The Gentleman Bastard Competition WINNERS!

To re-cap, I am giving away two copies of The Lies of Locke Lamora, and two copies of Red Seas Under Red Skies – the first two books in Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard Sequence – in preparation of his third book coming out in October.

The winners can choose whether they receive the book in paperback or eVersion, but they’re only receiving the first book straight away! Once they’ve read it, I’ll send along the second book. This is a little push to hope they get them read before the third book is out

 

But enough about that – onto the winners! I will be contacting them asap, but if you are the lucky winners and haven’t heard of me, check your spam box and/or email me to my username @ gmail.com in order to sort out which address you’d like them sent to, and whether you prefer paperback or electronic.

I should drag this out a little more, shouldn’t I?

No? Righto – the winners!

bunnibunnibunni

Rebecka

Thank you everyone for entering. I’ll probably run another, perhaps for the third book alone, closer to October.

BookSworn Giveaway!

Well, giving away awesome Scott Lynch books may be one thing (see my previous entry for the competition I’m running!), but a giveaway of 15 signed fantasy books comes pretty close as well.

There’s a new site called ‘BookSworn’ of 15 authors, and to kick it off, they’re running a competition. The way to enter is one of the best I’ve ever seen – you really do have to prove you’re a fan of fantast novels! 

Best of all, it’s open worldwide (always appreciated). You have until the 25th of March, and almost all the ‘masks’ have been revealed so now is the time to start working at it! Best of luck

The Gentleman Bastards competition!

Scott Lynch is easily my favourite author. His series, The Gentleman Bastards, is the one I fling at others the most to read and nearly everyone who’s had the book pitched at their heads has loved it.

Now that the third book has a release date, it’s time for me to do another giveaway!

I will be giving away two copies each of ‘The Lies of Locke Lamora’, and ‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ – the first two books in the series. The winner can choose whether they would like the paperback version, kindle version, or any other electronic version that has the same easy ‘gift this ebook via email’ option.

To make it a bit different though – the winner will only receive ‘The Lies of Locke Lamora’ to begin with. Whenever they have finished it (hopefully sometime this year!) I’ll then send through ‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’. Basically just to be a little push to edge this series up your reading pile, as we only have six months until the third is out!

Anyone in the world can enter my competition (if the winner chooses paperback, I’ll happily send them anywhere). All you have to do to enter is comment below stating why you’d love to win

Winners will be picked at random, only then will I contact requesting postage or email details.

Competition ends 29th of March (Australian time!), and the winners will be announced on the 30th March, 2013.

Scott Lynch’s 3rd book, ‘The Republic of Thieves’ will be released on October 10, 2013 in the UK and Commonwealth and October 8, 2013 in the US!

017/100 – I want to write

Some writers, when reading a book they utterly love, get disheartened. They think ‘I could never accomplish this! What’s the point! I give up!’

I’m a bit odd, as I think the opposite. It inspires me to try to create something on par with that excellence. I see what rules can be broken, what feelings I want to invoke in others, and so on.

Reading a certain book recently has ruined me for other books. I haven’t been able to read anything else since – I always get like that after reading something amazing, all else seems so dull in comparison (and I think a lot of other readers feel the same). It’s like my head needs more time to let it all sink in, and doesn’t want it erased or crowded by other reading.

This book blew my mind a little. Never before has a book made me realise, ‘You know, as the writer, YOU can write ANYTHING. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN! They’re your characters, from scratch! The plot, the world/s, everything! They’re YOURS TO COMMAND!’

Of course, from character, plot and world building, I’ve been aware of that for some time, but this made me realise how true and how shattering that statement is. A book doesn’t have to be the usual characters with plots A through C and la la la. I can write anything.

I haven’t been able to write like I used to for many, many years now. I used to be able to write each day and look forward to it. I used to scribble in my lunch hour, notes on my phone at all times, get up early and write before work – everything. more importantly, it was easy.

I think it was because of the writing environment I was in. There was this fantastic forum called Fiction[NET], that had a smallish core group of writers. We were all sorted into ‘houses’ like in Harry Potter, and there were weekly and monthly writing tasks that would earn the house some points. Whether they were pretending or not, they said my writing was excellent and begged to read more – I stress, whether they actually thought that, or were reading it at all – that feeling was what made writing so easy.

