The Qwillery

Here are some of the upcoming June 2020 works by formerly featured Debut Author Challenge (DAC) Authors! The year in parentheses is the year the author was featured in the DAC.

This is the fourteenth in this new series of updates about formerly featured Debut Author Challenge authors and their works published since their last update. The year in parentheses after the author's name is the year that author was featured in the Debut Author Challenge.

Part 1 here	Part 11 here	Part 21 here	Part 31 here	Part 41 here
Part 2 here	Part 12 here	Part 22 here	Part 32 here	Part 42 here
Part 3 here	Part 13 here	Part 23 here	Part 33 here	Part 43 here
Part 4 here	Part 14 here	Part 24 here	Part 34 here	Part 44 here
Part 5 here	Part 15 here	Part 25 here	Part 35 here	Part 45 here
Part 6 here	Part 16 here	Part 26 here	Part 36 here	Part 46 here
Part 7 here	Part 17 here	Part 27 here	Part 37 here	Part 47 here
Part 8 here	Part 18 here	Part 28 here	Part 38 here	Part 48 here
Part 9 here	Part 19 here	Part 29 here	Part 39 here	Part 49 here
Part 10 here	Part 20 here	Part 30 here	Part 40 here	Part 50 here

This is the eighth in a series of updates about formerly featured Debut Author Challenge authors and their upcoming books 2015. This update covers some of the 2013 Debut Author Challenge authors. What's Up for the Debut Author Challenge Authors in 2015? - Part 9 will cover 2013 DAC authors.

Happy penultimate Monday in March!  Spring is here finally, but the weather still thinks it's Winter.




There are quite a few books out by formerly featured Debut Author Challenge Authors:

The Six-Gun Tarot by R. S. Belcher is out in Mass Market Paperback;

Star Trek: Enterprise: Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel by Christopher L. Bennett;

The Burning Dark (Spider Wars 1) by Adam Christopher;

Truth and Fear (Wolfhound Century 2) by Peter Higgins;

The Wicked (Something Red 2) by Douglas Nicholas;

The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway is out in Trade Paperback;

and

The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag is out in Trade Paperback.




March 24, 2014

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Sex and the Single Vamp (e)	Robin Covington	PNR
Love and Other Cosmic Nonsense (e)	A.D. Marrow	PNR - Cosmic Nonsense 1
Granny Yaga	Vitali Vitaliev	FT/F

