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Posts Tagged ‘Peter V. Brett’

Homemade Heroes

Here at Voyager we love seeing what our authors are up to. But sometimes it what the fans are up to that is the most interesting! 

Peter V. Brett always has the best contests set up for his fans that people can really get stuck into. Just check out some of his entries for his latest contest Homemade Heroes. I have to say, the massive Sharik Hora is particularly awesome.

Homemade Heroes contest entries

Want to keep up-to-date on Peat’s contests and find out what he’s up to? Make sure you follow him on Twitter (@PVBrett) and bookmark his blog!


NYCC Video Panel: The Fantasy Authors

Del Rey has posted a video panel taken at New York Comic Con featuring Voyager authors Naomi Novik and Peter V. Brett alongside Jim Butcher, Joe Abercrombie , Deborah Harkness and Brandon Sanderson. It’s a great listen — why not check it out? 

NYCC Panel Video: Fantasy Authors from Suvudu on Vimeo.

NYCC Panel Video: Fantasy Authors Part II from Suvudu on Vimeo.


Our designer responds!

The post below on sci-fi and fantasy book covers has generated some great discussion and opinions are varied. One of Voyager’s main designers, Dominic Forbes, threw his comments into the ring as well… Thanks Dom!

As a cover designer and reader of SF/fantasy, I agree it’s annoying when a series changes look halfway through. Although for very long series or ones that have large gaps between releases (Mr Martin I’m looking at you) it’s possibly more understandable. Covers are quite like fashion in that styles come and go fairly quickly. Often it’s about refreshing something to attract new readers or broaden a title’s appeal.

Read More..


Judging a book by its cover…

@westerosorg asked: Shift in cover art for SF/F, from more illustrative towards more abstract/graphic, seems more pronounced in UK than US. Why?

Thanks for your question @westerosorg! I can’t really speak for the US or even the UK market as a whole, but I’ll try to give some insight into cover design from the Voyager/HarperCollins art department team perspective.

The great thing about the fantasy genre is that the fantasy market is actually very evenly spread across genders and age groups. The challenge is then that our book covers have to work for an extremely varied audience. We also have to be extra careful not to alienate any potential readers as external market research has shown us that sometimes more traditional-looking, illustrative fantasy covers are off-putting for newcomers to the genre. There’s a whole website dedicated to ridiculous fantasy covers — and while hopefully we are doing better nowadays there is still a negative perception towards fantasy books (‘trashy’, ‘weird’, ‘dated’ come to mind) that we have to push back against. Basically, more graphic, elegant covers are hopefully appealling to our extremely loyal genre fanbase as well as to new readers who perhaps wouldn’t expect to enjoy a ‘fantasy’ novel — and changing the perception of the genre as a whole.

Read More..


Peter V. Brett

Peter went to the University at Buffalo, where he studied Dungeons & Dragons, fencing, and girls.

Following college, he spent eight months managing a comic shop and pondering what to do with his life. He then went into medical publishing, but contented himself with writing books he never hoped to sell.

In June of 2007, his hard work and perseverance paid off, as he sold his 4th novel, The Painted Man.

He lives in Brooklyn NY with his wife Dani and cat, Jinx

Want to learn more about Peter V Brett?
Visit Peat’s official website
Chat with Peat on twitter
Read an extract from The Painted Man
List of Peat’s books

Out Now from Peter V Brett:

The Desert Spear (May 2010)

The sun is setting on humanity. The night now belongs to voracious demons that arise as the sun sets preying upon a dwindling population forced to cower behind ancient and half-forgotten symbols of power. These wards alone can keep the demons at bay, but legends tell of a Deliverer who once bound all mankind into a single force that defeated the demons. Those times, if they ever existed, are long past. The demons are back, and the return of the Deliverer is just another myth… or is it?

Out of the desert rides Ahmann Jardir, who has forged the warlike desert tribes of Krasia into a demon-killing army. He has proclaimed himself Shar’Dama Ka, the Deliverer, and he carries ancient weapons that give credence to his claim. Sword to follow the path of the first Deliverer, he has come north to bring the scattered city-states of the green lands together in a war against demonkind – whether they like it or not.

