Elspeth Cooper's Blog, page 7

The Raven’s Shadow – giveaway!

Ooh, a new book . . .

As you may know, this coming Thursday, 15th August, sees the publication of THE RAVEN’S SHADOW in the UK, and shortly thereafter in Australia and New Zealand.

This is the third volume of The Wild Hunt series, and things are heating up. Gair’s back on the mainland with a mission to fulfill. Teia is struggling through the mountain snow, desperate to reach safety before her child is born. As the moons move inexorably towards their conjunction and Ytha’s war band levels its spears at the Empire itself, deception and tragedy await. Actions have consequences, and not all of them can be foreseen.

I don’t know about you, but I’m just a-quiver with excitement.

 

And look! There’s free stuff!

Because I am immensely proud of this book, and y’all are the nicest bunch of readers, I am also giving away some signed copies of the Gollancz edition. These very ones, in fact:

5 signed, personalised hardbacks, delivered worldwide

To be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post before midnight UK time on 29th August to go into the draw. On the 30th I will select five winners’ names at random.

In the light of the last giveaway, I do have a few things I want to point out. Please note, the Rules of Engagement:

Rules of Engagement

One entry per person. Duplicate entries will be discarded.
Winners’ will be drawn at random, using a random-number generator. Randomly.
If you leave a comment and it doesn’t appear straight away, that’s because I have to manually authorise comments from email addresses the site doesn’t recognise. It’s nothing personal, I’ve just had all the fake Rolexes, NFL jerseys and Louis Vuitton knock-offs I can stand. Sorry.
Only comments on this post are eligible. Please don’t ask to be entered via Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or by email because this needs to be fair and simple to administer.
Please leave a valid email address or I won’t be able to get in touch with you to tell you you’ve won. Make sure it’s an email address you actually check more than once in a blue moon , because if you win and I email you and you don’t respond to said email within a reasonable time (say seven days) I will give the book to someone else.
The dedication doesn’t have to be to you. It can be your sister, mother-in-law, boss or pet rat – I really don’t mind. I will even post it to another address, if it’s a present for someone. Just don’t ask for gift-wrap as well, because do I look like Amazon to you? Sheesh.
Yes, I really will ship worldwide. That includes Chile, Burkina Faso and PO boxes on little islands off the coast of Australia. Neither rain, nor snow, nor glom of nit can stay my messengers about their duty.

All clear? Right, off you go then – and good luck!

 

David Gemmell Legend Award 2013

The mighty Snaga

Well, whaddayaknow. TRINITY RISING is on the longlist for the 2013 David Gemmell Legend Award – in some very fine company indeed. Lawrence and Williams and Bear*, oh my!

I was thrilled to be shortlisted for the Morningstar ‘Best Debut’ in 2012 with SONGS OF THE EARTH, and am more than chuffed to be considered a worthy contender for the Legend this year.

Is it likely I’m going to win? I’m up against LordGrimdark himself and RED COUNTRY – what do you think? However, hope springs eternal and yon axe would look exceedingly fine in my office with the rest of my arsenal collection of sharp shiny things, so if you’ve read TRINITY RISING and you want to nominate it, go right ahead. It’s a really easy public vote, and you can do it in a couple of clicks HERE. Voting is open until July 31st.

Of course, you are completely free to vote for anyone else on the ballot who strikes your fancy, and I absolutely will not hold it against you in any way. At all. Promise.

* And Abercrombie and Weeks and Deas and Erikson and all the rest, but it spoiled the joke** to include them all.

** Yes, I know, it wasn’t much of a joke.

 

Monster book giveaway winners!

Last month’s monster book giveaway closed at the weekend, and the winners have now been drawn*. Check your email to find out if you’ve been selected.

During the draw, I noticed a few things – data points, if you will:

The SONGS giveaway was massively over-subscribed, with 240 valid entries to TRINITY’s 49 – that’s almost 6 to 1. This was largely because so many of you hadn’t read my books before, or didn’t specify a book and so got entered into the SONGS draw, or you were cheeky and asked for either or both.
Lots of you are called Mike (7). Even more of you are called Chris (9). A surprising number (43, or 15%) have names beginning with the letter J. There was even one lady named Ellie, like me (but it didn’t earn her any special favours).
A couple of wee scamps commented more than once. One looks like an accidental double post, so he gets a pass. As for the others, yes, I de-duped your email addresses. I’ll hold my hand up and say multiple entries were not explicitly prohibited, and it’s entirely possible that WordPess screwed up (perish the thought) but in the spirit of fair play, you got one entry each.

