Category: General

Readathon Progress Post

Posted October 17, 2015 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Good afternoon, everyone! It’s almost time for the readathon, so I thought I’d get my progress post up and running. All my updates will be in here, unless the post starts getting ridiculously long, in which case I might start a new one. Let’s start by showing off my stack (or, you know, some of it).

Readathon Stack!

Of course, who knows whether I’ll stick to that, because I am a contrary creature…

Here’s the introductory meme!

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Cardiff, UK. And since I’m Welsh, you can expect some squealing about the rugby as well, I’m afraid.
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I don’t know, I’m quite looking forward to rereading Old Man’s War. Or maybe Magic Slays; Ilona Andrews’ work is always fun.
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? Salted caramel chocolate Cadbury fingers. Mmmm.
4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I’m a ghostwriter and will be looking with interest to see if anybody’s reading books I’ve had anything to do with… not that I can tell you if you are.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? I’m pretty in the swing of it, now. I’ll sleep if I have to and read joyously if not, and not beat myself up too much about either outcome.

13.31: Well, I’ve started with Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates. I actually tried to read this before and did not get on with it, so I’m a little surprised to find myself enjoying it.

14.24: Just did the Cover Escape challenge, and now it’s back to curling up with Phryne. Yeesh, it’s cold here in Wales!

15.26: I’m strangely slow at reading, today! I thought I’d easily get Phryne polished off in two hours. Ah well, enjoying it.

16.34: Now finished my first book! Not sure what’s next, being social a little bit first.

17.44: Have started reading Hollow City. Accidentally spoilered myself about the end, oops. About 1/4 of the way through.

18.27: More than halfway through Hollow City now. Break for dinner! Wales lost in the rugby, sigh.

21.02: Whoops, where is the time going? (Cue some Sandy Denny!) Listening to music to liven me up again and taking a break to chat. I’m 1/3 of the way through Murder Past Due, and 3/4 of the way through Hollow City — I was flagging a bit, so I changed it up for a while.

22.07: Finished Hollow City! I think I’m going to see if I can have a bath… books to go in with me: The Moonspinners (Mary Stewart) and Murder Past Due (Miranda James).

01.07: Well, I read The Moonspinners in the bath, completing my third book. But now I feel a bit sick, and I have work and book club tomorrow, so I’m going to get some sleep now. Back in the morning!

09.39: I’m back! I actually ended up reading over half of another book till I could fall asleep, so I’m now halfway through Dark Entries (Robert Aickman).

10.59: Finished Dark Entries. Now I’m going to settle back down with Murder Past Due, and see if I can finish a fifth book this readathon.

12.19: Now I’ve finished Murder Past Due. I’m wrapping up with some organisational stuff rather than reading more.

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted October 17, 2015 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

This has been an unexpectedly busy week again, since friends have been super nice to me (particularly Lynn and Robert), and Mum ended up with some Amazon vouchers from surveys! Which is really nice, because it is a stressful time. This week my grandmother’s going to have her operation for cancer, so I would really, really appreciate good thoughts sent her way.

Anyway, back to the books!

Won

Cover of Dragon Scales by Sasha L Miller

I liked The Errant Prince a lot, so yay for this! Looking forward to reading it. Thank you, Sasha L. Miller!

Dead tree books

Cover of Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews Cover of Dark Metropolis by Jaclyn Dolamore

I was instructed to get something light and escapist and easy, and Magic Slays will be exactly that for me. And research, since paranormal romance is a genre I ghostwrite in… Dark Metropolis apparently has a bunch of LGBTQ characters, including an ace character.

Ebooks

Cover of Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace Cover of Hollow World by Michael Sulivan Cover of Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

Cover of An Ancient Peace by Tanya Huff Cover of Salsa Nocturna by Daniel José Older Cover of Posted to Death by Dean James

Cover of This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin Cover of Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

A rather random mix, really! A few of these I’ve been meaning to read for a while.

Library

Cover of The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer Cover of Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo Cover of Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo

Cover of The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende Cover of My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart Cover of The Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

Cover of Control Point by Myke Cole Cover of Midnight Never Come, by Marie Brennan India Black and the Shadows of Anarchy

Another mixed bag, really! My Brother Michael and The Grand Sophy are rereads grabbed for the readathon this weekend (post coming soon).

What’s everyone else been getting?

