Results tagged “elizabeth moon”

November is here!

You know what that means.

Halloween has just passed, leaving both kids and adults alike with candy galore. The clocks have fallen behind, giving everyone an extra hour to read (you didn’t use it for sleep, did you?). The blustery fall weather is torturing what foliage remains and is quickly becoming winter—at least in the northern hemisphere. And bookstores have begun gearing up for the holiday sales season.

It is also time for new additions to the Suvudu Free Library!

We have three great books ready for your free download:

A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton

Laurell K. Hamilton has been a fixture in the urban fantasy / paranormal romance section of the bookstore for a long time now. Through Anita Blake, she gave readers a fun and sexy vampire / werewolf / undead story. But Anita is not her only great creation. A Kiss of Shadows is the first book in the Meredith Gentry series and it is just as fun and as filled with glorious romping as her other series. Definitely give A Kiss of Shadows After all, it is free!

Trading In Danger by Elizabeth Moon

There has been some fantastic space opera done the last five years and Elizabeth Moon is one of the authors producing it. Even though my favorite book by Elizabeth is The Speed of Dark, Trading In Danger is a great read as well, the first in a new series spanning the universe with a kick ass heroine. And here you get to read it for free!

The Best of Robert E. Howard: Crimson Shadows by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard is one of the most famous and influential pulp authors of the twentieth century. Though largely known as the man who invented the sword-and-sorcery genre—and for his iconic hero Conan the Cimmerian—Howard also wrote horror tales, desert adventures, detective yarns, epic poetry, and more. This spectacular volume, gorgeously illustrated by Jim and Ruth Keegan, includes some of his best and most popular works. Can’t argue with free!

There you go! The new free eBooks for the Free Library!

Pretty soon, with the fast approaching holiday season, you’ll want to spend your time with your nose in a book instead of talking to that wacky, fruitcake-making aunt who never remembers your name.

Use the Free Library!!

And keep some of your sanity!

Authors and editors frequently become good friends. Both know that the professional relationship may not last forever—either can change publishing houses—but I’ve learned never to say a final goodbye, because the winds of change can bring people back together just as easily as it parted them. So has it been with me and Elizabeth Moon, whose Paksenarrion series (The Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold) I edited at Baen Books lo these many moons ago.

These days Elizabeth is a Del Rey author, and recently she spent several days in Brooklyn with my husband and me. Elizabeth lives in a small town in central Texas, so New York was one big chocolate box to her. When she wasn’t running around the city, we talked. Aside from fine-tuning her new novel, which returns readers to the Paksenarrion universe (Oath of Fealty, coming next March), we discussed, and certainly not in this order: baking bread, Greek food, adoption, the New York subway system, attack squirrels, prairie management, restoring old houses, and visions from God.

And horses! Lots about horses! Take a look at this quick flick in which she tells us a bit about her own horse, Mac, and some of the horses that will appear in Oath of Fealty.

Bookseller Molly Bolden, author Cherry Adair and I did a critique of manuscript first pages at the Jubilee Jambalaya Writers Conference last weekend in picturesque Houma, Louisiana. Participants (anonymously) handed in the first page of whatever work they had in progress, and American Idol-like we took turns commenting on what was good and bad about each one. Hopes were raised, dreams may have been crushed, but I believe that most attendees gained by listening to others’ work and applying our comments to their own.

“You need a stunning first sentence, or an editor is just going to set your manuscript aside,” seems to be the common wisdom right now among aspiring writers. That’s not necessarily so; it’s also possible, by using an overtly provocative sentence, to come across as trying too hard. In another session at the same conference I spoke about the importance of a strong opening more in terms of the first scene and first chapter, after which one is not allowed to slump, of course, but must continue to hold the reader’s attention as the story continues. As a general rule, I do not care to hear about the prevailing weather conditions as the story begins. If there’s a tornado a block away and the protagonist is heading for the basement stairs, that’s relevant. Otherwise, start with something more revelatory about the characters and their situation.

So what does make a strong opening sentence? Let us look to the work of the masters. Here’s a little quiz to see if you can match the first sentences of these popular Del Rey authors to their prize-winning/bestselling novels. (Answers after the jump.)

1. There was no doubt about it: there was a fox behind the climbing frame. And it was watching.

2. For numberless years a myna had astounded travelers to the caravansary with its ability to spew indecencies in ten languages, and before the fight broke out everyone assumed the old blue-tongued devil on its perch by the fireplace was the one who maligned the giant African with such foulness and verve.

3. This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

4. “Send up another, damn you, send them all up, at once if you have to,” Laurence said savagely to poor Calloway, who did not deserve to be sworn at: the gunner was firing off the flares so quickly his hands were scorched black, skin cracking and peeling to bright red where some powder had spilled onto his fingers; he was not stopping to wipe them clean before setting each flare to the match.

5. Questions, always questions. They didn’t wait for the answers, either.

6. Brigadier General Clarence Potter crouched in a muddy trench north of Atlanta. Overhead, U.S. bombers flew through what looked like flak thick enough to walk on.

THE CHOICES
a. Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark
b. Harry Turtledove, In at the Death
c. China Miéville, Un Lun Dun
d. William Goldman, The Princess Bride
e. Naomi Novik, Empire of Ivory
f. Michael Chabon, Gentlemen of the Road