Aces Over England

September 2, 2017 at 1:05 pm

Aces! Jokers! Once more into the breach… or close the wall up with our English dead.

Which is another way of saying that I’ve just finished editing and assembling our latest Wild Cards book, KNAVES OVER QUEENS, the twenty-seventh volume in the overall series (assuming the current projected publication schedule remains unchanged, which might not be the case), and our first in-depth visit to the British Isles.

Past Wild Cards books have taken our characters all over the world (once literally so, on the world tour that formed the spine of volume four, ACES ABROAD), and we’ve called a few times in England and Ireland for a scene or maybe a story, but we’ve never lingered there long enough to see how the virus affected Great Britain and Ireland… until now. KNAVES OVER QUEENS is, in a sense, a bookend book for our very first volume, WILD CARDS. Both books begin in 1946, with the release of the wild card, and both carry the story through the decades up to the present… 1986 for WILD CARDS, and 2017 for KNAVES OVER QUEENS. In the former, the focus is on New York City and the US; in the new book, it’s on the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The lineup this time around:

KEVIN ANDREW MURPHY: “A Flint Lies in the Mud” and “But a Flint Holds Fire,”
PEADAR O GUILIN: “The Coming of the Crow,” “Cracks in the City,” and “Feeding on the Entrails,”
CAROLINE SPECTOR: “Needles and Pins,”
PAUL CORNELL: “Night Orders,”
CHARLES STROSS: “Police On My Back,”
MARKO KLOOS: “Probationary,”
PETER NEWMAN: “Twisted Logic,”
MELINDA M. SNODGRASS: “Ceremony of Innocence,”
EMMA NEWMAN: “How to Turn a Girl to Stone,”
MARK LAWRENCE: “The Visitor.”

If you’ve ever wondered about the backstories of Captain Flint and Double Helix, this is the book for you… but most of the stories will be given over to brand new characters rather than established ones. I can’t wait for you to meet them. By the time you put the book down, I think you’ll be wanting more. I know that I certainly do. And as you’ve undoubtedly noticed, we’ve recruited a bunch of terrific new writers to the consortium ranks as well. Expect great things.

I know, I know, I am hardly objective, but I think we have some great tales in KNAVES, and I’m very proud of this one. I’ll confess, I was a wee bit disappointed when Wild Cards didn’t even get a whiff of a nomination in the Hugo Awards for Best Series, considering that we’ve been doing some great work IMNSHO for thirty years now. Only one thing to do about that: try to do EVEN BETTER books in the future. I think we will…

KNAVES OVER QUEENS will be published by Tor in the US and Voyager in the UK. No publication dates yet, but you’ll know when I know. While you wait, keep your eyes peeled for MISSISSIPPI ROLL, LOW CHICAGO, and TEXAS HOLD’ EM, the next three volumes in the pipeline… and for more all new, all original Wild Cards stories on Tor.com. Oh, and check out the blog on the Wild Cards website at http://www.wildcardsworld.com/ — new content there every two weeks.

Current Mood: accomplished

Tags: tor, voyager, wild cards

Talking Jokers

August 30, 2017 at 4:37 pm

Our friends at Tor have uploaded another Wild Cards video, spliced together from the interviews they did last year at the Kansas City worldcon.

This time we’re talking about jokers.

Check it out… then go read some Wild Cards books!

(Speaking of which, I finished correcting the page proofs for MISSISSIPPI ROLL this afternoon, so our twenty-fourth volume is rolling ahead towards its December pubdate).

Current Mood: pleased pleased

Tags: wild cards

Wild Carding

August 28, 2017 at 3:25 pm

Kevin Andrew Murphy takes the stage on the Wild Cards blog today, with a tribute to his favorite WC character (aside from his own), Mister Nobody.

Check it out at: http://www.wildcardsworld.com/

Lots of other fun content there as well.

And speaking of Wild Cards, we’re almost done with another new volume. I hope to be able to deliver it to our publishers within the week. More details when I do.

