October 2018 Archives

The Labyrinth Index is here in time for Halloween, because 2018 just hasn't been scary enough!

US coverUK cover

The year: 2015, in an even worse time line than this one.

The place: The Palace of Westminster, London, and parts further west (a long way west).

The person: Dame Mhari Murphy, BSc (hons), MBA, FIC, DBE, styled Baroness Karnstein, member of the House of Lords and Chair of the House Select Committee on Sanguinary Affairs (ahem: vampires).

Her reporting chain: direct to the Prime Minister, his Dread Majesty N'yar Lat-Hotep, the Black Pharaoh—also known as Fabian Everyman MP, leader of the British emergency government of national unity known as the New Management.

Her mission: ... well, that's where our story begins.

If you're in Edinburgh, I'm doing a launch event (a reading and signing) at Blackwell's Bookshop on South Bridge at 6:30pm on Tuesday the 30th (tomorrow!); you can reserve a free ticket here.

Alternatively, you can buy the book in all good bookshops. Order the Kindle ebook here (for the US edition) and here (in the UK/EU)—they're published by different companies even though the launch is simultaneous. (Audiobooks: they're out now, from Audible! (First time I've had a simultaneous release in audio.) If they show up any time soon I'll put links here. Paperbacks: not 'til next year! Sorry!)

And if you want a signed copy, Transreal Fiction and Blackwell's Bookshop (Edinburgh) will be happy to ship signed copies locally or internationally.

The problem of fraud on the internet needs no introduction, but sometimes it takes on manifestly surreal forms. Here's an extract from the US National Cyber-Security Center's weekly threat report from last week: Publishing House Phishing Warning:

Penguin Random House North America has issued an alert to staff following a spate of global phishing scams attempting to access agencies' and publishers' manuscripts and other sensitive information.

The UK arm has been similarly targeted, with fraudsters posing as literary agents and foreign-rights staff from seemingly legitimate email addresses. Macmillan has confirmed that it has also been targeted by scammers trying to access manuscripts and has reportedly issued an internal briefing to staff.

I will confess I was somewhat boggled when I stumbled across this one. Everybody knows that the best way to make a small fortune in publishing is to start with a large one. And while there are some reasonable targets for fraudsters targeting a large publishing house (the accounts department springs to mind), author's manuscripts are not among them! Targeting manuscripts for profit is a bit like burgling a farm in order to steal all the crops growing in the field, three months before they're ready for harvest.

But still, it caught my attention. Scammers posing as literary agents and foreign rights staff have apparently targeted Macmillan and Random Penguin? My author-brain immediately started generating screwball heist caper comedy plot lines in which hapless scam artists discover how publishing really works.

(Continued below the fold.)

Shockingly, it has been drawn to my attention that The Labyrinth Index is nearly in print and yet I have failed to issue my usual crib sheet for The Delirium Brief. This cannot be! So without further ado ...

The eighth book in The Laundry Files (a title pinned on the series by marketing fiat at Random Penguin—sorry, Penguin Random House, Inc., who decreed that all series of more than three novels had to have a series title, and by an editor who wanted to leverage the brand name recognition of another urban fantasy author she edited, Jim Butcher) was written in early 2016 with a very specific goal: to deal with the aftermath of The Nightmare Stacks, which in turn had decisively broken the doldrums that nearly becalmed the "big picture" series story arc between books 3 and 6. That story arc is, loosely speaking, the story of the Lovecraftian singularity: in which vast, transhuman, and unsympathetic intelligences disrupt humanity's tenuous position of terrestrial dominance (but note they're not artificial intelligences but godlike alien ones—yes, it's also an alien invasion narrative, if you squint at it hard enough.)

Labyrinth Index cover

Hi! I'm in Toronto right now, and back in Edinburgh next week. Which leads neatly into me announcing the two launches I'm doing for The Labyrinth Index.

North America launch: although the official publication date remains October 30th, Tor have kindly given me the green light for a special event—a reading/signing on October 20th at Bakka Phoenix Books here in Toronto, this Saturday at 3pm. (Facebook event here; bookstore website here.) There will be hardcover copies for sale! (Note that this is the only time/place to buy copies ahead of the official launch on the 30th. It's a one-off preview event.)

UK launch: the UK edition launches on October 30th with a reading/signing in Edinburgh at Blackwells Bookshop on South Bridge, from 6:30pm: event signup page—it's free!—here.

Signed copies will probably be available for order from Bakka Phoenix books, but in limited supply; once I'm back in Edinburgh I will, as usual, be signing stock for Blackwells and also for Transreal Fiction, who are both happy to supply copies by mail.

Specials

Merchandise

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