Edward Willett's Blog, page 36

The Daily Toast: To Friendship

Background here.

The Daily Toast: To Our Guest

 

Background here.

The Daily Toast: a new daily feature (until I run out)

While tidying up my office bookshelves today–four boxes of books going out!–I came across an amusing volume from the collection of my wife’s grandparents (the house has been in the family since 1939).

Toasts for the Times in Pictures and Rhymes, by John William Sargent, illustrated by Nella Fontaine Binckley, is exactly what it sounds like: an illustrated toast book. Originally published in paperback in 1904 by The Consolidated Retail Booksellers, our little hardcover was published in 1906 by The Saalfield Publishing Co.

For the next few days, I’m going to offer a Toast of the Day from this little book. Just because I can!

But first, some background, which I obtained (Google being the fabulous thing it is) via the blog of the Goodwood Museum & Gardens in Tallahassee, Florida.

According to the museum:

John William Sargent was born in Bangor, Maine, in 1852.  A performer of magical feats since he was a boy, he founded the Society of American Magicians and served as the second president.  For the last three years of his life (1917-1920), he served as the private secretary of Harry Houdini.  His only other book was another book of humorous toasts (also illustrated by Nella Fontaine Binckley), published in 1906, Smoke and Bubbles.
 
Nella Fontaine Binckley was born in Washington, D.C., in 1877.  She was a pupil of the great impressionist painter, William Merritt Chase, studying also at the California School of Design and The Mark Hopkins Institute.   She was active in the Washington, D.C., art scene and illustrated several other books, including The Liberators:  A Story of Future American Politics by Isaac Newton Stevens in 1908, The Other Mr. Barclay, by Henry Irving Dodge in 1906, and Scars on the Southern Seas:  A Romance by George Bronson-Howard in 1907. 

Their other book, Smoke and Bubbles, shows up a lot more online than Toasts for the Times, but I also turned up this book review from page 7 of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of December 5, 1904:

A NEW TOAST BOOK. Wit and humor, cynicism and philosophy, art and poetry alternate and unite between the covers of “Toasts for the Times in Pictures and Rhymes,” by John William Sargent, pictured by Nella Fontaine Binckley (Consolidated Retail Booksellers, $1 net.). The little volume’s paper cover claims for it the distinction of being “the only toast book published in which every toast is illustrated.” The publisher might have said “well illustrated,” for although pictured toast books are not rare it is not always that the illustrations they contain are as original and attractive as in the present volume. Sometimes they are even more symmetrical than the verselets that gave them their “raison d’etre.” But, if not always well balanced, the rhymes are never less than clever and in their disregard for conventionalities are much akin to the Bohemian folk whose gayer hours have been their source of inspiration. This happy-go-lucky unconventionality of rhyme and reason is well presented in the toast to Bohemia: “To Bohcmia, where no questions are asked, Where today is today, and no man has a past; Where ethics, and usage, and trifles like that Are cast to tho minds, and each man stands pat; Where abideth true faith which casteth out fear, And a man is a monarch on pretzels and beer.” The new toast book ought to be a good seller.

Above, you see the cover and the title page and the dedication. And here is today’s Daily Toast:

 

Week 7 of the Great Book Giveaway: enter and get another free short story!

Neil from Saskatoon was the winner of last week’s book giveaway. Now it’s time to start Week 7.

The rules remain the same. Simply comment on this post, reply to one of the posts I’ll put on Facebook on both my Edward Willett and E.C. Blake pages, or reTweet one of the Tweets I’ll post on Twitter @AuthorECBlake, @ewillett, and @LeeArthurChane. Next Saturday I’ll tally up all the entries, do a draw, and I’ll send the winner the book of his choice from this list (with a couple of exceptions–I don’t have copies of absolutely everything). Fiction or non-fiction, his/her choice!

This week every entrant receives an ebook version (I’ll send mobi, epub and PDF files) of my short story “Je Me Souviens.”

