New Cover Art for THE DARK TOWER series (UK Editions)

Spied on A Dribble of Ink, new cover art for Stephen King's THE DARK TOWER series, including the new novel, The Wing Through the Keyhole :

I totally dig them! First of all,they all match and I always like the artwork to be consistent if I'm going to spend money on an entire series:  secondly,I really like the was Roland is depicted, especially on The Wastelands and Wolves of the Calla.  What do you think?

Miscellany

Bits and pieces from my surfing this week...

At Strange Chemistry books, editor Amanda Rutter announced on the website the news of the first two authors signed to the new YA imprint, Kim Curran and Sean Cummings!  Both will have new books from Strange Chemistry out this autumn, with second books following in 2013.  Congrats to both authors and to the team at Strange Chemistry on such a great start!

Meanwhile over at Angry Robot, brand new content has been posted to EmpireState.cc !!  Empire State-the RPG is a complete, original and self-contained roleplaying game system created by long time game designer David Wendt.  You can read more about it here.   

Just Wild About Harry!

Harry Markov (formally of the closed Temple Library Reviews, now at Through a Forest of Ideas and several other venues) really is one of the influences on my trying my hand at blogging/reviewing; when reading TLR, I was always impressed with his judgments and he always seemed able to bring to bring up points that hadn't occurred to me in my own reading.  I don't pretend to think I am in the same league but someday...:)

 A writer, a connoisseur of the Weird...now, Harry can add to his resume assistant editor.  He, along with Tony Smith  (Hugo award winner for the science fiction podcast StarShipSofa) is launching a new horror podcast called "Tales to Terrify".  The podcast starts this Friday, January 13th.

Congrats to Harry and the rest of the crew at Tales to Terrify; don't forget to check out the podcast Friday January 13 and spread the word!

To keep up with Harry and everything that he's doing (like his awesome Weird Wednesday posts, which analyze Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's massive compendium THE WEIRD...) follow his thoughtful and informative blog Through a Forest of Ideas and check him out on Twitter here @harrymarkov.

New Cover Art from Lethe Press

On Saturday, Lethe Press publisher Steve Berman revealed the cover for the 2012 edition of the annual Wilde Stories anthology series:

I think this is the best cover of the series thus far and it was put together by artist Ben Baldwin and designer Alex Jeffers; congratulations, gentlemen!  Wilde Stories 2012 is due out in June.

News From Angry Robot!

Good morning all!

So I woke up today to find this tidbit in my Twitter feed, that Angry Robot is recruiting for a Commissioning Editor for a new crime fiction imprint they will launch in 2013.  The new imprint will publish suspense, mysteries and thrillers, and will employ the same innovative approach to publishing and marketing used by its parent brand AR.  You can read the full press release here.

Obviously, the Robot Overlords are gleefully continuing their conquest of the publishing world by taking over as many genres as possible; just last November they announced the launch of Strange Chemistry, their new YA arm, headed by Amanda Rutter and they are full swing into the first WorldBuilder project based on EMPIRE STATE. Prepare to be conquered!

Miscellany

Tidbits and more from my web surfing this week:

First up, new cover art for THE QUARRY, the new book forthcoming from Mark Allan Gunnells.  The artist is David Naughton-Shires and is based on photos Gunnells took of the actual location:

THE QUARRY will be Mark's first novel and comes out in February from Evil Jester Press; keep a watch out for it and of course, I'll be talking about it here on the blog!


And another friend has something coming out; Sergio Kardenas's new album THE TIME MACHINE is finally out!

 I've been a big fan of Sergio's forever; he truly is a renaissance man!  In 2007 to celebrate his 20th anniversary as a photographer, he put out his first collection of his photography, THE MAGAZINE OF SEX, designed to look like a vintage adult magazine from the 60s and 70s; in 2009 he followed this with the award winning film La Functionaria Asensia a.k.a. The Slayer Bureaucrat and now he's hitting us with the one, two punch of his long awaited 10 song CD and his new book PULP FANTASIES & FETISHES that I talked about here.  I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of the CD and will be talking about it here very soon!

And finally,the momentum that EMPIRE STATE by Adam Christopher has reached dizzying heights this week, what with the book finally been released (it seems like it's been forever!) and two big events accompanying it; 

The first event was the London launch of EMPIRE STATE at Forbidden Planet Megastore on January 5th; the second will be the January 10th reading and signing in New York at the Mid-Manhattan Library.  You can read about the Forbidden Planet event on Adam's blog, here and here.

                                                          Photos by Stephen J Sweeney 


And that's the round up for today!  Happy reading!
                                                                           

Steampunk Reading Challenge 2012

I have joined the Steampunk Reading Challenge hosted by Dark Faerie Tales!

The goal is to "get greased" and read 24 steampunk books by December 31, 2012.  That is quite a few books, so I am starting out light and committed to "Gaslight", which is 6 books; I am hoping to do more though!  To participate in all the steamy goodness, sign up here.  C'mon, let's do it together!

Don't forget to follow my blog to see how I'm doing!  :)

Happy reading!