Hard on the heels of announcing my new YA deal, I want to announce that:
I am also working on a new epic fantasy trilogy for Orbit Books.
Details and publication dates to come.
All I can say right now is that of last night I had 83,000 words written on book one. I’m hoping that’s about halfway but we’ll see. Don’t laugh. 150,000 words is a crisp, efficient length for an epic fantasy. RIGHT?
More later this week as I want to ask everyone a question about sex.
I’ve mentioned in passing here and there online that I have been working on a YA fantasy but now that I have received an editorial letter that runs 11 single-spaced pages I think I can safely announce:
via my agent Russell Galen of the Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency I have sold an all new all original (new world) YA fantasy to Andrea Spooner at Little Brown Young Reader, the children’s/YA division of Hachette Book Group.
The book’s working title is MASK (subject to change).
The industry announcement of the sale describes it thusly:
A girl’s skill at a forbidden sport shakes the foundations of a rigid aristocracy.
That’s a decent assessment of the plot although it barely scrapes the surface of what the book is actually about.
My pitch line goes like this:
Little Women meets the Count of Monte Cristo in a fantasy setting inspired by Greco-Roman Egypt.
So that’s the GREAT news. I’m super excited to be working with LBYR and with editor Andrea Spooner and her assistant Deirdre Jones and the whole fabulous crew there.
The bad news? Well, I can’t say there is really any bad news in this wonderful project. However, the lead time for YA publishing is a lot longer than it is for adult fiction. The first draft is done (and in fact my agent and I agreed that to try to enter the YA field I needed to submit a manuscript rather than a proposal so I wrote the book on spec and sold it based on a complete manuscript). But given the time frame, what with space built in for revisions and LBYR’s timeline in which they want to be able to produce clean ARCs (Advance Reading Copies) 6 – 9 months before publication, MASK (or whatever title it picks up) will be published in the Spring/Summer 2015 season.
So, yeah, that’s a long time. But I’m still super excited that this is going to be a really great project.
Tomorrow I’ll have more news to announce. It’s gotten busy around here.
Speculative Fiction 2012: The Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary is now available in print editions (UK & US/Intl), with Kindle editions to come in May.
The collection is edited by Justin Landon and Jared Shurin and has an introduction by Mur Lafferty and an Afterword by Ana Grilo and Thea James. Jurassic London is the publisher.
Speculative Fiction celebrates the best in online non-fiction – the top book reviews, essays and commentary of the year. This first volume, edited by bloggers Justin Landon (Staffer’s Musings – US) and Jared Shurin (Pornokitsch – UK), collects over fifty pieces from science fiction and fantasy’s top authors, bloggers and critics.
It’s a great line up–click through to see their listing. My SFSignal piece “The Omniscient Breasts” is one of the included essays.
All profits will be donated to Room to Read.
I am hopelessly behind on writing up the Creole Part II post (for those awaiting it), much less other Spiritwalker related posts I have titled or partially sketched out like the one discussing how The Taming of the Shrew influenced the series, or the one about Place Names in Europa and how most of them aren’t made up, or the one about the greetings in Cold Magic (& how they’re not my invention), or the one discussing some of the choices I made in Cold Fire regarding Cat’s behavior as a post titled “Cat Alone.” Also additional posts I have partially written on subjects such as world building and writing and so on.
The main reason I haven’t gotten any of these posts finished is that I’ve been working to complete a first draft of a YA (Young Adult) fantasy which I’m writing for my own reasons, to see how it goes and if I can manage it. Which I have now done: A first draft of of volume one comes in at 125,000 words (that’s like a novella when you average 175,000 – 200,000 words per volume!) and I am revising it to send to my agent. Then we shall see. It is set in a secondary world and is not really based on anything else but as a pitch line I’m calling it Little Women meets Count of Monte Cristo in a world inspired by Greco-Roman Egypt.
Other news:
I have a story in a forthcoming anthology of epic fantasy themed short stories, Fearsome Journeys (edited by Jonathan Strahan) to be published May 2013.
Here’s the table of contents:
In the UK, as I have already mentioned, all seven of the Crown of Stars volumes are now available as e-books. The first three are available as e-book editions in the USA (no timetable for volumes 4 – 7 that I have been told). I’m not sure about Australia/NZ (if you have been able to purchase an ebook of one of the Crown of Stars volumes in Australia or NZ, please let me know).
I hope to be able to have some good news to report soon regarding e-book versions of the Novels of the Jaran as well as the Highroad Trilogy and The Labyrinth Gate.
Cold Steel is still scheduled for June 25, 2013 . . . . slowly getting closer.
Since I have not managed much value-added in my post, if you have a question to ask me about any of my books, about writing or any related subject, or about something else, feel free to do so here. And I will answer.
The February 2013 Apex Magazine is out with a Shakespeare theme.
I have a story (“My Voice is in My Sword”) and am interviewed in the issue, which you can find here.
Again, here is the link to a retrospective I wrote, looking back on the Crown of Stars series, which you can find at the Orbit Books web site.
