kage baker

December 2, 2014

Tachyon donates Kage Baker’s THE HOTEL UNDER THE SAND to Worldreader

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized Ann Monn, charity, ebooks, fantasy, kage baker, the hotel under the sand, worldreader

As featured on their site, Kage Baker’s The Hotel Under The Sand joins the Worldreader digital collection of over 11,000 books in 44 languages.

The charity “is on a mission to bring digital books to every child and her family, so that they can improve their lives.”

Literacy is transformative: it increases earning potential, decreases inequality, improves health outcomes and breaks the cycle of poverty (UNESCO). Yet there are 740 million illiterate people in this world and 250 million children of primary school age who lack basic reading and writing skills (UNESCO). Books are necessary for the development of these skills, and still 50% of schools in Africa have few or no books at all (SACMEQ II).

To learn more about and how they accomplish these admirable goals, visit the Worldreader site.

For more on The Hotel Under the Sand, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

September 9, 2014

Now You Can Preview Tachyon Books on Goodreads!

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized alex solis, Ann Monn, daryl gregory, deadman's crossing, ebooks, elizabeth story, Ellen Datlow, goodreads, Joe R. Lansdale, john coulthart, kage baker, kindle, lovecraft's monsters, preview, Richard Klaw, the apes of wrath, the hotel under the sand, Travis J. Elston, we are all completely fine

Goodreads recently revealed this new feature:

Don’t judge a book by its cover…judge it by what’s inside with our new Preview feature, which launches today! With Preview, you can sample the story before committing to the whole book. Now our U.S. members can get a taste of their next amazing read right on the Goodreads website.

Many Tachyon Publications number among the previewed titles including:

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall
Ancient Rockets
Beyond the Rift
Booklife
Content
Context
Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror
Deadman’s Crossing

Dogs
EPIC
Flaming Zeppelins
Hauntings
I Live With You
In the Company of Thieves
Lovecraft’s Monsters
Portable Childhoods
Reading the Bones
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology
Shambling Towards Hiroshima
She Walks in Darkness

Stable Strategies and Others
Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded
Steampunk Revolution
Super Stories of Heroes and Villains
The Apes of Wrath
The Best of Joe R. Lansdale
The Bible Repariman and Other Stories
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
The Fate of Mice
The Good Humor Man

The Hotel Under the Sand
The Madonna and the Starship
The Roberts
The Search for Philip K. Dick
The Secret City
The Stress of Her Regard
The Sword & Sorcery Anthology
The Third Bear

The Treasury of the Fantastic
The Uncertain Places
The Urban Fantasy Anthology
The Very Best of Tad Williams
We Are All Completely Fine
Wonders of the Invisible World
Yesterday’s Kin

For more information on Preview, visit Goodreads.

Lovecraft’s Monsters cover by John Coulthart.

Deadman’s Crossing cover by Travis J. Elston. Design by Elizabeth Story.

The Apes of Wrath cover by Alex Solis. Design by Elizabeth Story.

The Hotel Under the Sand cover by Ann Monn.

We Are All Completely Fine cover design by Elizabeth Story.

August 1, 2014

Tachyon donates Kage Baker’s THE HOTEL UNDER THE SAND to Worldreader

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized Ann Monn, blog, charity, donation, essay, jacob weisman, kage baker, Kathleen Bartholomew, Kathleen Kage and the Company, the hotel under the sand, worldreader

Kathleen Bartholomew, sister and sometime co-writer of the late Kage Baker, writers about her sister, charity, and the sharing of The Hotel Under The Sand in her blog entry “It Has To Go Around, First” at Kathleen, Kage and the Company.

Kage Baker held, as one of her core philosophies, the venerable axiom: What goes around, comes around.

<snip>

She wasn’t, ever, anything close to rich. But she did what she could. On Federal tax forms, when they ask you if you want to donate to causes, Kage chose things like education, national parks, endangered animals, veteran’s care. And she never, ever contributed anything to the government’s Presidential campaign slush funds – she said she wasn’t going to encourage politicians by letting them think their power grabs were a legitimate public charity.