I don’t think it’s something that every writer ‘needs’ to have in order to write – not at all. It just made it freakishly easy.

Due to lacking time as we all got older and went into full time work, college, marriage, and so on, one by one we all fell away. For the past two or so years the originally creator has been trying to get it up and running again, but so far it hasn’t happened. I’ve tried other writing groups, but now, thanks to anxiety and a general inability to keep anything that requires continuous social interaction, none of them really seem to work for me.

But that book. It made me want to write again. It made me realise how little I’ve done to the plot when anything possible. Even though I have a few tens of thousands of words on plot in various forms, it’s not enough. Because I could do anything with it. And that’s interesting.

Here’s to hoping I start writing again.

2012 Novels to be read

Whilst reading up on other blog posts on what everyone else in nominating for the Hugos, I thought I’d make a list of novels that show up the most often that I haven’t read yet. Which I probably should.

In hopefully alphabetical order (by title) – total count 20!

• 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson
• Caliban’s War by James S.A. Corey
• Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold
• The Diviners by Libba Bray
• The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan
• Existence by David Brin
• Flame of Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier
• The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi
• Jack Glass by Adam Roberts
• The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin
• King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
• Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines
• The Mirage by Matt Ruff
• Nexus by Ramez Naam
• Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
• The Rook by Daniel O’Maley
• Stray Souls by Kate Griffin
• Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
• Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch

 

2013 Hugo Award Nominations

It’s getting closer and closer to March 10th, which means it’s almost time to submit nominations for the 2013 Hugo Awards!

Below are my current thoughts. Please let me know if you think anything I have in my draft nomination isn’t correct – I’m seeing so many people nominate works that aren’t eligible, that I just know I must be doing it also.

One note: I know there’s much controversy over Doctor Who nominations for short form best dramatic presentation, and wonder whether I should be nominating Season 7 in Long Form, like Game of Thrones was slanted at least year?

Okay I lied, two notes: How are we supposed to find out the editor of books we’ve noted have excellent editing?

Libraries

I’ve had a library card for longer than my partner’s been alive, which all in all sounds incredibly creepy. Yes, there’s a slight age difference between us, but more pointedly, I’ve had my library card since 1991, when I was five years old.

My pre-school was a few minutes walk away from a library – though probably 20 minutes when trying to shepherd 20 or so tiny kids there. Parents had to supply us with a book bag (and I still remember how ugly mine was… though I think Mum made it by hand, so I should be kind about it… it was bright red/blue/yellow) and I think we went there once a week.

Though I live in a fairly small ‘city’, we have a surprising amount of libraries. Darwin, Nightcliff, Casuarina, Karama… and then Palmerston (sister-city) has one, though I think I’ve only stepped foot in it once for a NaNoWriMo meeting. Our schools all have fairly decent libraries also, and the Dept of Education has one that I think I can borrow from, but haven’t been bothered to just yet.

We went to the library a lot when I was young, right up until maybe a year and a half ago (or is it two and a half years?) when Dad received my first iPad (and I upgraded) for his reading. He loves the damn thing, and now doesn’t read printed books, which is a good thing for mum who was literally running out of books to borrow, despite our number of libraries.

I loved the library when I was little. Not so much now, which I’ll get to in a moment. Mum used to take me there when I was ill, because it was a promised quiet space. The chairs were massive, she’d help me find my favourite books, and I’d finally feel rested and okay afterwards. I loved ‘The Fiend’ books. There was this book called ‘The Bear Nobody Wanted’ that was only read by myself – our library sill had the card system for a long while, so you could see that I was the only person borrowing it.

Now our library has eBooks and online ‘holding’ of books, if your card is enabled and you’ve set up a password. I love the idea of finding a library has a book you need/want to read at 10pm, and being able to put it on hold until you can make it in after work the next day, so I went in to have my card enabled.

Only they couldn’t, and had to call others over. My card was too old and the …idk, code on the card was far too old for this to happen. I asked what about everyone else in Darwin? I’m young, surely my card-…

Nope. Seems majority of people have either died, don’t use the library anymore, or lost theirs and have had to ask for a new one. They called someone over who needed my card for half an hour but surprisingly, they didn’t throw it out and simply give me a new one. It’s not even the oldest card I’ve had – I remember when it was just a yellow bit of card with your name written on it and then laminated. The handwriting on it was lovely.

