Des nouvelles de John Scalzi

[jerome]

John Scalzi, l'auteur des Brigades fantômes ou de La Dernière Colonie, évoque sur son blog le roman qu'il vient de finir : The God Engines.

"First: It’s called The God Engines. If the title seems vaguely familiar to fans/stalkers/others, it would be because last year Locus suggested in one of its upcoming title features that I would have a novella with that title for sale in April ‘09 (i.e., right now). That information was a result of a miscommunication; nobody’s fault, it just happens.

Second: It’s fantasy. Why fantasy? Well, because I’d never written fantasy before, and I thought it would be interesting to try, and writing something novella-length seemed a whole lot less pressure that writing something novel length. And it was; aside from the usual procrastination issues of me being distracted by shiny objects, this one moved along nicely in the writing. It’s also dark fantasy, because I thought, hell, as long as I’m doing something different, might as well exercise a whole bunch of different writing muscles. Which brings us to our third point:

Third: It’s a lot different than what I usually write. Not just in subject matter but in tone and style and such. It’s always good to try new things to see if you can do them. And again, novella-length was a good length to try this stuff out in. I don’t doubt it’ll confuse some readers — I had that happen with “The Sagan Diary” as well, which was another short work drastically different from what I’d done before — but hey, that’s what happens from time to time.

Fourth: I’m pretty happy with it. Which is nice, because I hate working on something for a while just to figure out I don’t want anyone else on the planet to see it. This one was fun to write, as noted, but I also think it’ll be fun for people to read, and it’ll be interesting to see the reactions to it (as again, it was interesting to see the reactions to “The Sagan Diary” when people read that).

Fifth: TGE will be published by Subterranean Press as a standalone book, in the usual excellent and special-nifty Subterranean Press style, and will most likely show up either late this year or early next year. We’re still figuring out all that stuff. Quite clearly I’ll let you all know the details when I know them.

And that’s where things are with that."