Well-known contemporary Japanese author and likely Nobel Prize candidate Haruki Murakami, will release a new book this April, according to his publisher. It will be his first book in three years since his mammoth 1Q84, which was originally released as a trilogy in Japan.

Details are scarce about the plot, but considering Murakami reuses the same themes in all his books, (to the point where the New York Times Book Review put together a “Haruki Murakami Bingo”) basic plot points can be pieced together. The main character will most likely be middle aged, enjoy drinking beer, feel alienated and lonely, and have an interest in old records. Cats will also make an appearance, as will teenage girls. Despite recycling similar themes and plots, Murakami has a large fanbase–1Q84 sold millions of copies worldwide.

It has been suggested that Murakami’s new work could be an expansion of the 1Q84 series. Murakami has said, “A fourth volume featuring an older ‘Tengo’ may come out…who knows.” Tengo starred as the male lead in the book. “What I can say now is there are stories before (volume 1) and after (volume 3).”

It is unclear if Murakami aims to write a new book or simply a few short stories, something he has done before. The title story in his collection Blind Woman, Sleeping Willow focuses on the protagonist of his novel, Norwegian Wood, several years after the events of that book.

It is highly likely that this upcoming book will be much shorter than 1Q84, given that the trilogy took him five years to pen.

Murakami’s varied influences may help explain his popularity with western readers compared to other Japanese authors. He spends his time reading writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Philip K. Dick, and Truman Capote, and also translated their works into Japanese. Most recently, during the composition of this current work, he translated Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. 

Although no translation has been commissioned yet, Murakami’s popularity makes it almost certain that one will appear eventually. However, fans who cannot read Japanese will probably have to wait two or three years to read it, the average time it takes translators to bring his works into English. In the meantime, bored readers can read through Murakami’s long list of other books: ten novels, three short story collections, two non-fiction works, and two out-of-print novellas (the first two stories he ever wrote). His most well-known works include Norwegian Wood, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Image Courtesy : Haruki Murakami

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Tacoma, U.S.A – Discover Books – a leading book collection and online resale organization announced a major rebranding effort to clarify its mission and support expanding operations. At the helm of these efforts will be the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Michael Ricci, a highly respected veteran of the technology and telecommunications industries. Formerly known as Thrift Recycling Management, the organization’s new branding effort is focused on its results in diverting books from landfills, helping to fund library sustainability, and supporting literacy efforts through its donations of free reading materials to non-profit organizations throughout North America.

“Integrating success with a social mission is how today’s innovative organizations think and act,” says Ricci. “With billions of new books printed every year, we should share a collective consciousness about our responsibility to ensure those books, and the ones already in circulation, are reused or responsibly recycled. Our work directly impacts that goal in measurable, sustainable, and meaningful ways.”

The rebranding efforts, which include a revamped website, offer more clarity about Discover Books’ role as an organization with a commitment to corporate citizenship. Discover Books leverages its online infrastructure and distribution capabilities to redistribute or recycle used books on a national scale – something non-profit organizations often lack the funding or resources to accomplish. As a result, Discover Books successfully diverts millions of books from landfills.

With the tagline, “Let the stories live on,” and a communication campaign depicting characters appearing bored as they sit, “unread,” on shelves, Discover Books aims to persuade consumers to give their books a chance at another life. Messaging on Discover Books’ collection boxes, which are available in ten markets across North America, will also have new branding that better illustrates these efforts.

Jeff McMullin, a co-founder of Discover Books and its President, adds, “Over the last eight years our rate of growth has been phenomenal – and now we are excited to embark on a new phase with a higher level of emphasis on our social mission and engagement in the communities in which we operate. Mike is the right leader to help us execute this vision.”

Ricci, a Silicon Valley veteran, has held many C-level roles beyond his time at Intel, including as President and CEO of Optichron and at Ikanos Communications, Inc. where under his leadership both companies achieved significant growth.

“I’ve spent 30 years driving success in the other sectors,” says Ricci. “At this stage, I endeavored to invest that experience in a company with great potential to create value, both as a growing business enterprise and as a responsible corporate citizen. Discover Books fit that bill.”

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American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer Ray Douglas Bradbury passed away at the age of 91. He was best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951). Bradbury was one of the most celebrated among 20th century American writers of speculative fiction.

