Little, Brown, Dan's publisher for The Terror, has just revealed their proposed cover for Dan's next novel, Drood, currently scheduled to go on sale in January, 2009.
Drood, in the tradition of The Terror, is a unique mix of history, biography, and dark fantasy, but where The Terror dealt with an actual doomed Arctic expedition in 1848, Drood looks at the lives and secrets of Charles Dickens and his novelist friend Wilkie Collins in the period 1865-1870. History records that Dickens was in the terrible Staplehurst train accident of 1865 and suffered injuries - both physical and psychological -- from which he never recovered. He died suddenly on the fifth anniversary of that accident on June 9,1870.
Drood fictionally explores the dark secrets that came to obsess both Dickens and Wilkie Collins during those five years -- secrets that not only ended their long friendship but brought each writer to the brink of murder.
"I love the proposed cover for Drood," said Dan. "It conveys the brooding anxiety and dark sense of threat that I attempted to put into every page of the novel. Writing The Terror made me feel cold, even in the summer. But something in Drood has actively made me shiver from fear of the dark and this cover captures some of that sense of dread.
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The Terror on 2007 Top Lists
 Dan's Arctic adventure-dark fantasy novel The Terror was on a variety of Top 10 lists for 2007, including Entertainment Weekly's Top 10 Books of 2007, USA Today's Top 10 Books, Stephen King's "Top 10 from My Reading in 2007" list also quoted in Entertainment Weekly, and was # 1 on Amazon.com's "2007 Top 10 SF and Horror Novels" list.
The Terror was also in the Top 12 of all books rated by Book Sense, the journal of independent bookstores.
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Guest of Honor for 2008 Conventions
After some eight years of being out of the convention circuit, Dan has accepted invitations to be a guest of honor at two upcoming conventions in 2008. The first is Norwescon 31 (www.norwescon.com), to be held March 20 - 23, 2008 in Seattle, WA. His second appearance will be at Elstercon in Leipzig, Germany (http://www.fksfl.de/elstercon2008/elstercon.html) from August 29 - 31, 2008.
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"This Year's Class Picture" On Stage in France
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Dan's multiple prize-winning short story "THIS YEAR'S CLASS PICTURE" (about an older elementary teacher, Miss Geiss, who continues teaching, even though her students are now zombies) was produced as a stage play in Paris in the fall of 2007 by Violetta Wowczak. There were thirty performances throughout the month of October and into early November. Interestingly, reviews -- including one by the theater-reviewer for the national French teachers union -- were quite positive. Dan regrets that he was unable to attend the opening night, especially since this was the first time any of his work was transformed for the theater.
Ms.Wowczak recently said that the play," La Jour de la Photo de Classe", may well see other performances throughout France, possibly at Imaginales in Epinal, May 22-25. Dan would be honored to attend one of them and would even brush up on his French language skills so that he could pretend to follow along.
Visit Cie Violetta Wowczak site
Click here to enlarge
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Carrion Comfort Optioned by Costa Gavras, Screenplay Finished,
French Film Possible, Tautou Interested
 For several years now, Dan's epic tale of mind-vampirism, CARRION COMFORT, has been optioned for the screen by the family of famed French film director Costa Gavras, who did the paranoid political thriller "Z" in 1969. This January, the Costa Gavras group has renewed a final option on CARRION COMFORT and announced that a French language version of the screenplay is complete. Alexandre Gavras is slated to be the director of the film version of CARRION COMFORT, and they also inform us that Pathe likes the screenplay and is considering a Greek coproduction partner. According to the Gavras group, internationally famous actress Audrey Tautou -- known to worldwide audiences for playing the title character in the award-winning French film Amelie(2001) and also Sophie Neveau in The Da Vinci Code (2006) -- is currently reviewing the screenplay in connection with a lead role.
The Gavras group has announced that they hope to begin principal photography in September of this year.
Wikipedia says of the elder Costa Gavras --
"Costa Gavras is known for merging controversial political issues with the entertainment value of commercial cinema. Law and justice, oppression, legal/illegal violence, and torture are common subjects in his work, especially relevant to his earlier films. Costa Gavras is an expert of the “statement” picture, an art form slowly vanishing from the studios of cut-throat, capital-driven cinema. [ Note -- the Wikipedia writer's phrase, not Dan's. He likes cut-throat, capital-driven Hollywood cinema. Some of his best friends are cut-throat, capital-driven, Hollywood-cinema types. Dan hopes someday to be a . . . well, you get the idea.]
