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Calling US and Canadian Kindle users: for one day only, you can get the firs two volumes of the award-nominated Night’s Masque series from :
and , for just $1.99 each! Head over to the
store to pick up your copies of this enchanting series.
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was one of our best-selling and most critically-acclaimed titles of 2014. So now we’re beyond thrilled to share the cover for , the second book in The Malediction Trilogy.
Warm up your Feels Capacitors and prepare for awesomeness:
Wow, right? Steve Stone at Artist Partners has outdone himself.
Here’s the cover copy for Hidden Huntress, coming June 2nd, 2015 in the US/CAN and ebook, June 4th in the UK:
Sometimes, one must accomplish the impossible.
Beneath the mountain, the king’s reign of the one troll with the capacity to challenge him is imprisoned for treason. Cécile has escaped the darkness of Trollus, but she learns all too quickly that she is not beyond the reach of the king’s power. Or his manipulation.
Recovered from her injuries, she now lives with her mother in Trianon and graces the opera stage every night. But by day she searches for the witch who has eluded the trolls for five hundred years. Whether she succeeds or fails, the costs to those she cares about will be high.
To find Anushka, she must delve into magic that is both dark and deadly. But the witch is a clever creature. And Cécile might not just be the hunter. She might also be the hunted…
And here are the covers for Stolen Songbird and Hidden Huntress, side-by-side. You may want to borrow Cécile’s fan if you are overcome by awesomeness:
And if you’re feeling lucky, the fine folks at YA Midnight Reads are .
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2015 will be busy and exciting for Angry Robot as our publishing schedule is back under full steam in March, and we also still have some new authors to share with you. The first of these is Patrick S. Tomlinson with his debut novel, The Ark, acquired from Russell Galen of Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency in a two-book deal with translation rights. Scheduled for November 2015, The Ark is a thrilling mystery set in deep space.
Patrick S. Tomlinson: “When my agent first told me I’d be working with an Angry Robot, I was skeptical. “Oh, no,” I said. “I’ve seen this movie and the whole human race gets eradicated.” But then I started to wonder why the robot was angry. And if it was angry, did that mean it had human emotions instead of cold, inflexible machine logic? If a robot can be angry, can it also learn to… love?
Oh, and I wrote a book set on a generation ship called THE ARK. It contains many words. Some of them are even in the right order.”
Angry Robot’s Consulting Editor, Phil Jourdan: “What a pleasure it will be to unleash this blend of mystery, action and Really Big Spaceship madness on the world. The Ark has one of those great, mega-satisfying endings that will make readers squeal with delight a little bit. Be warned.”
Sherlock Holmes meets 2001: A Space Odyssey
Humankind has escaped a dying Earth and set out to find a new home among the stars aboard an immense generation ship affectionately name the Ark. Bryan Benson is the Ark’s greatest living sports hero, enjoying retirement working as a detective in Avalon, his home module. The hours are good, the work is easy, and the perks can’t be beat.
But when a crewmember goes missing, Bryan is thrust into the center of an ever-expanding web of deception, secrets, and violence that overturns everything he knows about living on the Ark and threatens everyone aboard. As the last remnants of humanity hurtle towards their salvation, Bryan finds himself in a desperate race to unravel the conspiracy before a madman turns mankind’s home into its tomb.
About Patrick: Patrick S. Tomlinson is the son of an ex-hippie psychologist and an ex-cowboy electrician. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with a menagerie of houseplants in varying levels of health, a Ford Mustang, and a Triumph motorcycle bought specifically to embarrass and infuriate Harley riders. When not writing sci-fi and fantasy novels and short stories, Patrick is busy developing his other passion for performing stand-up comedy.
Join us in offering Patrick a robotically warm welcome: , , and Patrick’s site, .
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We’re absolutely delighted to start 2015 with some awards news. Rod Duncan’s superlative alternate history
has made the six-book shortlist for the .
When he’d come down from the ceiling, a joyous
I had no idea that The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter was even in the running, so discovering it on the shortlist was a complete surprise. If you’ll excuse the British slang – I was gobsmacked! To be standing alongside such wonderful writers and to be up for an award bearing the name of Philip K. Dick – it is a great honour. I feel hugely grateful.
The award’s winner will be announced at Norweson in Seattle, USA on 3 April this year. Further details of that lovely shortlist – really, you should just buy all of them! – and everything else you need to know are on the . Rod’s sequel
is fast approaching too – it hits stores in May 2015, with a third novel in the Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire series, , due Spring 2016.
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We are delighted to announce that ‘s
has been sold to , the Czech publisher of George R. R. Martin, Terry Pratchett, Steven Erickson, and Brandon Sanderson, amongst others.
Kameron’s gripping and ambitious novel has delighted readers since its September release, and we are thrilled that more readers will have the opportunity to read this epic fantasy tale. Publication is due for Spring 2016, and in the run-up to the London Book Fair, we hope to have more deals to announce in the near future.
Kameron Hurley’s reaction to the foreign rights deal: “I’m beyond pleased that The Mirror Empire will be reaching a wider audience in the capable hands of Talpress.”
Watkins Media’s Senior Rights Manager, Alex Thompson, had this to say: “I’m delighted that Talpress bought the Czech rights for The Mirror Empire so quickly – we’re looking forward to selling it in many more languages so that this fabulous book gets the global readership it deserves! The Watkins Rights team have been enjoying letting out their inner sci-fi geeks and reading through the AR backlist, and we can’t wait to start selling lots more foreign rights.”
For further rights enquiries to The Mirror Empire, or other Angry Robot titles, please contact Alex at alext@dbp.co.uk.
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For the last 12 days we’ve brought you ;s titles at the knock-down festive promotional price of only ?1, or your current equivalent. If you missed any of the daily offers, fear not as the deal is available until 2 January, 2015. Here’s a handy list of all the books we included and als click through for extra treats from some of your favourite authors.
13 December:
14 December:
15 December:
16 December:
17 December:
18 December:
19 December:
20 December:
21 December:
22 December:
23 December:
24 December:
25 December:
Here’s how to take advantage of our ?1 seasonal special offer:
1. Visit the Robot Trading Company at
2. Add the book(s) you’d like to buy to your shopping basket
3. Add the magic word ‘mincepie’ to the ‘coupon/voucher’ box
4. Click the ‘update basket’ button and the discount will be applied
Wishing all our Robot Army, readers, fans, and friends a wonderful warm and merry Christmas and a happy new year.
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Welcome to the final day of our 12 Days of Christmas, and let this post start with a Merry Christmas from everyone at Angry Robot HQ to you all.
We hope you’ve enjoyed our festive promotion, and picked up some bargains. If you missed any of the posts, click here for links to all the ebooks you can still get at only ?1 – or your currency equivalent – until 2 January, 2015. For our final day, we bring you two fantastic titles, ‘s epic fantasy
and ‘s steampunk fantasy .
Here’s how to take advantage of our ?1 seasonal special offer:
1. Visit the Robot Trading Company at
2. Add the book(s) you’d like to buy to your shopping basket
3. Add the magic word ‘mincepie’ to the ‘coupon/voucher’ box
4. Click the ‘update basket’ button and the discount will be applied
For today’s festive bonus, here’s a special memory from Rod:
The Gift of Strangeness
December 25th 1991
The tea house was perched on top of a cliff. Sipping oolong from a cup little bigger than a thimble, I looked down to where a river licked the rocks far below. I could just make out turtles swimming in the green water. After two and a half years living in Taiwan, the scene had come to feel ordinary to me.
I can’t say that this was the precise moment when I started to write stories. It was certainly within a week or two either way. As with most turning points, it seemed inconsequential at the time. Not something worth noting in a diary, even if I’d kept one. But years of not writing were about to end. As a dyslexic, I’d done my best to avoid pens and paper. You’d have been more likely to find my efforts in FORTRAN than English prose.
Not that I had anything against stories. There were plenty of them chasing their tails in my head. Some I made up. Others I read in books – chiefly science fiction and fantasy, one of my favourite authors being Mervyn Peake.
