Well, I promised you a surprise with regards to Steven Erikson and, well… here it is!

This giveaway is a collaboration between A Dribble of Ink and The Signed Page. The Signed Page was kind enough to provide me with five (5) Trade Paperback copies of Steven Erikson’s The Bonehunters and, best of all, they’re signed by Steve himself!

Unfortunately this contest is only open to those living in North America. I have to pay for the shipping out of my own pocket and, well… I’m a poor college student! I apologize to all of those who read my blog from outside of North America, I know there are a lot of you!

Also, just to clarify, the editions being given away are Trade Paperback, US copies of The Bonehunters. The one with the erm… beautiful Todd Lockwood cover to the left.

The Rules are simple:

• Go to The Signed Page and find the name of their newsletter (found near the bottom of the page)
• Send and email to bonehunters(no-spam)@aidanmoher.com [remove the (no-spam) thing!)
• Put “BONEHUNTERS” into the subject line
• Include: your Full Name & Mailing Address (North American only, please!) and the name of the Signed Page’s newsletter
• Let me know what corners of the Internet you roam and your screen names (Message Boards, Blogs, etc…)
• Enter only ONCE, multiple entrants will be disqualified.

And that’s it! Pretty standard stuff (in fact, I basically stole most of it from Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist!) Steve doesn’t get out to do signings as much as other authors, so this is a pretty rare treat that fans of his surely won’t want to pass up! The lucky winners will be announced around the same time as the three-way interview between Steven Erikson, Ian Cameron Esslemont and myself! (Don’t forget that you can send in questions if you have them! Check this post for details!)

Good luck to everyone who enters!

   Thanks to Shawn Speakman (a good friend of mine, a terrific author and the man behind The Signed Page) I had the chance to meet one of Fantasy’s biggest authors, Steven Erikson. In fact, I didn’t only meet him, I spent an afternoon with him and Shawn and we had a good chance to talk about everything from Fantasy, to windy islands, to K.J. Parker’s latest trilogy (The Engineer Trilogy, it’s really good apparently!), to my own writing career, and even Pat from Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist (Nothing but good things, Pat. I promise!).

   It’s obviously a pretty rare chance to sit down with a published author and be able to shoot the shit for a couple of hours. It’s an even rarer chance to do so with an author who many will argue is the finest in the genre at the moment.
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David Anthony Durham is giving away an audio copy of his latest novel, ACACIA: The War with the Mein, over at his blog. ACACIA is well worth the read… er, listen and entering the contest is as easy as signing up for his forum (where you’ll often find me laying down the law!) and entering in a thread there.

I’m confident to say that ACACIA was one of the biggest surprises for me this year. Durham crafted a terrific novel that tackles a lot of topics not often seen in the Fantasy genre. you can find my full review HERE and the interview I did with Durham HERE.

Check out Durham’s blog post about the contest HERE. Good luck!

Brandon Sanderson is a hard working guy. As you’re about to find out, his first published novel, Elantris is actually the 13th novel he wrote! 13! And who said that was an unlucky number? Clearly Sanderson is passionate about what he does (write Fantasy novels) and it shows in his work. Elantris, “was Brandon’s first published book. A stand-alone epic fantasy novel, the book won the Romantic Times award for best epic fantasy of 2005, was chosen by Barnes and Noble.com editors as the best fantasy or sf book of the year, and is forthcoming in fourteen languages (about half of which have been released as of September of 2007.)” (pulled from HERE) Needless to say the release of his two subsequent novels (the first and second book of a trilogy, respectively), The Final Empire and The Well of Ascension were met with eager anticipation by his fans.

Brandon is currently hard at work wrapping up the third novel in the Mistborn Trilogy and has just released his first children’s novel, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians!

Well, enough introductions, why don’t we take a look at what Brandon has to say!
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   About a week ago, John (from Grasping for the Wind) posted a well thought out and articulated article on his stance regarding the presence of swearing in Fantasy novels. This is a topic I’m constantly thinking about and I planned on writing a response… but, well, time got away from me and I never really got around to it. Then Joe Abercrombie, (author of The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and the forthcoming Last Argument of Kings, brought his own thoughts to the table and I figured this would be a perfect time to finally add my own ideas and opinions to the mix.
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I’m a HUGE fan of R.A. Salvatore’s DemonWars Saga and anything related to it. I still rank the fourth novel, Mortalis among one of the most engaging and emotionally charged novels I’ve ever read. So, it’s understandable that I was pretty darn excited when I saw this on Remy’s Blog.

