Matthew Hughes's Blog: barbarians of the beyond - Posts Tagged "costume-not-included"
A small comfort
Well, I didn't score too highly in the Locus Magazine poll of the best sf and fantasy novels of the twentieth and (so far) twenty-first centuries . . .
. . . but I did make the top five in the Superhero Novels blog's retrospective of 2012, with this comment about Costume Not Included : "Of all the writers on this list, Hughes is the most puckish of the lot. And we love him for it. In our opinion he’s done the impossible; he’s returned Jesus and Satan to the Garden of Eden and he’s given them both a sense of humor. Also: the superhero is kind of funny too."
. . . but I did make the top five in the Superhero Novels blog's retrospective of 2012, with this comment about Costume Not Included : "Of all the writers on this list, Hughes is the most puckish of the lot. And we love him for it. In our opinion he’s done the impossible; he’s returned Jesus and Satan to the Garden of Eden and he’s given them both a sense of humor. Also: the superhero is kind of funny too."
Costune Not Included shortlisted for Endeavour Award
Costume Not Included, the second novel in the To Hell and Back urban fantasy series, has been shortlisted for the Endeavour Award.
The award is named for the ship captained by the great navigator James Cook when he explored and mapped the Pacific Northwest from Oregon up to Haida Gwai (the Queen Charlotte Islands). It's a juried award, given for a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author or authors and published in the previous year.
It's been established to the satisfaction of the Endeavour's governors that, although I wander the world as a homeless housesitter, I remain an author of the Pacific Northwest.
The winner will be announced at OryCon, the Oregon sf con, in November.
The award is named for the ship captained by the great navigator James Cook when he explored and mapped the Pacific Northwest from Oregon up to Haida Gwai (the Queen Charlotte Islands). It's a juried award, given for a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author or authors and published in the previous year.
It's been established to the satisfaction of the Endeavour's governors that, although I wander the world as a homeless housesitter, I remain an author of the Pacific Northwest.
The winner will be announced at OryCon, the Oregon sf con, in November.
To Hell and Back in your ear
Word from my agent that Amazon Audible will launch the audio versions of my To Hell and Back trilogy -- The Damned Busters, Costume Not Included, and Hell To Pay -- on March 11.
The narrator is Tom Lawrence, who has spoken books for Ian McDonald and China Mieville, among others, so I'm in good company.
The narrator is Tom Lawrence, who has spoken books for Ian McDonald and China Mieville, among others, so I'm in good company.
To Hell and Back books a Kindle daily deal
Angry Robot has let me know that on Wednesday, July 9, Amazon will put all three of the To Hell and Back ebooks -- The Damned Busters, Costume Not Included, and Hell to Pay -- on sale for 99 cents each as a Kindle Daily Deal. Mark your calendars.
I'm in Italy
I'm starting a new housesit that will run at least until December in a little hillside village in the Apennines, about midway between Rome and Naples. A very old-fashioned Italian house, more or less dug into the hill, overlooking an intermontane plateau of olive trees and farm fields. It's the birthplace of Thomas Aquinas.
It took us three days to drive down from Brittany, in heat that touched 40 degrees C at times, and with no air-conditioning in the car. And people think authors have a soft life. Well, of course we do, but we can still pretend to hardship.
Back on the internet, I've found blogged reviews of the first two volumes of my urban fantasy series, To Hell and Back from Angry Robot Books. The blogger is Rocky Sunico, who describes himself as a gay Filipino geek who picked up the trilogy months ago and got around to it only lately. Which is fine; I'd sooner be read later than never.
The reviews are positive and comprehensive. If you've been looking at the series on Amazon and wondering if you'd like it, I think Rocky's take on it will tell you whether or not it will delight you. If you ask me, of course, I'll swear that you'll love it, and you ought to get extra copies for your friends and colleagues. I'm told they make excellent Christmas and birthday gifts. Besides, it would be nice to see the trilogy earn out its advance.
Links to the reviews: http://www.geeky-guide.com/2015/06/bo...
http://www.geeky-guide.com/2015/07/bo...
It took us three days to drive down from Brittany, in heat that touched 40 degrees C at times, and with no air-conditioning in the car. And people think authors have a soft life. Well, of course we do, but we can still pretend to hardship.
Back on the internet, I've found blogged reviews of the first two volumes of my urban fantasy series, To Hell and Back from Angry Robot Books. The blogger is Rocky Sunico, who describes himself as a gay Filipino geek who picked up the trilogy months ago and got around to it only lately. Which is fine; I'd sooner be read later than never.
The reviews are positive and comprehensive. If you've been looking at the series on Amazon and wondering if you'd like it, I think Rocky's take on it will tell you whether or not it will delight you. If you ask me, of course, I'll swear that you'll love it, and you ought to get extra copies for your friends and colleagues. I'm told they make excellent Christmas and birthday gifts. Besides, it would be nice to see the trilogy earn out its advance.
Links to the reviews: http://www.geeky-guide.com/2015/06/bo...
http://www.geeky-guide.com/2015/07/bo...
Say what?
Okay, this one's got me puzzled. A few years ago, I wrote an "urban fantasy" trilogy for Angry Robot Books. I didn't know that urban fantasy meant vampires and werewolves, so I wrote about a high-functioning autistic actuary who accidentally summons a demon. Hijinks ensue and he comes out of it as what he's always wanted to be: a costumed crimefighter whose superpowers come from a wisecracking demon assigned to help him.
The series was called To Hell and Back and although I thought it was pretty skookum, it didn't resonate well with people who expected vampires and werewolves. But those who like their cosmology mixed with a hefty dose of ironic humor said nice things about the books.
They still sell a few copies a week but I figured that was the end of that. Now I see that Penguin Random House, who distribute AR books in the US and Canada, have apparently prepared a teachers guide to the middle book, Costume Not Included.
This has only happened to me once before, when Maxwell Macmillan published a teachers guide to my first novel, Fools Errant. It contained questions about the text that even I couldn't answer.
I'm assuming the PRH teachers guide listing is a mistake by someone in the cataloguing department. I tried following a link to order a copy of the guide and ended up at the Amazon listing for CNI itself.
The series was called To Hell and Back and although I thought it was pretty skookum, it didn't resonate well with people who expected vampires and werewolves. But those who like their cosmology mixed with a hefty dose of ironic humor said nice things about the books.
They still sell a few copies a week but I figured that was the end of that. Now I see that Penguin Random House, who distribute AR books in the US and Canada, have apparently prepared a teachers guide to the middle book, Costume Not Included.
This has only happened to me once before, when Maxwell Macmillan published a teachers guide to my first novel, Fools Errant. It contained questions about the text that even I couldn't answer.
I'm assuming the PRH teachers guide listing is a mistake by someone in the cataloguing department. I tried following a link to order a copy of the guide and ended up at the Amazon listing for CNI itself.
