Win a Space in our Fallout Shelter!

Huitzilopochtli: one of the many Aztec
gods that will rule over us in the future.

Solaris has made an early announcement regarding its 2013 publishing schedule.

"Obviously, it's been difficult, planning the coming years' output, given the inevitable destruction of human society, and much of the world's population, on December 21st this year," says Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Oliver, "but we believe there will be a rich vein of opportunity in the form of survival advice pamphlets, English-Nahuatl phrasebooks for communicating with our new Aztec overlords, and guidance on how to combat supernatural Ocelotl shapeshifters."

According to best current understanding, the world will be destroyed four days before Christmas this year by fire, or flood, or jaguars falling from the sky.

Solaris has tested the water already this year with James Lovegrove's Age of Aztec, an unflinching fictionalised account of the coming destruction, which they hope will prove popular in the months leading up to the end.

Work is nearly complete on the Rebellion
Apocalypse Shelter

"A lot of our capital this year has been sunk into our Apocalypse Shelter," says Oliver. The shelter, a reinforced concrete bunker under Rebellion Publishing's Oxford headquarters, is expected to be complete by summer this year and will support up to 200 staff and immediate family for up to a year. It includes broadcasting equipment and a small printing press, to allow Solaris to continue publishing as the hordes of horrific monsters wreak havoc on the surface world.

There's even some space for some of the imprint's lucky readers, according to the Editor-in-Chief. The first three readers to email abaddonsolaris@rebellion.co.uk with the answer to the following question will be sent copies of Age of Aztec and invited to shelter from the inevitable apocalypse in luxury and style:

Q. What is the name of the conquistador who overthrew Moctezuma and brought down the Aztecs?

Jason Kingsley:
"Our primary duty is the
health and safety of our personnel."

Jason Kingsley, CEO of Rebellion, said, "Part of senior management’s primary duty is the health and safety of its personnel. It is to this end that a thorough analysis of risk and outcome has been undertaken and giving due attention to the legislation, steps have been put in place to build a robust and attractive apocalypse/fallout shelter underneath the Oxford headquarters.

"We are very excited about the morale boost that surviving the apocalypse will give to our work-force, and anticipate only a modest reduction in output caused by the rapid relocation of people and computers to the bunker via the sheltered and hardened stairway.

"In the event of the apocalypse, an announcement will be read out over the tannoy system. A role call will then be taken by your allocated and trained member of staff, who will be wearing a high vis jacket with the logo ‘Happy to Help’ stencilled on the reverse. Please follow instructions briskly but do not run. Those not selected will be asked to move quietly outside and await further instructions."

Sympathy for the Devil: The Competition

Here's a message from Justin Gustainis, about the competition you can enter after reading Sympathy for the Devil. It's a tricky one!

In this context, “Easter Egg” refers to a popular culture reference made in passing. The reference can’t be explicit, or it’s not an Easter egg.

Here’s the difference: there’s a reference in the book to Jill Kismet (used by permission of her creator, Lilith Saintcrow). Since Jill is mentioned explicitly by name, it’s not an Easter egg. On the other hand, a character says he took some classes at UVA with “that chick Clara something, the one who joined the FBI and later shot that killer Buffalo Billy.” That’s an Easter egg, because it indirectly (if not very subtly) references Clarice Starling from Silence of the Lambs.

There are at least thirty Easter eggs within the pages of Sympathy for the Devil. The reader who identifies the most wins First Place in the contest; second most Easter eggs takes second place, ditto for third.

The first place winner (as determined by me) wins a $50 Amazon gift card and I will name a character after him/her in the next Morris & Chastain novel. Second place is a $25 gift card and Third Place gets a $10 Amazon gift card.

Keep your listings brief – something like this: “The woman named Clara who shot Buffalo Billy (p. 98) is a reference to Clarice Starling.”

One entry per email address, and you don’t get to amend your entry once you’ve sent it in. Send your entry – in the body of your email, not as an attachment – to justingustainis@yahoo.com. Entries will be acknowledged. In the event of a tie for First, Second or Third Place, duplicate prizes will be awarded.

Deadline is midnight (Eastern US time) on Halloween (October 31, 2011). Winners will be announced by December 1st.

-Justin Gustainis

-

Conrad Williams on Loss of Sep and COMPETITION!

Wotcher all,

Mr. Conrad Williams, whose remarkable book Loss of Separation is even now being printed, has been on his blog, blogging.

Check it out here.

Scroll back a bit - assuming you don't already regularly read, which I daresay you do - to see posts on draft revisions, chapter breakdowns and his thoughts about the book and the life of a writer, along with little sample snippets from the book, other short bits of prose (including a deeply unsettling description of some kind of air disaster), and links to interviews about his work.

And then read his thrilling announcement of an impending competition, to win a signed copy of Loss and a signed picture of Flight Z. Full details of the comp will go up on release date, the 3rd March.

While you're at it, read Jon Oliver's interview with Conrad here on the Solaris blog.

Whee!

David

Comp of Kings: Winners!

WINNERS!

Yes! I am here to proudly announce the winners of the Comp of Kings competition.

