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“Whaddya got?”

“Varcarel Jade Page 19!”

“Knights ownage.”

“For teh win.”

“Konnichi-wa, minna-san! We gots a Varcarel Jade update today ’cause it’s Monday and that’s when we do one of our comic updates. We gots another comic that’s called Fury of the Venom Legion but that one is updated on Thursday. Did you know that there’s a site called The Web Comic List that tells aaaaaaaall about our comics? You can even vote for us and they gave us a number button too!”

“That’s our ranking out of almost 11,000 comics.”

“Yay for us! If you read comics on The Web Comic List be sure to add our comics to your favorites and visit us every week for new pages! Ja!”

“Talk to me.”

“Varcarel Jade Page 18 is up!”

“Wicked.”

Two lots of awards news to cheer me this morning:

From The Times online: A gothic tale about vampire hunters has become the perfect Hallowe'en winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2007, it was announced yesterday. Marcus Sedgwick won the prize with his sinister story, My Swordhand is Singing, about a woodcutter and his son who fight the legendary undead in the forests of seventeenth-century Romania. (My review is here)

For more details about the prize visit Bookheads or Booked Up

* * * * * *

And in the non-Book Awards category David Tennant and Doctor Who both won awards in their categories in last night's National Television Awards ! Alas that Freema Agyeman couldn't make it a hat-trick.

It's been announced that Philip Pullman's Northern Lights has won the Carnegie of Carnegies (about which I posted in April). I confess, I voted for Alan Garner's The Owl Service, simply because it had such a huge impact on me as a child reader.




(I confess that I heard this news late yesterday but I was trying to work on both my current fiction tales (simultaneously more or less), so I didn't post it !)

The British Fantasy Award, Best Novel (The August Derleth Fantasy Award) longlist has been announced and I'm very excited as I know one of the authors on the list. Here's the list in full (the ones I've read are in bold rather than italics):

The Blade Itself: Book One Of The First Law, Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz)
The Fledging Of Az Gabrielson: The Clouded World Series Book 1, Jay
Amory (Gollancz)
Broken, Kelley Armstrong (Orbit Books)
Polity Agent, Neal Asher (Tor Books)
Bridge Of Dreams, Chaz Brenchley (Ace Books)
Scar Night: Volume One Of The Deepgate Codex, Alan Campbell (Tor Books)
The Devil You Know: A Felix Castor Novel, Mike Carey (Orbit Books)
Jack Of Ravens: Kingdom Of The Serpent Book 1, Mark Chadbourn (Gollancz)
Death's Dominion, Simon Clark (Robert Hale)
London Under Midnight, Simon Clark (Severn House)
The Book of Lost Things, John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton)
Widdershins, Charles De Lint (Tor Books)
The Bonehunters (A Tale Of Malazan Book Of The Fallen), Steven Erikson
(Bantam Press)
Ten-Second Staircase (Bryant & May 4), Christopher Fowler (Doubleday)
Development Hell, Mick Garris (Cemetery Dance)
Ilario: The Lion's Eye, Mary Gentle (Gollancz)
Nova Swing, John M Harrison (Gollancz)
The Secret Of Crickley Hall, James Herbert (Macmillan)
World Of Hurt, Brian Hodge (Earthling Publications)
Rainbow Bridge, Gwyneth Jones (Gollancz)
This Forsaken Earth (Sea Beggars), Paul Kearney (Bantam Press)
Cell, Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton)
Lisey's Story, Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (Small Beer Press/Bantam)
Dusk, Tim Lebbon (Spectra Books)
The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd (Gollancz)
The Lies Of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch (Gollancz)
Eastern Tide, Juliet E. McKenna (Orbit Books)
Quicksilver Twilight, Stan Nicholls (Voyager)
The Righteous Blade: Book 2 Of The Dreamtime, Stan Nicholls (Eos)
The Burning Girl, Holly Phillips (Prime Books)
Breeding Ground, Sarah Pinborough (Leisure Books)
The Toyminator, Robert Rankin (Gollancz)
Keeping It Real: Quantum Gravity 1, Justina Robson (Gollancz)
Mathematicians In Love, Rudy Rucker (Tor Books)
Winterbirth, Brian Ruckley (Orbit Books)
The Face of Twilight, Mark Samuels (PS Publishing)
Streaking, Brian Stableford (PS Publishing)
Pressure, Jeff Strand (Earthling Publications)
Shriek: An Afterword, Jeff Vandermeer (Macmillan & Tor Books)
The Demon And The City: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel, Liz Williams
(Nightshade Books)
The Unblemished, Conrad Williams (Earthling Publications)
Jaarfindor Remade, Sean Wright (Crowswing Books)

I'm really pleased to see Juliet E McKenna's Eastern Tide on the longlist -it's definitely her best book to date, and I know there are several highly regarded novels on that longlist, but I really hope Eastern Tide wins !