The Bodhisattva

*opens window and watches the kids playing and and tells Ceresei to quit teasing Jamie*

Another look at what occurred at the ‘bookspot this week

-Exclusives:

This is a sweet one. The first chapter to a forthcoming Ian R. MacLeod book? MacLeod is a multiple World Fantasy Award winner, a Sidewise Winner and a Locus Award Winner  and has garnered multiple nominations for the Nebula and Hugo and is one of the great combo writers: dude is devastating either in novel format or short fiction. We have the first look at his Song of Time coming later this year from PS Publishing. I think I even got to touch an email written by Nick Gevers as well and try to channel that ki into a busy review month for me coming up.

Got at least a couple more coming this week - some hot shit.

-Interviews:

This week i interviewed novelist Gregory Frost. Frost has been a finalist for just about every major award our little club has to offer: The Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree, Sturgeon - and probably should have won one for Shadowbridge (but I also think Matthew Hughes was robbed for the lack of recognition of Spiral Labyrinth). You can check out my interview here.

Upcoming, I know one of our contributors is working on an interview with another writer and I’m working on my next one with novelist James Blaylock that Brian is assisting with on a couple questions.

-Articles:

Clare was nice enough to do a write-up for us on her trip to the Explorers Club in Manhattan. Here, this cabal plans to take over the world utilizing robotechnology and and in their spare time presented the latest releases by Naomi Novik and Charles Ardai (both allegedly more famous than me). Some nice pictures to go along with it, and totally randomly I present:

I really love some of the art on display in the article and demand Damon to contact him for Helio6.

-Reviews:

- Val reviews the first book in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn cycle. When I read it I enjoyed it as well, I think some of the mechanics of what would be considered the magic element is a bit clunky and awkward in description but beyond that I really enjoyed it and thought it represented a rather large leap from Elantris. I say  this because I’m going to be marianoriveraing this series, and reviewing the third book later this year, so I’m interested in seeing how it goes.

- We have a couple of comic reviews. We plan to have a foothold in the comic market by next year and I’ll probably be kicking that door down like some combo of Stover’s Caine and Huston’s Joe Pitt. For now we are random but Dragonwomant reviews a part of one of my favorite SF stories going on right now, Richard Starking’s Elephantmen with a review of Elephantmen: War Toys.

“When an elephantman is the war toy, you can expect a compelling, hard-hitting story, just keep in mind, all toys are not fun.”

She also takes a look at the 5th issue of Dan Dare.

“Dan Dare” dares to be- dull.”

- Ms. Starling drops the brief gist on some romance with a review of Mourning Meadow by Larion Willis.

“Kari meets Steven amidst ghosts, saucy siblings, and a secret stalker but that doesn’t stop her from doing her best to keep him alive. Whether he feels the same way is still to be determined- by her sister, her sister’s new husband, a policeman named Canterbury, and an old family ghost. - Publisher- Swimming Kangaroo Books.”

We are experiencing a Summer slow-down I think, but I can tell you the next month or so will see a lot of stuff from me as I try to get us on some semblance of a relevant schedule. That means me doing a lot of reviewing of ‘heavy hitting’ stuff coming up after our redesign.

-Bookspot Family:

We added another member to the ‘bookspot hosted blog ring with Vast and Cool and Unsympathetic. Welcome! Anybody looking to blog about anything and want us to host it let us know. According to Damon:

“We can move old blogs if you have a current blog, or if you are going to blog on a semi consistent to consistent basis let me know and we can set you up with a new blog. The only thing we ask is to be able to drop a small google ad to offset hosting. Most of the blogs you can take a look at its not a big deal or in the way.”

Let me add you can keep you silly Amazon affiliation that you have yet to receive a check for and that this feature should be optimized with our site redesign and some cool features we plan on running utilizing them.  If you know anything about our operation you know we make moves, we are never stagnant with what we do or try and we aren’t ever finished.

Over at Damon’s blog he posts about meeting author David Keck while attending a SFABC meeting.

-Forthcoming:

We are hopefully still on the trail of redesign, though we are currently working on a manhunt.

-Special Note:

Dave  - lets get a move on dude. We have potential paper riding on this.