“Je Me Souviens” originally appeared in the Summer 2002 issue of Artemis Magazine, and received an Honorable Mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection , edited by Gardner Dozois. It was reprinted in the moon-themed anthology Ride the Moon (Tyche Books). Along the way, it picked up a couple of nice reviews:

“This quiet story was laced with melancholy and full of dignity.” — Greg Beatty, Tangent Online

“…the most overtly spiritual of the issue’s septet of stories and also the most lyrically written…a commendable tale, quite effective in showing both the subjectivity of progress and the sad, ultimate ethereality of tradition.” — Daniel E. Blackston, Firebrand Fiction Reviews, SFreader.com

So, to recap, enter to win a free book, and receive a great short story. What have you got to lose?

Kirkus Reviews offers first review of new Song of the Sword: “a tight story”

First review I’ve seen of the new version of Song of the Sword is from Kirkus Reviews, which says it’s “a tight story (all the details make sense), and characters exhibit honest emotions,” and adds, “Fantasy references galore should ensure that readers who enjoy fantasy—and Arthurian legend in particular—come away satisfied.“

Read the whole thing.

Only a couple of months until you can read it for yourself!

Week 6 of my book giveaway contest: every entrant receives a copy of short story “The Path of Souls”

The winner of Week 5 of my book giveaway contest was David (one of three Davids who entered) from right here in Regina (which makes it easy to get the book to him, at least!). Thanks to everyone who entered–I had 29 entrants in all, most of them this week from Facebook.

On to Week 6! The rules are the same. Leave a comment below, and I’ll enter you (and add your email address to my mailing list for the infrequent writing newsletter I send out). If you win, you can choose any book you want from this list, and if I have a spare copy (which I almost certainly do, with a couple of exceptions) I’ll send it to you, anywhere in the world, free of charge.

This week, everyone who enters receives a free PDF of my short story “The Path of Souls,” which appeared in Tesseracts 17, latest edition of the long-running annual anthology of Canadian science fiction and fantasy from EDGE. (That’s the cover art at left.)

(“The Path of Souls,” I might mention, is eligible to be nominated for the Aurora Awards this year. So is Masks. I’m just sayin’.)

Let the contest begin!

A couple of new book reviews…

While the most recently released book is always the one that generates the most reviews (although reviews for Masks have slowed tremendously since it first came out), older books can still spark reviews at unexpected intervals, and recently a couple of reviews popped up for some of my older books.

Outworlder Reviews picked up The Helix War…and liked it!

[image error] “ Marseguro is an excellent Science Fiction/ Fantasy story. The characters are well defined with emotion, purpose. ambition. and revenge. The action is relentless and violent. Mr. Willett has crafted an incredible world on Marseguro and this reader highly recommends other Outworlders to visit it.  Book Two, Terra Insegura , is almost as delightful as Book One. The setting changes dramatically, but the protagonists are still there.  Just pick up The Helix War Omnibus and enjoy both novels.  SCORE:   Marseguro 9.5/10 Terra Insegura 9/10″ 

Meanwhile, A Library Mama took a look at Spirit Singer:

“This is a classic quest narrative, with the originality coming from the parallel journeys in the spirit and the living worlds. While a lot of the other elements felt very familiar, it was still a well-told story. I really liked Amarynth, determined to make things right despite being out of her depth in a place where many more experienced people had failed before. She was much more doing the job because it needed to be done and she was the only one left than the more typical One Foretold by Prophecy, which I very much appreciated…At only 144 pages, it’s a good choice for reluctant middle grade and high school readers.”

Nice to see the books are still being discovered!

Help me choose between two cover art options for Star Song

I’m working toward self-publishing Star Song (as I mentioned in this week’s book giveaway starting post), and today I spent some time playing with cover ideas. I’ve got two choices thus far, so I’m soliciting opinions. Which of the two covers below do you like best…and why?