Bradbury’s journey as a writer started when he was a boy. As a child, an aunt read him short stories and throughout his youth, Bradbury was an avid reader and writer who spent much of his time in the Carnegie library in Waukegan, Illinois, reading such authors as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and his favorite author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote novels such as Tarzan of the Apes and The Warlord of Mars. He loved Warlord of Mars so much that at the age of twelve he wrote his own sequel. Bradbury was also influenced by the writings of Edgar Allen Poe. What impressed Bradbury most about Poe was his ability to draw readers into his stories and poems.

Bradbury’s love of the library and books can be seen in many of his works. He used this library as a setting for much of his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, and depicted Waukegan as “Green Town” in some of his other semi-autobiographical novels such as Dandelion Wine, and Farewell Summer as well as in many of his short stories. As he grew older, libraries continued to play an important part in Bradbury’s life. When he graduated from high school, Bradbury did not attend college and sold newspapers instead. In discussing his education, in a 2009 interview with the New York Times Bradbury stated,

“Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

The writer’s lifelong habit of writing every day can be attributed to two incidents during his childhood in which he wrote about in a column on his website titled ‘In His Own Words’ in 2009 and 2012. The first of incident occurred as a three year old when his mother took him to see Lon Chaney‘s performance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The second incident occurred in 1932, when a carnival entertainer, called Mr. Electrico, touched the young man on the nose with an electrified sword, that made his hair stand on end, and shouted, “Live forever!” Bradbury remarked, “I felt that something strange and wonderful had happened to me because of my encounter with Mr. Electrico…[he] gave me a future…I began to write, full-time. I have written every single day of my life since that day 69 years ago.”

Writing every day proved to be extremely productive for Bradbury as he is credited with writing 27 novels and over 600 short stories. More than eight million copies of his works, published in over 36 languages, have been sold around the world and many of Bradbury’s works have been adapted into television shows or films. Bradbury’s legacy will continue to live on in the many writers, artists, teachers, scientists, comic book readers, sci-fi lovers, and in all people who were influenced and continue to be influenced by him and his work.

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Toni Morrison has long been heralded for her difficult yet beautiful books. Ever since she won the Nobel Prize, Morrison has become a household name most commonly associated with her early books, such as The Bluest Eye and Beloved, and is both loved and hated by high school students everywhere. Her latest book, Home, however, is a far cry from the lyrical works that earned her fame.

Set during the 50s, Home follows the story of Korean War veteran Frank Money as he embarks on a journey to reach his home in Georgia where his sister is supposedly at death’s door. Along the way, Morrison explores the lives of those who have left their mark on Frank and his sister, often going back and forth through time to do so.

An examination of racial relations, a theme that carries on throughout all of Morrison’s work, is still present. Absent, though, are the breathtaking narratives that strung together those themes so well.

Frank Money has seen friends die on the battlefield and innocent orphans shot, and when he returns to the United States, he finds himself in a world where just looking suspicious can result in jail time. These horrors are so commonplace and so undeveloped that they lose meaning within the book.  A plot summary might read something like a list of terrors with little else included.

Part of the reason for this is that Home is very sparsely written.  The novel begins, “They rose up like men. We saw them. Like men they stood,” and continues in such a fashion for the rest of the novel. Although this will certainly attract some readers, it is hardly like Morrison’s usual beautiful language. Although many characters have whole chapters dedicated to them, other than Frank Money, none are as fleshed out as they could be and many come off as cliché and boring figures, resulting in the reader feeling apathetic towards them.

Still, the book does have its good points. Some passages—mostly those concerning Frank Money and his past—are quite captivating.  Morrison depicts the veteran without any sugarcoating, showing exactly how the war has changed him. As he watches a drummer get carried away by his fellow band mates, still drumming the air as they take him away, Frank wonders, “Maybe, as with the drummer, rhythm would take charge. Maybe he too would be escorted away, flailing helplessly, imprisoned in his own strivings.”

Upon reflection, many will probably wonder just what the point of this flawed work is. At 150 pages, it is quick and to the point, and yet so many parts seem unnecessary. It is worth a read more because if you do not like it, you will be on the last page before you even realize it.

Image Courtesy of   Angela Radulescu

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MIAMI BEACH,U.S.A. – In his latest book, Jesus on Homosexuality (http://www.jesusonhomosexuality.com), author and researcher Michael Wood claims that for 1,900 years, Christian scholars missed an essential fact about Jesus’ teachings. He states that Jesus repeatedly taught about a well-established group of commandments called Justices, a group of commandments that established what was required for eternal life and what would matter on Judgment Day but, tellingly, did not include the prohibition on homosexuality.

If Wood is correct, Jesus’ entire salvation message was based upon this well-defined group of commands that didn’t include the prohibition on homosexuality. In other words, Jesus specifically taught that homosexuality was irrelevant to salvation and judgment.