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted October 13, 2015 by Nicky in General / 17 Comments

This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday is picking authors you would like to see write together. I’ve taken a somewhat random approach, just throwing favourite authors together in some cases. Also, I’ve kept dead authors in the equation, because you never know. If anyone could find a way to talk to a dead author, it’d probably be another living author.

  1. N.K. Jemisin and Kameron Hurley. I can only imagine what evils they would create… it’d be amazing.
  2. Gail Simone and Kelly Sue DeConnick. A sudden thought: imagine Batgirl vs Captain Marvel. Or Captain Marvel vs Red Sonja.
  3. Jo Walton and Steven Brust. I like their work, Jo admires Brust’s books, and I know Brust at least has collaborated before…
  4. Scott Lynch and Joe Abercrombie. Mind you, it’d end with all the characters dead.
  5. Cherie Priest and Kelley Sue DeConnick. Maybe they could adapt Bloodshot and Hellbent into a comic, using Kelly Sue’s knowledge of how to script?
  6. Jo Walton and Dorothy L. Sayers. Farthing is a pastiche of Golden Age crime fiction. I’d love to see what Wimsey would do in Walton’s alternate Britain… or what Carmichael would do, face to face with Wimsey. I feel like he’d probably get along better with Parker.
  7. J.R.R. Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay. The Fionavar books were influenced by Tolkien, undoubtedly, and Kay worked with Tolkien’s son on preparing The Silmarillion. The two together would surely do some fascinating things with mythology.
  8. Ursula Le Guin and Jo Walton. Because what better way to short out my fannish circuits?
  9. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Because Good Omens was genius.
  10. Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman. Might be a bit of a mismatch, but they both deal in fairytales…

This was actually a really hard one to come up with. I’ll be interesting to see what other people have thought up!

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted October 10, 2015 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

Oops. This week has been one of wild indulgence. Granted, some of these were preordered — it’s been a heck of a week for books I wanted coming out! There’s one or two more I don’t even have, like Empire Ascendant by Kameron Hurley. Yeesh.

(Well, some of these I didn’t preorder, just picked up as soon as I could, with new money coming into my account for the start of the month. It hit me rather harder than I expected!)

Bought

Cover of Last Song Before Night by Ilana C. Myer Cover of Every Secret Thing by Susanna Kearsley Cover of Updraft by Fran Wilde

Cover of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs Cover of Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie Cover of Fool's Run by Patricia A. McKillip

Cover of Carry On by Rainbow Rowell Cover of Lady of Mallow by Dorothy Eden Cover of The Parthenon by Mary Beard

Cover of India Black by Carol K. Carr Cover of The Last Witness by K.J. Parker Cover of Home by Francis Pryor

Cover of Court of Fives by Kate Elliott Cover of Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan Cover of All For Love by Jane Aiken Hodge

Cover of White Water by Pamela Oldfield Cover of Mythmaker by Marianne de Pierres

Uh. Yes. Quite the haul, I know. And I actually won Mythmaker, but putting it there stops there being one book hanging out on its own.

(Yes, I quite literally have OCD, I know this.)

Library

Cover of India Black and the Widow of Windsor Cover of Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

How I wish these numbers were the other way round and I had gone nuts at the library instead! Ah well. I have lots of reservations due in next week…

How’s everyone else been doing? I’m feeling pretty worn out and run down at the moment; there’s family stuff going on, and sometimes I think I might just need a good hug. Books make it a bit more bearable, though — coming out of the library with an armful of new pocket universes to hide in is a heady feeling.

Don’t forget to link me to your hauls! Direct links are helpful and save me having to track you down to return the comments.

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted October 6, 2015 by Nicky in General / 17 Comments

This week’s theme from The Broke and the Bookish is ‘Ten Bookish Things I Want to Quit’. Wait, there’s things about books that people might want to quit?!

Kidding, kidding, I totally have a list too.

