. . . and much sooner than expected.

Our good friends at Bantam Spectra have just informed me and my partner-in-crime Gardner Dozois that they have moved up the publication date of our next mammoth crossgenre anthology ROGUES. . . to June 17.  Yes, this year.   Three months from now, in other words.

If you enjoyed WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN, we think you'll love ROGUES.  It may be our strongest anthology yet.   We have some amazing writers and some incredible stories in this one.  The table of contents, as previously announced:

George R.R. Martin “Everybody Loves a Rogue” (Introduction)
Joe Abercrombie “Tough Times All Over”
Gillian Flynn “What Do You Do?”
Matthew Hughes “The Inn of the Seven Blessings”
Joe R. Lansdale “Bent Twig”
Michael Swanwick “Tawny Petticoats”
David Ball “Provenance”
Carrie Vaughn “The Roaring Twenties”
Scott Lynch “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane”
Bradley Denton “Bad Brass”
Cherie Priest “Heavy Metal”
Daniel Abraham “The Meaning of Love”
Paul Cornell “A Better Way to Die”
Steven Saylor “Ill Seen in Tyre”
Garth Nix “A Cargo of Ivories”
Walter Jon Williams “Diamonds From Tequila”
Phyllis Eisenstein “The Caravan to Nowhere”
Lisa Tuttle “The Curious Affair of the Dead Wives”
Neil Gaiman “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back”
Connie Willis “Now Showing”
Patrick Rothfuss “The Lightning Tree”

Twenty stories not enough for you?

Okay, okay, we've decided to add a twenty-first, for all you fans of fake history.

"The Princess and the Queen," Archmaester Gyldayn's somewhat abbreviated account of the Dance of the Dragons, got a great response from all the folks who read it in DANGEROUS WOMEN, so we've dipped back into the archmaester's somewhat disorganized piles of scrolls and crumbling manuscripts, and brought forth another piece of his unpublished history.  "The Rogue Prince, or, the King's Brother," will tell the story of the years leading up to the calamitious events of "The Princess and the Queen" during the reign of King Viserys I Targaryen, with particular attention to the role played by the king's brother, Prince Daemon, a rogue if there ever was one.   I hope you'll enjoy it as much as you did "The Princess and the Queen."

(And yes, sadly, "The Rogue Prince" is an abridged account as well.  For the full version, you will all need to wait some years, until we publish the complete history of House Targaryen in the GRRMarillion… which, by the way, I've decided I am going to call FIRE AND BLOOD, since the GRRMarillion joke has grown somewhat stale by now).

 We're got something for everyone in ROGUES — SF, mystery, historical fiction, epic fantasy, sword and sorcery, comedy, tragedy, crime stories, mainstream. And rogues, cads, scalawags, con men, thieves, and scoundrels of all descriptions. If you love Harry Flashman and Cugel the Clever, as I do, this is the book for you.

Oh, and speaking of DANGEROUS WOMEN… it's now HUGO NOMINATION time, and we have lots of great stories in both DW and OLD MARS that are eligible, so I hope you'll remember some of them when filling out your ballots.

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Another anthology done, another monkey off my back.

The last revision just came in on OLD VENUS, the latest (and last, for a time) original anthology that Gardner Dozois and I have been putting together.  Gardner will be delivering the final manuscript… well, e-manuscript… to our editors at Bantam Spectra later today.

Sixteen stories set on Venus.  Not, however, the real life Venus, with its rains of sulfuric acid and surface temperatures that would roast a man in the blink of an eye,  but the old watery pulp Venus of our lost youth, with its swamps, dinosaurs, and web-footed Venusians… Venerians… whatever.

The final lineup for this one will look like this:

INTRODUCTION, by Gardner Dozois
FROGHEADS, by Allen M. Steele
THE DROWNED CELESTRIAL, by Lavie Tidhar
PLANET OF FEAR, by Paul McAuley
GREEVES AND THE EVENING STAR, by Matthew Hughes
A PLANET CALLED DESIRE, by Gwyneth Jones
LIVING HELL, by Joe Haldeman
BONES OF AIR, BONES OF STONE, by Stephen Leigh
RUINS, by Eleanor Arnason
THE TUMBLEDOWNS OF CLEOPATRA ABYSS, by David Brin
BY FROGSLED AND LIZARDBACK TO OUTCAST VENUSIAN LEPERS, by Garth Nix
THE SUNSET OF TIME, by Michael Cassutt
PALE BLUE MEMORIES, by Tobias S. Buckell
THE HEART'S FILTHY LESSON, by Elizabeth Bear
THE WIZARD OF THE TREES, by Joe R. Lansdale
THE GODSTONE OF VENUS, by Mike Resnick
BOTANICA VENERIS: THIRTEEN PAPERCUTS BY IDA COUNTESS RATHANGAN, by Ian McDonald

This one is even more fun than our forthcoming OLD MARS, I think… and there's one story in there that's so bloody good that if it doesn't win the Hugo and Nebula both, I'll count it as a major injustice.  Which one?  Ah, I will leave you guys to figure that out.  But first you'll need to read the book.  Look for it along about a year after OLD MARS.

Gardner and I wish to categorically deny the rumor that we are now working on OLD URANUS.

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