Free Stuff Winners

Thanks to all of you who posted comments or sent emails to win autographed copies of Orphan’s Triumph.

Congratulations to the winners, Henry Wu, from Montreal, Canada, and SSG Melvin Lara of Riverside, California.

Win Free Stuff (yet again)

Orphan’s Triumph’s US paperback edition hits the shelves, and the ebook hits the ‘net, in a few days.

If you can’t wait for Jason Wander Book 5, or don’t want to part with $US 7.99, more or less, post a comment below and you’ll be entered in a contest to win a free, autographed copy of  Orphan’s Triumph.  Alternatively, if you prefer, just email Author@RobertBuettner.com.  Post or email before midnight, Eastern Daylight Time, Tuesday, June, 2, 2009 to enter.  Winners will be selected at random from among eligible entries, contacted directly, and/or announced here.

Peculiarities from Abroad

Normally, in books as well as films, the first in a series typically is the biggest seller.  Stands to reason.  Not all fans who see book or movie 1 will return for number 2, no matter the quality.  Few will begin in the middle, and those who do are likely to go back and pick up the story.

However, the Chinese language edition of book 2 of the Jason Wander series, Orphan’s Destiny, is outselling book 1, Orphanage.  Counterintuitive.  Dare I say inscrutable? 

It may be the covers.  Chinese  Orphanage  depicts the alien enemy as spiders with blood-dripping fangs.  At the risk of a spoiler, the Slugs actually look like, well, big slugs.  So Chinese cover artistic license evidently extends to a phylum shift.  Chinese Orphan’s Destiny, on the other hand, depicts alien warships that remind me of the floating martians in the 1950s film version of War of the Worlds. 

But in the UK editions, book 3, Orphan’s Journey, is minutely outselling book 2, Orphan’s Destiny.   Nope, can’t be the covers – the UK covers mirror the US covers.

In the Czech Republic, the covers (book 3 was released by Fantom Print in March) are consistently old-school SF, but the sales fresh.

I dunno.  I’m just glad readers are enjoying the series.     

Two months and counting

Jason Wander Book 5, Orphan’s Triumph, hits the shelves and the ‘net in just under two months.  It’s been a long and strange journey for General Wander, and only just less for his creator.

A number of you have asked where things go after Book 5.  That mostly depends on the series’ publisher, Orbit.  Orbit and the Jason Wander series defy the trends of contemporary publishing.  Most publishers and booksellers are shrinking and retrenching, but Orbit is growing.  Orbit’s new projects, not least the Jason Wander books, have succeeded disproportionately in a changing marketplace.  I credit an editorial viewpoint sharp enough to recognize good writing and compelling storytelling, coupled with an effectively adapting marketing approach.

I’ll let you know how things go from here.

Meantime, get ready for Orphan’s Triumph.  I think it will surprise you.  I know it surprised me.

Glow, Canada

North of here, a glowing Canadian review of Orphan’s Alliance (and the Jason Wander series.  To whit: “This series will probably become a classic in military science fiction, and this book is one of the best”) appears in the most recent edition of the Imprint – http://imprint.uwaterloo.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3274&Itemid=56&issuedate=2009-01-16

There’s a slightly expanded version at the author’s blog, http://bookreviewsandmore.ca/2009/01/orphans-alliance-by-robert-buettner.html

See you at Chattacon

This weekend, I’ll be appearing at Chattanooga’s Chattacon, held at the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the hotel and convention complex created from Chattanooga’s grand old railroad terminal.  For more info, see http://www.chattacon.org/Joomla/

I’m looking forward to being on program with, among others, David Weber, creator of the Honor Harrington series.

Look forward to meeting you.  Bring your books.

Big Year for Orphans

2008 was busy for the Jason Wander series, and for its author.

In January, I was honored to serve as Marscon 2008’s Writer Guest of Honor, in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Great Con, with great guests and great people.

In April Little Brown Orbit released Orphan’s Journey, Jason Wander book 3,  in the US and Canada.  Books 1 and 2 were simultaneously reissued with updated, matching covers.  By year end, all three had reprinted, and Orphan’s Journey had made local bestseller lists as far away as Australia. 

If you don’t speak Bookbiz, “reprint” means the books exceeded the publishers’ and booksellers’ expectations by selling through their original print runs, so they had to print more.  Publishers often first-print a gazillion copies of a book with buzz-building fanfare, but sell only a half-gazillion, and eventually destroy the unsold paper mountain.  Either way can be profitable, but selling through and reprinting is easier on the planet.    

