Kell's Legend.

Couldn't resist 1 last post; the art for "Kell's Legend". Enjoy :-)

LAST POST HERE.

All posting has now moved over to my new wordpress site. Thanks to Darren Turpin and indeed, Nik Butler, for all their advice in transferring and setting up; and by kicking me repeatedly to leave the odd vagaries of Blogger behind.

All ANDY REMIC related info will emerge via this new site - as of today.

So, head over to http://andyremic.wordpress.com/ so hear all about Golden Eagles and mountain climbing....

Cheers!!

Rem, 18th June, 2009.
Happy Birthday Ralphy :-)

New Website LOOMS.

OK, I'm tentatively putting my head over the battlements again (last time, it got shot off, haha), and I'm ready to trial the new ANDY REMIC wordpress site. It can be found at www.andyremic.wordpress.com and I'm happy to field any criticism (see, I don't hate all critics, ha!). So, let me know what you think. Professional? Geeky? Spunky? Let me know.

Right. Off to browse Porsche 911s again. Midlife crisis? Moi? Surely not? But hey, it's a great Faith No More track.

Th3 m1ss1ng - my FAVE band - release their first single...

Just received this "hot off the press" announcement from my good buddies indie band Th3 m1ss1ng, who also supplied all the music for the podcasts of my novels over at podiobooks.com...

Th3 m1ss1ng are thrilled to announce that their debut single will be released as mp3 from today.

The single “first” will be available to download from the following sites:

iTunes - http://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=Th3%20M1ss1ng

Amazon (US) - http://www.amazon.com/First/dp/B002B2UAIW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1244324668&sr=8-2

Amazon (UK) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/First/dp/B002B3OZX2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1244325122&sr=8-2

Rhapsody - http://www.rhapsody.com/th3-m1ss1ng/first/first

eMusic - http://www.emusic.com/album/Th3-M1ss1ng-First-MP3-Download/11473704.html

Napster - http://home.gb.napster.com/#ns/view/artist/?artist_id=12814757

A video has also been put together to accompany the release of this single which can be found on our website www.th3m1ss1ng.co.uk/video

Th3 m1ss1ng also hope to release an e.p. at the end of the summer. Keep an eye on our MySpace page for further news.

Th3 m1ss1ng

David Eddings Dies, age 77.

It's with great sadness I heard the news of David Edding's death. I loved many of his fantasy works, and especially his creation Sparhawk.

There's a good piece on Mr Eddings over at SF Crowsnest - http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/news/arc/2009/nz14000.php

May he rest in the Hall of Heroes!

Camping in Wales.

I intend to take my two little boys camping this weekend. They have insisted we go near a beach--- so they can bury me in sand. So, if you hear no more blogs after Sunday, then please send a search party to: The Beach, Wales, and look for a shaved head, probably blistered with sunburn (I wish!), poking up through the dunes.

SFFE PRESS RELEASE

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Ethics group has been set up by a consortium of authors, co-ordinated by Andy Remic, who wish to celebrate the good side of the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres. By that, we don’t just mean media with a positive theme – no, we’re into violence, sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll like every other monkey – but that our outlook and content will be geared towards the positive.

The site will include reviews, articles and interviews, which is pretty standard across the industry, but also several exciting new angles – such as collaborative stories written by the professional authors therein, and “Viewpoint” articles where writers can collectively wax lyrical on a certain topic.

Andy Remic enthuses, “If we can get all the associated writers together at a convention and suitably drunk on a cocktail of cheap Scandinavian meths, Stella and absinthe, we can also expect a movie! Watch this space!”. The horror.

The official line runs thus:
“Our mission is to celebrate everything positive, funky and exciting in the Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Universe! The SFFE is a core platform, a hub of authors who have banded together with the aim of celebrating all that is positive in genre fiction. We aim to leave cynicism and negativity at the door, and concentrate on what makes us smile, what entertains us, and what brings light and joy to our SF, fantasy and horror universe. That's not to say there is no place for criticism--- there's plenty bad in the world. However, this little digital corner is a place for positive progression, somewhere you will (hopefully) come if you want to smile.”

So far, a considerable number of industry figures have signed up to take part, and many more are currently in negotiation! The SFFE currently enjoys: Tony Ballantyne, Eric Brown, Mark Chadbourn, David Devereux, Ian Graham, Paul Kearney, Tim Lebbon, Tom Lloyd, James Lovegrove, Gail Z. Martin, James Maxey, Juliet E. Mckenna, Mark Morris, Sarah Pinborough, Andy Remic, Brian Ruckley, James Swallow, Jeffrey Thomas, Jetse de Vries, Danie Ware and Conrad Williams. A healthy dollop of literary roughage, we’re sure you’ll agree!

