Smugglers’ Stash & News

Happy Sunday, everyone! If you’ll kindly step away from the football…

With the official end to Smugglivus, we’re back to our regular ol’ Smugglers’ Stash & News posts. But first, a few announcements.

Adrian Phoenix Giveaway Winners:

In all the excitement and chutzpah of Smugglivus, we forgot to announce the two lucky winners of our interactive Q&A with Adrian Phoenix! So, without further ado, here we go. The lucky winners of a complete, autographed set of The Maker’s Song books are…

Congratulations to the winners! You know the drill. Send us an email (contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address, and we’ll get your winnings out to you as soon as possible. Thank you to everyone that entered the competition – your questions for Adrian were fantastic. And if you didn’t win this time around, you’ll have another chance at an interactive author Q&A with a great full set of books as a prize – so stay tuned!

News from the Interwebs:

You might have heard of the release of upcoming SF novel The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman – a book that has garnered a lot of buzz online, and is being pushed by publisher Penguin as one of their biggest fiction launches of the decade. To celebrate the publication of the book, Don’t Panic (a super cool, FREE, arts/culture/design publication based in the UK) has launched a visual design competition. The winning artist will have their artwork printed on a Don’t Panic poster, and the chance to have their artwork included in The Left Hand of God‘s paperback release!

The guidelines are as follows:

What we are looking for is an artistic representation of the lead character Thomas Cale, who you can get to know through a selection of excerpts on our site. We want entrants to use any printable media they choose to create an interpretation of the young Cale using the text provided.

The top ten entries submitted will be put into the winner’s shortlist to be judged by Penguin with the top three entries given the chance to win some fantastic prizes, including £350 (or approximately $560 US) worth of Penguin books and signed copies of The Left Hand of God, as well as of course the opportunity to have their design printed. Also, every shortlisted entrant will receive a copy of the book.

You can check out the full details of the competition online HERE – if you’re artistically inclined, this sounds like a fabulous opportunity to get some real exposure.

This Week on The Book Smugglers:

Smugglivus may be over, but we’ve still got a whole lot going on this week! On Monday, we kick off the week by hosting a stop on Elizabeth Eulberg’s The Lonely Hearts Club blog tour. Elizabeth will be stopping by to tell us a bit about her book, dating, and life before jetting off to the next stop on the tour. On Tuesday, Ana reviews The Lonely Hearts Club for extra measure.

Wednesday, we have dark fantasy/paranormal author Jackie Kessler over for an interview to celebrate some huge news. See, in addition to being a bestselling author of paranormal and superhero-inspired books, she’s also just become a comic book author – FOR BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. That’s right. The talented Ms. Kessler has just joined the Buffyverse (and, by proxy, the Whedonverse) with the online publication of “Carpe Noctem” – her contribution to Dark Horse Comics’ “The Tales of the Vampires” story collection, which ties in to the Buffy Season 8 comics.

With the publication of a sneak peek of the first part of the comic last friday (which you can view for free on the MTV Splash Page), we are thrilled to have Jackie over to talk about writing comics, Joss Whedon, and all things Buffy with us.

On Thursday, it’s back to the daily grind as Thea gives a doubleshot of a newfound favorite author Stephen Baxter with reviews for Titan and Moonseed (books 2&3 in the NASA series).

Finally, on Friday we close out the week with a classic science fiction novel, as Thea reviews The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin in honor of the book’s 40th anniversary.

Phew. That’s it for now! Until tomorrow, we remain…