So… with apologies for the delay (I meant to do this earlier, and then I got a little, er, overwhelmed with stuff). I know this is a bit last minute, but still…

Pre-orders for books are a bit like release week for movies: they’re important for how a book performs and therefore pretty important for the author. On the other hand, I’m well aware of how much trust you put in me as a writer, when you order a book a long time before you actually get *anything* in your hands. Accordingly, I would like to offer a little incentive…

If you preordered or preorder The House of Shattered Wings in any form (ebook or physical), you’ll get a free, exclusive ebook: a series of vignettes set in the world of The House of Shattered Wings, hopefully to whet your appetite. They start during the Great Houses War in 1917, and go up to twenty years before the start of the book; a condensed prequel with a glimpse at characters beyond the scope of the book.

Here’s a little teaser of each section:

1. The Face of Heaven (House Silverspires, Ile de la Cité 1917, during the Great Houses War)
   If one was dedicated, and silent, and watchful, one could learn to see angels again.
2. Paid Debts (Houseless areas near Galeries Lafayette, 1925)
   Imadan wasn’t a fool, ordinarily. He knew the rules and the strictures of post-war Paris; he knew all the dangers that should be avoided.
3. What has to be done (House Silverspires, Ile de la Cité, 1958)
   Emmanuelle woke up, still woozy with sleep; and then felt it.

(the actual ebook wouldn’t have come into fruition without Tade Thompson and Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein, who provided cover art and lettering for said cover art in record speed–I know everyone is very busy and am very thankful. Any issues with actual formatting, I’m afraid, are solely at my door…).

So… how do you get this?

It depends. In the UK/Commonwealth, Gollancz is very kindly running this: see below for details. If you preordered/preorder the UK ebook or the physical book (aka “the one with the multicoloured wings”), then follow the instructions there.
ETA: for accessibility reasons, the address is gollanczgeeks followed by the @, followed by “orionbooks.co.uk”.

If you ordered the US edition (US edition only please–the one with the burning feathers :p), then fill in the contact form below and I’ll email you EPUB/MOBI/PDF versions of the ebook. Because I’m at Worldcon anyway, I’m going to let this run on the same timescale as the Gollancz promotion (the deadline is 11:59pm GMT on August 19th), so you can actually order the US edition on release day or shortly after and you’ll still get the ebook.

ETA: if you have the actual book (which is either happening because you got an early UK edition at, say, Fantasy in the Court or Nine Worlds or some booksellers, or because it’s August 18th/19th in the US, or some other reason I’m not privy to :)), email me a picture of the book as your proof of purchase.

The caveat is that this last bit is basically run solely by me and that I’m running a bit ragged: I will do my best to get back to you as soon as I can–if I don’t, I beg for your patience (also, I literally cobbled this form together this morning, so I hope it works).

(contact form closed as offer has expired)

Still undecided? You can sample a bit before making up your mind.
Read Chapter One!
Read excerpt from Chapter Three!
Read excerpt from Chapter Four!

You can now read a good chunk of chapter three over at Tor.com: bread-making, ruined Notre-Dame, and Lucifer Morningstar himself!

Mahvesh Murad interviews me for Midnight in Karachi.

I speak manga and anime inspiration to Fran Wilde at Geek Mom.

For the Gollancz festival, Anna Caltabiano, Al Robertson, Alex Lamb, Simon Spanton and I get in a “time travel vs fallen angels vs spaceships vs ventriloquist dummies” panel.

A survey of upcoming Science Fiction and Fantasy mentions The House of Shattered Wings:

Urban fantasies are also exploring fresh settings, like the alternate war-ravaged late 20th-century Paris of Nebula Award winner Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Shattered Wings. Roc/Ace editors Gill and Sowards praise the novel for its lush writing, informed by the author’s own experiences living in Paris and her Vietnamese heritage.

Also pleased to announce I (and a raft of authors!) will be part of the Gollancz festival on October 16th/17th in Manchester/London. You can get info and tickets at the above link.

Welcome back to Shattered Wings Thursdays, the weekly feature of art related to The House of Shattered Wings. 12 days to release of the Roc hardcover edition (and 14 days to the Gollancz trade paperback). Eep. Almost there!

Today: second-to-last of the magical factions (well, at least those I have space for :p)

Lazarus is an interesting faction: first, because it’s a recently founded House (it was founded shortly before the war), and second, because all its heads of Houses have been human. There are no rules that say a House has to be headed by a Fallen, but nevertheless it tends to happen, because Fallen are longer-lived and have a better natural aptitude for magic.

