Matthew Sturges on The Functional Nerds Podcast

Perfectly Functional

In the 24th episode of The Functional Nerds, Patrick Hester and John Anealio are joined by Eisner-award nominated author Matthew Sturges.  "This week, we chat about comic books, Midwinter, Jack of Fables, Vertigo comics, DC, House of Mystery, JSA All Stars, Chris Roberson, Bill Willingham, Fables, Masked, PYR, Lou Anders, Superheroes, The Dirty Dozen in Elfland, Doctor Who, Stephen Moffat, The Office of Shadow, World Building, Cover Art, Ian Banks & science fiction."


You can download the episode on iTunes or listen to it at the direct link.

Midwinter and The Office of Shadow

art by Chris McGrath

There is a joint review of Matthew Sturges' Midwinter and The Office of Shadow over at Ray Gun Reviews.

"Matthew Sturges’s novels are an interesting re-imaging of the world of Faerie. This is realpolitik fantasy, a fantasy world with a realistic socio-economic foundation. Midwinter definitely has a gritty 'Dirty Dozen' feel (or half-dozen in this case)...the novel succeeds very well. The Office of Shadows is even better, and it is interesting to see Sturges’s growth as a writer from the first volume to the second. The characters are pulled into a worlds-spanning mystery, and we piece it together with the characters. ...Sturges has created a very rich re-interpretation of Faerie"

A Magical Mission Impossible

Publisher's Weekly on Matthew Sturges' The Office of Shadow:

 

If 2009’s Midwinter was the Dirty Dozen in Elfland, this thrilling sequel is Magical Mission Impossible. Former lothario Silverdun becomes a priest, but finds himself bored. When his government recruits him as a spy, he takes the offer and is shocked when they demand he learn extraordinary physical and magical skills... Standard spy tropes—training sequences, double agents, betrayals from within—take on new life when melded with high fantasy, and Sturges has an easy ear for dialogue and character. Silverdun’s backstory is nicely fleshed out in the process, though fans of the first book should be warned that the other characters appear briefly or not at all.

Even Even More Best of 2009

Fantasy Book Critic has posted Cindy's Top 2009 Book List. James Barclay comes in at number five with the entire Chronicles of the Raven series of Dawnthief,Noonshade,and Nightchild.Whereas Mark Chadbourn is on twice, at number six with the Age of Misrule series of World's End,Darkest Hour,and Always Foreverand at number 9 with The Silver Skull.

Meanwhile SFFWorld has posted their SF Review of 2009 and their Fantasy Review of 2009. Ian McDonald's Cyberabad Days,Kay Kenyon's City Without End,and Paul McAuley's The Quiet War all get shout outs. On the fantasy side, Matthew Sturges' Midwintergets the love.

Keep 'em coming!

Babel Clash: Matthew Sturges and James Enge

Matthew Sturges (Midwinter, The Office of Shadow) and James Enge (Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way) are the next guests on Borders' Babel Clash, which kicks off tomorrow.

8 More Pyr Titles Arrive on the Kindle

A batch of eight more Pyr books has been Kindle-ized (though one is only listed as pre-order. Didn't know they'd do that with ebooks.)

They are:

Justina Robson's Chasing the Dragon (Quantum Gravity, Book 4)(Preorder)

Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

Chris Roberson's End of the Century

Gardner Dozois' Galileo's Children: Tales Of Science VS. Superstition

Sean Williams' The Hanging Mountains

Alexis Glynn Latner's Hurricane Moon

Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter

Matthew Sturges' Midwinter

Again, no control of the order in which Amazon puts these things up. It is apparently based at least partially on demand, as logged by their "I'd like to read this book on Kindle" button. Click often.

World's Biggest Bookstore

Matthew Sturges (Midwinter), Joe Abercrombie (The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings) and Tom Lloyd (The Stormcaller, The Twilight Herald) at the World's Biggest Bookstore:

The World's Biggest Bookstore is located in Toronto, Ontario, at 20 Edward St, just north of the Toronto Eaton Centre.