March 25, 2014

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince (h2tp)	Nancy Atherton	PCM - Aunt Dimity 18
Dawn's Early Light	Philippa Ballantine Tee Morris	SP/M - Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences 3
The Six-Gun Tarot (h2mm)	R. S. Belcher	HistF/WW
Star Trek: Enterprise: Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel	Christopher L. Bennett	SF - Star Trek: Enterprise
Last God Standing	Michael Boatman	UF
The Midnight Witch	Paula Brackston	PHR
Path of the Archon	Andy Chambers	SF - Warhammer 40,000: Dark Eldar Path 3
The Burning Dark	Adam Christopher	SF - Spider Wars 1
Wrath of Lions	David Dalglish Robert J. Duperre	F - Breaking World 2
Sovereign (tp2mm)	Ted Dekker Tosca Lee	F - Books of Mortals 3
The Heretic (h2mm)	Tony Daniel David Drake	SF - The General / Raj Whitehall 9
Talus and the Frozen King	Graham Edwards	F
The Dead Don't Dance	John Enright	Th/P - Jungle Beat 3
Dark Lycan (h2mm)	Christine Feehan	PNR - Carpathian 23
Carpathian (h2mm)	David L. Golemon	Th/P - Event Group Thriller 8
Waking the Dead	Heather Graham	Sus/P - Caffery and Quinn
Dead Ever After (h2mm)	Charlaine Harris	UF/M - Sookie Stackhouse 13
Truth and Fear	Peter Higgins	F/M - Wolfhound Century 2
Winter's Heart (ri)	Robert Jordan	F - Wheel of Time 9
Styxx (h2mm)	Sherrilyn Kenyon	PNR - Dark-Hunter 23
Under the Dome: Part 2 (h2mm)	Stephen King	H
Call of the Siren	Rosalie Lario	PNR - Demons of Infernum
Bite Me	Shelly Laurenston	PNR - Pride 9
Age of Shiva	James Lovegrove	SF - Age Of... / Pantheon Triptych 6
Code Zero	Jonathan Maberry	Th/H - Joe Ledger 6
Fury (Kindle e)	Charlotte McConaghy	SFR/Dys - Cure - Episode 2
Fury (Kindle e)	Charlotte McConaghy	SFR/Dys - Cure - Episode 3
Fury (Kindle e)	Charlotte McConaghy	SFR/Dys - Cure Omnibus
Antiagon Fire (h2mm)	L. E. Modesitt, Jr.	F - Image Portfolio 7
The Remaining: Trust: A Novella (e)	D.J. Molles	UF - The Remaining
The Wicked	Douglas Nicholas	HistF/H/Myth - Something Red 2
The Barsoom Project (tp2mm)	Larry Niven Steven Barnes	SF - Dream Park 2
Children of the Gates	Andre Norton	SF - Omnibus
Vampires Need Not...Apply? (tp2mm)	Mimi Jean Pamfiloff	PNR - Accidentally Yours 4
The House at the End of Hope Street (h2tp)	Menna van Praag	F
The Folklore of Discworld: Legends, Myths, and Customs from the Discworld with Helpful Hints from Planet Earth	Terry Pratchett Jacqueline Simpson	F - Discworld
The River of No Return (h2tp)	Bee Ridgway	TT/R
Sunstone	Freya Robertson	F - Elemental Wars 2
Red Planet Blues (h2mm)	Robert J. Sawyer	SF/Noir
Lockstep	Karl Schroeder	SF
The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies	Clark Ashton Smith	Su - Collection
DarkFuse #1 (Kindle e)	Shane Staley (ed)	H - Anthology
Shadow People (h2mm)	James Swain	Th/P - Peter Warlock
Shadowbound	Dianne Sylvan	UF - Shadow World 5

March 26, 2014

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Anyway: Angie: A Tor.com Original (e)	Daniel Jose Older	UF

March 27, 2014

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Copper Falcon (e)	W. Michael Gear Kathleen O'Neal Gear	F - A Tale of North America's Forgotten Past

March 30, 2014

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The Wanderer's Tale (ri)	David Bilsborough	F - Annals of Lindormyn 1

e - eBook
h2mm - Hardcover to Mass Market Paperback
h2tp - Hardcover to Trade Paperback
ri - Reissue or Reprint
tp2mm - Trade to Mass Market Paperback

Dys - Dystopian
F - Fantasy
FT - Fairy Tale
H- Horror
HisfF - Historical Fantasy
M - Mystery
P - Paranormal
PCM - Paranormal Cozy Mystery
PHR - Paranormal Historical Romance
PNR - Paranormal Romance
R - Romance
SF - Science Fiction
SFR - Science Fiction Romance
SP - Steampunk
Su- Supernatural
Sus - Suspense
Th - Thriller
TT - Time Travel
UF - Urban Fantasy
WW - Weird Western

This is the sixth in a series of updates about formerly featured Debut Author Challenge (DAC) authors and their upcoming books for 2014. This update covers some of the 2013 Debut Author Challenge authors. Look for Part 7, covering more 2013 DAC authors, on The Qwillery later this week.

Please welcome Peter Higgins to The Qwillery as part of the 2013 Debut Author Challenge Interviews.  Wolfhound Century is out today! Happy Publication Day to Peter.  You may read Peter's Guest Blog - Russian-ness - here.








TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery.

Peter:  Thank you for having me! It’s fantastic to be here.



TQ:  When and why did you start writing?

Peter:  I was a slow starter. I was always a reader though. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t surrounded by books. All kinds of books. Anything I could find. Thrillers, fantasy, SF, Victorian novels, the Greek and Roman classics, folktales, comic books, history, biography, science. Absolutely everything. I’ve never felt anything was off limits. It’s all part of one big wonderful book.

I used to make attempts at writing from time to time, but I always gave up. I couldn’t get beyond the initial idea and the first few pages. Looking back now, I realize that I wanted to write, but technically I just didn’t know how to do it. Eventually, I found myself stopping off in cafés on the way to and from work, scribbling in note books, and I decided I really did need to try and do it seriously.