The new cover art was just released for the latest novel set in the world of Corona. Here’s what Salvatore’s official web site has to say about it:

I can’t be the only one that’s super excited for this novel!

This one’s for all the aspiring writers out there.

Pick the Brain has put together a list of 10 writing tips from some of the literary world’s biggest names. A lot of it is common sense, but it also pays to refresh yourself on what some of the best writers of all time think is worthy enough to leave behind for future writers.

You can find the whole list HERE.

Crystal Rain

Author – Tobias Buckell

Paperback
Pages: 384 pages
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Release Date: Feb 7 2006
ISBN-10: 0765350904
ISBN-13: 978-0765350909

When I first heard of Buckell’s novels, Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, I wasn’t sure quite what to think. They were short (always an oddity in the field of Science Fiction and Fantasy), they had a strong Caribbean flair and, well… I thought the name Ragamuffin was kinda silly.

Still, the more I read about him and his novels, the more interested I became to see just exactly what they were about. So, I got my hands on copies of his two novels and quickly set to work forming an opinion of my own. And its a positive opinion, more or less.

Let me start off by saying this about Crystal Rain: Buckell manages to fit more into this lean novel than most authors do into novels twice as long. I don’t know how he does it, but other authors (and editors) need to take note; this is how you tell a lean, fast paced and frenetic story without any wasted words. Each and every one of Crystal Rain’s 384 pages burst at the seams with creativity: a vivid world inhabited by real people all wrapped up in a plot that races towards the finish line at full steam ahead.
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RIP
1948-2007

Details HERE

My original article (HERE) elicited a good response from many of my readers and I felt that instead of writing a gigantic comment in response to them I would craft another official article regarding the main topic being discussed by them, as it is one close to my heart. Terry Brooks is one of my favourite authors and his novels have really helped shape my perspective of the Fantasy Genre.

The topic started when John (of the kickass blog, Grasping for the Wind) responded to my inclusion of Terry Brooks and Raymond E. Feist,

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This terrific article was brought to my attention the other day by one of my creative writing professor at school. The Turkey City Lexicon a hilarious look at the clichés, pitfalls and incongruities of the Science Fiction genre and looks to help writers, new and old alike, avoid them in the future!

Lewis Shiner, the original editor of the article, explains:

Here are just a few of my favourite quotes!

“Said” Bookism
‘An artificial verb used to avoid the word “said.” “Said” is one of the few invisible words in the English language and is almost impossible to overuse. It is much less distracting than “he retorted,” “she inquired,” “he ejaculated,” and other oddities. The term “said-book” comes from certain pamphlets, containing hundreds of purple-prose synonyms for the word “said,” which were sold to aspiring authors from tiny ads in American magazines of the pre-WWII era.’

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A little over a week ago one of my favourite new authors, Joe Abercrombie wrote an interesting (and wonderfully long) blog post about the trend in the current SF/F markets towards long, drawn out multi-volume stories that seem to lose focus as they trundle ever on *coughrobertjordancough*. Not surprisingly, the ever charming and devilishly clever Mr. Abercrombie managed to get people talking about this very subject. Starting in the Comments section of his blog and eventually making its way to the Westeros Boards (thanks to Adam of The Wertzone and… well, I just couldn’t be left out!
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“   King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air & the world holds its breath to see how it will land.”

I promised myself I wasn’t going to make a post here on the blog about it… but then I got to be part of the coolest house in all of A Song of Ice and Fire lore. So, well… here we are. You may now cower before me.
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I know… I know! Another post about Patrick Rothfuss, brilliant author and hot topic here on A Dribble of Ink, but what can I say? I love the man, the rest of the Fantasy world loves the man, and my interview with him (Part One | Part Two) is still seeing a generous amount of traffic. Today’s edition of the “Patrick Rothfuss Tribune” covers his recent victory at “The Quill Book Awards”. Rothfuss’ first novel, The Name of the Wind, was just named the “Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Novel of the Year“! The best thing about this is that Rothfuss’ novel is automatically eligible for the “Quill” for novel of the year… and it’s a public vote! Definitely a worthy contender for the award, though I’m curious about them being held so early in the year… aren’t there still several great books coming out before 2007 ends?

You can see the whole list HERE.

I thought this was pretty cool. I was checking my blog stats today and noticed several visitors came by way of a french web site named elbalkin.net. Curious how they found my way from there to my blog, I clicked the link and found a nice surprise!

Click HERE!

Yep, that’s my interview with Patrick Rothfuss… but translated into French! Pretty cool, eh? That would take one dedicated Patrick Rothfuss fan, our interview wasn’t short!