Edward Willett's Blog, page 16
June 22, 2018
Announcing the Edward Willett bookstore!
For a long time I’ve wanted to set up an online store where people can order books directly from me–autographed, of course (except for the ebooks, because I haven’t figured out how to do that, yet). After a not-inconsiderable amount of work, I’m pleased to announce that my very own personal bookstore, The Fantastic Worlds of Edward Willett, is open for business!
Now I just have to go through this site and add links to it all over the place…more hours of work.
But here’s the first place to link to it. Browse! Better yet, buy!
June 20, 2018
Announcing Shadowpaw Press
Like many authors, I’ve got a few projects that I’d like to get out into the wide world for which I do not have a publisher handy, and so I am turning to my own publishing resources–something far easier to do today than ever before.
Rather than simply self-publish, however, I’ve decided to go the somewhat more complicated (but offering-more-opportunities) route of setting up my own independent press, which I’ve named Shadowpaw Press after our black Siberian cat (because, why not? Also, he has a publishing pedigree of sorts–see “My publisher brought me a kitten!“) who also serves as the logo. (Preliminary logo–I think I’ll be doing more work on that.)
I have several projects that will appear under the Shadowpaw Press input, and the first will be out in short order: a collection of my short fiction, which I’ve entitled Paths to the Stars. Here’s the cover art and description:
From Edward Willett, Aurora Award-winning author of Marseguro, The Cityborn, and Worldshaper (DAW Books), among many others, comes twenty-two tales of fantasy, science fiction, and fantasy, drawn from a long career of telling fantastic tales.
A young musician dreams of playing his songs among the stars…A Broadway performer on the lam is forced to direct aliens in The Sound of Music…Strange vegetables with dangerous properties crop up in small-town Saskatchewan…A man with a dark secret gets his comeuppance on a windy night on the prairie…An elderly caretaker on the Moon preserves the memory of the millions who died on Earth’s darkest day…A woman and a bat-like alien must overcome their own prejudices to prevent an interstellar war…
From the far future and the farthest reaches of space to the Canadian prairie, from our world to worlds that have never existed to world’s that might some day, rich realms of imagination and the fascinating characters and creatures that populate them await within these stories, some previously published, some seeing print for the first time.
Time to go exploring…
Release date is July 10. You can pre-order the ebook now through Amazon. A paperback version will also be available–it’s in the final stages.
What else will be coming from Shadowpaw Press? Up next will be Blue Fire, a re-issue, with a new cover and layout, of Flames of Nevyana, taking it back to its original title. I’m leaning toward releasing that one as an E.C. Blake book, since that might garner interest from readers of the Masks of Aygrima trilogy. And after that? I want to pull the First World War memoirs of my grandfather-in-law, Sampson J. Goodfellow, into a book. It needs a good edit and some other work, but I think it could be interesting to readers, especially with the 100th anniversary of the Armistice coming up–which is approximately when I’d like to have it out.
Lots more to come after that. And who knows? If this actually proves profitable (a big “if”) maybe I’ll open up to submissions. An original anthology might be fun…
June 11, 2018
Successful poetry book launch, complete with music!
I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust officially launched on Saturday night, with a great event attending by thirty-five people or so, in the basement of The Artesian on 13th (a former church converted into a theatre).
There’s been one great review of the book so far.
Shelley A. Leedahl, herself a Saskatchewan poet, writes:
“Prolific Regina writer Edward Willett took a great idea and ran with it…and the result is this creative, entertaining, and occasionally spine-tingling collection of poems that no one but Willett – well-known for authoring sixty books, including twenty science fiction and fantasy novels – could pull off.”
Like a copy? You can get it here:
Amazon.ca | Amazon.com | Kobo | Chapters/Indigo | Your Nickel’s Worth Press.
In addition to reading from the book, and saying a few words, and introducing my niece, Wendi Nordell, who is also the illustrator, I sang a couple of songs (and my daughter, Alice, performed as well).
One of my songs was “Unusual Way” from the Broadway musical Nine…and here it is.
Enjoy!
June 8, 2018
I talk about worldbuilding!
On Tuesday of this week I gave a presentation at the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild office, part of its Write After Lunch series of authors’ talks, entitled “Worldshaping.” The topic was what is usually called “worldbuilding,” but since my upcoming eighth novel for DAW Books (for which I just received the page proofs) is called Worldshaper, I thought I’d do a little marketing as well as lecturing.
The presentation went over very well, and was broadcast on Facebook live while I was doing it and archived once I was done. I also took the liberty of putting it on YouTube…enjoy!
April 29, 2018
Praise from Saskatchewan Book Awards jurors for The Cityborn
Last night the 25th annual Saskatchewan Book Awards were presented at the Conexus Arts Centre. My science fiction novel The Cityborn was shortlisted for the City of Regina Book Award, for “the best book by a Regina author, judged on the quality of the writing.”
