Matthew Hughes
Posts by Matthew Hughes
Barbarians of the Beyond on Amazon
Barbarians of the Beyond, the authorized sequel/companion novel to Jack Vance’s The Demon Princes, is now available as a paperback on Amazon – five days ahead of schedule.
Tell your friends.
(There should be a link here to Amazon, but for some reason it’s being refused, although the link works on Facebook and Twitter)
Newsletter time again
My monthly newsletter has just gone out, with news about Barbarians of the Beyond. If you’re not on the mailing list, here’s a link:
https://mailchi.mp/49306d327b9a/news-from-matthew-hughes-author
Cover art for Barbarians of the Beyond
I’ve received the cover art for Barbarians of the Beyond, the authorized sequel-cum-companion novel to Jack Vance’s iconic series The Demon Princes.
The text is now typeset and the book designer will be working on it next month. Then we will set a publication date and set up a preorder page, and the first chapter will get posted on the Spatterlight Press website.
I thought I’d share David Gerrold’s blurb:
“Lock the door, turn off the phone, get into a comfy chair, and deep-dive into a marvelous continuation of Jack Vance’s Demon Princes series. Matthew Hughes is a treasure and Barbarians of the Beyond is a terrific adventure.”
Barbarians of the Beyond, first review
Andrew Wheeler, former editor of the Science Fiction Book Club, has posted a teaser review of Barbarians of the Beyond, the authorized sequel/companion novel to Jack Vance’s The Demon Princes quintilogy. A little early, but it may help generate some buzz.
Please feel free to forward the link to anyone you think might be interested.
https://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2021/06/barbarians-of-beyond-by-matt-hughes.html
Master class in how I make stories
Angry Robot Books is now reissuing my offbeat urban fantasy trilogy, To Hell and Back, the one where an autistic insurance actuary accidentally causes Hell to go on strike. And then things get weird.
The three books – The Damned Busters, Costume Not Included, and Hell to Pay – came out ten years ago. A few months back, I asked to have the rights revert to me, but AR counteroffered to reprint and remarket them, which sounded good enough.
Though they started out as farce, the books morphed into a meditation on autism, the way Flowers for Algernon was a meditation on intellectual disability. The new marketing effort will reflect that.
I haven’t looked for reviews of the trilogy for years, but I started poking around the other day and came across a trio of reviews from 2014 by a blogger named Hal C.F. Astell, on a site called The Nameless Zine. They are, quite simply, the most insightful reviews I’ve ever received. The reviewer was able to deduce accurately from the way the books evolved the intuitive way I go about making stories.
So kudos to Hal.
They’re long reads, but if you’re interested in what I do and how I do it, they’re kind of a master class.
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Books-2014/Damned_Busters.php
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Books-2014/Costume_Not_Included.php
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