Posts Categorized: News

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Today, I join Justin Landon on the latest episode of Rocket Talk, Tor.com’s official podcast. We talk about a whole bunch of fun things, including:

I had a lot of fun, and it was a good opportunity for the two of us, longtime bloggers both, to get a little Inside Baseball about publishing, blogging, and SFF in general. I can’t wait to hear what you think.

Find out more on Tor.com, or get Rocket Talk on iTunes/RSS.

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Sci-Fi Bulletin is reporting that Tanith Lee passed away on Sunday, May 24, 2015.

Lee was an incredibly prolific writer, with 90 novels, and over 300 pieces of short fiction to her name, spanning science fiction and fantasy, horror, and crime. Most notably, she is the author of The Flat-Earth Cycle, a huge fantasy series with dozens of related novels and short stories.

Twitter is currently overflowing with love for Lee and her vast works of fiction.

Lee was 67 years old.

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Via the New York Times, John Scalzi and Tor Books announced a new deal for thirteen novels worth a whopping $3.4 million. “Mr. Scalzi approached Tor Books, his longtime publisher, with proposals for 10 adult novels and three young adult novels over 10 years,” revealed John Schwartz of the New York Times.

Some of the included novels will be set in the same universe as Old Man’s War, and at least one will be a sequel to his most recent novel, Lock In. Scalzi’s editor at Tor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, says that though Scalzi has never had a No. 1 bestseller, he “backlists like crazy.” Nielsen Hayden then revealed that Scalzi sells over 10,000 books a month, which is a very respectable number. “One of the reactions of people reading a John Scalzi novel is that people go out and buy all the other Scalzi novels,” Hayden said.

Scalzi’s Red Shirts, a satirical science fiction, won the Hugo Award for “Best Novel” in 2013.

“My celebration, personally, has just been standing around,” Scalzi told the New York Times. “And my wife saying, ‘Yes, now go take out the trash.’” It seems Scalzi’s trademark dry humour will remain intact, even under the weight of this mega deal.

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Julie Crisp is no longer Editorial Director at Tor UK. She is beginning a new venture as a private consultant, offering services as a literary agent, freelance editor, and manuscript doctor. She has launched a new website to market her new company. Her shoes will be filled by Wayne Brooks, Publishing Director for Tor UK’s commercial fiction team.

Ambiguous wording in the announcement makes it unclear if Crisp was let go from the company as a result of ” a review of the company’s science fiction and fantasy publishing,” or if Crisp left after conducting the review. However, Crisp’s response on Twitter suggest the latter, and, respecting her leadership and editorial eye as much as I do, I’d like to think Tor UK wouldn’t willingly let her go. Either way, Tor UK will be poorer for Crisp’s absence, but writers everywhere should be scrambling for her services.

Crisp has worked with many of science fiction and fantasy’s most successful authors, such as China Mièville, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ann Cleeves (not to be mistaken for Anne of Cleves), and Paul Cornell.

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Yesterday, Tor.com announced Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, a novel to be published in collaboration between the Tor.com Imprint, which focuses primarily on Novellas, and Tor Books.

“When Seanan McGuire sent me her pitch for Every Heart a Doorway I was delighted,” said Tor.com Senior Editor. “When the book arrived, and I read it, I was dumbfounded! Seanan had surpassed herself.”

“Seriously,” he continued, “I have been telling everyone I meet how great this book is, and I’m more than a little jealous that you’ll have the opportunity to read it for the first time, and I won’t.” Read More »