  1. Getting caught up in my latest shiny. It’d be so nice if I could manage to keep my attention on one book or series at a time. Or maybe a couple at a time.
  2. Buying something and then not getting round to it. I’m sorry.
  3. My ridiculous backlist of ARCs. I’m actually behaving myself better now, so maybe this is an ‘I Have Quit’ one.
  4. Carrying like fifty books around the country when I travel. I have an ereader! I have no need to do this! Which leads to…
  5. …Wanting to read every book but the ones I’ve got with me. Just no, brain. Just no. Behave yourself.
  6. Being cranky about ebooks. I actually love my ereader! It is adorable and it can carry a lot of books. But lately, I don’t know, I’ve been cranky about reading in ebook and I’ve wanted to have something in my hands. (Except with my Kindle Voyage, because new shiny.)
  7. Skipping bedtime reading. What’s with that? Come on, brain, you know that reading before bed is good for you.
  8. Feeling guilty about ‘guilty pleasures’. You know what sort of book I’m talking about, probably. If you know me. But my guilty pleasure is another’s favourite book, and it’s silly to feel guilty about something that makes you happy, even if it’s a brief pleasure. (I actually wrote a whole post about this.)
  9. Rebuying books to reread. Somewhere, I have a copy. Patience, self. You can wait.
  10. Planning ridiculous reading lists… and consequently getting nothing read. Pressure works, sometimes, but not when I try and plan months ahead. Maybe plan the next book ahead, singular. But be flexible. Reading is meant to be fun, right?

Anyone else resemble these remarks? Heh.

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted October 3, 2015 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

Last Saturday I was at a convention, and there was a dealer’s room and a swap table, sooo… yeah, unsurprisingly, I have some new additions!

Bought

Cover of London Falling by Paul Cornell Cover of Shanghai Sparrow by Gaie Sebold Cover of The Pendragon Protocol by Philip Purser-Hallard

I’ve been meaning to read the first two for ages, and the latter involves Arthurian references, so I couldn’t resist.

Swap table/freebies

Cover of Smiler's Fair by Rebecca Levene Cover of King's Dragon by Kate Elliott Cover of Black Magic Woman by Justin Gustainis

Cover of Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi Cover of The Straight-Razor Cure by Daniel Polansky Cover of The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley

Sadly, I didn’t really have anything to contribute to the swap table, since I didn’t know it was there in advance, so I am paying it forward by using Bookcrossing to send some books on a new journey.

ARCs

Cover of Armada by Ernest Cline Cover of An Apprentice to Elves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear

I’m surprised I was allowed access to Armada, since it’s definitely out and has plenty of buzz, but I’m not arguing! And I need to read the first two books in Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear’s series first, but I’m excited to do so!

Library

Cover of Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart Cover of The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart Cover of Rose Cottage by Mary Stewart

Cover of Thornyhold by Mary Stewart Cover of Unseemly Science by Rod Duncan Cover of Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald

Mostly a grab bag of my favourite comfort reads. My grandmother’s not very well, so I feel like I deserve it!

How’s everyone else doing?

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October TBR

Posted October 1, 2015 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

I’ve been excited to get started on this — I think I’ve got a great line-up for this month. I’m enjoying switching the categories up a bit, and will probably do that every month, even if ‘ARCs’ and ‘library’ are probably gonna be a constant.

ARCs

  1. Made to Kill, Adam Christopher.
  2. The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu.
  3. Tower of Thorns, Juliet Marillier.
  4. The Palace Job, Patrick Weekes.
  5. Armada, Ernest Clines.

Library

  1. Ghost Hawk, Susan Cooper.
  2. Badgerland, Patrick Barkham.
  3. Ask a Policeman, The Detection Club.
  4. The Great Zoo of China, Matthew Riley.
  5. Garden Spells, Sarah Addison Allen.

Series

  1. The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, Catherynne M. Valente.
  2. Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie.
  3. Dreamer’s Pool, Juliet Marillier.
  4. Dragon Coast, Greg van Eekhout.
  5. The Dark Blood of Poppies, Freda Warrington.

Tor.com novellas

  1. The Witches of Lychford, Paul Cornell.
  2. Binti, Nnedi Okorafor.
  3. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Kai Ashante Wilson.
  4. Sunset Mantle, Alter S. Reiss.
  5. The Last Witness, K.J. Parker.

Comics

  1. Bitch Planet, vol 1, Kelly Sue DeConnick.
  2. Saga vol 3, Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples.
  3. Hawkeye: Rio Bravo, Matt Fraction.
  4. Guardians of the Galaxy: Angela, Brian Michael Bendis.
  5. Batgirl: Wanted, Gail Simone.

Challenge

  1. Hard to Be A God, Boris & Arkady Strugatsky.
  2. Burning Water, Mercedes Lackey.
  3. The Colour Purple, Alice Walker.
  4. The Enchantment Emporium, Tanya Huff.
  5. Rosemary & Rue, Seanan Mcguire.