About that time – I’m really not sure now whether this came before or after I’d made that decision to commit to writing seriously – I was poking about in a carton outside a junk shop and I found this old book. It was by Joan Aiken, whose stories I loved when I was nine or ten, and it was about how to write. I mean, not what makes a good book – plots, themes, characters – but what the actual processes of making a story are. It was like someone had taken me into a workshop full of tools and shown me how to use them.



TQ:  What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

Peter:  Well I’m not sure how to answer that. Every reader has their own internal compass … But there are a couple of things I find really interesting when I’m actually doing the writing (sorry, I’m being greedy – having two).

I love trying to capture the atmosphere of places and periods. A crowded café in a northern European city a hundred years ago, in the rain. A path in the forest when the wind is blowing hard. An immense bureaucratic office building. It’s not really about accurate description, because every reader has their own places like that, which they visit inside their heads. I guess I’m trying to find the thing, or sound, or smell, that will trigger those imaginative memories, and make spaces in the story where a reader can bring their own imagination with them.

Also, I ask myself the most wild and off-the-wall question I can think of: such as, what would be it be like if the rain knew you were there and didn’t like you? And then follow it through with absolute care and seriousness.



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Peter:  Plotter. Definitely. I like stories that are tense and move fast and have lots of mystery and surprises. I work all that out first, so there’s a good strong spine to the book, because when the actual writing starts I get absorbed in the moment and the characters, and if I didn’t have a good idea of where it was going I’d be lost in the woods. Of course I don’t always stick to the plan. Sometimes a new character just walks in, or something unexpected happens, and I go with it. Change the plan.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Peter:  Mixing genres. I love thrillers and I love fantasy and SF, and in Wolfhound Century I wanted to write a book that would work as both, at the same time. I didn’t want to choose. So Wolfhound Century is a thriller, and it’s set in a world that’s different from ours in some important ways. It’s a lot like Soviet Russia, but there are giants there, and every few decades a monstrous inhuman creature falls from the sky, and usually they’re dead. The people call them angels, but they’re not.

There’s no reason why you can’t mix genres – books and movies and TV do it all the time – but I learned that it’s a kind of balancing act. There are times when the different genres pull against each other. For example, SF and fantasy books often take their time over world building. If you introduce something new and strange, you can expand a bit about what it is and give it some context. But thrillers don’t work like that: you have to start with a bang, in the middle of the action, and the pace can’t let up for too long or the book starts to sag and the sense of urgency and threat gets lost. That was certainly a challenge: finding ways of slipping the world-building in naturally along the way.



TQ:  Describe Wolfhound Century in 140 characters or less.

Peter:  A city of artists and revolutionaries and secret police, a monstrous alien presence in the forest, a woman sewing uniforms in a factory who wants to change the world …



TQ:  What inspired you to write Wolfhound Century?

Peter: I found the basic idea almost by accident. A long, slow accident. It was really an exciting moment when I finally got there. I jumped out of my skin.

I was reading a lot of fantasy at the time. Robin Hobb. I was obsessed by Robin Hobb. I wanted to write a big, wild fantasy. But I just couldn’t find a way in. Every time one of my characters picked up a sword, or did some magic, or heard about a dragon, I felt someone else in another book was already doing that better.

So, quite slowly, I started shifting my story deeper into central Europe, and north to the Baltic shores in winter, and I was moving forwards in time. Revolvers not swords. Trucks and trains not carts. Suddenly I found myself in St Petersburg in the early twentieth century. The idea just exploded into life. Suddenly I had marching crowds and modernist painters and propaganda cinema and noisy railway stations, and all the darkness and emotion of that historical period, and I had giants and golems and an endless forest. And I could make the story a thriller, an investigation, a race against time, a struggle against the overwhelming power of the state.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Wolfhound Century?

Peter:  A lot more than found its way into the finished story. I spent a lot of time, not only with history books, but also with artists and cinema and novels of the time. Old photographs. Travel books and guide books. Wildlife documentaries. Menus and recipes. I wanted to know what it felt like to be there, what it smelled like and tasted like, what they were afraid of, and what kind of things could happen. Where Stalin came from and how he took power.