Check out:
www.sffeth.blogspot.com
Love, kisses and chainsaws—
Andy Remic.

Flickr.....

Yes, I know, I have finally joined the digital age. With the recent change in terms of hosting my website and digital content, etc, I have now transferred all photos from my old site to FLICKR - and what a fine piece of javascript innovation it is, too. I've also added lots of new photo content, including the recent splurge of UK signings to accompany the launch of my Solaris SF novel, BIOHELL. I did a small signing tour across Bury, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and London, not exactly Paris and New York I am aware (and just had an email from Charles Stross to say the jammy bugger is in Ontario on his book tour- check out www.antipope.org/charlie/ for some very interesting reading); however, I like to keep a low low low profile, which will probably be exploded with my recent signing to Angry Robot Books, the new division of Harper Collins run by that very nice furry robot, Marc Gascgoine; I am sure they will have me dress up in faux fur. Or something.

Anyway. In the right hand column of this here very site you will see a Flash button for Flickr (providing you have been fortuitous enough to install Macromedia's little baby) and a single click will bring you into, err, Remic heaven. That's sounding dodgy, right? OK. Cough. I'll go now. I have to do some more work on Kell's Legend 2....... and yes, I am a few books ahead of myself, and aware nobody has even read Kell's Legend 1 yet!! But it's coming, baby, it's coming.......

All Content now HERE.........

Yes, sick of maintaining two discrete websites which directly replicated practically all content, I have now moved everything of relevance to this Blogger site. All the photos from the old site will end up on Flickr within the next few days, thus showing I am not some alcoholic dinosaur wot is scared ov this new web thang. So, hope that is clear :-)
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New Rem Interview...

Just had a new interview posted over at http://www.milscifi.com/.

This is with regards a recently published anthology, SO IT BEGINS, to which I contributed a Combat K short story entitled JUNKED; it's currently doing well in the US and can be picked up from Amazon.

And We Have A Winner!

Yes, Steve Bannister, othewise known in WoS circles as the "Mad Mekon", has supplied me with the full solution and final pasword to Biohell, the graphical text adventure game for the 48K Spectrum. 5 novels will be winging their way to him shortly!!

Well done "Mad". You did very, very well --considering some of the moaning I've had at the difficulty level of the game, haha.

Congratulations!!
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Book Piracy...

Found a really interesting article over at Micro Mart (http://www.micromart.co.uk/) discussing book piracy and the rise of E-Readers..... I didn't realise EBook piracy was such a problem (but then, every other type of piracy is, yeah?!!).

Pirates of the bookstore

While the music and film industries loudly proclaim their battle with the pirates, publishers and authors have been rather more quiet. But the problem affects them just as much, as David Crookes discovers.

Everybody knows that CDs and DVDs can be copied. Even when the manufacturers utilise stringent copy protection, it’s never too long before the pirates crack it and illicit music and films find their way on to the internet or into a car boot sale.

But books? Most people would think producing something on paper would make it difficult to copy. Photocopiers have been around for a few decades but no-one in their right mind would stand and scan a book in page by page, stick them together and sell them. For a start, the resulting ‘book’ would be instantly noticeable as a second-rate copy - and it would work out just as expensive as buying the book in the first place.

Then optical character recognition (OCR) was invented. This enabled people to scan in reams of text into a format that could then be easily edited. In short, it meant people who persevered long and hard enough could scan an entire book, edit the text to ensure it flowed correctly and end up with a Word document that could be shared.

With that power at their disposal, it was only a matter of time until people took these ebooks and sold them. The cost to the seller? Only time. The cost to the buyer? Less than it costs to get hold of a beautifully-bound book, as long as the buyer is content to read a book on a screen.
Such publishing pirates, however, are costing the book industry hundreds of millions of pounds and the booming trade in illegally copied books shows no signs of slowing down. he impact of ebooks could be seen in 2003 when a new cookbook by Jamie Oliver was circulated on the Iternet as a large electronic file. It had well-designed pages and colour photographs. The publisher denied it was an official Oliver release and they were not lying - someone had copied recipes from his previous cookbooks and presented them as a new release.

What surprised the publishing industry was the speed at which the file whizzed around the globe and suddenly authors, publishers and agents were alert to a threat which had worried their counterparts in the music and film industries for years.

