Frostborn (Thrones and Bones) available for pre-order

Links and pages for my forthcoming middle reader novel, Frostborn, are beginning to show up around the web.  The novel will be released on August 5, 2014.  The amazing cover is by Justin Gerard.

Meanwhile here is the Goodreads page, the page for the hardcover on Amazon, the hardcover on B&N (which sadly isn't taking preorders yet), and the page for the Audio CD on Amazon. Here's Indiebound. And here's the book's page at Random House and on Random House Kids.

UPDATE: There isn't much there at all yet, but here's a Tumblr page and there's a Twitter account at @ThronesandBones . When news breaks, that's where it will break first.

From the book description:

Fantasy fans of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series will embrace this first novel in an adventure-filled, Viking-inspired series by a debut author.

Meet Karn. He is destined to take over the family farm in Norrøngard. His only problem? He’d rather be playing the board game Thrones and Bones.

Enter Thianna. Half human, half frost giantess. She’s too tall to blend in with other humans but too short to be taken seriously as a giant.

When family intrigues force Karn and Thianna to flee into the wilderness, they have to keep their sense of humor and their wits about them. But survival can be challenging when you’re being chased by a 1,500-year-old dragon, Helltoppr the undead warrior and his undead minions, an evil uncle, wyverns, and an assortment of trolls and giants.

Readers will embark on a sweeping epic fantasy as they join Karn and Thianna on a voyage of discovery.

Antics and hair-raising escapades abound in this fantasy adventure as the two forge a friendship and journey to unknown territory. Their plan: to save their families from harm.

Debut novelist Lou Anders has created a rich world of over twenty-five countries inhabited by Karn, Thianna, and an array of fantastical creatures, as well as the Thrones and Bones board game.

Lou Interview on Diabolical Plots

I am interviewed today by Carl Slaughter on his blog Diabolical Plots. We talk about the criteria that goes into selecting manuscripts for Pyr books, how my admittedly rather diverse media background prepared me for editing science fiction and fantasy, and my philosophy in anthology editing. Thanks to Carl for conducting this interview. Here's a sample, but please check the whole thing out.

You’ve also been nominated several times for anthology editor.  Give us a thumbnail sketch of your vision for anthologies, past, present, and future.
LA:  Well, I don’t know if I’m going to do any more anthologies in the future. I’ve turned my attention to my own fiction, and given the copious amounts of free time I don’t have, any and all snatches of personal time I have that is not claimed by my family goes into my own creations. But when I did anthologies, my goal was to never simply present reprint collections of themed stories, but to ask questions of where I thought the genre was, where it was going next, and where it should be. Each of my nine anthologies are attempts to engage the dialogue of speculative fiction in a moment, whether that was my frustrations with the limits of post-cyberpunk fiction in Live Without A Net, or my desire to explore the intersection of sword and sorcery values with modern, “realistic” fantasy in Swords & Dark Magic(co-edited with Jonathan Strahan). Every anthology is a question put to the field and hopefully a collection of answers.