I was always very aware that the events I was researching were real, and caused the deaths of millions of people and ruined the lives of millions more. I’ve tried to let that awareness come through in the book, as a kind of quiet undercurrent, so that Wolfhound Century doesn’t trivialize or exploit its background.



TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Peter:  The bad guys were the easiest, for sure. Josef Kantor, master terrorist with his eye on the main prize, and Lavrentina Chazia, head of the Secret Police. As they develop, they just get crueler and crueler, more and more powerful. Each has their own plans, and they pursue them ruthlessly. They spot their enemies’ weakest, most sensitive points, and they stick their fingers in and they push. If you have any kind of a malicious streak in you, writing villains is great fun.

The heroes were the hardest – Vissarion Lom, the police investigator whose refusal to toe the line starts the story rolling, and Maroussia Shaumian, the woman he meets, who wants to change the world – because they grow and deepen as people. You have to think about that really carefully: they’re thrown out of their familiar lives and experience terrible things, and they have to respond, emotionally, but not to the point where they become ineffective and they can’t push back. You don’t want them to come over as callous or unaware either: what happens affects not just them, but their families and friends and other people. They have to make hard decisions, knowing there’s a price to pay either way. And of course they respond to each other, too.



TQ:  Without giving anything away, what is/are your favorite scene(s) in Wolfhound Century?

Peter:  When I think about Wolfhound Century now, it’s often the quieter moments that come back most vividly. The pauses after the action. For example, there’s a scene where the heroine, Maroussia, has just had to run and fight for her life, and she knows she’s going to have to leave her apartment for ever, but she has a moment where she goes back home and washes the dirt off her cuts and bruises, changes her clothes and packs a bag. It doesn’t take long. She doesn’t own much. The passage only takes a paragraph or two, and I wrote it quickly, but I felt I’d got close to who she really was. What it was like to be her.



TQ:  What's next?

Peter:  Well, Wolfhound Century is definitely not the end of the story. It’s the first in a series of three. The second is already written, and I’m working on the third at the moment.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Peter:  Thank you for inviting me. I’ve enjoyed it a lot.






 About Wolfhound Century

Wolfhound Century
Vissarion Lom 1
Orbit Books, March 26, 2013
Hardcover and eBook, 380 pages

Inspector Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist --- and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police. A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown terrorism with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists. Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head.

And the recently revealed cover for Truth and Fear (Vissarion Lom 2):


I love the Russian included on the seal on this cover (and yes, I know what it means).

 



About Peter

Peter Higgins read English at Oxford University and Queen's, Ontario. He was a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and worked in the British civil service. His short stories have appeared in Fantasy: Best of the Year 2007, Best New Fantasy 2, Asimov's Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Zahir and Revelation, and in Russian translation in the St Petersburg magazine Esli. He lives with his family in South Wales.



Website
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Happy Monday!  It's the last Monday in March. Spring has arrived astronomically but not meteorologically - in other words, supposed to be Spring, still snowing.  If I've missed thanking anyone please accept my thank you for the birthday messages yesterday!






The 2013 Debut Author Challenge featured authors with novels out this week:

Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins. You may read Peter's Guest Blog - Russian-ness - here.

The Witch of Little Italy by Suzanne Palmieri. You may read Suzanne's Guest Blog - Finding Magic..... - here.

and

Virus Thirteen by Joshua Alan Parry. You may read Joshua's Guest Blog - Pink Girl in a Cruel World - here and the Interview here.


Two former Debut Author Challenge featured authors have new novels out this week:

The Marching Dead by Lee Battersby, which is the second novel in Lee's Marius dos Hellespont series.

The Age Atomic by Adam Christopher.  The Age Atomic is the sequel to Empire State.


Don't forget to vote in the 2013 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars for March!


