Endurance - Tor/Forge Blog

Poster Placeholder of - 97

Celebrating LOCUS Magazine’s Best Publisher for the 26^th year in a row!

Once again Tor (Booth# 2707) continues our wildly popular *in-booth signings and giveaways, offering you a chance to meet your favorite authors up close and personal and pick up free books.

We’ve got a great line up including appearances by CORY DOCTOROW, BRANDON SANDERSON, and a special appearance and celebration for beloved Tor author JAY LAKE, author of Mainspring, Escapement, Green, Pinion, Endurance, and Kalimpura.

The big news this year is Summit Entertainment’s showcase for the highly anticipated film adaptation of

ENDER’S GAME

Coming to theaters November 1, 2013!

Summit will present never-before-seen new footage, appearances by cast members and filmmakers, and several massive, interactive fan events. A full slate of activities related to the film to be unveiled at this year’s Comic-Con, including:

Hall H Panel – The studio’s panel on Thursday, July 18th 3:50-4:50pm will feature ENDER’S GAME filmmakers and cast, including producer Bob Orci, director Gavin Hood, and cast members Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld and Abigail Breslin.

Exclusive Fan Experience – Attendees will be able to visit an elaborate, specially constructed ENDER’S GAME exhibit outside of the Hilton Gaslamp, featuring 8 unique rooms representing the most iconic environments of Ender’s world, complete with original film props and set pieces used in the movie. Throughout the experience, attendees will be able to see exclusive film footage on LED screens, interact with new digital content, integrate photos of themselves into the highly anticipated Battle Room, and register to win a home make over.

Convention Floor Booth – Summit Entertainment’s booth located within the Grand Hall will highlight ENDER’S GAME footage. Premium promotional items will be distributed to the 120,000 attendees walking the convention floor, and booth visitors will be given the opportunity to win “fast passes” to the ENDER’S Game Exclusive Fan Experience, granting them entry without having to wait in line.

Thursday, July 18th

10:30 – 11:30am Panel: Paranormal Passion, Room 24ABC
Tor Teen favorite Kendare Blake (Antigoddess) joins Maryelizabeth Hart of Mysterious Galaxy for a discussion with Christine Feehan (Guest of Honor), Claudia Gray (Spellcaster) and others to discuss the inclusion of romantic elements in their action-packed novels.
12 – 1pm Signing to follow in the autographing area, Table AA09

12pm Tor Booth (#2707) Giveaway! The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe, a Kirkus Reviews Top Pick for 2011!

1:45 – 2:45pm Panel: Ode to Nerds, Room 6A
Everyone knows that published science fiction authors reign on the Geek Heirarchy charts because the Internet tells us so! Join us on this epic panel as the genre’s top names in publishing celebrate all things geeky and nerdy with Charlie Jane Anders of io9.com! Geek out with Charlie Jane and Cory Doctorow (The Rapture of the Nerds), Chuck Palahniuk (Doomed), Austin Grossman and others.
3:15 – 4:15pm Signing to follow in the autographing area, Table AA09

2pm Tor Booth (#2707) KENDARE BLAKE will sign advanced copies of Antigoddess

5pm Tor Booth (#2707) Bestselling author CORY DOCTOROW will sign copies of Pirate Cinema

Friday, July 19th

12pm Tor Booth (#2707) JAY LAKE has candidly documented his battle with cancer on his blog and will appear at Comic-Con thanks to the kindness of friends and family. Tor is proud to host an in-booth signing and will offer copies of Green.

2pm Tor Booth (#2707) Dr. Who writer, PAUL CORNELL will sign copies of London Falling

2:30 – 3:30pm Panel: Epic Fantasy, Room 24ABC
Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn and the Wheel of Time series) joins genre’s biggest authors as they discuss the worlds of their own creation and what fantasy has to say about our own world: Robin Hobb (Blood of Dragons), Christopher Paolini (the Inheritance cycle), and Daniel Abraham (The Tyrant’s Law) and others.
4 – 5pm Signing to follow in the autographing area, Table AA09

5pm Tor Booth (#2707) New York Times bestselling author BRANDON SANDERSON will sign copies of The Way of Kings

7 – 8pm Panel: Publishing SF/F in the Digital Age, Room 25ABC
Moderated by Timothy Travaglini (Open Road Integrated Media); authors Kevin J. Anderson (Sisterhood of Dune), Rebecca Moesta (WordFire Press), Cory Doctorow (Homeland), Andy Briggs (Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy), Sherri L. Smith (Orleans), and Nick Cole (The Old Man and the Wasteland), and bookseller Maggie Tokuda-Hall (Books, Inc) discuss impact of the digital age on writing, publishing, reading, bookselling, and the traditional book as we know it.