Matthew Sturges in the Wild

Matthew Sturges, signing Midwinteras well as his many famous graphic novels, at the Barnes and Noble in Round Rock, Texas. Matt reported via Twitter, "I have been totally upstaged by a middle school choir singing show tunes. I told them spinal tap first, puppet show LAST!"

Enge, Sturges, Robson, Lloyd and Me

There's a fantastic interview with Blood of Ambroseauthor James Enge over on SFScope. Conducted by Sara M. Harvey, and well-worth reading, here's a taste:

The genesis of Morlock was, I think, frustration with two of my favorite writers, Tolkien and H.G. Wells. I was annoyed that Tolkien so obviously favored elves over dwarves, and that Wells did the same with Eloi over Morlocks. Morlocks did stuff—they worked and learned and thought and created. They seemed to me more authentically human than the empty, shiny Eloi. So what if they lived underground and weren't so pretty? The cannibalism is a little harder to stomach, as it were—but I'm sure that's exactly why Wells put it in. That's his thumb on the scale, trying to tilt our judgment of his characters.

Then over at The Agony Column, Rick Kleffel and I talk about Steampunk, Victoriana and Elizabethan SF, with a bit about Chris Roberson, George Mann, and old series Doctor Who. Here's a direct link.

Meanwhile in response to my accidentally traumatizing her with an offhand statement, Justina Robson asks What is Fantasy About? Please go join in the discussion. I sense brilliance on the verge of conception.

Then Graeme's Fantasy Book Review gives an 8 out of 10 to Matthew Sturges' Midwinter.They say:

...a book that any fantasy fan will get a lot out of. ...there is no denying the sense of urgency that leaps out off the page and drives the story along [at] a very fast pace. The constant plotting and scheming underneath the surface adds to this urgency as well as giving the reader the best possible reason to keep reading. There are loads of questions that all need answering and it’s all credit to Sturges that these are the kind of questions where you care enough about the answers to invest more time in reading the book. You also cannot deny the dangers that our travellers must face on their journey and these make for some great moments where anything could happen and spectacle is the order of the day!

Hey, I'd be rushing out to get that now if I hadn't read it already. But if you need more convincing, Jessica Strider at Sci-Fan Letter interviews Matthew Sturges, about the book and the craft of writing in general.

I was doing a presentation about writing comic books for a group of fourth-graders, since I'm most known as a comic book writer. Most of the questions were what you'd expect from nine-year-olds: Who'd win in a fight between the Hulk and Superman, that kind of stuff. Just as the questions were dying down, a kid in the back raised his hand and asked, "How much do you make?" I paused for a second and said, "I do okay, I guess." He wasn't satisfied, "Can you give me a dollar amount?" "That's an inappropriate question," said the teacher, embarassed. "Why?" said the kid. "How can I tell if I want to do that job if I don't know what it pays?"

Meanwhile, The King of the Nerds (what a title!) has some very positive thoughts about Tom Lloyd's The Twilight Herald:

...one heck of a wild ride, with action, excitement, danger, violence and epic confrontations occurring left and right... I’m not certain I would say The Twilight Herald is an improvement over The Stormcallerbut Lloyd at the least reveals an impressive level of verstatility in terms of style between the two novels. Furthermore he maintains an ability to include a subtle over-arching theme of revenge across the entirety of the novel that is never overwrought or glaring. Lloyd is keeping me guessing with the series and, criticisms asside, that is something I can definatley appreciate.

And that's enough news for one morning, right?

Update: Well, no, because there's a terrific interview with Tom Lloyd that is up at Fantasy Book News & Reviews.

Author Event: Matt Sturges Sigining @ B&N

Matthew Sturges, author of the fantasy novel Midwinter, will be signing at the Barnes and Noble in Round Rock, on Saturday April 18, 2009 at 2:00 PM.

The store is located at La Frontera Village, 2701 Parker Road Bldg A Suite 700, Round Rock, TX 78681, telephone number 512-600-0088. Here's a link to the event on the B&N website.

