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Cornelia Funke Founds Her Own Publishing Company to Release Reckless: The Golden Yarn

Cornelia Funke Founds Her Own Publishing Company to Release Reckless: The Golden Yarn

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Reckless Cornelia Funke-smallCornelia Funke is the international bestselling author of the Inkheart trilogy and more than a dozen other novels. Her latest to arrive on American shores is the third book in the popular MirrorWorld trilogy, which began with Reckless (2010) and Fearless (2013). It didn’t arrive without some bumps on the way, however. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Funke was so upset by her publisher’s suggested changes to the book that she formed her own company to release it.

At issue was a request by Funke’s publisher Little, Brown, to move the first chapter… to a different place in the book. After returning from a book tour in Germany where her publisher had released The Golden Yarn this February, Funke says she was “stunned” by the email she received from her editor at Little, Brown in the U.S., who she says was also speaking on behalf of the author’s U.K. editor. “It said, ‘We love the book, Cornelia, but could you please change the first chapter? It’s a birth scene. That’s a little drastic for our audience. Could you please put that somewhere else?’”

The opening chapter describes a dark faerie watching a princess give birth. “It’s about love,” says Funke, from her Beverly Hills home. “And it’s about what love does to you, and it’s about the fruit of love – a baby. The golden yarn is the yarn that binds us to people with love.” Her publishers also objected to the “open ending” of the book and asked Funke to turn it into an epilogue instead. “And I love that ending,” says Funke. After discussing these issues with her agents, Andrew Nurnberg and Oliver Latsch, Funke made the decision to part ways with her publishers and launch her own publishing house for markets in the U.S. and likely the U.K.

Well, it’s not every author who can walk away from a lucrative publishing contract midway through a series, and more power to her. Still, there are good reasons to partner with a major publisher — and one of them is that they understand the American market. I’d love to see Funke succeed, but the packaging for this book isn’t going to help readers at all. I received an advance copy of the book, and the completed hardcover, and several photocopied articles and releases explaining what it was, and honestly I was still confused about what book I’d received.

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Future Treasures: First and Last Sorcerer by Barb and J.C. Hendee

Future Treasures: First and Last Sorcerer by Barb and J.C. Hendee

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First and Last Sorcerer-smallBarb and J.C. Hendee began The Noble Dead series with Dhampir way back in January 2003. Since then they’ve released a dozen additional books in the series, and the fourteenth and final volume, The Night Voice, is scheduled to arrive in hardcover on January 6th.

The same day, Roc will release the penultimate book, First and Last Sorcerer, in paperback for the first time. For those pragmatists who wait until an entire series is in print before they pick up the first volume, your day has finally come. Check out one of the most popular series on the market, which Publishers Weekly calls “A crowd-pleasing mix of intrigue, epic fantasy, and horror.”

Waylaid in their quest for the orb of the Air, Magiere, Leesil, Chap, and Wayfarer have all been wrongly imprisoned. But it is Magiere, the dhampir, who suffers the most at the hands of a cloaked interrogator employing telepathic torture.

Arriving at the Suman port city in search of Magiere, Wynn Hygeorht and her companions — including vampire Chane Andraso — seek out the Domin Ghassan il’Sänke for assistance, which proves no easy task. The domin is embroiled in a secret hunt for a spectral undead with the power to invade anyone living and take the body as its host.

Even if Wynn manages to free her friends from prison, battling this entirely new kind of hidden undead may be a challenge none of them can survive…

First and Last Sorcerer was published in hardcover by ROC on January 6, 2015, and will be reprinted in mass market paperback on January 5, 2016. It is 395 pages, priced at $7.99, or $12.99 for the digital version. The cover artist is uncredited.

Future Treasures: Midnight Taxi Tango by Daniel José Older

Future Treasures: Midnight Taxi Tango by Daniel José Older

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Midnight Taxi Tango-smallDaniel José Older’s first Bone Street Rumba novel, Half-Resurrection Blues, was one of the most acclaimed novels of the year, selected as one of the Best Fantasy Books of 2015 by BuzzFeed, Barnes & Noble, and other fine establishments.

The second in the series, Midnight Taxi Tango, will be released in paperback next month. If you’re a regular reader at Tor.com, you’ve probably already sampled it, as portions were originally published there as three original short stories: “Anyway: Angie,” “Kia and Gio,” and “Ginga.”

The streets of New York are hungry tonight…

Carlos Delacruz straddles the line between the living and the not-so alive. As an agent for the Council of the Dead, he eliminates New York’s ghostlier problems. This time it’s a string of gruesome paranormal accidents in Brooklyn’s Von King Park that has already taken the lives of several locals — and is bound to take more.

The incidents in the park have put Kia on edge. When she first met Carlos, he was the weird guy who came to Baba Eddie’s botánica, where she worked. But the closer they’ve gotten, the more she’s seeing the world from Carlos’s point of view. In fact, she’s starting to see ghosts. And the situation is far more sinister than that — because whatever is bringing out the dead, it’s only just getting started.

