Results tagged “temeraire”

I have run the online signed-book bookstore The Signed Page for almost ten years now. I have had the opportunity to meet dozens and dozens of wonderful writers who have given their time to sign and/or personalize their newest releases for thousands of their fans all over the world.

Today, for instance, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson will be stopping by to sign copies of The Gathering Storm for hundreds of fans of the Wheel of Time series.

Two weeks ago I had another large signing—with Naomi Novik.

And I noticed something really fun that she does.

Naomi is a doodler.

She met me at the Random House offices, where I had already flapped and set up the books in one of their offices. As I began sliding the books opened to the title page to her, I noticed she took a bit longer to sign than the average writer. Turns out she gives a little extra to most of the books she signs; she draws a quick sketch of her main character dragon, Temeraire.

It is very cool.

As you can see, it is a simple drawing, called a remarque by artists. It shows a flying Temeraire roaring his Divine Wind, denoted by three soundwave-like lines. It didn’t take Naomi very long to do each, but watching her I could tell she gets a kick out of it. It makes her happy to add something most writers do not do.

These doodles, however, can take on a life of their own!

Last night we hosted an incredible chat between two really exciting authors working in historical fantasy: Naomi Novik and Scott Westerfeld. Naomi is the author of the Temeraire series, which is terribly cool. Scott Westerfeld is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book Leviathan and the bestselling Uglies series.

When we brought them together they talked about everything from fanfic to dragons to their favorite writers and even dropped a few hints at what we’ll be seeing from them in the future! To say it was an hour packed full of great chat would be an understatement. But we here at Suvudu don’t want to hog all that fun for ourselves. We want to give you a chance to take our chat, repost it, and carry on the conversation on your site or blog for your readers to enjoy as well. So here it is - take our chat!

Use the buttons below to grab the code you’d like (or take them both, I mean, they’re free and all). And you have two choices, they are:

1. If you have a site that supports embeding the chat, then select the Embed Code.
2. If you have a wordpress.com, blogger blog, or other site that will not support embeding the code, select the Chat Link that will pop up the chat on a blank page (without throwing people away from your site in the process).

Enjoy!

Anthologies abound!

There are several great ones coming out in the coming months. The first is The Dragon Book, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. It was released on November 3rd and features short stories from some of the very best writers in the business.

One of them is Naomi Novik, author of the recently published In His Majesty’s Service omnibus containing her first three Temeraire novels!

First, here is The Dragon Book summary:

Never before published stories by New York Times bestselling authors Jonathan Stroud, Gregory Maguire, Garth Nix, Diana Gabaldon, and others.

Whether portrayed as fire-breathing reptilian beasts at war with humanity or as noble creatures capable of speech and mystically bonded to the warriors who ride them, dragons have been found in nearly every culture’s mythology. In modern times, they can be found far from their medieval settings in locales as mundane as suburbia or as barren as post-apocalyptic landscapes-and in The Dragon Book, today’s greatest fantasists reignite the fire with legendary tales that will consume readers’ imaginations.

With original stories by New York Times bestselling authors Jonathan Stroud, Gregory Maguire, Garth Nix, Diana Gabaldon, Tamora Pierce, Harry Turtledove, Sean Williams, and Tad Williams as well as tales by Naomi Novik, Peter Beagle, Jane Yolen, Adam Stemple, Cecelia Holland, Kage Baker, Samuel Sykes, Diana Wynne Jones, Mary Rosenblum, Tanith Lee, Andy Duncan, and Bruce Coville.

Second, as a treat to her fans, here is author Naomi Novik reading the first quarter of her anthology submission, the short story titled Vici.

To find out what happens with the first taming of a great dragon in the West, you will have to read The Dragon Book!

Along with the other great short stories in the anthology!

Enjoy!

In HIs Majesty’s Service, the handsome new hardcover omnibus volume of His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War goes on sale this week, and contained therein is a never-before-seen short story which all Temeraire fans will want to read. In the chronology of the series, it falls between Throne of Jade and Black Powder War, and contains the story of how Temeraire’s nemesis, the white dragon Lien, first meets Napoleon Bonaparte. I hereby evilly post just the first few paragraphs.

In Autumn, A White Dragon Looks Over The Wide River(c) 2009 by Naomi Novik

The diplomat, De Guignes, had disappeared somewhere into the palace. Lien remained alone in the courtyard. The pale narrow faces of the foreign servants gawked out at her from the windows of the great house; the soldiers in their blue and white uniforms staring and clutching their long muskets. Other men, more crudely dressed, were stumbling around her; they had come from the stables by their smell, clumsy with sleep and noisy, and they groaned to one another in complaint at the hour as they worked.

