Recently Vera Nazarian announced that several Norilana anthologies would be postponed due to the worsening economy. In addition, another anthology would be published under a different arrangement.
Shortly thereafter, she announced that another anthology editor had decided to take her lineup to be published elsewhere, albeit under a new title, since the old title had belonged to a series.
Now another editor who had previously announced a one-year sabbatical in his annual anthology for purely personal reasons is looking at the possibility that he may go to another publisher for future volumes.
This is worrisome to me because it is looking very similar to what happens when there is a run on a bank. That is, concern about the future of the institution leads to an increasing number of people to decide to get out while it's still possible, resulting in an escalation of the institution's erosion.
Of course a publisher isn't quite like a bank -- editors deciding to pull their anthologies and seek other publishers isn't going to directly deprive other titles of their existence the way a large number of people withdrawing deposits can make it impossible for the bank to make good on the remaining depositors' money. The biggest question will be how book buyers behave -- if they keep buying existing Norilana titles, the situation can still be turned around.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Free Sample of Mansfield Park and Mummies Available
If you've been uncertain if whether Mansfield Park and Mummies: Monster Mayhem, Matrimony, Ancient Curses, True Love, and Other Dire Delights
is for you, Vera Nazarian has just posted three sample chapters on the Norilana website. So take a look now!
is for you, Vera Nazarian has just posted three sample chapters on the Norilana website. So take a look now!
Friday, December 4, 2009
The Regency Egyptologist
You may have heard about the recent Jane Austen mashups bringing sea monsters and zombies into the dear old classics Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Now Vera Nazarian, who as publisher of Norilana Books has already brought us James Fairfax, an alternate Jane Austen in which a royal decree permits same-sex marriage, now brings out her own hilarious parody, Mansfield Park and Mummies: Monster Mayhem, Matrimony, Ancient Curses, True Love, and Other Dire Delights.
As a historian (MA, Illinois State University, 1996) with a background in languages (BA in Russian Language and Literature, 1989), I find it of particular interest because, unlike the sea monster and zombie mashups, the introduction of mummies into Regency society is not merely an aventitious intrusion by the author's whim. Far from it, the period in which Jane Austen was writing was also the period in which modern Egyptology was developing as a science, casting off its roots as glorified grave-robbers to actually study the artifacts as evidence of a culture now departed from this mortal coil. Most critically, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's forces made possible the decipherment of the Egyptian sacred writings, the heiroglyphics, and opened the books of Egyptian religious and secular writing. Henceforth historians would be able to examine Egyptian temple and palace records much as they had long been able to read ancient Greek and Roman documents.
But Egyptology wasn't that far removed from its grave-robbing cousins yet. Artifacts were regularly removed from their original locations with little or no concern for preserving provenance or context, and certainly no concern whatsoever about respect for the cultures that had originally created them. Mummies were regularly brought to Britain and unwrapped in exhibitions little better than circus sideshows in a process that destroyed incalculable amounts of information about them which later generations could have learned through non-destructive means. Never mind the question of disrespect for the people whose mortal remains these were.
Now imagine that by supernatural means the ancient Egyptians forcibly expatrated from their beloved Nile Valley are able to express their objections to this mistreatment. Thus that nagging feeling of violation and guilt manifests itself in the form of the horror novel in which the mummy rises and objects in the most forceful manner possible to his victimization. Frightening as the traditional mummy movie may be, might there be just a little sense that the anonymous Ancient Egyptian beneath those wrappings has a reason to be wandering about and mugging presumptuous moderns?
But Vera Nazarian is not a writer of the gruesome variety of horror. No, her weapon is the subtle rapier wit that Jane Austen wielded against her own contemporaries, drawing instead upon the liminal unease of a world in which the boundaries between dead and living have drawn dangerously thin. The darkly handsome young gentleman with the raptor beak of a nose and the guttural accent isn't a Jewish banker from the Continent or even an Arab sheik, but an Ancient Egyptian prince returned from the grave to woo our beautiful young heroine Fanny Price -- leaving us to wonder what might befall her should she yield to his blandishments. And if he has been able to break the Law of Death and return to the land of the living, might it be possible that other boundaries could grow weak and even dissolve away, allowing the supernatural to run wild in the staid society of the English upper crust? Vampires and werewolves cast a dark shadow across the ancient writing that mysteriously appears upon a whitewashed English wall, and just what is that creature known only as the Brighton Duck?
.As a historian (MA, Illinois State University, 1996) with a background in languages (BA in Russian Language and Literature, 1989), I find it of particular interest because, unlike the sea monster and zombie mashups, the introduction of mummies into Regency society is not merely an aventitious intrusion by the author's whim. Far from it, the period in which Jane Austen was writing was also the period in which modern Egyptology was developing as a science, casting off its roots as glorified grave-robbers to actually study the artifacts as evidence of a culture now departed from this mortal coil. Most critically, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's forces made possible the decipherment of the Egyptian sacred writings, the heiroglyphics, and opened the books of Egyptian religious and secular writing. Henceforth historians would be able to examine Egyptian temple and palace records much as they had long been able to read ancient Greek and Roman documents.
But Egyptology wasn't that far removed from its grave-robbing cousins yet. Artifacts were regularly removed from their original locations with little or no concern for preserving provenance or context, and certainly no concern whatsoever about respect for the cultures that had originally created them. Mummies were regularly brought to Britain and unwrapped in exhibitions little better than circus sideshows in a process that destroyed incalculable amounts of information about them which later generations could have learned through non-destructive means. Never mind the question of disrespect for the people whose mortal remains these were.
