NEWS RELEASES FROM GRRM—2011:
ACES HIGH FOR XMAS November 7, 2011
Now available for pre-order via Amazon, B&N, or your favorite local bookstore is volume two in our long-running Wild Cards series, ACES HIGH, scheduled for publication on December 20. No new stories this time around, alas, but the new edition will feature another spectacular cover from Michael Komarck, this time starring Pat Cadigan's character Water Lily.The lineup:
- "Jube" (interstitial) by George R.R. Martin
- "Pennies From Hell" by Lewis Shiner - "Unto the Sixth Generation" by Walter Jon Williams - "Ashes to Ashes" by Roger Zelazny - "If Looks Could Kill" by Walton Simons - "Winter's Chill" by George R.R. Martin - "Relative Difficulties" by Melinda M. Snodgrass - "With a Little Help From His Friends" by Victor Milan - "By Lost Ways" by Pat Cadigan - "Mr. Koyama's Comet" by Walter Jon Williams - "Half Past Dead" by John J. Miller. This time around the aces and jokers of New York face an alien invasion by the voracious Swarm, and continued problems from the crimelord Kien and his Shadow Fist Society, and the Astronomer and his Egyptian Masons. Fortunato, Dr. Tachyon, the Sleeper, Yeoman, and the Great and Powerful Turtle return from volume one, and we meet the usual host of new characters, including Modular Man, Demise, Zabb, Water Lily, and Cap'n Trips.
A GAME OF THRONES PREMIERE ISSUE RELEASED September 30, 2011
 
The first issue of GAME OF THRONES, from Dynamite and Random House, is now on sale in your favorite local comic book shop, bookstore, or spinner rack.
(Or at least it WAS on sale. GOT #1 went on sale last week, I gather, and is already sold out in many places. Dynamite has gone back to press for a second printing, but those copies will not have made it to the retailers yet ).The first issue is available with two variant covers, one by Alex Ross and one by Mike S. Miller.
Inside, the artwork is by Tommy Patterson, the script and adaptation by Daniel Abraham. The original story, of course, is by me.
In other comic-related news, Comic Book Resources has published an interview with Daniel. There's also a preview available on Newsarama.
My hat is off to Daniel, Tommy, Alex, Mike, and the rest of the good folks at Dynamite and Random House, who have brought Westeros and its denizens to the world of comics.
"MYSTERY KNIGHT" CONTENDS FOR WFA August 9, 2011
Dunk and Egg are contending in another tourney. The third of my Dunk & Egg novellas, "The Mystery Knight," has been announced as a finalist for this year's World Fantasy Award. Here's the full list of this year's nominees:
BEST NOVEL
- Zoo City, Lauren Beukes (Jacana South Africa; Angry Robot)
- The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit) - The Silent Land, Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Doubleday) - Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc; Harper Voyager UK) - Redemption In Indigo, Karen Lord (Small Beer) - Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW) BEST NOVELLA
- "Bone and Jewel Creatures," Elizabeth Bear (Subterranean)
- "The Broken Man," Michael Byers (PS) - "The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon," Elizabeth Hand (Stories: All-New Tales) - "The Thief of Broken Toys," Tim Lebbon (ChiZine Publications) - "The Mystery Knight", George R.R. Martin (Warriors) - "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen's Window", Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer 2010) BEST SHORT FICTION
- "Beautiful Men" , Christopher Fowler (Visitants: Stories of Fallen Angels and Heavenly Hosts)
- "Booth's Ghost", Karen Joy Fowler (What I Didn't See and Other Stories) - "Ponies", Kij Johnson (Tor.com 11/17/10) - "Fossil-Figures", Joyce Carol Oates (Stories: All-New Tales) - "Tu Sufrimiento Shall Protect Us", Mercurio D. Rivera (Black Static 8-9/10) BEST ANTHOLOGY
- The Way of the Wizard, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Prime)
- My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, Kate Bernheimer, ed. (Penguin) - Haunted Legends, Ellen Datlow & Nick Mamatas, eds. (Tor) - Stories: All-New Tales, Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio, eds. (Morrow; Headline Review) - Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, S.T. Joshi, ed. (PS) - Swords & Dark Magic, Jonathan Strahan & Lou Anders, eds. (Eos) BEST COLLECTION
- What I Didn't See and Other Stories, Karen Joy Fowler (Small Beer)
- The Ammonite Violin & Others, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean) - Holiday, M. Rickert (Golden Gryphon) - Sourdough and Other Stories, Angela Slatter (Tartarus) - The Third Bear, Jeff VanderMeer (Tachyon) BEST ARTIST
- Vincent Chong
- Kinuko Y. Craft - Richard A. Kirk - John Picacio - Shaun Tan SPECIAL AWARD, PROFESSIONAL
- John Joseph Adams, for editing and anthologies
- Lou Anders, for editing at Pyr - Marc Gascoigne, for Angry Robot - Stéphane Marsan & Alain Névant, for Bragelonne - Brett Alexander Savory & Sandra Kasturi, for ChiZine Publications SPECIAL AWARD, NON-PROFESSIONAL
- Stephen Jones, Michael Marshall Smith, & Amanda Foubister, for Brighton Shock!: The Souvenir Book Of The World Horror Convention 2010
- Alisa Krasnostein, for Twelfth Planet Press - Matthew Kressel, for Sybil's Garage and Senses Five Press - Charles Tan, for Bibliophile Stalker - Lavie Tidhar, for The World SF Blog The winners will be announced Halloween weekend at the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, California. The award is a wonderfully gloomy bust of H.P. Lovecraft sculpted by Gahan Wilson.
