Nearly one year ago, on July 12th, 2012, Neil Clarke, the young editor of Clarkesworld magazine, nearly died. I chose the word young because the manner of his near-demise was a heart attack, which is a killer one often associates with an older generation and/or people with very obvious weight/health problems. This was not Neil Clarke. Or at least it didn’t appear to be.

Thankfully Neil Clarke has survived, and not only survived, but thrived. Neil took this event as the wake-up call it was and used it to inspire him to put more time and energy into his passions. Over the past year Clarkesworld has seen a growth in readership and the addition of more original fiction as well as reprint fiction. One of Neil Clarkes’ other dream projects has taken the shape of a very special anthology that you can be a part of. Yes, you!

Continue reading Upgraded →

July 5th has arrived, meaning it is the official start date for the Group Read of Daniel Abraham’s novel, The Dragon’s Path. I planned to dive in early on this one but I continue to be behind on some reading (and quite frankly have been sucked deeply into Bioshock 2 of late) and thus I will be starting fresh from page one today.

This is a most difficult book to structure a group read around given that it does not have proper chapter numbers or titles. The chapter titles alternate between the names of the main characters and repeat themselves throughout. Simply giving page numbers for the various sections only works if we are all reading the trade paperback. I am not sure if ebook pages are standard regardless of device or not. And then some of you may be doing this on audio. Unfortunately the bundled version I have with Leviathan Wakes does not give page count at all.

I am wanting to try something a bit different for this Group Read. As many of you have various posts scheduled for different days of the week and because it is sometimes difficult to visit all the participating sites of a group read consistently, I wanted to see what it would be like to host this discussion on the Goodreads website. I have created a group homepage called The Dragon’s Path Group Read. I have left the group open for anyone to join and we will use the discussion forum on that page to do our weekly Q&A. That way everyone can jump in on the ongoing conversation and not miss any of the threads of the conversation. At the end of the group read you will have the option of doing a proper review of the book on your website and I will create a Mr. Linky here and a forum thread over there for you to post your links and we can do wrap-up conversations on the individual websites, that way we still have the chance to visit each other on our various websites.

On with the schedule.

Continue reading The Dragon’s Path Group Read →

It has been a few months since I have participated in a group reading experience and I am experiencing the itch (whoa, that sounds like a terrible personal problem, doesn’t it?)

TMI aside, I have been enjoying Daniel Abraham’s work in collaboration with Ty Franck writing as James S.A. Corey. Their first novel, Leviathan Wakes, is one of my favorite reads of the year and I am nearly mid-way through the second novel, Caliban’s War. This series that he is currently working on, The Dagger and the Coin, sounds intriguing, especially given that reviews I read talk about the emphasis on character.

Orbit books just announced today that for the month of June you can pick up a copy of The Dragon’s Path on Ebook for just $2.99 and in addition you get a copy of Leviathan Wakes. [Okay, actually it is the other way around, but for the purposes of this group read, just go with it]. If you click here you can use this site to launch into the site from which you want to purchase your Ebook.

Additionally, the book has been out for some time and so it should be easy to pick up in used bookstores or your local library.

What I am proposing is a group read that begins on July 5th and before I set up a reading schedule and commit to this I wanted to gauge your interest. If you think you might want to do an epic fantasy read together, let me know in the comments section. If you would like to host a week of questions covering a section of the book, please let me know that as well.