NANP: The Entonomicon

Today’s guest on Names: A New Perspective, after the recent 4th of July day-off, is Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author of the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series from Tor. I recently got to read the first book, Empire In Black and Gold, and one of the high points of the book was how the world was presented as one where insects are dominant, and are all divided into different “tribes” known as kinden, with their own regional variations on each. The idea of these insect-kinden as characters (presented as pseudo-humans of sorts) was quite interesting, and so was Adrian’s naming convention, which is what he talks about here. While not my favourite book of the month, Empire In Black and Gold is definitely among the better ones I’ve read this year and I’m definitely on to read the sequel. Fingers crossed! In the meanwhile, here’s Adrian on names in Shadows of the Apt.

June Reading Poll Results

The voting process on my latest reading poll closed last night, after two weeks of intense excitement and record after record. Once again, just as with the previous two polls that I’ve run, this was a humbling experience given the tremendous response from the authors and their fans and everyone else who helped make this new poll such a success.

June Reading List Poll

In January and February, I ran two highly successful polls where I asked all the readers of the blog to help me pick my reading list for the following months. The first one was for novels, the second one for comics. I managed to meet the reading goals for the first of those polls, but am still progressing through the second one, mostly because I’ve been traveling a bit too much of late, and reading time has generally been at a premium due to work and more time devoted to my writing.

However, I should be done with it by the end of this month, so keep an eye out for updates on that.

In the meantime, here’s my next reading poll, and this one is for novels once again. Hit the break to find out more.

Names: A New Perspective Part 3

The last two weeks have been spent in a mad scramble to get people on board for the next phase of Names: A New Perspective. I really should have gotten this done a month ago, but I kept getting sidetracked by other things (Game of Thrones, finishing edits on Project Dharmayoddha, reading a ton of graphic novels, catching up on my monthly reading, etc), that it just didn’t happen on time.

But, I have the new schedule done and all worked out, and my thanks to everyone who has agreed to participate. The last few guest posts that have gone up have not been mentioned in any of the schedules, since I was mostly just winging it all, but now everything is set for the most part. This is the schedule that I will be referring to in the coming weeks, and I will also be expanding on this one as I contact yet more authors and bring them on board.

Here they are: