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May 16, 2012 Dress Your Marines in White Emmy Laybourne Murder in powdered form. What a life. May 9, 2012 About Fairies Pat Murphy Some things happen whether or not you clap your hands. May 3, 2012 At the Foot of the Lighthouse Erin Hoffman I am American. We are all Americans. April 25, 2012 Prophet Jennifer Bosworth Some men are born monsters. Others made so.
From The Blog
May 11, 2012
Casting Crowley and Aziraphale for Good Omens
Emily Asher-Perrin
May 9, 2012
Who’s In the Epic Fantasy Avengers?
Stubby the Rocket
May 8, 2012
Sleeps With Monsters: Failure to Communicate (An Ongoing Problem)
Liz Bourke
May 8, 2012
Death in Fantasy Fiction: Why It Makes Us Rage
Shoshana Kessock
May 7, 2012
It Was the Summer of ’82
Stubby the Rocket
Showing posts by: Ian Tregillis click to see Ian Tregillis's profile
Tue
May 15 2012 9:00am
Excerpt
Ian Tregillis

The sequel to Ian Tregillis’ Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, comes out July 17. Here’s a special peek at what’s coming:

In Ian Tregillis’ The Coldest War, a precarious balance of power maintains the peace between Britain and the USSR. For decades, Britain’s warlocks have been all that stands between the British Empire and the Soviet Union—a vast domain stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the shores of the English Channel. Now each wizard’s death is another blow to Britain’s national security.

Meanwhile, a brother and sister escape from a top-secret facility deep behind the Iron Curtain. Once subjects of a twisted Nazi experiment to imbue ordinary people with superhuman abilities, then prisoners of war in the immense Soviet research effort to reverse-engineer the Nazi technology, they head for England. 

Because that’s where former spy Raybould Marsh lives. And Gretel, the mad seer, has plans for him.

As Marsh is once again drawn into the world of Milkweed, he discovers that Britain’s darkest acts didn’t end with the war. And while he strives to protect queen and country, he is forced to confront his own willingness to accept victory at any cost.

[Read more]

Thu
Apr 21 2011 12:55pm

Over the past year or so, the presence of Doctor Who in the Tor.com offices has grown massively. New writers have come in with a pre-existing love for the show and others have discovered just what it was they were missing. The end result being an office that will talk at length about anything Who-related.

When the news came on Tuesday of Elisabeth Sladen’s passing, we stopped cold. This was Sarah Jane Smith, vibrant and indomitable, how could she be gone?

To say Sladen was adored is an understatement, and we simply couldn’t stay silent in this regard. Below the cut, you’ll find tributes to Elisabeth Sladen gathered from the staff and contributors here at Tor.com, here to share their own memories and thoughts on the lovely Ms. Sladen.

Forever our Sarah Jane.

[Read more]

Tue
Jun 8 2010 8:30am
Original Story
Ian Tregillis

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers.

“Do you suppose it’s possible to murder God?”

Gretel was Gottlieb’s most troubling patient. She was clairvoyant. She was also, he feared, quite mad.

He paused in the midst of jotting a note in her file. Capping his fountain pen and setting it on the desk, alongside the blotter, gained his scattered thoughts a few seconds to catch up with her. “I beg your pardon?”

“If He is omniscient and infallible, then surely He would see the moment and manner of His own passing. Knowing this, and being infallible, He could prevent it. Yet to do so would imply His prescience was imperfect. While not doing so would mean He is not eternal.” She sighed.

Gottlieb said, “The death of God is a metaphor. It isn’t meant as a literal, corporeal death. It represents the overthrow of God through modern man’s diminished need for external sources of wisdom.”

Nietzsche was required reading at the farm. But only the approved works, of course.

Mon
Feb 1 2010 5:40pm

(Or, “How Fast Can You Write, Kid?”)

In my previous post as a guest blogger here at Tor.com, I touched on some of the brainstorming and planning that goes on behind the scenes when writing Wild Cards novels. I’ve written for three Wild Cards novels, and each  has been a unique experience. (“Unique” means many different things, depending upon the book in question.) In this post, I thought I’d say a little bit about my experience with Inside Straight, which is the first novel of the Committee Triad, and also where my first Wild Cards story appeared. (That is, my first Wild Cards story to be published, not the first WC story I sold to George. But that’s a tale for another post.)

Inside Straight launched the Committee Triad via a pair of interleaved stories. The first story followed the filming of a television reality show called “American Hero.” The second story involved a genocide taking place halfway around the world from Los Angeles. Oddly enough, when co-editors George Martin and Melinda Snodgrass started assembling the book—by interleaving individual chapters written by separate authors, according to an overarching outline—they found these story lines didn’t mesh together seamlessly.

There had been some concern about this possibility during the plot break. But sometimes we need to see the details of a problem, the shape of its teeth and the color of its fur, before we can fix it.

[And sometimes, the solution isn’t rewriting.]

Tue
Jan 26 2010 12:42pm

My fellow Wild Cards co-author (and fellow Tor.com guest blogger, and all-around good guy) Daniel Abraham has posted about the weird style of collaborative writing that happens inside the invisible floating mountaintop fortress that is Wild Cards Headquarters. He compared the experience of writing in a shared universe collaboration to a rugby scrum, and that comparison is apt. (As far as I can tell. I’m not, you know, the rugby type. By which I mean I bleed easily.)

But I’d like to elaborate on something Daniel said in his first post, because it touches on a facet of collaborative writing that is often overlooked, yet occasionally essential and (at times) surprisingly rewarding.  I’d like to talk about the beginning of the collaboration process: the plot-breaking session.

And you thought Daniel was kidding about that huge meeting deep in the heart of rural New Mexico.

[A plot break isn’t merely a brainstorming session.  It’s carefully choreographed chaos.]