 

I also used a library down in the very small farming town of Frankland, when I visited mum’s side of the family during holidays. It was a small half room attached to the town hall, and to this day they’re still on the index card system. I never got mine, I was always on Grandmas, and they were only open two days a week which drove me bloody crazy. At any one time they probably hold … mum and I can’t agree. At least nothing over 300 books, but at least they did a high turnover with nearby farming towns, so one visit I might have seen Frankland’s books, then next time it would be Cranbrook’s books, or Albany’s.

 

 

These days (and they’ve had it for a long time) there’s video games, televisions, and people who speak normally/loudly/yell across the room. I’ve tried going there while sick, and it’s been quieter in a bookstore in a shopping centre instead. I utterly hate this. I miss our quiet libraries. I miss the slightly-scary and/or rude librarians who’d tell you off. I love video games. This doesn’t mean I want them in a library with the sound way up and a horde of kids being loud around them.

 

But hey, what does my opinion matter. My hands are still ruined by ross river and so I read on my kindle (recently upgraded to the paperwhite!) because I can’t hold a book that’s over 300 pages otherwise. My library’s collection of ebooks seems to just be popular titles, ie. vampire smut, so I don’t even use them for that. Eh. At least I have the memories.

My 2012

Books read: 129
Shorts: 26
Audio: 29
Podcasts: 45
Comics/Manga: 28
Things won: 17
Movies: 18
Television: 272

This year I had two holidays – three, if you count the few days my partner was here at the very start of the year. From the 22nd – 27th of May, Lana and I went to the Glass House Mountains for a Writing Trip, where instead we played Magic: The Gathering and Settlers of Catan and I did utterly no writing. Then, from the 21st – 23rd of August – my Drewbro travelled all around Australia and stopped here for a few days  :D

Other things of note this year, our dingo Akasha died of the effects of old age at 12 years old. We adopted Echo from the RSPCA who then died after only six weeks by somehow getting out of the yard and being hit by a car. We then got Beckett, a border collie/husky cross who is a little terror and we love her to bits.

I knitted a scarf for my partner – Started: 7th Feb 2012 / Finished 15th Feb 2012. I started a jumper for him which is still only just started. I finished a quilt I started years ago, and made a much smaller one for my cat from the remains.

Partner and I reached our two year anniversary. Sherlock RP has been going since August 2010 and I have 31,000 followers. Rather than trying to move, rent or buy, we decided the best choice for the future was to put in a proposal to the building council for a flat-pack granny-flat kind of small house to be built at the far corner of my parents block. I’ve been in my current job for nine years by the 17th January. I’ve started on anxiety/depression meds and am seeing a psychologist.

I hit $50,000 in my savings (soon to be demolished when the house building starts) and whilst voting in the Hugo Awards for the first time and judging Aurealis Awards for the second time, I now review for seven publishers, NetGalley, and write for two websites whilst very slowly starting my own.

For some reason I still don’t feel like I’ve accomplished a damn thing.

2012: A Year in Reading

As seen in Tansy Rayner Roberts’ blog.

1. Best Book You Read In 2012? (You can break it down by genre if you want)

Please see these two posts:

• Books rated 5 stars.
• Books rated 4 stars. 

2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?
What We Saw At Night by Jacquelyn Mitchard – three young adults are allergic to sunlight so instead they rule the night. To feel like they’re still alive they take up parkour. Sadly it was poorly written and executed.

3. Most surprising (in a good way!) book of 2012? 
Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis – It’s 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between. It’s fantastic to have a well-rounded book, one that has a well developed plot, believable characters, beautiful description and above all else – a well written novel.

4. Book you recommended to people most in 2012?
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

5. Best series you discovered in 2012?
Milkweed Triptych by Ian Tregillis

6. Favorite new authors you discovered in 2012?
John Green, John Scalzi, Guy Adams, Mary Robinette Kowal and Sarah Rees Brennan

7. Best book that was out of your comfort zone or was a new genre for you?
The Luther book (The Calling by Neil Cross) was very wrong in parts, and I struggle reading about animals being hurt (even when children and humans in general are, that’s apparently fine to my mind, but animals? No.) The book was utterly fantastic, though.

