stillsostrange

The "Recent Entries" tab mocks me with inaccuracy.



Progress continues! Pieces fall into place!

In other exciting news, today I made anticuchos de corazon for the first time, and it was delightful. Although I'm not sure how you mess up anything as lovely as beef heart.

Also also, today my story "Snakebit" went live at Strange Horizons. I was so enamored of hearts I nearly missed it. There is also a podcast! This is so fancy!

( Books read in 2012 )

A much better reading year than last year, if not as fabulous as one might like. The writing front was also not as fabulous as one might like, but not too shabby. Kingdoms came out, and Brave New Love. And maybe A Fantasy Medley 2--I got my author copies, at least. I finished an extremely thorough revision of Dreams, and my fabulous agent has sent it out into the world. I also tidied up a partial of Pinion, and started a few other projects. I did not finish any new short stories, but oh well.

I'm not as happy to be rid of 2012 as some of my f-list. I would like to be more productive in 2013, and slightly less crippled with indecision (well, laugh), but if nothing else the success of Project Valkyrie and my Run For Your Lives training has made this a pleasantly memorable year. We'll see how Warrior Dash turns out. Hopefully 2013 will be the year of the unassisted pull-up.

And of course, there was that whole adoption thing. Can't forget that.

Hopefully the boy will find his missing driver's license soon, so as not to thwart our plan to go for cocktails and Elysium tonight. My house has already thwarted my plans to repurpose last Halloween's griffin costume by eating my feathers and copper foil. I'll be less of a danger to myself and others without dozens of sharp copper feathers, I suppose.

The good news is, The Drowning City has earned out its advance. The bad news is, the devils of basket accounting keep me from those delicious royalties until the other two earn out. (The Bone Palace is close! Kingdoms, alas, has a way to go.)

So, just to get the tackiness over with: Necromancers make great presents for the holidays! So do manticores! Consider giving your loved ones the gift of angst and setting!

Okay. Sorry. Had to get that out of my system.

We now return you to your previously scheduled programming.

Originally posted by squirrel_monkey at Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top

Because plunderpuss asked on Twitter.

I've only had to do this once, with The Drowning City, but it went something like this:

My editor asked me if I knew any authors who might be willing to blurb the book. Luckily, I did. He also asked my agent if she had any suggestions. He then made a list of authors he thought might be appropriate--some of whom were Orbit authors and some who I'm pretty sure weren't--as well as my and arcaedia's suggestions. Those authors who were willing and who hadn't read the book in draft already were sent bound galleys. That's how I got blurbs from Jacqueline Carey and Brent Weeks.

Not every publisher sends out bound galleys; PDFs are also used, and sometimes the author will send out Word files, if that's all that's available. I've heard that some editors make the author do more work about soliciting blurbs, which sounds completely cruel. This is one of the times where professional networking may be of use--by which I mean meeting people at cons and being pleasant and friendly online, not spamming people on Twitter. DO NOT SPAM PEOPLE ON TWITTER. I MEAN IT!

If you know other writers, a polite email asking if they would be willing or able to read your book and possibly blurb it is perfectly okay. The worst that will happen is that a) they'll say no upfront, probably because of time constraints, or b) they'll agree to look at the ms but not actually have time or inclination to offer a blurb. DO NOT NAG PEOPLE. Obviously. If they have to time to read the book and have something positive to say, you'll probably get a blurb. Someone at your publisher will perform blurb-fu and trim the quote down to be punchy and cover-sized.

With any luck, the blurb won't say "No one can touch [AUTHOR] when he is on fire," or "[CHARACTER] is as hardboiled as a 5-minute egg." "Lush and evocative" seems pretty popular.

While I'm sure someone somewhere has said nice things about a book that they didn't really mean, most authors I know have no desire to lie to readers or their friends. I also have no idea how you would ever make money off blurbs. Maybe that only happens to people way more famous than me.

Title Redacted
Words today: 1653
Words total: 1653
Darling: "There's a ghost in the garden. If it stays there much longer it will kill the tomatoes."
Mean things: interrupted sleep, familial expectations

I received some news today that's affected my choice of WiP, above and beyond my natural flakery. I'm going to be all cryptic and shit four a couple of weeks, just to be safe, but while the news is a little scary, the change in projects is actually pretty soothing. (This one has a title, a soundtrack, and an epigraph out of the gate.) We'll see how long that lasts. I'll try to be more forthcoming when I have more details.

Yesterday brought doubled good news. "Red", my not-exactly-a-zombie-romance featuring goth bicycle gangs in post-apocalyptic Austin, has sold to Brave New Love, a dystopian YA anthology edited by Paula Guran. (For those of you who followed the Wicked Pretty Things debacle, yes, there was a change of editors. I've worked with Paula before, and am very happy that she took over the anthology.)

Shortly after that, I learned that "Bone Garden"--or Boywhores vs. Oracular Demons--was accepted by its anthology as well. I don't have the all-clear to share details yet, but I'm very happy to be accepted by this publisher.

The CEM for Kingdoms went back to my editor today, leaving me with with a surprising fondness for the book, and the restless itch to write The Bitter Road, aka the unsold fourth Necromancer Chronicle. Not to mention The Poison Court.

That leaves the to-do list looking like this:

Finish Kingdoms of Dust
Write "Bone Garden"
Eurocon
Write dystopian YA story
Kingdoms CEM
Revise "Bone Garden"
Revise "Red"
Write synop & 3 for Oracle of Plagues
WorldCon
Armadillocon
Kingdoms page proofs
Pitch option novel
Poke "Flood" with a sharp stick
Poke "Birthgrave" (Isyllt's origin story) with a sharp stick

Project Valkyrie and Operation: Badger Reduction continue apace. Several of my shirts are becoming less like sausage casings, but I seem to have lost all my swimming stamina since last summer.

Now I guess I'll start looking for awesome stuff to pack into Oracle. Any suggestions?

Fourth-day Universe is having a contest, with many categories. The Bone Palace is one of the contenders for Best Horror Novel of 2010 (I know, but I guess it is kinda spooky?). If you have some free clicking time, feel free to vote for any of the many fine books nominated for various things.

Today I sent back the page proofs for the End of an Aeon anthology! It's scheduled for print and ebook in July. I'm so glad that "Blue Valentine" will finally be loose in the world, even if I'm not in love with its commas anymore.

Now I need to read someone else's book to crit, and then try to figure out what's going on with my boywhores and oracular demons.

In prowling for epigraphs for Kingdoms, I found "Dust", by Dorothy Anderson. I'm quite smitten, but I'm having a hell of time getting any information on her out of Google. It was apparently published in the Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920 (William Stanley Braithwaite, ed.), but that's all I have.

Is anyone familiar with Dorothy Anderson, or know where I should look for more information?

My other favorite so far is Carl Sandburg's "Troths", which is too short for two lines fair use. At least I have contact information for his estate.

The magic of LJ comes through again! I figured out my elephant. I also named my warrior priests--they ended up being the red pilgrims, but thanks for all the suggestions. Bonus thanks to desperance, because "the Risen" is excellent and I'll have to use it somewhere, and to lindensphinx, because I found another home for Illumined.

Now I have to insert the newly-discovered elephant into relevant scenes, and prepare for the elephant stampede that now gets to happen somewhere in the second part of the book. Okay, maybe that metaphor has run its course. Nonetheless, I look forward to the stampede.

Also, I feel that I should sing the praises of my publisher. Remember the cover art prints Orbit was giving away? Anna-my-UK-editor sent me one! I now have a gorgeous print of the yellow Bone Palace cover, which I've framed and will soon hang.