The Steel Seraglio, Turbulence and Other Books (+ giveaways)

So a (really) short update of Fantasycon* - I had a blast and, more importantly, our cupcakes and biscuits raised £215 for National Literacy Trust. Woot!!

Huge thanks to my fab, fellow bakers Adele, Louise, Rhian, Michaela, and Andrew, with extra thanks to Michaela and Andrew who ended up doing most of the selling/organising.

Some pics of cakes (if you want to drool) are here! (Mostly mine as I had con camera-fail as usual) And even HUGER thanks and virtual hugs go to everyone who bought and devoured the cakes, and to those who managed to resist temptation but were cake-tastic and still donated. Thank you!

Now onto books (and giveaways - details at the end of the post)! These are some that have come to live with me recently. Death's Rival is #5 in Faith Hunter's fantastic Jane Yellowrock/Beast UF series, which I adore. Anton Strout's Alchemystic is the first in his new Spellmason Chronicles series, which looks like it's going to Rock*! And I was lucky to nab two copies of Nicole Peeler's awesome Eye of the Tempest at Fantasycon! Yay! Jane True FTW! (And one's in the giveaway!)

Another book that came home with me from Fantasycon is The Steel Seraglio by Mike Carey, Linda Carey, and Louise Carey. Mike is one of my all time writerly heros (LOVE his Felix Castor books!), so I was thrilled when he gave me a signed copy of The Steel Seraglio co-written with his wife and daughter. I'm two thirds of the way through reading it and, WOW!

The third book that I have thanks to Fantasycon, and my lovely pal Ben who introduced us, is Samit Basu's Turbulence. We three had a wonderful writerly chat about writing (;p) and characters and how as authors we love to be evil! *g* At the end of which I forced my first book on Samit and insisted he read it and demanded he give me his asked Samit if he might want to swap books! He said yes! Yay! I haven't started Turbulence yet but I did sneak a quick read of the first page! Awesome beginning!

TURBULENCE is a hyper-real novel set in an over-the-top world. It features the 21^st-century Indian subcontinent in all its insane glory – F-16s, Bollywood, radical religious parties, nuclear plants, cricket, terrorists, luxury resorts, crazy TV shows – but is essentially about two very human questions.

How would you feel if you actually got what you wanted?

What would you do if you were given the power to change the world?

‘For wicked wit, for post-modern superheroics, for sheer verbal energy and dazzle, Samit Basu doesn’t so much push the envelope as fold it into an n-dimensional hyper-envelope, address it to your hind-brain and mail it with a rail gun.’- Mike Carey (X-men, Lucifer, the Felix Castor series)

‘You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll gasp and you will demand a sequel.’- Ben Aaronovitch (Doctor Who, Rivers of London)

Onto the GIVEAWAYS

Giveaway 1 - Eye of the Tempest - Jane True #4 - Nicole Peeler
Giveaway 2 - The Steel Seraglio by Mike Carey, Linda Carey, and Louise Carey
Giveaway 3 - Turbulence by Samit Basu

How to enter:

Leave a comment with your 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice books.
1st name drawn gets their first choice of book, 2nd name drawn gets their 1st/2nd choice book, and 3rd name drawn gets the book not chosen by the previous two winners.
Winners drawn by Random.org.

Giveaways are international where Book Depository deliver and end Midnight (GMT) Oct 17th, 2012.


* Many thanks to Marie and Paul, everyone else who did a grand job organising the con, and all the brilliant redshirts!
*Gargoyles and rocks . . . sorry, couldn't resist . . . *g*
*My only sadness is I missed their reading and didn't get to ask how they worked out their collaboration. (I stupidly got my timings wrong and arrived at the end) :-(