2013 April Reading List

Heechee Annals by Frederick Pohl – I liked this series but this book not so much. I don’t usually like whiny characters and in this one the hero was borderline annoying. 3/5 stars

CPSF1 – Not at all impressed by the story and the explanatory article. 3/5 stars

CPSF2 – I very much liked both the Mars story and article. 4/5 stars

CPSF3 – I liked CPSF2 better. Heavily loaded with details prose puts my patience to the test, and I’ll always take sci fi over fantasy. 4/5 stars

Zombii. Cartea mortilor vii (Zombies. The Book of the Living Dead),editor Mircea Pricajan – I don’t normally read horror, but since one of my stories is included in the anthology, I just had to see what the others had written. My favorite stories were those written by Laura Sorin, Liviu Radu, and Florian Nan. 4/5 stars

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (vol.1) by Gardner Dozois – I liked more than half of the stories so a good read. 4/5 stars

Calatorii in timp. Antologie de povestiri SF (Time Travels. An Anthologyof Sci Fi Short Stories) edited by Antuza Genescu – I’ve got a fun little story in there too so I was curious to see how it rate compared to the others. I think I did well. :) However, it struck me as odd the high number of men complaining about their wives or one woman in particular. 4/5 stars

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – I’m not a fan of circus stories, but this was a charming story if we ignore the overly telling, heaps of details and mushiness. 4/5 stars

Jack Glass by Adam Roberts – I loved the cover art. However, I didn’t care much for the first story and the first half of the second one. I was this close to gave up on it and put it down when the story suddenly became interesting. The narrative is somehow twisted and it gets ridiculously sappy by the end, but we’ll ignore that. 4/5 stars

About Eurocon in Observator cultural

Catalin Badea-Gheracostea's newest article for Observator cultural focuses on Eurocon. This is what he has to say about yours truly:

"Ioana Vișan este unul dintre cele mai viguroase debuturi ai ultimilor ani, despre culegerea ei de povestiri Efectul de nautil, lansată la tîrgul „Final Frontier“ de luna trecută, voi scrie în curînd. Cu alte proze scurte, Ioana Vișan este o prezență constantă în toate antologiile de gen recente. Construcția epică romanescă va fi pasul pe care, sînt convins, îl va face în curînd."

I'm looking forward to his review of "Efectul de nautil" and cross my fingers he's right about the last part.

Cover Reveal: Instincte umane

Yes, the Romanian edition of Human Instincts will be published by Millennium Books at the end of May.

Cît de uman mai poţi fi într-o lume descompusă de război? Ce instincte îi mai rămîn omenirii atunci cînd, victimă a nebuniei unor monştri, se stinge încet, fără puterea de a pune capăt propriei extincţii? Frica, furia, dragostea sau încăpăţînarea de a supravieţui? Într-o lume lipsită de orice şansă e oare cu putinţă ca speranţa să renască din cel mai întunecat colţ de iad?

Deanna Nichols trebuie sa salveze ceea ce a mai rămas din oameni. Aruncată într-o luptă fără sorţi de izbîndă, medicul genetician trebuie să găsească o soluţie pentru a crea viaţă din nimic. Izolată într-un penitenciar de maximă securitate, înconjurată de violenţă şi ură, ea va trebui să cîştige încrederea deţinuţilor înainte de a fi prea târziu. Dar şi aceştia sînt oameni şi au instincte…

208 pages, paperback, 115 x 185 mm, ISBN 9786068113890, Millennium Novella Collection, 22 RON.

The Impaler's Revenge Available on B & N, iTunes, and Kobo

Aside from Smashwords and all of the Amazon websites, The Impaler's Revenge is now also available on:

Barnes & Noble

iTunes

Kobo

Happy shopping! :)

The Impaler's Revenge Review (2)

A new review of The Impaler's Revenge is available online this time on Angels are Kids and Furkids blog:

"The characters in this book are unforgettable! They each have their own personalities, lives, and pasts that make this book what it is. I like how you are given information about them all to make them more developed, but at the same time there is an air of mystery to them all too, something that tells you as a reader that there is more to them that you will learn as you read on in the book and in the series." - Angie

Thank you Angie for your review! Read the rest here.

