Matthew Hughes's Blog: barbarians of the beyond, page 26

Historical fiction

A colleague on the SF Canada listserver, up and coming author Liz Strange, asked me to guest blog. Since it turned out we had not only sf writing in common but also a taste for historical fiction, I wrote a few words on my first fiction love.

Another space opera ebook

My space opera short story collection, The Meaning of Luff and Other Stories, is now available at the Archonate Bookstore, priced at US$2.99 (£2.02)

It's also working its way through the publishing process at Amazon and Kobo.

Here's the blurb:

In Old Earth’s penultimate age, the corpulent master criminal Luff Imbry moves through the halfworld like a full-fleshed shark. Thief, forger, confidence man, and sometimes go-between, he maps out his illicit operations with exquisite care then carries them out with courage and panache. But, often, things don’t go as Luff planned, and he must call upon a talent for improvisation and a ruthless will to survive.

This collection brings together seven short stories and novelettes previously published in Postscripts, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and the anthology Forbidden Planets, plus two novellas formerly only available in limited editions. It offers Luff Imbry in all his moods and guises.

Template ebook

My standalone space-opera, Template: A Novel of the Archonate, is now available on Amazon. By tomorrow it will be up on Kobo and my own webstore for $2.99.

In a day or so, I'll follow with The Meaning of Luff and Other Stories, a collection of nine short stories and novellas featuring my corpulent master criminal of Old Earth in its penultimate age.

How to write scenes

A little while back, I gave a talk to a Vancouver Island writers group on how to write scenes in genre fiction. A video of it is up on YouTube.

Review of Hell to Pay

David Brzeski has given Hell to Pay, the third novel in the To Hell and Back trilogy, a strong review on the British Fantasy Society site. He says, "The first book in the series was very good, the second was better. The events of those books were leading up to this final volume in the trilogy and it’s the best yet."

So You Want to Become a Published Author

Last month I went down to Victoria to be part of a panel at the Gottacon gaming convention. The theme was "So You Want to Become a Published Author" and my fellow panelists were Alyx Dellamonica (who's very good), Dave Duncan (one of Canada's top-selling fantasy authors) and T.J. Silver, who was just in the process of making a seven-book deal with Random House.

Karl Johanson, editor of Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine, video-recorded most of the panel. He synched his video with an audio recording made by Jules Sherred, the moderator, and has now posted it on YouTube.

There's some pretty good information there.

Henghis Hapthorn ebooks

The three Henghis Hapthorn novels -- Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira -- are now available as ebooks in Kindle and Epub formats on my web page. The price is $2.99 each.

A pdf format file will follow soon. They'll also be for sale on Amazon and Kobo in the near future.

Excerpt from Hell To Pay

Hell to Pay, the third novel in the To Hell and Back series, will be published in paperback and eformats on February 26 in North America, and a couple of weeks later in the UK. Chesney's adventures as a demon-assisted costumed crimefighter continue to lead him down ever more tortuous paths.

I've posted the first few thousand words in the Excerpts category of my web page.

Another review of Devil or Angel

Terry Weyna, at the Magazine Mondays blog, reviews "Devil or Angel," my story in the January/February F&SF, and calls it, "a marvelously silly story, and I enjoyed every word of it."

Podcast about the craft and business of sff and horror

A couple of weeks ago, I went down to Victoria, BC, to take part in a panel at a gaming convention called Gottacon. The panel was called "So You Want to be a Published Author." With me were friends and able authors, Alyx Dellamonica and Dave Duncan, and T.J. Silver, a young fellow who just got his first book deal. The moderator was broadcaster Jules Sherred, who recorded the session and posted it as a podcast on her website.

I think that, together, we said some useful things about our experiences with the craft and the business.



Mat