Lazarus is currently headed by Claire, a sixty-year-old woman with a grandmotherly attitude (and if you think that means nice you need a refresher course about grandmothers ^^). The colors of the House are brown and green, its arms are an antlered man emerging from a cavern, and its motto is “Firma nunquamque lapsa” (“Steady never falling”). Its philosophy of life can best be summed up as “divide to reign.” House Lazarus knows it will never be as strong or as powerful as other Houses, and therefore thrives on encouraging discord.

Notable characters from Hawthorn: Claire, the head of the House; Eric, her bodyguard and lover.

Previous iterations of this:

1. Meet nuked Paris
2. The Fallen
3. The Houses
4. The Immortals
5. The Colonies
6. House Silverspires
7. House Hawthorn

Read Chapter One!
Read excerpt from Chapter Three!
Read excerpt from Chapter Four!

Full Pinterest board:
Follow Aliette de Bodard’s board House of Shattered Wings on Pinterest.

(and there’s a map of the book’s key locations at the bottom of the novel’s page)

Very pleased that The House of Shattered Wings has got a Starred Review in Library Journal:

De Bodard (…) has spun a fascinating Paris of decay and cruelty.

A few more appearances of the book:

• It’s listed on PW’s “Most Anticipated Fall Titles” list (which is, er, a rather short thing insofar as SFF is concerned 0_0)
• It’s also on Kirkus’s Must-Read Speculative Fiction books for August
• It’s a B&N Bookseller’s Pick for August
• And finally, it’s spotlit on Tor.com’s list of genre benders for August

More info on the book here (also, eep. Less than a month to go before release. I’ll be the one gibbering in the corner).

Welcome back to Shattered Wings Thursdays, the weekly feature of art related to The House of Shattered Wings. 19 days to release of the Roc hardcover edition (and 21 days to the Gollancz trade paperback). Getting closer and closer!

Ferdinand Knab, “The Castle Portal”, 1881

Today: another of the magical factions!

Hawthorn is… well, mainly Silverspires’ rival in the book. It’s in the Southwest of Paris, close to the border with Boulogne-sur-Seine, and it’s also on low grounds and quite close to the Seine, as a result of which it took a big hit during the years of the war (and had to abandon some of the ground it occupied on account of its becoming too dangerous for people to go there).

Hawthorn is currently headed by Fallen Asmodeus–a fairly recent change: before that, the House was headed for a long, long time by Uphir, a powerful and ruthless Fallen who nevertheless failed to see where the true danger to his House was coming from. Twenty years before the start of the novel, Asmodeus led a coup that deposed and killed Uphir, and became uncontested leader of the House. The colors of the House are dark grey and black, its arms are a hawthorn tree circled by a crown, and its motto is “Spina Inter Flores” (“the thorn among the flowers”). Its philosophy of life can best be summed up as “our own first.” House Hawthorn is well known for clinging to its dependents, and to bring swift and unpleasant retaliation to anyone who brings them harm.

Notable characters from Hawthorn: Samariel, Asmodeus’s long-time lover; Madeleine, House Silverspires’ alchemist (who was originally from Hawthorn but fled); and Elphon, Madeleine’s childhood friend (who died the night of the coup).

Previous iterations of this:

1. Meet nuked Paris
2. The Fallen
3. The Houses
4. The Immortals
5. The Colonies
6. House Silverspires

Read Chapter One!
Read excerpt from Chapter Four!

Full Pinterest board:
Follow Aliette de Bodard’s board House of Shattered Wings on Pinterest.

(and there’s a map of the book’s key locations at the bottom of the novel’s page)

In which I take a holiday…

I’ll be off with snakelet & family to a secluded location so I can write sleep. Email is (mostly) on hiatus, though if I owe you a thing it’s going to hopefully get done that week or the one after that! (you know who you are). Book promo stuff will still be posted: expect Shattered Wings Thursday to still happen. Social media might or might not happen (trying to get a little less addicted to the stuff).

And I will see you in London for those of you who are here: Blackwell’s High Holborn with Anna Caltabiano Wednesday August 5th 18:30 onwards (book tickets here, it’s free but you need to register your attendance); and Fantasy in the Court at Goldsboro Books here on August 6th 6:00pm-9:00pm (tickets £5, book here. Lots of other cool authors here!). FYI, The House of Shattered Wings finishes printing end of July, so hopefully there’ll be copies around.

The August newsletter will be a little late due to the aforementioned holiday, expect it around August 4th (earlier if I get through the to-do list faster than expected–one never knows!)

