Had I been less efficient about the book-related post the other day, I could have bundled this into it — but that’s just as well, because I think some things deserve their own posts. 🙂

HUGE congratulations to my friend Alyc Helms, who has just announced the sale of her first novel! I won’t go into the full saga of this book — Alyc herself does that quite well in the post — but I will say that I have the same kind of warm glow right now that I did when Mike Underwood sold his first book, only even more so. As she says over there, the two of us met on an archaeological dig in Wales, when I was writing Doppelganger. That Changeling game she ran to amuse us in the evenings? Led to me playing in the Changeling LARP in Bloomington, which led to me running Memento, which led to the Onyx Court series. (It may also lead to more fiction, if I end up rebuilding Ree’s story to become its own thing: Ree is the character I made for that game at the dig.) Alyc read the first draft of what eventually became Lies and Prophecy; she’s one of about four people in the world who can say that, and her enthusiasm over the years is part of what encouraged me keep working on that one. She has read more terrible drafts of my books than probably anybody, since I have a habit of flinging them at her when I get stuck and wailing “hellllllllllp, I can’t make it go.” So to have been around (and apparently useful) while she made her own journey from picking up a pen again to this kind of professional victory? Feels awesome.

Oh, and the book itself is pretty awesome, too. 😉 I’ll say more about it when it’s closer to the pub date, because there isn’t all that much use in raving about something you won’t be able to read until next year. But never fear! Raving is inevitable!

Congratulations to her once again, and I can’t wait to have The Dragons of Heaven on my shelves.