Monster book giveaway – now even monsterer!

Whilst we’re on the subject of fair play, the extremely high number of entrants for SONGS left me minded to throw a few more books into the pot, so I have drawn a total of TEN winners for that one.

If I could have offered six times as many, i.e. 42, to give everyone a more or less equal chance of winning, whichever draw they were entered for, I would do, but alas Tor only sent me so many copies.

So without further ado . . .

SONGS OF THE EARTH winners: Steve, Haik, Daniel, William, Shelley, Matt, Paras, Linus, Sarah, Nadine.

TRINITY RISING winners: Debbie, Lorraine, Mark, Kirsten, Aaron, Shawn, David.

Congratulations, all of you! You will shortly receive an email requesting your address and personalisation details, and your books will go on the post on the Saturday after I receive your reply.

* For all those interested in due process, the winners were selected by importing all the commenters’ names, deduping and sorting into two lists, then I used a random number generator to select positions on those lists.

The Raven’s Shadow: cover launch

My lords, gentlepersons and other sentient beings, I give you THE RAVEN’S SHADOW, Book 3 of The Wild Hunt.

This will be arriving on your bookstore shelves on August 15th, in hardcover and trade paperback, so get your pre-orders in, if you haven’t already.

The artwork is once again by Dominic Harman, and continues the book-covers-that-look-like-books theme. Click the image for a larger version. Striking, isn’t it?

Now, you all remember where we left things at the end of TRINITY RISING, yes? Teia struggling through the mountains to avert a disaster only she can see? Gair in mortal peril in El Maqqam? Splendid.

In this book we return to the mainland as the Nimrothi war band advances southwards through the Archen Mountains, bent on reclaiming their ancient homeland with the help of Maegern the Raven, Keeper of the Dead. Under a trinity moon, battle will be joined. Ytha and her war band, forty thousand strong, versus a scant legion of imperial infantry, a handful of Arennorian clansmen, and one damaged gaeden with nothing left to lose.

Places, everyone. And . . . action!

 

Communication breakdown

So we’ve been customers of a certain satellite TV company for almost 13 years, and just lately we’ve got rather fed up with them. The broadband, whilst cheap, is not great. Our favourite sports have all moved to a rival broadcaster, who is offering a competitive alternative service* and a far better broadband (up to 32mb, thanks to the local network’s upgrade to fibre) at a price which will save us around £20 a month all told.

No brainer, isn’t it?

So I phone up and cancel the broadband, but I can’t cancel the TV account because that has to be done by the account holder. Merely talking to the bill-payer is not enough, apparently. So my husband Rob signs into his account and issues the instruction to cancel, and we start the process to move to BT.

Then the phone calls start.

Sky: “Can I speak to the account holder, please?”

Me: “I’m sorry, he’s at work. Can I help? I’ve got the account password.”

Sky: “Sorry, it has to be the account holder. We’ll try again later.”

Next day.

Sky: “Can I speak to the account holder, please?”

Me: “I’m afraid he’s at work and won’t be back until later. Are you sure I can’t help?”

Sky: “No, I’m sorry, it has to be the account holder. ”

Me: “Can you ring back after 5pm? He’ll be in then.”

Sky: “It won’t be me, unfortunately. The calls just go back into the queue and whoever’s free takes the next one. I’ll leave a note on the account and someone should call tomorrow, Thursday, at about 6pm.”

Me: “That’s fine.” And I think it’s sorted.

Thursday at 6pm comes and goes without a phone call. Friday 9:30am, however . . .

Sky: “Can I speak to the account holder, please?”

Me: “I’m sorry, he’s at work. You were supposed to ring last night at 6pm.”

Sky: “Oh no, you shouldn’t have been told that. We can only make appointments with the account holder.”

Me: “Well, the account holder’s at work. This is the third time I’ve told you this week. Why can’t you just deal with me? I’ve got the account password.”

