#tor authors

[chekhovs-tantrum]

Everyone I've met in this fandom is a decent, kind, wonderful person and so I'm not sure how some of you finished a work about the horrors of consuming one's beloved and the destructiveness of capitalism — and then promptly went off to "jokingly" badger/threaten/nag your favorite author's boss because she isn't providing content fast enough for you?

I'm being overly snarky and I know that in a lot of cases this is just an expression of how excited people are: “Starving for Alecto news” translates to “I'm so excited for the next installment of this series!” But let's maybe work on phrasing? If your post sounds like your parent being passive-aggressive about why the dishes aren't done, maybe take a shot at some edits.

I am also beyond stoked for Alecto but I don't go to a restaurant and bitch at the waiters because the chefs are taking a little too long to get my dessert just right. Good art takes time. Grab a snack.

#reminder that Tamsyn has been as open as she wants to be about her physical and mental limitations #and no artist owes you an explanation of why they're not producing this very second #I would rather an author take care of themselves and push a deadline back than fall apart trying to put out a mediocre book on time #by all means do what you want but just know I am wincing if you center your own distress #tlt #tor #alectopause #Alecto the ninth #locked tomb #tlt meta #tazmuir

[christabelq]

'SOULSTAR' BOOK REVIEW...

I haven’t done a review for a while, but I felt I should for this book, as I didn't like it and wanted to explore why. The book’s about a necromantic witch called Robin, who is fighting to make the country of Aeland a better place. At first she tries to do this by working with the new king, who appears to be quite progressive, but as time goes on, it becomes clear he’s not the person she thought he was and she needs to take a different route. She takes over as the head of the Free Democracy party when the previous leader Jacob is assassinated and ends up bringing about a revolution. The blurb for the book describes it as A WHIRLWIND OF MAGIC, POLITICS, ROMANCE, AND INTRIGUE, which sounded right up my street, but it totally didn't live up to my expectations and here are some of the reasons…

One of the villains (a terminally ill old man) is tried near the end and sentenced to hang. I find the idea of capital punishment deeply troubling, so this was never going to sit well with me. I think it’s inhumane, and when mistakes happen (which they totally do), there’s nothing you can do about it. The trial also left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s what I believe is commonly referred to as a kangaroo court, when the accused isn’t given a chance to defend himself and the verdict’s pretty much decided before anyone says a word. To make matters worse, Robin traps the man’s soul in a tree for a thousand years after he’s been hanged. This isn’t part of the court’s decision and there’s no consultation. She just does it. For me this little display suggests that power has totally gone to her head and Aeland has simply traded one arrogant despot for another, which I’m sure wasn’t what the author had in mind.

The pacing feels off. Parts of the book seemed rushed (e.g. the revolution and a lot of the magic stuff), while other parts felt bloated and unnecessarily drawn out. The author seemed unable to tell what to focus on to best serve the story, and if there was any editorial guidance, it must have been pretty poor judging by how it turned out.

Complex issues are dealt with in what for me seems like a totally simplistic way. The revolutionaries are holier than thou and the people they’re fighting against are like pantomime villains, when in the real world, almost everyone is somewhere in the middle. You only really hear one viewpoint about stuff and the whole mess gets cleared up in a ridiculously short amount of time.

The character of Zelind. Zelind is non-binary, which on the face of it sounds great, but the sense I got was that khe was a token character. I had no clue about kher appearance or what kher life as non-binary was like (e.g. the specific challenges khe faced). I noticed that the author used the wrong pronouns for kher a few times (usually SHE/HER, but also at least one THEY), which made me wonder if KHE was once a SHE and the non-binary element was added quite late in the writing process to be on trend or something. It certainly doesn’t add to the plot in any way. If it wasn't a late change, then it's another example of sloppy editing. You expect that kind of slip in self-published books, but not when they're from a big company like Tor and not when its something people might be sensitive about. I also wondered how everyone the character meets seems to immediately know which pronouns to use for kher. I don’t have any direct experience of this myself, but I’m guessing it doesn’t always work that way for real non-binary people, so it doesn’t ring true. Another thing that didn’t seem realistic was the way the character rustled up a machine to generate electricity at the drop of a hat, when others have been trying for years and utterly failing. It’s not properly explained how khe is able to do it and it all happens off camera so to speak, so you don’t get to see what it actually involves. This character could have been so much more and for me was a big disappointment.

