Tim Lebbon – horror and dark fantasy author

Hi folks …. a couple of links.

First, here’s a really nice review of ECHO CITY, available now in the USA and July here in the UK.

And there’s an interview with me up now at The Damned Interviews.

Here’s a nice ECHO CITY review.

You can read a feature about ECHO CITY on Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog.  It’s fun.  Go see it.  It talks about how difficult a task I set writing myself a story wherein the history is sometimes as alive as the present.

COLDBROOK, my big science fiction zombie novel due from Corsair/Constable in the UK, has had its publication put back until January 2012.  Don’t worry, though, as next July sees the publication of ECHO CITY from Orbit UK.

Chris Golden and I have delivered our script for THE SECRET JOURNEYS OF JACK LONDON: THE WILD to Fox 2000.

The JACK LONDON series has sold in Germany and France, with more foreign rights interest all the time.

I’m currently working on a new novel for Orbit in the UK, as well as a couple of screenplays (one a collaboration), a collaborative YA novel, a couple of TV series proposals, some comics ideas, and another novel idea or two.  Oh, and there are some short stories screaming to be written, and a novella or two.  Never a dull moment, and that’s just how I like it.

The end of this month marks four years since I left my previous job at Monmouthshire County Council to write full time.  It remains the best decision I ever made, and I’ll write a longer post about what those four years brought, and what the next year or two might bring.  Exciting things are afoot.

My new standalone fantasy novel ECHO CITY is out now in the USA.  You can buy it from all the usual bricks & mortar and online places.

Here’s what you’ll get for you $$$s:

Surrounded by a vast, poisonous desert, Echo City is built upon the graveyard of its own past. Most inhabitants believe that their city and its subterranean Echoes are the whole of the world, but there are a few dissenters. Peer Nadawa is a political exile, forced to live with criminals in a ruinous slum. Gorham, once her lover, leads a ragtag band of rebels against the ruling theocracy. Nophel, a servant of that theocracy, dreams of revenge from his perch atop the city’s tallest spire. And beneath the city, a woman called Nadielle conducts macabre experiments in genetic manipulation using a science indistinguishable from sorcery. They believe there is something more beyond the endless desert . . . but what?

It is only when a stranger arrives from out of the wastes that things begin to change. Frail and amnesiac, he holds the key to a new beginning for Echo City—or perhaps to its end, for he is not the only new arrival. From the depths beneath Echo City, something ancient and deadly is rising. Now Peer, Gorham, Nophel, and Nadielle msut test the limits of love and loyalty, courage and compassion, as they struggle to save a city collapsing under the weight of its own history.

Hi Folks

Been a busy time here at Lebbonville, so I’m sorry for the lack of recent updates.

Firstly, FOUR RODE OUT arrived from Cemetery Dance Publications, and it’s it’s a beautiful book.  It’s sold out from the publisher now, but I’m sure you’ll still be able to pick it up from dealers or second-hand markets.

My collection LAST EXIT FOR THE LOST received another wonderful review.  You can still pick this up from Cemetery Dance in the USA, or PS Publishing in the UK.

I’m working hard on COLDBROOK revisions and the script for Fox2000 (with Chris Golden), and several other exciting projects that I can’t really mention just yet.

Meanwhile, my brand new fantasy novel ECHO CITY hits the shelves next week in the USA.  Please go and buy it, order it, shout it from the rooftops.  I’m so pleased with this book that I want everyone to read it, and please let me know what you think.

‘Til next time, be good to each other, drink fine ales, and happy reading.

Been working hard here on COLDBROOK and other exciting stuff, so I haven’t been updating as often as I’d like.  Here’s a couple of items I should have posted earlier:

CZP Publications books are now available on Kindle! This doesn’t yet include my own The Thief of Broken Toys.

I’ll be killing Scott Blanks in COLDBROOK.  Horribly.  And there’ll be another COLDBROOK related competition announced quite soon.

The paperback of my novel THE ISLAND is out in the UK on 6th May.

