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A lot of bloggers are making end-of-year lists of books they read in 2009. They’re not hard to find, but here are some particularly awesome ones (because they mention yours truly, natch):

Fantasy Book Critic

Robots and Vamps

A Dribble of Ink

Walker of Worlds

Fanlit

The end-of-year roundup is something I’ve occasionally done on the Peephole, and since I’m not likely to get any real work done until my wife gets over the flu and the baby is sleeping at the moment, I am going to try and knock this out quick.

After the birth of little Cassie and the publication of The Painted Man, both in mid-2008, my pleasure reading time took a serious nose dive. I used to read something along the lines of a book a week until a couple of years ago. Lately, not so much. I am resolving to do better in 2010. It’s important to my mental health and creative energy, in addition to being something I love.

Books Read in 2009 (no particular order other than the top of my head):

The Gathering Storm, by Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan: Despite a friendly rivalry with Brandon (we’re at the same literary agency), I really WANTED this book to be good, and was kind of doubting it would be. Brandon is a fine writer, but Robert Jordan’s work, particularly the early WoT books, touch my life profoundly, as did the man himself the one time I met him. I was very pleasantly surprised to find the book to be so good. If I hadn’t know if wasn’t Jordan, I never would have guessed.

Legend, by David Gemmell: Read this kind of sheepishly after I was nominated for the DG Legend award. Amazing book by a great author. The writing of the book has as great a story behind it as the one in book itself.

Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card: Awesome, compelling book. People have been recommending it to me for years. Why did I wait so long?

The Way of Shadows & Shadow’s Edge, by Brent Weeks: Compelling characters and kickass ninja action written by a damned nice guy. Got to spend some time with Brent and his lovely wife at WFC this year. Fine folk.

Wings of Wrath, by CS Friedman: What? You don’t read CS Friedman? Shame on you. Start with the Coldfire trilogy, then move on to this series. You’ll learn something. Her Science Fiction is solid, too.

The Steel Remains, by Richard K. Morgan: Still annoyed at Morgan for his net-troll snipes at Tolkien (and by association, Tolkien’s fans) earlier this year, but he did manage to deliver a pretty solid fantasy that’s well above the norm. I think sometimes he went over the line into gratuity with the sex and violence, but that’s not necessarily such a bad thing.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy, by Robert Redick: Got a free copy from the man himself at NY ComicCon, and then we went out and got drunk at the Del Rey party and debated whether e-books were the second coming or the apocalypse. Or both. Good stuff.

Latent, by Myke Cole: Written by my one of my bestest buddies, this book is currently at market. It is great Military Fantasy – the X-Men meets Black Hawk Down. Myke has been one of my inner-circle test readers for many years, and vice-versa. There is a lot of him in The Warded Man, and a lot of me in Latent. Keep your eyes peeled for it.

The Desert Spear, by Peter V. Brett: Great fucking book. I must have read it a dozen times this year. Can’t wait till it goes on sale.

Books I Started but Didn’t Finish:

These books are not necessarily down for the count, but for one reason or another they didn’t grab me and are sitting on the to-read pile waiting for another shot.

Death Troopers, by Joe Schreiber: This zombie horror novel set in the Star Wars universe came highly recommended, but it just wasn’t working for me, and after about 100 pages, I put it down in favor of something else in the pile.

A Princess of Landover, by Terry Brooks: I was eagerly anticipating this book after many years away from Landover, but when the time came think I just wasn’t in the mood. I’m saving it as a treat for my next beach vacation.

Read Seas Under Red Skies, by Scott Lynch: I’m 116 pages into this, and while the dialogue and storytelling is clever as ever, I am not swept up in it and decided to put it aside for a while. I will note for the record that I did the same with Lynch’s first book, The Lies of Locke Lamora, and that turned out to be one of the best fantasies I ever read. I will get back to RSURS before I start book 3, Republic of Thieves, but in the meantime I have switched to…

Spellwright, by Blake Charlton: Just started this ARC that Blake gave me at WFC a couple of months ago. I’m up to chapter 6, and so far so good!

Comic TPB collections read in 2009:

Batman: Cat and the Bat, by Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire: Cute, fun book about Batgirl chasing Catwoman all over Gotham. By the book’s end, both of their costumes are sexily shredded, but neither has a scratch on them. Sexy, but WTF?

Path of the Assassin, by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima: Another fantastic series by this team has come to an end, and since Kojima passed away recently, that is it. Amazing while it lasted, and I’m glad this series had more closure than Samurai Executioner, which ended kind of abruptly.

Fables/Jack of Fables, by Bill Willingham, et al: Always fabulous.

