RR's Top 10 Spec-Fic Novels of 2011

We'll run this thing countdown style, but first with a preamble:  almost half my reading this year was non-fiction, so I missed a few of the "big" releases (Stephenson, Bakker, etc.).  I look forward to comments complaining about how your favorite author (besides me) is missing.

THE BEST

10.  Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson - Sanderson barely makes the list this year.  Considering the book was barely a book that seems fair.  Yes, it's Mistborn with guns...and that's AWESOME, but it wasn't much of a story.  Short, short, short, and we all want more, more,  more.

9.  Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews - The only Urban Fantasy novel to make the list and of course it's going to be Andrews.  Andrews is the top of that sub-genre.  This novel was a pause in the larger Kate Daniels story, but still had some rocking scenes.

8.  The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss - A novel that brought us both the laughable Fae Super Sexathon and the amazing Cthaeh, it was pure Rothfuss, with an unbeatable readability, clue's to the trilogy's mysteries all over the place, and...Kvothe being an ass.

7.  God's War by Kameron Hurley - I love this world!  Bugs, deserts, Middle Eastern and African influences.  Characters that are hard, a plot that is harder, and a world that is hardest of all.

6.  The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding - Wooding's steampunk meets Firefly series keeps on going and I keep eating it up.  This time we got some major world-building going on and perhaps it didn't have Black Lung Captain's pace and character work, but it still has enough of Darian Frey and his crew for anyone.

5.  Stonewielder by Ian C. Esslemont - A Malazan novel, so obviously I loved it.  With a whole new continent to explore, Malazans, Crimson Guards, and plenty of gods and goddesses causing the usual convergences this one felt formulaic to the series, but I'm not complaining.

4.  The Crippled God by Steven Erikson - The last book in the mainline Malazan story went out big...then decided big wasn't enough and went ludicrous speed.  There were some good conclusions here, some long speculated moments coming about, and some interesting open doors for the future.  RR needs more Karsa STAT.

3.  Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey - It's not the space opera notes that work best in this novel but the noir and mystery notes.  The fast pace, no-holds-bared action, and complex social themes may not have made it the "best" read of the year, but they did make it the funnest read of the year.

2.  Infidel by Kameron Hurley - That's right, Hurley makes the list twice.  Her second novel was even better than the first.  Every problem I had was solved, the world was further explored, the characters faced serious challenges, and some insane HOLY BLEEPAGE got thrown around on twists and turns.

1.  The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie - Say one thing about Logen Ninefingers, say he's not required to make an Abercrombie book great, but even the mentioning of his name goes a long way.  Abercrombie kicked a lot of character and plot BLEEP in this book but they both fail before what the man did with chapter structure.  The "letter" and "battle" chapters were just as great as advertised, making this my spec-fic book of the year.


THE DISAPPOINTMENTS


5.  Still No Scott Lynch! - Scott Lynch's long awaited third Locke Lamora novel continues its waiting period.  Lots of rumors on this one, maybe it's handed in, maybe it's being revised, maybe he's writing book 4 at the same time.  Or maybe not.  All I know is a year without Scott Lynch's style and skill is worse off than one with it.

4.  The Unremembered by Peter Orellun - One of the most pushed and pumped debut novels of the year.  It had an amazing cover.  It had all the might of Tor behind it.  Yet...the major who read it looked on it in horror.  The prose...the purple prose!  The rip off of Eye of the World.  A cry came out from across the blogosphere:  what was Tor thinking pushing this?  Perhaps worse than the novel itself was the manipulation on review sites like goodreads and Amazon by unknown forces to see the novel given high marks.

3.  The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham - In an amazing feat, Daniel Abraham managed to make both my "best of" and "disappoint" lists (he's part of the writing duo going by James S. A. Corey).  This novel lacked all the joy and tight plotting of its brother, it also had bland characters that were hard to like and a world that was forgettable.  A decent novel, but not up to the standards of his other work.

2.  Snuff by Terry Pratchett - For the first time I asked myself if Terry Pratchett has himself a ghost writer.  Just an odd book that was as not Discworld as you can get.  Pratchett is in my all time top 10...this one was a huge let down.

1.  A Dance With Dragons by George (Not as) R.R. (As Me) Martin - We waited six years for Dany, Tyrion, and Jon...we got a waffling girl, turtles and pigs, and not an Other in sight.  My three star review on Amazon received over 1,000 helpful notes so I know I'm not alone in my disappointment.  No matter how good the Theon/North storyline might have been, the rest...was all disappointment.


DEBUT AUTHOR OF THE YEAR


Kameron Hurley for her great work with both God's War and Infidel.  Not only is she the debut author of this year, she's the author I'm most excited about since the Debut Explosion of 06/07.  If you haven't checked out her books, start zapping them onto your Kindle immediately.

Christmas is Cancelled

Okay, maybe not Christmas, but I am officially considering BETROTHAL 2 to be shelved.  I'd never actually planned for the "series" to be anything but the first book.  It was developed as a simple funny book that would be easy for me to write and finish, since I'd yet to complete one at that point.  It's fine for what it is, but...I don't read humor/romcom/lad lit.  It's not my thing.  I don't 'get' it.  It's hard to sell it.  It's hard to understand what it's fans are after and expect.

