Marc Aplin's Blog, page 242

After years of making us wait, 2011 rolled into town and so did Mr. Martin’s long awaited book, number five in a planned seven book series. It is safe to say that many of you were patiently waiting with dread as to whether it would be more of the same crawling to useless strings in […]

Well, earlier this week we revealed the cover redesigns of Robin Hobb’s original Farseer series. If that wasn’t enough excitement for one week, her American Publishers (Del Ray books) have just released the cover for Fool’s Assassin! Pretty cool and if that is indeed Fitz on the cover (we presume it is) then he looks […]

I find the post apocalyptic genre simultaneously interesting and frustrating. I think that it has a lot of interesting potential to comment on social trends and social experimentation, but I find that it is frequently bogged down by the same story arcs over and over again. Someone who once was an elite is cast down, […]

So, yesterday we published a piece on Fantasy-Faction highlighting the observations made by three of British fantasy’s female authors suggesting that UK Booksellers are selling them and their contemporaries short. A number of comments and tweets came flooding in, and Forum Members even started a topic; the overwhelming feeling was that ‘yes, there is a […]

I’ve been saying for years that Sam Sykes’s books need some awesome covers. Don’t get me wrong, Sam’s covers for his original series weren’t ‘terrible’, but I did feel that his work deserved so much more. For those who have read Sam’s work you will know that there is something very unique about his voice, […]

The Longlists for the David Gemmell Awards has been revealed and voting has opened!!! For those unfamiliar with how The David Gemmell Awards work, the first stage (that has resulted in this longlist) is where publishers nominate titles they think should be considered for the three award categories: best book, best debut and best cover. […]

My Twitter stream regularly expresses a variety of opinion on the treatment of women, or of people of colour or unconventional sexuality, in genre fiction. This is, I presume to imagine, a reflection of the treatment of women, or of people of colour or unconventional sexuality in the wider world. It’s also a consequence of […]

Just picked this up from Myke Cole: Ginjer Buchanan, editor-in-chief of Ace and Roc Books, is set to retire in March 2014, exactly 30 years after she was hired by The Berkley Publishing Group, now a division of Penguin Random House. For those unfamiliar with the role of an ‘editor-in-chief’, in Ginjer’s own words “there has […]

There has been a recent highlighting of the fact by three well-known female authors that UK Booksellers are selling them and their contemporaries short. My aim today is to take the numerous articles they’ve written and interviews they’ve been involved in and present to our readership, in a single post, along with the observations they have made. […]

I always find it weird… reading a book by someone I’ve met. I first met Den Patrick in 2012 at Fantasy-Faction’s Q & A Session with Peter V. Brett, Myke Cole and Joe Abercrombie. At that point in time, Den Patrick was the ‘events organiser’ at the bookshop (Blackwells) that was hosting the event and […]