The LibraryThing giveaway is still going on this week, but if you can't wait, The Impaler's Revenge is available on Amazon, iTunes, Kobo and Smashwords.

Human Instincts Review (13)

I haven't talked about Human Instincts in a while, mostly because I had more recent projects to promote. This will change next month, but until then there's a new review online.

Tudor reviewed it for Cititor SF, and he has nice things to say about it, yay! :) He also said he'd be interested in reading a sci fi novel written by yours truly. You and I both, Tudor, though it's quite possible for a fantasy novel to come out first.

Human Instincts is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes, Sony, Smashwords. 

Has anyone else read it lately? I noticed an increase in the number of sales. If you read it, please take the time to review it on Amazon and rate it on Goodreads. Thanks! 

"Calatorii in timp" Official Launch

"Calatorii in timp" (Time Travels) edited by Antuza Genescu will have its official launch on Friday, at ProspectArt in Bucharest. More details here.

Since it takes place in Bucharest, I won't be there, so I'm missing all the fun, but I'm looking forward to hear how it went from those attending.

The Impaler's Revenge First Review

The first review of The Impaler's Legacy has showed up online barely a week after its release.

"This tale absolutely is not a typical vampire blood-fest, nor is it a thinly veiled excuse for erotica, like so many contemporary vampire publications tend to be. To the contrary, this story has a unique plot, a very entertaining storyline, and is simply an excellent example of good story-telling." - Grampy

Read the full review here.

The LibraryThing giveaway is still going on this week, but if you can't wait, The Impaler's Revenge is available on Amazon, iTunes, Kobo and Smashwords.

Interview on Galileo Online

Horia Ursu interviewed me for Galileo Online. We talked about the ESFS Encouragement Award received at Eurocon over the weekend, self-publishing, the difference between ebooks and traditional books, my new release, and my plans for the future. There's even a brand new announcement at the end.

Read the full interview here.

The Impaler's Revenge LibraryThing Giveaway

The Impaler's Revenge is brand new, and we need to start the buzz about it somehow so I organized a giveaway on LibraryThing.

There are 25 copies available. If it turns out there's a high demand, I'll increase the number of offered copies.

The giveaway will run for two weeks, starting with today. Go request your copy now!

If you can't wait that long, The Impaler's Revenge is available on Amazon and Smashwords.

The Impaler's Revenge is available now!

The Impaler's Revenge (The Impaler Legacy #1), the vampire novella I kept telling you about, is now available through Amazon and Smashwords and soon it will be available on other on-line stores too.

In the fall of 2011, I got sick with a bad cold and for a week, I was unable to do anything beside reading. I knew from the start that it was going to be a long recovery so I picked a series that was supposed to keep me busy for a while. It happened to deal with vampires.

While I enjoy my fanged friends like anyone else, I’m more than a little offended to see everyone associating them with Transylvania and especially Vlad Ţepeş. Thank you, Mr. Stoker! Not. I guess my issue with vampires started back in my childhood when I was recovering after a surgery in France. The physical therapist came to check on me, and seeing that I was having a transfusion, he quipped, “Oh, you’re from Romania. I see you’re having breakfast,” and pointed at the blood bag. I was this close to reply “Yeah, and you’re next!”

This put aside, after finishing reading the series, I started thinking about how I would write a vampire story, considering that I had never written anything of that sort. And you know, someone had to defend Ţepeş’s honor. He used to be a great king, even if a strict one, and people had turned him into such a joke. I plotted the story over the summer and wrote it the following fall. So this is my answer to all the vampire stories out there, ‘a story like no other’ as the tagline says.

The novella comes accompanied by a bonus story Sweet Surrender (The Impaler Legacy #1.5) that is only available on my website.

When I finished writing the first draft of The Impaler’s Revenge, I had no plans for a sequel, but I was not ready to let go of the characters yet. I had spent half a year socializing with them and becoming close friends so as I typed ‘The End’ I was already starting to miss them. But it turned out it didn’t have to be the end of our adventures together. 

