David J. Williams

Mike Collins over at the awesomely-named Rescued by Nerds has reviewed BURNING SKIES. Mike starts off by saying that MIRRORED HEAVENS was “easily my favorite book of last year” (!), but he has this to say about the sequel:

So my verdict on BURNING SKIES? I can say without any hesitation that it wipes the floor with MIRRORED HEAVENS. This is Dave on steroids. The action is bigger, the conspiracies are deeper and the stakes are through the roof. . . .

Most of the book takes place on the fantastically conceived Europa Platform where we go from one wild action scene to the next. The pace is absolutely relentless and thrilling all the while. We learn bits of relevant information in the course of all the action. It reads fast, but it’s not lacking in depth. It builds to a conclusion that I certainly didn’t expect. One character makes a reveal that changes everything you’ve thought to that point and Dave ends with the boldest cliffhanger I’ve read in a long, long time. This is like Darth Vader revealing he’s Luke Skywalker’s father big. It’s a stunning conclusion. . . .

After Mirrored Heavens I thought Dave was very much a writer in the vein of Richard Morgan. Bombastic action scenes and a tough edge. After Burning Skies I think Dave is standing toe to toe with Morgan at his best. I can’t pay him a higher compliment than that.

BURNING SKIES is available from Amazon and other fine bookstores!

And just like that . . .we’re onto round two!! BURNING SKIES is now in bookstores, taking the saga of Autumn Rain to the next level, and I’m in Albany, NY to read tonight at Flights of Fantasy, at 381 Sand Creek Road, 7 p.m. So if you’re in the area. . . come out and witness the first stop on the tour! The end was merely the beginning . . .

UPDATE:  here’s my overall schedule for the summer as of right now .. further updates will be here.

• Tuesday, May 19th: Flights of Fantasy, Albany (7 p.m.)
• Friday & Saturday, May 22nd-23rd: Balticon, Hunts Valley, MD
• Saturday, June 6th: Hour of the Wolf, NYC
• Saturday, June 13th: Borderlands Bookstore (3 p.m.);
  Writers with Drinks (7:30 p.m.)
• Wednesday, July 8th: Powell’s Books, Portland
• Thursday, July 9th: University Bookstore, Seattle

The challenge: Praise me, Spartacus the Wonderbeast.

The prize: Dave’s miserable prose, translated into Spanish

The winner:

You know what’s great about being a cat? Every day is the WEEKEND. All the more so as now Dave has switched my chicken-turkey combo to “Ocean Fish and Tuna Formula”. The stuff stinks up the house, but the day the smell of finned creatures gets old is the day I retire from all this cat stuff anyway. And now it’s spring, and BIRDS ARE EVERYWHERE. What a great universe, I can tell it was created just for me.

Certainly not for Dave, though. He’s locked himself in his study with the last three years of New Scientist magazine and God only knows what the hell he’s cooking up.  In the meantime, I’m here to announce that I’m GIVING AWAY A COPY OF THE SPANISH TRANSLATION OF MIRRORED HEAVENS WITH MY COOL SIGNATURE NOT DAVE’S LAME ONE.  You don’t even need to speak Spanish to get your hands on it—and believe me, the trippy cover is something you will WANT on your bookshelf.  All you need to do is obey the following not-at-all arbitrary rules:

1.  Send an email to djwATautumnrain2110.com.

2.  Subject line should be Cielos Reflejados

3.  This is the important part.  The email text should offer some words of praise to me.  You could say, for example, that I’m a Sleek Beast, or that I run really fast, or that I can catch more mice than any other cat.  I don’t care, as long as it sounds like you mean it.

4.  The best panegyric will get the book.

5.  You have until 5 p.m. eastern standard time next Friday to send in the praise.

6.  Multiple entries are encouraged, particularly if you feel like you were a little begrudging in your initial laudatory comments.

Sound good?  Good.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go wonder where my balls went.  I know Dave hid them somewhere.

The sequel to Mirrored Heavens is BURNING SKIES, and you can pre-order it right now on Amazon!

The first review of BURNING SKIES is in. . ! Steven Klotz of Mentajack describes it as “as perfect a middle book as you could ask for . . . it ratchets up every element that made Mirrored Heavens what it was, and laid some pretty sturdy foundations for the third book.” The “remember to breathe” injunction was what he wrote on his bookmark. Probably a wise precaution.

