Elizabeth Moon & SFFWorld

Over the course of the past near-decade at SFFWorld, particularly in my role as moderator/administrator of the SFFWorld forums, I’ve seen a fair number of published authors participate. It always pretty neat

James Barclay (author of the awesome Raven series of books, the first trilogy of which recently hit US shores thanks to Pyr is a regular participant and moderator, R.A. Salvatore was participating for a while, Jim Butcher dropped in once, Jeff VanderMeer stopped by during our Book Club discussion of Veniss Underground, and perhaps most recently Brandon Sanderson (posting as EUOL).

Heck, we host official author forums for R. Scott Bakker, Alison Croggon, Gary Wassner, Kevin Radthorne, and Matthew Stover

This all brings me to the latest top-name author to become a member of SFFWorld forums, Elizabeth Moon. Mrs. Moon has gone full gusto since joining, providing some great writing advice and discussing both her SF work and her Paksenarrion saga with our members, as well as Science Fiction in general.

She’s got a major release coming out early 2010, the next of her Paksenarrion saga, Oath of Fealty.


In addition, she’s written some popular and acclaimed Science Fiction:
Vatta’s War, Serrano Legacy and the Nebula Award winning Speed of the Dark



So, after reading some of her posts and interacting with Mrs. Moon, I'm very inclined to jump into some of the books she's written. I will likely start with Oath of Fealty, an ARC of which I received a few of weeks ago, and hope to get the omnibus of The Deed of Paksenarrion for Christmas, then I might jump into some of the Heris Serrano books.

Revenge of the Elves by Gary Wassner

Elves, Pandas, and Knights

I just posted my review of Gary Wassner’s latest GemQuest novel, The Revenge of the Elves. I continue to enjoy Gary’s writing and hope his audience increases with this book.

Neil Gaiman is a very cool guy and a great writer, which is why he gets to have Pandas on his lap.

Although this is probably old news by now to the folks who read this blog as well as those on my side bar, but La Gringa is back to regular blogging. This is a good thing, especially with all daily genre updates she’s been doing.

Thursday Knight is Rutgers Football Kickoff and I’ll be in attendance. I haven’t been to too many games since I graduated, so this should be fun. With the team starting out in the Top 20 (#16) and Ray Rice as a potential Heisman Trophy candidate, it looks to be a great year. I don't recall expectations ever being so high for Rutgers; it is a weird place to be for this team, though one they will hopefully be in over the next big handful of years. Just a few years ago I had trouble finding Rutgers merchandise in stores and malls. Now it is everywhere. Regardless of how well the team ever did, there was never any excuse for not being able to find RU merchandise. Especially in the malls closest to the school. Enough of that bitching for now, the forthcoming season looks like it will be a ball.

10 Unread Books Meme and a Review

I posted my review of The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. In the same vein as Maguire’s Wicked, though not quite as good.

Hornswaggled from the Hornswaggler himself… The 10 Unread books mem

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher – I really enjoyed Storm Front and with the TV show upcoming, I want to get into this soon.

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman – I feel I should read this before I get Fragile Things.

Son of the Witch by Gregory Maguire – I loved Wicked, got this about a year ago, but haven’t gotten to it yet.

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson – I never got around to reading Elantris, so I figured this might be a good starting point for the new author.

Innocents Aboard by Gene Wolfe – really, is there a defendable excuse for having an unread Gene Wolfe book on my shelf? I didn’t think there was.

The Hidden Stars by Madeline Howard – Ms. Howard has a forum at SFFWorld and I’ve been meaning to read this for a while, shame on me.

The Chosen by Ricardo Pinto – Gary Wassner spoke very highly of this book as have others.

Tales of the White Wolf edited by Karl Edward Wagner – a collection of short stories about Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone. With writers like Tad Williams and Neil Gaiman, I couldn’t pass this up in the used bookstore.

A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo – SFFWorld forum member Ouroboros goes on quite a bit about this book and series. I saw it in the local used bookshop and figured I’d give it a try.

The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock – this one has been on the shelf for at least a year, and I’ve heard wonderful things about Blaylock.

I’m sure most people who read my blog already know this, but it is worth mentioning: Clarkesworld Magazine launched yesterday. Good luck to Neil and Nick.

Last but not least, the latest installment of Greenhorn made me smile very broadly.

Sith!

Pretty, ain't it? Hits the stands in May. Here is the reluanched web page of the author:
http://mattstover.blogspot.com/

I’ve had this goddamned cold for almost two-and-a-half weeks, and to quote Indiana from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, “I’ve got the sniffles!” Started taking some Cold-Eeze, which is helping, but not as much as I’d like.

I knew, as is almost always the case when I compile any kind of list, there would be something I was bound to forget. Two additional books I’m looking forward to this year by E.E. Knight are two more books in his Tales of the Vampire Earth: Tale of the Thunderbolt (03/05) and Valentine Rising (12/05). I mentioned Mr. Knight and how I enjoyed his work in a post back in December.

Things are always evolving over at SFFWorld, we are hosting official author forums for the following FSF writers:
Alison Croggon a well respected writer already published to a good deal of acclaim in the UK and Australia, she makes her US debut with Naming: The First Book of Pellinor in May
Gary Wassner, author of the GemQuest trilogy, out next month from Windstorm
Kevin Radthorne author of the Road to Kotaishi
Richard Tuttle
Samit Basu, a respected author published by Penguin India
R. Scott Bakker, author of The Darkness that Comes Before and The Warrior-Prophet
Steve Savile, runner-up for the British Fantasy Award and was included in the 2003 L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future anthology

And oh yeah, how could I forget? We are also hosting the official forums of Matthew Stover, author of the novelization of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. Matt, thanks to Gabe, has also begun blogging again, at what amounts to his official Web site: http://mattstover.blogspot.com/ Matt is the author of, easily, two of my top 10, and maybe my top 5 favorite novels of all time: Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle.