Last year, in anticipation of the publication of Amortals, I joined the International Thriller Writers. It’s a spiffy organization headlined by some top-named talent, and one of the best parts about it is that it’s free to those qualified to join. The people behind it do an excellent job of aggressively promoting their authors, and as part of that Christine Goff contacted me for an interview about Amortals.
As of this morning, you can now read that interview. I hope you enjoy it.
Over at Figures.com, Jess Horsley gives Amortals a glowing review.
Amortals starts out with a thunder cracker and accelerates full speed ahead, forcing readers to delve headlong with Dooley on this exciting quest to not only find and capture his killer, but understand why he was killed.
He also compares the book to Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, Warren Hammond’s Kop or Ex-Kop, and Jeff Somer’s Avery Cates novels, which puts it in fine company. (Actually, I’ve not read Kop yet, but it’s now on my list.)
Today, my first original novel, Amortals, hits shelves in bookstores all the way across America. That includes both big-box and indie stores in the USA and Canada as well as all your favorite internet shops. This is, I believe, my best work to date. If you’ve ever enjoyed anything I’ve written, do both of us a favor and hunt it down and read it.
Amortals is the story of Ronan Dooley, top Secret Service agent and—at nearly 200 years old—the world’s oldest man. After giving his life for his country and being restored into a clone body several times, Ronan is brutally murdered and must now hunt down his killer. Of course, it all spirals out of control from there.
The book has garnered some excellent reviews. The Guardian called it “Chandler by way of Blade Runner, with the pace of an express train.” SFBook.com gave it five stars and made it the book of the month upon its UK release in November. Fantasy Literature called it “one helluva sci-fi thriller.”
In addition to all that, Amortals has been blurbed by a number of fantastic people, including Billy Campbell, John Rogers, Jim Lee, Jordan Weisman, Dan Abnett, Mike Stackpole, Ben Templesmith, Richard Dansky, Monte Cook, Richard Knaak, and Jack Emmert.
So, if you buy one more book before the end of this year, make it Amortals. (If you buy lots of books before then, be sure to check out Zoo City from Lauren Beukes, Walking the Tree from Kaaron Warren, and Pretty Little Dead Things by Gary McMahon, all from Angry Robot too, plus J. Robert King’s Edge of Destiny, the second Guild Wars book. All of these released today too, which makes for a year-end bonanza of reading goodness.)
If you’ve already enjoyed Amortals, please do me just one more favor and tell people how much you enjoyed it, either in person or online. A kind review from good folks like you goes a long way. Thanks!
This month’s episode of the Angry Robot Podcast, hosted by the sweet-voiced Mur Lafferty, features Colin Harvey (author of Winter Song and Damage Time) and me talking about our novels. The conversation covers a lot of ground, from our thoughts about the future to the three types of jobs that every freelancer must do. Be sure to listen in.
If you enjoy the Angry Robot theme song, it’s by John Anealio, a great songwriter I met at the World Fantasy Convention in October. John also has a brilliant “Name Your Own Price” pack of holiday songs available right now, called Seasons Geekings. It includes “Batman Smells (A Rebuttal),” among other charmers.
My friends over at Pelgrane Press—who are stalwart sponsors of the Diana Jones Award ceremony, among their many other good deeds—just announced that they’re launching a new fiction imprint called Stone Skin Press. Tabletop RPG legend Robin Laws heads up the new operation as its creative director, ensuring some high-quality tales.
Stone Skin also announced its first three titles: New Hero, Shotguns v. Cthulhu, and New Hero II. Robin explains the line and what the books are about, over on the Pelgrane blog. I don’t know the full list of contributors, but at the least it includes Ed Greenwood, Adam Marek, Alex Bledsoe, Jennifer Brozek, Jesse Bullington, Richard Dansky, Monte Cook, Julia Bond Ellingboe, Will Hindmarch, Jonny Nexus, Jeff Tidball, Kyla Ward, and Chuck Wendig, plus a number of other names yet to be revealed. Good money says that Robin will pitch in a story or three himself. Oh, and I have one in there too.
My story, “Friends Like These,” will appear in one of the New Hero books. It’s a shotguns & sorcery tale set in a world I had once planned to use as a d20 setting called Shadowknight. At one point, I’d signed contracts with Mongoose Publishing for that line, but when Ann became pregnant with the quads, I had to table the project for a, um, while. Now, eight or nine years later, I’m happy to be able to bring you a taste of it in 2011. And I can’t wait to read the rest of the stories too.
The next computer game I had a hand is Conduit 2, the sequel to The Conduit, one of the few first-person shooters for the Wii. Back before the original came out, the fine folks at High Voltage Software asked me to come up with the story for the sequel. The roots of The Conduit went a lot deeper than most people would have suspected, and that gave me plenty of juicy material to work with.
When it came time to actually write the dialog for the game, High Voltage tapped my pal Jason Blair for those duties. I’ve not had a chance to play the game yet, but I cannot wait. Word is that the game will hit the street on February 15, so keep your thumbs warmed up until then.
If it seems like it’s been quiet around here lately, that’s because I spent the last couple weeks crunching through to the end of Star Wars vs. Star Trek, a new nonfiction book I’m writing for Adams Media. Although Adams doesn’t have it up on its own site yet, Amazon already has information on the book, including a cover shot.
According to that page, the book is due on shelves on May 18, which is the blink of an eye in the publishing industry. I have no idea if that’s a final or preliminary cover, but that’s what’s up there now, and it looks pretty snazzy. I’m already starting to gear up for the hate mail readers are sure to toss my way. With such a contentious issue, there’s really no way to make everyone happy. Despite that, I had a ball working on it, and I hope you enjoy reading it when it comes out.
Last week, my first work published by Marvel Comics hit shelves. It’s not much, just an entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A–Z Update #5.
I wrote the entry for Raptor, a newish Spider-Man villain. I’d already read the comics, so I figured the workload would be light. Still, the rigor with which team leader Jeff Christiansen and the rest of the crew attack the entries impressed me. They have a well-oiled machine working these entries up, often under sharp time pressures, and I’m proud to have played a small role in this book.
I should have some entries in upcoming books in the series too. I can’t spend too much time on them because of my many other projects, but they’re too much fun for me to avoid.
Amortals just received two more glowing reviews, one of which includes my favorite line from a review ever. First, though, Paul Simpson at Total Sci-Fi Online enjoyed the book and says:
Forbeck deftly deals with the philosophical implications of the society he’s functioning within while delivering a thrilling, chase-filled detective story with a surprising finale. VERDICT: 8/10 Highly enjoyable technothriller.
Wait for it. It gets even better. Over at The Guardian—yeah, that Guardian, one of the biggest newspapers in the UK—Eric Brown writes:
Amortals is Chandler by way of Blade Runner, with the pace of an express train. Great fun.
As a writer, I try not to think too much about reviews, but I read them all. Good or bad, I do my best not to take them to heart but to examine them with a cold eye to see what I can learn about my work from the reactions it engenders.
But this one just made my day. If I could have written my own review of Amortals, I would have wanted to come up with that exact line. Raymond Chandler is one of my favorite writers, and Blade Runner is one of my favorite films, and to have my work compared to either is an honor. The fact that this comes from my first review in a major paper—the second largest English-language newspaper on the web, behind only The New York Times—makes it that much sweeter.
Over at Booklife, Jeremy L. C. Jones asked a bunch of contributors to The Bones about what it means to roll the dice and take some risks with your writing. He posted my answers (along with a terribly kind introduction) today. It may be the only time you hear writing being compared with downhill skiing today.
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