One of the most popular outlets for such ebooks is eBay. It only takes a search of popular titles such as Harry Potter to find someone who has posted up a counterfeit copy. Micro Mart found a copy of Jamie Oliver’s Naked Chef 2 cookbook on sale as an ebook for 99p with the selling writing: “The cookbook is on CD and opens in Word. You can print off any section that you want. It comes exactly as it is printed in the actual book (with pictures).” The hunger for his recipes refuses to go away, it seems.

Such cheap costs has meant the market in pirated books has exploded over the past eighteen months. It is estimated that publishers lose £260 million a year in sales of hardback and paperback books.

Organisation
Much of this is due to greater organisation by the pirates. It may well have started as a handful of people scanning in books in their bedrooms, but it has escalated into piracy rings. Pirates trade counterfeit ebooks with each other over the Internet which saves them the hassle of originating dozens of books themselves.

Author Stephen Clarke, who wrote the popular novels A Year In The Merde and Merde Actually, says the problem hits authors hard. He said: “We already get very small royalties per book. I think, after agent's commission, I get about 40p a paperback. That's before tax and only if they're sold at full price. When the book is sold in a 3-for-2 or half price offer, you get proportionately smaller royalties. So it is certainly frustrating if someone is selling the books to people who would otherwise buy from a bookshop. The authors lose a lot of money.”
Some people argue that book piracy is not different to borrowing a library book or lending a novel to a friend. But it is - whenever you borrow a library book, a small royalty is paid to the author, and handing a novel to a friend is different to sending hundreds of ebooks to strangers.
The book pirates tend to target the current best sellers with Harry Potter author J K Rowling being a particular favourite. Other high profile victims include thriller writer Patricia Cornwell and Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series of books and a man who has allowed only one of his best selling novels, Thud!, to be produced as an ebook. But pirates are not afraid to raid the huge library of great novels written in the past - books by James Bond writer Ian Fleming and children’s author Roald Dahl are frequently copied, for example.

The problem is so bad, that publishers and agents - sometimes even authors themselves - scour eBay and do numerous Google searches in a bid to clamp down on the illegal trade. Often, they strike gold. It was reported in The Times that a pirate sold more than £22,000 of pirated audio books for £300 on eBay in 42 hours.

And eBay is keen to stamp it out. “A comprehensive scheme is run by eBay.co.uk to help protect brand owners from piracy and fakes on the website,” says an eBay spokeswoman when asked what the auction site was doing to tackle the problem. “It's called VeRO, the Verified Rights Owner Programme. We’d recommend all brand owners [publishers and authors] to sign up as soon as possible to help get the fakes off the site.”

The VeRo programme has seen 10,000 companies and individuals sign up, representing every type of intellectual property - from major software companies to videogame developers to rock bands to luxury good manufacturers. It enables victims of book piracy, for example, to quickly notify eBay staff of any illegality with the promise of the listing being rapidly withdrawn.It also gives participants the ability to obtain identifying information about eBay users to allow swift action to be taken.

It still doesn’t stop people trying, though, and the feeling among many authors is that they are facing a losing battle, constantly battling against the tide, hoping a tidal wave will not engulf them. Indeed, the Publishers Association, which represents around 200 publishers, says it has spotted tens of thousands of illegal Internet sales.

In an annual report, the association said it was continuing to refine its anti-piracy strategy, conceding “there are very few, if any, easy wins in the fight against piracy; we have to recognise that this campaign will be expensive and will run for years with, to misquote Lenin, the price of success being eternal vigilance.”

That was in 2004. In 2005, the problem increased, according to association spokesman Rob Hamandi, because it offers a path to cash without the hassle presented by other criminal activities such as selling drugs. It’s as simple as keeping an electronic file on a hard drive.But does that take away the romanticism of buying a book? Do people really want to read books on computers rather than have the thrill of a wad of paper in their hands? For many bibliophiles, the suggestion that people would abandon real books for electronic versions is absurd and they point to the success of Amazon as proof that new technology such as the internet has led to increased sales of old ‘tech’ such as books.

But then music buffs said CDs would never replace the thrill of vinyl. Instead we’ve seen not only CDs do just that but digital MP3 files take the concept even further. Now we don’t even have to use portable media.

Are Ebooks The Way?