But the northerners claim their own Deliverer. His name was Arlen, but all know him now as the Painted Man: a dark, forbidding figure whose skin is tattooed with wards so powerful they make him a match for any demon. The Painted Man denies that he is the Deliverer, but his actions speak louder than words, for he teaches men and women to face their fears and stand fast against the creatures that have tormented them for centuries.

Once the Shar’Dama Ka and the Painted Man were friends, brothers in arms. But betrayal has turned them into fierce adversaries.

As old allegiances are tested and fresh alliances created, the people are ignorant of the emergence of a new breed of demon, more intelligent – and deadly – than any that have come before.

List of Peat’s Books




Voyager at the London Book Fair

We wanted to share some photos of the Voyager team at this week’s London Book Fair, celebrating our anniversary….

Voyagertrailer2Alice_Peter_Emma Lucy_Sarah_Caroline_GeorgiaPeter Brett

From the top….

The Voyager trailer

Voyager Editorial Director Emma Coode, Graeme Neil from the Bookseller, Voyager publicist Alice Moss and Peter V. Brett (prizes for spotting Conn Iggulden)

The lovely HarperCollins Legal and Rights team,  Lucy, Sarah, Caroline and Georgina

Peter V. Brett and one of the HC team


Win Signed First Edition – Peter V. Brett!

To celebrate publication of the brilliant The Desert Spear this month, we have a very special competition…

One lucky winner will win a signed first edition copy of The Painted Man, the first in the series, as well as a signed first edition copy of The Desert Spear. All you need do is email thevoyager@harpercollins.co.uk with your name and address and we will pick one lucky winner who will be notified by 30th April. It’s a really great prize, so make sure you enter!


Book of the Month: The Desert Spear

Our book of the month for April is Peter V. Brett‘s The Desert Spear. Peter burst onto the fantasy scene in 2008 with his fantastic debut The Painted Man (read an extract from The Painted Man) which introduced us to a world where humanity is plagued with demons which arise when night falls. But three very different heroes are determined to free humans from the demon plague and from that most insidious of foes – fear itself. The Desert Spear continues where The Painted Man left off and is full of brilliant characters, amazing plotting and terrifying demons. It was number 9 in the hardback bestseller chart last week and we really can’t recommend it highly enough, so make sure you pick up your copy today


The Voyager Trailer has Landed

Drum roll please… at last we can unveil our rather splendid trailer to celebrate 15 years of Voyager publishing.

We hope it was worth the wait. For everyone that leaves a comment on the blog or on YouTube between now and the 10th May, we will enter you into a draw to win a copy of each of the published books from the trailer.


BENEATH THE COVERS

NICK SHAH, senior designer, and the man behind some of our favourite Voyager covers, opens the lid on what it’s like to design for us…

First of all I feel the need to confess that I am a complete nerd. I watched all the DVDs of the new Battlestar Galactica back-to-back in a 6 week period and there is still a part of me that wants Star Wars bed sheets.

Why I mention this is that designing book covers for Voyager (as it is for  the rest of the Voyager team) doesn’t involve me trying to get into someone else’s headspace; it feels like designing covers for my peers. When a brief comes in you could just ask the editor for a synopsis but invariably I beg for the whole manuscript! After reading it you end up trying to distill what it meant to you (and hopefully what it would mean to others) into a smaller and smaller set of concepts.

This might seem like over simplification but you have to realize the amount of time an eye will rest on the cover as it scans a book shelf or a website. You are lucky if you get a full second of attention. In that short space of time you have to give an idea of what the book is about and try to get someone to reach for the book. A good barometer to see if you have achieved this is showing your designs to people around the company. If you have to explain or justify them it’s not working.

You know you have done something special when you put them on the table without saying anything and you start to see everyone who is looking at them smile. This is by no means a common occurrence and for every time it does happen there are times when you miss the point and your designs are viewed as some sort of highly dangerous radioactive material. However when it does come together you feel such a sense of achievement it really does make you feel rather good.

See below for some of the brilliant covers Nick has designed for us:

The Painted Man cover

The Painted Man cover

The Desert Spear cover

The Desert Spear cover