Thanks to everyone who weighed in to our recent post about a fantasy series we’re going to be publishing. I’ve just been given permission by Tor — who’ve been great to work with on this — to announce that we’ve reached agreement to publish the first two volumes of Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen. If sales of those two books (500 numbered copies and 52 lettered copies) are up to expectation, look for us to sign on the rest of the series. Steve and we have chosen Michael Komarck to provide 8-10 full color illustrations for each volume, as well as a chapter head motif to be repeated. We’ll have more details soon, but at this point it looks as though the lettered editions will feature a dust jacket different from the numbered, be housed in a custom traycase, and also have an exclusive gatefold pull out illustration.

If that’s not enough good fortune for one week, this fall, Jim Butcher is due to turn in a long Dresden Files story for us to publish as a standalone illustrated book next year.

Please sign up for our newsletter. When we start accepting orders for these, word will go out there first.

Progress, finally! Justin Sweet has just turned in all the color and interior black-and-white artwork for Geoge R. R. Martin’s vampire masterwork, Fevre Dream, the cover of which you can already check out. We’ll post a few of the interior illos (b&w and color) shortly. Thanks to everyone who’s been waiting the years it’s taken us to pull this project together. Look for another progress report shortly.

Now, on to A Feast for Crows. Tom Canty has turned in every last bit of art for volume one, which we’ve sent to GRRM to make sure everything is exactly as he’d like it. Soon as he signs off on the art placement and design — which we expect him to do later this week or early next — we’ll have our proofer start in looking for stray errors that may have crept into the files we received from Bantam. Look for the covers, and a further update, soon.

Finally, Elizabeth Bear’s New Amsterdam is selling so phenomenally well — we’re down to the last 60 copies of the trade edition — that we don’t expect to have it in stock for more than another week.

Hi all,

We’re working on one of the larger deals we’ve contemplated in some time, to do limited editions of a fantasy series I can’t yet name (please don’t ask; just sign up for the newsletter at our site. Word will go out there first, and on a few message boards.)

Most of the numbered books in this series are likely to be priced around $125 and the lettered $250-$300, and we’re giving serious thought to NOT slipcasing the numbered books themselves, but putting the $$ into more color art, and upgrading the paper and cloth we would normally use. We did this recently for our edition of Mirrormask by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, also priced $125, and the reception was very positive.

I’d like everyone’s input. Would you prefer a nicer book, or a case to hold it? I should add that one of the things we’re considering is offering slipcases to hold 2-4 volumes at certain points in the series, that would be available for separate purchase.

If you’d like, please email me at subpress@gmail.com.

I can tell you straight up that I’m leaning toward putting the money directly into the books, to make them nicer productions, but wanted to see what everyone thought first.

We’ve just posted the first bits of the Summer Issue of Subterranean Online. Head on over for Elizabeth Bear’s take on the fanfic kerfluffle, a new short story by Joe R. Lansdale, and a truly maddening inquiry into the oeuvre of an underappreciated sf master, led by John Scalzi, Sarah Monette, and Nick Sagan. Future features in this issue will include short stories by Gene Wolfe, Charles Stross, Charles de Lint, and more!

Since its publication less than a week ago, we’ve seen stock on Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora go from 150 copies left to fewer than 60. (Important Update: Another 40 copies sold today, so we’re down to 20.) At this rate, we expect it to sell out in the next couple of weeks, so if you want to get in on the ground floor of one of the best fantasy series currenty running — and we’ve already secured rights to the sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies — get your order in now.

Also selling very well are both the limited and trade editions of Elizabeth Bear’s New Amsterdam. We don’t expect to have copies of the limited for more than another day or so, with the trade edition unlikely to be in print for more than another 3-4 weeks. As Charles Stross says: “In the tradition of Randal Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories, Elizabeth Bear has carved out a disturbingly dark alternative past, where the gaslit neuroses of Victorian colonialism rub shoulders with the nightmares of an older, grimmer age. Watch out for this fantasy — it’s got fangs.”