Now imagine that by supernatural means the ancient Egyptians forcibly expatrated from their beloved Nile Valley are able to express their objections to this mistreatment. Thus that nagging feeling of violation and guilt manifests itself in the form of the horror novel in which the mummy rises and objects in the most forceful manner possible to his victimization. Frightening as the traditional mummy movie may be, might there be just a little sense that the anonymous Ancient Egyptian beneath those wrappings has a reason to be wandering about and mugging presumptuous moderns?
But Vera Nazarian is not a writer of the gruesome variety of horror. No, her weapon is the subtle rapier wit that Jane Austen wielded against her own contemporaries, drawing instead upon the liminal unease of a world in which the boundaries between dead and living have drawn dangerously thin. The darkly handsome young gentleman with the raptor beak of a nose and the guttural accent isn't a Jewish banker from the Continent or even an Arab sheik, but an Ancient Egyptian prince returned from the grave to woo our beautiful young heroine Fanny Price -- leaving us to wonder what might befall her should she yield to his blandishments. And if he has been able to break the Law of Death and return to the land of the living, might it be possible that other boundaries could grow weak and even dissolve away, allowing the supernatural to run wild in the staid society of the English upper crust? Vampires and werewolves cast a dark shadow across the ancient writing that mysteriously appears upon a whitewashed English wall, and just what is that creature known only as the Brighton Duck?
Monday, April 27, 2009
Life Imitates Art
As I've been watching news coverage on the flu outbreak, I immediately started thinking of John Ringo's recent biothriller, The Last Centurion. Of course the situation isn't exactly the same, since in our world the flu outbreak is following a major economic dislocation caused by the mortgage meltdown, but it still is enough to give me chills.
However, some people on Baen's Bar have been suggesting that the quick response by public health agencies indicates this isn't going to be the Big One, but that will come from some unexpected quarter while we're distracted with something else. Or worse, if this outbreak is successfully contained, we could get a "cry wolf" effect that will actually impair people's readiness to respond properly when it really comes.
However, some people on Baen's Bar have been suggesting that the quick response by public health agencies indicates this isn't going to be the Big One, but that will come from some unexpected quarter while we're distracted with something else. Or worse, if this outbreak is successfully contained, we could get a "cry wolf" effect that will actually impair people's readiness to respond properly when it really comes.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
1632-verse News
It looks like there's going to be at least two more novels in the 1632 universe coming out this year or early next year. One, 1635: Sympathy for the Devil is a collaboration with David Carrico, and may either be a compilation or a continuation of the stories of Franz Sylwester and Marla Linder which have been appearing in various issues of Grantville Gazette, as well as in Ring of Fire II. The other, tentatively entitled 1635: The Tangled Web, is listed in a pre-release list as being by Virginia DeMarce alone, which would be a departure from previous procedures, and may represent Eric Flint's decision to hand off some of the side stories altogether. However, this could also be a misprint, so we should not read too much into it.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Second Book Blues
It's said that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Similarly, a series is only as strong as its weakest book. And unfortunately a number of series have started out with a strong first book, only to be followed by a second volume which is at best uninspiring.
This problem seems to be particularly bad with "trilogies" that are in fact not a series of three interconnected books, but in fact three volumes of a single large novel. As a result, the middle volume is all middle, with no beginning or end of its own.
I think this is the problem with C. S. Friedman's latest, Wings of Wrath
. I originally read the first volume, A Feast of Souls, in a single afternoon, stopping only for bodily necessities. As a result, I was really looking forward to the second volume, but now that I finally have it in my hands, I'm finding it a lot slower and less interesting a read than the first. I've been able to casually put it aside and do other things, and pick it up only haphazardly from time to time.
A lot of what I'm reading right now feels like "housekeeping," necessary information to get us moved toward the final climax in the third volume, but not really of that much interest of itself. So I'm impatient to get through it and to some more real action, or even just some interesting hints of fascinating secrets of the past -- but not so impatient to keep me reading obsessively.
This problem seems to be particularly bad with "trilogies" that are in fact not a series of three interconnected books, but in fact three volumes of a single large novel. As a result, the middle volume is all middle, with no beginning or end of its own.
I think this is the problem with C. S. Friedman's latest, Wings of Wrath
. I originally read the first volume, A Feast of Souls, in a single afternoon, stopping only for bodily necessities. As a result, I was really looking forward to the second volume, but now that I finally have it in my hands, I'm finding it a lot slower and less interesting a read than the first. I've been able to casually put it aside and do other things, and pick it up only haphazardly from time to time.A lot of what I'm reading right now feels like "housekeeping," necessary information to get us moved toward the final climax in the third volume, but not really of that much interest of itself. So I'm impatient to get through it and to some more real action, or even just some interesting hints of fascinating secrets of the past -- but not so impatient to keep me reading obsessively.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sequel to Crown of Slaves
Amazon.com has just posted the pre-order link for Torch of Freedom
, the sequel to David Weber and Eric Flint's Crown of Slaves
.
Of course Mesa wasn't going to take such a blow lying down. Particularly not when it was a publicity embarrassment as well as a major economic loss.
Still, I'm wondering if this is going to go a lot deeper than just Mesa's attitude that it's above the law, and draw in some politicians at very high levels in several other star nations. Especially if it were to expose some hypocrites in the process.
, the sequel to David Weber and Eric Flint's Crown of Slaves.Of course Mesa wasn't going to take such a blow lying down. Particularly not when it was a publicity embarrassment as well as a major economic loss.
Still, I'm wondering if this is going to go a lot deeper than just Mesa's attitude that it's above the law, and draw in some politicians at very high levels in several other star nations. Especially if it were to expose some hypocrites in the process.
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