Win a Signed Copy of The Black Chalice!

Wotcher all,

Fancy a signed copy of Steven Savile's groundbreaking Arthurian fantasy, Malory's Knights of Albion: The Black Chalice?

'Course you do.

Well, check this. How about the world-exclusive, first ever signed copy of The Black Chalice? Authenticated by Mr. Savile himself?

Now we're talking.

Steven has been so good as to sign his first ever copy of the book, and will be giving it away to one lucky subscriber to his newsletter in the next few weeks.

The newsletter is kicking off very soon, and will include such goodies as excerpts, teasers in advance of his coming books, and links to unlock special content on his site.

So pop on over to his website, StevenSavile.com, right now, and you could be in on a genuinely special piece of collectibilia.

Collectibilia? Is that a word? You can have memorabilia. This is kind of memorabilia. It's collectible. It's collectibilia.

To Hell with it. I'm an editor; I can add new words if I want.

You still here? Why are you still reading this? I'm just waffling about new words I made up. You should be at StevenSavile.com, registering for his newsletter!

Cheers,

David

Pornokitsch Gives You... Anno Mortis!

Hey all,

As you probably remember, the fine folk at Pornokitsch.com have spent all week bringing you the best, worst and most interesting of Romeiana... Romana?... Romanesque?... stuff about Romans, in their week-long feature, "V Days of Rome."

It's gone brilliantly well, as near as I can tell, with loads of blogposts, reviews, an enormous interview with Sophia McDougall, and competitions and giveaways on their Facebook page. So very well done, Anne and Jared. It's been a blast.

Anyway, today they have a spate of Anno Mortis-related shenanigans! There's the downloadable free sample already mentioned (it's Chapter Sixteen, by the way, with all the zombies and zombie tigers and chariots and stuff), a review of the book (actually, kind of a re-review, since as Jared points out it was one of the first books they reviewed, back in the day), and until midnight tonight you can win a signed first edition of the book on their Facebook page by answering the question, "What caused the fall of Rome?"

Check their shiznit izout.

The book comes together in a complex mash-up of classical mythologies that, in my case, really did benefit from a re-read. If the "what" (zombies) is unveiled early in Anno Mortis and the "how" (evil bugs) soon follows, the "why" is kept a tight secret until the final pages. There are a lot of players involved, both mortal and immortal, and it takes an explosive chain of conclusions to reveal them all. Needless to say, the stakes are not only much higher than just Rome, but also more personal. What a god wants, the whole world may have to give.

To freely lift from my own original conclusion: "All said and done, Anno Mortis is a massively entertaining - and oddly educational - romp. From sieges to orgies; tigers to chariot races; it pulls out all the stops in providing unceasing fun." And as a footnote, Anno Mortis isn't just another chapter in a passing fad. Good pulp is timeless, and this pulp is very, very good indeed.

Schweet.

David

Happy Monday!

We recommend you check out Graeme's Fantasy Book Review today. As well as the great reviews he writes every week, he's currently got an Abaddon-themed giveaway going on! You could win a copy of our first Pax Britannia omnibus, or maybe a copy of our first Tomes of the Dead omnibus! The competition is open until the 14th November.

These omnibuses/omnibi* are now out in all the shops - such weighty tomes - each comprising three Abaddon books, make a great Xmas present for anyone who loves their zombies and/or their steampunk fiction, so get buying!

Also, don't forget to check out our interview last week with an author who's written for both of those series, plus plenty of 2000 AD comics, the illustrious Mr. Al Ewing...

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*Let the comments war begin...

Pax Britannia Competition Winner!

Heyo,

You probably remember me starting the month of October with a massive post about Pax Britannia: covers, new commissions, and, of course, Jon Green's Lego-inspired competition...

If you don't remember, feel free to refresh yourself now. I'm cool with waiting for a bit. It's not like I have anything better to do.

Anyway, once you've done, you can jump over to Jon Green's Pax Britannia blog, where he has announced the winner!