Sky: “The password’s just for adding or downgrading services. For cancellations it has to be the account holder we speak to.”

Me: “What if the account holder was working overseas, on the far side of the world? What if he was dead? Would you talk to me then?”

Sky (getting flustered now, because he’s off-script): “Er . . . well, those are special circumstances . . . there are procedures . . . [struggles manfully to regain initiative] . . . it’s for data protection!”

Me: “Really? I’m afraid I don’t believe you. The bank account that pays the bill is in my name**. What data exactly are you protecting?”

Sky: “. . . um . . .”

Me (taking pity on the poor lad): “My husband won’t be back until after 5pm. I’ll tell him to expect a call.”

It gets better. That same day, 4pm. “Hello, can I speak to the Sky account holder, please?”

Me (rolling my eyes): “He’s at work. I’ve told you this three times since Tuesday.” All the while thinking ‘Don’t you people write things down?’

The lady was very nice and apologetic, and I’m sure if the call wasn’t being monitored for training and quality purposes she would have agreed with me that the situation was ludicrous, viz. I could have put a random bloke on the phone to say he was Rob (my dad happened to be visiting for the second call – he would have done), or I could have added the full suite of HD, movies, sports and all the premium porn channels I could find***, but I couldn’t cancel the bloody thing.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t Rob just ring them? Well, he would have done if he didn’t hate talking to strangers on the phone – plus, the last time he had to ring Sky was in their offshore call centre days. He couldn’t understand the droid’s too-fast, thickly accented English, and the droid couldn’t understand Rob’s Geordie twang. This is why we put me on the account in the first place.

But anyway. Rob got through to their cancellation team in the end, and set the wheels in motion to terminate our account.

Fast forward to today. The phone rings, and . . .

Sky: “Can I speak to the account holder, please?”

Me: “I’m sorry, he’s at work. Can I help?” Expecting to be told no, it has to be Rob.

Sky: “I understand you’re cancelling your account, and I’m ringing to see if there’s anything we can do to retain your custom. Are you dissatisfied with the service?”

Me: “No, not at all, it’s just we can get a broadly equivalent service plus superior broadband for less, about £35 a month.”

Sky: “If you have a moment to chat, we can talk about a few ways we might be able to match this . . .”

Waitaminit. You won’t talk to me about closing the account, but you’re happy to talk to me about staying? When I could be agreeing to anything, signing up to any number of services? I’d like to see a copy of your Data Protection policy, please, because it’s got so many holes I think the moths have been at it.

***

* We’ll lose Sky Atlantic, but we gain unlimited box sets on demand. Plus we get the rugby back, and MotoGP from next year.

** Long story. The account that pays the household bills used to be a joint account. I transferred it to a single account, and now the bank won’t let us make it joint again. The alternative is shift a whole load of standing orders and direct debits to a new account and frankly, life’s too short.

*** Assume for a minute that the bank account the Sky is charged to was in Rob’s name, and I was a bitter ex-wife. Exactly.

 

 

All images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Book giveaway

Folks, I need to clear some space on the shelves in my office. Gollancz just sent me another bunch of paperbacks, and there is no length to which I will not go in order to avoid dusting ‘em, so the time has come to run another giveaway.

First up, I have seven copies of the Tor paperback of SONGS OF THE EARTH to give away. Many of you will have aready read this, but I am reliably informed that there are people out there in internetland who haven’t yet heard of me (waves to the good folk of Reddit Fantasy) so here’s your chance to try a new-to-you author for free. You never know, you might even like it.

Second, I am giving away seven copies of the larger format UK paperback of TRINITY RISING. These are the not due in the shops until June 13th, so they’re new and shiny and unthumbed.

Free stuff, people. Who doesn’t love free stuff? Oh, and I’ll sign and personalise each book, too.

This giveaway is open worldwide – all you have to do is leave a comment on this post before midnight UK time on June 15th, and tell me which book you want, then I will put all the names in a hat and select the lucky recipients at random.

When you comment, please make sure you give a valid email address so I can contact you for your shipping addy and personalisation details when the giveaway ends.