Whenever Kage got an advance or a royalty, we went shopping for the local Food Bank. Big checks meant cases of canned tuna and chicken – protein’s hard to come by at Food Banks. Smaller checks went to peanut butter, pasta, rice, beans and other sturdy carbs. The guys at the warehouse got to know us by sight. That made Kage proud.

<snip>

Today, I got a call from Jacob Weisman, the splendid head of Tachyon Publications. Jacob was good for Kage, and he’s been good for me, too. He’s a joy to work with; he and all his fine folks at Tachyon.

Jacob had been contacted by a non-profit charity called Worldreader, which can be found, Dear Readers, at (http://www.worldreader.org/). These good people supply ebooks to developing countries, to phones and tablets and Kindles. Most of them are in the keeping of schools and teachers, and the books are supplied to them for the use of their students. Especially little girls … So when Jacob asked me how I felt about donating The Hotel Under the Sand (published by him) to this project – I said YES!

Yes, yes, and yes again. This is the sort of thing Kage wrote the book for: our niece Emma, a little girl in a bad spot, who needed to know the world could be better if she was strong and brave and true. The Emma for whom she wrote it is a young woman now – in Annapolis, studying to be (surprise!) a naval officer. Blue water and gold braid run deep in our family …

Read the rest of Bartholomew’s essay at Kathleen, Kage and the Company.

To learn more about Worldreader, visit their site.

For more on The Hotel Under the Sand, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

April 24, 2014

Explore THE HOTEL UNDER THE SAND by Kage Baker for only $1.99

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized Ann Monn, ebook, fantasy, Hotel Under the Sand, kage baker, kindle daily deal, novella, sale

Kage Baker’s acclaimed story for children The Hotel Under the Sand is a Kindle Daily Deal for Thursday, April 24.

For today only, the ebook is available for just $1.99!

2010 Andre Norton and Mythopoeic Award nominee
2010 Locus Award runner-up

Nine-year-old Emma is lost at sea in a terrible storm. She awakens on a desolate island, frightened and lonely. Yet brave, quick-witted Emma will not be alone for long, as the ghost of a bellboy appears with the tragic tale of the Grand Wenlocke.

More than a century ago, a brilliant inventor built a splendid Victorian resort, the Grand Wenlocke. The hotel was powered by a Difference Engine, a miraculous device that could slow down time (making your vacation just as long as you’d like). But just before it was scheduled to open, the Grand Wenlocke mysteriously sank under the sand. Now the storm that brought Emma to the island has awakened the hotel, perfectly preserved and as incredible as ever.

While exploring the magical hotel, Emma encounters a kind-hearted cook and her faithful little dog, a seemingly fearsome pirate captain, and the imperious young heir to the Wenlocke fortune (should it ever be recovered). Adventure, friendship, peril, and perhaps even treasure—all these and more await Emma at the hotel under the sand.

“Wow! I read The Hotel Under the Sand with delight and joy. It’s wonderful, wacky and spooky, and serious and FUN. It also strikes me as utterly original (which is quite rare). In fact—although this is something one should always say with some caution—it wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out to be a classic and went on down the ages along with Alice and Oz and the very few others that have become immortal.”
—Diana Wynne Jones, author of Howl’s Moving Castle

“Kage Baker’s The Hotel Under the Sand will grab you on page one and never let you go until you finish reading and beg for more. Young Emma is exactly the kind of little girl I wish I’d had for a sister and would love to have for a daughter. She’s smart, brave, and good. Her adventures are wonderful, her companions are amazing, and The Hotel Under the Sand will send you back to the bookshop to search for every Kage Baker book you can find.”
—Richard A. Lupoff, author of Marblehead

