I've just had some dates confirmed by the most excellent Darren Nash, so here is my publication schedule for the next few months:

March:
The Changeling - Australia mass market paperback (Angus & Robertson)

May:
Earth Ascendant - US mass market paperback (Ace)
Earth Ascendant - Australian mass market paperback (Orbit)

June:
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: US hardcover (Del Rey)
Saturn Returns: UK mass market paperback (Orbit)

November:
Earth Ascendant: UK mass market paperback (Orbit)

The best part of this news is that local readers of the Astropolis series aren't going to be stiffed by import prices when the next book comes out.

Meanwhile, work on book three continues apace. (I can hear the whips cracking as I type...)

Here's the US blurb of Earth Ascendant:

Imre Bergamasc is the First Prime of the Returned Continuum. For many hundreds of thousands of years, he has ruled Earth and the far-flung regions of the galaxy. To ensure stability within his empire, he has embarked on a Line transmission tour of his domain, reinforcing the links between distant sectors.

But during his mission, Imre is abducted by an unknown entity demanding he return to Earth and warning him of an impending threat. After he is released, an attempt is made on his life--resulting in the deaths of a dozen innocent people.

Upon his return, Imre learns Earth is in crisis. His administration is under attack by saboteurs and dissidents. And as his empire crumbles around him, Imre can't help but wonder if his enemies are connected to his murder nearly half a millennium earlier...

And here's the link to the cover, which I still think is kinda neat.

If you haven't heard enough of my sultry tones lately (ho ho), here are a couple of interviews you won't want to miss:

...with the excellent Shaun Farrell of Adventures in Sci-Fi on the topics of Cenotaxis, Saturn Returns, The Force Unleashed and more. Kevin J Anderson is also interviewed in the same podcast, as an added bonus.

...with the legendary Grant Stone of Faster Than Light on, well, anything that came to mind. There was a lot of talk about Saturn Returns and Earth Ascendant, iirc.

Both interviews were conducted last year. I've just been slow posting them.

Enjoy!

Saturn Returns and Cenotaxis (billed as "Astropolis 1.5", which I love) are now available unabridged, via the preceding links, from the most excellent Audible.com, which means they're purchasable on the iTunes store here in Australia.

I'm excited by this because they're my first audio releases since my novella "Evermore" and the Star Wars: Force Heretic trilogy (all of which are also still available on iTunes, the latter books in abridged form). I haven't heard them yet, but I'm intending to work my way through both during my afternoon walks.

Each recording comes with an intro from me, recorded in my very own voice. At some point I'll post the full text here for those who have already bought the paper books, but here for now are some samples. ( Imagine me breathing heavily out of your headphones, and trying my best to sound learned... )

Here's a quick conversation between Jessica Wade, Ginjer Buchanan and me that covers all sorts of fun topics: the Philip K Dick nomination, where Astropolis is going, the weather in Darwin, chundering, and our favourite PKD novels. Enjoy!

I'm very pleased (and flattered) to learn that Saturn Returns has been nominated for the Philip K Dick Award, for "distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States." It appears alongside a truly stellar list of names, including Elizabeth Bear, M. John Harrison and Karen Traviss. The result will be announced in March.

This news has prompted a wave of Dick jokes, the likes of which I haven't seen since High School. Bring 'em on! :-)

( Full details here. )

"MIA" stands, in this case, for "Missing In Astropolis."

You might already have guessed that I've gone quiet because I'm in the thrall of the latest ms, in which case I apologize for belaboring the point. (That could also be why I'm spelling in USese. Who knows?) So a belated Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to all and sundry. I hope 2008 has got off to a magnificent start. Has anyone managed to break any resolutions yet?

I'll be back in a week or two with some news. For now, I'll keep tapping away (from my fourth state/territory in two weeks--it's been hectic!).

Russell Letson reviewed Cenotaxis for Locus's latest issue, and I'm going to use his excellent summary as a way of promoting the book's release.

"Cenotaxis," he says, "is a free-standing novella set, according to Sean Williams's 'Note on Sources,' between Saturn Returns (reviewed in October 2007) and its yet-unreleased sequel in the Astropolis sequence. While it does feature the earlier book's protagonist, Imre Bergamasc, it is not really a sequel--the precise connection to prior events is uncertain, and (more important) the viewpoint is that of one Jasper, Bergamasc's mighty opposite in a war to control old Earth. In fact, events in general float around in time, since Jasper experiences a large part of his life not in linear sequence but as a series of flashbacks. The story begins in medias res, with Jasper already Bergamasc's prisoner and the serial interrogation well established. The first word spoken is 'anachronism,' and the first crucial fact we discover is that Jasper believes himself to be a god. Bergamasc wants information from Jasper, and he is willing to take a long time and go to some trouble to get it--but he is also willing to blow his prisoner's brains out if Jasper cannot or will [not] satisfy him.

"Among the ordinary plot questions posed by this initial situation are how a god (if he is such) came to be a prisoner; how he lost the war; why Bergamasc feels the need to interrogate him over what proves to be a very long imprisonment; why Jasper is unstuck in time; plus familiar science-fictional-background matters such as the nature of Jasper's mentality and of his relationship to the entity he calls the Apparatus (which may be kin to the now-extinct post-human intelligences called Forts). Some of these do get answered, but other thematic threads are more obscure, embedded in a network of allusions and echoes that rattle around in the text."

Russell found the rattling substrate less interesting than the "clear-text" part of the tale, enjoying "the rather Silverbergian combination of exotic far-future landscape and gloomy emotional atmosphere (think Nightwings or even Son of Man)" (comparisons I'm more than happy to accept). He notes that "the space-operatic and revenge-melodrama themes of Saturn Returns are so far in the background here as to be invisible, replaced by contemplation of modes of consciousness and/or of being," but that's okay, because it's a different sort of tale to Saturn Returns. That he thought "the sightseeing was worth the ticket price" is good news for me. I think it contains some of my best writing yet, and anyone who's enjoying Astropolis will find a lot in it for them.

Available soon through bookstores stocking MonkeyBrain!

In March next year, I'll have three new books out--The Changeling, Earth Ascendant and The Force Unleashed--making them my equal-23rd novels. I'm quite excited about it, and not just because 23 is my favourite number.

What it's meant, though, is that I've spent the last month or so poring over three separate sets of re-writes, copy edits, and page proofs, plus many discussions about blurbs, cover quotes, maps, and cover designs. That wears a thin pretty fast, and can be a bit confusing on sleepy mornings with three books on the go at once. To keep things interesting, a French translation has also been popping up every now and again, plus the Pyr paperback reissue The Crooked Letter in paperback, also due in March.

Still, it's over now, and my brain can go back to normal (or what passes for normal around here). I'm about to launch into The Grand Conjunction (the last of the Astropolis books) and from there straight into The Scarecrow (the last in the Broken Land series). I have a couple of other loose ends to tie off after that, and then I'm free. What that means, I'm still working out.

But this might be part of it:

I've been accepted into a PhD in creative writing at Adelaide University.

It's been a great week for covers. Here's what the US edition of the second Astropolis novel, Earth Ascendant, will look like:



Stephan Martinière remains a god. (Thanks, also, to Cat Sparks for doing the techie stuff.) Hurrah!

Trivia: Amanda pointed out the giant saxophone on the left, and now I know it's there I can't see anything else--except for the mega-flugelhorn behind it. And could that be a titanic bongo peeping around the very right-hand edge of the cover? That's one hell of a cosmic combo! :-)