Well, it’s official. I’ve joined the team over at the inestimable SF Signal, a blog that needs no introduction. John DeNardo, the mastermind behind SF Signal was kind enough to approach me and see if I’d be interested in joining them. I jumped at the opportunity.

You won’t be surprised to find out that John’s asked me, along with the wonderful Jeff Patterson, to help increase the art coverage on SF Signal, a position I hope to use as a venue to promote many of my favourite artists, both established and upcoming. Also, it looks like I’ll be taking over the reins of the famous Book Cover Smackdowns; so, if you’ve got any covers or artists you think are particularly great, let me know!

One of the other big draws for me is the SF Signal Podcast. I’ve been a big fan of the podcast since it launched, and being a contributor means I’ll have the chance to join the rest of the crew each week. Talk about a fanboy moment.

What does this mean for A Dribble of Ink? Well, besides more exposure, not much. I won’t be changing the format much at all; if anything, it’ll open up doors to bring more great content to the blog. I also plan to port most of the content and articles I post over at SF Signal to A Dribble of Ink after a suitable amount of time, so even if you don’t read SF Signal (seriously, though, you should!), you’ll still be able to read almost everything I write.

In the meantime, you can check out my first article, On Genre Diversity (Or, Why Mark Charan Newton Was Right), a response to Mark Charan Newton’s call for bloggers to diversify their reading habits.

Though my experience with The Ten Thousand was troubled (and well documented), I look forward to taking another look at Kearney’s work, especially now that I’m a more discerning reader and reviewer. For what it’s worth, The Ten Thousand has, despite my reservations, stuck with me longer than most other novels, which is reason enough to read Corvus.

Solaris has posted the opening chapter of Corvus as a downloadable PDF. Also, if you download it, you might just find a nice (if ironic) surprise on page two!

Seriously. Look at that lineup. For my money, Swirsky’s near the top of the heap of young writers, and, well, you don’t need me to tell you who Scalzi, Rothfuss or Wheaton are. On top of that, you get a great song from John Anealio, who’s a good friend of A Dribble of Ink. And it’s a fundraiser for a great charity? What’s there to lose? I’ve got a bunch of great new short fiction to read and I feel good about myself. Win-win.

So, go grab a copy of Clash of the Geeks. It’s free, but I highly recommend you support the cause a toss a few buck their way, too.

From the Little, Brown website:

I’m not shy about my love for Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet. Though I’ve only read the first two volumes (I’m pacing myself, otherwise I’d devour the whole thing and look back in sadness at what I’ll never get to experience again for the first time), it’s easily one of my favourite series off all time. If the final two volumes are of an equal quality to the first two, I have no qualms saying it’s the finest finished series published in the last 25 years. Needless to say, I’m excited by both The Dragon’s Path, the first volume in The Coin and the Dagger, published under Abraham’s real name, and Leviathan Wakes, the first volume in The Expanse Series, a Science Fiction cycle he’s writing alongside Ty Franck under the pseudonym ‘James S.A. Corey’. Then, of course, he’s also got an Urban Fantasy series that he writes under the name ‘M.L.N Hanover’. It’s kinda unfair that the guy can write so fast and produce such quality. For all the praise Brandon Sanderson gets, Abraham’s accomplishments are no less noteworthy.

To me, a reader whose experience with Science Fiction isn’t nearly what it should be, what intrigues me most about Leviathan’s Wake is Abraham’s restraint in his vision of the future. There’s no interstellar travel, as seems to dominate much of Space Opera, and neither does it look like he’ll be relying on aliens to wow his readers. Like The Long Price Quartet, it seems like Abraham discovered a story he wants to tell and then found the suitable setting in which to tell it, rather than letting the setting dictate the plot.

Of course, we’ll get a stronger impression of Leviathan Wakes as its June, 2011 release date draws closer.

The Great Hunt is over.

After the strong critical response to The Gathering Storm, the first of the Sanderson/Jordan posthumous collaborations, anticipation is high for Towers of Midnight, the penultimate volume in The Wheel of Time series.

For those interested, the excerpt, a chapter called The Seven-Striped Lass, is available on Sanderson’s official website, or in a prettier form on Dragonmount.