The rest of this article can be read at... http://www.micromart.co.uk/features/article/default.aspx?id=23258
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E-Readers

Over at BBC News -http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8037058.stm - Michael Fitzpatrick has fielded a story about the "Rise and rise of E-Readers". He writes:

"Amazon's launch of its first dedicated e-reader for newspapers and magazines points to a future when digital and analogue publishing begins to merge.
Nearly double the size of the book giant's existing e-reader, Amazon's wireless Kindle DX has adopted a tabloid-like format for ease of reading newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times and the Washington Post which have announced they will launch pilots editions on Kindle DX this summer.
Although others, most notably the Japanese and the Dutch, have trials underway that publish tabloid-size digital editions for other handheld e-reader devices, Amazon with its mighty marketing clout represents the first mainstream commercial stab at the market.
Increased graphics resolution and the larger size of the tablet-like, the $489 Kindle DX is also a departure from previous e-readers on the market, although Japan's Fujitsu has a similar sized colour reader on the market for twice the price. "

Well, as a reader, I'm just not convinced. Maybe this is a knee-jerk nostalgia reaction, I was brought up with little dinky paperback novels, which I can trash to my heart's content, and not feel too aggrieved when I drop a £5.99 book in the Cypriot swimming pool. And with regards newspapers - I get my fix from online sites linkes to my browser's homepage. When I log on, it logs on, and I click on any news story that catches my eye. And have News of the World decided to subscirbe to this technological advancement? I said have they? Eh?

As a writer - a different story. I still remember Napster and the unbelievable kick-off with digital music back in 1998/1999 (for me), and more importantly for recording artists, the piracy of their music. How would I feel as an author if my book was spread across the Scandinavian piracy sites a few days after release? Pretty pissed, I can tell you. Piracy eventually equates to a lack of original work; after all, who's going to create "for a living" when that living is financially sub-standard to collecting trolleys at Tesco? Actually, quite a lot of people, heh, but if I'd stayed in teaching I'd be on 50K pa now. Not awesome, I know, but a damn sight better than what I earn in the creative arts. Factor in piracy as a revenue sapper, and I'd be out of business, out of writing (yay! shout some) and back to educating nippers to feed my own, err, nippers.

It's a hard life.

And try fishing your E-Reader out of the swimming pool.

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IMMINENT GAME RELEASE...

Yep, that's right, Biohell for the Speccy is available this Friday 1st May from my website http://www.andyremic.com/. It's a free download, and the first person to send me the solution and password gets a copy of my first five books, whilst the next three runners up get a copy of my latest novel Biohell, published by Solaris Books (http://www.solarisbooks.com/). And yes, I know the game ain't as gud as a new Joffa Smifff game, but it was all done as a bit of fun and any feedback and comments are appreciated on this here blogspot!!

Cheers


Andy Remic.
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BIOHELL - THE GAME

QUAKEWARE has been set up to deal with my new ZX Spectrum games.

BIOHELL (Part 1) for the 48K Spectrum is now complete, and has 60 locations, NPCs (sort-of), and full use of the Spectrum hardware including 8 colours!!


Price- well, err, it's FREE...

COMPETITION!! to win 5 copies of Remic's novels!! [starts 1st May 2009]. Just download the game, play it, complete it, and send the solution and password to jappo@talktalk.net along with your address.

THE GAME

BIOHELL is a fast-paced hardcore first-person epic graphical text adventure, utilising guns and bombs to progress across a nano-molecular zombie-infested city game-world where you, FRANCO HAGGIS, must battle AIs, aliens and, of course, horrible zombie mutations. The game utilises advanced AI for behavioural patterns in advanced violent textual adversaries, superlative 8-bit advanced 3D bump-mapping, a full range of 8 (yes 8!!) colours and advanced shading techniques, advanced textual parser and many advanced Spectrum features!! Hell, this game is just totally advanced!!


BIOHELL – THE STORY

The City: an entire planet teeming with corruption, guns, sex, and designer drugs. Humans are upgraded by the injection of microscopic nanobots, courtesy of a new technology from the Nano-Tek corporation, but when this highly desirable technology heads onto the black market, millions of people inject themselves with pirated biomods - and transform into zombies. Now they roam the streets, out for blood, packing shotguns and bombs. The Combat K squad are dropped into this warzone to uncover what's turned the planet into a wasteland of murder and mutations, and soon their focus is on the darkness at the Nano-Tek corporation itself...










Remic, with his first true-love.... his Spectrum 48K.


My next project, if you can believe this, is writing the Spectrum 48K version of HALF LIFE 2, by VALVE SOFTWARE. I am currently just negotiating the rights with Gabe Newell :-)

HALF LIFE 2! On the Spectrum!! Cool, hey??
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Scott Sigler & Andy Remic Collaboration

THE CRYPT

A Podcast short story collaboration between Scott Sigler and Andy Remic, read by Scott Sigler.