Peake was born in Jiangxi province, China, a few hundred miles from Taiwan. That was in 1911, less than a year before the fall of the Qing Dynasty. I’d always assumed that his experience growing up in an exotic and intensely stratified society had given him the inspiration to write his masterpiece, the Gormenghast trilogy. The books describe a society bound within crumbling walls and a labyrinthine code of laws. The Forbidden City in Beijing is an easy comparison.
In a much smaller way, perhaps living on Taiwan and being immersed in an exotic culture had given me the push to start writing. Whatever the reason – I began tapping away on my computer, creating an eco-thriller based on the island, a landscape of vertiginous mountains dripping with tropical forest and gorges carved into white marble.
It was bad writing. With the benefit of 20 years hindsight, I can assure you it was terrible. Thankfully (and unsurprisingly) it didn’t get published. However, I had caught the writing bug. I was still at it when I returned to the UK.
Taiwan might have become normal to me. But I was surprised to discover that the UK, my old home, had become strange. Ordinary things had become extraordinary – the way people walked down the street, the assumptions they made about each other from dress and speech, the thousand inconsequential habits and gestures of everyday life.
It was then I started to think that perhaps Gormenghast owed as much to 20th century England as it did to Qing Dynasty China. How strange London must have seemed to him when he arrived in 1922. Its people bound in a rigid class structure and mysterious codes of social etiquette.
It doesn’t take long before the feeling of comfortable normality returns. But somehow, years after moving to England, Mervyn Peake was able to recreate that sense of strangeness. He lends us his eyes so that we can experience the same sense of bewildered awe as we gaze on Gormenghast.
This ability, I am convinced, is one of the keys to great writing. It is the facility to be able to look at something we have seen a thousand times and see it as if for the first time. In all the writing I’ve done since, up to and including my most recent novel The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter, that is what I have been trying to capture – the gift of strangeness.
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We have a bumper offering for you today, to celebrate this Christmas Eve:
Not only can you get ‘s
sequel, , but we also have both
titles from . If you missed the first title from Anna, Blades of the Old Empire, in the promotion don’t worry as you can still buy this title at the promo price.
To avail of this festive ?1 – or currency equivalent – offer, follow these
simple instructions:
1. Visit the Robot Trading Company at
2. Add the book(s) you’d like to buy to your shopping basket
3. Add the magic word ‘mincepie’ to the ‘coupon/voucher’ box
4. Click the ‘update basket’ button and the discount will be applied
Take a moment to enjoy this festive Russian piece from Anna:
Christmas celebration in Russia
Traditional holiday celebrations typically stem from folklore and mythology. Perhaps not surprisingly, I believe that my native country, Russia, holds a unique edge in this area. Russia spans the broad geographical and cultural boundary between East and West. While a lot of Russian traditions are European, the territories covered by this country are more than half Asian, and this puts a unique twist on these traditions. Russian folklore blends elements of pagan and Christian into a truly organic form.
On the surface, Russian and Western Christmas differ only by the date: January 7th, instead of December 25, following the Russian Orthodox church calendar. Just like in the West, the Russian celebration involves a feast, presents, and importantly the decorated fir tree (which, during the secular Soviet times, came to be known as the “New Year fir” or “novogodnyaya elka”). But this is pretty much where the main similarities end. Underneath it all are layers of traditions that go all the way back to the good old pagan days, before Russia was baptized, when the Slavic people that inhabited these territories celebrated winter solstice.
The central figure of the Russian Christmas is Old Man Frost, better known as Grandfather Frost. He is an old, powerful man in a rich, ornamental coat, with long white hair and beard, and of course with a sack of presents. Grandfather Frost does bear resemblance to Santa Claus, and he can occasionally be seen riding a sled through the winter forest, but he definitely does not say “ho, ho, ho”, and you would never ever catch him climbing chimneys. His origins, from the old pagan gods of cold and winter, make him seem quite ominous, and in the old pre-Christian days he definitely did not bear too many gifts. He is kind to children, and generally brings them presents, but he commands more reverence and respect, and is surrounded by more mystery, than typical for a festive holiday spirit.