Here’s the one-paragraph description of the novel:

Kriss Lemarc is alone on a remote planet where he doesn’t belong. The guardian who raised him in a backwoods village has been murdered. His parents died when he was a baby. His only link to them is a strange musical instrument that pulls his innermost feelings to the surface and pours them into the minds of his listeners. Kriss plans to take that instrument off-world and trace its origin and his own–but the artifact proves to be more than just a musical oddity: it holds the key to ancient alien powers, and ruthless people will stop at nothing to get it. Befriended by a girl of the space-going, gypsy-like Family and a former Family captain, but mistrusted and even hated by some of their comrades, Kriss seeks to learn about his parents, to keep the instrument from falling into evil hands–and ultimately, to learn his own worth and find a place where he belongs.

And here are the two potential covers. Thoughts?

 

 

Book Giveaway Week 5: Enter and get a pre-publication sneak peek at STAR SONG

The winner of Week 4 of my great book giveaway was Melinda, who commented on my Edward Willett Facebook page. Now it’s on to Week 5!

Rules are the same: leave a comment below, or reply to one of my Facebook posts, or retweet one of my daily Tweets on the subject, and if your name is chosen next Saturday, you can choose any one of my published books from this list and I’ll send you a copy (provided I have one to spare, which I almost certainly do) free of charge. Just note that I’ll also add your email address to my newsletter mailing list. (Don’t worry, I only send something out every two or three months if that, so you won’t be inundated.)

This week, everyone who enters gets a free pre-publication ebook copy of Star Song.

Star Song grew out of a short story called “The Minstrel,” which was published in the long-defunct JAM Magazine (that’s the cover art, which featured my story, at left) in 1985. It was really the first novel I wrote that I tried to get published, and was almost the first novel I had published: Josepha Sherman, then at Walker and Company, recounted the tale at the 1994 World Science Fiction Convention in Winnipeg (the first WorldCon I ever had the opportunity to attend). She liked the book but thought it needed to be revised and expanded. I revised and expanded it and sent it back, and, she said, she was “ready to make an offer” on it when the publisher of Walker and Company died. His son (I believe) took over–and promptly decreed they would no longer publish science fiction.

Had I sold that novel, my career would have been completely different. Better or worse I can’t say, but different, for sure. Instead, it was years before I sold a novel…and it wasn’t Star Song.

A while back I went through the book and gave it a bit of a polish. And now, thanks to the wonderful world we live in in which self-publishing has never been easier, Star Song is finally going to find whatever audience it can find.

Enter this week’s contest, and you can be among the first to read it.

Please share this widely!

Nautical audiobook I narrated now on sale!

Deer Isle’s Undefeated America’s Cup Crews: Humble Heroes from a Downeast Island, by Mark J. Gabrielson, (published by New Street Communications) is a fascinating look at a crucial segment of the long history of America’s Cup yacht racing. I was fortunate enough to be hired as the narrator for the audiobook version, and enjoyed it immensely. (I may have lived my entire life about as far from the ocean as you can get, but I was infected early in life with a fascination for sailing by reading the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome,.)

The audiobook is now available from Audible, so please, go forth and purchase.

Here’s the description:

In 1895, emissaries from the New York Yacht Club traveled to Deer Isle, Maine, to recruit the nation’s best sailors, an “All American” crew. This remote island in Penobscot Bay sent nearly 30 of its fishing men to sail Defender, and under skipper Hank Haff, they beat their opponents in a difficult and controversial series.

To the delight of the American public, the charismatic Sir Thomas Lipton sent a surprise challenge in 1899. The New York Yacht Club knew where to turn and again recruited Deer Isle’s fisherman sailors. Undefeated in two defense campaigns, they are still considered one of the best American sail-racing teams ever assembled. Listen to their fascinating story and relive their adventure.

Listen to a sample!

http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2014/03/Deer-Isle-Retail-Sample.mp3