COVER REVEAL: Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie

Blade for Black Steel: Map by Tim Paul, Design by Lauren Panepinto

Over the years Joe Abercrombie has earned a reputation as one of fantasy's most exciting and popular writers. His novels have sold more than a half million copies while receiving rave reviews. But Abercrombie is also an accomplished writer of short fiction--something we've noted on several occasions. Indeed, Tia called the story "Tough Times All Over," from the Rogues anthology: "fun and funny...fast paced and gripping," while Zhaoyun characterized "Some Knockout" as "positively delightful" and "a nonstop barrage of Abercrombie's characteristic bleak situations + wry humor one-two punch."

For these reasons and more, we here at 'nerds of a feather, flock together' are thrilled to present to you the U.S. cover for Sharp Ends, the forthcoming collection of Abercrombie's short fiction (both original and reprinted) from Orbit Books. The cover is

In Abercrombie's words: 

I’m very pleased that some widely scattered shorts are going to be brought together in one volume along with some new stories about old friends and enemies, filling in some blanks in the map of the First Law world and offering some different perspectives on key events. I hope readers will have as much fun revisiting some of these much-loved–and much-hated–characters as I have.

Count us in! But if you still aren't convinced yet, check out this excerpt from "Some Knockout":

****

Shy gave the horse her heels, its forelegs buckled, and, before she had a notion what was happening, she and her saddle had bid each other a sad farewell.

She was given a flailing instant aloft to consider the situation. Not a good one at a brief assay, and the impending earth gave her no time for a longer. She did her best to roll with the fall—as she tried to do with most of her many misfortunes—but the ground soon uncurled her, gave her a fair roughing up, and tossed her, flopping, into a patch of sun-shrivelled scrub.

Dust settled.

She stole a moment just to get some breath in. Then one to groan while the world stopped rolling. Then another to shift gingerly an arm and a leg, waiting for that sick jolt of pain that meant something was broke and her miserable shadow of a life would soon be lost in the dusk. She would’ve welcomed it, if it meant she could stretch out and not have to run any more. But the pain didn’t come. Not outside of the usual compass, leastways. As far as her miserable shadow of a life went, she was still awaiting judgment.

Shy dragged herself up, scratched and scuffed, caked in dust and spitting out grit. She’d taken too many mouthfuls of sand the last few months but she’d a dismal premonition that there’d be more. Her horse lay a few strides distant, one foamed-up flank heaving, forelegs black with blood. Neary’s arrow had snagged it in the shoulder, not deep enough to kill or even slow it right off, but deep enough to make it bleed at a good pace. With her hard riding, that had killed it just as dead as a shaft in the heart.

There’d been a time Shy had got attached to horses. A time—despite reckoning herself hard with people and being mostly right—she’d been uncommon soft about animals. But that time was a long time gone. There wasn’t much soft on Shy these days, body or mind. So she left her mountto its final red-frothed breaths without the solace of her calming hand and ran for the town, tottering some at first, but quickly warming to the exercise. At running, she’d a heap of practice.

“Town” was perhaps an overstatement. It was six buildings, and calling them buildings was being generous to two or three. All rough lumber and an entire stranger to straight angles, sun-baked, rain-peeled, and dustblasted, huddled about a dirt square and a crumbling well.

The biggest building had the look of a tavern or brothel or trading post or more likely all three amalgamated. A rickety sign still clung to the boards above the doorway but the name had been rubbed by the wind to just a few pale streaks in the grain. Nothing, nowhere, was all its proclamation now. Up the steps two by two, bare feet making the old boards wheeze, thoughts boiling away at how she’d play it when she got inside, what truths she’d season with what lies for the most likely recipe.

There’s men chasing me! Gulping breath in the doorway and doing her best to look beyond desperate—no mighty effort of acting at that moment, or any occupying the last twelve months, indeed.

Three of the bastards! Then—provided no one recognised her from all the bills for her arrest—They tried to rob me! A fact. No need to add that she’d robbed the money herself from the new bank in Hommenaw in the company of those three worthies plus another since caught and hung by the authorities.

They killed my brother! They’re drunk on blood! Her brother was safe at home where she wished she was, and if her pursuers were drunk, it would likely be on cheap spirits as usual, but she’d shriek it with that little warble in her throat. Shy could do quite a warble when she needed one, she’d practiced it ’til it was something to hear. She pictured the patrons springing to their feet in their eagerness to aid a woman in distress. They shot my horse! She had to admit it didn’t seem overpowering likely that anyone hard-bitten enough to live out here would be getting into a sweat of chivalry, but maybe fate would deal her a winning hand for once.

It had been known to happen.

***

...and while you're at it, check out Orbit's call to adventure. 

POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012.