“Christianity originally began as a sect within Judaism, at a time when their law was divided into Justices and Jobs,” explained Wood. “The second-century writings of Justin Martyr show that when the Gentiles dominated the Faith in the second century, they brought with them the false assumption that the law was divided into morality and ritual. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

The Justices covered philanthropy and ethics while the Jobs addressed ritual observances and sexual taboos. The division was based on the precept, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” For example, the command not to rape was a Justice and the prohibition on homosexuality was a Job.

Wood pointed out that Jesus, Paul and James all used the precept, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Now we know that they used this precept to reference a well-established group of commandments — the Justices,” he said. “Each, in his own particular way, used the precept to explain that the Justices alone are the Christian law.”

Wood previously uncovered and wrote about new findings regarding the Bible’s book of Romans and the Dead Sea Scrolls. “Jesus on Homosexuality” (Tubi Publishing, LLC, April 2012) is the result of 10 years of research, and Wood includes numerous footnotes citing historical writings and other scholarly material to document the 1,900-year-old error.

One of the Biblical examples that Wood uses to support his claim that Jesus repeatedly presented the Justices as the entirety of the Law is Jesus’ response to the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-19. “In Jesus’ response he cited only ethical commandments and then quoted, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’– the precept designating the Justices,” Wood said.

“In other words, Jesus stated that only the Justices matter. Every Job — every religious requirement — was excluded. That deliberate exclusion was a clear statement of Jesus’ position on ritual (such as the prohibition on eating shellfish and wearing garments made of two cloths) and sexual taboos (such as the prohibition on homosexuality and having sex with your wife during her menstrual cycle). The discovery of the Justices and Jobs finally reveals Jesus’ original message.”

The 56-page ebook can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.JesusOnHomosexuality.com. Wood encourages readers to copy and distribute the book, provided it is copied in full without any editing or modification. “I wrote the book to kick-start a much-needed conversation. It’s time for the conversation to begin,” Wood said.

About the Author

Michael Wood designed REDOC-II – one of the only unbreakable codes in existence today. Wood then turned his cryptanalytic attention to finding a way to solving the problem of managing the physical infrastructure of the Internet. He designed an artificial intelligent system which instructed a computer how to decode the information flowing through its network wires. The computer then used artificial intelligence to assemble the deciphered information into a real-time map of the worldwide physical infrastructure.

Wood also applied his cryptanalytic skills to monitor the real-time level of human parasympathetic activity by decoding subtle changes in heart rate measurements.

Wood then turned his cryptanalytic skills to finding patterns in first-century Jewish language, culture, and law. After ten years of dedicated effort, this eventually led to the discovery of the Justices and Jobs in the writings of the Apostle Paul.

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Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, and the Scaliger Institute of Leiden University Libraries announced the founding of a three year fellowship program to enable international rare books scholars to study 16th -18th century scientific scholarship and publishing.

The program will support two scholars to work with the extensive Leiden University Special Collections and the Elsevier Heritage Collection for a period of one to three months annually. They will be invited to share their research through public lectures and publications.

The fellowship program builds on Elsevier’s recent launch of the Elsevier Heritage Collection’s online catalogue comprising over 2,000 rare books with more than 1,000 distinct titles published by the original Elzevier publishing house from 1580 to 1712. Based in the Netherlands and closely tied to Leiden University, the original company published groundbreaking work from contemporary scholars including Descartes, Huygens, and Galileo.

The modern publisher Elsevier, founded in 1880, was named after the original firm as a tribute to the publishing achievements of the Elzeviers. The Scaliger Institute will also work closely with the Elsevier Heritage Collection team to provide training and expertise on preservation, exhibitions, display techniques, cataloguing, bindings, history, and provenance study.

The fellowships offer a scientific publishing complement to the longstanding Scaliger Institute Brill fellowships. These focus on rare books research in the fields of Middle East, Islamic, and Asian Studies, medieval and early modern history, as well as religious and classical studies.

“Our collaboration falls squarely in the tradition of the Scaliger Institute,” remarked Kurt De Belder, University Librarian and Director of Leiden University Libraries. “It stimulates the study of rare books and special collections to further our understanding of the foundations of academia. The Scaliger Institute is also dedicated to public outreach and looks forward to hosting the lectures and master classes generated by studying the history of publishing and scientific scholarships.”

“The Elsevier Heritage fellowships reinforce our longstanding relationship with the University of Leiden and builds upon the original Elzeviers’ tradition of publishing the great scientific minds of the 16th-18th century,” noted David Ruth, Senior Vice President of Global Communications, Elsevier.

