A copy of my publisher's latest enewspaper, with some more news about Partings, and other things of interest.
Enjoy
Congratulations to our Short SF Competition cash winners, Stuart Aken’s 2nd is here and exciting Kickstarter news!
This week we are celebrating the closing of the Fantastic Books Short Science Fiction Competition 2014. The cash winners have been notified and the editorial process has begun!
After many months, our judges have finally finished battling with the longlist and have awarded the following people the 5 cash prizes;
First prize: Dying Star by Marko Susimetsa
Second Prize: Steampunk Striker by Pierre Le Gue
Third prize: If We Start Killing by Ulla Susimetsa
Fourth Prize: Three Second War by Darren Grey
Fifth Prize: The Moon a Balloon by Rose Thurlbeck
Second Prize: Steampunk Striker by Pierre Le Gue
Third prize: If We Start Killing by Ulla Susimetsa
Fourth Prize: Three Second War by Darren Grey
Fifth Prize: The Moon a Balloon by Rose Thurlbeck
The judging is done completely anonymously and it came as a very nice surprise to see no less than 4 Fantastic Elite Fiction authors in the top 5!
Our heartiest congratulations to everyone who made it to the longlist and we really must stress how impressed we were with the high quality of all the entries. It was a very hard job to decide who was in the anthology and who didn’t make it. Well done to everyone who entered, you are all Fantastic.
We have now opened our next competition. It is a horror story competition asking for stories of EXACTLY 666 words. It is a tough challenge but after seeing the quality of the entries for our competitions over the last two years, we know you can do it. We look forward to you scaring the pants off us!
Now, to other news. Stuart Aken has released the second novel in his ‘A Seared Sky‘ series. Partings continues from where Joinings left off and has a shiny new cover to ensure the final trilogy looks amazing. Our cover designer Heather Murphy has done a wonderful job integrating Stuart’s hand drawn maps into the cover and we couldn’t be more pleased.
And now to our next exciting project. Although lots of our own Kickstarter gifts are still to be sent out (the boxed sets are in production, the special edition boxed sets won’t begin production until October and the audio books will be ready by December at the earliest), there are still lots of folks who would love to see another Fantastic Books Kickstarter based in the universe of Elite: Dangerous.
Thanks to our friend Anthony Olver, who runs the Elite Archives, we are very proud to announce that a brand new Kickstarter will be launching on the 20th September to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original Elite computer game!
The Elite Archives Kickstarter will use your pledges to fund the creation of a beautiful hardback book detailing the 30 year journey this game has taken including interviews, artwork, game tips and tricks, reviews, archive pictures and lots more. Anthony’s passion for the game shines through in everything he does and he has decided that the world needs to know about this amazing game and share his collection that he has painstakingly built up over the years.
This will be the first ever book detailing the history, lore, releases and more of this seminal space trading computer game. As massive fans ourselves, we felt very privileged to be approached by Anthony to publish this book and we are prepared to throw everything we have at making this Kickstarter a success. With us on board as publisher the book will benefit from professional editing, proofing, typesetting and cover design as well as joining the other 5 official Elite titles in our bookstore and on Amazon and other retailers.
The project goes live on the 20th September and will run for only 48 days. With the help of the Elite Community, Science Fiction fans, Gamers and Collectors alike we hope to push this project over the line quickly and have already formulated some great ideas for stretch goals. And for those of you who still remember our own Kickstarter project, Commander Dan has promised to make an appearance on video too!
So when the project goes live in two days time, look out for ‘The Elite Archives Book: A 30 Year History of Elite’ on Kickstarter and make sure you spread the word by liking and sharing all our posts about it. Thanks!
By working together on projects that people are genuinely passionate about we can create anything. Just imagine.
Come join the family, you’re welcome!
Just imagine,
The Fantastic Books Team
