For me, it was Roman Britain.

The Venerable Bede....?

Katerina's Lame-O Idea for getting publisher attention wrt Blood Opera #4. First, identify the publisher in question. Second, identify this year's releases. Third, post reviews to Amazon about those books, saying, too bad this is not something I really wanted to read, like Tanith Lee's Blood Opera #4, it's a such shame the publisher is too cheap to let us have it.

There's probably a better idea out there; I just haven't tripped over it yet.

on edit: Like visiting the official website: She's gotten a new publisher, and they offer a mailto link:

tanithbooks@egertonhousepublishing.co.uk

Um, one question: is everyone certain this is the publisher's fault?

Because there a couple of writers who have had their readers dangling for years on a series or new book - Mary Gentle is one, I believe, and Melanie Rawn for certain is another - and the responsibility for those is on the writer's not doing it or wanting to do it, and not the publisher.

In Melly's case, it was a family tragedy. I don't know Gentle, so I don't know what the deal was there.

But as much as I hate to admit it (being the writer, not the publisher), sometimes it's the writer's doing.

I got my info re: publisher and Blood Opera #4 off the official Tanith Lee website. She says they didn't feel there was a market for the book. I feel that I wish to read it nonetheless.

(from 2000)The same is true of the Scarabae Blood Opera. One book remains to be written. It would detail how the murdered Faran and Berenice get their revenge on the monstrous Cain, and how the conflict between Ruth/Anna and Malach is finally resolved - and, a lot more. But so far no one will buy the last volume of this (in fact really bestselling) series.

In that case, let's go get 'em. Dumbass publishers.

Huh, I'd wondered what happened to Melanie Rawn. I was afraid it was something tragic. Her books were a definite guilty pleasure for me.

One of our closest family friends is an Oxford don from Cornwall, and having known him for years I'd be terrified to write Cornwall. The Cornish are fierce and proud and very much have their own ideas about How Things Are. I asked him to read Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle (and hey, YA ghost story!), and he was moderately accepting of it, but felt it didn't get near the truth of the country.

Mary Gentle doesn't have any series waiting on closure. Of her past series, all the books stood alone, except for Ash, which was released as one novel in the UK and as a series of four in quick succession in the UK.

Possibly you're thinking of Kate Elliott, Deb? I don't think we're ever going to get another Jaran book.

Tanith Lee has spoken freely and bitterly in interviews about publishers not being willing to pick up a new Blood Opera book, although from my perspective out in here in the bleachers it sounds like for a while she wasn't willing to take a lower advance in spite of falling sales and sell-through.

The maze book sounds like William Sleator's House of Stairs.

I like The Changeover a lot, but my favorite Mahy is The Tricksters, and not just because the fantasy novel the teenage protagonist is writing is bad and good in exactly the way a sixteen-year-old's novel should be--purple and exotic and full of not-terribly-sublimated eroticism. (*cough* It may have borne some slight resemblance to what I was writing at that age.) The novel-within-the-novel also reminded me a bit of bad Tanith Lee.

Which brings me to Tanith Lee, whose works are extremely variable. She can be very, very good and very, very bad. I agree with a lot of the suggestions people have made, especially the Flat Earth books and The Silver Metal Lover (except for the ending). I'm also fond of Don't Bite the Sun/Drinking Sapphire Wine (recently published in an omnibus as Biting the Sun), a pair of weird sf novel set in a future where everyone is effectively immortal and body modification, recreation, and gender-switching are really common, and I have a grave weakness for Sabella, which is about a vampire on Mars. Of her kids books, my favorite has always been her charming wry fairy tale, The Dragon's Hoard. If your library has it, or a good interlibrary loan program, I strongly recommend checking out her collection Dreams of Light and Darkness, which has a lot of her best short fiction.

I will pause to breathe now.

No, I won't.

I haven't read him yet, but y'all who liked Moorcock and his heirs may want to check out China Mieville--his books keep being mentioned, approvingly, as being in that line. Influenced by Moorcock and Peake and M. John Harrison.

I'm about 9 chapters into Mieville's Perdido Street Station, and I just can't make myself go any further for now. I will have another go at it shortly. It reminds me most of Gene Wolfe for those who like his stuff. It is dense and chewy and there's lots going on, but I just can't make myself like it yet. Paul Park is another who comes to mind (Soldiers of Paradise, Sugar Rain, The Cult of Loving Kindness, etc.). I found Park's stuff to be a bit more accessible and I made my way through, and enjoyed it.

I really like Mieville's King Rat, kinda Neverwhereish. Haven't read Perdido Street Station yet