“Supporting scholars to study the history of scholarship and science also ensures that the Elsevier Heritage Collection can be more fully researched and made available to scholars around the world.”

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After some intense bankruptcy negotiations, Barnes and Noble has finally secured permission to buy Borders’ customer list for $13.9 million. This purchase includes information from former Borders customers, including email addresses, purchase histories, home addresses, and phone numbers. However, no financial information will be transferred to Barnes and Noble.

Even though the initial sale was made on September 26, the sale was not finalized for several weeks due to Borders’ objection to having their customers’ information sold. The Federal Trade Commission’s consumer chief, David Vladeck, agreed with Borders’ concerns.

“In light of the promises Borders made to its customers, we believe it would be appropriate for Borders to obtain express consent from its customers, specifying the potential purchaser, before it transfers the data. The consent process would allow customers to make their own determination as to whether a transfer of their information would be acceptable to them.

For consumers who did not consent, their data would be purged,” he said. Judge Martin Glenn, who has been presiding over Borders’ bankruptcy proceedings, decided it would not be necessary for customers to express permission for their information to be transferred to the new company.

Instead, Barnes and Noble was required to provide former Borders’ customers with the ability to opt out, and have their personal information purged from all databases. Last week, Barnes and Noble CEO, William Lynch, sent an email to 40 million former Borders customers welcoming them to the “Barnes and Noble family.”

The email briefly explained the purchase, and encouraged recipients to take advantage of the opportunity to receive emails with special offers for in-store and online purchases at Barnes and Noble. There was also a note at the bottom of the page with a link giving customers the option to opt out and have their information deleted.

Customers who received this email will have until October 15 to opt out. Former Borders customers who did not provide an email address will have until October 29. After these dates have passed, anyone who has not specifically opted out will automatically have their information transferred to the Barnes and Noble database.

This sale has caused some controversy concerning a company’s right to sell the intellectual property of their customers to another company without express permission. The privacy rights of an individual are highly prized in American society, and Barnes and Noble’s ability to simply buy personal information is upsetting to some individuals.

Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, recently stated his objections. “The settlement reached between Borders and Barnes and Noble is wholly inadequate and unacceptable. Consumers are unprotected unless they explicitly opt out. Instead, their specific consent should be requested,” he said.

The bankruptcy courts have set a precedent for companies to sell their customers’ information to others in the future. Only time will tell if this sharing of information is determined to be a breach of privacy, or simply a new way for businesses to reach out to customers.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/benjamingolub/

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Half of the miners involved with the accident at the San Jose mine are still unemployed, one year later. Those who have jobs are only part-time as mechanics, odd-job men or greengrocers. When the miners were trapped underground in Chile, great things were predicted for them. They thought nothing would be the same in their lives.

They would be rich; cinema producers would make films about them and journalists would pay fortunes for their stories. Therefore, they thought they would never have to work again. Jean Romagnoli was the miners’ physical trainer while they were below ground. He helped them to stay in shape so they could fit into the capsule used for their rescue.

“The promises that were made to them when they reached the surface, like for example that they were going to all have a job in the national mining industry; they’ve all vanished,” Romagnoli said. The reality has been quite different. Some of them are dealing with the psychological impact of what they went through.

Only a couple of the 33 men trapped for two months at San Jose have ventured back down the mines. Raul Bustos, a miner who works as a guest speaker for a telephone company said, “I’ve dealt with those problems, but there are two or three of the miners who still have problems. They haven’t been able to get over it, and they’re still on sick leave.”

He believes every miner deals with psychological impacts in their own different ways. Last July, 31 of  33 men launched legal action against the Chilean state, accusing them of failing to do their job properly by allowing the San Jose mine to remain open in the year before the accident. They are claiming a compensation of $500,000 per man.

Meanwhile, the state is claiming the mine owners’ money back for the millions of dollars spent on the miners’ rescue.  Jean Romagnoli said to BBC News  that any mining company is avoiding giving them jobs because they think of them as damaged goods. “They think they’re psychologically unbalanced still, and there’s a risk in contracting them,” he said.Despite their recent frustrations, there is still some hope that they are going to become rich men very soon.

Mike Medavov, the Hollywood producer who grew up in Chile has bought the rights to make a movie about the miners. He seems to have affinity with the accident. Jose Rivera has been hired to write the script. He wrote the screenplay for the Che Gevara film. As well,Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Hector Tobar is working on a book about the miners.