Grandfather Frost usually comes with a companion, his granddaughter, the beautiful Snow Maiden. She dresses in an ornamental blue and white coat, and wears either a fur hat or a traditional Russian head ornament, kokoshnik. Her colors are always blue and white, with silver and crystal decorations. She is much kinder that Grandfather Frost, but also much more elusive. If you misbehave, Grandfather Frost can get angry, but the Snow Maiden will just glide away and you will never see her again.
The night before Christmas spirits and old deities can roam freely in the world, and one can get a lot of favors — or curses — by appealing to them. On this night, young maidens gather for fortune telling. I have been told of at least a dozen different fortune telling methods specific to that day, and I know there is a wealth of others. My favorite is pouring hot wax into water, holding the resulting shape against the candle, and interpreting the shape of its shadow on the wall. Another way was to look between two mirrors in a semi-dark room and try to see all the way into this mirror corridor. You say special spells when you do these things, and sometimes it can become quite frightening.
Another Russian Christmas tradition is kolyadki, when people dress in costumes and knock on doors to ask for food. Think Halloween, but on a grander scale. The costumes are meant to be scary, and I believe the people dress up to represent some evil spirits that need to be appeased on the Christmas eve. In old days such people were invited into houses to share a feast and ward off the evil spirits they represented. Special foods were being made for the purpose, and those dressed up sang special songs when going from house to house.
In old days, many of these traditions coincided with the Winter Solstice. In Russia, and many Western countries, the church went to great lengths to superimpose Christian saints on all these old deities, and to Christianize the entire celebration. It worked better in the West. It did not quite work in Russia.
I have grown up in a large city, where some of these traditions seemed distant or impossible to perform properly. Yet, I always had a chance to go outside to meet Grandfather Frost, and if I was especially lucky, to play with the beautiful Snow Maiden. Living in the west, I miss those traditions, and hope they will stay alive for centuries to come.
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As we prepare for our Spring relaunch there’s one series above all that has had Angry Roboteers clamouring for information about. Today we are delighted to reveal that ‘s , a novel that has added whole new layers of meaning to the phrase “eagerly awaited” – will be with you on May 5th next year.
All very well, you shout, but what does it look like? Well for this new beast of a book as well as giving it an amazing cover, we have also redesigned the previous two novels as they are going to be reissued in handy mass-market format in North America in the run-up to Apex‘s release. So ladies, gentlemen and robots, here is the trade paperback of Apex, together with its equally smart if somewhat diminutive siblings,
(March 15) and
(April 15):
{ Click each image above for a larger version. }
The unified design for all three has been created by one of our favourite designers, . And if you were wondering yes, we will switch the UK/RoW paperback editions to these new covers the next time we reprint them as well. Smart!
(US/Canada mass-market reissue) March 2015
(US/Canada mass-market reissue) April 2015
(trade paperback) May 2015
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is today’s offering in our 12 Days of C to avail of this festive ?1 – or currency equivalent – offer, follow these
simple instructions:
1. Visit the Robot Trading Company at
2. Add the book(s) you’d like to buy to your shopping basket
3. Add the magic word ‘mincepie’ to the ‘coupon/voucher’ box
4. Click the ‘update basket’ button and the discount will be applied
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Andy Remic is back for today’s 12 Days of C we started with the first Rage of Kings book, The Iron Wolves, and today we’re offering you the sequel, The White Towers, as well at the same bargain price! To pick up these two titles – or any of our other books in the 12 Days of Christmas promotion so far – follow these simple instructions:
1. Visit the Robot Trading Company at
2. Add the book(s) you’d like to buy to your shopping basket
3. Add the magic word ‘mincepie’ to the ‘coupon/voucher’ box
4. Click the ‘update basket’ button and the discount will be applied
If you missed Andy’s guest post earlier in the promo, click this link to read
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We hope you’ve been enjoying our 12 Days of Christmas, and all the bargains So far, our 12 Days of Christmas ebook promo has gifted you bargain copies of books from , , , , , , , and . You can still get these titles at the bargain price by following the instructions below.
Today is the turn of
and the first book in his Shadow Watch series, .
