The Immortals of Meluha and Redemption in Indigo

Congratulations to the winner of last week’s giveaway – Mihai, the last commenter on the post!

This week’s giveaway is Redemption in Indigo (paperback)

plus another Jo Fletcher Books title:

The Immortals of Meluha, by Amish (paperback)

1900 BC: the once-proud Suryavanshi rulers of the Meluha Empire are in dire peril. The empire’s primary river, the Saraswathi, is slowly drying up. There are devastating terrorist attacks from the east, the land of the Chandravanshis – and to make matters worse, the Chandravanshis appear to have allied with the Nagas, an ostracised race of deformed humans with astonishing martial skills.

The only hope for the Suryavanshis is an ancient prophecy: when evil reaches epic proportions and all seems lost, a hero will emerge . . .

To enter the competition, comment on this post and tell us the name of any Jo Fletcher Books title or Quercus non-SF title that has won an award or been nominated/shortlisted (to make it a bit more of a challenge, you may not mention Redemption in Indigo or The City’s Son!). If you wish, add your twitter name, tumblr or blog url. Next Wednesday night (around 8pm GMT-4), I’ll randomly choose a winner from the comments. I’ll announce the name in the next Thursday Giveaway post.

The City’s Son and Redemption in Indigo

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UPDATE. The Kitschies were announced today (18 Jan 2013), and both Redemption in Indigo and The City’s Son have been nominated in the best debut novel category! Congrats to all the nominees, and thanks to the members of the jury!

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This week’s giveaway will be Redemption in Indigo (paperback)

plus another Jo Fletcher book:

The City’s Son, by Tom Pollock (hardback)

Expelled from school, betrayed by her best friend and virtually ignored by her dad, who’s never recovered from the death of her mum, Beth Bradley retreats to the sanctuary of the streets, looking for a new home. What she finds is Filius Viae, the ragged and cocky crown prince of London, who opens her eyes to the place she’s never truly seen.

But the hidden London is on the brink of destruction. Reach, the King of the Cranes, is a malign god of demolition, and he wants Filius dead. In the absence of the Lady of the Streets, Filius’ goddess mother, Beth rouses Filius to raise an alleyway army, to reclaim London’s skyscraper throne for the mother he’s never known. Beth has almost forgotten her old life – until her best friend and her father come searching for her, and she must choose between the streets and the life she left behind.

You have a week to comment on this post. Tell me which Jo Fletcher Books or non-SF Quercus titles you’re looking forward to reading in 2013. If you wish, add your twitter name, tumblr or blog url. Next Wednesday night (around 8pm GMT-4), I’ll choose a winner from the comments. I’ll announce the name next Thursday when I post about the new giveaway.

Have fun!

Book Giveaways Starting Tomorrow

Jo Fletcher Books and some of their authors are holding book giveaway competitions. Some are coming soon, most are happening right now. To find out more, follow the blogs and twitter feeds of:

Naomi Foyle (@naomifoyle)

Lynda Hilburn (@LyndaHilburn)

Snorri Kristjansson (@SnorriKristjans)

Stephanie Saulter (@scriptopus)

Mazarkis Williams (@mazarkis_w)

(I may have missed an author or two, but as long as you follow @JoFletcherBooks you should be able to catch all the competitions ongoing.)

Nicola Budd of Jo Fletcher Books has kindly provided each of us with at least four titles to give away, one per week. We select the winners and pass on their names and addresses and she will ship out the books from London to wherever. When I suggested to Nicola that this might be a good thing to link up to the 31 January launch date for The Best of All Possible Worlds, she very generously arranged for me to have an additional five copies of both of my own books. That’s five paperback copies of Redemption in Indigo and five hardback copies of The Best of All Possible Worlds also being given away over the next five weeks!

To enter the competition, all you have to do is comment on the book giveaway post which will go up each Thursday, starting tomorrow. I usually have comments disabled on my posts so I don’t end up Wasting Time Online, but comments will be enabled for the competition. I will post links to my the giveaways post on twitter and Facebook, but only comments on my blog will count as competition entries. I’ll select the winner with the assistance of an online random number generator (quick, easy and a lot safer than darts). I will contact the winner via comment reply, twitter, Facebook, tumblr or at their own blog, so do make sure that at least one of those methods is workable and made known to me, because if you win and I can’t reach you within a week, I will choose another winner.

See you tomorrow. It’s going to be lots of fun!

A New Arrival

If you follow my twitter, you’ll know that a lot is happening very soon. For example, the UK edition of The Best of All Possible Worlds will be out 31 January, and I will be running a competition giving away copies of that book, Redemption in Indigo, and other Jo Fletcher Books titles. But I’m going to talk about that later this week, not today. Today concerns a new arrival to my bookcase:

That lovely etched crystal piece is the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. I’ve crowded it together with the other bookcase dwellers for the photo. On the left we have the Frank Collymore Award (The Best of All Possible Worlds), the Aslan (also known as the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award) in the foreground, the Crawford Award plaque in the background and my first ever writing award, the Frank Collymore Award for Redemption in Indigo.

And just because, here is another photo of the Parallax looking pretty in front of my fav decorative blue bottles:

Huge thanks to the Carl Brandon Society!

The Carl Brandon Society Awards

The first time I appeared on the Carl Brandon Society website, it proved to be the catalyst that led to the publication of Redemption in Indigo. Now Redemption in Indigo has won the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award!

The winners of the 2010 Carl Brandon Society awards are Karen Lord, who received the Carl Brandon Parallax Award for her novel Redemption in Indigo, and Nnedi Okorafor, who received the Carl Brandon Kindred Award for her novel Who Fears Death.

Honors:

• N.K. Jemisin for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
• Anil Menon for The Beast with Nine Billion Feet
• Charles Yu for “Standard Loneliness Package”

Heartfelt thanks to the Carl Brandon Society and congratulations to Nnedi Okorafor!

 

Podcast updates

The Readers Summer Book Club interviewed me about Redemption in Indigo. I may have mentioned The Best of All Possible Worlds briefly, in passing. Click here for the podcast.

I was invited to the SF Squeecast where I chose to squee about the new novel by Curdella Forbes, Ghosts. How much did I like Ghosts? Click and listen to find out. Bonus entertainment: I run the Squeecast’s traditional silly questions gauntlet.

Updates

I’ve added this lovely review from Eric Brown of The Guardian (UK) to the Redemption in Indigo page.

I’ve also got some excellent news to share. Ron Eckel of Cooke International has sold German rights to The Best of All Possible Worlds to publishers Heyne Verlag on behalf of The Cooke Agency.

A podcast and a nomination

I forgot to blog (but remembered to tweet) about my time on the Hugo-nominated Coode Street Podcast about two episodes ago:

In the second of two podcasts recorded at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Gary and I are joined by Ellen Klages, Karen Lord, and Nalo Hopkinson for a discussion on writing, cover art and many other things.

Click here for a download link, or subscribe to the Coode Street Podcast on iTunes.

And speaking of Hugo nominations, here’s the full list from Locus Magazine, filled with excellent names and titles. Congratulations to all the nominees! I’m very happy to announce that I’ve been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Unfortunately I won’t be at Worldcon in Chicago when the winners are announced, but I will be in Toronto later in the year for the World Fantasy Convention.

Interview: The Strand, BBC World Service

Before I went to ICFA, I recorded this interview with the BBC World Service which aired yesterday and today. You can hear it repeated over the weekend, but if you’re sufficiently comfortable with a podcast or audio-online, go here:

Sarfraz talks to Caribbean writer Karen Lord about the inspiration for Redemption in Indigo.

 

The Writer and the Critic

I knew I forgot to mention something in my update. Last month, the podcast ‘The Writer and the Critic’ reviewed Redemption in Indigo (and also Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. Excellent stuff, go listen here). I was moved to comment at length and by email, and they continued the dialogue by quoting from my email in their next podcast (listen here; it’s early in the podcast). It was a thought-provoking discussion on writing in, near and outside of your own culture. In the original podcast review there are also some interesting points on what makes a heroine feminist, whether antagonists are necessary, and (one of my favourite topics) genre definitions and boundaries.

I don’t have comments enabled here because I’m too busy/lazy to moderate, but if you’re at all moved to express an opinion, please shout me on twitter (@Karen_Lord) or facebook. I’d love to hear from you.