This is a Worldbuilders Blog.
Pat is still out at ConFusion, so you lucky sods get blogs from me for a couple more days. Pat is still reading the blog and comments when he can, and he’s still calling me to gush about how awesomely our auctions are going. Even though he can’t be here these last few days, he’s doing his best to keep up.
Things have been going really well, so let’s get back to the awesome prizes.
* * *
This year we were approached by more people than ever about donations. Part of this is because we’re growing in the community, and a lot of people have spread the word about us. The other part is because we brought on Maria, and she brought years of non-profit experience to our fundraiser. She’s why we have sponsors this year. She’s why we had so many tuckerizations for auction this year. She’s directly responsible for tripling the cuteness factor in the office. And she’s the reason we received hundreds of books from Prime Books.
Prime, conveniently enough, has their books printed near our office, so it was incredibly easy for them to ship over boxes of books – so they sent a lot.
There are a ton of anthologies, including a lot of big names – Gaiman, Beagle, LeGuin, Lackey, and L’Engle, to name a sparse few, and many of them are featured in more than one of these books. There are also stand alone novels and collections, so you really can’t lose.
As soon as these came in, Pat descended upon them to group them into prize packages for y’all. They actually group rather well. The idea here is that winning one prize containing three books seriously increases the possibility that you’ll find your new favorite story.
- 25 sets of Phantom edited by Paul Tremblay & Sean Wallace, Future Lovecraft edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia & Paula R. Stiles, and Ghosts: Recent Hauntings edited by Paula Guran.
(Click to embiggen and read all the awesome contributing authors)
“[Phantom is a] deliciously creepy book of horrors that prove all the more terrifying for their everyday nature.” – Publisher’s Weekly
As soon as the boxes were open, a bunch of us started coveting these, particularly Brett, who is not only a short story person but a rabid horror fan. Don’t worry, I’m protecting them from him, just as he protected the Kvothe doll from me.
- 25 sets of Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful and Season of Wonder both edited by Paula Guran.
These anthologies also have some awesome people who wrote for them. Gaiman, Lackey, Card, Ellison…
“Fans of stories involving witches as well as those who enjoy well-told fantasy should appreciate the strength of this themed collection.” – Library Journal, about Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful
- 25 sets of Running with the Pack and Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top both edited by Ekaterina Sedia.
“The stories [in Running with the Pack] veer from comedy to horror and from tragic love story to coming-of-age tale, showing the richness inherent in the idea of shifting shapes and animal strength” – Publishers Weekly
- 25 sets of Everything is Broken by John Shirley, Sword & Blood: Book One of the Vampire Musketeers by Sarah Marques, and Winning Mars by Jason Stoddard.
“Powerful storytelling, a minimalist prose style that does not diminish the three-dimensional characters, and a keen ear for dialog add to this novel’s many pleasures.” – Library Journal (starred review, Debut of the Month), about Winning Mars
- 25 sets of The Bone Key by Sarah Monette, Creatures edited by John Langan & Paul Tremblay, and Horror: The Best of the Year 2006 edited by John Betancourt & Sean Wallace.
“Sarah Monette can write like a dream.” – Charlaine Harris, about Bone Key.
- 25 sets of Rock On edited by Paula Guran, Robots: Recent A.I. edited by Rich Horton & Sean Wallace, and Battlestations edited by David Drake & Bill Fawcett.
“Lovers of all things robotic will enjoy this 21st-century collection of stories about the attempt to create an artificial human.” – Library Journal, about Robots
- 25 sets of Bloody Fabulous edited by Ekaterina Sedia and People of the Book edited by Sean Wallace.
“The uniformly strong writing [in Bloody Fabulous] makes this tasty sampler a fine foray into the fashionable side of speculative fiction.” – Publishers Weekly
- 25 sets of Moscow but Dreaming and The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia and Powers by James Burton.
This is another one of those prizes I would’ve been happy to win just for the cover art. But then I read this:
“A lovely, disconcerting book that does for Moscow what I hope my own Neverwhere may have done to London.” – Neil Gaiman, about The Secret History of Moscow.
- 25 sets of In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss, Mayan December by Brenda Cooper, and On the Banks of the River Heaven by Richard Parks.
“Goss’s collection of 16 gothic stories possesses a spare, surprising beauty, though her modern-day characters, like those in fairy tales, are constrained by the hard lessons she sets out to teach.” – Publishers Weekly
25 sets of At the Edge of Waking and In the Palace of Repose by Holly Phillips.
“[At the Edge of Waking is] an astonishing who-the-hell-is-this kind of discovery for anyone previously ignorant of her work.” – Peter Beagle
- 25 copies of Shelf Life edited by Greg Ketter.
Some of you may recognize this book, as we put a special edition in the lottery earlier.
However, luckily for you, Prime sent us even more copies of it, so you have even more chances to read some of the best short stories about bookstores out there.
“Shelf Life is an interesting and fun romp through the world of, mostly, second hand bookstores which invites the reader to think about books in new ways while experiencing a magic associated more with bookstores than any other types of store.” – SF Site
* * *
Make sure to make your donation on the Worldbuilders Team Page by January 21st. For every $10 you pitch in, you get another chance to win thousands of books and DVD’s.
There are still some auctions up, including some signed Gaiman and Pratchett stuff, unreleased ARCs, and a favor from Pat. You can view all of them on our current auctions page over here.
If you want to see the other items that have been donated to Worldbuilders, or learn more about the fundraiser itself, you can head over to our main page.