Here’s how to take advantage of our ?1 seasonal special offer:
1. Visit the Robot Trading Company at
2. Add the book(s) you’d like to buy to your shopping basket
3. Add the magic word ‘mincepie’ to the ‘coupon/voucher’ box
4. Click the ‘update basket’ button and the discount will be applied
Festive bonus from Tim Waggoner:
The Lie of “Santa Claus”
Santa Claus, Father Christmas, St. Nicholas, Kris Kringle, Père No?l – whatever you call him, you must understand one very important thing: he’s not who you think he is. He’s not what you think he is. He’s not the jolly benefactor of humankind, a symbol of joy, love, and light, harbinger of a season of peace and goodwill. Oh, no. He’s something else altogether
I can’t tell you who created the lie of “Santa Claus” and why. Maybe people, deep down, sense the reality, and they invented the story of the philanthropic present-giver in order to hide the truth from themselves. Or maybe “Santa” has agents all around the world, human traitors who for whatever reasons help to spread the lie. They stand on street corners dressed as him, ringing bells, collecting for charity, wishing all who pass a Merry Christmas. They pose for pictures with small children, ask if they’ve been a good boy or girl that year, have them speak of what they’d like Santa to bring them, then give them candy canes and send them on their way.
So loving, so giving, so kind . . .
Here is the truth.
He dwells far from the haunts of humankind, in the frozen climes of the North, where ceaseless winds howl and perpetual ice storms can strip flesh from bone within moments. He travels by night – only night – moving through darkness with ease, as if born of it, ever silent, always unseen. He needs no sleigh and no reindeer to pull it. He has other ways of getting where he wants to go. Secret ways. Hidden paths. Dark roads.
Why Christmas Eve? It’s the one night of the year when parents’ guards are down. Holiday stress leads to holiday weariness, along with a few drinks to take the edge off. Mother and Father may not get much sleep that night, but they are bone-tired, and the sleep they do get is deep. They won’t hear him when he enters their house and makes his way upstairs. They never do.
He doesn’t visit every house on Earth in a single night. How could he? He manages a few hundred at most, but even that is miraculous when you think about it. He has twenty-four hours (remember, we’re talking about the entire planet here), and in that time he is able to traverse the globe, make his stops, and return to his ice-blasted domain before a single ray of light can touch him.
How does he choose which houses to visit? This is unclear. Perhaps he operates on some atavistic instinct which even he doesn’t understand. Or perhaps he carefully selects his destinations for the night. Children do write to him, you know. And perhaps those missives somehow find their way to his hands – hands which, despite all the illustrations depicting them as perfectly ordinary-looking, aren’t altogether human – and he reads them. And he chooses.
However he selects the children, he enters their homes without touching doors or windows or, despite the stories, a single chimney. Once inside, he moves past the tree, not pausing to admire how precisely the ornaments are placed, how lovingly the garlands are draped on its branches, how cheerily the lights twinkle. He doesn’t stop at the tree because there are already presents arranged beneath it, wrapped in colorful paper and tired with ribbons and adorned with bows. Mother and Father put those presents there, and they always have. In all his long years – even back in the days before the coming of the Christ child, when he had another name and a far different appearance – he has never left a single present at any home he’s visited. He comes not to give, but to take.
Sometimes children leave a snack for him, most often cookies and milk. He thinks of it as an offering, and while he appreciates the gesture, small as it is, he passes it by. He’s hungry, of course. He’s been hungry since humanity’s fur-covered forbears first descended from the trees. But he has a very specialized diet, and cookies and milk – while he could ingest them if he wished – simply do not satisfy.
He carries a sack – the stories are correct in this detail – and it’s full to bursting. Despite its size, it doesn’t weigh him down, and he moves quick and graceful as a cat as he makes his way to the children’s rooms. He’s not interested in adults. Never has been. To him, they’re nothing more than breeders, useful only because they create what he desires, what he loves, what he needs.