Fantasy is my thing.  Sci-Fi is my thing.  Creating crazy ass worlds, that's my thing.  BETROTHAL was meant to be a one off and forgotten, probably never published if the Indie boom hadn't happened when it did.

So why did I even bother to try to write a sequel?  Most my family.  I got so much "when's the next one coming out?" and "what happens next?" and serious whining over a sequel that I caved and thought I could at least try.

But my heart just isn't in it.  Another wedding, more torturing of poor Phin, and yes there is some funny in the 1/4 of the draft I've finished, but...all my thoughts are with other projects at the moment...mostly King Henry Price.  Writing BETROTHAL 2 feels like homework...I don't quite like that, so for now, consider it disappeared into the mysterious aether of my trunk.

New 2012 Covers for FOUL MOUTH

I ended up making this change mostly for the same reason I did with BETROTHAL.  When you're using thumbnails to sell your book it all comes down to big fonts that are easy to read.  I still like the original cover for FANGED LADY but as I moved into CAT KILLING COYOTES I could never get the graffiti font to be bold enough to read at small sizes.

I didn't want to abandon the original idea of trashing artistic masterpieces in true rebellious style, so I looked to find a happy medium by keeping both "THE FOUL MOUTH" and my name in graffiti but bringing in the Pistolgrip font over single color bars, with a single word highlighted in white instead of black.  I also had to throw in little comments from King Henry about the piece in question...got to have a little fun.

THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE FANGED LADY 2012 COVER

I'll show off the CAT KILLING COYOTES cover closer to release (March = Unlikely, April = Questionable, May = Probable).

Writer Lockdown

I've been a busy bee this year.  5 works out, all that formatting, editing, keeping betas in line, wrangling reviewers, getting Amazon to make some of my stuff free, etc.  But writing wise...not that hot.  This looks to be the least productive year I've had in three years.

I know some people can go all social butterfly and that's how they get their work noticed and done, but me...I'm much more the mad genius locked in his laboratory.  Either I'm writing or I'm doing promo, not both.  This year, promo has consumed my time.

I'm frankly sick of it.  Maybe this will cost me readers that one extra tweet would have grabbed, but I find it hard to care.  I need to do this writer-style, not marketer-style.  Even assuming I write all the way into my eighties, I don't have enough time on this Earth to get out all the material that is already in my head.  Oh to think about some of the worlds and characters we're never going to get to visit together just because I'm human and not an evil cyborg...

Alas...

So...WRITER LOCKDOWN.

I'm ripping the mouse and keyboard off this baby and throwing them into the closet, I'm taking the laptop off WiFi, I'm giving the Xbox a very stern talking to about letting me play with it so often lately, and I might even give Kathy Bates a call.

RR will not be on the net much...for December or for 2012.  If you need to contact me about a review for my books, hit up my email and expect a wait in answer.  If you just want to send fan-mail...well, I like fan-mail, only again: expect a wait.  Hopefully I'll eventually sale a million copies and have some extra cash for a assistant, and a cover artist, and a great copy editor, and a guy to walk around behind me and say "Remember the Athenians".  But for now:  expect a wait.

You should however, be happy.  This means more work coming out from me.  Probably...no promises.  But I expect an uptick in production without promo holding me down.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a geomancer to do some business with...

No More Reviews from RR

I actually really do love writing reviews, mostly to get cheap laughs with puns (YAY PUNS!), but also to defend good books and to destroy over-pushed bad books.  Being both an Indie writer and a semi-successful reviewer has been something I've gone back and forth over whether it was..."cool".

Before last weekend I could safely claim that even thought I had novels for sale, I wasn't in competition with these people.  I mean, let's be honest, I had sold a grand total of 50 books, with another 50 given out to reviewers.  That's not prime-time, that's minor leagues...maybe even tee-ball.

In no way, shape, or form, was I in competition or a peer of some of these Big 6 writers I was kneeling down before or bashing over the head with a lead-pipe.

But I'm not sure I can say that any longer.  The BETROTHAL went free and now I have six thousand copies floating around in the ether after four days...and a week or two to go before I can switch that drain off.  Sales of FOUL MOUTH have also picked up to a few copies a day.  Looking at the future I can only imagine that this is going to increase, especially with sequels coming next year (probably...no promises...back up off me!).

Maybe I'm not Major League yet, but the GM just gave me a reminder that it's coming.  So why not stop reviewing my soon-to-be peers now?  It's a good time for it.  The only book to come out for the rest of the year I was interested in having an opinion on was Ilona Andrews...and everyone already knows Andrews rules Urban Fantasy, so why do I need to say it?

It is kind of a shame...I never did break into the Amazon Top 1000 Reviewers...and I was very close.  It will just have to be one of those things I never accomplished, up there with not climbing Everest (big mountains and freezing to death are so not me) or missing out on my high school senior prom (no, not because I couldn't get a date...the girlfriend lived out of town...me, geek?  Never!).

If you're REALLY into my thoughts on the books I read, there's always Goodreads, which I'll keep updating with star ratings, if not explaining them (why did he give MY PET GOAT 5 stars?  We'll never know...).  I'll also probably casually mention books I think rock and Spec-Fic I think everyone should be reading (Kameron Hurley) in general blathering posts I make in the future.

But puns?  No...the puns are dead.  Or at least unintended (LOOPHOLE)...