Ben Aaronvitch adds yet another feather to his already impressive panache with the news that his hugely popular novel RIVERS OF LONDON is one of the titles announced today on the long list of this year’s Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, one of the most prestigious crime writing prizes in the country.
This feat prompted him to wonder if he can now officially be classed as a crossover author! We reckon so, Ben. Congratulations!!
And no sooner had my post about the various sales of OSAMA gone live yesterday, than the news came through that Lavie’s book has made this year’s shortlist for the John W. Campbell Award, the third major prize that this extraordinary novel has been up for.
Zeno has a special association with the Campbell Award and if Lavie should win, he’ll actually be the third Zeno author in four years to do so – following in the footsteps of Ian R. MacLeod (2009) and Ian McDonald (2011).
Congratulations and good luck, Lavie!
Congratulations to our client Aliette de Bodard, whose story Shipbirth has been short-listed for this the 2011 Nebula Award in the Short Story category.
The Nebulas are are ‘voted on, and presented by, active members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc.‘ and have been so since 1965!
The ceremony this year will take place at the Nebula Awards Weekend, May 17th thru 20th in Arlington, Virginia, USA.
Lavie Tidhar‘s formidable novel OSAMA is one of five books nominated for this year’s Kitschie Awards – specifically, their ‘Red Tentacle’ award!
The winner receives a £750 prize, a hand-crafted tentacular trophy and (best of all!) a bottle of the Kraken’s finest black rum. See here for more details and for the full shortlist.
‘OSAMA is exceptional. Compelling, confrontational, and surprisingly moving, it is one of the best novels yet on terror in our times.’ — World Literature Today
‘Not a writer to mess around with half measures … brings to mind Philip K Dick’s seminal science fiction novel THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.’ –- The Guardian on OSAMA.
‘Bears comparison with the best of Philip K Dick’s paranoid, alternate-history fantasies. It’s beautifully written and undeniably powerful.’ – The Financial Times on OSAMA.
‘OSAMA is written with both an obvious affection for genre fiction and a sense of wild-eyed disbelief at the insanity of a world where people fly planes into skyscrapers. 4.5/5 stars.’ –- SFX
‘Intensely moving.‘ -– Interzone on OSAMA
When I was over in San Diego recently at the World Fantasy Convention, I got together with Mur Lafferty, author and the brains behind the I SHOULD BE WRITING podcast, a massively useful resource for aspiring authors and one that I am very happy to recommend and endorse.
The interview covers quite a lot of ground, including my thoughts on the current state of the market (especially here in the UK) and some advice on how to approach not just us here at Zeno, but any literary agent you might be hoping to interest. Enjoy!
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Following last year’s experiment, we are once again opening submissions specifically for folks who will be attending Renovation, this year’s Worldcon being held in Reno, Nevada from the 17th to the 21st August, 2011.
John Berlyne will be attending and will also be appearing on a number of panels. Here are the relevant and *very specific criteria* for submitting. If you can’t tick ALL these boxes, unfortunately we will not be able to to consider your work…
Good luck! See you in Reno!
Gosh, anyone would think it’s awards season! And the latest wonderful news we have to impart in this department is that Brandon Sanderson‘s THE WAY OF KINGS has just scooped this year’s David Gemmell Legend Award. WOOT!
A recent arrival in the awards calendar, the Legend award is three years old now, and is decided by popular vote rather than by a jury. There are three categories – for best newcomer, best artist and the Legend award itself, which is given to the best fantasy novel.
We are absolutely delighted for Brandon and publisher Gollancz who have done a really wonderful job with this thwacking great novel. And Brandon is hard at work on the second volume. Let’s hope the arrival of the very large “Snaga” axe he just won doesn’t distract him!
Zeno Agency is delighted to announce that film and television rights to Ian McDonald‘s award winning novel THE DERVISH HOUSE have been optioned by Warp Films. The deal was negotiated by Zeno’s John Richard Parker who says, ‘As with all Ian’s books THE DERVISH HOUSE is very much cinematic as well being an imaginative tour de force. I have always believed it has the qualities that make it eminently suitable for film and I am sure that with Warp’s enthusiasm for the project and their fantastic track record, all the ingredients are in place to put together something very special indeed.’
Warp Films have had notable successes recently with SUBMARINE and FOUR LIONS and Executive Producer Peter Carlton says ‘We’re delighted to have the chance to adapt THE DERVISH HOUSE for the screen, set in that most iconic of cities, crossroads of east and west, past and future, Istanbul. It starts with an explosion on a tram and ends in a race to stop a terrorist plot, but in the meantime Ian somehow weaves together speculative share trading, nanotechnology and Islamic microcalligraphy, to name but a few strands in this visual feast that has a narrative sweep and ambition all too rare in contemporary fiction.‘
It’s not too long (fingers and toes crossed) until we see Ian R. MacLeod‘s brand new novel, WAKE UP AND DREAM roll off the presses. To herald the coming of this event, PS Publishing have produced a short chapbook entitled HECTOR DOUGLAS MAKES A SALE, which is a kind of companion piece to the book and features a wonderfully insightful Afterword by the author.
Produced essentially for private distribution and in support of the pending release of the novel, copies of this piece of collectable MacLeod ephemera were only available at Eastercon and are thus extremely scarce, but I managed to swipe a few for the Zeno archives – including one signed by Ian.
