So what’s new in February in the Forgotten Realms and from Angry Robot Books (no new Star Wars fiction releases this month, it seems)?  Let us see.

First, we have Carpathia, from friend and colleague Matt Forbeck.  This book has gotten a lot of great reviews, so I encourage you to check it out.  The description:

It’s Titanic meets 30 Days of Night.

When the desperate survivors of the Titanic were rescued from the icy waters of the North Atlantic by the passenger steamship Carpathia, they thought their problems were over.

But something was sleeping in the darkest recesses of the rescue ship. Something old. Something hungry.

The lucky ones wished they’d gone down with the ship.

Then, in the Forgotten Realms, we have The Masked Witches, from another friend and colleague, Richard Lee Byers.  This is the fourth book in Richard’s Brotherhood of the Griffin series.  From the publisher’s description:

Aoth Fezim and his mercenary company have restored their tarnished reputation and attracted new recruits for their depleted ranks. But they still have one big problem. Too many griffon mounts were killed in the battles in Thay Chessenta. If “the Brotherhood of the Griffon” is to be more than a name, new mounts must be found.

As it happens, the Wychlaran in Rashemen have griffons available to a worthy few who can slay the undead that are committing atrocities throughout the land. Aoth volunteers his band, as do other groups who are in the market for griffons, including Company Bez.

But things are not as they seem. Epic battles between rival sellswords, berserkers, and aerial skyships punctuate this whirlwind tale set in a barbaric land of oracles, nature spirits, and talking animals.

Great books by a couple of quality gents.  Read and enjoy.

For those just joining the fun, previous excerpts can be found here, here, and here.  They’re all about one-thousand words or so, just bits to give you a feel for the tone of the novel, so you can decide if it’s for you.  None have been line edited yet, so any typos or other awkwardness are mine.  I hope you enjoy and I hope you’re as excited about this novel as I am.

In this bit, we see that Nix does not know as much as he thinks he knows.  Alas, this won’t be the last time that happens.

_____________________________

To occupy the time, Nix examined the ivory wand he’d found in the tomb of Abn Sur. He studied the tiny carvings on its shaft, his mind drifting back to his time in the Conclave as he tried to make sense of the characters.

The scent of perfume presaged Kiir’s arrival beside him.

“You have scant idea how pleased I am to see you,” he said with a smile. “’Ware my stink.”

She smiled shyly, sat, and nodded at the wand. “What’s that?”

“’This? This is nothing, just one of my gewgaws, as Egil would say. I took it from the tomb of an Afirion wizard-king after defeating the devil that guarded it.”

He spoke casually, but his words summoned the response he’d hoped for. Her eyes widened with wonder and she made a circle of her ring finger and thumb, a protective gesture, the symbol of Orella. She leaned in close to him, and he felt the warmth of her through his clothes. Her hair smelled of vanilla and the scent made him more lightheaded than Gadd’s smoke.

“A real devil of Hell?” she asked.

“Indeed,” Nix said, warming to the tale. “He stood twice as tall as Egil, coated in scales as large as my hand and as hard as steel. He had fanged rictuses at the ends of his arms. A terrible foe. Terrible.”

“Gods preserve! How did you escape it?”

Beside Nix, Egil harrumphed. “Escape it? Bah. We slew it.”

Her hand went to her heart-shaped lips. “Slew it? How?”

Nix sipped from his tankard. “Sharp steel and sharp wits, same as always.”

She touched his forearm, just a brush of her fingers. “Your life sounds so interesting. It must be exciting to travel around Ellerth as you do.”

“It is. We—“

Suspicion dawned. He turned on his stool, studied her face, her smile, the look of wonder. He pulled back.

“Wait. Are you Jonning me?”

Her smile widened, her brown eyes bright.

“You are!” he said. “Playing me like a Jon. Got me talking about myself while you act the innocent. I see what you’re doing.”

She batted her eyelashes and damned if she didn’t almost have him again.

“None of that now,” he said, and she gave a genuine laugh and laid her hand on his arm. The feel of her skin on his felt warm, comforting.