The book will be based on the diary that Victor Segovia, a miner among the 33 kept writing below ground. The profits from the sales will be split between the miners.

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British publishers Angry Robot recently announced that they will be publishing two new books by one of urban fantasy’s stars, Mike Shevdon. His debut novel, Sixty-One Nails, was published in 2009 to great acclaim and he subsequently published a sequel entitled The Road to Bedlam in 2010. Shevdon was kind enough to answer the Post’s questions in a wide-ranging interview.

Toonari Post: When did you first realize that you wanted to be an author?

Mike Shevdon: I didn’t even consider becoming an author until well into my forties. I’d been a keen reader since childhood, and I’ve always liked telling stories, but it didn’t occur to me that I could be a writer until comparatively recently. I’d been reading a friend’s drafts for some years and began to see by osmosis how stories were constructed. Even then it was some time before I wrote anything worthwhile. I was quite naive about it, but if I’d known how difficult it really was I probably would never have started.

TP: Could you describe your journey from aspiring writer to published author?

MS: One of the advantages I had was that I knew the story I wanted to write. It started a chapter at a time and at that stage I only shared it with one good friend. He encouraged me to write more and gradually it accumulated. The first time you write those magic words, The End, is a real buzz, but of course you’ve only just started. What I had was a first draft and a pretty rough one at that. I worked on it and polished it until it was as good as I could make it.

Only then did I dare to share it with my friend whose drafts I had been beta-reading. She asked me if I wanted her views as a friend, or as an author. I chose the latter, and though it was hard to hear that all my hard work did not yet make the grade it was the right things to do. I went back to the draft and moved it up another level.

After that, test readers, workshops, beta readers – even when you think you’re finished you’re really not. You have to take a big step back, gain some perspective and try again. I look back and still think there are things I could have done better, but then I learn more every time I do this.

TP: What are some of your literary influences?

MS: The first fantasy I came across was The Hobbit while at school, then I read the Narnia books one after another. John Wyndham, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein – and then Ursula Le Guin,and Alan Garner. Later I got into John Le Carre’s spy novels, which I devoured. I read all Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes stories and am a big fan of Robert Crais’ thrillers.

Alan Moore is a great inspiration, I loved Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series and the contrast between American Gods and Anansi Boys. My current favourites are Mike Carey’s Felix Castor books and Joe Abercrombie’s, First Law trilogy – Joe restarted my love of fantasy – he took all the tropes and twisted them delightfully.

TP: For many aspiring authors, the idea of searching for an agent is quite nerve-racking. How did you find your agent, and what advice do you have regarding the dreaded query letter?

MS: I found my agent after extensive research, what agents like and who they represent. I wrote a specific query for her and one other agent who also matched my criteria. I got a request for a partial from one, and a polite and encouraging rejection from the other. It seems to me that too many try the shotgun approach and shoot their query out to as many people as possible in the hope that it will stick somewhere. Don’t hope – do your research and discover what your chosen agent wants to see, then give it to them.

For the query, understand what your story is about. Tell that story in 200 words. The query should make the agent want to ready your sample pages. Your sample pages should make the agent want to request a partial. The partial should make them want to read it all. If it’s not working, ask yourself why? Is the problem your query or your story? Have you targeted the right agent?

TP: What’s your writing routine? For example, do you write in a specific location or listen to a certain type of music?

MS: I used to write on the train while commuting to and from work, so I got used to distractions and can write pretty much anywhere. I immerse myself in the story and found it best to set an alarm after I missed my station and ended up 15 miles down the track past my stop. I try to avoid dependency on any one thing, though. It only makes it harder when that one thing isn’t available.

TP: You’ve written quite a bit on your blog about the various technological tools available to writers. What are some of your favorites?

MS: For sitting down and working out a plot I find FreeMind a great tool. It’s quick, makes it easy to rearrange things, and is abstract enough to allow for non-linear development. I wrote Sixty-One Nails using RoughDraft, but nowadays I use Scrivener on the Mac almost exclusively. It has all the tools I need and is aimed at writing large complex pieces where you need to focus on the detail but keep an eye on the big picture. For small articles I use Bean, which is a very nice RTF text editor.

TP: We’ve all heard the hype about how traditional publishing is dying, and self-publishing via e-readers is the way of the future. What do you think? Will there always be a place for traditional publishing? What made you decide to go with a traditional publisher?