Yes, that's right, Adam Sparshott, and/or Sparshott and Son - I'll admit I'm confused as to whether the Adam in question is Sparshott or Son - has created an awesome airship for Ulysses to fight on (I'm guessing Ulysses has the two pistols and the smarmy grin, rather than the katana and the top hat), complete with two massive balloons for carrying it through the skies of Londinium Maximum. It's frikkin sweet. Sparshott will be making an appearance in the upcoming Anno Frankenstein (Mark Harrison's cover art pictured, right).

And here to show you the kick-ass airship in question, is Sparshott himself. Or Son:

He loves it.

Cheers,

David

Pax Britannia Goodness: Covers, Releases, Blogs, and Competition!

Wotcher all,

Well, it's a pretty busy time over in the parallel universe where Victoria is still Queen of England.

Let's see...

We've had The Ulysses Quicksilver Omnibus back from the printers (shown here with Pye Parr's gloriously grim Londinium Maximum skyline and the new Victorianesque layout), and it is beautiful. So much so that we've decided to use the same layout and design for all our future Pax Britannia books. That should be hitting the shelves in the next month or so, just in time to buy as stocking-fillers for the steampunkophile in your life.

Er, the other steampunkophile in your life. Obviously you're a steampunkophile. You wouldn't lie to us, would you?

(Pye has actually written a blog about creating the cover for this, and another one about putting the final touches to the artwork on the cover. Pop over to his blog and take a look.)

We've also just had Gods of Manhattan back from the press. Unfortunately too late to incorporate the sexy new formatting, although it does have Mark Harrison's awesome montage cover art.

(Fun fact: Al saw this art, concluded there were more hot women in the cover art than there actually were in his book, and immediately set out to add more hot women to the book. The final book has, I believe, two more hot woman in it than it initially did, wholly due to Mark's cover art and Al's OCD/whimsy. Thanks, Mark!)

Gods of Manhattan sees the Saint of Ghosts travelling to New York in the United Socialist States of America, where he encounters the impossibly heroic Doc Thunder and the dark and bloodthirsty Blood Spider, and helps uncover sinister plots and secret pasts and more evil Nazi goings-on.

We've just sent the next Ulysses Quicksilver adventure, Dark Side, off to press, with the new format cover.

Also very sexy. Particularly love Mark Harrison's dark homage to the famous "man in the moon" image from Georges Méliès' 1902 film Le Voyage dans la Lune (Okay, I had to look that up on Wikipedia; but didn't I look all informed and educated for just a second, there?), only slightly late, so you should be seeing that early next year.

This book sees Ulysses travelling to the Moon in search of his brother Barty, who's apparently (and fairly characteristically) fleeing gambling debts. Once he gets there, our intrepid dandy-adventurer encounters murders, conspiracies, secret bases, and all the usual shenanigans that he seems to find wherever he goes. It's as silly and fun as usual, but a bit... darker than the earlier books. Ulysses goes through the wringer a bit. You'll see.

(Also see a cameo by competition-winning Jared Shurin of Pornokitsch. He's well excited about this.)

...which brings me neatly to the next Pax Britannia competition! Jonathan Green loves Lego. Hell, who doesn't? He also loves steampunk. And we all love steampunk, or we wouldn't be reading/writing this blog post. And he's seen some steampunk lego that people have put together, and that's got him well-chuffed.

So he's offering another walk-on part in his coming Pax Britannia novel, Anno Frankenstein (Mark Harrison's cover shown right, although this will get redone with the new layout and text before it goes to press). Just send in a picture of your own Pax Britannia-inspired lego, and the one he likes best gets to be in his next book.

Check out his blog post about it.

Phew! That's a lot of stuff about Pax B. Might need a cup of tea and a sit down.

Cheers,

David

Book Launch Tickets Giveaway!

Right, lightning quick, 'cos this is for tomorrow evening.

Rebecca Levene's awesome new series, The Infernal Game, launches with the first book, Cold Warriors, tomorrow evening at a secret location in London.

We've just heard from the organisers that, after inviting all the trendy media types and booksellers, he has a few tickets left over, and would love us to give them away!

So sling us an email at abaddon@rebellion.co.uk and tell us why you should get a ticket. If we like your answer, not only will we give you a ticket for tomorrow evening's launch party, we'll also throw in one of the shiny new "Hermetic Division" tie pins we've got here in the office.

