Gavin G. Smith's Blog, page 4

London’s Week of SFF

So it seems that the entire SFF community is making it’s way to London this month.  I will be up to the following:

I will be doing a signing, with Mark Alder (aka: MD Lachlan) and Jon Wallace at 4.30pm on Friday the 8th of August in the Comm West room (Forbidden Planet Signings) at the Nine Worlds Convention.

On Tuesday the 12th of August I will be Fantasy in the Court hosted by Goldsboro Books in association with Tor UK and Harper Voyager, which, frankly, has a stellar collection of authors attending.

On Wednesday the the 13th of August I will be at attending the Gollancz Festival at Waterstones in Piccadilly between 6 and 9pm.  I will be on a panel about the sense of wonderment in SF with Adam Roberts, Connie Willis, Hannu Rajaniemi, Jaine Fenn and chaired by Simon Ings.  So not at all intimidating then.

And then Worldcon comes to London.  I will be up to the following at Loncon 3:

I will be doing a Kaffeeklatsch with Mike Carey in London Suite 4 at 7pm on Sunday the 17th of August.

Rat’s Monkey’s Ass is all about swearing in SFF (I intend to win this panel).  It’s at 10am on Monday the 18th in Capital Suite 3.

Fan Shaming is about intra-sub-sub culture nastiness and what, if anything, to do about it.  The panel is at midday in Capital Suite 3 on Monday the 18th as well.

I’ll leave you with Loncon Calling.

Lavecon 2014

So co-author of Elite: Wanted, Stephen Deas, and myself will be at the Elite: Dangerous convention, Lavecon 2014, on the 5th of July at the Kettering conference centre.  We will be doing a Q&A along with some of the other authors, wandering around, making the place look untidy, and I suspect exploring the bar.  For more details and tickets see Lavecon 2014.

 

Elite: Wanted by Gavin Deas

Who the hell is Gavin Deas?  Gavin Deas is myself and, all-round nice guy, and Ming the Merciless impersonator, Stephen Deas writing together.  Elite: Wanted is a tie-in novel set in the universe of Elite: Dangerous (which looks amazing), the new multi-player game from Frontier.  The book is currently only available as an Ebook, but will be out in hardback later on in the year.

Stephen and I tried to interview each other about our experiences writing the book on the Gollancz blog.

We are working on a shared world project entitled Empires, which will be out later in the year.  We’re both pretty excited about it so look out for more news on that.

So if you like pirates, bounty hunters and desperate space battles give it a go.

Stop Watching Star Wars!

I had the opportunity to do a blog for the Charing Cross branch of Blackwell’s…er this is what I did with it:  Stop Watching Star Wars!

Age of Scorpio Photo Shoot

In the run up to the publication of Age of Scorpio, Gollancz ran a competition based on a series of photos taken by Chloe of Chloe Isherwood Photography, which were then manipulated by Karma.  With gear and props provided by Evenlode Studios, Rachel Nicholson providing the makeup, and Yvonne Cunningham the scouting/location managing, we went to Wales and transformed Gabriella Howson into Britha, the artist Stephanie Lindley into Tangwen, and  stunt woman Kiera Gould into Cliodna.  You can see the amazing pictures below.

Chloe also wrote a blog about the photoshoot that is well worth a look.

The idea was to have two pictures of each model showing the characters before the events of the book and during the story:

 

Gabby as Britha before:

 

Gabby as Britha during:

 

Steph as Tangwen before:

 

 

Steph as Tangwen during (Karma put some long hours in on this one):

 

Kiera as Cliodna before (it’s quite difficult to see this image, it wasn’t used in the competition and for some reason Facebook removed it from my page):

 

Kiera as Cliodna during (stellar work from Karma and Rachel here, also Kiera spent hours stood on a Welsh beach, in autumn, getting made up, not wearing a great deal, she is, however, extremely hard):

Age of Scorpio

 

 

The Age of Scorpio is the first of a trilogy from Gollancz with interconnecting stories set in the distant past, modern day and far future.  It’s available from Waterstones and Amazon.

Crysis: Escalation released today!

 

So today sees the release of Crysis: Escalation, and apparently some game called Crysis 3!

To celebrate the folks at Gollancz posted the Part. 1 of Chance, the first story in Escalation, on their Blog.  So you can try before you buy.  In addition to the free story there is also a chance to win a copy of Escalation, and the computer game tie in.  (Oh wait, sorry, apparently it’s the other way around.)

And check out Stephen “the Merciless” Deas’s website for a chance to win another copy of Escalation and just the slightest hint of a new project that we’re working on.

And just for the sake of it here’s my favorite Crysis 3 trailer with some awesome tunes kicked out by Muse.

Anyway I’m off to kill squid.  (This is a game reference, I’m not out murdering sea life.  Though I do like calamari.)

Crysis: Escalation

So after a bit of quiet year last year, the hunt is on.

 

I’m very excited about this: to tie in with the massive new game Crysis 3, from Crytek and EA, released on the 22nd of February, Gollancz are releasing a collection of short stories written by yours truly.  The stories explain what’s been happening in the Crysis world in the the twenty-seven years between the events of Crysis 2 and Crysis 3.  Crysis: Escalation contains stories about game favorites: Prophet, Alcatraz and Psycho, including glimpses into their pasts, and hints of some of the really cool things to come in the new game.  It also tells the story of the rise of the sinister and rapacious multinational company CELL, to its position as a dominating world power.  There are fights, chases, fights, aliens, orbital weapons, fights, terror and some foul language.

Frankly it’s about as much fun as you can have without you’re own cloaking device and compound bow (with explosive tipped arrows).

Triangle: New short story set in the Veteran universe.

 

To celebrate the mass market paperback release of War In Heaven the team at Gollancz have very kindly posted a short story of mine called Triangle set in the Veteran universe on the Gollancz Blog.  It stars everybody’s favorite (judging by feedback) delusional cyber-psychotic, Balor, as well as the Grey Lady.  Oh and it’s a love story, sort of.  (Don’t worry there’s action as well.)

War In Heaven Available in Mass Market Paperback 14/06/2012

War In Heaven, the continuation of the story started in Veteran will be available in Mass Market Paperback (for Kindle users they are almost exactly the same as Kindles except thicker and made from paper) from Thursday the fourteenth of June 2012.

Keep watch on the Gollancz Blog for a surprise freebie involving everyone’s favorite (apparently) delusional cyber-psychotic.