Midnight Taxi Tango will be published by Roc on January 5, 2016. It is 322 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions. Sadly, the gorgeous cover art is uncredited.

Read the first chapter at Tor.com.

Future Treasures: City of Light by Keri Arthur

Future Treasures: City of Light by Keri Arthur

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City of Light Keri Arthur-smallKeri Arthur is the New York Times bestselling author of the Souls of Fire and Dark Angels novels. Next month she introduces a brand new futuristic fantasy with City of Light, Book 1 in the Outcast Series, the tale of an invasion of wraiths, demons, and death spirits, and the super-soldiers who form Earth’s last defense.

When the bombs that stopped the species war tore holes in the veil between this world and the next, they allowed entry to the Others — demons, wraiths, and death spirits who turned the shadows into their hunting grounds. Now, a hundred years later, humans and shifters alike live in artificially lit cities designed to keep the darkness at bay….

As a déchet — a breed of humanoid super-soldiers almost eradicated by the war — Tiger has spent her life in hiding. But when she risks her life to save a little girl on the outskirts of Central City, she discovers that the child is one of many abducted in broad daylight by a wraith-like being — an impossibility with dangerous implications for everyone on earth.

Because if the light is no longer enough to protect them, nowhere is safe…

The second novel, Winter Halo, is scheduled to arrive November 2016.

City of Light will be published by Signet on January 5, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions. Learn more at Keri Arthur’s website.

New Treasures: The Redemption’s Heir Series by Anne M. Pillsworth

New Treasures: The Redemption’s Heir Series by Anne M. Pillsworth

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Summoned-small Fathomless-small

Here’s something interesting: a two-volume Young Adult series of Lovecraftian horror and mystery. I don’t often see YA fiction labeled “Lovecraftian,” but when I do, I pay attention.

The first volume, Summoned, was published in hardcover in June of last year, and just released in paperback by Tor in October. It’s the tale of a teenage boy in Arkham, who finds an ancient book in a rare book store… with an ad from a sorcerer seeking an apprentice, and an e-mail address. When he replies, the boy finds himself quickly drawn into strange secrets from Arkham’s history. And parts of Arkham’s history are very dark indeed.

The standalone sequel picks up the tale as Sean is offered a chance to study real magic, with a proper teacher. Fathomless arrived in hardcover from Tor in later October.

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Future Treasures: The Alchemy of Chaos by Marshall Ryan Maresca

Future Treasures: The Alchemy of Chaos by Marshall Ryan Maresca

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The Alchemy of Chaos-smallMarshall Ryan Maresca’s debut novel, The Thorn of Dentonhill, followed the adventures of Veranix Calbert, diligent college student by day and crime-fighting vigilante by night, in the crime-ridden districts of the port city of Maradaine. Library Journal said, “Veranix is Batman, if Batman were a teenager and magically talented,” and that’s not far off. Now comes word that the seqel, The Alchemy of Chaos, arrives from DAW in February, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Veranix Calbert is The Thorn — the street vigilante who became a legend to the people of Maradaine, especially the gangs that run the neighborhood of Aventil. The Thorn continues to harass Willem Fenmere, the drug kingpin of the Dentonhill neighborhood. Veranix is still determined to stop Fenmere and the effitte drug trade, especially when he discovers that Fenmere is planning on using the Red Rabbits gang to bring the drug into Aventil.

But it’s also Exam Week at the University of Maradaine, where Veranix is a magic student. With his academic career — and future as a mage — riding on his performance, Veranix needs to devote himself entirely to studying and participating in a fellow student’s thesis experiments. There’s no time to go after Fenmere or the Red Rabbits.

Then a series of strange pranks begin to plague the campus, using a form of magic that Veranix doesn’t recognize. As the pranks grow increasingly deadly, it becomes clear that there’s someone with a vendetta against the university, and The Thorn may be the only one capable of stopping them. Between the prankster, the war brewing between the Aventil gangs, and the flamboyant assassins Fenmere has hired to kill him, Veranix may end up dead before the week is out. Which just might be preferable to taking his exams….

Maresca’s second novel, A Murder of Mages, began a second series set in Maradaine. The sequel, An Import if Intrigue, the second novel of The Maradaine Constabulary, is coming Fall 2016.

The Alchemy of Chaos, the second volume of The Maradaine Series, will be published by DAW on February 2, 2016. It is 400 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the print and digital versions. The cover is by Paul Young.

Prehistoric Fantasy from the Days Before the Earth had a Moon: Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga, Part I

Prehistoric Fantasy from the Days Before the Earth had a Moon: Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga, Part I

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 The Quest for the Complete Series

SerpentPocket_Small
Pocket Books – art by Boris Vallejo
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Orbit / Futura – Artist Unknown

In my quest to revive interest in forgotten or overlooked fantasies, it would be remiss not to discuss Jane Gaskell, specifically her Atlan Saga. The fact that my past few posts about H Warner Munn also happen to reference Atlantis is purely coincidental, and I am by no means an expert on all things Atlantean.

