FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Norilana Books is proud to present Sky Whales and Other Wonders edited by Vera Nazarian, an exciting new anthology of cutting-edge literature of the fantastic to awaken your sense of wonder . . .


Sky Whales and Other Wonders edited by Vera Nazarian




". . . intriguingly off-kilter fantasy stories where the unexpected doesn't so much jump out in the reader's path as subtly peek around corners."

— Publishers Weekly

". . . really colorful central ideas. It's a solid book throughout."

— Rich Horton, Locus


Featuring stories of wonder by Tanith Lee, Anna Tambour, Erzebet YellowBoy, Linda J. Dunn, Sonya Taaffe, Lisa Silverthorne, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Mary A. Turzillo, Mike Allen, John Grant, and Robert Brandt.


Sky Whales and Other Wonders edited by Vera Nazarian
Norilana Books Fantasy
December 15, 2009
Trade Paperback
Retail Price: $9.95 USD - 7.00 GBP
ISBN-13: 978-1-60762-055-6
ISBN-10: 1-60762-055-3
208 pages

Click for more information...

Order Your Copy:

- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
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- Amazon CA
- Amazon FR
- Amazon DE
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Norilana Books is a Los Angeles-based new independent publisher, owned and operated by Vera Nazarian since 2006. With over 250 books in print, Norilana Books specializes in beautifully packaged hardcover and trade paperback classics of world literature, quality fantasy, science fiction, romance and women's fiction, and young adult titles. For more information visit http://www.norilana.com/

Contact:

Vera Nazarian, Publisher
Norilana Books, P.O. Box 2188, Winnetka, CA 91396
service (at) norilana.com - http://www.norilana.com/
Catalog of Books in Print: http://www.norilana.com/norilana-catalog.htm
Blog: http://norilanabooks.livejournal.com/

I hope everyone who celebrates is having a lovely day today.

I am stealing time while the food cooks, before the relatives get here, swapping off between a new project and rewriting an old. Something that barbarienne said a few days ago sure resonated.

I don't think what she says applies just to beginning writers, I think it applies to all of us. Or, maybe I should say, those of us with more drive than talent--like Yours T. It's really come home as for e-book purposes I've been going over Exordium the first volume, Phoenix in Flight, and absolutely cringing at some of the craptastic prose that got by us. No, by me. Most of the worst of the writing is mine, not Dave Trowbridge's. Rewriting this thing has been both freeing and also intensely humiliating. I think I cut at least ten thousand words of solid sludge larding up sentences, without changing anything that actually had content. In fact, probably more like 20 k. I added a couple of short scenes to the beginning in an attempt to make it more accessible, but the whole is still shorter than the original length.

Anyway, learning never stops for some of us. It might take some time between awareness of a problem and figuring out how to deal with it, but never stops, never never never. (And each time I close that file, when I open Banner of the Damned I jet back looking for ways to tighten it up yet again.)

For a limited time, Norilana Books is offering a free review copy in PDF format for legitimate reviewers of the new fantasy anthology Sky Whales and Other Wonders.

If you have a blog, website, or other valid revue venue, and plan to review the book, you may request your copy by emailing service at norilana dot com.

I don't know if any of you have seen the wonderful cartoons of Simon and his cat (the one with the baseball bat), but if you haven't, here they are. Simon has a website with a new toon (the cat discovers snow!), his public service announcement for overfeeding animals, and his adventures with the cat (watching television, closing the door, the fly in the house, and of course, the original, it's time to get up and feed the cat).

I love these toons, and I think you will too (if you haven't discovered them already)!

(And there's now a new iTunes game with the cat! I have it on my Touch! ::doin my Snoopy dance::)

Anyone who needs a dose of creature love check out that link ( where a one-legged dove cares for baby animals, such as wounded rabbits). [Thanks to Dave Trowbridge for the link]

There is more about Noah and fellow rescue animals here.

Yesterday coraa asked if anyone had ever seen a case where an author responded to a slammer review and came out looking good, and I remembered one linked to by burger_eater a day or so ago.

When subsequent commenters say they are going to buy the book just because of the author's awesome response to the stinker review, I'd say that author came out lookin' good.

It also makes me wonder if the generally understood wisdom that authors should not respond to reviews is going to change, like so many other aspects of publishing custom are changing. I find myself ambivalent because there are instances where I would love to engage in dialogue with an author of a book. And people are talking to one another across the world via all these social network connections, from the lightning blips of Twitter (which I still refuse to engage in--I think it would drive me crazy. Ur, crazier) to longer discourses on things like LJ and so forth.

People Google on interests, old friends and family, towns they lived in, schools, workplaces, cons they went to, all kinds of things. And jump right into the discussion. Authors with more guts than I have Google their names every day, and many link to the tiniest mention of their names, in case their friends want to follow those as assiduously as they do. Yet the etiquette still states Thou Shalt Not Engage. It's relatively easy when the review is praise--do you thank them and seem like you are the stalker you actually are, or pass quietly on by and pretend you didn't see it? When it's a stinker, the question is tougher, especially when you know right down to your chitlins that the review is "unfair." Only . . . what's unfair?