All seven of the Crown of Stars books are now available in ebook form, from Orbit UK in the UK region.
The first three volumes of Crown of Stars are available in ebook form in the USA and other English-language venues. No schedule yet for the ebook publications of #4 – 7, although they are all available in print form.
This week’s Spiritwalker Monday post was supposed to be The Creole of Expedition Part Two (Part One from last week can be found here), in which I go into detail (and quote extensively from people who know more than I do) about how I “created” a creole specifically for the city of Expedition so the people who live there could have a regionally specific way of talking.
I haven’t had time to finish writing that post because of other deadlines.
1) I am still working my way through the page proofs of COLD STEEL.
Of course I am looking for typos and grammatical mistakes, of which so far I believe I have found only two in quite a long manuscript, which means the Editor, Associate Editor, copy editor, and Sr Production Director have all done an excellent job. There is one odd glitch (marked by the orange post-its) which has to be trimmed out throughout [number strings that got dropped into/left in from some previous cycle of production]. Given the paucity of actual typos, my focus has been making any last (minor) changes such as changing a word or rephrasing a conversation or (in one case) adding a small revelation to the end of a chapter. This massive project is due at the end of the week.
2) A final copy-edit read-through of my short story “My Voice Is In My Sword,” which was originally published in WEIRD TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE (edited by Katharine Kerr & Martin H. Greenberg, 1994) and is being reprinted (together with a new interview) in APEX MAGAZINE‘s February 2013 issue. It’s now done and turned in.
3) Edits on my short story (technically a novelette) for Jonathan Strahan’s FEARSOME JOURNEYS (Solaris/S&S Summer 2013), a collection of original epic fantasy short stories. Due at the end of this week also.
Because of these deadlines, I plan to finish and post the Creole Part Two post — next week.
For this week, have a jpeg of the final cover for COLD STEEL. Note the cut on her cheek.
ETA:
I’ve edited the image below out and asking you to go to the image here (Cold Steel Final Cover).
Finally some news on ebook releases of the Crown of Stars series.
This information is for the USA market only, where the series is published by DAW Books.
I will post news about the UK/Aus/NZ region (Orbit UK) as soon as I know anything.
KING’S DRAGON is available now as an ebook in Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and presumably mobi and epub versions.
PRINCE OF DOGS and THE BURNING STONE are scheduled to be released in ebook versions on January 15.
I do not currently have a schedule for volumes 4 – 7.
A question for those of you outside of the USA/Canada and the UK and the Australia/NZ regions who like to read English language e-texts: How are you able to get English language ebooks? Are you in a restricted market, or do you have some other mechanism to get downloads?
The good news: Cold Steel is finished, revised, and in production at my publisher, Orbit Books.
The reality: Production is a process that takes many months.
The book gets copy edited for grammatical, punctuation, and consistency errors, and then I have to go over the copy edits as well, at which time I can make any last line editing changes. For instance, I think I am going to have to cut the word “cocky” from one sentence. [Copy editing is good news, though, since a good copy-editing job makes the book better.]
More good news: After copy editing, the book gets “typeset”–that is, converted from double spaced manuscript format into the format seen in books. The interior of a book is designed, just as the exterior cover design is. Font, kerning, spacing and other graphic design elements are just as important for ease of reading and a positive aesthetic look even when it is just text. A beautifully designed text is a pleasure to read.
Several proofeading passes are made through the typeset pages to eradicate as many typos and errors as possible (although some will always slip through). The text must be converted into various ebook formats. A cover is designed, tweaked, printed. Marketing, orders, and distribution also have to be dealt with in the lead up to printing and the actual arrival on the shelves. And this accounting is just the quick, simplistic version of all the things the publisher does. (I haven’t even touched on how my editor helps me make this the best book possible, because that part of the process has already happened.)
The other thing the publisher does is schedule books a year or even farther in advance. While there are exceptions of faster turn around times, a novel that is part of an ongoing series is often published (on the shelves) about a year after the manuscript is turned in (sometimes a year after it is turned in with all final revisions). Even if a publisher is trying to hold open a slot, if the book comes in too late, they will then have to move the book to a later open slot because they need the time for production, and sometimes an even later slot because they have already scheduled books that have been turned in.
That’s what happened with Cold Steel.
Let me explain: I started writing Cold Steel in late February or early March 2011. My wonderful brother in law (my sister’s husband) was at this time dying of brain cancer (he died in June 2011). His death hit hard, and combined with some other life stressors (nothing life threatening) to make writing the book slow going. Meanwhile writing the last volume in a trilogy is always challenging because it is important to tie everything together in a way that fits with what came before as well as fulfilling–as far as humanly possible–the promise of the opening. For instance, at one point I wrote 150 pages of material I ended up cutting (for branching down the wrong story tributary) as I tried to figure out what approach to take to the story.
Note: Cold Steel is 227,000 words in final draft. The first draft was more like 270,000 words, but I cut about 50,000 words before I even turned it in to my editor. That doesn’t take into account the aforementioned 150 pages I had cut while in the process of writing the first draft. Naturally, my editor wanted more cuts, and she wanted revisions as well. So, all in all, I expect I wrote about 325,000 total words (give or take ten thousand or more) for a final revised draft of 227K.
