The paperback of Survival Game is out now.

The paperback of Survival Game, the sequel to Extinction Game, is published in the UK today! And if you prefer ebooks, the price of the Kindle edition has dropped as well. So if you don't have it already, go git it. 

If you're in the US, you've got a little while to go - the paperback won't be out there until July. But if you want to preorder on Amazon, go here.

I also have an article up at Torbooks.co.uk about the writing of the book. No, wait, that's a lie. It's got nothing to do with the writing of the book. Sort of. Maybe. Well actually, it's about the question every writer but me hates to answer, which is where ideas come from. And that means brain science. Read it here. 

Here's some reviews to put you in the mood:

• Gibson's take on two thoroughly familiar tropes (Cold War + apocalypse) is actually quite refreshing ... The prose is also satisfyingly good - FantasyLiterature.com

• Gibson’s artful worldbuilding sets the stage(...)it is the emotionally-driven characters and their curiosity about alternate possibilities that makes this story so compelling. - amazingstoriesmag.com

•  If you like SF romps combined with an exploration of a solid SF trope wrapped up in a high-powered adventure then you'll love Gary Gibson's Survival Game. - Concatenation.org

• This is exactly the kind of SF I enjoy – thoughtful and intelligent, yet action-packed with great ideas. - sffworld.com

• Gibson turns the genre on its head ... He excels at depicting real-feeling destruction and the tenacity and weaknesses of survivors, along with the moral wrestling of survivor guilt. This potent, teeth-gritting SF thriller shows death and love only a shadow away from our ordinary lives -- Publishers Weekly starred review of Extinction Game (Book One)

Expectations

"But, over several months, my manuscript was rejected for reasons that bewildered me: often because all the slots for debut literary fiction that year were taken; once because I was a woman; but mostly because editors “just didn’t love it enough”. When I took the call from my agent saying we had no deal, I cried like a little girl. I defiantly started a second novel. It was my masterpiece, but it bombed, too. Years of work and emotional investment wasted, I finally gave up, to save my sanity."

 This  article in the Guardian speaks to me in a way its author didn't intend; of the value of persistence and of false expectations. Writing novels is often seen, wrongly, as a primarily middle-class pursuit, and as a result a certain number of those who chase publication expect or hope it to support them in a middle-class lifestyle - I recall a recent article in an Irish newspaper where a writer spoke of having to go back to his civil service day job because writing novels didn't pay him enough to support a wife, two kids and a mortgage.

I read articles like this and laugh like a drain. I guess it says something about the kind of writers I admire, who always extolled the virtue of constantly writing, and writing fast if need be. When I think of being a writer, I think of Michael Moorcock, sitting in a cramped apartment in Ladbroke Grove in the mid-sixties, banging out fantasy novel after fantasy novel to keep New Worlds afloat, or Philip K. Dick, making ends meet in a record shop while similarly hammering out novel after novel. Those are serious writers - far more serious in their intent and focus than many of those who fancy themselves 'literary' writers, who are more taken with a vision of accolades than of ripping out ideas and putting them on the page, hour after day after week after year.