“Don’t take it ill,” she said. “You seemed to be having fun. It’s habit and hard to break. Besides, men love to jabber on to a pretty girl.”

Nix thought of the coinpurses he’d lifted earlier, both done not out of need but habit. “Habit, I understand. And you are pretty. But now I feel a bit of an arse.”

“Don’t. And if you’re not filling my ears with shite, I am interested in hearing about the wand. Is that a real pearl?”

Nix nodded. “A shaft of ivory capped with a pearl.”

She leaned in close. “What does it do?”

“I don’t know yet. But as I always say, the fun’s in finding out.”

“You don’t know yet?” The surprise in her expression made her look even prettier. “Aren’t you afraid to carry it around? What if it…I don’t know, it went off and filled your trousers with lightning.”

Nix grinned. “Avoiding the obvious response to a pretty girl’s mention of lightning in my trousers, I’ll say instead that while I don’t know exactly what it does, I have a rough idea.”

“And?”

Egil looked over from his somber ruminations. “Yes, and?”

Nix leaned forward, elbows on the bar, holding the wand across his palms. “The wizard-kings of Afirion were known to practice the art of transmutation, changing things into other things, or modifying existing things to make them better. The ivory and pearl construction is consistent with a transmutational device. The substance used to craft the wand suggests a minor transmutation.”

“Continue,” Kiir said.

Nix’s eyebrows rose. “You understood all that?”

“I’m a prostitute, Nix, not a dolt. I know some things.”

“Er…right. Well enough, then. So, now we examine the carvings that adorn the wand for some indication of function.”

He turned it in the meager light, to show the many grooves and whorls that lined it. Some looked like serpents, other like abstract shapes, others like script.

“And?” Kiir said.

“And this,” Nix said, pointing to a tiny image carved into the wand. “It appears right under the pearl, and also on the opposite end. It’s the operating glyph.”

Kiir squinted at the image. “What is it?”

“It’s a bull.”

She leaned forward and eyed the wand. “That’s a bull?”

“Of course it’s a bull.” Nix eyed it more closely. “Well, I’m pretty certain it’s a bull. An artist’s interpretation of a bull. Maybe. What else could it be?”

“A dog.” Kiir said. “A rat. A cat.”

Egil guffawed.

“Pfft. No, it’s a bull. I’m certain.”

She leaned back. “So if it’s a bull, what does that mean?”

“Not certain of that either.”

“That’s much uncertainty for one wand,” she said.

“Well, what do think of when you think of a bull?” Nix asked her.

“Horns.”

“No,” Nix said. “Size, right? Strength, too. Given that, I think the wand will make its target bigger and stronger, at least for a time.”

“Hmm,” Kiir said. “If true, that’d be useful.”

“Indeed,” Nix said.

“If you’re right,” she added.

“You are possessed of little faith.”

“I’m not the priest,” she said.

Another guffaw from Egil. He toasted her with his ale.

“How do you make it work?” she asked.

“A word in the Language of Creation awakens the magic. That’s true of all enspelled items, including and especially wands. Then…you just aim.”

“You know the Mage’s Tongue?” she asked, unfeigned surprise in her tone.

“I’m a tomb robber,” he said with a wink. “Not a dolt. And, as it happens, my tongue knows many, many things.”

She laughed, her lips parting to show perfect teeth. “You’re awful.”

Egil toasted her again. “The priest agrees entirely.”

“I am awful,” Nix acknowledged with a nod. He drained his tankard. “I really am. As it happens, I spent most of a year at the Conclave. That’s where I learned the bits I know.”

She looked even more surprised than when he’d mentioned the Mage’s Tongue. “I thought studies there lasted several years.”

“He dropped out,” Egil said.

“No,” Nix said irritably. “I was expelled. That’s a much more honorable method to part ways with that place and its so-called instructors.”

“Agreed,” Egil said, and harrumphed. “Wizards.”

“Third best event of my life, that expulsion,” Nix said, thinking back on his younger days at the Conclave.