Criminal, by Brubaker/Phillips: Read all three trades while on jury duty, along with the Sleeper prequel. I will read anything these guys do. The are awesome. Picked up Incognito, but haven’t read it yet.

Conan the Barbarian reprints, by Roy Thomas/John Buschema, et al.: So damn good… until Roy Thomas left the series. Then… meh.

The Sword, by the Luna Brothers: Always love the Lunas.

The Goon, by Eric Powell: I keep thinking I will tire of this book, but I never do. It always makes me chuckle to myself as I read.

Invincible/The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman, et al.: These books could not be more different from one another, but they stem from the same creative genius. I love them both in very different ways.

100 Bullets, by Azzarello/Risso: This book would be incredible even if Eduardo Risso weren’t one of the best artists on the planet… and he is.

Ultimate Spider-man, by Bendis/Bagley: I gave up on most of the other books in Marvel’s Ultimate line once they started sucking and/or getting caught up in the massive crossover bullshit that drove me away from most mainstream Marvel books in the first place, but I will read USM for as long as Bendis is writing.

I’ve also read dozens of floppies. I like Kick Ass and the new Power Girl comic with art by the amazing Amanda Conner. I was also happy that Warren Ellis tied up the loose ends in Planetary, though I was less thrilled with the new Grant Morrison Batman and Robin (but the Frank Quitely art was fantastic). I liked the Astro City 2-part Astra series, which was great after the less than stellar Dark Ages run. I was also reading The Boys, Red Sonja, Powers, and a bunch of others I am forgetting at the moment.

Here is a snapshot of my to-read shelves. Click to embiggen.

Posted on January 1, 2010 at 11:57 pm by PeatB
Filed under Life, Musings, Reviews, Writing
8 Comments »

Saw Avatar last night. I’m kind of tired (the baby had me up till 5am) and don’t want to write a huge review, but I will say that I really really enjoyed it. A lot of people have criticized various aspects of it, and while I don’t really disagree with a lot of those criticisms, they don’t change the fact that it was an amazing, engrossing, beautifully produced film that will profoundly affect the movie industry for a long time to come. Yes, the story has been done many times before, and will be done many times again, but one man’s cliche is another man’s timeless archetype, so whatever.

In the Desert Spear ARC Contest world, fabulous entries keep trickling in, making it harder and harder to pick winners.

Emily the Aussie and her twin sister took time away from drooling over Sam Worthington to stop in a photobooth to get this shot:

And I also received two more absolutely incredible entries from Simcha, all the way from the Judean Desert. In her words:

I manged to make some time today to go over to one of the Bedouin encampments along the road, something I’ve always wanted to do but never found a reason to. Since I didn’t have time for a hike over there I had to rope in someone to drive me ( I don’t have a car) and I brought along another friend who is friendly with this family of Bedouins.

After parking along the side of the road, we had to climb over the guardrail and then carefully cross a metal beam precariously laid across a deep ditch, in order to reach the encampment (some pretty life threatening stuff!).

The matriarch of the family came out of the tent to greet us, along with her son, and they welcomed us into their tent where they place some mattresses on the floor for us to sit on. After I explained why we were there (I told them it’s for a strange American thing, and they nodded knowingly), they cheerfully agreed to pose for some pictures with the Warded Man.

The first pictures is of my friend Liz with the mother:

The second picture is of their beautiful twenty-two year old daughter, Tzor, who came over to say hello:

I hope you like the pictures and thanks for giving me an excuse to finally meet with some of my Bedouin neighbors.

Posted on December 27, 2009 at 2:48 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans
7 Comments »

Looks like I opened up a can of worms yesterday by responding to a reader review on Amazon. You can get the story over on Grasping for the Wind.

But it’s Christmas, and my loving readers have been more than willing to spread me some sweet holiday cheer with new DSAC entries from women I adore. The first is from Kim Kincaid:

Merry Christmas Peter!

Kim

[None of these creatures were photoshopped or harmed while photographing them]

After that, we have French Jess’ amazing adventure:

This morning, my boyfriend told me how he LOVED your book, but that he wasn’t sure this book could be liked by all different people. So, to prove him wrong, I got out of bed, took my coat, my bonnet, my scarf, and my boots of seven leagues:

And I go touch the magic golden billhook to bend space and time (like Hiro Nakamura!):

First, I went to the Vikings, show them the book, and they loved it soooo much that they believed I was Sif, Thor’s wife, returning on earth to tell them a powerful story:

After that, I went to antique Egypt, read them parts of the book, and they were so exited to learn what will appened next, that they enthroned me Queen of Egypt:

After all this emotions, I was a little hungry, so I stoped by the Palais Bonbon (litteraly The Candy Palace), and I tought I must take a picture for you, as a fan of candy like you!

