E.C. Blake's Blog, page 10

In Honour of National Poetry Month 2: Within this box of glowing white…

Within this box of glowing white

I type, in pixels black,

These words. I try to get them right,

Yet still I feel they lack

A certain something. Yeats I’m not

Nor am I Keats or Austen.

My forte, I would say, is plot:

This scansion is exhausten’.

And so, although ’tis poetry

This month is meant to honour,

I don’t think it’s the month for me.

Why, I can’t even find a last line that has the right number of beats and ends with a rhyme for “honour.”

In Honor of National Poetry Month 1: I Tweet, Therefore I Rhyme

I TWEET, THEREFORE I RHYME

Being a Twitterpoem cycle in honour of National Poetry Month 2014, with each stanza set off with pretentious Roman numerals, just because it’s more poetic that way

I

In characters, 140 sum, I must Tweet out my heart,

So that, for National Poetry Month, I will have done my part.

 

II

I think that I shall never see a Tweet as lovely as a tree.

(Kilmer I’m not, nor e’er will be–but that’s my stab at poetry.)

 

III

A rhyming couplet may not be considered avant garde,

But it works well enough for me (though better for the Bard).

 

IV

“I Tweet, therefore I am,” Descartes did not (and could not) say,

But probably he would have had he been born present-day.

 

V

If you find a piece is missing from the puzzle of your soul,

Perhaps you need a poet—to fill a poem-sized hole.

 

Coda

It’s hard, now I have started, to stop these silly rhymes.

I humbly beg your pardon for my literary crimes.

Week 7 Book Giveaway begins: every entrant receives short story “Je Me Souviens”

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 likes Song of the Sword

First review I’ve seen of the new version of my written-as-Edward-Willett YA fantasy Song of the Sword (first book in the five-book Shards of Excalibur series) 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 weekly book giveway: enter and receive 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!

Two new reviews for some of my Edward Willett novels

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, written as Edward Willett.

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

“ 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!

One step closer to the release of SHADOWS

The release of Shadows, Book 2 in The Masks of Aygrima, is getting closer–it’s due out beginning of August. And here’s proof that it’s not far away–the page proofs arrived from DAW Books yesterday. I’ll be going through these over the next month to try to stamp out any typos/other minor problems that might still remain despite all the editing and rewriting.

Can’t wait until the book comes out and I find out how readers feel about it!

Soliciting cover art opinions for upcoming Edward Willett ebook

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?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5 of my weekly book giveaway: everyone who enters gets a pre-pub copy of 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, written as Edward Willett.

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!

A glimpse at a real-life Masked city…

Wonder what it would be like to live in a city where everyone has to be masked at all times? Venice’s Carnival gives you a pretty good taste of it. Some of these photos could have been taken in Aygrima!

View the whole slideshow, and read about Venice’s maskmakers…