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Megan Lindholm will be attending the 2021 World Fantasy Convention virtually. The con takes place in Montréal, Quebec this weekend - virtual memberships are still available if you want to participate.

Here's her schedule:

• Saturday the 6th of November at 10:00am "Are there heroes anymore?" Panel discussion with Yves Meynard, Brandon Crilly, Megan Lindholm and Julie E. Czerneda

• Saturday the 6th of November at 3:00pm Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb) Reading

• Sunday the 7th of November at 10:00am Interview with Lifetime Achievement Winner: Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb, interview by Shaun Duke

Additionally, the Fantasy Awards Ceremony is on the 7th of November beginning at 2:30pm. Megan Lindholm is to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for her long and celebrated career.

Note for Sunday's schedule especially: in Canada and the US, daylight savings ends on Sunday, November 7th, at 2:00 am. Times posted reflect that change. You can use a tool like the Time and Date converter to figure out your local time for the events.

There's a brand new Megan Lindholm story in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The story is titled A Dime and appears in the current issue which is the November/December 2021 one.

You can find ways to subscribe to the magazine or buy back issue at their website.

Robin Hobb will be one of the authors participating in #VoyagerCon 2021, which is a virtual festival run by her UK publisher HarperVoyager. The event takes place online Friday the 10th and Saturday the 11th of September and tickets are free!

Sign up for Friday & sign up for Saturday - all you need to do is to register with your name and email address.

The 2021 World Fantasy Award finalists have been announced and this year Megan Lindholm aka Robin Hobb is to receive the Life Achievement Award, which is "presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field". The awards will be presented during the next World Fantasy Convention which will be held this November in Montreal, Quebec.

This is a well deserved award for an author who has been steadily releasing much loved fantastical stories for decades: from the first Ki & Vandien short story in 1979, through the 16-volume epic of the Realm of the Elderlings, to the most recent urban fantasy adventures of Celtsie. Between her two pen names, she has published 30 novels and 37 short stories of various lengths as well as contributed essays and forewords to other publications in the genre. Her works have been translated to over 25 languages, adapted into graphic novels, and inspired musicians such as Within Temptation.

For her full bibliography, please visit the wiki pages for Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm.

Heartfelt congratulations Megan!

A brand new Megan Lindholm story has appeared in the latest Asimov's Magazine (the July/August 2021 issue). It is titled Giving Up the Ghost. The story features Celtsie who keeps a pet boarding shop in Tacoma and has some very special skills. We first met her in the 2018 short story Community Service, and Megan has mentioned that she's currently writing another Celtsie story.

If you don't have a subscriction to Asimov's, you can also buy single issues through a number of online sellers.

Songs of Love and Death, a 2010 anthology that contains a Six Duchies short story titled Blue Boots, got republished recently. This is a new paperback and ebook edition released in December 2020 by Saga Press and is now available through booksellers and ebook stores.

Songs of Love and Death was edited by GRR Martin and Gardner Dozois and features authors such Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Diana Gabaldon and Peter S. Beagle.

Blue Boots is a story of a young Buck girl called Timbal and takes place around the later years of King Shrewd’s reign.

There have been various editions over the past decade from a US-only hardcover to split ebook editions, to audiobooks and a Turkish translation which are all listed on the wiki page.

Robin Hobb's UK and US publishers, HarperVoyager and DelRey books, have been celebrating the 25th anniversary of the original publications of the Farseer trilogy by yearly releases of new hardbacks editions.

This particular set of books features full-colour illustrations by Magali Villeneuve, and unlike previous anniversary and special editions of the trilogy, is not strictly limited in numbers.

The 25th anniversary edition of Assassin's Apprentice was released in October 2019 in both markets and Royal Assassin followed in June 2020.

The last part, Assassin's Quest, was just released in the US this March, and the UK edition is set to be available in June 2021.

The US and UK editions have the same artwork inside, but the overall designs are slightly different. Steph @bookplaits has done great side-by-side comparisons of the first two volumes: Assassin's Apprentice and Royal Assassin.

If you are looking for a signed book to own, the Signed Page still has some copies of the US edition of Assassin’s Quest in stock and some signed copies are also available through University Bookstore.

Back in September 2020, Folio Society published a new illustrated edition of the Farseer trilogy. This is a boxed set of hardcovers with a new introduction by Robin Hobb and a redrawn double-page map by Neil Gower. Each book has 5 full-page colour illustrations by David Palumbo.

A set of 240 copies of the trilogy were made available with a bookplate signed by the author as well as the illustrator; these sold out in a matter of hours. The regular edition is still available. If you're curious to see what these books look like inside, Pontus Presents has a detailed review video on youtube.

Last December, GrimOak Press published a special illustrated edition of Wizard of the Pigeons to mark the book’s the 35th anniversary. The illustrations and cover art are by Tommy Arnold. All the publication details are in the wiki. There are 4 different versions of the book: an ebook and a trade hardcover are available through various booksellers, but there are also two limited double-signed editions which you can purchase through the GrimOak Press website. Honouring the book’s narrative, the publisher is donating 5 percent of the profits to the National Veterans Foundation . If you're looking for a signed copy of the trade hardcover, try The Signed Page or the University Bookstore.

Some links to promotional interviews related to the publication: A facebook live with Megan Lindholm, Tommy Arnold & Magali Villeneuve + Megan Lindholm’s post about how the pigeons became part of the story, as well as a reddit AMA thread for the this new edition of Wizard of the Pigeons.

You may have noticed a lack of updates even though there hasn't been a lack of news to post about. This is partly due to one of the site scripts slowly getting more and more obsolete. It turned out to be impossible to replace it with a similar setup, so I've had to make some compromises and restructure some areas of the site. These things happen when you build on top of old things like the Buckkeep castle, and thePlenty.net has just turned 18!

Things will unfortunately look disorderly for a bit until I get the change to unify the layouts of all the different sections of the website, but for now it's functionality over form. The biggest change is the location of this news feed, which means the RSS feed also has a new address (all the old news will be kept in an archive, so those links will keep working). You can also follow thePlenty.net on social media, including on twitter, instagram, tumblr and pinterest (the RSS feed is also set up to post to facebook).

A series of round-up news posts about recent book releases will be posted soon.