The plot feels contrived. I knew all along where the book was headed, so getting through it felt like a chore. There were also quite a few times when seemingly hopeless situations were quickly resolved by unlikely events, e.g. Robin happening to know there would be a hidden door which would allow her and Grace to escape from a burning room, or footsteps lying undisturbed on a snowy rooftop for days, so Robin can solve the mystery of Jacob’s assassination (luckily there hasn’t been any snow in the meantime and it hasn't melted either). Magic also felt a bit convenient at times and the rules around it seemed to shift to fit the plot.

So those are my biggest gripes. I won’t tell anyone they shouldn’t read the book, because I’ve seen a lot of glowing reviews and I’m sure a lot of people will 💜 it, but for me it just didn’t work. I haven’t read the other books in the Kingston cycle and I won’t be doing now. This one was more than enough. 2/5

#follow for follow #follow back #like for like #christabelq #christabel simpson #soulstar #soul star #kingston cycle #lgbtq books #queer author #c.l. polk #good idea badly written #revolution is super easy #tor need new editors #book review #book recommendations

[preacherboyd]

hard pills to swallow: the worst person you know has made art you enjoy

#okay so maybe not the worst person but definitely uhhh #this is a reminder to myself: never NEVER listen to interviews of authors/actors/directors etc who made something u like #this is about a specific incident but this always happens to me unfortunately #this is definitely not a vague post about the thing u think it’s about but it probably applies to that too #tor stfu challenge

[sethhaddonsblog]

dropping in to dump this life changing deal <3

#author #sapphic books #sapphic scifi #scifi books #tor books #tordotcom #currentlyreading #tamsyn muir #ex machina #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth

[darkwood-sleddog]

been talking about it a lot on my personal blog, but the whole AI as a replacement for creative work makes me feel sick to my stomach and i just needed to share my feelings with the wider audience i have on this blog. like physically it makes me feel ill.

#not dogs #artists #as somebody that has ~by choice~ left being a paid professional artist/designer/character designer/animator #because of how shit we are treated #this does not make me feel better for the future generations or current generations of artists/creatives #companies ONLY care what they can get away with and how CHEAP they can get away with it #the idiots claiming that ai will make art 'more efficient' don't get it #art isn't about efficiency #even if you are a commercial and professional artist #artists make art because we not only enjoy the final outcome #but we enjoy the act of creation itself #it's the only thing that makes working for a soulless exec in an art job mildly bearable #with ai you are a commissioner and the machine is the artist. do not get it twisted. #thinking about how TOR books still paid minimal amounts of money for an author with a 7 figure book deal #bc they could use a ai generated image on the cover #and it doesn't even look good to an ARTISTS eye #but they don't care #bc it will look passable to everybody else

[love-wing]

I tend to like to keep up with what LGBT+ fantasy/sci-fi books are being released so there’s definitely author names I tend to recognize. What I often forget is sometimes these authors made their start in fanfiction and are still in fandom spaces on tumblr, so sometimes a tumblr user will mention “oh I’m an author” and I’m like cool I want to check out what they wrote and I’m always bamboozled when it’s something I’ve read

#I mean… the locked tomb owns my ass and tasmuir used to be a homestuck fanfic writer #seen both alexendra rowland and foz meadows make posts about good omens 2 #there’s just something interesting to me about authors existing without the regular fanfare that comes with celebrity #I mean I ended up having a whole conversation with olivie blake at the Tor booth at SDCC before she said ‘oh yeah and I wrote this’ #lindsey speaks

[rrcraft-and-lore]

instead of a shitpost/meme, I just say this: Hey, would you be kind enough to spread the word about my new epic silk road fantasy book? Would you buy a copy please? :)

