Matthew Fryer reviews Simon bestwick's Tide of Souls here.

"A recent addition to Abaddon’s 'Tomes of the Dead' line, I expected this to be a zombie horror-thriller. And while indeed it is, there’s far more to Simon’s novel than necrotic innards and masticated brains..."


P.S. Simon's a bestseller, too! Stats from the Dark Delicacies Horror Bestseller List in California. Outselling even zombie fiction author Max Brooks (World War Z), ey?

Hey all,

So The Bookseller's slightly peculiar Diagram Prize "for the oddest book title of the year" has announced the shortlist for 2009. Go check it out. Now.

I mean it. When I'm speaking rhetorically, my voice rises at the end of the sentence.

Right. So, did you check out no. 4?

Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots, Ronald C Arkin (CRC Press)

That's not odd, surely? That's sensible! In fact, to hell with "governing"! We should be stamping out lethal behaviour. We should, in fact, be stamping out autonomous robots. Or not making them autonomous in the first place. Or not, ideally, building robots.

It's coming, brothers and sisters.

Those wacky folks at Pornokitsch have been up to their old tricks again - after their interviews with Abaddon authors Rebecca Levene and Scott Andrews, they've now interviewed Paul Kane, the author of Arrowhead and Broken Arrow, in the Afterblight series.

Paul chats about writing for Abaddon, and how he and Scott Andrews have planned the overlap of characters and event in their respective Afterblight series, both previously and in upcoming novels...

Part one of the interview is here, part two is here, and part three should be coming out in the next few days or so.



P.S. I notice Pornokitsch are also running a Sexy Steampunk Competition - comment there and nominate your favourite sexy steampunk characters to be entered into a prizedraw. I notice that nobody has nominated our very own Mr. Ulysses Quicksilver, yet! Nor any one of his many lovely female companions from the Pax Brittania series. It's an outrage, say I, an outrage!

There's a great review of Way of the Barefoot Zombie, by Jasper Bark, over here at TheNovelBlog.com.


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Okay, so apparently the Guardian has been running a 10 rules for writing thingy, and David and Jenni thought it would be interesting/amusing/shocking/inspiring for me to give my take on these, seeing as I'm an editor and I've written one book and that. Anyway, this is going to be messy so bear with me:

Hi all,

The second Abaddon & Solaris Books Pocast is now up! Point your iTunes to this link, or search "Abaddon" (or "Solaris") in the "Search Store" box at the top-right corner of iTunes, to check it out. Or if you're a good boy/girl and subscribed to our feed last time, just run iTunes and it should find and upload the new episode automatically.

The editors and staff at Abaddon Books and Solaris Books continue to deliver the "very best, most hard-hitting and innovative"* of podcasting entertainment in this second, thrilling instalment.

The Abaddon & Solaris Books Podcast #2: Juliet McKenna and the SFX Weekender (okay, it's a functional title; it does what it says on the tin) is introduced by junior editor Jenni Hill, who's trying to overcome her fear of the microphone, so everybody be really nice about her. Jon Oliver interviews Juliet McKenna, author of Solaris's The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution books, sharing thoughts on coming up with fantasy names, writing and the future of fantasy fiction, and Juliet gives us a reading from the second Lescari book, Blood in the Water. Finally, Jon and David talk about the SFX Weekender, and we hear David's interviews with daleks, authors, and a couple of special guests.

Seriously, you can't get this stuff anywhere else. Barack Obama's considering starting a war with the UK, just so he can justify sending the CIA in to kidnap us. That's how cool we are.

Please listen to it, and once again, we'd love feedback. We got some great feedback last time, and have tried to make completely different mistakes this time.

Cheers,

David


*my mum again.

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Hi all,

The Abaddon & Solaris Books Podcast second instalment, "Juliet McKenna and the SFX Weekender: From Lescar to Camber Sands," is underoing final editing now, and should be up tomorrow afternoon.

Featured is an interview with Solaris Books author Juliet McKenna and a reading from her book, Blood in the Water, and a convention report from Editor-in-Chief Jon Oliver and the roguishly charming David Moore on their recent jaunt to the SFX Weekender at Pontins Camber Sands, including interviews with Abaddon's own Al Ewing and Jonathan Green, with a dalek, and some pretty exciting surprises.

Keep an eye out on the blog. Should be a good one.

David

I just had to interrupt your regular broadcast to say - how effing Abaddon Books are these shoes?

Honest to god, I must have these. Like, now. Zombie shoes! They're even in Abaddon colours!!

('Zombie Stomper' high heels by Iron Fist)

If you see a brunette tottering around the next Horror convention wearing these, it's probably me. Help me back to the Abaddon and Solaris Books table as I can't walk in high heels to save my life. And yet I still want these shoes. (Hey, who needs to actually walk? I'll just sit and look at them.) Which reminds me - I'm going to be at WHC in Brighton and Eastercon in London in a few weeks, comment if you're going!


Right, back to proofing Weston Ochse's Empire of Salt, his zombie novel for our Tomes of the Dead line. It's brilliant, by the way. One thing that completely jumps out at me is the setting, he really makes me want to visit the Salton Sea, (although not if it's full of zombies, obviously! I'd be rubbish with a shotgun). It just sounds like such a spooky, interesting place.

If you don't know already, (and I didn't) the Salton Sea is a large lake in California that was once hailed as a tourist resort, although due to environmental problems the water is getting saltier and saltier, the fish are dying out and tourism has decreased.* There're loads of abandoned holiday houses and motels, - in short, it's a really spooky setting for a zombie story!

I love ghost town photography of abandoned places, so here's two photos from the Salton Sea to get you in the right frame of mind... The book's out at the end of April!

Right, back to work...**

(photo of an abadoned motel by 'pretzelpaws' taken from wikipedia)

Just a big shout out to our colleagues in Rebellion Video Games, who you may or may not know that we at Abaddon and Solaris Books share an office with. Their recently released game Aliens vs. Predator is currently number one on all platforms in the UK, beating games such as BioShock 2! It's also the fastest-selling game in the UK of 2010!

Props to be you, guys! Guess all those months of making us poor publishers listen to weird alien noises coming from the sound room actually came to something, huh?

-

Hi all,

As I'm sure I mentioned, Mike Wild's Twilight of Kerberos: The Crucible of the Dragon God (cover by Mark Harrison) and Matthew Sprange's Twilight of Kerberos: Night's Haunting (cover by Greg Staples) have both been longlisted for the David Gemmell Award, in both the Legend (for best heroic fantasy) and Ravenheart (for best cover art) categories.

Current voting is for the short-list, to be published in April, and ends on March 31st; there will be another round of voting, the details for which will be given when the shortlist comes out.

The Gemmell Award is relatively new - this will be the second award - but already well supported and quite widely recognised, and winning either category will be a great coup for the author or cover artist (and for us). So be sure and jump on the website, sign up and get your votes in!

Cheers,

David