Wikiepedia goes on -- "Gavras has repeatedly explored political terrain. In most cases, the targets of his work have been right-of-center movements and regimes, including Greek conservatives in and out of the military in "Z," and the U.S.-supported authoritarian governments that ruled much of Latin America during the height of the Cold War, as in State of Siege and Missing."
Dan says of a possible Costa Gavras film adaptation of CARRION COMFORT -- "I remember seeing 'Z' while I was in graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis in 1970 and I thought at the time that it was a brilliant political thriller. It caused viewers to be paranoid about everything. Since CARRION COMFORT is a novel filled with justifiable paranoia -- it turns out that "they" are out to get us -- a Gavras-family connection to a French film version of this epic novel might lead to a very interesting project. I look forward to seeing what develops"
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THE TERROR Released in Trade Paperback -- Goes to Third Printing
 In December of 2007, publisher Little, Brown's Back Bay Books released THE TERROR in trade paperback format with an original release of 80,000 copies. Within weeks, the trade paperback had gone back to two more printings.
The trade paperback, which sells for $14.95, includes a beautiful two-page "inside cover" showing the HMS Terror stuck in the ice floes and surrounded by icebergs.
Lincoln Child said of this novel -- "The Terror is nothing less than a revelation. Dan Simmons is a giant among novelists, and I am in awe of his achievement."
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DAN TO WRITE FANTASY TALE SET IN JACK VANCE UNIVERSE
Despite the fact that Dan has won the World Fantasy Award twice, the British Fantasy Award, a Japanese Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and various other awards with "fantasy" in their headings, some of you may know that he feels that he's never written a "real" fantasy story or novel.
That will change this year.
George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois have asked Dan to write a story or novelette or novella for their upcoming proposed anthology of tales set in Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" universe and Dan has accepted . . . with pleasure.
"I respect the fact that most of the world thinks of Harry Potter when they think 'fantasy,'" says Dan. "For me, quality fantasy will always be Jack Vance and his The Dying Earth tales. I'm excited to be invited to that universe and look forward to attempting a piece of fantasy that will honor the tremendous quality that Jack Vance set as the standard in his Dying Earth stories."
Here are some of the details as forwarded in a letter to Dan from George R.R. Martin:
"Gardner and I have put the finishing touches on the proposal for the anthology we're calling SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH, and have turned it over to Ralph Vicinanza, who represents Jack Vance and will be handling this one on both the foreign and domestic fronts. We got a wonderful response to our invitations; Jack Vance is truly a writer's writer, and has had a profound influence on several generations of fantasists.
Our lineup of writers is pretty impressive, we think. In alphabetical order:
Glen Cook Michael Shea
Terry Dowling Robert Silverberg
Phyllis Eisenstein Dan Simmons
Ray Feist Jeff Vandermeer
Neil Gaiman Paula Volsky
Elizabeth Hand Howard Waldrop
Matt Hughes Liz Williams
Tanith Lee Tad Williams
George R.R. Martin Walter Jon Williams
Michael Moorcock John C. Wright
Mike Resnick
Gardner and I are hopeful that the publishers will be as excited about this anthology as we are. It should be a terrific book.
We'll keep you posted.
George R.R. Martin"
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Podcast of Rick Kleffel's January 31 Interview with Dan
While in San Francisco on tour for THE TERROR at the end of January, Dan went to the NPR headquarters there to do this one-hour interview with Rick Kleffel of California's KUSP radio. Kleffel's "The Agony Column" features podcast and broadcast interviews with some of the top names in imaginative fiction. This interview focuses on THE TERROR but also includes conversations about writing SF, researching for a novel, the demise of Joe Kurtz, and other topics.
To hear this podcast, please click here to reach the Agony Column Archives and scroll down to Simmons's interview on 1-31-07 to download it in either MP3 or Real Player format.
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Darwin's Blade in the Comic Strips
As recently noted by a reader posting on the Dan Simmons' Forum, the following comic strip by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum dealing with Dan's accident-investigation thriller, DARWIN'S BLADE, (copyright 2000, published by William Morrow), appeared on "Unshelved Comics Archive" at overduemedia.com. You can visit their site for more library comic goodness via this link: http://www.overduemedia.com/archive.aspx?strip=20050911
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