Available everywhere books are sold

"Crafted with patience, passion, and most importantly, tremendous love. Read R.R. Virdi!"- Jim Butcher, NYT bestselling author of the Dresden Files

"Rich world-building, plenty of action, and devious twists abound. Very highly recommended!" ―Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of V-Wars and Kagen the Damned

"R.R. Virdi's The First Binding is engrossing and beautiful, joyous and painful―always entertaining, sometimes profound. This book makes me remember why I love epic fantasy."―Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Dune: House Atreides

"An epic like no other - grand, sweeping, dramatic, a love letter to fantasy burning with the dust and heat and mythos of South Asia. It reads like magic and tastes like saffron." ―Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Washington Post bestselling author of the Salvage Crew

#books #bookblr #reading #books and reading #bookworm #bookish #fantasy #fantasy books #high fantasy #asian fantasy #southeast asia #Folklore #folktales #myths #legends #retelling #Indian fantasy #bestseller #salvage crew #dresden files #the dresden files #jim butcher #Kaigen the Damned #Dune: House Atreides #book review #buy this book #tor books #authors of color #indian authors #book blog

[killbaned]

personally i just think too many people are incapable of generically expanding their interests and horizons and i'm tired of it.

"the publishing industry is in shambles have you seen booktok recently" no. i don't get book recs from social media. i get book recs by going to my library and inputting "zombie" into the search function and seeing what it gives me.*

"the music industry is dying and no one likes rock and roll anymore because all the radio plays is taylor swift" have you tried picking a band you like and seeing who influenced them? have you tried picking a band you like and googling similar music? asking on fucking reddit even?

"comic books suck because of the mcu" have you tried not reading superhero comics?

#*i haven't actually visited my local library in a long time #but back in the day that's how i found new books. that's how i found my favorite series. #lately i've been finding new books bc i tripped into these free compilation books from tor publishing #and then if i like a short story an author did i look up that author

[ebookporn]

Tor Publishing Group Announces Bramble, a New Romantic Imprint

President and Publisher Devi Pillai announces the creation of Bramble, a new imprint of Tor Publishing Group dedicated to a wide array of romantic stories for the modern reader.

From science fiction and fantasy to contemporary and family saga, romance belongs in every genre and every genre belongs in Bramble. Whether the last page holds happily ever after, to be continued, or an ending that isn’t so simple, Bramble books will take you on an extraordinary journey of love. With spice levels to suit all readers, with familiar tropes and uncharted territory, Bramble books will explore a love that’s tangled up, covered in thorns, and oh so sweet. Bramble is for everyone and everyone deserves a good love story.

Of the new imprint, Pillai remarked, “Tor Publishing Group is the gold standard of genre publishing and it’s the perfect time to have an imprint dedicated to romance. Bramble will be the destination for exceptional love stories of all kinds. Expanding into romance gives our team and our readers another chance to do what we do best: get obsessed! Plus, let’s be real, I just want to publish more books I love to read!”

Pillai also announced that Monique Patterson will join as VP, Editorial Director, effective February 27th, and will report to Pillai. Patterson brings almost 25 years of publishing experience, specifically in romance, to the table and will oversee and develop Bramble as well as acquire titles for the imprint, in addition to acquiring fiction and non-fiction outside of Bramble. She has published over 40 New York Times bestsellers, has worked with a diverse range of talent, and looks forward to bringing the same to Bramble.

READ MORE

#romance writers #romance novels #book publishing #authors #writers #writing #genre writing #digital publishing #ebooks #tor publishing #bramble #love stories

[seased]

i have really mixed feelings about tlt lol like i dont think the critiques about how it “sounds like fanfic” are wrong. but also like those are the worst chunks of the book. like all the meme reference pop fiction YA voice chunks suck... tho they are like 70% of the books. but then, it has a few like really fucking flow state good chunks. like the chunks that get away from that “fanfic” voice are really cool!!!

and it makes me wonder like whats the true authors voice here? is the pop fiction AND the weird detailed gore-psychology both legit? is the pop fiction just being lazy/approachable? makes me wanna see what comes after tlt and after tor dot com lol