Wildcards

  1. The Fox’s Tower & Other Stories, Yoon Ha Lee.
  2. Thornyhold, Mary Stewart.
  3. Timeless, Gail Carriger.
  4. Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo.
  5. ?

It shouldn’t be too busy this month, so I’m hoping to really chew through the list. I think I’m gonna end up with a couple books left over from September, but I’ll stick them in wildcards if I get round to them.

ETA: I’ve gone wildly off-script because it’s a difficult month. Still hoping to finish a few more of these, though!

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The story behind The Killing Kind

Posted October 1, 2015 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

You might know I’m a bit of a fan of Chris Holm’s work — you can find my reviews of his Collector trilogy here, and of his new book The Killing Kind here — and we’ve had some great interactions (including some signed bookmarks for the Collector series, featured in my review of that trilogy!), so I was excited to be contacted and asked if I wanted to feature a post from him about the journey behind writing The Killing Kind.

It’s a bit of a jump from publishing SF/F Chandler/Hammett pastiche with Angry Robot to writing a book set in reality (albeit the dark underside of reality I wouldn’t want to visit, unless guided by an author like Chris in a safely fictional vehicle)… but as you can see from Chris Holm’s post here, maybe it has something in common with the Collector trilogy after all.

It just wouldn’t die, you see.


The Story Behind THE KILLING KIND
Chris Holm

It began, as many criminal enterprises do, with a layoff—with a man, suddenly out of work, nearing the end of his rope.

Writers don’t often talk about their day jobs, but I’m a scientist by training. For a time, I thought I wanted to be one of those bug hunters the CDC dispatches whenever there’s an outbreak of something deadly and exotic. (My wife, as you might imagine, was thrilled.) I was serious enough that I enrolled in a microbiology PhD program at the University of Virginia—but ultimately, it didn’t stick. A field that challenging demands one’s full attention, and I couldn’t bring myself to shelve my dream of becoming a published author. So I dropped out of grad school, took a job as a researcher for a small biotech startup, and got writing.

Nine years, one unpublished novel, and a handful of short stories later, that startup folded—and for the first time since I was sixteen, I was jobless. So when my buddy Steve Weddle told me he was launching a new print magazine and asked if I’d like to contribute a story, I said sure. He couldn’t afford to pay me, but I didn’t care. I needed something to do to keep me from climbing the walls while waiting to hear back on all the resumes I sent out.

I pitched Steve couple story ideas. One was lean and mean at maybe 3,000 words—the sort of story I was known for (inasmuch as I was known at all). The other was a monster, a behemoth—an idea so ambitious that I worried it’d get away from me, and wind up too long to print. When I told Steve so, here’s what he replied:

“The problem with online writing (which I love and have nothing against and love and did I make it clear that I love online?) is that folks have a tough time scrolling through a 10k word blog post of a story. So if you have a piece that’s longer than 5k, being in print would be the way to go, I think. AHMM and EQMM and those folks have limits to size. I mean, they can’t just run 20k of something because it’s cool. Needle can. It’s what we were built for. Yeah, some quick punch is great. But something longer, developed, intricate, high-concept would be great to see in print.”

So, caution thrown, I sat down and wrote “The Hitter”—a hard-bitten tale of violence, loss, and redemption, featuring a hitman who only hits other hitmen. It came out fast. Crazy fast. And at 11,000 words, it wound up more novella than short story.

“The Hitter” appeared in Needle’s second issue. To my surprise and delight, people really responded to it. It was nominated for an Anthony Award, and selected to appear in THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011. I’m pretty sure that means I owe Steve a beer.

But for some reason, the story still nagged at me. Unlike all the other shorts I’d written, it felt unfinished—which was odd, since it was already longer than the lot of ’em. I told myself to leave it be. That I shouldn’t mess with a good thing. Then, one day, I woke up with an idea that changed everything. I could pull back the camera. Shift the narrative from claustrophobic first-person to sprawling third. Show not just the (hopefully redemptive) journey of the hitman protagonist, but also that of the antagonists who want him dead, and those who hope to bring him to justice. A few months later, I’d finished the first draft of THE KILLING KIND.

Whether the transition from short story to novel was successful isn’t for me to say—but so far, buzz has been good. THE KILLING KIND received the first starred review of my career, from Kirkus. I’ve gotten glowing blurbs from writers I admire. In one of the more surreal turns of my life, the legendary David Baldacci called it “a story of rare, compelling brilliance.”

