This is a Worldbuilders blog.
Let’s deal with the simpler auction first, shall we?
- An ARC of The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed by Patrick Rothfuss and Nathan Taylor. Signed by the Author.
I’ve already talked about the Princess book over on this blog. If you’d like more details on it,you can head over there.
Simply said, if you win this auction, you can get an Advance Reading Copy of this book now, rather than having to wait until July when it’s coming out through Subterranean Press. I’ll sign it for you too.
Interested? Here’s the link to the auction.
Note: for those of you interested in buying a copy of this book, you might want to do so sooner rather than later. Last I heard the print run was already more than half sold out…
- The Golden Ticket.
Ever since I mentioned I was donating the Golden Ticket in one of the early posts of the fundraiser, people have been asking me questions about it.
Now that I’m auctioning one off, I should clarify a few things to make sure there’s no confusion or hurt feelings after the bidding’s done.
In the previous post about the golden ticket, here’s what I said.
“If you win this prize, I will owe you one (1) favor. You can cash it in however you like.
You want your name in book two? We can do that. You want me to read your book and give you some criticism? No problem. You want me to attend your local convention, perform your wedding ceremony, or just give you a nice backrub? Consider it done.
A few stipulations:
* The favor has to be legal. (More or less.)
* It has to be something I can actually do. (Duh)
* I can’t make anyone fall in love.
Other than that, I’ll do my best to grant your wish….”
Aside from the last two sentences (which were really just a joking reference to Aladdin) I thought this was pretty clear. But since then, people have sent me e-mail asking questions that made me realize the wide scope of things people *could* ask for as a favor.
So here’s a few more formal guidelines.
Examples of things you could use the golden ticket for:
- You could ask for one of the original manuscripts I used while editing The Name of the Wind. Some folks consider them kinda collectible.
- If you missed the previous auction, or just didn’t manage to win, you could ask me to read and critique your manuscript.
- You could get your name in my second book, as per the raffle we held a couple months ago.
- You could ask for one of the numbered museum quality copies of the Luring the Draccus posters. Phil was nice enough to give me a couple, and I’d part with one for this.
- You could ask to get an early look at The Wise Man’s Fear. (As soon as it’s ready to show around.)
Examples of things you *can’t* use the Golden Ticket for:
- I won’t give out details about what happens in the third book. I don’t go in for spoilers.
- You can’t ask to change the course of the book so that, say, Kvothe and Elodin have a sex scene. Or Kvothe and Ambrose have a sex scene. Or so that someone dies, or doesn’t die, or has a threesome with Bast and Chronicler, or whatever. Sorry.
- I won’t blurb your book. I’d gladly *read* your book and consider blurbing it, but that’s not something you can buy, at least not from me. I decided years ago that I didn’t want to be a blurb whore, and that I’d only blurb books I truly enjoyed and could recommend wholeheartedly.
- I won’t re-name my child, buy you a car, beat up your ex-boyfriend, or become physically intimate with you.
- Well… let’s call that last one a maybe. Anything more than a kiss and backrub would have to be approved by Sarah.
As you can see, there’s a lot of room between these two extremes. Someone asked if I would come out to their house, make them dinner, and tell them a story. My response was that that sounded fine to me so long as:
1) They didn’t mind waiting until I can work it into my travel plans.
2) They like pasta.
3) They don’t kill me and wear my skin like a coat.
See how easy I am to work with?
Here’s the link to the auction.
Remember folks, for every 10 dollars you donate to Heifer International, you get a chance to win fabulous prizes. Plus there’s the whole helping make the world a better place thing. That’s nice too.
And don’t forget, I’m matching 50% of all donations made. So why not head over to my page at Team Heifer and chip in. Trust me. You’ll feel great afterward.
Or, if you want to go back to the main page for Worldbuilders, you can click HERE.
With thanks to our sponsor, Subterranean Press.
A Veritable Cornucopia of Signed Books
This is a Worldbuilders blog.
Here’s some more books, folks. And as you can see, we’ve been saving some of the best for last.
Also, in the interest of complete honesty, I’m over-tired and over-caffeinated right now. This makes me punchy, which means I probably shouldn’t be doing anything delicate like writing book descriptions.
Still, the fundraiser ends on January 15th, which means I really need to get these posted sooner rather than later. So I’m going to apologize in advance for anything bizarre or inappropriate I might say below.
Sorry.
A great book, and I’m not just saying that because a chunk of it is set in Wisconsin. I’m saying that because I’m a complete geek for Neil Gaiman *and* a big chunk of it is set in Wisconsin.
“Original, engrossing, and endlessly inventive; a picaresque journey across America where the travelers are even stranger than the roadside attractions.” – George R. R. Martin
Jim Butcher is another one of my favorite authors. In fact, he was one of the first authors I wrote about on the blog a long while back. I continue to love him despite the fact that writes two extremely well-crafted novels every year, thereby making me look like a chump.