(and yeah, I know there was no July newsletter. Very sorry about that, but real life went a little bonkers on me).

Welcome back to Shattered Wings Thursdays, the weekly feature of art related to The House of Shattered Wings. 26 days to release of the Roc hardcover edition (and 28 days to the Gollancz trade paperback). Getting closer and closer!

So, by popular (well, twitter) request, the last few episodes of this will focus on the different magical factions of the city of Paris: I won’t have time to do them all, as I’ve only got 3 of these left, but I hope to tackle some ground!

House Silverspires is the heart of the book: its setting, and a place a lot of characters in the book call home. It stretches, as said before, over Ile de la Cité: only the eastern part is inhabited, the Prefecture, Commerce Tribunal and other buildings in the West are only sparsely populated. Though founded by Lucifer Morningstar (oldest and most powerful among Fallen), House Silverspires is currently headed by his Fallen student, Selene, after the disappearance of Morningstar twenty years before the start of the novel.

As said previously: the colours of Silverspires are red and silver, and its coat of arms is the sword of Morningstar (one of those big, unsubtle two-handed swords) against the silhouette of Notre-Dame. Its motto is “Aspicete solem ortum” (“look to the risen sun”). Its philosophy of life can best be summed as “whatever works”. Anything is acceptable as long as it keeps intact its dominant status in the city, and the House has a (well-deserved) reputation for ruthlessness and playing fast and loose with rules (though Selene has pursued a gentler policy). It is also, unquestionably and even in decline, the foremost House in the city, an impregnable fortress with an iron grip on politics.

Notable characters from Silverspires: Selene’s lover, the archivist Emmanuelle; Javier, the House’s priest (and resident Spanish-French) who acts as Selene’s right hand; Madeleine, the geeky alchemist who provides the House with its magical artifacts; and Isabelle, a newly arrived and naive Fallen.

Previous iterations of this:
1. Meet nuked Paris
2. The Fallen
3. The Houses
4. The Immortals
5. The Colonies

Read Chapter One!
Read excerpt from Chapter Four!

Full Pinterest board:
Follow Aliette de Bodard’s board House of Shattered Wings on Pinterest.

(and there’s a map of the book’s key locations at the bottom of the novel’s page)

So… by the magic of Rafflecopter, the following people have won a signed hardcover of The House of Shattered Wings:
-Peter S K
-Michelle Clarke
-Jessie M

Congratulations!

Yeah, I added a third hardcover as there were so many entries! Really delighted at the enthusiasm for this.

If you feel like you missed out: the RT Book Reviews giveaway of 5 ARCs is still on-going here. (and even if you don’t, there’s an extra excerpt with the giveaway, featuring geeky alchemist Madeleine and Head of House Hawthorn Asmodeus).

Other House of Shattered Wings news: Freda Warrington at Book Riot lists it as one of 5 books to get into paranormal fantasy (honored to be in the same list as NK Jemisin!):

One of the darkest and strangest fantasies I’ve ever read, containing the creepiest villain ever, the appalling Asmodeus, it haunts you long after you’ve finished it.

(yes, the same Asmodeus that’s in the excerpt. Isn’t life fun? 🙂 )

Just a quick heads-up that the RT Books website has a large chunk of The House of Shattered Wings, featuring a third point-of-view character who isn’t in Chapter One: Madeleine, the geeky alchemist of House Silverspires. And it comes with a chance of winning an ARC of the book with the pretty “burning feathers” cover ^-^

Go check it out here!

I’ve been really, really remiss with these:

• My Xuya story “Crossing the Midday Gate” will appear in Athena Andreadis’s awesome looking To Shape the Dark (full TOC here), an anthology about women scientists and a successor to her Other Half of the Sky (which had “The Waiting Stars” in it). Mine is a biologist dealing with the fallout of a plague, and how to earn favour once again…
• My sort-of-Xuya story about virtual realities and access control “First Presentation” will be in David Brin’s and Steven W Potts’ Chasing Shadows, alongside work by Neal Stephenson, Robert Silverberg, Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, Stephen Gaskell, Nancy Fulda… *gulp*
• “The Death of Aiguillon” will be published in Yanni Kuznia’s A Fantasy Medley 3, with work by Jacqueline Carey (!), Kevin Hearne, and Laura Bickle. This is set in the universe of my upcoming novel The House of Shattered Wings, and follows a kitchen girl after the fall of the House of Aiguillon and the refuge she finds in a Paris torn apart by the Great Houses War. I’m pretty psyched about this one: it’s coming out from Subterranean Press and will be published at the end of 2015.