He enters the child’s room. The door is never locked. What child would lock his or her door on Christmas Eve? Once inside, he glides across the floor to stand at the bedside. He gazes down at the child, sometimes for a few moments, sometimes longer. And then he sets his pack on the floor, loosens the drawstrings, and reaches one of his not-quite-human hands inside. He withdraws a globular mass that fits easily in the palm of his hand, and he pulls back the child’s covers and places the viscous thing on the sheet next to the sleeping boy or girl. The instant he pulls his hand away, the mass begins to change. By morning it will have reshaped itself until it resembles the child in every detail. It will look, walk, talk, and behave like the child in all particulars, fooling everyone. And it will continue to do so until the day – perhaps not so very far in the future – when its true nature will assert itself and then it will do something terrible, something unimaginable.
Santa always smiles with the larger of his two mouths when he thinks of this.
He then lifts the sleeping child from the bed and pulls him or her close to his chest and holds them tight. So very, very tight. It doesn’t take long. And when they are gone, with no sign left to indicate they ever existed at all, he bends down, pulls the drawstrings on his pack closed, lifts it onto his shoulder once more – his burden slightly lighter now – and he departs, making his way out of the house the same way he entered.
And when the night is over at last and most of the world’s children – but not all – have been spared, he will return to his home of wind and ice, and he will sleep, full, but not sated. And the days and nights will pass as he slumbers, his appetite building for next year. And he will dream of all the children who now dwell within him, and he will hear their voices calling his name. Santa, please! Let us out!
And he shall sleep well.
Tim and his sister Lisa in 1968
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We hope you’ve been enjoying our 12 Days of Christmas, and all the bargains So far, our 12 Days of Christmas ebook promo has gifted you bargain copies of books from , , , , , , and . You can still get these titles at the bargain price by following the instructions below.
Today, we are celebrating
and the first title in her Peacemaker series, .
Here’s how to take advantage of our ?1 seasonal special offer:
1. Visit the Robot Trading Company at
2. Add the book(s) you’d like to buy to your shopping basket
3. Add the magic word ‘mincepie’ to the ‘coupon/voucher’ box
4. Click the ‘update basket’ button and the discount will be applied
For today’s festive bonus, here’s a special memory from Marianne:
Christmas in the Australian Wheatbelt circa 1970’s
My mother loved to dance. Any opportunity, but particularly on holidays. Two weeks before Christmas she’d begin laying out wrapping paper and gifts and sticky tape and tinsel on the large bed in the spare room (my brother’s old room). It was the coolest room in the house, painted soft green, and with the benefit of high ceilings because summer was a blistering, unforgiving time in our part of the world.
Rose would click on the fan, crank up the record player (Bing or Dean and, occasionally, Frank), and dance around that room while playing the delicate game of fit the present to the person.
My contribution was to lie in the centre of the huge old King-sized bed, gifts scattered around me, and daydream. I still remember the flowery scent of Avon soaps, perfumes, and bubble baths – for indeed Avon did come to call in our the ribbon-festooned bottles of wine and odd naughty I the mouth-watering biscuits in silvery pressed-tin boxes, the soft chiffon fripperies, satin pillowcases, and packets of salty celebration mixed nuts: pretzels and smoked almonds. Nothing expensive but each item as luxurious and exotic to me as Christmas itself. Each one of them, a mysterious tale.
She would sing, too, while she worked, in a deep, rich voice that never changed octave but brimmed full of life and fun. I’d turn my face into the pillows as her singing trailed off and she began to talk about the people she was giving presents to–recounting their lives and losses in short bursts of gratefulness and love.
Then dad would arrive and stamp dust off his boots outside the window, calling her to have a cup of tea. Hearing his voice, her face would light and I would feel…perfect.
Mum and Dad at Derdebin
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We hope you’ve been enjoying our 12 Days of Christmas, and all the bargains So far, our 12 Days of Christmas ebook promo has gifted you bargain copies of books from , , , , , and . You can still get these titles at the bargain price by following the instructions below.
Today, we have the first two titles of ‘s Legends of the Duskwalker series,
and . Been meaning to read these books or have the first, and want the second? Wait no longer!