This is, I believe, the eighth time I’ve been shortlisted, and I won the City of Regina Book Award in 2002 for Spirit Singer; in fact, on the display board at the door last night they had photos of some past winners, myself among them (look closely at the photo I’m indicating in the photo accompanying this post!).
My competition this year include Anne Campbell’s poetry collection The Fabric of Day (Thistledown Press), Trevor Harriott’s non-fiction book Islands of Grass, with photographs by Branimir Gjetvaj (Coteau Books), and Marlis Wesseler’s novel The Last Chance Ladies’ Book Club (Signature Editions).
Although I didn’t win (Trevor Harriott did), the jurors for the category, Mryl Coulter, Charles Demers, and Farzana Doctor, had some very nice things to say about The Cityborn in the program:
“In this torrent of a story, Edward Willett crafts a fast-paced narrative that features masterful world-building and dozens of surprising twists. The result is a reading rush led by two unique young people who must unravel the mystery of their origins while fleeing a crumbling trash-filled environment and evading an oppressive social hierarchy. The continuing failed attempts for ultimate power by many of this book’s characters illuminate human flaws and the impossibility of omnipotence.
The Cityborn
is an intricate tour de force that will bewitch its readers.”
It was a great event all the way around. I look forward to next year.
April 28, 2018
Illustrated collection of science fiction/fantasy poetry released!
I Tumble through the Diamond Dust, my new collection of fantastical (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) poems, illustrated by Alberta artist Wendi Nordell (my talented niece), is now available in both print and ebook formats!
Buy it from Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Kobo, or the Apple store in ebook format, or in print through Chapters/Indigo or the publisher, Your Nickel’s Worth Press.
Here’s the description:
Within these pages lie twenty-one poems… and twenty-one worlds: worlds in the farthest reaches of space, worlds steeped in myth and legend, worlds that never were, and worlds that yet could be.
Written by award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Edward Willet, and beautifully illustrated by Alberta artist Wendy Nordell, each poem was inspired by— and contains– two lines of published poetry from Saskatchewan poets, sent out every weekday by former Saskatchewan Poet Laureate Gerald Hill as a Poetry Month challenge to members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild in April 2016.
Every poem tells a story. Some are frightening. Some are funny. Some are poignant, some surreal. Enter a realm of unfettered imagination… and embrace the fantastical.
Tentative plans are for a book launch the first weekend in June. Whatever happens with that, Wendi and I will both definitely be on hand for a book signing at Chapters Regina the afternoon of June 2. I’m also working on some sort of launch event/reading/signing in Saskatoon at McNally Robinson. Stay tuned!
April 5, 2018
Complete cover for my poetry collection I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust
Here’s the complete cover of my upcoming poetry collection, I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust, illustrated by Alberta artist Wendi Nordell (who happens to be my niece). The back copy reads:
Within these pages lie twenty-one poems…and twenty-one worlds: worlds in the farthest reaches of space, worlds steeped in myth and legend, worlds that never were, and worlds that yet could be.
Written by award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Edward Willett, and beautifully illustrated by Alberta artist Wendi Nordell, each poem was inspired by—and contains—two lines of published poetry from Saskatchewan poets, sent out every weekday by former Saskatchewan Poet Laureate Gerald Hill as a Poetry Month challenge to members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild in April 2016.
Every poem tells a story. Some are frightening. Some are funny. Some are poignant, some surreal. Enter a realm of unfettered imagination…and embrace the fantastical.
Coming soon from Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing.
March 29, 2018
Great new review of Door Into Faerie
On her blog, Saskatoon author Shelley A. Leedahl reviews Door into Faerie:
“…I read it without reading its predecessors, and also, admittedly, with a bit of a bias against the fantasy genre. Magic shmagic. I’ve oft said that what I really value in literature is contemporary realism: stories I can connect with via details from the here and now, geography and language I can relate to because I recognize it, I speak it. The old “holding a mirror to the world” thing. Well surprise, surprise: I loved this YA fantasy. Willett wields his well-honed writing chops from page one, and my interest was maintained until the final word…I can’t imagine teens not enjoying this entertaining story, perhaps especially if they’ve read the books that’ve preceded it. This adult enjoyed it, too … magic and all. “
March 28, 2018
Cover Art Reveal: Worldshaper
Here’s the fabulous cover art for Worldshaper, my ninth novel for DAW Books, coming out September 18 in hardcover and ebook. It’s the start of a new series called Worldshapers. The artwork is by Juliana Kolesova, who happens to also be from Canada–she works out of Toronto.
Here’s the description:
From an Aurora Award-winning author comes the first book in a new portal fantasy series in which one woman’s powers open the way to a labyrinth of new dimensions.
For Shawna Keys, the world is almost perfect. She’s just opened a pottery studio in a beautiful city. She’s in love with a wonderful man. She has good friends.
But one shattering moment of violence changes everything. Mysterious attackers kill her best friend. They’re about to kill Shawna. She can’t believe it’s happening–and just like that, it isn’t. It hasn’t. No one else remembers the attack, or her friend. To everyone else, Shawna’s friend never existed…
Everyone, that is, except the mysterious stranger who shows up in Shawna’s shop. He claims her world has been perfect because she Shaped it to be perfect; that it is only one of uncounted Shaped worlds in a great Labyrinth; and that all those worlds are under threat from the Adversary who has now invaded hers. She cannot save her world, he says, but she might be able to save others–if she will follow him from world to world, learning their secrets and carrying them to Ygrair, the mysterious Lady at the Labyrinth’s heart.
Frightened and hounded, Shawna sets off on a desperate journey, uncertain whom she can trust, how to use her newfound power, and what awaits her in the myriad worlds beyond her own.
The Space-Time Continuum: Steam-Engine Time
Here’s my latest column from Freelance, the magazine of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild.
All forms of art, from the visual to the theatrical, from motion pictures to literature, tend to go through movements. One reason for this is simply copycatting, something that is most clearly seen in the motion picture industry: somebody makes a movie about, say, competitive cross-stitching, and it’s such a hit that suddenly there are a dozen more films about the cut-throat world of fabric-related competition. Another reason is conversation: artists within the same genre naturally react to, protest, and comment on the work of others within their genre.
But sometimes, and especially in science fiction, it’s because it’s “steam-engine time.”
The phrase was coined by Charles Fort (1874-1932), who researched and wrote about weird, inexplicable phenomena—showers of snakes, spontaneous human combustion, floating balls of light, encounters with monsters, that kind of thing. His books were very popular, and to this day there are “Forteans” who continue to collect and investigate accounts of these anomalies.
In his third book of oddities, Lo!, published in 1931 (which, as Wikipedia puts it, detailed “mysterious falls of animals and strange materials, flying stones, poltergeist activity, etc. and incorporated these strange phenomena into his new theory on teleportation, saying that teleportation from the Super-Sargasso Sea can explain these phenomena”—because, why not?), Fort wrote, “A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine time.”
In the science fiction field, “steam-engine time” is a handy shortcut for the phenomenon of multiple writers suddenly and more-or-less independently producing stories built around the same idea. In a 2011 interview in The Paris Review, Canadian author William Gibson talked about how he came to coin the word cyberspace (it first appeared in his story “Burning Chrome,” published in Omni in 1982, then really took off with the publication of his 1984 novel Neuromancer). It was, he said, “steam-engine time” for the idea of cyberspace.
“It’s called steam-engine time because nobody knows why the steam engine happened when it did,” Gibson said. “Ptolemy demonstrated the mechanics of the steam engine, and there was nothing technically stopping the Romans from building big steam engines. They had little toy steam engines, and they had enough metalworking skill to build big steam tractors. It just never occurred to them to do it. When I came up with my cyberspace idea, I thought, I bet it’s steam-engine time for this one, because I can’t be the only person noticing these various things. And I wasn’t. I was just the first person who put it together in that particular way, and I had a logo for it, I had my neologism.”
The resulting sub-genre of cyberpunk is hardly the only example of “steam-engine time” within the field. The idea of manned spaceflight, still closely associated with science fiction, was another that many people were drawn to all at once.
When I read science fiction short stories religiously, in the 1980s and 1990s, one topic that sprouted several stories was the threat to civilization posed by the coming ice age (remember, in the 1970s scientists were predicting global cooling, not warming). These days, of course, there are so many stories about civilization facing the challenges of a warming planet that they’ve spawned their own (rather unattractive) neologism: “cli-fi.”
Nanotechnology and virtual reality have all had their place in the sun. And you could say it literally became steam-engine time again with the advent of the popular sub-genre of steampunk.
Science fiction, I think, is particularly prone to the flowering of multiple stories built around the same themes because it is driven by scientific, technological, and social developments in the real world. The classic science fiction idea-generator, after all, is “If this goes on…”
In fact, “If This Goes On—” was the actual title of a classic science fiction novella by Robert A. Heinlein. Serialized in 1940 in Astounding Science Fiction, and included in revised and expanded form in his 1953 collection Revolt in 2100, it’s about a theocratic dictatorship taking hold in the United States. A backwoods preacher, Nehemiah Scudder, is elected president in 2012…and there are no more elections after that. The theocracy is established and maintained through the combination of mass communications (just taking hold when Heinlein wrote), applied psychology, and a hysterical populace.
While some of the upwelling ideas that produce clusters of similar stories eventually fade, overtaken by events, others continue to percolate inside the field. Nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robots, genetic engineering, environmental concerns, terrorism, mass migration, and many other technological and social developments continue to spark ideas, and thus stories, from today’s science fiction writers.
Science fiction isn’t about predicting the future (and when it tries, it almost always gets it dead wrong), but it is very much about the fact that tomorrow will not be like today. Whenever enough threads come together in the real world to point to amazing (or alarming) developments down the road, you can bet science fiction writers will begin putting the pieces together—and once again, it will be steam-engine time.