Current Mood: amused amused

Tags: wild cards

Wild Cards and Werewolves

July 21, 2017 at 12:37 pm

Another new post just up on the Wild Cards blog.

This time our blogger is David Anthony Durham, and his subjects are Spartacus… and werewolves.

Ahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

http://www.wildcardsworld.com/on-the-trials-and-tribulations-of-werewolves/

Current Mood: amused amused

Tags: werewolves, wild cards

Wild Cards Goodness

July 19, 2017 at 10:12 pm

Some cool new stuff out there for Wild Cards fans.

Over at Tor.com, the Wild Cards Reread continues with Katie Rask’s insightful look at the fourth volume of the original series, ACES ABROAD. Check it out and join the discussion at:

https://www.tor.com/2017/07/18/religion-revolution-and-80s-politics-wild-cards-iv-aces-abroad/

And there’s some new content on the Wild Cards website as well. A new blog post by Mary Anne Mohanraj about writing an intertwined story

http://www.wildcardsworld.com/how-do-you-tell-an-interlinked-story/

and some great art uploads of work by some of our favorite artists: John Picacio, Marc Simonetti, and Michael Komarck.

((Meanwhile, development continues on the Wild Cards television series. I could tell you all about that as well, but then I’d have to kill you. Oh, yes, and the latest Wild Cards mosaic novel is nearing completion as well. Seven of ten stories in, and the last three expected soon)).

Current Mood: pleased pleased

Tags: editing, television, wild cards

Double Helix Returns

July 5, 2017 at 4:08 am

Double Helix is back, and Tor.com has got him… her… them.

Noel Matthews, our favorite gender-bending sex-switching ace magician, teleporting assassin, and snide supercilious sonofabitch, the guy/ gal that Wild Cards fans love to hate or hate to love, returns in solo action in Melinda Snodgrass’s “When the Devil Drives.” As usual, John Picacio has contributed another amazing cover illustration.

You can ride with the devil, for FREE, at http://www.tor.com/2017/07/05/when-the-devil-drives/

For those of you who haven’t tried Wild Cards yet, “free” is a good way to have a taste. Melinda’s story is the latest on Tor.com, but by no means the only one. Search, and ye shall find stories by Cherie Priest, Daniel Abraham, Carrie Vaughn, Walter Jon Williams, Paul Cornell, Stephen Leigh, and David D. Levine as well. Have a read… and don’t forget to comment (there, not here).

Current Mood: cold cold

Tags: tor.com, wild cards

Some Odds, Some Ends

June 23, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Had a great visit with Walter Jon Williams and his Toolbox students up in Angel Fire. It’s a lovely drive from Santa Fe, and it was nice to meet (however briefly) the fledgling writers. How many of them will actually go on to make it, well, one can never be sure of that, but I shared what wisdom I could from my years in the field, and showed them a few of my scars as well. They have some good teachers in Nancy Kress and Walter Jon. As I mentioned to the class, I workshopped with WJW for years, and he was right almost 75% of the time. 🙂

Back at the homestead, we’re facing a certain amount of disruption. Santa Fe is a lovely town and one of its charms is its pueblo style architecture… but be warned, those damned flat roofs will LEAK, don’t let anyone tell you any different. My office roof has been leaking off and on for years, and has been patched and repaired at least a dozen times since I’ve been here… to the point that my contractor finally threw up his hands and said he couldn’t keep putting patches on the patches on the patches. I need a whole new roof. And since that process requires me to vacate the premises, I figured this is the perfect opportunity to do some of the renovations I’ve been planning (and putting off) for the better part of the decade. So, bottom line, I’m moving to new workspace, while the old workspace gets a new roof and some cool additions. But I should be settled in at the new place within a week or so.