I’m grateful, if a bit befuddled. All I was trying to do was make this story finally shut up. I’m nearly finished with book two, and it hasn’t yet. It’s almost enough to make me wish I’d been laid off ages ago.

Almost.

***

Chris Holm is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011. His critically acclaimed Collector trilogy made over forty Year’s Best lists. His latest novel, THE KILLING KIND, is about a man who makes his living hitting hitmen, only to wind up a target himself. For links to Chris on Twitter and Facebook, visit www.chrisholmbooks.com.

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted September 29, 2015 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Hmm, this week’s theme is about recommending stuff you like if you like something popular, and I’m never sure about what’s actually popular and what I just know about because I’m in my own little circle. So I’m just going to suggest some readalikes.

  1. If you like N.K. Jemisin, especially The Fifth Season, try Kameron Hurley. Reading the start of The Fifth Season, I was so struck that it ‘felt like’ The Mirror Empire.
  2. If you like J.R.R. Tolkien, particularly in The Lord of the Rings mode, try Poul Anderson. He was also one of the founding writers of SF/F, and dug into a lot of the same material that influenced Tolkien.
  3. If you like Raymond Chandler, try Chris F. Holm. Mostly if you like SF/F as well, because the Collector series is a lot of fun, and riffs on Chandler and Hammett’s style and plots. But The Killing Kind is also great.
  4. If you like Jacqueline Carey, particularly the Kushiel books, try Freda Warrington, starting with A Taste of Blood Wine. There’s a similar lushness there in the language and style.
  5. If you like Ilona Andrews, try Jacqueline Carey! She has written some urban fantasy type stuff with the Agent of Hel trilogy, which is now complete.
  6. If you like Catherynne M. Valente, try Patricia McKillip — or the other way round, both being differently famous depending on your circles. The lyrical writing and some of the themes seem akin.
  7. If you like any books at all, try Jo Walton. She’s written in a whole range of genres, but mostly I’m thinking of the fantasy/coming of age story, Among Others. If you’re in love with books, you’ll have something in common with Mori.
  8. If you like Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint, try Tanya Huff’s The Fire’s Stone. Also has LGBT themes, in a more fantastical world. Never seems to get the love I’d like to see for it!
  9. If you like epic fantasy, of whatever stripe, try Tad Williams. I really enjoyed the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books, and though they stick quite close to a traditional fantasy mould, they had a lot there that I appreciated, especially by way of characters.
  10. If you like Gail Carriger, try Genevieve Cogman. The tone is less silly, but some of the same enthusiasm and tone is there.

I’ll be interested to see what other people are recommending here! I found this one difficult, because I’m never sure how to judge other people’s taste.

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted September 26, 2015 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

This week I was a little bit naughty and did some requesting on Netgalley, after doing a bit of a tidy-up of copies I can’t review because I didn’t download them in time, can’t find a library copy, etc, etc. But I’m still on 69% reviews-to-approvals, so I think I’m doing okay!

Received to review!

Cover of The Prophecy Con by Patrick Weekes Cover of The Paladin Caper by Patrick Weekes Cover of Tower of Thorns by Juliet Marillier

Cover of Badge, Book and Candle by Max Gladstone  Cover of The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu Cover of Made to Kill by Adam Christopher

I really need to read Dreamer’s Pool so I can read Tower of Thorns, and The Palace Job so I can read The Prophecy Con and The Paladin Caper. Oh, self, you do make work!

(Like I mind.)

Bought/gifted

Cover of Old Man's War by John Scalzi Cover of The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi Cover of The Last Colony by John Scalzi

Cover of Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi Cover of The Human Division by John Scalzi Cover of The End of All Things by John Scalzi

Cover of Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson Cover of Dragon Coast by Greg van Eekhout Cover of Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Cover of Talking Hands by Margalit Fox Cover of The Fox Tower by Yoon Ha Lee

Many many many thanks to Lois and Amy, who have belatedly celebrated my birthday by showering me with bookishness. (Some of the Scalzi is from Lois, and Talking Hands is from Amy.)

Aaand the final issue of Captain Marvel and the Carol Corps

Captain Marvel & The Carol Corps #4

By the time this goes live, I’ll be on the way to BristolCon with Robert from Bastian’s Books. So if you’re going, you might catch a glimpse of that rare sight — a wild Nikki. Bring a pokĂ©ball.

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