UPDATE: If you’ve not read my work before, you should start with SONGS OF THE EARTH as it’s Book 1 in the series. TRINITY RISING is Book 2. If you don’t specify which book you’d prefer, I’ll put you in the hat for SONGS.

UPDATE the second: If your comment does not appear straight away, my apologies, but due to a rise in comment spam I have to manually approve new commenters. I’m training the cats to monitor the feed in my absence.

 

From Russia with love

Today, I had the singular pleasure of receiving my author’s copies of the Russian edition of SONGS OF THE EARTH. Click on any image to embiggen.

I have to say it’s the dinkiest hardback I’ve ever seen, short of the BFS Journal. Compared to the German editions, it’s positively sylph-like, yet still weighs in at a substantial 479 pages, thanks to its delicately-thin paper stock.

Externally, under the gloss finish the entire cover is metallicised to give a silvery sheen to the light through the trees. This does not photograph at all well without clever lighting unavailable to a mere mortal with a phone camera and an energy-saving lightbulb overhead, but I’ve done my best. That orangey bit is my T-shirt reflecting in the finish, and if you look closely, you can even (horrors!) see the shape of my head.

Internally, the designers have gone absolutely to town with printer’s ornaments on each chapter head and page number, and in replicating the cover’s curlicues on the title page:

It’s a strange and strangely lovely thing, completely unlike any of the other books on my shelf, and I’m really rather taken with it.

 

 

Coming soon: Trinity Rising paperback (UK)

I’m pleased to announce that the UK mass-market paperback of TRINITY RISING will be released on 13th June 2013 – with, I’m told, a bonus sneak peek at the first chapter of the next book in The Wild Hunt series, THE RAVEN’S SHADOW.

I will of course be doing some giveaways of signed copies (when I actually have some copies to sign and give away, that is) so check back next month for details.

As always, any giveaways that I run through this blog are fully international. I don’t care where you live, as long as you have a postal service of some description – be that a transdimensional vortex, a painted golem called Mr Pump or just an old man with a donkey who comes over the mountain every second Wednesday – you can enter.

Herewith some shameless self-promotion:

…settle down and enjoy Cooper’s eloquent prose, unique versions of the occult, and fine emotional range — Locus

And I didn’t even have to pay them to say that.

June 13th. Go. Read. Enjoy.

 

BookSworn unmasked!

If you’ve been stalking me on social media recently, you might have noticed me dropping veiled hints about the BookSworn. You might even have wondered what it was all about.

Today, the truth is out.

So who are the BookSworn?

They are weavers of worlds and spinners of tales, a writer’s collective that features some of fantasy’s freshest voices from the last couple of years.

They are Bradley Beaulieu, Betsy Dornbusch, Teresa Frohock, Douglas Hulick, Kameron Hurley, Zachary Jernigan, Mark Lawrence, Stina Leicht, Helen Lowe, Anne Lyle, Evie Manieri, Jeff Salyards, Courtney Schafer, Mary Victoria, Mazarkis Williams and, er, me.

In the coming weeks we will be blogging and writing essays on the art and craft of genre fiction, offering sneak peeks at our upcoming books, and giving away some very cool stuff.

To help us launch our new website, you are cordially invited to attend a

Grand Masked Ball

and mingle with our characters over the next seven days. Guess who’s behind the masks, and you could win a stupendous pile of signed books.

Time: Monday 18th March 2013, from 12 noon EST (5pm GMT)
Venue: BookSworn
Dress: Masque
All welcome!

 

Trinity Rising giveaway winners

Wow – thank you all for such an amazing response to the giveaway!

I got so many entries that I’ve decided to throw in another book, because giving away just two felt a bit niggardly when sixty-odd folk had replied. So there they are, on my desk, waiting to be signed.

And now for the winners. By the wonders of the Random.org random number generator . . .

Congratulations Marika, Scott and Cindy!

You will be receiving an email from me shortly for your postal address and personalisation details, and your signed books will be shipped out to you as soon as possible. I hope you enjoy the read!

Didn’t win?

If you weren’t one of the lucky ones, there are still FIVE signed books up for grabs on Goodreads:

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Trinity Rising
by Elspeth Cooper

Giveaway ends March 10, 2013.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win