I continue my quest, and went in fight with a Lion. I apply Arlen’s technique, and he was very impressed. He named me Queen of the Jungle:

He showed me the way into the Forbiden Forest, where the Wood Spirit loved The Painted Man so much that he tried to eat my book:

But I didn’t let him! So I finally arrived in a little village of holdout Gauls (Gaulois)! The book hold such power over them that I won the title of “strongest woman of the world”:

So… I went home, and told my boyfriend that YES, The Painted Man is universally loved!

Not to be outdone, Chantal from the UK came back from her trip to Africa with some amazing pictures as well:

The first photo was taken in Samburu National Park in Kenya. Unfortunately all of the lions were too damn lazy to come close enough to the jeep but the elephants were more accommodating.

The second photo was taken at the Nairobi Animal Orphanage. There were three four-month old cheetah cubs. They pretty much ignored us for the whole time we were in the enclosure with them, since they were too busy chasing and chewing on each other.  I did try to see if I could tempt one of them to at least sniff at the book (it would have been awesome if it had left a cub-sized bite mark) but alas, it was not to be.

In the third photo we were on a snake safari. Right after the photo was taken, the snake bit me. It wasn’t venomous but the bite was surprisingly painful –I hope I’ve proved my eagerness to win one of those ARCs! Our guides always gave me puzzled looks when I suddenly whipped out a book while on safari. I shall also add that since some of our journeys were by light aircraft there was a weight restriction on our baggage. I sacrificed a pair of shoes to take the book out instead – do you know how significant that is in the world of womenfolk?

And Marilia in France’s cat Pumpkin feels the need to scent-mark Mary’s copy, this claiming it as her own:

Last but not least, proof from Lizette that I am a man of my word and sent her prize swiftly:

Posted on December 24, 2009 at 3:51 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, Reviews, Writing
1 Comment »

Got another couple of entries in the Desert Spear Arc Contest (DSAC) today. The first, from my buddy Matt,  requires a little explanation.

Back in college, I worked a few summers for Westchester County Parks and Recreation. It was a great job. I was outdoors all day in the fresh air, getting plenty of exercise at a job where it was easy to let my mind wander. Sometimes I was testing the ph levels of the public pool while waving at pretty girls, and other times I was hauling garbage and spreading wood chips in a picnic area, or tearing down a hidden treehouse full of drug paraphernalia deep in the woods. Often I would go with a partner at the end of the day to clear parking lots and lock gates for the night. One of my regular locations was a wooded park named Tibbett’s Brook, which I always thought was a beautiful place during the day, but which took on an ominous quality at sundown.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is where the town of Tibbet’s Brook, where Arlen Bales and Renna Tanner grow up in The Painted/Warded Man and The Desert Spear, originated in my mind.

Matt is one of maybe half a dozen people who know that story. I haven’t been out to the park in 15 years, but Matt lives closer than I do, and decided to go out there with a copy of The Painted Man (a signed first edition hardcover, no less!),to snap a few pictures for the contest, because he is awesome.

Thankfully Matt used his better half in the pictures, as the lovely Ursula is much easier on the eyes.

Look. There in the trees. Can you spot the wood demon?

Matt, of course, read The Desert Spear long before almost anyone, as he is on the test-read short list. So no ARC for him. I did manage to get him a Resident Evil t-shirt and some 3D glasses, though.

Likewise, my agent Joshua received his own samples of The Desert Spear from the publisher, so he’s not allowed to steal one out of the hands of my fans. Still, his entry, reading with his nephew’s bear Rhino, is delightful:

Posted on December 21, 2009 at 5:41 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans
1 Comment »

Lisa from the UK, who also submitted a picture of her adorable dog reading The Painted Man, sent in this entry on Friday, but I didn’t have a chance to post it:

When I saw your ‘photoshop’ announcement I thought I might as well give it a shot…

Back in 2006 I trekked along the Great Wall of China to raise money for Cancer Research UK. I was out there for 10 days and it is one of the best (and hardest) things I have ever done but most importantly I managed to raise £6,000 for a great cause. Obviously I couldn’t take a book out there that had not even been published yet so I have doctored it in. (in the hope that no-one submits a real life version in the same location lol)

This is the last of the entries thus far. I’m looking forward to seeing more in the new year, as there will be many more prizes to give out. 2010 is going to ROCK. In the meantime, Happy Holidays to all.

Posted on December 20, 2009 at 6:27 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans
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