And I just found this on Amazon, so I guess I can share:

I’ve just delivered the revised ECHO CITY to my editors at Bantam in the US, and Orbit in the UK.  Hoorah!  I’ve been immersed in it for the past couple of weeks, and I really think it’s the best fantasy novel I’ve ever written.  So … for now, here’s the final brief extract.  I hope these snippets have whetted your appetites, and closer to publication, there will be many more.

Dragar’s Canton had been hidden away from the rest of Echo City for over five hundred years, and though there were written accounts about what it had been like before the concealment—a normal place, with buildings similar to those throughout the city, ruled by priests of the generally benevolent Dragarian religion—no one knew for sure what had become of it since.  There had been conjecture for a while, and sometimes there still was, but it had become a silent part of the city, forgotten by most because it was as distant and unknown as the Markoshi Desert.  An enigma on their doorstep, Penler had called it once, and he should know.  His book about the Dragarians had resulted in his banishment, but even he knew little.  It was a book of legends and myths considered insidious because so few knew even them, he’d told Peer once over a bottle of wine.  The most amazing place in the city, and nobody thinks about it.  It’s just the six domes, that’s all.  They’re regarded as sculptures now.  Even kids don’t dare each other to go out there and stand close to them anymore, because it’s boring.  Nothing can happen.  Nothing ever does.  At least, not that we see.  Pushed by Peer, tongue loosened by more wine, he’d smiled and laid back, staring at the cracked ceiling of his adopted home in Skulk.  The Dragarians can’t be fools, he’d said. They’ll want to know what the rest of the city is doing.  They might be closed off from us, but we’re no mystery to them.

Once, before the Hanharans had declared them blasphemous because of their artificial stimulation of ecstatic terror and awe, her mother had taken her to one of Mino Mont’s traveling fairgrounds.  She’d been a child then, maybe ten years old, and the smells, sights and sounds of the fair had remained with her ever since.  She’d never seen anything like it.  Men and women walked through the crowds on stilts a dozen steps high, dropping roasted nuts into willing hands, urging people to try this ride or that, or the phantom rooms, or the crushed mirror swamp.  Huge, creaking structures of wood, metal and rope rose all around, with oil lamps burning different colored and scented oils and casting their soft light over the whole scene.  And it was one of these structures that had grabbed Peer’s attention from the moment she first saw it.

Her mother told her it was called a drop ship.  People paid to be strapped into a metal-reinforced wooden cart, which was then hauled to the summit by means of an intricate system of pulleys, ropes and chains.  The pulling was carried out by three tusked swine, and even that process was made into an entertainment, with clowns leaping from one creature’s back to another and conducting a fake swordfight with silk snakes as they went.  Once the cart was at the top, the clowns paused and began a countdown.  Ten … nine … eight … When they reached one, a clown threw a lever in the hauling-wheel’s hub, and the cart fell to the ground.

The noise was tremendous.  Ropes whipped around wooden spools, sending smoke hissing out of the ride.  The people inside screamed.  And as it reached the bottom, a high whining shriek was emitted from the complex braking system.  The riders emerged laughing and pale, shaking and whooping, and Peer had insisted that she have a turn.  Her mother had refused at first, but soon relented.  She’d been wearing a smile that day, and Peer was the center of her life.

I’m going to see the Baker’s daughter, Peer thought.  Back before she was arrested, tortured and banished, stories of the Baker had terrified her.  She had been hunted and killed by the Scarlet Blades when Peer was a teenager, but she was a legendary character throughout Echo City, and many of her chopped constructs could still be seen.  There was the Scope that Peer and her mother had once seen, and the larger Scopes that watched from the top of Marcellan Canton.  There were Funnelers that drew air into the tunnels and routes passing through the higher parts of Marcellan.  And as a child, she and her friends had delighted at rumors of a series of monstrous chopped that existed within the many water refineries dotted along the riverbank in Course and Mino Mont Cantons.  They eventually came to learn that the refineries were driven by rather more mundane technologies, but the memory of that belief persisted, and the sense it had imbued within her that anything was possible.  Sometimes she dreamed of the dead Baker and her creations, and anything was a dangerous thing.