#seas posts #i kinda assume tor editors push the authors to all write… Like That. they all have a very similar ‘’like fanfic’’ tone #probably bc that does really well for YA pop fiction #but it does make me sad bc a lot of upstart authors w good ideas get scooped by tor and forced into the tor mold and etc #it reminds me a lot of The Host back in the day… where the insane shit feels like its held back by the conventional YA bones its strapped to

[lesbianyosano]

you guys ever go to bsd twitter just to remember how good we have it here

#i dont use twitter but i have an account mostly for stealing bsd raws when new chapters are out #anyway went there bc i was reading a fic and the author linked their account #there wasnt anything crazy bad there btw but my brother in christ bsd tumblr is such a good place to hang out #'why is there such a pressure to not write characters ooc do you not want to see them in different scenarios' i dont think you know what ooc #means btw #yeah adjusting how a character acts tor the purpose of writing a story far removed for canon is great #exploring who they might be in this other universe in widły different circumstances is so so fun #but ignoring and misinterpreting them is such bizzare behaviour to me #esp that even when reading au’s you can just. still sort of feel that something is off #and im not talking abt someone trying and maybe to necessarily succeeding in makes everyone perfectly in character #but rather people who will go out of their way to make characters different and unrecognizable and claim it’s somehow better #do you even like these characters then? if you feel the constant need to pretend they’re are vastly different? #txt. #hi and welcome to post 15226 of me being pissy over something that’s objectively not a big deal

[razzek]

@drchucktingle Camp Damascus is available in braille at last! I’ve read it thrice via text to speech ebook and audiobook but now I can really read it myself! I’m so excited!

#just blind things #braille #book access and literacy for the blind is not as easy as people think #very happy this only took a month instead of years or never #which is often the case #love is real #thank you to the folks at Bookshare for providing accessible books #and Tor Nightfire for making books available to the services that transcribe them for the blind and print disabled #more of this from all publishers please #authors can also give permission to make their books available to disabled readers

[starblaster]

so it was brought to my attention that the post calling the locked tomb series “homestuck fanfiction” was misrepresenting some things about the books, and that the point of view transitions between books and now that i’ve been given a better synopsis (than the marketing-brained “lesbian necromancers in space” i see people parroting nonstop as if that is at all a good way to recommend a book), i can certainly understand that the style of the narrative voice is written like that (presumably) to ‘cut tension’ but, like, if the books contain heavy subjectmatter, why is that the way the author has decided to cut tension or add comedy? like, i do want to know why. what is the utility of that language, that tone, that style? marketability...?

i'm not sure which characters, if it's even first-person pov at all, the example excerpts from that post are the narration of but, as far as i’ve been made aware, gideon and harrowhawk are eighteen year olds (since both example excerpts came from gideon the ninth, i assume that's gideon's point of view) and, if that’s the case, and their immaturity (and potential inability to take heavy issues seriously in their own minds) is the point of that style, isn’t there some better way to write that than what is ostensibly dated meme-speak? is there a contextual reason why this character know what "resting bitch face” is? if not, how isn't that an anachronism? genuine question. if there are fans following me who want to explain that, i would encourage it.

#reblogs are off because i don't trust people lmao #either not to distort what i am literally asking or to use it as an excuse to be mean to locked tomb fans for #like... enjoying something that is obstensibly harmless #it may not literally be homestuck fanfiction but admittedly it does smack of 'this author was a homestuck as a teen' #not a bad thing on the face of it i'm just remarking on that as an observation #the same way i might observe that nonjudgementally in someone's art style #i need to turn my rant about tor dot com into a new post though #this is just something i've been meditating on today since a pal brought it to my attention

[thebookbin]