"Known for his talents as a writer of comic book series including House of Mystery and the Eisner Award-nominated Jack of Fables, Sturges turns his storytelling mastery to epic fantasy. With an enigmatic hero and a supporting cast of colorful and varied personalities, his latest work breathes new life into a genre too often stunted by stereotypical portrayals of good and bad creatures of the faerie realms. Joining Neil Gaiman in making the crossover from comics to prose fiction, Sturges represents a strong, new voice in fantasy." —Library Journal Starred review

Two Epic Fantasy Novels Coming Your Way

Two epic fantasy novels, Matthew Sturges' Midwinter and Tom Lloyd's The Twilight Herald (Book Two of the Twilight Reign quintet) are now shipping from Amazon and other online vendors. They should showing up in physical stores in a week or so as well.

Midwinter: Winter comes to the land only once in a hundred years. But the snow covers ancient secrets: secrets that could topple a kingdom. Mauritaine was a war hero. Then he was accused of treason and sentenced to life without parole at Crere Sulace, a dark and ancient prison in the mountains, far from the City Emerald. But now the Seelie Queen – Regina Titania herself – has offered him one last chance to redeem himself, an opportunity to regain his freedom and his honor.

The Twilight Herald: Lord Bahl is dead and the young white-eye, Isak, stands in his place; less than a year after being plucked from obscurity and poverty the charismatic new Lord of the Farlan finds himself unprepared to deal with the attempt on his life that now spells war, and the possibility of rebellion waiting for him at home. The Twilight Herald is the second book in a powerful new series that combines inspired world-building, epic battles, and high emotion to dazzling effect.

Sturges & Enge: Talk About Fantastic!

Part One of an interview with Matt Sturges, author of the forthcoming fantasy Midwinter,is up on Newsarama. He talks about his comic book work - Jack of Fables, Shadowpact, Blue Beetle, House of Mystery, etc... - as well as his long association with Bill Willingham and Chris Roberson.

It wasn't until I was in college, when my friend Chris Roberson, who is now a novelist and is also the guy who's writing the new Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love mini-series this year, was the person who introduced me to comics. And the things he liked at the time were Legion of Super-Heroes and all the stuff that would become Vertigo. And because the Legion of Super-Heroes, at the time, made no sense to me, I sort of went for the Vertigo stuff.

Not that I didn't learn to love superheroes, but for a beginner, the Vertigo type stories were more self-contained. This was the late '80s, so this was when a lot of great stuff was happening in comics. One of the first things I read was Watchmen, followed by Sandman, then everything Grant Morrison was writing at the time. So those were the books that really formed my sensibilities about what comics could be and should be, and the potential of what you could do in a comic.

Meanwhile, James Enge, whose Blood of Ambrosewe publish in April, is on Rogue Blades talking about the character of Morlock Ambrosius, and the short story "The Red Worm's Way," which forms part of the backstory for the novel and appears in the anthology Flashing Swords Presents: The Return of the Sword.

I did a little fencing in high school, so I have some sense of how some parts of a sword fight might work. On a couple of occasions I’ve walked through part of a fight, just to have a sense of whether the footwork was possible. But I try not to over-identify with my viewpoint character: my job as the storyteller is very different from his.

Both are very interesting guys, set to make a spalsh in fantasy when their respective novels debut in just a few short weeks. Hmmm. Maybe they should read & interview each other?

MIDWINTER: Starred Review in PW

Yeah! A Starred Review in Publishers Weekly for Matthew Sturges' Midwinter!

Midwinter Matthew Sturges. Pyr, $15.98 paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-59102-734-8

Comic book writer Sturges (Jack of Fables) makes an impressive debut with this superb low fantasy. During the titular cold season, the imprisoned soldier Mauritane is offered the opportunity to earn his freedom if he undertakes a risky mission for Seelie Queen Titania. Mauritane brings along a motley crew from the prison, including a gorgeous foreign warrior elf, a disgraced guard and a human scientist trapped in their world. Their Dirty Dozen–style exploits are interwoven with political intrigues at both the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Sturges deftly works in superb character development, solid action sequences and engaging heroes and villains, as well as an original and fascinating mythological backbone for the Fae world. Although there is certainly room for the planned sequel, this tale stands nicely on its own. (Mar.)