You can read the whole thing here.  Mentatjack’s also giving away two signed copies of the mass-market of Mirrored Heavens, so head on over there if you’re feeling lucky!

BURNING SKIES will be released on May 19th.

Follow me on Twitter.

The legendary Charlie Jane Anders over at io9 has done an awesome write-up of the new artwork on the website—check it out!

And stay tuned next week, as the BURNING SKIES campaign ramps up another notch! There’ll be prize giveaways, and rumor has it that Spartacus the Wonderbeast might be coaxed away from his magicfoodbowl to take the helm for a post or two. Hope everybody enjoys the weekend—I know I will (as long as I can crank another 3000 words by Monday).

Via Magna is releasing the Mirrored Heavens in Spain! And check out the trippy cover—one of the best attempts I’ve seen so far at capturing the mindset of the book’s razors as they traverse the zone (aka cyberspace), and chow down on their various combat drugs. It’s also nice to see something that I don’t have to immediately start obsessing over, compulsively looking for potential errors and typos, because yanno, I don’t speak Spanish.  And hey, apparently you can buy the book here! 

But I do seem to recall that “caelum” is sky in Latin.   Which led me to investigate . . . according to my handy Yahoo Spanish dictionary, “cielos” can be translated as either “sky” or “heaven.”  Anyone out there care to tell me which is the more standard usage?  BONUS QUESTION:  if the title of my second book is BURNING SKIES, would they just have to use the word “Cielos” again if that one also gets published in Spanish?  Uh-oh . . .

Sorry for the low profile these last few days, but I have now sent in all the changes to the BURNING SKIES manuscript except for one sentence that I intend to spring on my unsuspecting editor once I’ve mulled it for another 24-48 hours. (It’s a long story.) Thoughts/news in the meantime:

—Can you believe that two satellites collided?  Rest assured that’ll be the first “incident” on many future timelines.

—Tony Smith over at Starship Sofa has declared MIRRORED HEAVENS his book of the month! I don’t know what’s cooler, hearing him wax poetic about the book’s opening, or hearing him wax poetic about the book’s opening in that groovy Scottish accent. Check it out, it’s at 1:24 on this—though as per usual from Tony, the whole episode is great.

—Spartacus (who is now far more popular than me) will be allowed no more soft food until I can get him into the vet.

—BURNING SKIES is going to blow your #$# minds.

Spartacus the Cat here! I’m back while Dave frantically works on the proofs for BURNING SKIES. He took a day out for ComicCon in NYC on Saturday, leaving at 7 in the morning and getting back well after midnight. I found this annoying, so I had a little “accident” on the rug. Harharharhar. Now he’s afraid to leave the house. 

Anyway, he did all sorts of things up there, like signing copies of MIRRORED HEAVENS and meeting cool people; I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it, but he also brought me back a new friend! I’d like you to meet Rex the Lion.  Rex is from www.squishable.com, which is run by a guy who used to row alongside Dave back in the corporate slave galley.  I know Rex looks so realistic he’s probably fooled you into thinking he’s a real lion, but I have a very acute sense of smell so I know he isn’t.  But he’s still fun to have around.  We spent the morning talking about how to get down the fire escape and meet some of the female alley cats.  Meantime, I think I might have an accident on his head to show him who’s boss.

Aka the Stupid Human’s Cat. And I have taken over the blogging from him, since what he writes is so stupidly lame. He only acquired me to pimp his dumb book anyway: he told me that “science fiction fans are suckers for cats, so they’re gonna LOVE you and make us both rich.” Of course, he wasn’t expecting me to announce that to all of you.  Sucks to be you, Dave! Now your career’s over.

But anyway, let’s get to the inbox. Let’s see. . Mike Collins of Rescued by Nerds has posted an interview he did with Dave a couple days back. Mike even calls the book “Iron Man meets Jason Bourne.”  Hmm.  He seems like a classy guy; I can’t imagine why he wants to be associated with the author of MIRRORED HEAVENS, but whatever. There’s no accounting for taste.

And speaking of taste, my magic food bowl has refilled.  And so have Amazon’s stockpile of the book. The two events are clearly related—so keep on buying it, humans!  Keep on buying!!!