Smugglers’ (Mini) Stash & News

Howdy folks, and Happy Sunday! We begin this edition of our (mini) Smugglers’ Stash with a couple of announcements…

Giveaway Winners:

Phew, we had a few this week. The winner of the full set of Kelley Armstrong’s Darkest Powers Trilogy (The Summoning, The Awakening & The Reckoning) is:

The winner of The Returners by Gemma Malley is:

The winners of Summer of You by Kate Noble are:

You all know the drill. Email us (contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address, and we will get your winnings out to you as soon as possible. Thanks again to everyone that entered, and congratulations to all of the winners!

And don’t forget, our giveaway of TEN copies of Amazon Queen is still open – make sure to enter before next Saturday!

Cover Matters Survey:

After our most recent Cover Matters’ Issue on Fantasy Covers, we decided to create a survey: we want to know what YOU think about genre fiction covers in general. It’s completely anonymous (unless you WANT to leave your name and contact info, which is totally cool too) – but we really want to know how you fellow internet readers feel.

We already got a pretty good response (over 500 entries and counting!) and if you’re interested and have some time to kill, we’d love to hear from you too!

The Cover Matters Survey is here.

Hugo Nominees:

We’re a little late, but last week at Aussiecon 4, the nominees for the 2010 Hugo Awards were announced.

On the ballot for Best Novel are:

• Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)
• The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
• Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
• Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
• Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)
• The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

For Best Graphic Story:

• Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Written by Neil Gaiman; Pencilled by Andy Kubert; Inked by Scott Williams (DC Comics)
• Captain Britain And MI13. Volume 3: Vampire State Written by Paul Cornell; Pencilled by Leonard Kirk with Mike Collins, Adrian Alphona and Ardian Syaf (Marvel Comics)
• Fables Vol 12: The Dark Ages Written by Bill Willingham; Pencilled by Mark Buckingham; Art by Peter Gross & Andrew Pepoy, Michael Allred, David Hahn; Colour by Lee Loughridge & Laura Allred; Letters by Todd Klein (Vertigo Comics)
• Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm Written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
• Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse Written and Illustrated by Howard Tayler

And finally, The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer:

• Saladin Ahmed
• Gail Carriger
• Felix Gilman
• Seanan McGuire
• Lezli Robyn

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Assorted Book-Related Tidbits:

Disney and Robert Zemeckis – yeah, Back to the Future Robert Zemeckis – have teamed up to adapt Kat Falls’ new YA novel, Dark Life, for film! As you may recall, we’ve had a giveaway of this fantastic book – and will have a review, an author post, and another chance to win the novel again in the very near future! You can read all about the movie deal HERE.

Also, given our recent review and giveaway of Kelley Armstrong’s Darkest Powers trilogy, we wanted to share some news about her YA writing plans. Kelley announced that although The Reckoning marks the end of the trilogy, she is indeed returning to the same YA world for a new book, titled The Gathering. According to Kelley:

The next book is The Gathering. Same world. New characters. New Edison Group experiment. The Gathering starts trilogy #2, Darkness Rising. While my plot line shows Chloe and the others being introduced late in that trilogy, that is NOT a guarantee until the whole thing is written.

We are thrilled at the prospect, and cannot wait for the official release of The Gathering!

Meg Cabot, a Twitter Party, and an iPad

What do these things have in common? US! Later today we’ll be posting about the details.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand that’s all folks! Ok…not really.

We will be back later today with our calendar for Steampunk Week: Redux and kick off the week once again! Stay tuned…