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PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:32 am
by renderman
Having read it, I can assure you, you'll get your science in the science fiction.

Given the circumstances on planet 'hell' Jeff came up with some very intriguing solutions to thier problems. Really got me intrigued and thinking about how a society without electricity would evolve.

PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:56 am
by Novilio
Dutch wrote:Uhmm.. Does that mean your next book will be a fantasy/sci-fi crossover with dragons, wizards, orks and trolls wielding rayguns ?

/ducks and runs...

Dutch


Hey, isn't "Klingon" another word for a troll weilding a raygun?

I've tried fantasy a time or two and could never force myself to enjoy it. Harry Potter fails in my view because the magic they use at Hogwarts isn't a system. There are no consistent rules for how it can be applied, what its limitations are, etc. You can pull any damfool rabbit out of any damfool hat that you need to move the plot along. At its best, fictional magic is a kind of alternate (or supplemental) physics, with its own laws and limitations. Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away did a decent job with that, seeing magic as a kind of elemental force that you can use in various systematic ways and eventually exhaust, like a seam of coal.

Also, I just don't like swords. I really don't like swords. (I like guns.) So I guess from a fantasy standpoint I'm right out.

--73--

--Novilio

PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:58 am
by streaker69
Novilio wrote:
Also, I just don't like swords. I really don't like swords. (I like guns.) So I guess from a fantasy standpoint I'm right out.

--73--

--Novilio


So, you're not a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian Series with John Carter and all their sword fights?

PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 2:32 pm
by Novilio
streaker69 wrote:So, you're not a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian Series with John Carter and all their sword fights?

Not a big fan, but keep in mind, the last time I read them was in 1968, when I was 16. I was mostly trying to assuage the boredom of middle-class Chicago life under strict parents. Insisting that the story made sense was way down the list.

If you don't have guns and you can't outrun the bad guys, swords are better than nothing. If you don't have swords, a length of iron pipe is better than nothing. If you don't have a length of iron pipe, grab anything you can swing. Fighting is nothing if not a pragmatic science. The romance of swordplay is lost on me, though--ditto those very ballet-like martial arts exercises.

I wonder if anyone here is old enough (Thorn, at least) to recall that old Cheech Wizard cartoon in the back of National Lampoon, where some arrogant kung-fu master is trying to hunt down Cheech, waving his hands in all directions. In the last frame Cheech blows the kung fu guy's head off with a shotgun, saying, "Welcome ta da West, gooko!"

--73--

--Novilio

PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 5:24 pm
by Monitr7
Novilio wrote:Well, I was hoping to have as many original ideas in the story as possible, and as best I could tell, nobody had yet postulated that the Canadians would someday rule the Earth. I figured that if a couple of Canadian readers didn't object to that, I wouldn't lose the Canadian audience...


After reading the review on it, Jeff, I'm going to make sure to put it on my Christmas list. Not to mention that it'd be supporting one of our own. Congratulations!

PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 6:02 pm
by Novilio
I really appreciate the support, and you guys have been great with respect to my books generally.

The Cunning Blood took 18 months to write, a year to revise, and six years to sell. It's not easy telling a 143,000 word story. I hope to make at least a little noise with it--and I don't think the next one will be anything like that long.

Thanks again, and stay turned. Amazon hasn't listed it yet, but B&N Online is taking pre-orders.

--73--

--Novilio

PostPosted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 1:16 pm
by renderman
Quick update and thread bump..

Amazon has listed 'The Cunning Blood'

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0975915622/sr=1-1/qid=1138914555/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0342645-0685612?%5Fencoding=UTF8

So everyone who said they were going to buy it: GO BUY IT!!!

And it was a long fight to get it there...

PostPosted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 5:05 pm
by Novilio
Many thanks to Render for his unswerving support.

Getting Amazon to carry the book was a horrendous battle. Admittedly, the publisher is a startup, but they have other books from authors more famous than I am--like Harry Turtledove--and yet it took Amazon almost two months to recognize that the publisher had a distributor. It took almost six weeks just to get them to post the cover shot. It's only in the last couple of weeks that they posted shipping within 24 hours.

This all drove me nuts, in part because I'm also a publisher in my day job (I am not involved with ISFiC Press except as one of their authors) and neither of my own publishing startups ever had this much trouble getting books into the Amazon system.

Ah, well. Nobody said it would be easy. Thanks to all of you who have expressed interest.

--73--

--Novilio (Jeff Duntemann in meatspace)