Martha Wells's Blog, page 71

Neat Thing

Murderbot Tattoos! https://marthawells.tumblr.com/post/166289129822/murderbot-tattoos-before-you-ask-these-are

comments

Book Quote Wednesday

A quote from The Murderbot Diaries 3: Rogue Protocol for Book Quote Wednesday on Twitter: https://marthawells.tumblr.com/post/166044853607/this-is-from-book-quote-wednesday-bookqw-on

comments

Book Recs on Wednesday

(If you've been following my book rec and new book listing posts for a while, you may have noticed this already, but while most book lists emphasize books by popular straight white men, this one emphasizes everybody else. I include books by straight white men, but in about the same percentage that other book lists include everybody else. I also try to highlight books that are less well known.)

(I only link to one retail outlet in the book's listing, but most books are available at multiple outlets, like Kobo, iBooks, international Amazons, Barnes & Noble, etc. The short stories are usually on free online magazines.)


* Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng
Victorian missionaries travel into the heart of the newly discovered lands of the Fae, in a stunningly different fantasy that mixes Crimson Peak with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
Catherine Helstone’s brother, Laon, has disappeared in Arcadia, legendary land of the magical fae. Desperate for news of him, she makes the perilous journey, but once there, she finds herself alone and isolated in the sinister house of Gethsemane. At last there comes news: her beloved brother is riding to be reunited with her soon – but the Queen of the Fae and her insane court are hard on his heels.


* The Rule of Five by Melissa Scott and Don Sakers
THE RULE OF FIVE: YEAR ONE contains the first twelve episodes of the serial space opera that's changing the way stories are told.


* The Tiger's Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera
Away on the silver steppes, the remaining tribes of nomadic Qorin retreat and protect their own, having bartered a treaty with the empire, exchanging inheritance through the dynasties. It is up to two young warriors, raised together across borders since their prophesied birth, to save the world from the encroaching demons. This is the story of an infamous Qorin warrior, Barsalayaa Shefali, a spoiled divine warrior empress, O Shizuka, and a power that can reach through time and space to save a land from a truly insidious evil.


* Story: Though She Be But Little by C.S.E. Cooney


* Dragon Sisters by Joyce Chng
A special edition to celebrate the enduring friendship between Xiao Xiao and Ming Zhu, two princesses from two different worlds. Enter a world of fantasy and magic and recipes set in Qing China. What happens when Xiao Xiao, a daughter of an Imperial Courtesan, finds a magical green pearl in the hands of her adoptive little sister? When she meets Ming Zhu, a dragon princess, daughter of the Dragon King, a friendship is formed. But will Princess Ming Zhu ever return back to her watery kingdom and reconcile with her father, the Dragon King? The vignettes and recipes will make you nostalgic and very hungry.


* Story: Angel of the Blockade by Alex Wells


* The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson
For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she’s been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction. Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?


* The Lilies of the Dawn by Vanessa Fogg
There is a lake of marvels. A lake of water lilies that glow with the color of dawn. For generations Kai's people have harvested these lilies, dependent upon them for the precious medicines they provide. But now a flock of enchanted cranes has come to steal and poison the harvest. The lilies are dying. Kai's people are in peril. A mysterious young man from the city thinks he might have a solution. Kai must work with him to solve the mystery of the cranes, and it will take all her courage, love, strength, and wisdom to do what she must to save both the lilies and her people.


* The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune by JY Yang
The Red Threads of Fortune is one of a pair of unique, standalone introductions to JY Yang's Tensorate Series, which Kate Elliott calls "effortlessly fascinating." For more of the story you can read its twin novella The Black Tides of Heaven, available simultaneously.
Fallen prophet, master of the elements, and daughter of the supreme Protector, Sanao Mokoya has abandoned the life that once bound her. Once her visions shaped the lives of citizens across the land, but no matter what tragedy Mokoya foresaw, she could never reshape the future. Broken by the loss of her young daughter, she now hunts deadly, sky-obscuring naga in the harsh outer reaches of the kingdom with packs of dinosaurs at her side, far from everything she used to love.


* The Best American Science Fiction edited by John Joseph Adams and Charles Yu
Authors include Leigh Bardugo, E. Lily Yu, Nisi Shawl, Jeremiah Tolbert, A. Merc Rustad, N.K. Jemisin, and Joseph Allen Hill.


* Null States by Malka Older
After the last controversial global election, the global infomocracy that has ensured thirty years of world peace is fraying at the edges. As the new Supermajority government struggles to establish its legitimacy, agents of Information across the globe strive to keep the peace and maintain the flows of data that feed the new world order.