Ooh, shiny.

Get mailing!

We have a winner!

Jonathan Green has announced the lucky winner of his steampunk competition over here. Fans who donated to the author's sister-in-law's London Marathon run for the Devonshire Air Ambulance Trust were entered into a raffle for a cameo in the Pax Britannia book Jon is currently writing. What a prize! We're jealous....

Don't forget that Jon's newest release, the Pax Britannia novel Blood Royal, will be out in the shops in June!

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Empire of Salt Victim's League

Weston Ochse has written to me to tell you guys that there's a new Facebook group that's been created to support those horrified by the zombie carnage in his Tomes of the Dead novel - it's called the Empire of Salt Victim's League.

Our thoughts are with those poor souls....


There's also two competions which are only open to UK fans, so get in there quick, Brits!

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Pax Britannia Competition - For the Devonshire Air Ambulance Trust

Ever fancied seeing yourself immortalised in a steampunk novel? Well now you can!

Abaddon Books author Jonathan Green is running a competition in aid of the Devonshire Air Ambulance Trust. http://paxbritanniablog.blogspot.com/2010/04/win-walk-on-part-in-dark-side.html

How to Enter
All you have to do to qualify is make a small donation to charity. My sister-in-law is running in this year's London Marathon for the Devon Air Ambulance. If you sponsor her via her Just Giving page, along with the comment 'Jon Green sent me', then on the day of the marathon I will put all qualifying names into a hat and, after the race, get my sister-in-law to pick one. It really couldn't be easier.


The Prize
A walk on part in the next Ulysses Quicksilver Pax Britannia novel Dark Side, due to be published by Abaddon Books by the end of the year. It will be up to me how you appear in the book and whether you're a hero, a villain or a third class laundry room attendant, but your name will appear somewhere within the book.

So, if you'd like to enter this competition simply follow this link. To find out more about the work of the Devon Air Ambulance click here. I look forward to reviewing your entries in due course.

- Jonathan Green



The proposed cover, which is a reference to the 1902 French film Le Voyage dans la lune.

It'd be awesome if you guys pimped this in your own blogs/twitters and so on. It's for charity after all!

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Abaddon Competition Winners!

Hi all,

Here it is. I know you've been waiting for this with bated breath, jowls wobbling like some kind of Japanese teleporting superhero... I am proud to announce the winners of the Abaddon Zombie Shelter Competition!

Now, this has been far from easy. We've had some brilliant entries, and they've all taken very different approaches to the very thorny problem of where to take shelter from the coming Zombipocalypse. Each of us had a favourite; there have been arguments, recriminations, even tears. Some things were said that will be hard to take back. It's been an emotional time.

But we have shaped up some kind of final list. As I said before, the top three submissions have been selected to publish here for your education and edification.

Third Place goes to Debbie Bennett, who went for a delightful combination of whimsical, crazy and come-hither:

It’s dead simple, you see. There’s this field at the back of my house and I’ve been busy planting land mines in it – I get them cheap from a guy in the pub. So there’s garlic and holy water too (just in case) and once I’ve made my way through the mine maze, I can climb up to my tree house and pull the rope ladder up behind me (the tree trunk is covered in oil and battery acid). I’ve got cherryade and garibaldi biscuits. 3 loo rolls. And an AK47. Like I said – dead simple. Wanna come play?

I'm sure this is lifted out of Blyton's Five Fight Off The Deathless Horde, but I'll let that slide since I just made that fact up. Debbie, I would personally love to join you in your tree-house, but there's this zombie horde attacking and we have to get to a bunk- holy shit! Did you say say cherryade? I'm there.

Second Place, by an absolute whisker, goes to Charles Payne's submission which, oddly, also appeals to the inner chainsaw-wielding child:

Two words: Santa's workshop. As soon as the first cry of BRAINS! goes out, I'm heading for the North Pole. It's the perfect shelter- most zombies will freeze before they reach it and it comes with an army of industrious elves and a super powered fat guy. Santa and his elves should be more than happy to rain destruction upon the undead hordes (I'm pretty sure eating brains puts you on the naughty list) and you get all the milk and cookies you could want. What more could you want in a zombie-proof shelter?