MS: I don’t think self-publishing will replace traditional publishing. In 2009, my agent Jennifer Jackson, read 8,004 queries, from which she signed 5 new clients. The other 7,999 writers could theoretically self-publish their work without an agent or publisher, but you have to ask yourself, were they ready for publication? That’s just one agent. There are hundreds of agents and publishers, and their slush-piles are similarly full. As a reader, how do I find the one brilliant self-published masterpiece from the hundreds of thousands of novels that just weren’t quite ready?

Having said that, the publishing business is being forced to change. The economics are harsh but simple. We’ve seen similar scenarios in the music business where bands now make money from touring because their music is sold for cents and freely pirated on the Internet. They can’t make enough from sales to keep going and the result is that you have to pay £50 a ticket to see a band. Authors are not going to be able to do that.

The app model of publishing where the publisher sells novels for 99c works for the publisher if they can produce enough titles. Two hundred titles selling a thousand copies each nets over a hundred thousand dollars. It doesn’t work for authors, though. Even at 25% of gross, that’s only $250. It doesn’t pay your bills.

I believe that readers want new and inspired voices producing work that is original and exciting, and that publishers are able to find and develop those authors successfully and bring them to market. All we have to figure out is how to fund it such that it becomes a sustainable business model and everyone will benefit as a result.

TP: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

MS: I am a keen target archer and spend quite a bit of time sending pointed missiles across a field at paper circles. There is a beautiful simplicity in archery. All you have to do is draw the bow back and let the arrow go in a way that is clean and consistent. It sounds easy but in turns it is both challenging and frustrating, and wonderfully rewarding when you get it right. As Eugen Herrigel noticed, there is zen in the art of archery.

TP: Since I live in Wisconsin, the land of cheese, I was interested to see on your website that you’ve invented “Squeaky Cheese Curry.” What’s that?

MS: Squeaky cheese is our family name for Halloumi, a cheese from Cyprus which can stand cooking heat without melting or falling apart. It’s salty and has a texture that, when you bite it, squeaks against your teeth. When planning a meal for vegetarian friends I made a massaman curry with Halloumi instead of meat, grilling the surface of the cheese to keep it firm, adding massaman paste, lime leaves and star anise into coconut milk, and Squeaky Cheese Curry was born. It’s now a firm favourite with vegetarian and non-vegetarian friends alike.

TP: What are the top three things on your “bucket list”?

MS: I would like to sail around the Greek Islands, stopping off at little villages and tiny fishing harbours and immersing myself in Greek culture, food and hospitality. I would like to explore New Zealand; my visit in 1990 left me wanting to see more of that beautiful country, and I would like to be on the New York Times Bestseller List.

TP: The Quit-Rent ceremony is a huge part of your debut novel, Sixty-One Nails. What made you decide to build a novel around this little bit of legal arcana?

MS: I was researching English folklore and was following a thread to do with iron and its role as a protection against magical influence, particularly with respect to blacksmiths and horse-shoes, when I came across the ceremony.

When you find a ceremony involving six iron horse-shoes and twin knives, one blunt and one sharp, you have to accept the gift and write a story about it. When I realised that they had been carrying out the ceremony for eight-hundred years it started me thinking – why?

I realised that if you wanted something done long past any individual person’s life-span, and you needed it to be done perfectly and regularly, every year, come what may, then this would be a perfect way to achieve that. It was a mystery hidden in plain sight. The question was, what was it hiding?

TP: What was the reaction of the staff at the Royal Courts of Justice when you told them why you were interested the Quit-Rent ceremony? Did you ever get to meet the Queen’s Remembrancer?

MS: I have always found the staff at the Royal Courts of Justice to been wonderfully polite, helpful and tolerant. After all, they deal with people every day who are in the most difficult of situations and my enquiries were, perhaps, light relief from their more serious role.

I’ve attended the ceremony several times, including 2009 after the book was launched, and I got to meet the Remembrancer and the Chief Clerk, who were both bemused, I think, by the enthusiasm with which I told them about the book. I did send the retiring clerk a copy, but I’m not sure if she read it. I also got to chat with the smith who made the knives. Lovely people, and the ceremony itself is absolutely fascinating.

TP: The Quit-Rent ceremony is of course just one of many historical oddities that are part of the British constitution. What would you say to those who would love nothing more than to sweep such things away?

MS: Britain’s constitution is written not in one document, but in many. It is formed by the precedent and practice, by challenge and convention. As such it is a living document with roots in the birth of nation states. If you will sweep that away, what will you replace it with?

TP: You recently announced on your website that Angry Robot will be publishing two more books in The Courts of the Feyre series. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s going to happen in the next two books?