“So, in only a year you learned the Mage’s Tongue?”

“Bits of it,” Nix said, unwilling to admit that he knew some words but not their meanings. “Enough to do a few things. I wouldn’t want to know much more. It’s the gods’ tongue, used to create Ellerth and the vault of stars. Speaking it too much is said to drive a man mad. Words not meant to be heard by mortals and so forth.”

“There’s truth in that,” Egil said. “From what we’ve seen.”

Now it was Nix’s turn to toast his friend. He and Egil had crossed many sorcerers over the years and not one seemed to think with sense.

“They say magic’s in the blood not the tongue,” Kiir said. “So I guess there’s magic in your veins, Nix Fall.”

“Not likely,” Nix said.  He was born of a prostitute and a Jon.

“So then,” Kiir said. “How’d you get into and out of a wizard-king’s tomb with your lives?”

Gadd put an ale before her and she smiled her thanks at the tall easterner.

Nix just shook his head. “Tricks of the trade, love. Some secrets we must keep to ourselves. Suffice to say it was a close thing.”

Each author involved is running a contest on his/her own site. The specific details vary from author to author, so the particulars of the contest I’m running may differ somewhat from the particulars on another author’s site.

But each contest has a few details in common. Each of us will select two winners from the contest on our own site, and each of those winners will receive one signed book, free, from the author whose contest they won. So, for instance, if you win here, you’ll win one of my books. If you win on Ari’s site, you’ll win one of his, etc.

But there’s a bigger prize. At the end of February, once the contests on the individual sites have ended, all the authors involved will get together and choose one single “super-winner” from all the entries on all our sites combined. This winner receive a signed book, free, from each and every one of the authors involved.  That’s a lot of cool books to win, baby.

You can only enter each author’s contest once, but you may enter multiple contests. So you could enter here, on Matt’s site, on Jason’s site, etc. In fact, you can enter on everyone’s site, if you want. (And even if you aren’t selected as the “super winner,” you might win more than one of the individual contests. You never know.)

You can find a complete list of the authors involved, as well as links to their sites, below. But first…

How to Enter

Remember, these are just the rules for my contest. The rules for entry on other authors’ sites might be very different.

But for me, it’s really simple — Just leave a comment to this post (and please make sure your name or username is reasonably distinct).   That’s it.  Easy peasy.

I will select two winners by random draw at the end of the month (and of course, everyone who enters is also in the running for the random “super-winner” selection), and those two winners can choose any one of my books(Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, or even an ARC of The Hammer and the Blade, if the winner is willing to wait a bit).  I’ll sign the books so chosen (personalizing as requested) and ship them off.

The Rest of the Lineup

As I said, there are over a dozen of us involved in this. You can find names and links below (in no particular order).  And hey, when you check out the various contest pages, browse around the author sites and have a look at their books.  These are talented storytellers and there’s bound to be something there you’ll enjoy.

Ari Marmell

Aaron Rosenberg

Keith Baker

Nathan Long

Kevin Hearne

Joshua Palmatier/Benjamin Tate

Matt Forbeck

Marsheila(Marcy) Rockwell

Jason Bradley Thompson

Howard Andrew Jones

Eugie Foster

Scott Oden

Katharine Kerr(on LiveJournal as Aberwyn)

Jon Sprunk

Steven Savile

Elaine Cunningham

Erik Scott de Bie

Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

To say that I love, love, love this would be an understatement.  It captures Egil and Nix exactly. My thanks to the artist, Richard Jones, whose portfolio you can see on his website.

Egil, the brooding, surly priest of the Momentary God, is the muscle of the duo and is foremost.  Nix Fall, College of Wizardry dropout, quick with sharp words and sharp steel, is the brains of the group and stands behind Egil.

You can read excerpts from The Hammer and the Blade here, here, and here.  I’ll be releasing more as we countdown to the release date (June 26, 2012). I’d note that every pre-order results in a soul being released from Purgatory and sent on to a glorious afterlife.  So maybe consider pre-ordering? 