From Publishers Weekly, “Butcher smoothly manages a sizable cast of allies and adversaries, doles out needed backstory with crisp efficiency and sustains just the right balance of hair’s-breadth tension and comic relief.”
“Crystal Rain is refreshing and imaginative, an exotic stew of cultures, myths, and technology.” –Kevin J. Anderson
Anyone who’s read the acknowledgments in NOTW knows I owe Kevin Anderson a great debt of thanks, as he helped get me started in the publishing world. On top of that, I now owe him even *more* thanks for donating this lovely ARC…
Publisher’s Weekly says, “Anderson’s sizzling sci-fi thriller resurrects the technology of miniaturization introduced in the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage. [...] Casual sci-fi fans as well as newcomers to the genre will enjoy this well-paced, energetic narrative.”
From the back of the book: In two scant months the nation, and all her colonies, will celebrate 160 years of Queen Victoria’s glorious reign. But all is not well at the heart of the empire of Magna Britannia. A chain of events is about to be set in motion that, if not stopped, could lead to a world-shattering conclusion. It begins with a break-in at the Natural History Museum. A night watchman is murdered. An eminent Professor of Evolutionary Biology goes missing. Then a catastrophic Overground rail-crash unleashes the dinosaurs of London Zoo!
Signed by the author, the merest touch of this book will cure scrofula. At least that’s what the promotional blurb says.
The Specusphere urges readers to “enjoy another fast and furious ride with the zap-happy, zany rapscallions.”
Like Nnedi, David Levine is one of the folks I met when we got published in Writers of the Future Volume 18 together. David writes short stories like I’ll never be able to, and over the years his advice about how the publishing world works has been invaluable to me.
Space Magic is his first short story collection. His “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Short Story and “The Tail of the Golden Eagle” was a previous Hugo nominee; it also appeared on the Nebula preliminary ballot and was a finalist for the Sturgeon Award and Locus Award.
It’s also important to note that this limited edition harcover of the book is numbered AC-6. Which means that it’s harder to hit than AC-10.
Booklist says that Shadowed Summer is, “Highly atmospheric, with pulse-pounding suspense and an elegiac ending.”
You hear that? Elegiac. How come nobody calls my book elegiac? I’m all kinds of elegiac.
“The wildly imaginative Reilly has taken inspiration from comics, video games, thrillers and Code-style puzzle novels to create this rocket-fueled sequel to his 7 Deadly Wonders [...] A tongue-in-cheek quality will help readers find this outlandish adventure thrilling.” — Publishers Weekly
“Wilson’s fantasy debut recalls the complexity of classic epic fantasy in the tradition of Robert Jordan. Combining adventure with mystery and memorable characters, this is a good choice for committed fantasy fans.” —Jackie Cassada, Library Journal
“Janny Wurts writes with astonishing energy… it outght to be illegal for one person to have so much talent.” – Stephen R. Donaldson
“The most enjoyable science fantasy book I’ve read in the last four years.” – Christopher Stasheff
David Sedaris is a brilliant author I only discovered a couple years ago when someone advised me to listen to his short piece “6-8 Black Men” on Youtube.
After less than a minute, Sedaris had a fan for life.
I’ve been meaning to post a blog recommending Sedaris’ books for almost a year. But something always seems to get in the way. For example, the last time I sat down to write a post about it, I got hung up about whether or not I wanted to use the word “boner” in the blog. Then I started to write a blog about how avoiding the use of the word “boner” revealed a lot about my revision process. Then I stopped writing that blog and did something else. True story.
Anyway, a couple months ago, I found out that David Sedaris was on tour here in the US. What’s more, I found out that he was making at stop Stevens Point. I still can’t imagine why he was here in Podunk, WI. His tour schedule was literally something like this: San Diego > San Francisco > Los Angeles > Salt Lake City > Stevens Point > New York. My suspicion is that he lost a bet with God.
Sedaris gave a great performance and was incredibly gracious in person, though I’m pretty sure I made a bit of an ass of myself when I got to the front of the signing line. I bought a couple of his books and rather than have him sign them to me, I had him just sign his name so I could use them for this fundraiser. Also a true story.
Washington Post Book World describes Sedaris as “Shrewd, wickedly funny [...] one of America’s most prickly, and most delicious, young comic talents.”
There we go. Now I can go to sleep. Hopefully I didn’t say anything too awful…. If I did, enjoy it while it lasts, because I’ll probably just delete it when I wake up later today…
Remember folks, for every 10 dollars you donate to Heifer International, you get a chance to win these books and hundreds of others like them. Plus there’s the whole helping make the world a better place thing. That’s nice too.
And don’t forget, I’m matching 50% of all donations made. So why not head over to my page at Team Heifer and chip in. Trust me. You’ll feel great afterward.
Or, if you want to go back to the main page for Worldbuilders, you can click HERE.
With thanks to our sponsor, Subterranean Press.