Mary, Mary...

 Today's blog post is a big shout out to my friend Michael Colbert, whose comic book Crazy Mary is in the top paid books list in the Comics Plus app. Artwork is by J.K. Woodward (of CSI:NY, Fallen Angel, and Star Trek TNG/Doctor Who: Assimilation2), William Blankmanship, and Ryan Sargent. Here's the description:

Don’t call her crazy to her face. Several years ago Mary was a professional soldier who volunteered for an upgrade program dubbed “Project Dragonfly”. The project upgraded the subjects with enhanced strength, speed and combat ability.

It didn’t go well for Mary.

Shortly after the upgrades Mary started seeing things… insane things. A world of melting walls and living fire, vortexes of thought and colored radio waves, sentient metaphors and beings that existed in an invisible layer of reality. She could communicate with these beings. She made deals with some of them.

Or she had simply gone insane.

Either way she was useless to the project and the military so she was cut loose and vanished shortly thereafter.

A few years later she re-emerged in the New York area of Megalopolis as a “freelancer” specializing in bounty hunting and search and rescue. Her upgrades give her an advantage in competing against other freelancers, Lawcom and her targets… most of the time. She can still see the weird layer of reality and her trinity of supernatural advisers helps … most of the time.

Or she could just be crazy and very lucky.

Or a bit of both.

To date there are four issues of Crazy Mary, and you can read the 0 issue for free here.

FREE by Chris Anderson

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

Free Online Reading: "Fire and Sleet" by James Enge

James Enge's forthcoming novel Blood of Ambroseis epic swords and sorcery starring his enigmatic creation, Morlock Ambrosius, wandering swordsman, master of all magical makers, and dry drunk. Before his novel debut, Morlock already featured in many works of short fiction appearing in the pages of Black Gate and elsewhere.

This morning we posted "Fire and Sleet" at the Pyr Sample Chapters blog, an original novelette "published" there for the first time anywhere. Although it stands on its own and makes a wonderful introduction to Enge's fascinating character, it is also a sequel of sorts to the earlier tale, "A Book of Silences," originally published in Black Gate and now also appearing on our blog. Read and enjoy!

Free Fiction: "A Book of Silences" by James Enge

April will see the release of James Enge's swords & sorcery novel, Blood of Ambrose,an epic work featuring Morlock Ambrosius, wandering swordsman and master of all magical makers. The book is a stand-alone adventure, but Morlock returns in the (already-delivered) follow-up, This Crooked Way, and we've just signed for a third Morlock novel, the wonderfully-titled The Wolf Age. But Morlock Ambrosius already has a significant following, as Enge has been chronicling his adventures in short fiction for some time prior to his novel debut. One such tale,"A Book of Silences," first appeared in the pages of Black Gate magazine. We are pleased to reprint it in its entirety at the Pyr Sample Chapters page. What's more, we will shortly be presenting "Fire and Sleet," which follows directly on the events of "A Book of Silences" and is an original novelette that will debut at the Pyr website for the first time anywhere. So, read and enjoy!

Midwinter: Like Tolkien meets Abercrombie meets Chadbourn

Just added a sizable excerpt from Matthew Sturges' Midwinter to the Pyr Sample Chapters blog, making it the 43rd book to go up there (where there are also four complete short stories, one of them original to the site. What are you waiting for?)

And speaking of Midwinter,over at Fantasy Book Critic, Robert Thompson and Liviu C. Suciu have done a joint review of Matt's debut fantasy. In their intro materials they write, "think Tolkien meets Joe Abercrombie meets Mark Chadbourn." This thrills me, not just because I publish two of the three writers above (you can work out which), but also because "Abercrombie meets Chadbourn" was how I described it to my dark masters when presenting the book in the first place. (I also mentioned some similarities to Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity universe in the way the various dimensions are aligned.)

While not being blind to problems he chalks up to first-novel-itis, Robert concludes, " I really enjoyed the book and thought it was a fun, entertaining and imaginative new entry in the fantasy genre. I was also quite impressed with Matthew Sturges and believe he has the talent and creativity to make a name for himself outside of comics. Definitely looking forward to the sequel!"

And Liviu says, "Midwinter is a page-turner and a very exciting novel which managed to surprise me with unexpected twists and turns despite its seemingly straightforward plot.... Overall, Midwinter is the best pure genre debut of 09 so far for me and I highly recommend it."

I'm thrilled, further, to see that the comments section includes some love for the wonderful cover illustration from Chris McGrath. He's currently working on the art for, and Matt is currently writing, the follow-up, The Office of Shadow, about which more later.

Free Ebook: Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter

As you've probably already heard on Boing Boing or SF Signal or Bookspot Central, and as I've already Tweeted and Facebooked:

For the first time ever, Pyr Books is making one of our novels available for free as an eBook. Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One is available now, in its entirety, as a PDF.

When mirror twins Seth and Hadrian Castillo travel to Europe on holidays, they don’t expect the end of the world to follow them. Seth’s murder, however, puts exactly that into motion.

