Urban legends, lists, and Cal Kestis's beard
Have you heard the one about the dog in a microwave?
A somewhat chaotic update this week, with a bunch of random things I want to shout about. First of all, over at Crimereads I wrote an article about how urban legends inspired Games for Dead Girls, and the strange links between these friend-of-a-friend stories and true crime. Check it out! I’m quite proud of it, and Crimereads is crammed with interesting stuff.
I had a lovely little surprise last night when I was tagged in this list of ‘8 Award-Winning Fantasy Books You’ve Probably Never Heard of’ from BookRiot. It’s a sad fact of publishing life (for me, anyway) that although The Winnowing Flame trilogy won two British Fantasy Awards, they are still quietly flying under the radar of most fantasy fans. Putting aside the usual reasons of random luck and the vagaries of fate, I think this is mainly because a) they are difficult to categorise, given their genre-bending tendencies and variety of moving parts, and b) for a long time they weren’t available in America at all, and this does unfortunately seem to have a big impact on visibility. Luckily, in the last year or so my lovely publisher Headline have begun distributing the books in the States, and thanks to brilliant book people like Petrik Leo and Elliot Brooks, the word is getting out there - and the excellent Broken Binding produced a very special hardback edition of the trilogy, which no doubt has introduced the series to a bigger audience, all of which I am incredibly grateful for. It just goes to show that word of mouth is the most powerful way of getting a book into reader’s hands; it just happens to be the bit that writers have the least control over ~insert sweatdrop emoji~ If you’ve ever shared the love about a book, know you are doing the lord’s* work.
Also, every one of the books on that list looks incredibly interesting. Time to add to that TBR!
My last bit of housekeeping concerns the signing event for The Other Side of Never, which has been postponed due to train strikes taking place tomorrow. It will now happen on the 17th of June, with drinks after in The Angel pub - I am quite fond of The Angel, as I always seem to bump into someone unexpected there, including on one memorable occasion, Robert Rankin. A lot of London pubs have an edge of the uncanny to them, and The Angel is definitely one. I hope to see some of you there!
Most of my evenings of late have been taken up with doing wild gymnastics in Jedi Survivor, which has been huge fun. We’ve had the odd teething problem with it, such as juddery graphics and a tendency to crash, but largely it had been a fun game full of the stuff I loved about Jedi Fallen Order. I am very taken with the fact that you can customise Cal’s hair AND facial hair, and it’s kind of fascinating how his ‘look’ subtly changes how I feel about the character. Big Josh Brolin beard? Cal is wise, Cal has experience beyond his years. Big handle-bar moustache? Cal is a rebel, a maverick, who knows what he might do next! Clean shaven? Cal is smol, Cal is soft, we must protec. Far and away my favourite thing about both the Jedi games is the fact that every loot box is actually worth it - a piece of light saber, a set of paints for BD1, a new set of snazzy trousers. Possibly that makes me sound really shallow, but being able to actually use these things to customise your experience makes all the difference. And it’s especially apparent after a couple of months playing Mass Effect: Andromeda**, where the contents of chests are rarely worth the effort of pressing the button to open them.
And I think that’s all I have for this week, apart from a note to say that things are starting to come together with Talonsister, my new fantasy novel due to be published in September: we’re now at the proofreading stage, with the cover soon to be finalised. I hope to have more news for you soon.
In the meantime, with BookRiot’s article in mind, are there any SFF books you think are wildly underrated? Drop them in the comments!
*Lord Cinnamon Bunn the Third
** I do actually like Andromeda, but it does have its issues, which I’m sure at some point I will wang on about in one of these newsletters.
I watched the cut scenes on YouTube. It looks pretty good to me