Just posted to Subterranean Online: An audio of the standalone second chapter of New Amsterdam. “Wax” is the first tale to feature Deputy Crown Inspector Abigail Irene Garrett, read by the incomparable Mary Robinette Kowal. Head over and give it a listen.

Just thought you might like some early word on books we’ve only recently signed contracts for, including The Other Teddy Roosevelts and Hazards: a Lucifer Jones Adventure by Mike Resnick, a huge, 200k word collection by David Weber, The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury — collectors note, Mr. B will only be signing the lettered edition, as well as an excursion into Lovecraft territory by Peter Cannon, and Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch’s nautical sequel to The Lies of Locke Lamora. We’re also negotiating original works by a number of best-selling writers, as well as working on the launch of our trade paperback line. 2008 is already shaping up to be another great year!

Please note: with the drastic changes in USPS charges, we’re going to have to hike what we charge for shipping in the very near future. This will have an effect on both our domestic and international customers. If you’ve got your eyes on some in-print titles, you might want to get your order in now, before our changes take effect.

We’ve just sent a new batch of titles to the printer, including

– I Sing the Body Electric (Ray Bradbury);
– Up from the Bottomless Pit (Philip Jose Farmer);
– D.A. (Connie Willis);
– A Coven of Vampires (Brian Lumley);
– To the Dark Star (Robert Silverberg).

Look for the last three in June, and the first two a little later, as those books are slipcased, and will take a bit longer in production.

First word on Charles de Lint’s new short (roughly 170 page) novel, Promises to Keep, just in from Booklist: “De Lint returns to Newford and Jilly Coppercorn’s youth, which readers of The Onion Girl and other Jilly stories know was extremely painful. The setting here is Jilly’s early college days. She is just beginning to put her abused past behind her. One evening she runs into her only friend from her days in a juvenile institution, one of the few who know her original name… De Lint presents Jilly’s choices, the memories impelling them, and the solution to the riddle of Donna in his characteristic powerful yet intimate style. Jilly’s reader friends, including those first meeting her, will be more than delighted.”

Ted Chiang’s tales within a tale, The Merchant at the Alchemist’s Gate, is drawing praise from all quarters. The author and designer John Berry are putting the final touches on the book, including signature pages printed by letterpress, a Subterranean first. Here’s a taste of the reviews:

From Booklist:
“In the manner of the Arabian Nights, Chiang wraps stories within a story… Eventually, interconnections between the four stories surface, and they boggle the mind, more so, perhaps, than any of the tales of similar effect in Chiang’s dazzling Stories of Your Life and Others (2002). Could fantasy be more intelligently exquisite and, ultimately and surprisingly, morally sound than this?”

From Scalpel Magazine:
“It would be easy for Ted Chiang to rest on his laurels, especially after winning so many awards for his previous works, but his mastery of the written language continues to evolve. This novella charmed me down to my strings, a science fictional tale clothed in the silks and linen and scarves of the fantastic, and I do hope another five years will not have passed before seeing another major work from this phenomenal writer.”

From Publishers Weekly:
“This curious time-travel novella from Hugo-winner Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others) is a gracefully told lesson about accepting fate—or, as better suits this medieval Arabian setting, the will of Allah… Half lyrical Arabian Nights legend and half old school cautionary SF tale, this skillfully written story and its theme of insurmountable fate may comfort as many readers as it makes uncomfortable.”

Please meet Miss Celeste Temple, Captain-Surgeon Abelard Svenson, and mercenary for hire Cardinal Chang, who, in Gordon Dahlquist’s The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, one of the finest literary fantasies of the past decade, join forces against a ruthless cabal wielding mind-control, blackmail, temptation, and a mysterious blue glass that holds the power to entrap memory itself, however luscious or terrible. The absoutely breathtaking dust jacket is by Dave McKean.

Limited Edition:

$75