* Preorder: Moonshine by Jasmine Gower
In the flourishing metropolis of Soot City (a warped version of 1920s Chicago), progressive ideals reign and the old ways of magic and liquid mana are forbidden. Daisy Dell is a Modern Girl – stylish, educated and independent – keen to establish herself in the city but reluctant to give up the taboo magic inherited from her grandmother. Her new job takes her to unexpected places, and she gets more attention than she had hoped for. When bounty hunters start combing the city for magicians, Daisy must decide whether to stay with her new employer – even if it means revealing the grim source of her occult powers.

comments

Murderbot on Audio

I have some good Murderbot news. There will be audiobooks of all four of the Murderbot novellas (All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy) by Recorded Books (https://www.recordedbooks.com/). And the narrator will be Kevin R. Free! (https://www.kevinrfree.com/) (Squee!)

If you're a Welcome to Night Vale fan, you may recognize him from Desert Bluffs and the Vortex.

You can listen to some of his other work here: https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Kevin+R.+Free and https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/narrators/kevin-r-free/

It looks like All Systems Red will be available on December 1, 2017.

comments

Murderbot Quote

Tumblr post: https://marthawells.tumblr.com/post/165797238002/for-bookqw-book-quote-wednesday-on-twitter-and A quote from The Murderbot Diaries: Artificial Condition for book quote Wednesday

comments

Busy Weekend

This weekend we ended up going to my husband's 40th high school reunion. It was a lot of driving and sitting in traffic to get there and get back (perpetual high way construction taking four lane highways down to one lane, trying to exit onto another highway just as a large sports event was ending, etc) but we had a good time. (Also we went to a party out in the country where our GPS tried to direct us into an open field.) But everybody ended up having fun. At one point we went into Denton with friends and went to Recycled Books which is a bookstore so huge I think it hurt my brain. We also got to see my family including my two year old grand-nephew, and that was a lot of fun.

I posted a story to the Raksura Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2458567 and that was about all the work I did this weekend besides answering email.

comments

More Murderbot

Yay, the cover for The Murderbot Diaries III: Rogue Protocol is on Tor.com:

https://www.tor.com/2017/09/21/cover-reveals-martha-wells-rogue-protocol-murderbot-diaries/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twitterpost&utm_term=tordotcomtwfols-tordotcomalltweets&utm_content=na-visit-blogpost&utm_campaign=tordotcomalltweets

The cover reveal for Murderbot Diaries II, Artificial Condition was here on The Verge:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/16/16315474/science-fiction-author-martha-wells-murderbot-robots-interview

Art by Jaime Jones

comments

Rats and Books

We've been hearing noises in the wall between our house and the garage for a while, and got confirmation today that it was rats. Apparently they chewed their way in through a hole at the end of a rain gutter and got in the garage attic, then got in and have been hanging out under the bathtub. So, not fun. But someone at the university recommended a wildlife removal company that specializes in rodents, and I think that's exactly what we need. (We're also infested with geckos, but that's actually a good thing.) Anyway, it's going to be expensive, but not nearly as bad as I thought.

***

Fireside Fiction has set up an ebook Hurricane Relief Bookstore. 100% of the profits go to hurricane relief funds in Houston, Florida, and the Caribbean. My book Wheel of the Infinite is available there, with lots of other cool SF/F novels, magazines, and anthologies:

http://www.hurricanebookstore.com/

comments

The Murderbot Diaries: Artificial Condition Excerpt

Now that the cover (by Jaime Jones) has been revealed, more preorder links are available. (I really, really appreciate preorders, wherever you shop, not just the links here.)


Note: Artificial Condition is a novella, around 160 pages. It's a direct sequel to All Systems Red and begins not long after that novella ends.


Description: It has a dark past -- one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself "Murderbot." But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don't want to know what the "A" stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks...

Available at:
Barnes & Noble, Amazon US and all other Amazons, Mysterious Galaxy, BooksaMillion, Book Depository, and from a local independent bookseller through Indiebound.

ebook (DRM-free): Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo, iBooks, Amazon Kindle, Kindle UK, Kindle Canada, Kindle France, Kindle Germany, Kindle Spain, and all other Kindle retailers.




Excerpt:


SECUNITS DON'T CARE ABOUT the news. Even after I hacked my governor module and got access to the feeds, I never paid much attention to it. Partly because downloading the entertainment media was less likely to trigger any alarms that might be set up on satellite and station networks; political and economic news was carried on different levels, closer to the protected data exchanges. But mostly because the news was boring and I didn't care what humans were doing to each other as long as I didn't have to a) stop it or b) clean up after it.

( more )

comments

OTW Chat

Here's the transcript for the Organization for Transformative Works 10th Anniversary chat: https://www.transformativeworks.org/transcript-for-otw-10th-anniversary-chat-with-seanan-mcguire-martha-wells/

comments