March #TorChat Sweepstakes

Did you participate in today’s #TorChat? We hope you enjoyed it and look forward to your participation in next month’s chat on April 17th!

In the meantime, here’s your chance to win a prize! Five – that’s right, five – lucky winners will receive a trade paperback edition of Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells. Leave a comment below to enter.

And again, we’d like to thank Catherynne M. Valente, Jeffrey Ford, Leanna Renee Hieber, and Kaaron Warren for participating. We’d especially like to thank editor Ellen Datlow for moderating!

Sweepstakes closes to new entries on March 27th at noon.

And don’t forget to come and join us next month, on April 17th, at 4 PM Eastern!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. You must be 18 or older and a legal resident of the 50 United States or D.C. to enter. Promotion begins March 20, 2013 at 4:30 p.m. ET. and ends March 27, 2013, 12:00 p.m. ET. Void in Puerto Rico and wherever prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules go here. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

March #TorChat Lineup Revealed

This month, #TorChat is exploring the nineteenth century and the world of gaslamp fantasy! Join us as editor and moderator Ellen Datlow chats with Catherynne Valente, Kaaron Warren, Leanna Renee Hieber, and Jeffrey Ford on March 20th at 4 PM Eastern.

Tor Books (@torbooks) is thrilled to announce the March #TorChat, part of a monthly series of genre-themed, hour-long chats created by Tor Books and hosted on Twitter.

This month, #TorChat is looking back on the nineteenth century and the subgenre gaslamp fantasy. Gaslamp fantasy, according to the new anthology Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, can take place any time during the 1800s, and is primarily set in England or in places where the British had a strong cultural presence. Rather than being a narrow subgenre, however, gaslamp fantasy is actually rather broad, and can include steampunk, historical fiction, detective tales, gothic fiction, and so much more.

Joining us to talk about this emerging genre are four authors who contributed to Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells. Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship Of Her Own Making and the gaslamp fantasy short story “We Without Us Were Shadows;” Kaaron Warren, the award-winning author of Slights and the short story “The Unwanted Women of Surrey;” Leanna Renee Hieber, an actress, playwright, and the author of “Charged,” as well as the novel The Strangely Beautiful Tales of Miss Percy Parker; and Jeffrey Ford, the multiple award-winning author of The Shadow War and the story “The Fairy Enterprise.” Together, they’ll discuss what, exactly, gaslamp fantasy is, and why the subgenre is here to stay.

The chat will be loosely moderated by Ellen Datlow, who has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for over thirty years. We hope fans of gaslamp fantasy, as well as those interested in learning more about it, will follow the chat and join in using the Twitter hashtag #TorChat!

About the Authors

ELLEN DATLOW (@EllenDatlow) has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for over thirty years. She was fiction editor of OMNI magazine and SciFiction and has edited more than fifty anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year; Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror; Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy; Blood and Other Cravings; Teeth: Vampire Tales; and After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (the latter two young-adult anthologies with Terri Windling). She has won nine World Fantasy Awards and has also won multiple Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, and the Shirley Jackson Award for her editing. She was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention, for “outstanding contribution to the genre.” She has also been honored with the Life Achievement Award given by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career. Her latest anthology is Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, co-edited with Terri Windling, which publishes on Tuesday, March 19th.

JEFFREY FORD (@jeffreyford8) is the author of eight novels (most recently The Shadow Year) and four collections of short stories (most recently Crackpot Palace). He is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, Shirley Jackson Award, Edgar Allan Poe Award, and Nebula Award. His story “The Drowned Life” was recently included in The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, 2nd ed. Also his story “Blood Drive” appeared in the YA apocalyptic and dystopian anthology After, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Tor), and “A Natural History of Autumn” appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He lives in Ohio with his wife and sons.

LEANNA RENEE HIEBER (@Leannarenee) is an author, actress, and playwright with a BFA in Theatre and a focus in the Victorian Era. A member of Actors Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA, Leanna works periodically on shows like Boardwalk Empire. A Goth girl with an enormous collection of corsets, she resides in New York City with her real-life hero and their beloved rescued lab rabbit. Her debut novel, the B&N best-seller The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, won two Prism Awards, multiple regional and genre awards and is currently in development as a musical theatre production. Her fourth, Darker Still: A Novel of Magic Most Foul, was selected as a Scholastic “highly recommended” title. Leanna’s short fiction has been featured on Tor.com, in Willful Impropriety, and in the new anthology Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, publishing on March 19th. Her upcoming Gaslamp Fantasy series, The Eterna Files, launches in 2014 from Tor Books.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE (@catvalente) is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpest, The Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship Of Her Own Making. She is the winner of the Andre Norton Award, the Tiptree Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Million Writers Award. She has been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, Nebula, and Spectrum Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 2007 and 2009. Sjhe lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner, two dogs, and enormous cat.

KAARON WARREN (@KaaronWarren) is the author of the short-story collection The Grinding House, which won the ACT Writing and Publishing Fiction Award and two Ditmar Awards. Her second collection, Dead Sea Fruit, also won the ACT Writing and Publishing Fiction Award. Her third collection, Through Splintered Walls, was recently published by Twelfth Planet Press. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Slights, won the Australian Shadows Long Fiction Award, the Ditmar Award, and the Canberra Critics’ Award for Fiction. Since then she’s had two other novels published, Walking the Tree and Mistification, both short-listed for a Ditmar Award. Warren’s stories have been picked for The Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy and Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, as well as The Year’s Best Australian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy anthologies. Warren lives in Canberra, Australia, with her husband and children.