OK, get over to http://www.scottsigler.com/ to check out this brand new collaboration between two masters of kick-ass hardcore high-action SF. The story is released as a podcast episode, 37 minutes long and starring Pippa, an ex-Combat K squaddie on a violent solitary adventure holiday when things go terribly wrong...... here, Sigler describes Remic's writing, "I listened to some of Andy's podcast novels and invited him to join The Crypt project because his stuff is really over the top and I kinda describe it- if you took the testosterone of a thousand mixed martial arts fighters, distilled that down to a form of ink and printed it on paper, that would be how you would get an Andy Remic novel". Hoo har!

It's great to have your work read by another author, adds a real different spin on things, and it's also great to work with a guy like Scott Sigler. Many beers at the next SF convention I think!!

Angry Robot.

OK. It's official. I have been signed by Angry Robot Books, Harper Collins new genre imprint to write a trilogy of hardcore vampire(ish) heroic fantasy novels, beginning with Kell's Legend, published September 2009. Kell's Legend is already finished, and just undergoing editing - it's a kick ass new angle on heroic fantasy which should appeal to readers of David Gemmell and Raymond Feist.

The official press release states:

From the UK, meanwhile, we’re delighted and just a little scared to welcome ANDY REMIC to our ravening horde. His reputation as the hard man of British SF is well-deserved. Now he’s taking the tough guy stylings of Quake, Spiral and his recent Combat-K novels into fantasy, for a brand new trilogy that sees him, in one mighty bound, become the natural successor to the much-missed David Gemmell.

KELL’S LEGEND, due September 2009 in mass-market paperback, introduces Kell, grizzled veteran warrior much at odds with a civilised world where humanity has become soft. When a new foe arises to threaten the city of Jalder, only Kell remembers that to live, you have to fight, and fight dirty. But how can one man hold off against the Vachine, the terrifying clockwork vampires of legend?

SF Signal said this about Remic’s books: “A roller-coaster of fun… fun and fast-paced @$$-kicking action.”

Fantasy Book Critic agreed: ”Every once in a while a novel comes along that surprises the hell out of you. That was the case with “War Machine” by Andy Remic. Imagine my surprise when “War Machine” became my favorite science fiction novel of the year. Yes, you heard correctly. Gary Gibson’s “Stealing Light”, Peter F Hamilton’s “The Dreaming Void”, Neal Asher’s “Hilldiggers”, Josh Conviser’s “Empyre”, Richard K. Morgan’s “Black Man/Thirteen”, Matthew Jarpe’s “Radio Freefall”; “War Machine” topped them all and no one is more shocked than I am! …I loved every testosterone-fuelled second.”

Join the battle at andyremic.com

I was very proud of the David Gemmell bit, as Dave was the man who started me off writing when I first read Legend in 1987. I corresponded with David many times, which culminated in a drinking session after a book signing in Manchester. So, I am proud to say, I got drunk with David Gemmell :-)

Anyway, check out Angry Robot Books at:

http://angryrobotbooks.com/

Helvellyn.

Climbed my favourite mountain in the Lake District again on Friday- the superbly beautiful Helvellyn. What was crazy (and always makes for interesting climbing and endurance, because you need to carry full winter kit) was the weather. Sunny as hell at the foot of the mountain, and ice and snow at the top - but warm enough pretty much to reach the summit in a t-shirt. Really crazy weather. Me and my mate took ice axes, and ended up helping out a few people descending Swirrel Edge over the ice. We cooked some German pork sausages on the summit with the view on the photo above... and those few other climbers out were extremely jealous of our full-fat lunch, eating, as they were, cold cheese sandwiches and crappy pasta salads. Long live the sausage!!

I also took my collie dog on the climb (now just over a year old) and she caused me some problems on the ridge descent down Swirrel. I had to drag her down a few precipices, but once she got her canine brain around it she was galloping all over the rocks and jumps like a goat-possessed.

Anybody fancying a climb, just let me know :-)

Doomdark's Revenge...

What an ace game!!

Download a Spectrum emulator right NOW!! and play it.

And look at that artwork!!

Meet Andy at Manchester Waterstones.

Just a note to say I'm doing a signing for BIOHELL at Waterstones, Deansgate, Manchester, on Saturday 21st Marchh 2009 at 2.00PM...

Meet Andy Remic Biohell
WATERSTONE'S MANCHESTER DEANSGATE
Saturday, 21 March 2009, 2:00PM
Come and meet the cult author of thrillers, science fiction and military science fiction when he signs his latest novel instore. No ticket required.
Further details: 0161 837 3000

Also check:
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/navigate.do?pPageID=200002

Cheers

REM.
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