I have one Howie on my awards shelf already, a best novella award for my werewolf story "The Skin Trade," published lo these many years ago when the world was young... but he has a lonely look about him, and 'twould be nice to have another. Hey, it's always nice to get a little head. Not that I'm expecting to win. Unlike the Hugo and the Nebula, the World Fantasy Award is juried, so one never knows how it's going to turn out.
"The Mystery Knight" was published in WARRIORS, the big crossgenre anthology I edited with Gardner Dozois. If you'd like to check it out, paperback copies are available from Amazon and other on-line bookshops.
WARRIORS WINS June 30, 2011
I'm delighted to announce that WARRIORS, the gigantic cross-genre anthology that I co-edited with my old friend Gardner Dozois, has won the Locus Award as the Best Anthology of 2010.
The award is given by LOCUS magazine, the PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY of science fiction and fantasy, and is decided by an annual poll of of the magazine's readers. You can check out the full results on Tor.com
 Gardner and I are very proud of WARRIORS, our tilting-at-windmills attempt to smash down some genre barriers, and we're thrilled to see it cop this prize over some terrific competition, all of them pure SF and fantasy. My thanks to all our contributors, who helped make the book what it is. Without them, WARRIORS would be... well, a big book of blank pages. And thanks as well to Tom Doherty, Patrick Nielsen-Hayden, and all the other folks at Tor.In other categories, Neil Gaiman took home the prize for Best Short Story for "The Thing About Cassandra," originally published in another of the anthologies that Gardner and I have edited, SONGS OF LOVE AND DEATH. Congratulations to Neil. A well deserved award for a great story.
In novella, my own contender "The Mystery Knight" was among the finalists, but lost out to Ted Chiang's "The Lifecycle of Software Objects." Tough competition, that. Congratulations to the winner... and don't worry, Dunk & Egg will have other chances in the years to come.
FORT FREAK is here! June 28, 2010
The latest volume in the Wild Cards series was released on June 21. You can pick up a copy now from your favorite local bookstore, or order one from your favorite online retailer.
 After the wide- ranging global story- lines of the Committee triad, FORT FREAK returns to New York City, the epicenter of the Wild Cards universe, to tell the stories of the cops and crooks of the historic 5th precinct of the NYPD - the Jokertown precinct.
The lineup this time around includes stories by Wild Cards veterans Melinda Snodgrass, Stephen Leigh, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, and Victor Milan, and introduces newcomers (new to Wild Cards, at least) Cherie Priest, David Anthony Durham, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Ty Franck, and Paul Cornell. You can check out a sample of Cherie's interstitial, the literary mortar that holds all the bricks together, on my website... and read Melinda's story, "The Rook," on Tor.com
So come meet Ramshead, the Rook, Tabby, SlimJim, Abigail the understudy, Sgt. Squinch, Ratboy and Flipper, Tinkerbill, the Infamous Black Tongue, Natya, Maggie Graves, Puff, Beastie, Dr. Dildo, and the other colorful denizens of Fort Freak and environs. Old-timers like Father Squid, the Sleeper, and the Oddity also turn up to enliven the proceedings.
 Also... some more good news for the Wild Cards fans out there. The seventeenth volume in the series, John Jos. Miller's novel DEATH DRAWS FIVE, was released in hardcover just a week before its publisher (iBooks) went bankrupt, and very few copies ever made it to market. As a result, this volume of the series has been near impossible to find, commanding huge prices from dealers on the secondary market.But at long last Brick Tower Press, who acquired many of the assets of iBooks in the bankruptcy proceedings, has released a paperback edition. It's available on Amazon and may also be turning up at some local bookstores.
