Two bits of wonderful news today.

First up, Publishers Weekly has selected Frostbornfor their PW Picks: Books of the Week, August 4, 2014. They say:

Frostborn by Lou Anders (Crown) - In this Norse-flavored adventure, Anders pits a clever boy and a resourceful half-giant girl against numerous enemies and the hazards of the frozen wilderness. Twelve-year-old Karn has no desire to learn the family business of farming; he’s much more interested in playing the strategy board game Thrones and Bones. Thianna’s human ancestry makes her an oddity and object of derision among her full-blooded giant peers. Nevertheless, Karn and Thianna become reluctant allies and friends when trouble threatens: Karn runs afoul of a malevolent undead lord, while Thianna must flee from her human mother’s people, who seek a long-lost artifact. Though a lot of elements are in play, Anders ties the novel’s threads together in a neatly satisfying way, crafting a powerful, fast-paced tale.

And second, Amazon has picked Frostborn as one of only four Best Books of the Month: Ages 9-12 (Middle Grade)!

My Eos anthology, Swords & Dark Magic, co-edited with Jonathan Strahan, is now IN STOCK at Amazon, B&N, Borders, etc... and is available for the Kindle, B&N ereader/Nook, and in iBooks. And I'm sure you can get it at fine independents like Borderlands Books as well. (See this indiebound link).

Once again, the Table of Contents:

• Check Your Dark Lord at the Door" — Lou Anders & Jonathan Strahan
• Goats of Glory — Steven Erikson
• Tides Elba: A Tale of the Black Company — Glen Cook
• Bloodsport — Gene Wolfe
• The Singing Spear — James Enge
• A Wizard of Wiscezan — C.J. Cherryh
• A Rich Full Week — K. J. Parker
• A Suitable Present for a Sorcerous Puppet — Garth Nix
• Red Pearls: An Elric Story — Michael Moorcock
• The Deification of Dal Bamore — Tim Lebbon
• Dark Times at the Midnight Market — Robert Silverberg
• The Undefiled — Greg Keyes
• Dapple Hew the Tint Master — Michael Shea
• In the Stacks — Scott Lynch
• Two Lions, A Witch, and the War-Robe — Tanith Lee
• The Sea Troll's Daughter — Caitlin R Kiernan
• Thieves of Daring — Bill Willingham
• The Fool Jobs — Joe Abercrombie

Holy cow, look what's popped up for preorder at Amazon!
We'll be able to disclose the TOC very soon now too.

Mark Chadbourn, author of the Age of Misrule trilogy that begins with World's End,is guest-blogging at Amazon's Omnivoracious, courtesy of the amazing Jeff Vandermeer. His first post, THE INVISIBLE HAND OF THE GODS OF WRITING, is up now. It begins:

"When the author and poet Robert Graves embarked on a study of ancient myth, he found an unsettling world opening up to him. The work in question, The White Goddess, proposed the existence of a long-forgotten cult dedicated to a moon goddess who was the root of most pre-Christian religions--Greek, Phoenician, Celtic, Roman, Scandinavian Hindu, even African...."

You'll have to go here for the rest. Meanwhile, I have several similar stories from when I wrote a script with a partner in my Hollywood days. The script was about a Vatican conspiracy of collosal proportions (this several years before Dan Brown), and I know firsthand that Joe Straczynski experienced a lot of odd coincidences when he wrote Babylon 5, which was also based on Celtic myth. Hmmm....