“I read it all in one sitting, enjoying the characters and the well-crafted plot very much, and want to read it soon to my granddaughters. Kage Baker used the fantasy structure with a light touch, reassuring but exciting, and the Wenlocke itself is a wonderful creation. Baker writes well without writing down to her young audience; in fact, she invites them to stretch and reach.”
—Cecilia Holland, author of Until the Sun Falls

“…charming…Baker’s first book for younger readers is a delight.”
—Denver Post

“…skillfully written….”
—Publishers Weekly

“Kage Baker is already well-known among adult readers for her science-fiction series The Company, but her new children’s book The Hotel Under the Sand is bound to win her plenty of new readers among the younger set.”
—Omivoracious.com

“Refreshingly original…. Although Baker is an established author of science fiction and fantasy for adults, this novel is written so naturally that it is difficult to believe it is her debut for younger readers.”
—VOYA Library Journal

“There are few books that I immediately want to press into the hands of other readers the instant I turn the last page. My copy of Hotel will be one that I hand to my daughter in a few years. First, however, I’m going to force it on everybody I know.”
—Locus

“It’s exciting to come upon a book that serves not only as a great story to share with your kids, but one that has some undeniably unusual—and geeky—features.”
—Wired.com

“…a strangely delightful story.”
—Charlotte’s Library

“The Hotel Under the Sand is the kind of book that you resolve to send to your nieces and nephews even before you have finished the first page.”
—Reading the Leaves

“I just wanted more!”
—Fantasy Book Critic

For more on The Hotel Under the Sand, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

December 17, 2013

IN THE COMPANY OF THIEVES: “can’t think of a better way to get introduced to Kage Baker”

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized andrea johnson, collection, company, kage baker, Little Red Reviewer, mind meld, review, science fiction, SF Signal, steampunk, time travel

Andrea Johnson, aka the Little Red Reviewer, included the final Kage Baker collection In the Company of Thieves, in her contribution to the SF Signal Mind Meld: What Lesser-Known Books Deserve More Attention?

Everyone talks about Kage Baker’s Company series, but it’s a long series that has to be read in a certain order, making it look almost as intimidating as McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga (or moreso, since very few people will tell you what The Company series is actually about). Want just a taste to see if The Company schtick is for you, not to mention Baker’s writing style? Plant yourself in front of the short story collection In The Company of Thieves for a handful of short stories that take place in the world of The Company. There are contemporary tales, a comedy of errors, plenty of history fiction, and even a steampunk story. I can’t think of a better way to get introduced to Kage Baker if you’re not familiar with her work. I always get a little sad thinking about this series, because there will never be another book written in it.

For the rest of the selections, visit SF Signal.

For more information about In the Company of Thieves, visit the Tachyon page.

December 3, 2013

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized collection, company, kage baker, review, science fiction, steampunk, tachyon publications, Thomas Canty

litrant:

Those amazing immortals and the things they do

In the Company of Thieves by Kage Baker (Tachyon Publications, $15.95)

While most of the work in this collection of short stories and novellas by Kage Baker—set in the universe of her series about the Company—have been previously published, they’ve been in a number of outlets and hard to track down. This collection brings them together for fans of Baker, old and new.

And if you’re not a fan of Baker’s Company series, in which a corporation in the far future has mastered one-way time travel and created Immortals to serve them by picking up priceless artifacts before the items are destroyed, there’s only one question: Why not?

Start with In The Garden of Iden, then come back.

Good. Now that you know what we’re talking about, the best news about this new collection is that it includes a new and previously unpublished story featuring Joseph and Lewis in old Hollywood. It’s also got the fantastic novella The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, and a long-ish short story about an Immortal who longs to end it, but can’t (“Mother Aegypt”).

In short, it’s another good shot of complex work from a writer who died far too young. While it may be more necessary for Baker fans, it’s good science fiction (with elements of steampunk) for any reader.

For more information about In the Company of Thieves, visit the Tachyon page.

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