Meanwhile Orbit was holding open a January 2013 slot, but when I could not make the March 1, 2012, turn-in date they had to move the book. The next available slot — and remember that meanwhile they have other books by other authors being turned in and scheduled — was June 2013.
So that’s the bad news: Cold Steel will be published on June 25, 2013.
As it happened, I finished a draft in mid April, revised it and turned in a preliminary draft to my editor in May, got revision requests in June, and turned in a final draft in late August.
However, the EXCELLENT news remains that the novel is complete, is proceeding through production, and is (I can safely say) the very best book I could write (with the aid of the always crucial comments from my various beta readers and the firm hand of my evil dedicated and mild-mannered editor Devi Pillai).
Cold Steel completes the Spiritwalker trilogy.
The other excellent news is that I have the best, most perspicacious, and remarkably patient readers, and I appreciate each and every one of you.
Therefore, from now until publication, I hereby commit to making a post a week (in countdown format) specifically about the Spiritwalker books and/or the Spiritwalker universe that may include answers to your questions, my comments about the writing process or the characters or the world, biographical vignettes, and (I hope) a few short stories. It will be tagged “Spiritwalker Monday” and will, I hope, mostly appear on Mondays. I’m also going to try to continue with more regularity my long-promised semi-regular world building posts, but I’m trying to not be too ambitious here.
That makes this post Spiritwalker Monday 35 (next week will be 34, etc).
Again, my thanks for your patience.
If you have any questions or a subject you would like to see addressed over the next 7 months, please let me know here or via email or on Tumblr, Twitter, or Facebook.
I will post the final cover as soon as I have it. Now I have to get back to work on my next project.
On April 17 I finished a draft of COLD STEEL. I just spent the last month revising that extremely imperfect draft and sent a revised draft to my editor last night (May 10). She will read through it and beat me over the head until I revise it more (that’s her job).
If she accepts the revisions I make to her direction, then I’ll be able to announce a confirmed publication date. However, due to how long it has taken me to write the novel, I can sadly say that it will not be out in 2012.
My apologies for the delay. Partly the book was simply very hard to write, and partly we had a death in my extended family in 2011 that took a toll. Finally, I want this book to be the best it can possibly be.
This is how it goes from here:
Editor reads it and makes revision suggestions. I revise.
Editor reads it one more time and makes final revision suggestions. I revise again to her suggestions and also usually with some things of my own (and from beta readers) that I want to fix and/or change.
It goes to copy editing, in which a copy editor goes through the manuscript looking for grammatical and punctuation and continuity errors. After the copy edit, the manuscript is essentially in its final form.
It is then typeset into the printed form it will have in the book. This typeset manuscript has to be proofread for mistakes and errors.
Meanwhile, the art department will be working on a cover.
All these things take time, and once they are complete, the book will go to the printer, for paper books, and converted to ebook form for the various ebook versions.
If a book is a bestseller the time it takes for this process can be accelerated, but as (sadly!) the Spiritwalker Trilogy is not a bestseller (it could still happen, she said optimistically!), it will go through the production process at the ordinary speed.
That is my report for the week ending May 11. I’ll keep you posted on the next set of developments as soon as I have any. For now, I’m going to dig out my desk and clear out my inbox, and think about what I will be doing next.
Next week I will have two guest posts, one from Australian writer Tansy Raynor Roberts and one from Philippines writer Rochita Loenen-Ruiz.
Thanks — I have to say, my readers have been, as always, wonderful, encouraging, and perspicacious. Thank you for your patience.
Over at The Ranting Dragon site & forum, an interview with me just went up.
Among other things, I talk about some aspects of the world building of the Spiritwalker books;
Additionally, the legal system in the world is not the same as in ours. There is no English common law here; law is based on a rough amalgamation of Roman civil law, what we know of Celtic law, and some very basic elements drawn from reconstructions of the famous Mali charter called the Kurukan Fuga. I also made an attempt to show family structures as they might have evolved out of different culture traditions. In book two, I try very imperfectly to portray a conception of rights that is more community-based rather than individually-based because of the differing nature of community and relationship in West African and indigenous Native American societies.
I also answer the questions if I prefer to read female writers (over male writers) and why I value diversity in genre fiction. And more! Much more!
I have struggled to think of what I might say about Anne McCaffrey’s work. I read the first Dragonflight trilogy, the Dragonsinger trilogy, the first Crystal Singer book, Restoree, and The Ship Who Sang. If I read other of her books or stories I don’t recall, as the ones I list are the ones that stayed with me. I’ve not re-read them.
It’s really difficult for me to quantify what the books meant to me, harder than I thought it would be because her death has forced me to consider the part her novels played in my development as a writer. I never met Anne McCaffrey, and I never wrote to her. But she is one of the women who made my career possible because she helped forge that path.
These were the books in which girls got to have sfnal adventures. I think it’s easy to ignore how revolutionary they were — but they were.