Ian deliberated at some length over the list, and chose his winners based purely on personal whimsy. Which is fair.

The winners are:

Lou Morgan, with the Arthurian Fisher King;
and Den Patrick, with Labyrinth's the Goblin King.

If the pair of you could get in touch with me and let me know your preference (either Rowena Cory Daniells' King Rolen's Kin series or Paul Kearney's Monarchies of God series) - if you both decide you want the same one, we'll probably go with first come, first served - we'll get those prizes out presently.

Thanks all for taking part. It's been a giggle.

David

Comp of Kings final line-up

Right, here's the final list of entries for the Comp of Kings:

Weirdmage – King Shrewd (Robin Hobb’s Assassin Trilogy)
Michele – King Aragorn (J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy)
Jonathan D. Beer – King Robert Baratheon (George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire Series)
Gris – The Pirate King (Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance)
Jared – The King in Yellow (Robert Chambers’ The King in Yellow Stories)
Jared – King Louie (Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book)
Adam Christopher – The King in Yellow (Robert Chambers’ The King in Yellow Stories)
Stephen – The King (Joe R. Lansdale’s Bubba Ho-Tep)
Mieneke – King Zachary Hillander (Kristen Britain's Green Rider)
Mieneke – Drustan Mab Necthana (Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legeacy)
Dreamsandspeculation – King Aragorn (J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy)
Leland – King Arthur (Arthurian myth)
Steven Poore – Smaug (the real King Under the Mountain) (J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit)
ChrisW – Al'Lan Mandragoran the uncrowned King of Malkier (Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time)
editormum75 – Emperor Gregor (Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan Series)
Harry Markov – Hades, king of the underworld (Greek myth)
Amanda Rutter – The Metal King Slime (DragonQuest VIII)
Beachy Books – King Rollo (David McKee’s King Rollo Series)
Lou Morgan – The Fisher King (Arthurian myth)
Bloduedd83 – Rand al’Thor (Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time Series)
Prince Jvstin – Avtokrator Krispos (Harry Turtledove’s The Tale of Krispos)
Den Patrick – The Goblin King (Labyrinth)
Eithin – Auberon Quin (G. K. Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill)
Pablo Cheesecake – King Ralph (King Ralph)
Hadean – King Jezal the First (Joe Abercrombie's The First Law)
Hadean – The Crimson King (Stephen King’s Dark Tower)

And there are just too many excellent answers for me to pick.

Fortunately, we have author and editor Ian Whates here for the podcast, so we might just ask him to be a special guest judge.

Winners announced this afternoon.

Cheers,

David

The Comp of Kings!

Hi all,

Well, we're in a charitable mood. Or else there's something weird in the water here. Either way, we're proud to announce our latest competition, the Comp of Kings.

In honour of the releases of Paul Kearney's The Monarchies of God omnibuses (Hawkwood and the Kings, out now, and Century of the Soldier, due out next month) and Rowena Cory Daniells' The Chronicles of King Rolen's Kin trilogy (The King's Bastard and The Uncrowned King, out now, and The Usurper, due out next month), we're holding an all-kings-themed competition.

(by way of illustration, here are King Tutankhamen, The Lich King, Alison King, Stephen King, The Burger King, Martin Luther King, Jr., King Henry VIII, a King Charles Spaniel, King, and the King:)

"Very nice," I hear you cry, appreciatively, "But what exactly is this competition, David? What do we stand to win?"

I'm glad you asked. The two winners will each win a complete set of one of our current monarch-related series; one will receive both The Monarchies of God omnibi (here are those gorgeous Pye Parr/Andrew Evans covers again for you):

...and the other will win all three The Chronicles of King Rolen's Kin books, complete with book-plates signed by Rowena herself! (here are those kick-ass Clint Langley covers again):

"All very well, David," you persist, "But what do I have to do?"

Nothing simpler. Just jump on here, or on our Twitter at @SolarisBooks, and tell us who your favourite fictional king is and why. We'll probably weigh in with our own favourites, purely for the sake of the debate, although, naturally, we're excluded from the competition.

We'll leave the competition open for a couple of days; probably decide on a winner next Monday or something.

Commence!

David

Shine update and competition!

Hi all,

We've already blogged about Jetse de Vries' upcoming Shine anthology, and about the fantastic Daybreak Magazine blog in support of the book, which will publish an optimistic short story every two weeks until the book's release next year.

So far, the magazine has published "The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram" by Jeff Soesbe on October 16th, and "Horrorhouse" by David D. Levine on October 30th; we're waiting with bated breath for this weekend's third instalment.

In case you missed it, the @Outshine project on Twitter is publishing 140-letter prose poems on the subject of the future (along with quotations, soundbytes, and similar stuff for those who are interested); you can submit your poem by emailing shineanthology@gmail.com, or go here for submission guidelines.

Finally, Jetse informs us that he will be running a competition on the Shine website, starting on November 20th this year. He will be posting an excerpt from each of the sixteen stories in the anthology and challenging readers to guess which of four alternative endings is the correct one, and who wrote which excerpt. So jump on there and take a look, next Friday.

Cheers and stay hopeful,

David