About #Torchat
#TorChat is a genre-themed, hour-long chat series created by Tor Books and hosted on Twitter. Guest authors join fans in lively, informative and entertaining discussions of all that’s hot in genre fiction, 140 characters at a time, from 4 – 5 PM EST on the third Wednesday of every month. Each #TorChat revolves around a different genre topic of interest, often of a timely nature, and strives to provide a new media opportunity for readers to connect with their favorite authors.

About Tor Books
Tor Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, is a New York-based publisher of hardcover and softcover books. Founded in 1980, Tor annually publishes what is arguably the largest and most diverse line of science fiction and fantasy ever produced by a single English-language publisher. In 2002, Tor launched Starscape, an imprint dedicated to publishing quality science fiction and fantasy for young readers, including books by critically acclaimed and award winning authors such as Cory Doctorow, Orson Scott Card, and David Lubar. Between an extensive hardcover and trade-softcover line, an Orb backlist program, and a stronghold in mass-market paperbacks, books from Tor have won every major award in the SF and fantasy fields, and has been named Best Publisher 25 years in a row in the Locus Poll, the largest consumer poll in SF.

A Demented Labor of Love

Written by James Frenkel, Senior Editor

I have edited, packaged, or been the in-house editor for several dozen anthologies since I started working in publishing, late in the last millennium. I’ve always loved working on them, especially anthologies with original stories, because they give readers (and the editor, too!) a chance to discover talented young writers who haven’t yet made a name for themselves with novels, as well as cool short fiction by wonderful established writers. Anthologies are also perfect new millennium media, especially for people who are too busy to read long books. In an anthology, each story is complete, but doesn’t take a long time to read. And themed anthologies, if they’re done well, like this one, are often a great revelation, as you read one story after another, each one offering a different writer’s original, creative take on the theme.

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, brought to me by the obviously demented, twisted John Joseph Adams, has been a labor of love. Twisted, tortured, tied-up-in-baling-wire-that-cut-into-my-bleeding-wrists love, but definitely love.

Its genesis was a long, seriously difficult process: at one point, the longest story in the anthology was hijacked by the editors of another anthology; sadly, one of the contributors died, and we don’t know just how many have fled into the hills . . . but we know Adams himself abandoned the East Coast for what he obviously perceived to be the relative safety of California. Obviously, he doesn’t understand the perils of unstable plate tectonics and multiple fault lines.

Were all these developments really coincidence? Hmmm.

But I had to keep going. Why? Hahahahahaha! Did you read the title? It’s the Mad Scientist’s Guide.

Have you ever noticed, in sf and fantasy books, almost always, the good guys win. The bad guys — Mob bosses, over-ambitious warlords, evil scientists, power-mad wizards — are usually crushed, their hopes and dreams, however misguided, or yes, perhaps even malevolent, turned to ashes.

This book is for them—really, yes, for those maligned, misunderstood MADMEN who merely want to RULE THE WORLD (or destroy it). Cloaked in the sheep’s garb of fiction, hidden within the pages of this guide, are secrets that readers probably will never discover . . . but those for whom this book is really intended (you know who you are, in your secret lairs, your hidden laboratories, your camouflaged hideaways with booby-trapped entrances to trap the uninitiated) will see, will discern the true, masterfully disguised intent!

And then, all the others, the unsuspecting readers who will enjoy the “stories,” will know, to their eternal doom, that what they thought were mere tales by “fiction” writers such as Diana Gabaldon, Daniel Wilson, Austin Grossman, Ben Winters, Naomi Novik, Harry Turtledove, Jeffrey Ford, Mary Robinette Kowal, Alan Dean Foster, Seanan McGuire, David Farland, Carrie Vaughn, Grady Hendrix — there are nine others, and you might find them out if you are clever, but . . . stop me before I say too much! . . . are really plans.

Yes, plans . . .

World domination will be theirs! Even the “cover artist,” Ben Templesmith . . . ha! if you think the image on the cover is mere decoration, you will rue your naive confidence. What does a “temple smith” really do? Have you really considered that? I thought not.

And now it’s too late . . . and I have enabled them . . . if the world ends now, I will know I did my part. For now it is enough to know that nothing can stop them — the “stories” — now! They are free to infect the world . . .

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From the Tor/Forge February newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

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More from the February Tor/Forge newsletter:

• Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz
• An Interview with Lady Trent, Dragon Naturalist by Marie Brennan
• Speechless: Writing Dialogue for Characters Who Don’t Speak by Evie Manieri
• Grab Bag Sweepstakes

Goodreads First Reads: The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination edited by John Joseph Adams

About The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination: From Victor Frankenstein to Lex Luthor, from Dr. Moreau to Dr. Doom, readers have long been fascinated by insane plans for world domination and the madmen who devise them. Typically, we see these villains through the eyes of good guys. This anthology, however, explores the world of mad scientists and evil geniuses—from their own wonderfully twisted point of view.

An all-star roster of bestselling authors—including Diana Gabaldon, Daniel Wilson, Austin Grossman, Naomi Novik, and Seanan McGuire…twenty-two great storytellers all told—have produced a fabulous assortment of stories guaranteed to provide readers with hour after hour of high-octane entertainment born of the most megalomaniacal mayhem imaginable.

Everybody loves villains. They’re bad; they always stir the pot; they’re much more fun than the good guys, even if we want to see the good guys win. Their fiendish schemes, maniacal laughter, and limitless ambition are legendary, but what lies behind those crazy eyes and wicked grins? How—and why—do they commit these nefarious deeds? And why are they so set on taking over the world?

If you’ve ever asked yourself any of these questions, you’re in luck: It’s finally time for the madmen’s side of the story.

Enter for a chance to win on Goodreads here!

(Ends January 31)

Also, don’t forget to check out our other sweepstakes!