MS: The Road to Bedlam ended with Niall rescuing Alex and releasing the inmates from Porton Down into the wider world. In Strangeness & Charm we see what happens to these individuals, how people who have been mistreated by the state react when granted freedom, and what they do with their power and liberty when they find that society has no place for them.

We also see the relationships between Niall and Blackbird change with the birth of their baby, and how that affects Alex, a teenage girl who has endured torture and cannot return to the way she was.

The Eighth Court is where all the threads come together and the plans of those behind the scenes are finally revealed. The grand experiment comes to fruition and all the pigeons come home to roost. Sides will be chosen, friend will fight friend, and old scores will be settled in blood.

TP: If Hollywood were to come calling, who would you want to play Niall? Blackbird?

MS: You need an English Rose to play the young Blackbird – Keira Knightley or Kate Winslet, perhaps, and I would love Dame Judi Dench to play the older Blackbird. She has that instant presence. Niall is harder to cast. You need someone understated and subtle, who can portray someone who has closed themselves off from the world and is then slowly revealed. Having seen Colin Firth in The King’s Speech, I can see him in that role.

TP: As you know, there’s a long-standing debate within the writing community about the merits of first-person narrators vs. third-person narrators. What made you decide to write in the first person?

MS: Sixty-One Nails is about discovering that the world is a stranger and more wonderful place than it appears. It’s about opening up to new ideas and new ways of being. For me, the best way to portray that was to follow someone who is going through that experience, so that you can be with them as it happens.

In The Road to Bedlam, Niall and Blackbird become separated and we see Blackbird from a third-person perspective. This is because I don’t want the reader to have access to Blackbird’s knowledge and experience of the fey world. That would undermine Niall’s perspective by giving the reader more knowledge about the world than Niall possesses. Neither is right or wrong. It’s about what’s appropriate for that character.

TP: For me, one of the most chilling parts of Sixty-One Nails was the scene in Niall’s apartment with the Darkspore. What was the inspiration behind it?

MS: My house is surrounded by large trees which are host to many moulds and spores, and I have a constant battle against mildew gaining a foothold between tiles or around windows because the spores are in the air. I’d already formed the view that magic in The Courts of the Feyre would be innate rather than learned, and wanted to bring in some unusual aspects to that power. Darkspore was one of those wonderful moments when a problem and an idea come together.

TP: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

MS: Write. Keep writing. Challenge yourself to get better. Share your writing with people who will be honest and give you constructive feedback. Join a writing group. Learn to see your own mistakes by critiquing the work of others. Never stop learning.

TP: Do you plot your stories beforehand, or do you write by the seat of your pants?

MS: My approach is a hybrid of the two. I have a rough outline in one-line sentences, and I use that to structure the story. I don’t always stick to it though, and if the writing goes off in an interesting direction then I follow it. I may end up deleting it all later, but it’s worth the time to chase a thread – it can lead you to some really interesting places.

Having said that, I have a very clear picture of some scenes – the funeral scene from The Road to Bedlam is an example, and you’ll know what I mean if you’ve read it. It emerged as part of the plot and I knew how it would have to go before I started typing. It didn’t make it any easier to write, but I knew it had to have that emotional weight to deliver the impetus for what comes after.

TP: What are your plans once you’ve finished The Courts of Feyre series?

MS: At the moment I’m immersed in the Courts of the Feyre, and I don’t want to think too far beyond that. I have an idea for a stand-alone novel I want to write – a modern haunting, not horror but a psychological thriller, and I also have ideas for a trilogy, set in a different world with an entirely new set of characters, but that needs work to bring the ideas into focus and I don’t have time to work on that while I’m busily writing Strangeness & Charm, so it’s gone into the ‘later’ folder until I can spend more time on it.

Please click below to purchase one of Mike Shevdon Books:

• Sixty-One Nails: Courts of the Feyre, Book 1   Buy At Amazon
• Road to Bedlam: Courts of the Feyre, Book 2  Buy At Amazon

For more information about Mike Shevdon, visit his website or follow him on Twitter.

Image courtesy: Mark Lewis Photography

The article Mike Shevdon, One of Urban Fantasy’s Freshest Voices appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

After struggling to survive Chapter 11 bankruptcy since February, Borders officially announced they would be closing the doors on their remaining 399 stores by September.

At the height of their success in the early 90s, they had more than 1,500 stores across the country. Despite competition with Barnes and Noble, Borders was a successful bookstore giant. Then as electronic E-readers and online publications grew in popularity, Borders began to have problems.

