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Lee's Photos |
We now have a publication date for my new novel,
SLOW APOCALYPSE.
It will see print on September 4, 2012.
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This novel is my attempt to reach a larger audience, which I will never do with hard science fiction like my Gaea Trilogy or the Thunder and Lightning series. As such, the book begins with a more-or-less science fiction premise in a more-or-less present-day setting, and proceeds from there. SLOW APOCALYPSE follows the story of a family in Los Angeles as they attempt to deal with an energy crisis of unprecedented proportions. What if, virtually overnight, all the crude oil in the world suddenly became unusable? Hint: It would mean a lot more than just having to walk to work in the morning ... This is what my editor called a "comp of the art director's take on the dust jacket." It will be tinkered with, I'm sure, but this is the basic concept. The idea is that this is paint peeling from the rusting body of a car. I thought it looked more like dead leaves, but it's just a first draft. It will also be jazzed up with "matte with spot gloss and embossing," which sounds pretty cool to me. What do you think? |
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What's Varley reading? A FINE LINE ... before that |
Saturday,
February 4, 2012
Latest
January 10, 2012:
Movie
Reviews:
Here's a very short but
quite impressive video made by Jean-Paul Tetu, a fly-through of Gaea
from my trilogy. M. Tetu wants to be involved if a movie ever gets
made. Over the years many, many people have written to me wishing
these books would be made into a movie. Naturally, I'd like that,
too. Let's hope this is not as close as we'll ever get. |
We Don't Share!
Please Buy
These Books!
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“... this Podkayne's story is not a Shavian-Voltairean satire but a nicely traditional combination of bildungsroman, alien contact, planetary adventure, and disaster scenario featuring a smart, mouthy young person as narrator and stirrer-up-of-plotpoints. ” Russell Letson, Locus
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January, 2012:
Movie Reviews: Margin Call * Impostor * Midnight in Paris * The Little Giant * Hopscotch * Rio Bravo * Obsession * Contagion * The Tree of Life * True Crime * The Way Back * Attack the Block * Wild Target * Cutter’s Way * Rise of the Planet of the Apes * Hot Millions * The Stunt Man * Dead Calm * Cowboys and Aliens * Water For Elephants
December, 2011:
Movie Reviews: Richard III * The Long Kiss Goodnight * The Town * The Company Men * You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger * Good Night, Nurse * Bigger Than Life * It! The Terror from Beyond Space * X the Unknown * Win Win * Jane Eyre * A Day at the Races * A Night at the Opera * Stone * The Invisible Man * The Innocents * The Cameraman * Breakfast of Champions * Mother Night * In a Lonely Place * The Pink Panther Saga * Two Tars * You’re Darn Tootin’ * Putting Pants on Philip * Big Business * Habeas Corpus * The Prize * My Man Godfrey * I Married a Witch * The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) * Noises Off * Bridesmaids * Matinee * Cedar Rapids * Kelly’s Heroes * Hugo * The Help
November, 2011:
Movie Reviews: Dead of Night * The Adjustment Bureau * Rango * Welcome * El Dorado * Source Code * Tightrope * Rubber * The Best Man * Limitless * The Music Man * Under Siege * The Fighter * Three Kings * Unstoppable * Legally Blonde * Super 8 * New York, New York * A Place in the Sun * Men Behaving Badly, Series 2 * The White Ribbon * Monsters * How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog * The Three Penny Opera * Gaslight (1944) * 84 Charing Cross Road * Night Train to Munich * Airplane! * The Coen Brothers
October 27, 2011:
The results are in, and they are … inconclusive. About half of you liked SLOW APOCALYPSE as the title for my upcoming book, and half preferred ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT. That’s those of you who had a preference. Some of you didn’t like either of them. A few thought either one was okay.There were a few dozen suggestions for alternatives. Some of them were quite good, but none stood out as something I just HAD to use. That’s the way it goes with titles sometimes. Most of the time I KNOW what the title should be. There’s just no question in my mind. But every once in a while nothing really satisfies, and we go to press with something that I will never be happy with. That looks to be the case here.
I have a policy of answering all my email, except for those very infrequent rants from cranks and idiots. This time the volume of mail was such that I’d end up using most of the day writing emails, and I hope you would prefer me to spend that time continuing work on my next novel, DARK LIGHTNING, the fourth and final book in the THUNDER AND LIGHTNING series. So please forgive me, and accept this group mailing along with my thanks for your responses.
October 21, 2011:
You Heard It Here First!!!!Earlier this year I finished a novel that I titled ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT. I withheld announcing that here on the website because my editor had some concerns and said she might need some re-writes. And there was also the matter of the title. She didn’t like it, and to be frank, I wasn’t wild about it, either. It was just the best of a dozen unsatisfactory titles I came up with.
Today I was informed that she wants to call it SLOW APOCALYPSE. This makes sense, as the reason I wrote it is that she wanted a post-apocalyptic novel, a non-SF story (though all post-apocalyptic novels, by their nature, have SF elements) that she could push harder than the typical SF novel gets pushed. That sounded like a good idea to me, so I wrote a story about the development of a bacterium that turns crude oil into a useless, gooey mass. It gets loose, and suddenly we are faced overnight with the situation we all know is coming sooner or later: The end of the world’s oil supplies. How would this affect the world? Pretty badly, and pretty quickly, I felt. So, though the disaster is slow compared to an earthquake or a tsunami, it’s rapid enough to disrupt and then damn near destroy our accustomed way of life in months, not years. I hope you, my readers will buy it and enjoy it.
Publication will be in October … of next year. It takes time to plan the sort of roll-out and ad campaign I hope to see for this book. So please be patient. When I have an exact date, I will let you know here. You can also come here for a first look at the cover, when I get a copy. We’ll let you know.
So, purely to satisfy my curiosity, what do you think of the two titles? Love them both, but one slightly more? Love one, hate the other? Hate them both? Any suggestions? I warn you that suggestions are unlikely to be considered unless they are SO good they might propel me to the top of the bestseller lists. But I’d still like to see them.
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Lee's Photos |