The palace, built in square around the courtyard, was not at all of the style she had known at home, and deeply inconvenient. While it possessed in some few places a little pleasing symmetry, it was full of tiny windows arranged on several levels, and the doors were absurdly small — like a peasant’s hut or a merchant’s home. She could never have gone inside. Some of the laborers were putting up a pavilion on a lawn in the court, made of heavy fabric and sure to be hot and stifling in the warm autumnal weather. Others carried out a wooden trough, such as might be used for feeding pigs, and began to fill it with buckets, water slopping over the sides as they staggered back and forth yawning.

Aristotle once coined the general principle of holism as: “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

It can be great fun, however, analyzing the parts!

Where do the parts that comprise you come from?

Where did the parts that make up Shawn Charlton Speakman come from?

I am extremely self aware of who I am—at least who I think I am. Every daily event I have experienced in life has become a part of me. From birth until my last breath, I know that I will be shaped by anyone and everything. It is inevitable. That includes the books I read too. In a way the authors I’ve read over the years have taken up residence in my soul and, like the guiding influence of my parents when I was young, live inside of me, to be called on when needed.

It’s no wonder I love collecting those books that are most meaningful to me.

What characters in fantasy / science fiction best explain who you are?

Here are the main four I can definitively say reside inside:

Superman

No, no father of mine gave his son away, to rocket through the cosmos and help bring light to a barbaric humanity.

That would be cool though, right?

In all seriousness, the majority of who I am can be explained by Clark Kent and how he sheds all selfish desires to help others less fortunate. I try to emulate that. When a friend needs help I am there offering what I can. If a stranger falls down in front of me, I help them up if I don’t catch them first. When a wheelchair-bound man tries to belly up to the bar, I clear away the stools before the bartender can do it. I spend a lot of time and energy putting people at ease, to add a meaningful dialogue with all I meet whether it is talking about sports or giving heartfelt listening and advice.

I try to be a hero for other people who need it, even for what seems the most mundane of needs.

I have always held those ideals, from my earliest memories. But Superman became something more to me when I was diagnosed with cancer almost nine years ago. I began chemotherapy just like many thousands do every day. To represent the strength I would need to survive, I wore one of three Superman t-shirts to treatment every day. It brought a smile to those being infused around me; it kept me focused on the strength I would have to bring to bear.

Needless to say, there is a Man of Steel in my persona—despite looking like Lex Luthor on the outside!

I returned from San Diego ComicCon so energy-depleted (in a good way, since I spent all that energy talking to people) that I’m still catching up on the news coming out of the con. Therefore I’m just hearing what director/producer Peter Jackson had to say about two Del Rey titles to which he’s connected on the film side. For those of you who think that publishing types have all the fun, consider that although I am the editor on both of these titles, not only wasn’t I invited to any of Mr. Jackson’s press conferences, I couldn’t even carve out any time away from the Del Rey booth to attend any of his public events.

Be that as it may, we’d be so, so happy to have either of these films reach the big screen. I honestly don’t know which one to root for. Therefore, no rooting shall occur. This is just to bring any of you up to date on what Mr. Jackson is planning regarding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, which involves fighting dragons serving as the aerial forces in the Napoleonic Wars. (Click on the above links to read stories from theonering.net and Empire, respectively.)

And if you’ve never read His Majesty’s Dragon, the first novel in Naomi’s series, it’s available as a free download on the Suvudu Free Book Library. Try it today—the offer ends on August 18.

Comic Con is many things, but it is definitely one large information dump of fresh news on the public!

Sometimes it isn’t even intended to be.

When I visited at the Random House booth a few days ago, I tried to take in all of their forthcoming titles. The publisher posts giant posters of their new and soon to be published novels and they are spread over a large set of booths that dazzles the eye. It is very cool to watch people slow as they make their way through the Random House aisle, their eyes gazing at new prospective reads.

Usually there are one or two posters that really stand out. This year it was the cover above.

In October 2009, Random House is publishing a hardcover omnibus containing His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade and Black Powder War by Naomi Novik. The books have only been released in the US as mass market paperbacks, so it was time they got the hardcover treatment that Victory of Eagles received. The cover of the book is, in my opinion, absolutely stunning!

What do you think?

In other news, director Peter Jackson spoke at Comic Con last night and mentioned that once The Hobbit films are finished he will be taking another closer look at His Majesty’s Dragon as a feature film adaptation.

