Will Darth Pumpkin turn into a carriage for Cinderella?
I had no idea that the Mouse House was going to buy Lucasfilm Ltd. when I started carving this bad boy. Had I known, I might have carved some mouse ears on it.
Yep, it’s big news. George Lucas gets to set a course for Easy Street strapped to a serious hyperdrive, in the form of $4 billion in cash and Disney stock.
But for everyone freaked out about the corporate takeover of a beloved icon…dude, you saw The Avengers, right?
Filed under Geek
The Daedalus Incident is a very English novel, given its fantastical take on His Majesty’s Royal Navy during the late 18th Century; the works of C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian were a huge influence on me. Thus, I’m pleased to report that the book is available for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk. If you’re in the U.K., give it a look!
As more pre-order sites go live, wherever they may be, I’ll be adding them here. For those of you not in the U.K., the book is available via Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you see the book available on other sites, feel free to add comments here on the blog or flag me over on Twitter. And always remember to ask for The Daedalus Incident at your local independent bookstore!
Filed under Books
Have to keep up, otherwise my view of SF/F could look like this.
OK, that was some excitement yesterday, what with The Daedalus Incident now available for pre-order and the unveiling of the cover and all. You know what’s distracting? Amazon sales rankings. The book doesn’t come out for another six months, but there I am, looking and going, wow, someone is actually BUYING MY BOOK.
Now that the shock and awe have worn off, I’m back to reality, which includes revising a short story, considering revisions for a second, and pondering just when I’m going to get the sequel to The Daedalus Incident off the back burner. These are, of course, good problems to have, considering that I’m a soon-to-be published novelist. Someone wants to read my fiction, and that’s a beautiful thing.
I’ve also been spending time becoming better immersed in geek culture and getting myself up to speed on what’s happening and who’s doing what. Yes, I’m a proud geek, but I also have limited time in which to geek out. I’ve had to do some refreshing. So without further ado, here are some of the sites I use to keep up to date on all things SF/F and geek, particularly those things with a literary bent.
OK…now this is getting real.
The Daedalus Incident is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble! That’s right, the book is now a Real Thing that you can purchase today. I mean, it won’t be delivered until May 7, but you can purchase it today. Be an early adopter! Tell all your friends that, yes, you were among the first. When everyone starts talking up this crazy book they heard about, the one where a sailing ship crashes into Mars, you can nonchalantly lean back and say, “Yeah, I pre-ordered it.” You are instantly cool.
I’ll be updating the blog with other vendors offering The Daedalus Incident for pre-order as I hear about them, and I also expect that the book will be available in a variety of e-book formats and, yes, audiobook as well. I would also urge you to ask about The Daedalus Incident at your local independent bookseller. Let’s keep those indie bookstores going!
Of course, all this means that we now have a final cover. Here’s a nice big version of it:
Any good SF/F on television? Go check out SFSignal!
Just a quick note to tell folks that I’m participating in a “mind meld” over on SFSignal today. (Better that than the neck pinch, I say.) The topic is science fiction and fantasy on television, and there’s five of us opining on what’s good and what’s not.
I’m a big fan of SFSignal, so I’m pretty excited to have been included. They’re a great fanzine — so much so they won a Hugo Award for it. So go check out the mind meld and everything else they have to offer. It’s good stuff.
And yes, I mentioned Firefly. Someone had to.
Filed under Geek
Harry’s Bar, where New York SF/F writers go to get geeky, apparently.
Nestled in Harry’s Bar in the storied Helmsley Park Lane Hotel, a 21st century version of the Algonquin Round Table took place Friday afternoon. Except for the fact that it was far more geeky than the original.
A number of my fellow genre writers descended on New York this past weekend for New York Comic Con, and a few of us met at Harry’s to celebrate our recent successes. We shared a common love of science fiction and fantasy, an inordinate ability to dissect writing processes at length, and a single literary agent — the inestimable Sara Megibow — who found each of our works a creative and commercial publishing home.
Our little bubbly-fueled chat-fest included fellow scribes Mike Underwood, Steve Vera and all the way from Europe, Stefan Bachmann, among other convivial souls. We all agreed that The Phantom Menace was unworthy, that the covers of our forthcoming books were all quite exciting — and that writing short stories is a lot harder than it seems.
The hat and pipe don’t make the man.
Will the real Mr. Sherlock Holmes please stand up? You know, the one with the deerstalker hat and the pipe?
Actually, while the hat has become iconic, it’s actually a later addition to the Holmes canon. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made Holmes a pipe smoker, an eccentric, a recreational drug user and an occasional lout, but the hat and the cloak-cape-thing were practically all Hollywood. Indeed, throughout the history of the character, he has changed and adapted with the times. And for anyone who’s writing fiction based on already established characters — historical or fictional — a look at Holmes can be instructive. It also helps that I’m something of a Holmes aficionado. So settle in for this post, dear reader.
, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Books-A-Million, Kobo, iTunes or Google Play!
Michael J. Martinez 
