Hell to Pay by Matthew Hughes

helltopay“Meet Chesney Arnstruther. Once a mild-mannered insurance actuary, now a full-time crime-fighting superhero, it’s all he can do to kick bad-guy ass while at the same time holding down a steady relationship with the gorgeous Melda. Something is going on.

Meet Xaphan, wise-cracking demon and the source of (almost) all of Chesney’s powers. He’s been asked by his infernal master to give Chesney whatever he needs… but surely stopping bad guys is not in Hell’s plan? Something is definitely going on.

Meet Arthur Wrigley, a modest yet charming older gentleman whose nasty little hobby is fleecing innocent widows. Meet Simon Magus, ancient mystic and magician from Biblical times now very much enamoured of Vegas, baby. And pray you never meet the Chikkichikk, a proud and ancient race of, well, warrior dinosaurs, from the universe that God made then rejected before He started monkeying around with this one.

Whatever the hell is going on, this is definitely the third book in the wondrous To Hell & Back series.” (Angry Robot Books)

Hell to Pay

Homeland by Cory Doctorow

homeland2“In Cory Doctorow’s wildly successful Little Brother young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco—an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state.

A few years later, California’s economy collapses, but Marcus’s hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It’s incendiary stuff—and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier.

Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him—but he can’t admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He’s surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can’t even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He’s not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he’s gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they’re used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want. Fast-moving, passionate, and as current as next week, Homeland is every bit the equal of Little Brother—a paean to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place.” (Tor Books)

Homeland

J. Brian Clarke Wins Inaugural A.E. Van Vogt Award

alphaJ. Brian Clarke of Calgary, Alberta has won the inaugural A.E. Van Vogt Award for his novel Alphanauts along with a $1200 honorarium sponsored by the Winnipeg Science Fiction Society. The annual award is designed to honour a work of science fiction from an author in Western Canada.

“After nearly fifty years in suspended animation a crew of human space explorers return to Earth, only to discover a medical side effect that prevents them remaining on their home planet. Now, in a desperate bid for survival, they must return to space and attempt to colonize an alien world under an alien sun.” (Edge Publishing)

Alphanauts

Inner Diverse Book 2 of The Splintered Universe Trilogy Now in Bookstores

Inner-diverse-full-coverBook Two of Nina Munteanu’s Splintered Universe Trilogy, Inner Diverse, was released by Starfire on December 13th 2012 and is now in bookstores.

In Book Two of this metaphysical space thriller trilogy, detective Rhea Hawke continues her quest for truth and justice in a world that is not what it seems. Rhea’s relentless search takes her to the far reaches of the known universe from the treacherous Boiling Seas of the Weeping Mountains of Horus to the blistering deserts of Upsilon 3. Amidst the turmoil of an imminent extra-galactic war, Rhea holds the key even as those she trusts betray her.

Cover art for Inner Diverse was done by Costi Gurgu, 2012 Aurora Award finalist for his cover art for Outer Diverse. Costi is eligible for the 2013 Aurora Award for Best Artist for his work on Inner Diverse.

Redemption is Available

“This elegantly written SF series features believable characters and powerful situations. Stanton wastes no words in his approach to language, creating a deceptively simple style that is both appealing and lucid.” — Library Journal

The thrilling conclusion of the Bloodlight Chronicles trilogy. 

Steve Stanton - BloodlightSet in a world where global economic activity is carried out in a virtual-gaming realm, a blood-transmitted virus with rejuvenating effects has become a black-market staple, forcing infected “Eternals” into a tightly knit underground where they must hack the V-space for food and shelter. After their leader, Helena Sharp, begins to mysteriously degenerate and flees, the Eternal community is thrown into chaos, fearing that their immortality has ended.

When the young clone Niko discovers that her gifted daughter carries the future heritage of humanity in her augmented DNA, she travels home to confront her progenitor, Phillip Davis, with a litany of experimental abuse. Phillip has fully integrated his persona with the AI Beast who controls V-space, and with the aid of a charismatic avatar, he embarks on a program of manipulation and control that will redefine the boundaries of death and consciousness.

An interview with Steve Stanton is now online at Open Book Ontario.

An interview in his role as President of SF Canada is now online at CBC Books: Canada Writes.

A “writing tip” to career novelists is online as part of Sci-Fi Odyssey.

The Bloodlight Chronicles: Redemption is available wherever great books are sold, and via payday direct from ECWpress.com.

CZP Launches John Park’s Janus

JPJanusJohn Park’s novel Janus was launched by CZP on September 22 at Can*Con in Ottawa.

Psychological drama, mystery, Janus is both violent and lyrical as it follows conflicts of love and identity to a bitter climax and a somberly optimistic conclusion.

In the near future, Jon Grebbel arrives on the colony world of Janus and finds himself without memory of his life on Earth. It seems the journey has caused memory loss in many of Janus’s colonists. While Grebbel wants to start his new life, he wants his memory back, and starts treatments to restore his past. But he begins to doubt the glimpses of the past they reveal.

He meets Elinda, an earlier arrival, whose lover, Barbara, vanished and then was found lying in the woods apparently brain-damaged. Elinda has also lost her memories of Earth, but unlike Grebbel has abandoned the effort to recover them. Now their meeting brings them a glimpse of an experience they shared  back on Earth. . . .

From the front cover:

“In the tradition of Delany, Sturgeon, and Le Guin, but taking his place among contemporary voices like Watts, Vonarburg, Schroeder, and Huff, John Park brings strength, intelligence, and grace of narrative to bear in this novel of relationship and estrangement.”

          —Candas Jane Dorsey, author of Black Wine and A Paradigm of Earth,

                                   and winner of the Aurora, Tiptree, and Crawford Awards

Listed by Kirkus among “worthy runners-up” for the “can’t-miss” fantasy and science fiction books of October 2012.

where to buy Janushttp://chizinepub.com/books/janus.php