I came upon Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga in the late 1980s. As a high school lad in South Africa with limited funds, the public and school libraries — as well as friends — were my main sources of fantasy material. While many folks I know seem to have been reading Heinlein and Tolkein by the time they were 10, I only started reading for pleasure as a pre-teen. Until then I actively despised it. That is not to say I didn’t enjoy a good story, just I was too lazy to read it myself.  My mother desperately tried to encourage me, but I recall thinking Enid Blyton (Secret Seven etc.) was really nyaff, and the Hardy Boys were too mainstream.

Fortunately I discovered Biggles by Captain WE Johns and my mind, at last, opened to the joys of reading. After moving through CS Forester’s Hornblower books and Alexander Kent’s Richard Bolitho series (both period sea adventure), I found myself looking for something different. I found it through friends who introduced me to Anne McCaffery’s Dragonflight and David Eddings’ Belgeriad books.

One of the factors hindering me at the time was that good material was relatively thin on the ground. I also had a juvenile dislike of second hand books, preferring to buy them new. Sure, the shops had a reasonable amount on their shelves, and there were a (very) few specialist shops with a plethora of gear to choose from, but most of it was out of my price range, or my sphere of travel. Fortunately the major chain store of the day, CNA (like a Borders I imagine) used to have an annual book sale just after Christmas where they moved loads of old warehouse stock. During one of these sales I encountered two slim volumes which, due to their awesome cover art, just had to be fantasy par excellence: The Dragon and The City, both by Jane Gaskell.

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Future Treasures: Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Future Treasures: Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

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Passenger Alexandra Bracken-smallI’m a sucker for an eye-catching cover. And Alexandra Bracken’s new novel, the opening volume in a new series featuring an accidental time-traveler, definitely qualifies. It will be published in hardcover by Disney-Hyperion in January.

In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles, but years from home. And she’s inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she’s never heard of. Until now.

Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods — a powerful family in the Colonies — and the servitude he’s known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can’t escape and the family that won’t let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, his passenger, can find. In order to protect her, Nick must ensure she brings it back to them-whether she wants to or not.

Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods’ grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home forever.

Alexandra Bracken is also the author of Star Wars: A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy and the Darkest Minds series. Passenger will be published by Disney-Hyperion on January 5, 2016. It is 496 pages, priced at $17.99 for both the hardcover and digital versions.

Collecting Karl Edward Wagner

Collecting Karl Edward Wagner

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Karl Edward Wagner books-small

I’ve been enjoying gathering data for my informal survey of paperback prices for some of the most popular and collectible 20th Century science fiction and fantasy authors — mostly because it means shopping for vintage books on eBay. As I said in the last installment, I was a little surprised at the demand for Robert A. Heinlein, but at least I knew he’d be near the top of the list. He wasn’t at the top, however. Setting aside Phil K. Dick, so far the most expensive author I’ve collected recently is Karl Edward Wagner, whose collections sell for around $6.40/book, roughly a 30% premium over Heinlein.

32 books by Arthur C. Clarke $27.00 $0.84/book
35 books by Isaac Asimov $82.17 $2.35/book
51 books by Robert A. Heinlein $255.00 $5.00/book
11 books by Karl Edward Wagner $70.55 $6.41/book
56 books by Philip K. Dick $536.99 $9.59/book

The 11 paperback books above sold on eBay on September 27 for $70.55, making Karl Edward Wagner the most expensive author in our survey so far, outside Phil Dick.

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Vintage Treasures: The Queens’ Quarter Trilogy by Midori Snyder

Vintage Treasures: The Queens’ Quarter Trilogy by Midori Snyder

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New Moon Midori Snyder-small Sadar's Keep Beldan's Fire

It’s a tough thing to have to change publishers in the middle of a trilogy. That’s exactly what happened with Midori Snyder’s The Queens’ Quarter, which began with her second novel, New Moon, published in 1989. The last two novels followed over the next four years.

New Moon (1989)
Sadar’s Keep (1990)
Beldan’s Fire (1993)

Snyder’s first novel was Soulstring (1987), a standalone fairytale based on the Scottish legend of Tam Lin (which we covered here). Two years later, she decided to turn her attention to a secondary world fantasy. The first novel, New Moon, appeared in paperback from Ace in February 1989 with a fine cover by Jody Lee (above left; click for bigger version).

If subsequent books in the series had also had covers by Jody Lee, or even kept the same cover design, they would have been easy to spot as part of the same series. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Snyder was forced to switch publishers in midstream. As a result the second book, Sadar’s Keep, arrived in paperback in the US March 1991 from Tor Books, with a fine but strikingly different cover by Dennis Nolan (above middle).

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