As part of our mission of bringing you interesting writers from around the world, I’m delighted to welcome Massimo Marino to the Wizard’s Tower bookstore. Massimo is Italian by birth, but has worked at CERN, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories and Apple, so he has plenty of scientific credentials and lots of experience of writing in English. Daimones is his first novel, and seems to have been fairly well received thus far. There’s a sequel due out next month.

Oh, and just to prove he’s a real science fiction writer, Massimo has two cats, one of which is named Nutella because it is chocolate colored.

I’m delighted to announce that a new publisher has joined the Wizard’s Tower store. Xoum Publishing is a fine Australian small press. They don’t publish a lot of SF&F, but what they do have is very impressive.

Top of the list has to be Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott which has just won the 2013 Australian Shadows Award for Best Novel. Kirstyn is, of course, also one of the co-hosts of the fabulous podcast, The Writer and The Critic and the wielder of the infamous Pointy Stick. She may decide to poke you with it if you don’t buy her book.

Also arriving from Xoum is Blood and Dust by Jason Nahrung, which is a vampire novel set in the Queensland outback. I’ve always felt that there are far too many things trying to kill you in Queensland already, so it hardly needs vampires, but you have to admit that Queensland has the coolest bats in the world. I can see why vampires might want to live there.

Finally we have something much less deadly. Irina the Wolf Queen by Leah Swann. Xoum lists this as a children’s book, so I’m assuming it is aimed at a younger market than YA. It is described as “Book I of the Ragnor Trilogy”, which should get the kids hooked nicely early.

All three books are nominees for this year’s Aurealis Awards, which is an impressive achievement.

Over at the Wizard’s Tower website I have posted a Call for Submissions for Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion, a new anthology that I’m producing in collaboration with the BristolCon Foundation.

This is what Colin Harvey would have called an “art project”. That is, the purpose of the book is to encourage and promote talented young writers. We don’t expect it to sell in vast quantities, and the money isn’t great. We decided not to use Kickstarter to fund it, because in order to run a successful campaign you need a bunch of high profile writers already committed to the book. That would go against the intention of using mainly people who are earlier in their careers. Much as I would love to have an Anastasia Sixsmyth story in the book, I know the book is well below Ian McDonald’s radar.

Because the book is steampunk I should doubtless note right from the start that we are well aware of the potential issues with the genre. Bristol’s history is by no means wholly glorious. Indeed, much of the investment in the city in the Victorian era came from the ridiculously large sums of money that the British government paid slave traders in compensation when their business was outlawed.

As we noted on the BristolCon website, we have arranged an event next week where local historian, Eugene Byrne, will talk about some of the city’s more colorful Victorian characters. Knowing Eugene, he won’t skimp on the less pleasant aspects of history. And knowing Bristol there will doubtless be the odd riot involved. The city does have a proud tradition of telling the upper classes where to go.

Usefully, Eugene has just written a book called Unbuilt Bristol, in which he talks about some of the crazier civil engineering projects that never quite made it into the city’s landscape. It is all good alternate history fodder.

Although the primary intention is to encourage local writers, we are happy to accept submissions from elsewhere. The stories just have to be set in or near Bristol. If you need help with research we can help.

I haven’t, as yet, set a publication date for the book. It would be nice to have it out around BristolCon, but we know from experience how crazy our lives get at that time of year so we’ll see how things go. We do, however, intend to produce a paper version of the book. And that means I need to get on with sorting out how we do that.

We have a new paranormal romance book from Entranced in the store today. Elsker by ST Bende sounds like it is perfectly timed to cash in on the new Thor movie. So, ladies: Team Thor or Team Loki? Or possibly Team Sif?

Update: here’s an interview with the author.

I’m delighted to be able to offer a novel by a Finnish author in the bookstore. Fargoer by Petteri Hannila is the first in a series of fantasy novels that, “draws its power from the harsh, yet beautiful nature and folklore of Finland”. It is self-published, and presumably self-translated, but that’s understandable when you are operating out of a fairly small country with a language few people know. There are plenty of reviews available on Petteri’s website. Why not check it out?

The third in the new books by women that I have for you this week is a very exciting collection. Conservation of Shadows is by the Korean-American writer, Yoon Ha Lee. It includes her two Sturgeon Award finalists: “Ghostweight” (Clarkesworld) and ““Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain” (Lightspeed). There are 14 other stores, one of which is unique to the collection, and an introduction by Aliette de Bodard. For further details, check out the bookstore.

Continuing this week’s bookstore releases, today I have a new release from Fox Spirit. Blood Bound by Sarah Cawkwell is apparently a “dark little fantasy story”. And I note that it comes from a woman-owned company, as well as being woman-authored. Enjoy.

Last night I finished the bulk of the conversion work on the next Lyda Morehouse book, Fallen Host. It still needs to go through proof-reading, but I’m planning to have it out this month. While you are waiting, you can feast your eyes on the lovely Bruce Jensen cover (and thanks again to Bruce for re-doing all of the covers for the ebook releases).

Of course if you can’t wait, you could always ask me for an eARC…


And if you still haven’t got around to buying Archangel Protocol, then you are missing out on a treat.

It is going to be a busy week as far as bookstore posts goes. I’ve just uploaded three new books. If you want to know what they all are, the Wizard’s Tower Twitter feed has details and links, but as we are doing this whole Women In Genre thing I wanted to give each one their own chance to shine.

Today I’m welcoming a new publisher to the store. Entranced Publishing covers a wide range of different genres, but with an emphasis on romance. We’ll be carrying their SF&F titles. Their first offering is Spirit World by Krystalyn Drown, which is a YA fantasy. Why not give it a try?