Author News - June

Anne Charnock announced the title of her next book and how it came about.

Mike Reeves-McMillan announced that a story of his has been selected for the Terry Pratchett In Memory anthology. Proceeds go to benefit research into finding a cure for Alzheimer's.

Rob Steiner has been busy lately. Two of his stories have recently appeared in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show: "The Oath Breaker's Daemon" and "The Cloaca Maxima". He also published the third story in his Codex Antonius series, Muses of the Republic.

Michael J. Sullivan started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a third Riyria Chronicles novel entitled The Death of Dulgath. The campaign was successfully funded in just under 48 hours. I find it interesting that after signing a major book deal, he still feels the need to self-publish.

The Best of 2013

Each year, the reviewers here at the New Podler Review of Books pick the book (or books) which we feel are the very best independently published (or small press) works. The only other requirement we have is that it was reviewed here on the blog. Here are the winners for 2013: The Bookworm: I'm going to go with Realmgolds by Mike Reeves McMillian. It's everything that a reader could want in a steampunk novel. It combines politics, innovation, social unrest and the fight for basic freedoms in a compelling story. And the books in the series are even better.

Rob: Black Book: Volume 1 by Dylan Jones, is my pick for the best of 2013. It had a cool blending of genres (Western, sci-fi, and fantasy) that you don't often see in traditionally published books. However, be aware that it's a serial novel made up of three "episodes." You'll need to buy future volumes to learn the characters' ultimate fates.

DED: It should come as no surprise that my selection for the best book of 2013 is Anne Charnock's A Calculated Life. It is an excellent character study of a young augmented woman named Jayna who works for a global trends analytical firm. Her journey of self-discovery is what makes this story. Charnock deftly bonds the reader to Jayna by granting us unfettered access to her mind, thus making us her mute confidant.

Since my review, the novel was picked up by 47 North, Amazon Publishing's speculative fiction division, and nominated for the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award.

We reviewed 24 stories last year and rejected over 170. Considering that we were closed for seven months, that's still a fair amount of submissions.

Mainstream Praise for an Indie Author

The 2013 Philip K. Dick Award nominees were announced on Friday. Have a look at the first book on the list. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Nah, I can't wait.

Readers of this blog will recall that A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock was reviewed here last year. Several weeks later, it was picked up by 47North, Amazon's publishing imprint. And now, it's been nominated for the prestigious Philip K. Dick Award. Congratulations, Anne!

Anne's success is yet more proof that indie authors should not be shunned merely because they lack the backing of a traditional publisher. I don't deny that indie publishing is a veritable haystack full of poorly edited manuscripts and lousy covers, but there are needles, make that diamonds, that can be found.

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DED

A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock

Anne Charnock's first novel, A Calculated Life, offers a glimpse into late 21st Century England. It isn't glamorous, nor is it horrific. It's a dystopia where government and corporations control a pacified populace. The population has been divided into augmented professionals, who live in wonderful neighborhoods with all the trappings of upper middle class life we see today, and organics, who are crowded together in enclaves outside the city. The enclaves aren't filthy hellholes, but rather subsidized housing where their residents make use of everything to scrape up extra money to take the edge off of their spartan existence.

The story is told from the POV of a young woman named Jayna. She works for a successful analytical firm that studies global trends; seeking signals in the noise of everyday life, like whether or not wind direction affects reports of violence. We realize at the outset that Jayna is different, even from the augmented managers she works for. As the novel progresses, we learn more about Jayna's world as she seeks to find correlations between disparate events. But this quest for empirical data is also trek of self-discovery for Jayna.

Charnock has done an excellent job of getting the reader into Jayna's head and forging a relationship with her. We see the world through her eyes. We're a mute witness to her thoughts as she hypothesizes and postulates, unable to offer her helpful advice. We're her co-conspirator as she concocts schemes and formulates plans to carry out forbidden activities. Over the course of the novel, it is this intimate closeness which lets us silently cheer her on and prevents us from reaching out to her in her greatest time of need.

My one negative is that the story got off to a slow start. It didn't really grab me right away and my limited patience threatened to take a pass on it. Fortunately, something about Jayna piqued my curiosity and I stuck with it. I'm glad I did, but I worry that others won't. Maybe this review will convince them to hang around for this slow burn.

In summary, A Calculated Life is an excellent character study. Charnock deftly bonds the reader with her protagonist and leads us by the calculator through her strengths and failings in an attempt to establish the proper emotional algorithms for the human condition.

For more information, including purchasing information, please see the author's website.