I hope you dig this as much as I do.

This should be fun.  I hope to see you there.

I was ‘dating’ a girl at the time (‘dating’ in quotes because I never really connected with anyone until I met my wife) and we were going to the Jazz Festival in Downtown Detroit.  At that point, I was just an ignorant suburban kid and Detroit was this big, scary city where awful things seemed to happen a lot (I know Detroit much better now, and it’s really a great city).

Anyway, before I left the house to pick up my date, my dad, knowing my general temperament, pulled me aside and told me that if anything happened, to just walk away.  He said that twice.  You’re prideful.  Walk away.  It’s not worth it.

Then he said: But if someone says or does something to your date, you don’t walk away. If that happens, you fight.

That’s stuck with me a long time.  It’s a particular example of a general principle: There are things in life worth fighting for. Figure out what they are and, if they’re threatened, fight for them.

Lots of events in my life since have turned on that principle, and I’m grateful to have been taught it by my dad in such a concrete way. I think teaching those kinds of principles are the gift that parents give their kids, if their kids are lucky. I was, and I’m glad for it.  Hopefully, I’ll do the same by my children.

I think it’s enormously wise of WotC to look to the D&D fan base — a huge population of smart, creative people — for input on the development.  The idea is to get at the core of D&D, the thing that has made it such a mainstay of tabletop RPGs for decades, and then develop a universal rules system around that core.  From what I’ve seen and heard already, I expect this will kick all kinds of ass.

Long and short:  I’m excited about it. I think there’s a real chance that what comes out of this process will be the best iteration of D&D to-date. As a player, I’m looking forward to sitting around the table with friends and rolling some bones.  As a writer, I’m looking forward to the creative possibilities.  Rock on.

From Angry Robot Books, we have The Great Game: The Bookman Histories, Book 3, by Lavie Tidhar, which sounds completely kickass. From the back matter:

When Mycroft Holmes is murdered in London, it is up to retired shadow executive Smith to track down his killer – and stumble on the greatest conspiracy of his life. Strange forces are stirring into life around the globe, and in the shadow game of spies nothing is certain. Fresh from liberating a strange alien object in Abyssinia – which might just be the mythical Ark of the Covenant – young Lucy Westerna, Holmes’ protégé, must follow her own path to the truth while, on the other side of the world, a young Harry Houdini must face his greatest feat of escape – death itself.

As their paths converge the body count mounts up, the entire world is under threat, and in a foreboding castle in the mountains of Transylvania a mysterious old man weaves a spider’s web of secrets and lies.

Airship battles, Frankenstein monsters, alien tripods and death-defying acts: The Great Game is a cranked-up steampunk thriller in which nothing is certain – not even death.

In the Galaxy Far, Far Away we have the much anticipated Darth Plagueis, by James Luceno. I’ve heard great things about this novel, among them that it allows a reader to see the events of The Phantom Menace in a new light.  From the back matter:

Darth Plagueis: one of the most brilliant Sith Lords who ever lived. Possessing power is all he desires. Losing it is the only thing he fears. As an apprentice, he embraces the ruthless ways of the Sith. And when the time is right, he destroys his Master—but vows never to suffer the same fate. For like no other disciple of the dark side, Darth Plagueis learns to command the ultimate power . . . over life and death.

Darth Sidious: Plagueis’s chosen apprentice. Under the guidance of his Master, he secretly studies the ways of the Sith, while publicly rising to power in the galactic government, first as Senator, then as Chancellor, and eventually as Emperor.

Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious, Master and acolyte, target the galaxy for domination—and the Jedi Order for annihilation. But can they defy the merciless Sith tradition? Or will the desire of one to rule supreme, and the dream of the other to live forever, sow the seeds of their destruction?

In the Forgotten Realms, I don’t see a new January release, so let’s plug two of the December releases: Shadowbane, by Erik Scott de Bie, and Brimstone Angels, by Erin Evans. Both great novels that I’ve mentioned previously.  Give them a read, by Ao.