Saturday, July 20th

10 – 11am Panel: Urban Fantasy, Room 7AB
Paris, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Tucson, and cities of our own imagination come to life when tales of myth and magic are blended with the urban landscape. These stories are collectively known as Urban Fantasy, and many of today’s popular authors are adding their otherworldly ingredients to the melting pots of modern (and not-so-modern) society. Join authors Max Gladstone (Three Parts Dead), Jim Butcher (Cold Days), Kevin J. Anderson (Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.) and others.
11:30 – 12:30am Signing to follow in the autographing area, Table AA09

12pm Tor Booth (#2707) Giveaway of signed copies of the Ender’s Game movie tie-in novel

2pm Tor Booth (#2707) Giveaway of Halo: Glasslands and Halo: The Thursday War

5pm Tor Booth (#2707) MAX GLADSTONE will sign advanced copies of Two Serpents Rise

Sunday, July 21st

12pm Tor Booth (#2707) S. M. WHEELER burst on the scene this year with her critically acclaimed debut novel, Sea Change. Meet the author and get a signed copy while supplies last.

2pm Giveaway of The Omen Machine

2 – 3pm Panel: Witches and Fey, Room 24ABC
That vamp’s a tramp; this witch is a real bitch. Pixies will pinch; and the fey go beyond fairly frightening. The ghouls are ghastly, and we mere mortals are growing testy. S. M. Wheeler (Sea Change) joins Brom (Krampus), Amber Benson (The Calliope Reaper-Jones series), Seanan McGuire (The October Daye series) and Rachel Caine (the Morganville Vampires series) to provide perspective on the monsters of myth.
3:30 – 4:30pm Signing to follow in the autographing area, Table AA08

Make sure to follow @Torbooks on Twitter for up to date information and last minute events!

All Tor Booth signings are on a first come first serve basis and while supplies lasts. Limit one book per person.

By Jay Lake

Green is one of my favorites of my own characters. She’s strong, fiercely independent to the point of being annoyingly pig-head, and very much her own woman. When I wrote the first volume of her story for Tor, Green, I was still introducing myself to this extraordinary young lady, and she was introducing herself to me.

As it happens, we’ve gotten along famously since. Her second volume, Endurance, is out from Tor this November, and I’ve just turned in the third, Kalimpura, for publication in late 2012. Green has had a lot to say, and Tor has been very kind to give me space in which to say it.

Writing Endurance was a lot of fun, but there’s two stories in particular I want to share. One is something that happened between writing Green and Endurance. I was working on a novelette called “Coming For Green”, about Samma, Green’s fellow Lily Blade aspirant back at the Temple of the Silver Lily in Kalimpura. After Green’s exile from Kalimpura, the temple had sent Samma out in an unsuccessful effort to call Green back to the city. Samma had sailed into a small Bhopuri coastal town when another character observed, through my typing fingers, that from the lack of smoke or screaming, Green was likely not present.

I literally stopped and stared at the words on my screen. The story had surprised me. Because, from the point of view of anyone who isn’t Green herself, my beloved character is a homicidal lunatic. I’d written Green from very deep within her point of view, and never thought about her from the outside that way. Green has reasons for everything she does, good reasons. But if you’re an innocent bystander, she’s awfully dangerous to be around. She’s a trouble magnet, and when people mess with her, my home girl always escalates. Walking away from a fight really isn’t in her vocabulary.

But I’d never understood how she looked from the outside. This little epiphany made writing Endurance something of a challenge because I kept second-guessing Green, kept second-guessing myself. The absolute, narrow-eyed certainty of the first book was gone. What I finally grokked was that Green in that book is also experiencing the first wash of self-doubt and questioning that comes at a certain phase of teen-aged life. She was having angst! Or at least the angst I was having, I could blame on her.

So weird, when one’s view of one’s own work can be so utterly shifted in a moment.

The other story I wanted to touch on is very brief indeed, and it concerns Endurance, both the ox at the beginning of Green and the ox-god at the end of Green. Green’s relationship with the ox as she played in her father’s fields is modeled a bit on my younger brother’s relationship with an ox that grazed in a field near our house in Taipei, Taiwan, when we lived there as children in the early 1970s.

This was a large brown and black ox. (Endurance is white, which is fine with me as I always carry an artistic license when plundering my own life experiences for story bits.) He was tied up in a field across the street most days. Like most oxen, he was preternaturally patient. Our amah would take my brother out for a walk every day (he was a bit less than two years old at this point), and they would tarry a while as my brother talked to the ox. Or “ock”, as he pronounced it then. The ox would simply watch him with liquid-eyed calm, which always seemed to imply a certain listening wisdom.

My little brother with the ox is an image that has always remained with me, and I finally got to use it in Green. Then I got to name an entire book after the ox modeled on my brother’s ox of long ago. So it is that story images transit from real life to the pages of a book, from the other side of the world and across intervening decades.

I hope you enjoy reading Endurance as much as I enjoyed writing it. Green has more adventures in her, but she wouldn’t be here without the help of Tor and the interest of you, the readers.

…………………………

From the Tor/Forge November newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

Tag: Endurance

Tor Books Announces Programming for San Diego Comic-Con 2013

Celebrating LOCUS Magazine’s Best Publisher for the 26^th year in a row!

Celebrating LOCUS Magazine’s Best Publisher for the 26th year in a row!

Celebrating LOCUS Magazine’s Best Publisher for the 26^th year in a row!