Here’s how to take advantage of our ?1 seasonal special offer:
1. Visit the Robot Trading Company at
2. Add the book(s) you’d like to buy to your shopping basket
3. Add the magic word ‘mincepie’ to the ‘coupon/voucher’ box
4. Click the ‘update basket’ button and the discount will be applied
Festive bonus:
What Christmas Means to Jay Posey
When the Robot Overlords “requested” I write a little piece to go along with their fabulous 12 Days of Christmas sales special, I couldn’t resist the opportunity. (I there was no way to resist, since they sent a Directive directly to my implanted brainchip.)
I spent a couple of days trying to think of a particular special Christmas memory or an Amusing Holiday-Themed Anecdote or a Fun Family Tradition to share. There were a number of candidates. The Tetris Christmas, for example, when at least half the family wandered about the house with vacantly-staring, bloodshot eyes, mindlessly humming Russian-inspired tunes. Or the briefly-annual viewing of the entire original Star Wars trilogy, back-to-back-to-back, when at least half the family wandered about the house with vacantly-staring, bloodshot eyes, mindlessly humming yub nub-inspired tunes.
But as I reflected on all the many Christmases I’ve enjoyed, I couldn’t help but notice how very many great memories I had to choose from, which in turn made me recognize what the holiday season ha it’s ultimately a season of gratitude.
For me and my family, the holiday season, and Christmastime especially, has become a time where we get to slow down and shake up our daily routines. And those times of stepping away from The Usual gives us space and perspective on a lot of things we’re often too busy to notice. We of course have our scheduling woes and travel stresses just like any other family, but all things considered, this season is one we look forward to with Great Anticipation.
I don’t take for granted how blessed I am to have warm memories about the holidays, to be able to think fondly of time spent with family and friends, to actually look forward to the holidays instead of dreading them. And at the same time, I notice that for as long as I can remember, since I was just a wee lad dreaming about Big Things, we always took time during the holidays to think back over the year and consider the things we were grateful for.
We had our share of tough years, when money was so tight we didn’t know how we’d have “Christmas” at all, or when we lost loved ones, or had health challenges. But no matter what, we were always able to find something that we were truly, genuinely grateful for.
I’m pretty sure there’s a connection between that intentional practice of thankfulness (even when I didn’t necessarily want to participate!) and the fact that I have Good Feelings about the holidays.
I was recently reading Robinson Crusoe, and came across this line:
“It put me upon reflecting how little repining there would be among mankind at any condition of life if people would rather compare their condition with those that were worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings.”
For a book published almost 300 years ago, that sure did hit home for me. It hit me so hard, in fact, I had to read it a couple of times, and then set the book down and think about it for a bit. Even with my upbringing, I realized how much of my time and energy I’ve wasted looking at this author’s sales, or that person’s reviews, and wishing I Had It Better. I obviously still have a lot to learn about living a life of gratitude, but recognizing that fact has given me a stronger motivation to make sure that this holiday season, I keep my eyes on the many blessings I’ve had in my life.
Being a man of faith, there’s additional significance to Christmas that I know not everyone shares. But if I’m allowed to have a Christmas Wish for all of you readers out there, I wish you time and energy to pause from all the usual holiday craziness, a moment that inspires genuine gratefulness, and a 2015 that brings you the true gift of gratitude.
If nothing else, you sure can get a lot of great books from Angry Robot for cheap, so that’s a pretty great start!
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We are delighted to announce that ‘s sci-fi mystery
has been sold to Japanese publisher, Tokyo Sogensha. The Buried Life has been reviewed and featured by many in most-anticipated lists and we are looking forward to its Japanese release in Spring 2016; English-language readers, The Buried Life will be with you in March of next year.
This is our second Japanese deal, after Madeline Ashby’s vN whilst agents have also sold Lavie Tidhar and Lauren Beuekes’ books to Japan. Thanks to our Rights Manager, Alex, at Watkins Media who is off to a great start with this deal with Japanese agent Tuttle Mori. As 2014 ends on a high note for Angry Robot Books with acquisitions, rights sales, and world domination plans afoot, we’re looking forward to a wonderful 2015.
The Bookman
Camera Obscura
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