Also have the big trip coming up. I cut way way way back to my travel this year, to give myself more time to work. Back in April/May I did Stokercon on the Queen Mary and the benefit for Clarion, but come August I’ll be off again, first to NYC for a wedding and the usual round of publisher and agent meetings, then off to Finland for worldcon, then on to Russia for a con in St. Petersberg. I have been to Finland twice before, but this will be my first time in Russia… though I know I have a lot of Russian fans from the emails I receive. It will be nice to meet them. Two trips for all of 2017 is the least amount of travel I’ve done in twenty years.

LOTS of things going on with television and film. Season 7 of GAME OF THRONES will be here on July 16 (and we’re doing a season 6 marathon at the JCC), the five successor shows are moving forward at various rates of speed, and we’re talking with UCP about not one, not two, but three possible Wild Cards series. And there are a couple other TV projects that I can’t tell you about… how much of this will come to pass, nobody knows. Ah, the joys of development…

Oh, and football will be starting soon. Don’t ask me to explain what the Jets are doing. I don’t understand it either. I foresee a very painful season for fans of Gang Green. But hey, what’s different about that?

Tags: television and film, the writing life, wild cards, workshops

Something Old, Something New…

June 12, 2017 at 12:49 pm

… or rather, the old becomes new again tomorrow, when Tor releases the latest volume in their series of Wild Cards reissues: DEAD MAN’S HAND, the seventh book in the original sequence.

I’ve had some readers complain about my name being featured on the covers of the Wild Cards books because I “didn’t write them.” That’s a bullshit complaint, IMSHO. No, I am not the sole author of the Wild Cards stories, I am only one of… ah, lemme see, I believe it was forty-one writers at last count.

I am, however, the editor of every single one of the twenty-three volumes published to date, and the new ones in the pipeline as well… the guy who recruits all those writers, determines the ‘overplots’ of the triads, solicits proposals, accepts and rejects, and gives extensive notes on rewrites. (And there’s a LOT of rewriting in Wild Cards, to make all the bits fit together so the whole will be more than the sum of its parts). It’s a lot more work than any other sort of anthology, believe me… though I love it, so I don’t complain… too much. I earn those credits, and to suggest that my name is just being ‘slapped on’ the covers while someone else does the work is as ignorant as it is offensive.

Besides which, I DO write for Wild Cards, in addition to editing the series. More so in the early days, admittedly, before Westeros and Ice & Fire arose to eat up almost all of my writing time. Truth be told, I’d love nothing better than to write some more Wild Cards stories. I have some old favorite characters I’d love to revisit (Popinjay, the Turtle), and some newer characters that I’ve hardly written about at all (Lohengrin, Hoodoo Mama)… and I have stories to tell. But all that will need to wait until I’ve finished WINDS OF WINTER, and maybe DREAM OF SPRING as well.

Which brings me back to DEAD MAN’S HAND.

If you’re one of those who hasn’t tried Wild Cards because there’s not enough of my own writing in it, well, here’s your chance to hop in. Because this volume has LOTS of my own writing. The typical Wild Cards mosaic novel features work by half a dozen or more writers and as many characters, but on this outing there were only two of us. DEAD MAN’S HAND is a sort of noir mystery novel, as two very different detectives attempt to unravel a grotesque murder in Jokertown. The stars are Yeoman, the ace of spades vigilante, written by John Jos. Miller… and my very own Popinjay, Jay Ackroyd, a rumpled private eye and projecting teleport.

The Tor reissue has a great new cover from Michael Komarck as well.

DEAD MAN’S HAND goes on sale tomorrow, at your favorite local bookstore and/or online retailer.

Current Mood: cheerful

Tags: tor, wild cards

Aces, Jokers, Artists

June 8, 2017 at 1:15 pm

The Wild Cards reread continues over at Tor.com, with an insightful new post by Katie Rask about the many various styles of art in JOKERS WILD, and the meanings behind all of it.

Join the discussion at:
http://www.tor.com/2017/06/07/heres-what-art-tells-us-about-the-world-of-the-wild-cards/