And here are the releases for this week:


March 25, 2013

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Pooka in My Pantry (e)	R.L. Naquin	UF - Monster Haven 2

March 26, 2013

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The Good, the Bad and the Infernal	Guy Adams	SP/WW
Demon's Daughter	Paula Altenburg	PNR - Demon Outlaws 1
Passion's Prey	A.C. Arthur	UF - The Shadow Shifters 3
Immortal Trust	Claire Ashgrove	PNR - Curse of the Templars 3
The Marching Dead	Lee Battersby	F - Marius dos Hellespont 2
Galactic Courier (tp2mm)	A. Bertram Chandler	SF - John Grimes Saga 3
The Age Atomic	Adam Christopher	SF - Empire State 2
The Weight of Worlds	Greg Cox	SF - Star Trek: The Original Series
Rebel	Kristina Douglas	PNR - The Fallen 4
Deadly Sting	Jennifer Estep	UF - Elemental Assassin 8
Fire Caste	Peter Fehervari	SF - Warhammer: 40,0000
1636: The Kremlin Games (ri)	Eric Flint	SF - Ring of Fire 14
The Wreck of the River of Stars (ri)	Michael Flynn	SF - Firestar 5
Dog and Dragon (tp2mm)	Dave Freer	F - Dragon Ring 2
Twice Tempted	Jeaniene Frost	PNR - Night Prince 2
Ripper (h2mm)	David L. Golemon	AH/SF/Th - Event Group Thriller 7
Let the Dead Sleep	Heather Graham	PM
Play with Fire & Midnight at the Oasis	Justin Gustainis	UF - Morris and Chastain Investigation
Deadlocked (h2mm)	Charlaine Harris	UF/M - Sookie Stackhouse / Southern Vampire 12
Hellhole Awakening	Brian Herbert Kevin J. Anderson	SF - Hellhole 2
Wolfhound Century (D)	Peter Higgins	F
Kiss of Temptation	Sandra Hill	PNR - Deadly Angels 3
Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (h2mm)	Darynda Jones	Su/M - Charley Davidson 4
Time Untime (h2mm)	Sherrilyn Kenyon	PNR - Dark-Hnuter 16
Black Feathers	Joseph D'Lacey	F - Black Dawn 1
Wolf with Benefits	Shelly Laurenston	PNR - Pride 8
Aftertime (tp2mm)	Sophie Littlefield	PA - Aftertime 1
Gotrek & Felix: The Fourth Omnibus	Nathan Long	F - Warhammer
Extinction Machine	Jonathan Maberry	SF - Joe Ledger 5
The Scrivener's Tale	Fiona McIntosh	F
Princeps (h2mm)	L. E. Modesitt	F - Imager Portfolio 5
The Gift of Fire / On the Head of a Pin (h2mm)	Walter Mosley	SF - Two Short Novels from Crosstown to Oblivion
The Witch of Little Italy (D)	Suzanne Palmieri	F
Virus Thirteen (D)	Joshua Alan Parry	SF/Th
Red Planet Blues	Robert J. Sawyer	SF
Triggers (h2mm) (ri)	Robert J. Sawyer	SF
A Problem of Proportion	John Scalzi	SF - The Human Division 11
Of Shadow Born	Dianne Sylvan	F - Shadow World 4
The Slab (h2mm)	Karen Traviss	SF - Gears of War
Angelopolis	Danielle Trussoni	UF - Angelology 2
Lover At Last	J.R. Ward	PNR - Black Dagger Brotherhood 11
Solaris Rising 2: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction	Ian Whates (ed)	SF - Anthology
Kitty Rocks the House	Carrie Vaughn	UF - Kitty Norville 11
Rage of the Dragon (h2mm)	Margaret Weis Tracy Hickman	F - Dragonships of Vindras 3

March 31, 2013

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The Best of Joe Haldeman	Joe Haldeman	SF
Necroscope: The Mobius Murders	Brian Lumley	SF - Necroscope
Magic Highways: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Three	Jack Vance	SF

e - eBook
D - Debut
h2mm - Hardcover to Mass Market Paperback
tp2mm - Trade to Mass Market Paperback


AH - Alternate History
F - Fantasy
M - Mystery
PA - Post Apocalyptic
PM - Paranormal Mystery
PNR - Paranormal Romance
SF - Science Fiction
SP - Steampunk
Su - Supernatural
Th - Thriller
UF - Urban Fantasy
WW - Weird Western