AiIP: The Times They Are A-Changin'

But first, a message from our sponsors:

 Well, not a sponsor, exactly. But as A) an author and B) someone who pays quite a bit of attention to publishing in general, and self-publishing in particular, I see a lot of book covers. And, man, do I see a lot of bad book covers. I want to take a moment here and plug the guy who did the cover for 3024AD, over at Atomic Covers. If you're an author looking for an artist, here's why you should consider him:

• The look. Books are judged by their cover, and literally everything I've seen from him is top quality, and that's of utmost importance.
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Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

 Recently, on this very blog, a few of us discussed a few pieces by Jonathan McCalmont, wherein he makes the statement that:

the genre short fiction scene is becoming a literary niche in which readers are entirely optional

Which, I think, is 100% true (he, incidentally, seems to have misunderstood my points in that post. Suffice it to say, while I found his tone somewhat off-putting, I agreed with what he said, and basically said we need more of that. But I digress). Readers have become optional in many ways, as short fiction authors sell and read other short fiction authors.

But, we live in the fun* age that we do, so there are options. One option that has recently appeared is QuarterReads. Basically, you pay $0.25 per story, and you get to pick what you read with it. But it's not and open field like, say, Amazon- there are some basic editorial standards, for quality and basic subject matter. You can read their whole 'about' page here.

Founder Ian was kind enough to take a few moments and answer some questions about QuarterReads for us:

1) What gave you the idea for QuarterReads?

Like most great and terrible ideas, this one came up over drinks with friends. We were lamenting the fact that short story publishing felt like a binary choice: submit to the professional markets or self publish. We started talking about what something in between those poles might look like, and eventually came around to the idea of a market for individual stories, sold at a low price with most of it going straight to the author. Everything grew from there, and that simple idea is still central to every feature we add to the site.


2) Where do you see QuarterReads in a year? In five?

I am a terrible prophet, but here goes. We are about two and a half months old right now, so a year is a long time and five feels like an eternity. In a year, I'd like QuarterReads to be a more mature market, with not only many more writers and readers in the system, but with features that make the very most of every story. That includes things like smartphone apps, the ability for readers to interact more with writers, etc. In five years, at the rate that we change, the site itself might be completely unrecognizable from what it is today, with the exception of the mission, which is carved in very solid stone. Sell stories for a quarter, 22 cents of which go to the author. Everything other than that is negotiable and subject to change based on what is best for our writers.

3) The process is extremely author-friendly, and you listen to feedback and implement it quickly. Can you speak a little to your working process and philosophy?

Everyone who works on this site is a writer first. Before I do any development work on QR each day, I make sure to hit my word count goal as a writer, and I'm a stickler for everyone who works with us having at least one story for sale on the site. We can talk about being writer-friendly all we want, but the best way to stick to that is to be constantly seeing the process from the writer's side as well as the business one. Our philosophy, if we have one, is very simple and absolutely unoriginal. Yog's Law is our first unbreakable rule: money flows always to the writer. If we make a cent, we make sure that one of our writers has made about seven cents first.

4) Do you foresee a longer-form version of QuarterReads, or always stick to the 2,000 word limit?

If we ever deal with longer stories, it will be with a partner site, and I think that very well might happen. But QuarterReads itself will always be for flash and the shorter end of short stories, as well as poems and essays. I won't guarantee that 2,000 will never turn into 2,500, but for the most part, we are happy with our limits. To go back to your previous question, I can all but guarantee that a year into the future, we will still have a 2k limit in place.

5) Much has been made of the Terraform launch, and the market for short fiction- How do you plan on attracting more readers?

That's certainly the big question. We have taken the strategy of being very good to our writers first and letting the readers follow. We're well aware that this only works to a point. One of our biggest challenges, which we share with every single market on the planet, is reaching out to readers and convincing them that their $5 is best spent with us. Our advantage, I think, is a low barrier to entry in terms of price, and a huge variety of content. Show me another place where you can choose 20 stories from a catalog of 600 that gets bigger every day, encompassing everything from high fantasy to romantic poetry, for five dollars. I think we've created a good product, but can we get the critical mass of readers to join? We'll certainly try.

On a slightly less rambling note, we will be making one story each week free to all visitors, starting in the next week or so. This was a somewhat controversial move, because it threatens our core value of always paying writers. But I think we've done it in such a way (paying the writer ourselves and encouraging tips) that Yog is still satisfied, and I hope that will help new visitors see what we do and convince some percentage to join up.

Thanks for the chance to talk about QR. If your readers have any questions, I'd love to hear from them by email at ian [at] quarterreads.com.


We now conclude with another message from our sponsors:

Actually, from me! Just a reminder, in line with the above on the changing face of publishing, that I have an ongoing (free!) choose-your-own-adventure running over at The Venturess! I'd love it if you read it & voted!


-DESR

Dean is the author of 3024AD and other stories, engineer, and geek about many things. He lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. You can listen to him ramble on Twitter and muse on his blog.