DEATH DRAWS FIVE is a tale of fists, faith, and armageddon in America's heartland, the novel features John's asskicker ace Billy Ray (aka Carnifex), the long-time fan favorite Fortunato and his son John Fortune, and the shape-shifting private dick Mr. Nobody, along with John Nighthawk, the Midnight Angel, and a host of other new characters. In many ways it is the last of the "original series" of Wild Cards, before the introduction of the "next generation" cast featured in INSIDE STRAIGHT and subsequent volumes.
So for all those readers who have been looking to fill the hole in your Wild Cards collection, here's your chance to complete your sets.
IF I HAD A HAMMER... March 21, 2011
... wait! I can have a hammer!!
And so can you, thanks to the good folks at Valyrian Steel, who have just unveiled their design for King Robert's warhammer.
 Alas, you can't order the hammer just yet. We're still in the design stage, but I have approved these drawings, so the next step is the prototype, which is now being made. Once I approve that, production can begin. And along about there somewhere, Valyrian Steel will begin taking orders.
For more details, check out their website.
Yes, it is a big hammer. A very big hammer. Going to be heavy as well. I insisted on that. After all, it says right in the book that Robert's warhammer was so huge and heavy that only someone with his own freakish strength could wield it. So I kept telling them, "bigger, bigger."
Valyrian Steel has done some lovely versions of Longclaw, Needle, and Ice (all of which remain available from their store), but I think the hammer is my favorite to date.
DRAGON TIME March 3, 2011
No. Sorry. Not done yet.
I'm close, though. Watch this space. When the book is done, you will read it here.
Meanwhile... there is news. Big news. The end is in sight, at long long last, and we're close enough so that my editors and publishers at Bantam Spectra have set an actual publication date.
Yes, I know. You've all seen publication dates before: dates in 2007, 2008, 2009. None of those were ever hard dates, however. Most of them... well, call it wishful thinking, boundless optimism, cockeyed dreams, honest mistakes, whatever you like.
This date is different. This date is real.
Barring tsunamis, general strikes, world wars, or asteroid strikes, you will have the novel in your hands on July 12. I hope you like it.
(For what it's worth, the book's a monster. Think A STORM OF SWORDS.)
The dragons are coming. Prepare to dance.
And hey... thanks for waiting.
COMING IN OCTOBER...  February 23, 2011
... is the latest crossgenre anthology from Gardner Dozois and yours truly. This one is called DOWN THESE STRANGE STREETS, and in its pages you'll find another all star roster of writers, with a mixture of urban fantasy, science fiction, hardboiled mystery, noir, paranormal romance, historicals, and fantasy PI stories.
The lineup includes a Lord John novella from Diana Gabaldon, a SPQR story by John Maddox Roberts, a True Blood story by Charlaine Harris, a Garrett tale from Glen Cook, an Edge story from Melinda Snodgrass, a Gordianus yarn from Steven Saylor, an incredible WWII mystery novella by Bradley Denton, a Joe Lansdale story than can only be described as Gonzo Lovecraft, and wonderful contributions from Carrie Vaughn, Conn Iggulden, Simon R. Green, Laurie R. King, Lisa Tuttle, M.L.N. Hanover, Patricia Briggs,and S.M. Stirling.
The complete table of contents: - "The Bastard Stepchild" (introduction), by George R.R. Martin - "Death by Dahlia," by Charlaine Harris - "The Bleeding Shadow," by Joe R. Lansdale - "Hungry Heart," by Simon R. Green - "Styx and Stones," by Steven Saylor - "Pain and Suffering," by S.M. Stirling - "It's Still the Same Old Story," by Carrie Vaughn - "The Lady Is a Screamer," by Conn Iggulden - "Hellbender,"by Laurie R. King - "Shadow Thieves," by Glen Cook - "No Mystery, No Miracle," by Melinda Snodgrass - "The Difference Between a Puzzle and a Mystery," by M.L.N. Hanover - "The Curious Affair of the Deodand," by Lisa Tuttle - "Lord John and the Plague of Zombies," by Diana Gabaldon - "Beware the Snake," by John Maddox Roberts - "In Red, With Pearls," by Patricia Briggs - "The Adakian Eagle," by Bradley Denton
Look for DOWN THESE STRANGE STREETS at your favorite bookstore this fall.
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