Zeno clients triumphed at the BSFA awards, which were held at this year’s Eastercon, at the Hilton Metropole in Birmingham over the Easter weekend.
First up was Aliette de Bodard, who was on hand to collect the award for Best Short Fiction for her story The Shipmaker, which appeared in Interzone issue #231. I managed to snap this pic of her being dwarfed by David Weber, who was on hand the present the award. (The homeless man to the rear is Paul Cornell prior to the removal of his comedy charity beard – for which he raised an impressive amount of money for, ironically, Shelter!)
No sooner had the applause for Aliette died down than our own Ian McDonald took to the stage to accept for the award for Best Novel for THE DERVISH HOUSE (not ‘The Dervish Nights’ as the convention newsletter later reported!), his 2010 novel published by Gollancz in the UK and by Pyr in the US.
A further layer of coolness was added to these wins when we later learned that both Ian and Aliette have been nominated for this year’s Hugo Awards – this news adding to Aliette’s previously reported Nebula nomination for the same story, and Ian’s Arthur C. Clarke Award nomination.
Huge congratulations to both authors.
There were lots of other Zeno authors at Eastercon – I got to meet our latest clients Anne Lyle and David Tallerman, albeit all too briefly, and the mass signing of Angry Robot authors at Waterstones in the centre of Birmingham was almost a mini ‘Zenocon’ of its own. Present were Aliette, Colin Harvey, John Meaney – or was it Thomas Blackthorn? – and, in a rare UK appearance, one Lavie Tidhar (pictured here next to a banner proclaiming his novels in all their steampunky glory.)
Elsewhere at the con, at readings, on panels and if truth must be told, in the bar, one could find Freda Warrington, Susan Boulton, Michael Cobley and last but by no means least Ian R. MacLeod.
I did a panel called ‘Writing 102: Finding an Agent‘, which was well attended and along with Gollancz Editorial Director Gillian Redfearn, Gollancz author Stephen Deas and author Martin Owton, we fielded a number of excellent questions from the audience. Hope those who were there found it helpful.
In the wake of our recent submissions window and to prove that it does actually happen, we are delighted to announce that the following authors are now represented worldwide by Zeno. Welcome one and all …
Watch this space for exciting announcements for some of these folks in next few days and weeks.
We’re posting this somewhat belatedly, but our congratulations to Aliette de Bodard on her Nebula nomination (announced a couple of weeks ago by the SFWA) are no less heartfelt for our tardiness.
Aliette’s story ‘The Jaguar House, In Shadow’, originally published in the 7/10 issue of Asimov’s has been shortlisted in the best novellette catagory and we wish her the best of luck when the Nebula winners are announced on May 21st 2011 at the Nebula Awards Weekend in Washington.
And you can read Aliette’s novelette for free right now over at her author web site – follow this link – where you will also find plenty of other wonderful stories available.
CAMERA OBSCURA, the new novel by Lavie Tidhar is published next month by Angry Robot, and the author, rumoured by some to be nothing more than a shadowy internet presence, makes a rare visit to the UK to promote the release and will be attending – in person! – this year’s Eastercon in Birmingham, where he will appear on a number of panels. Whilst he’s in town, Lavie will be doing a number of events and signings, and so if you want to meet the man that LOCUS call an ‘emerging master’, citing five of his projects on their 2010 Recommended Reading List ( Count them, folks! No other author had more listings!), here’s where you’ll find him…
And if you want to get a taste of Lavie’s new book, here’s a neat bit of code courtesy of the folks at Angry Robot…
Over at the LOCUS web site, there’s a fascinating Roundtable discussion going on all about the works of our client Ian McDonald (whom we reported recently had been nominated for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke award) with a number of learned folks taking part – including Ian’s US Editor, Pyr’s Lou Anders, authors Cat Rambo and Rachel Swirsky, editor and translator Fabio Fernandes and our very own web guru, moonlighting as a learned genre commentator Paul Graham Raven.
Elizabeth Moon‘s brand new new novel, KINGS OF THE NORTH, the second volume in her new Paladin’s Legacy series is to be published by Orbit here in the UK later this month.
If you’re looking to send us a fantasy novel at some point, you could do worse than look to Elizabeth’s work as an fine example of what the market is looking for right now – and courtesy of Orbit – a publisher always on the look-out for commercial fantasy, here’s some free sample chapters from the novel to help you do just that.
Elizabeth has also just contributed a guest piece to the Orbit Blog entitled ‘A Few Favourite Fantasy Dragons‘ which is well worth a look. (Hint: Dragons are hot right now – no pun intended … well, okay, a bit intended!)
King Kieri’s realm has been destabilised by political wrangling and his court is blind to the dangers – until an assassination attempt on their king. And when this backfires, Kieri’s enemies start planning an invasion using dragonfire, a force unseen for hundreds of years. In King Mikeli’s adjoining kingdom, his crown is threatened by a bandit prince. Alured the Black claims his lineage gives him dominion over all the lands. His ambition is boundless, his methods are ruthless and he will not be swayed from his goal, whether or not it undermines a region already on the brink of war. Dark mages also watch for weakness and hunger for their own lost powers. The Kings of the North must plan wisely, as disaster is a sword’s breadth away.