Aside from the difficulty of getting to the North Pole when all the airports are closed down by the apocalypse (f*ck it, I can always steal a twin-prop from somewhere), this is actually pretty much the perfect solution. It very nearly won, but Santa Claus is an imaginary person, and we take Zombies very seriously.

First Place and ultimate winner is this proposal by Richard Smeeton:

A converted Man-Takraf RB293 mobile bucket wheel excavator, a forty-five thousand tonne, ninety five metre tall beast of mining equipment - with red go faster stripes. And the bucket wheel converted to a giant buzzsaw. It's a moving shelter where the best form of defence is attack - slowly crushing the hordes beneath the tracks or slashing with the buzzsaw. Concessions to practicality: a greenhouse, solar panels, a crane to grab stuff (including a fuel suction function to drain petrol stations). Plus a crew of Swedish air hostess and topped off with a golden throne to observe the carnage from.

A controversial choice, Richard; you could always run out of fuel, and you'll be stuck with the hordes clambering up the sides of your machine. But, after a long, hard deliberation, we decided that including Swedish air-hostesses in your vehicle - as a "concession to practicality," no less - shows a certain style. Also, golden thrones kick ass.

We'll be writing to Richard to get his postal address and choice of Tomes of the Dead books.

Thank you all for entering, and I'm sorry to those of you that entertained and amused me who had the ill-fortune not to be included in the final list. You're all awesome, and I'm heartened to know that the future of humanity will be in your hands when the blood starts to flow...

Cheers,

David

Zombie Contest Closed!

Hi all,

The Zombie Shelter Contest is now closed. We are sorting through submissions - and arguing about whether to get our authors in as guest judges - and will post the results on Friday.

Many thanks to those of you who sent in submissions, and our commiserations to those of you who meant to but didn't get around to it. Although, actually, not too many commiserations. You should have got yourselves sorted out. Sheesh.

Watch this space...

David

One week to go...

There's a week left to our Zombie Shelter contest. We've had some fine entries so far, but it's far from a done deal; get your submissions in to abaddonbooks@gmail.com and you could win some of our acclaimed Tomes of the Dead books!

Abaddon Competition!

Alright, here it is! Our first ever Abaddon Competition!

Everyone knows it’s coming. You just gotta see the signs. And I see you all preparing – maybe getting some training in with simulations like L4D or House of the Dead, maybe going to see instructive films like 28 Days Later or Zombieland – but how ready are you, really? When the Zs start clawing at your door, what are you going to do? How will you fight them? Where will you take shelter?

With an eye to getting you all ready for the (sadly inevitable) Zombipocalypse, Abaddon is running a competition! We want you to tell us about your zombie-proof shelter. Where is it? How is it protected? Upper stories (good vision, shoot from the balcony) or underground (more secure, more energy-efficient)? Locked down or escape routes? Well-water or bottled? What do you look for in a zombie shelter? It doesn’t have to be a real place (although a friend of mine swears he’s heading straight to Reading Gaol) or at any rate your place (honestly, if you write to us and tell us that you for real have a gun-and-tinned-food-stocked bunker in the suburbs, we may be obliged to inform your psychiatrist...), just the sort of place you’d go when the eatin’ starts.

You have 100 words. Tell us why your hideout’s awesome, not just what it is. Convince us. And make us laugh. All submissions to abaddonbooks@gmail.com by November 27th; winner announced December 4th, and we’ll post the best three reports here. The prize is copies of a couple of our Tomes of the Dead books, to further prepare you for the days to come.

Reviews and (Shh... Top-Secret) Competition Teaser...

Hey all,

Two more reviews for Mike Wild:

Graeme's Fantasy Book Review on Twilight of Kerberos: The Clockwork King of Orl, and

Falcata Times on Twilight of Kerberos: Crucible of the Dragon God.


Also, we're going to be announcing our first ever competition on the Abaddon blog tomorrow.

Check in to take part.

Hint: Zombies.

Cheers,

David