Peter Jackson. Directing a Naomi Novik tale. With flying dragons.

How can that get more awesome??

Make the movies, Peter!

Over coffee and snackies the other day Naomi Novik, freshly returned from Australia, reported some of the results of her research for Book 6 of the Temeraire series, which will be published Summer ‘10, God willing and the creeks don’t rise. As the so-far-untitled novel begins, Will Laurence and Temeraire have been deported to the prison colony in New South Wales in order to springboard a breeding colony of dragons on Britain’s most far-flung possession.

In 1809, when Laurence and Temeraire arrive in disgrace, the settlement is embroiled in unrest and power struggles. Governor William Bligh (the same Bligh who was mutineed against on the HMS Bounty) has been deposed once more and sent packing to Tasmania, there to plot his return. Temeraire and Iskierka’s arrival signals a tremendous power shift, as the dragons represent the colony’s largest concentration of firepower.

Laurence and Temeraire quickly find themselves embroiled in the political and personal conflicts running rampant in the new colony, which was largely being treated by the British government as a convenient dumping ground for the excess convict population. The entire settlement of New South Wales was a jail, surrounded by the Blue Mountains which blocked passage to the interior, and populated with resentful convicts and grasping military officers trying to make their fortunes. “The early history of the colony at the time has an almost Wild West, lawless-frontier feel to it,” Naomi told me.

Above: A view of the Blue Mountains, showing the characteristic blue haze
(produced by light reflecting off the oil of the eucalyptus trees
dominant in the area).

Here are a few more of the literally thousands of shots Naomi took on her trip. And if you haven’t kept up with the Temeraire series, be aware that the mass market of Victory of Eagles, book 5, goes on sale today.

Left: A small relative of Temeraire? Hanging out in the desert near the Kata Tjuta rock formation in the red center of Australia.
Right: A mangrove at low tide on the shore in North Queensland.

Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire series, was one of several people interviewed for an “All Things Considered” feature that aired on NPR this week discussing DRM, or Digital Rights Management. DRM—meaning software built into electronic books that controls the way it can be viewed—is a hot-button topic among publishers, writers and agents these days; both proponents and detractors discuss it passionately. Naomi’s point of view, which you can listen to here, is anti-DRM. As an author, she wants as many people as possible to be able to read her work.

As an editor whose continued employment relies on book sales (both electronic and hard-copy), I am of course conflicted about the topic. But I am fully in favor of offering non-DRM titles on occasion to fulfill the same goal as Naomi’s. That’s one reason we’ve opened the Suvudu Free Library, which will make electronic books available on numerous eBook sites for free. There are authors I know I would like to try but have never gotten around to reading; if I ran across a freely offered electronic copy of one of his or her titles, I most certainly would download it. (And if I liked it, I’d probably plunk down hard-copy money to buy the print edition—me being a fan of hard-copy books more than eBooks, at least at this point.)

DMR has been much discussed in the SF/fantasy world. Cory Doctorow and Baen Books, for example, have long been vocal proponents of making eBooks freely available. Any opponents out there? Let us know your opinion.

It’s been over a year since Peter Jackson optioned the rights from author Naomi Novik and publisher Del Rey to create live-action movies based on the Temeraire novels. At the time only three novels were written and since then Novik has written two more.

Peter Jackson didn’t wait. He has now optioned Empire of Ivory and Victory of Eagles! Now we just need Jackson to finish his adaptation of The Lovely Bones and get on with creating real dragons on the silver screen! Can’t wait!

The State of Del Rey is EXCELLENT. Saturday is usually the busiest day here at San Diego Comic Con historically, and for Del Rey it has been no different. Busy once the day began and with an awesome list of author signings and panels throughout today, Del Rey is ready!

Although Regency dancing is often a part of the programming at science fiction conventions, I had never bothered to go and watch. My loss—the exhibition of Regency dancing I saw recently was delightful. The event was the launch party for Naomi Novik’s newest novel in the Temeraire series, Victory of Eagles. Held at the Explorers Club in New York, the party included in its guest list representatives of the press, Random House sales force members and their accounts, editors, FON (Friends of Naomi), the occasional LARPer and many others. Including a squad (squad? surely not) of eight Regency dancers, who hail from various Northeast states and had gathered at the party to provide a demonstration of their skills.

Dancers, from left to right: Mary Alice Ladd, Alan Ahles, Lynn Saltonstall, Marc Hartstein, Marci Morimoto, Racheline Maltese, Irene Urban, Susan de Guardiola. Photo by Kaitlin Heller.