A number of their stores began to close as they fell behind in popularity. In 2010 they teamed up with the company that owns the Kobo E-reader and started selling it in their stores in an attempt to stay afloat. But it was still not as popular as other similar products, such as Barnes and Noble’s Nook or Amazon.com’s Kindle.

Finally, in February of this year, Borders declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy and put their remaining stores up for sale in an attempt to keep the franchise alive. They did receive an offer from the owner of the Book of the Month Club, a book club that offers its members discounts on popular books, but the creditors for their bankruptcy refused the terms of the sale because they would not have received compensation for Borders’ liquidation.

That decision has led to the selling of Borders’ remaining assets. All of the remaining stores are having going out of business sales from now until September. Many of the coffee shops located within Borders have already closed up shop, leaving an ominous dark corner of the store that stands as reminder to any customer who wants to snatch up a few good deals that the store will soon be closed.

Borders currently has almost 10,700 employees, all of whom will soon be out of work. In addition, a number of companies had departments that worked primarily or exclusively with Borders, and those positions will be lost as well.

In America’s struggling economy, an employment loss of this size is unfortunate. Many people are upset about Borders’ closing, but independently owned book stores have mixed feelings. While their closing will give customers less options and make them more likely to shop in their stores, it does not guarantee that former Borders customers won’t simply make the switch to online purchasing instead.

As Borders begins to slowly die, interest turns to their main competition, Barnes and Noble. Brick and mortar book stores in general have lost business in recent years, and people are wondering if Barnes and Noble will be next. However, it seems that Barnes and Noble will survive the current transition from brick and mortar sites to online buying and reading E-books.

They have managed to continue turning a profit, which Borders hasn’t been able to do since 2006, by expanding beyond the physical store. Last Christmas, Barnes and Noble managed to earn 30 percent of online book sales, and their Nook E-reader is fairly popular.

Borders was an icon for many years and many of their loyal customers are sad to see them go. The closing of their doors signals a significant shift in the way people are both buying and reading their books. Perhaps 20 years from now the idea of going to a store to buy a book will seem just as strange as getting milk from the milkman.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/boydsworld/

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Whether in the cooling shade or the bright sun, a good book is always great company for the summer. But which book should you grab? If you’ve already made your way through the Twilight Saga, the Harry Potter Chronicles and the Millennium Series and find that the rest of the summer needs something without a franchise, these five suggestions will guide your way.

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón
For a proper time-killer, get your hands on Zafón’s mesmerizing mystery novel about love and obsession. Set in post-Spanish Civil War, a boy’s encounter with an old book ends up consuming his young life and determines his fate. Even in English, the words are incredibly well written and especially Fermín, the boy’s friend, a ravenous hedonist with a tortured past, delivers one memorable quote after another. Excitement, intrigue, tears, laughter — Zafón takes you through it all with such passion and crude irony, you won’t be able to put it down.

Africa Trilogy - Jacob Ejersbo
Forget Karen Blixen for a moment. This is the deep end of Scandinavian literature — where happy endings are not in the vocabulary. Ejersbo died of cancer at the age of 40 but his last work is an accomplished critique of civilization. Despite a decent amount of hopelessness, the work delivers a graceful and heartfelt tale of two friends’ coming of age. Set in Tanzania, the story alternates between the viewpoints of Christian from Denmark and Marcus, a local boy, as they explore their common friendship and the good and evil (mostly evil) of their own existence.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
Known as the ultimate piece of Latin American literature, the story of the rise and fall of the Buendía Family is riddled with intense emotions and tragedy. But it also explores the ultimate expressions of human nature and the destructive evolution of time. The tone is brutal, even tragicomic, but once you get into the mystique of the Family, you realize that their success and failure is not random and that generations are connected by a paradox of time beyond our control. Not for the impatient reader but its strangeness is terribly intriguing.

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
Murakami is known for his lyrical themes and titles and Norwegian Wood (a Beatles song) is no exception. The 1987 novel is essentially about clinging to loss and the painful turmoil of love, friendship and death. Carefully constructed around Turo, his relationships with the delicate Naoko and the vivacious Midori lays the foundation for a beautiful and melancholic journey through Japanese youth culture in the late 1960s.

Either/Or: A Fragment of Life - Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard’s work is hardcore philosophy disguised as clever literature. Before you point out the double-mentioning of Danish writers, consider this: Either/Or is everything — a ruthless take on identity, a bible on existentialism, a guide to getting laid and a collection of advice on how to live life without dying of boredom. Kierkegaard is literally a philosophy superstar and this work in particular emphasizes the most encompassing of thoughts: the journey of finding yourself can be a bit of a life-long project.

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