In the Watchful City

S. Qiouyi Lu

Publisher: Tor Genre: sci fi Year: 2021

Today I finished In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu and I was blown away. It was my first novel that used neopronouns. The main character used æ/ær pronouns (the same that the author uses) and there is another character that uses se/ser pronouns. The story follows Anima, a human dedicated to the safety and knowledge of all people in the futuristic city of Ora. Ær job is to move into the bodies of animals around the city and help, sometimes intervene in crimes or watch out for accidents. While Anima has lived in thousands of bodies, ær own body cannot leave the pool in which æ live and the cables that bind ær to the Gleaming. The book begins when æ meet Vessel, a mysterious traveler from another realm. Vessel has a qitiang full of items, each item containing a memory. Anima may choose any of the items to feel their story, and when æ are done with the experience æ must give ser a memory of ær own. Through these objects, some insignificant, some beautiful, we get brief flashes of humanity from people all over this world, and Anima learns what it truly means to be human. All the stories are queer. This was truly a delight to read and just solidifies my interest in translated fiction and in gender studies in other languages. storygraph | bookshop.org | local houston

★★★★★ compelling, linguistic stars

#book review #in the watchful city #s qiouyi lu #nonbinary #neopronouns #trans #2021 #five stars #a good read #chinese author #Author of color #COOL WORLDBUILDING #profound #short stories #unique premise #sci fi #featured #lgbt #queer #tor pub

[eli-mendoza-author]

Hi, everyone! This is my new official author blog. I plan on doing a mix of OC and reblogging, so follow to stay updated! I promise most of my posts will be less formal than this 😅

I'm thinking of posting writing updates more than on Insta and maybe some prompts!! Feel free to recommend good blogs for me to follow as well (yes, this includes self-promotion lmao)

Quick things about me: I like video games, alternative subcultures, reading, writing, social sciences, funny memes, stuffies, and axolotls!!! I love those lil bastards 🥰

#theory of reality #TOR #author #transmasc #ya fiction #queer fiction #lgbtq books #lgbtq authors #disabled author #writeblr #punk

[cienie-isengardu]

Illogicality (the original, Polish version can be found on DA or manda’yaim).

This old comics is based on my talk with friend about Jango Fett: Open Seasons and is (kinda) joke of course, but the fact that Tor did not go with the typical villain routine of “give me what I want or I will kill your kid” when he could hurt Jango or his mother and sister staying in the house (’cause I don’t believe Death Watch would not check the house in search for any hiding there injured True Mandalorians) and instead he limited the violence to the Fett Senior (the only one confirmed helper of Jaster) is a very neat yet usually ignored nuance of Tor Vizsla’s character presented in the first issue of said comics.

 Which is why I'm furious about the additional tie-in materials that demonize Tor by calling him a sadist (with no proof to back up this claim from the original source) just to glorify his opponent. Which is unfair not only to creators of JF:OS or to Tor and Death Watch, but to Jaster Mereel as well. Both Mandalorians were shaped by the same environment/society so if the alleged brutal, barbarian bastard like Tor follows very specific personal code of honor (keeping his promise to kill all who helped True Mandalorians and yet focusing violence on the only one confirmed person that helped Jaster even if this hindered his effort more than help ) then Jaster who is supposed to be the better (morally wise?) Mandalorian, by logic, can’t act in any less way than Vizsla.

Oh, I’m soon gonna talk about this, and other issues in regard to Tor and Jaster, so take this comic as my only warning - and hint - about upcoming analysis. Because I have a lot to say in that matter.

#star wars #tor vizsla #jaster mereel #death watch #my comics #my art #i can't believe that creators of tie in materials literally either don't know what sadism means #they totally ignore this pretty nuance of Tor's character #which is really disrespectful #toward authors of JF:OS who went out their way to estabilish that in the first place #to Tor and Jaster (as the supposed moral better part of their conflict) #and to Mandalorians as a whole #seriously i'm mad about this ignorance and the comics was published in 2002 #20 years of frustration lol talk about devotion #anyway i'm waiting for the outcry how i dare to say that tor and jaster are alike and so on so on #spoiler true mandalorians showed to us and death watch aren't that different when it comes to brutality #i guess the difference may be about work ethics and the end goal #this is gonna be fun #the meta about tor is waiting already few years in my drafts but i guess the RC reread really pushed me into getting myself preparing #to finish what i started once and for good #what a times to be alive for me to demand a fairness to Tor AND Jaster lol