After finishing reading the draft, a friend told me “You have to write what happened between Liana and Jesse. You can’t leave it like that! You’ve tortured them enough.” I whined about how it would be just fluff and no one would be interested in reading it, and the reaction was “Just write it already!” 

So the next Friday, I sat down at the computer and realized that it wasn’t just fluff like I had feared, there were real issues that needed to be discussed. I finished the story in one sitting and, when I was done, my first thought was “Damn! Now I need to find out what happened in New Zealand!”

For those of you worrying about starting a new series,  know that I have the first draft of the second novella written down and I'm already plotting the third one. Hopefully, the entire series will be published by the end of the year.

I hope you'll like my own version of vampire stories. Check out the purchase links at the top of the post and in the right side bar. Enjoy! 

Eurocon 2013 Encouragement Award

I'm proud to announce that I'm one of the receivers of Encouragement Award given by the European Science Fiction Society at Eurocon 2013.

See the full list of winners here.

So I guess it's time to add "award-winning writer" to my author bio.

"Zombii. Cartea mortilor vii" First Review

The first review of "Zombii. Cartea mortilor vii" showed up online on Fan SF blog. Liviu has good things to say about the book.

I've only managed to read the first eight stories yesterday, but I tend to agree. Now the cat looks at me like she's about to ask for punitive damages. I must have traumatized her last night.

"Zombii. Cartea mortilor vii" can be ordered here.

The Impaler's Revenge Excerpt

The Easter bunny has arrived early this year! I decided it was time to give you taste of The Impaler's Revenge, so over the weekend I'll post each day a part for your enjoyment.

Here's the description if you need to refresh your memory:

"In a world crawling with vampires, Romania is the safest place left on earth. Thanks to the Little Council, there hasn't been a vampire on Romanian ground in over five centuries. But one day, Liana Cantacuzino, also a member of the Little Council and a descendant of one of the old noble families, is ordered to bring one in, covertly. Enter Maximilien Hess, a thousand years old vampire determined to ruin the existing order of things.

Suddenly, Liana finds herself forced to protect Hess, instead of having the pandurs kill him. With the help from her trustful friends, Rodica Ghica and Ştefan Sturdza, and that of an innocent bystander, Dr. Jesse Carver, Liana has to find out what is going on and what the President is hiding from her. When all is revealed, Hess's secret changes everything.

The first novella in The Impaler Legacy series, a vampire saga like no other."

And here is the first part. 

Update: Part two added. 

2nd Update: Part three also added.

Two stories and one interview in Revista de Suspans

I've been wanting to write a story for Revista de Suspans (Suspense Magazine) ever since its launch last fall. With other magazines, unless they pay, I'm usually like "okay, let's give it a couple of months and see how it fares, and then maybe I'll write something for it." It wasn't the case here as I was already familiar with Mircea Pricajan's work from Suspans.ro, so it was only a matter of time for finding the time to write the story and, of course, finding the right idea for it. It looks like the waiting paid off because in the April issue of Revista de Suspans you'll find not just one story but two plus an interview featuring... me.

1. "Iluminare" (Illumination) - Romanian short story written especially for Revista de Suspense. Initially, the story was supposed to include more fantasy elements, but sometimes what you write on the paper (or in this case type) comes out a little differently than what you have planned. After the first draft was done, I considered re-writing the story to get it back on the right track, but then it risked turning out too much like Howgarts, and I kind of liked it the way it was. Besides, I don't write only sci fi and fantasy, I write suspense and adventure too, and oh, you should read my spicy romance, tee-hee!

2. "The Chase" - English short story, included in "Blue Moon Cafe Series: Where Shifters Meet for Drinks". If you like it and want to read more stories set in the same universe, you can get the short story collection here or check out the various links at the right.

3. Interview - It's about "Zombii: Cartea mortilor vii" (Zombies: The Book of the Living Dead), and it features most of the authors included in the anthology (you can order the book here). While reading it, I noticed that my answers are the shortest so if you really want to know how this writer's mind works I guess you'll have to read my stories. *grins* Oh, and check out Roxana's Brinceanu's answer no. 6. It gave me quite a giggle!