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth was a struggle because it was set in a time I have no knowledge of, and I’m not usually a fan of the type of book it is (which means I miss out on so many books most people love) but it was worth continuing with.

8. Most thrilling, unputdownable book in 2012?
I can’t really answer this, as when I love a book far too much, I DO put it down because I need it to last and I can’t stand the thought of it being over.

9. Book You Read In 2012 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year:
Any book that has another in the same series coming out – I usually need to re-read so I remember what’s going on!

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2012?

11. Most memorable character in 2012?

Lucie Miller from Doctor Who (8th Doctor) Big Finish.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2012?
Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

13. Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2012?

The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling

14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2012 to finally read?

The Hobbit. Yes, I know. Also Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal which I’ve seen around, but the cover totally lead me to believe it was really not what it turned out to be at all.

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2012?

“So,” he called to her back, “Just out of curiosity, you know, purely conversation and all, at what age will you be entertaining offers of marriage?”
“You think it’ll be so easy?” she called back over her shoulder. “No way. There will be tasks. Like in a fairy tale.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Very, so think twice.”
“No need,” he said. “You’re worth it.” 
― Laini Taylor, Days of Blood & Starlight

16. Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2012? 
To Spin a Darker Stair (edited) by Tehani Wessely is the shortest at 64 pages, and Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson is easily the longest at 1122 – it had to be printed in two print volumes. The longest print book I read was The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson at 748 pages.

17. Book That Had A Scene In It That Had You Reeling And Dying To Talk To Somebody About It? (a WTF moment, an epic revelation, a steamy kiss, etc. etc.) Be careful of spoilers! 
Oh god, the end of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, end of Newsflesh by Mira Grant, certain shorts in the collection The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, and understandably, parts of Jenny Lawson’s memoir, and the David Thorne books.

18. Favorite Relationship From A Book You Read In 2012 (be it romantic, friendship, etc).
Karou and Akiva in Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series for romance.

Wax and Wayne in Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson for friendship.

19. Favorite Book You Read in 2012 From An Author You Read Previously
Anything by Brandon Sanderson and Mira Grant.

20. Best Book You Read That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else:
A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty was recommended to me, but by one of the publisher media girls who then sent it to me to review. It’s easily one of my favourite books of the year <3

Looking Ahead…

1. One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2012 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2013?

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed and The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma

2. Book You Are Most Anticipating For 2013?

• Siege and Storm (The Grisha #2) by Leigh Bardugo
• Fuse (Pure #2) by Julianna Baggott
• The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson
• The Madness Underneath (Shades of London #2) by Maureen Johnson
• Untold (The Lynburn Legacy #2) by Sarah Rees Brennan
• Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1) by Gail Carriger
• The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard #3) by Scott Lynch
• Steelheart (Unknown Trilogy #1) by Brandon Sanderson
• Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych #3) by Ian Tregillis
• Untitled (Adaptation #2) by Malinda Lo
• The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
• Midnight Blue-Light Special (InCryptid #2) by Seanan McGuire
• The Burning: A Luther Novel by Neil Cross
• Without a Summer (Glamourist Histories #3) by Mary Robinette Kowal

3. One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging In 2013?

Get through some of my 236 books that I really want to read asap (that doesn’t include the above mentioned).

My ‘to-read’ pile

I have a very messy number of ‘to-read’ books, which sometimes includes a full series, sometimes just the first book in the series, and sometimes kind of a few of the books, or the ones that are available to my vague memory, or even sometimes when I know that the third book is coming out in the next soon whenever.

But all that aside, I have a messy number, and it’s 213. I have 236 books I would very much love to read in the next as soon as possible. This year I read 128 novels so far, so hrm.

I have a problem where no matter how much I read, I always feel like I should be reading more. There’s so many books that are considered to be the prerequisite books in the Spec Fic genre, then there’s those that have one the main awards (or many awards), then there’s books my friends love… and I want to read them all! No, I feel that I need to, otherwise, what, I can’t say that I read/write in that genre, or something.

This is in addition to the reading I need to do to review books for publishers, and judging for Aurealis Awards.

Well, it’s nearly 2013. Bring it on.