Map by Kitkat Pecson
So, how cute is this? Not that I have a kid, but this would totally be hanging on the wall of his/her nursery if I did!
Tomorrow marks the release of The Blinding Knife, the second volume of Brent Weeks’ The Lightbringer series. It also happens to be one of my favourite novels of 2012, and I’d love for it, and the series in general, to make it into the hands of as many readers as possible. Thanks to Orbit Books, Weeks’ publisher, the first three chapters of The Black Prism, the first volume of The Lightbringer series, are available to devour, free of charge.
Read an excerpt from The Black Prism on the Orbit Books website.
It’s not as good as a free eBook, but it’s a good way to check out Weeks’ work. If you like what you see, keep an eye out for my upcoming review of The Blinding Knife, and I’ll tell you just why I fell so in love with Weeks’ novel.
Just a quick note about the recent launch of version 2.1 of A Dribble of Ink. Many of you have probably noticed (and if not, hit refresh on your browser) that I’ve updated the template of the blog. Instead of a major revision, like the one that happened in March 2012, and focussed on a from-the-ground-up redesign, this revision focuses on some minor visual updates (new body font, tightening up of layout, sticky header), some major overhauls to the back-end (that you won’t see, but make life much easier for me), and a great new system for displaying and promoting the various guest writers that I host from time-to-time. So, take a look around, I hope you like it!
The Wise Man’s Fear, Art by Marc Simonetti
Tor.com reports on the latest issue of Locus Magazine:
The September 2012 issue of Locus Magazine lists a recent book sale by Patrick Rothfuss to his longtime editor (and 2012 Hugo winner) Betsy Wollheim at science fiction/fantasy publisher DAW Books. The sale is listed as “the first book in a new fantasy series” by the Kingkiller Chronicles author.
It’s unclear whether this will be related to his mega-successful Kingkiller Chroncicles, though I still stand by my guess that he will write a follow-up trilogy to his first series, picking up with ‘present day’ Kvothe/Kote resuming/completing his goal to destroy the Chandrian. There’s a good likelihood that this is what we’re looking at here. Not a suprise that Rothfuss would ink another deal with DAW, but nice to have it confirmed, nonetheless. It also suggest that they’re now looking beyond the final volume of the Kingkiller Chronicles, The Doors of Stone, which is good news.
It’s been a heck of a week for Betsy Wollheim, who recently took home the Hugo Award for ‘Best Editor, Long Form,’ largely on the back of the success of The Wise Man’s Fear.
When the Ustream livestream video of the 2012 Hugo Award ceremony was taken down by overzealous copyright bots, cries of despair rang out through not only geekdom, but even mainstream news sites, like CNN, picked up on Ustream’s failure to broadcast the entirety of the ceremony, and their inability to react quickly enough to restore the stream when the issue was pin-pointed.
In response, Ustream has been working overtime to make up for the mistake, promising big changes to their procedures and offering additional support for upcoming Worldcons. In addition, they will be re-airing the ceremony this Sunday, September 9th, and will provide an on-demand version of the stream thereafter.
Details:
To makeup for the disruption to the original broadcast, Ustream will feature the full un-edited and bot-free ceremony on its homepage this Sunday, September 9, starting at 7 p.m. CT. Ustream will also run the broadcast ad-free on the Worldcon Hugo Awards channel at www.ustream.tv/channel/hugo-awards, and provide additional marketing and promotional support to raise the profile of the event. The broadcast will subsequently be available from the same channel on an on-demand basis. Ustream has also offered additional support and publicity for the streaming of future Hugo Award Ceremonies for upcoming Worldcons in San Antonio, TX (2013) and London, UK (2014).
I missed the live broadcast, due to family fun times, and all of the frustration that followed, so I’m glad to have a chance to watch the ceremony, especially since a few friends accepted awards that evening. Good on Ustream for doing everything they can to make right a very unfortunate situation.
You can read more from about the re-streaming of the event in the Chicon presse release, and Tor.com has more details about the event, the kerfuffle with the livestream, and Ustream’s response.
- Hugo Award
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- About Aidan Moher
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