Of course, the publisher, in its prior Time-Warner Aspect corporate identity, had already reprinted the original 2004 and 2005 releases of books 1 and 2 several times.  In fact, I believe Orphanage  in English is now selling into its tenth reprint, counting US, UK and book club editions.

Speaking of editions, May, 2008 also saw the release of Spanish and Czech language editions  of book 2, El Destino del Huerfano and Sirotkov Osud, respectively.

In August, Orbit released the aforementioned UK editions of books 1, 2 and 3.  August also gave me the chance to renew acquaintances with authors and booksellers I know from my years in Colorado, at WorldCon 2008, aka Denvention 3, in the Mile-High city. 

September was my chance to renew acquaintances with 35,000 of my closest friends at Atlanta’s DragonCon.

In November, the UK edition of Orphanage reprinted, and the production process for book 5, Orphan’s Triumph, which will be released in both US and UK editions in Spring, 2009, was well underway.

What’s on tap for 2009?  Come back In January, and I’ll fill you in.

Happy New Year!

Orphan’s Triumph launch set

Orbit will release Orphan’s Triumph, book 5 of the Jason Wander series, in the US and Canada in mass market paperback June 1, 2009.  The thumbnail at left provides a peek at Calvin Chu’s fifth cover for the series.  Might be the best yet.

The UK edition will be released at about the same time, with the same art but slightly different cover copy.

Reader Review Wins Free Stuff

The Great Big Reader Review Contest ended yesterday.  The winning review was by SPC James Herrington, posted from Dhi Qar Province in Iraq. 

He reviewed Jason Wander Book 2, Orphan’s Destiny for Amazon.  An excerpt: 

“Simply great science fiction for anyone, anywhere. Whether you are sitting in the shade of a humvee in the desert trying to keep cool or sitting in your favorite chair at home…Buettner captures the essence of what it is to be an infantryman: the sand and dirt, the gallows humor that we all indulge in to keep relatively sane.”

I’ll be contacting SPC Herrington, as well as other winners, by separate email about prizes and delivery arrangements.  Thanks to all participants and congratulations to the winners. 

You can read SPC Herrington’s full review of Jason Wander Book 2, Orphan’s Destiny on Amazon’s page for the book;   http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0316019135/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R13GYXYX54EU95

Veterans Day, 2008, and C.S. Lewis’ Re-enchanted man

Most Americans know C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia.  Fewer know that in the late 1930s he wrote science fiction set on Mars and Venus.

More to the point, on this Veterans Day, 2008, C.S. Lewis served as an infantry officer wounded at the Battle of Arras in 1917.

I am indebted to Baen books’ publisher Toni Weisskopf for recently pointing me to Lewis’ 1946 essay, Talking about Bicycles, which, as you may suspect, talks not so much about bicycles as about the four ways in which authors think – and write – about war.

“The Unenchanted man sees (quite correctly) the waste and cruelty and sees nothing else…the Enchanted man  – he’s thinking of glory and battle-poetry and forlorn hopes and last stands and chivalry.  Then comes the Disenchanted Age…But there is also a fourth stage, though few people in modern [1946] England dare to talk about it.  You know quite well what I mean.  One is not in the least deceived:  we remember the trenches too well.  We know how much of the reality the romantic view left out.  But we also know that heroism is a real thing, that all the plumes and flags and trumpets of the tradition were not there for nothing.  They were an attempt to honour what is truly honourable: what was first perceived to be honourable precisely because everyone knew how horrible war is.

“The war poetry of Homer…for example, is Re-Enchantment.  You see in every line that the poet knows, quite as well as any modern, the horrible thing he is writing about.  He celebrates heroism but he has paid the proper price for doing so.

“You read an author in whom love is treated as lust and all war as murder – and so forth.  But are you reading a Disenchanted man or only an Unenchanted man?  Has the writer been through the Enchantment and come out on to the bleak highlands, or is he simply a subman who is free from love mirage as a dog is free, and free from the heroic mirage as a coward is free?  If Disenchanted, he may have something worth hearing to say, though less than a Re-enchanted man.  If Unenchanted, into the fire with his book.  He is talking of what he doesn’t understand.  But the great danger we have to guard against in this age is the Unenchanted man, mistaking himself for, and mistaken by others for, the Disenchanted man.”

To serve is to leave forever the ranks of the Unenchanted, and of the Enchanted.  Whether you have emerged Disenchanted or Re-enchanted, thanks.