From opposite sides of death, the Castillo twins grapple with a reality neither of them suspected, although it has been encoded in myths and legends for millennia. The Earth we know is just one of many “realms”, three of which are inhabited by humans during various stages of their lives. And their afterlives...

In the tradition of Philip Pullman and Ursula K. Le Guin and inspired by numerous arcane sources, the Books of the Cataclysm begin in the present world but soon propel the reader to a landscape that is simultaneously familiar and fantastic.

See why SFFWorld said:

"[E]xplores the nature of life, death, and reality. Big subjects, but with the precision of an archaeological expert, Williams is more than up to the task. There is a lot to admire in Williams' epic fantasy, the wide range of global religions and myths of which his afterlife is comprised, to the characterization of the protagonists. The story has the mythic resonance of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and American Gods, the dark fantasy/horror one might associate with something like Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga, the multiple universes/realities of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion mythos, and the strange, weird creatures one might associate with China Miéville’s Bas-lag novels. Williams imagined world is equal part those novels which preceded his, but fortunately, there is enough newness to both the approach and vision to make this the work of a singular vision...." [R]eading many of the other titles Lou Anders has published with Pyr, I shouldn’t have been surprised with both the quality of the writing and the breadth of Williams’ imagination. Like a lot of the other books published by Pyr, Williams captures what makes a tried and true genre like Epic Fantasy so popular and enjoyable of a genre and spins a tale with his unique voice. This is the type of book you finish and can’t wait to read the sequel."

Download your copy here, and thanks for helping us spread the word!

FF2: The Age of Accelerating Returns

My introduction to Fast Forward 2,"The Age of Accelerating Returns," has just gone up on SFSignal this morning.

I don't know if anyone actually reads introductions, but I'm pretty proud of this one, as it says a lot of what I have to say about science fiction in general.

Paul Cornell's Short Story From FF2 Free Online!

In support of Fast Forward 2,we've put the entirely of the opening story from the anthology online at the new Pyr Sample Chapters page. (If you are viewing this inside the frame of the Pyr site, you might right click to avoid opening a window in a window).

"Catherine Drewe" by two-time Hugo nominee Paul Cornell is a tale of a Bond-like character in an alternate history where the Great Game never ended and the British Empire - along with the other world powers - extends its reach throughout the solar system.

Paul says of the character:

"I like to think I'm writing in the tradition of Ian Fleming's Bond novels (not the movies) but I'm trying to stay away from pastiche, and instead hope to explore the same debates about masculinity and Britishness he did, while perhaps coming to different conclusions."

The Stormcaller - Free Online Reading

Check out this enormous excerpt from the soon-to-be-released fantasy epic, The Stormcaller: Book One of the Twilight Reignby Tom Lloyd.

I am really excited about this book. I'm not the only one:

"Magical creatures and high speed action scenes... packed with detail without being too heavy. The Stormcaller shows how high the bar has been raised with its sheer vision and inventiveness." —SFX

Free Online Stuff

Over at the Pyr website, we've added a Sample Chapters page that aggregates all the free reading in one spot (there's a lot of it!), and also a page that displays all our book banners for downloads.

A Wealth of Online Reading

We've just uploaded a massive amount of sample pages to the Pyr website, some of them quite substantial excerpts (around 50 pages of text or so each). Generally about 3 or 4 chapters per book, but I try to pick good stopping points so it varies. Now, after all this work, it occurs to me that a lot of people may not realize what all is online, and since we've labored long and hard on our Funky New Format, please do follow the links below. Plus, each of the new format pages has a really cool custom banner ad. Collect them all!

First, there are two entire short stories online:
Paul Di Filippo's Fast Forward 1 contribution, "Wikiworld"
Sean Williams' The Resurrected Man inspiration, "A View Before Dying" (old format)

Then these twelve excerpts all recently uploaded, all in our Funky New Format:
Jack Dann's The Man Who Melted. Also, a new interview.
Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky
Ian McDonald's Brasyl
Mike Resnick's Starship: Mutiny and Starship: Pirate
Adam Robert's Gradisil
Justina Robson's Keeping It Real (along with music and other extras)
Joel Shepherd's Crossover and Breakaway
Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter, The Blood Debt, and The Hanging Mountains

We'll be adding more as we go, and converting some of the old ones across to the new look, but meanwhile, these excerpts are still available in the Old Format:
Michael Blumlein's The Healer
Gardner Dozoi's Galileo's Children introduction
Charles Coleman Finlay's The Prodigal Troll
Scott MacKay's Tides
Ian McDonald's River of Gods
John Meaney's Paradox, Context, Resolution
Michael Moorcock & Storm Constantine's Silverheart
Chris Roberson's Here, There & Everywhere
Justina Robson's Silver Screen
Robert Silverberg's Star of Gypsies
Martin Sketchley's The Destiny Mask

Elsewhere on the web, you can find:
Chris Roberson's Paragaea, and an entire prequel novel, Set the Seas on Fire
David Louis Edelman's Infoquake (Chapters 1 - 7), also four Audio chapters.
Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky at InfinityPlus
My own introduction to Fast Forward 1, "Welcome to the Future"

And that should be enough to keep you busy!