it begins . . . .

Actually, it began a while ago, when my agent asked me to write a sample of the next Onyx Court book to send out with the proposal. I already had nearly eight thousand words in the bank when I announced the deal.

But today is the real beginning, the day when I sit down and start cranking out words at a steady pace. The LBR icon will come back, I’m sure, for progress posts, but this first one gets my brand-spanking-new comet icon. (It really ought to be a pic of Halley’s comet, but the sad truth is that the 1986 return did not produce any pictures half so spectacular as this one — whichever comet it is — and the various older depictions don’t make great icons. You’d all be wondering what the white smudge is, or why I have a Bayeux Tapestry icon for an eighteenth-century book.)

Anyhoo. 1093 words: a hair over quota, to cross the 9K boundary and make myself feel good. I’ll talk more later about Galen, the mortal protagonist of this book, and the ways in which I’m going to have to stretch to write him, but so far, so good. I think it’s safe to say Galen is not in much danger of being boring.

Tomorrow, I get to play with a centaur . . .

Wolverine verdict, no spoilers

I wish I remembered whose comment it was I read earlier today, re: the Wolverine movie, but I agree with it. Basically, unlike The Dark Knight or the earlier X-Men films or a bunch of the other superhero movies we’ve gotten these past years, this movie? Is not trying to talk about any Issues. Not civil rights, or vigilante justice, or anything like that.

It’s just an action movie.

With superheroes.

And it’s a perfectly competent action movie, as such things go. It has its good moments and its plot holes and some lines of dialogue I would have changed, and what I found the most interesting was the way its entire science-fictional component is just one piece of the whole, rather than the central focus. I mean, how far into the movie are you the first time anybody uses the word “mutant”? And then it’s just a line of dialogue like any other, not an occasion to stop and exposit. Mutants. Moving on. The script just kind of assumes you’re on board with the basic concept, and proceeds with its action-movie business without any further ado.

Which strikes me as an efficient statement on the mainstreaming of genre tropes. I mean, hell — they spend more time explaining the gadgets in a Bond movie than they did on the mutant powers here. And y’know, I think I like that.

Five and Six

It’s May 1st. Do you know what that means?

Time for me to start work on the sequel to In Ashes Lie.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Onyx Court series will continue! I’m slated for two more books: one in the eighteenth century, one in the nineteenth. Technically they have working titles, but around the house, they’re known as “the comet book” and “the Victorian book.” (Exciting, I know.) The latter was first announced back in 2007 — the original plan was for me to write that one instead of In Ashes Lie, because I was going to do these things out of chronological order. The comet book goes in between: culminating in 1759, it mashes together Halley’s comet, Sir Isaac Newton (yes, I know he’s dead by then), alchemy, and the consequences of the Great Fire of London (coming in June to a bookshelf near you).

So, the series in order: an Elizabethan faerie spy fantasy, a Stuart faerie disaster fantasy, an Enlightenment faerie alchemical fantasy, and a Victorian faerie steampunk fantasy.

(And then maybe a Blitz book and a modern book, but I’d have to think up plots for those first.)

There’s a bit of a shakeup on the back end, though it won’t mean much for you the readers: the publisher for these next two will be Tor, not Orbit. No terribly exciting drama to tell you about; it’s just that Orbit wanted me to work on something new before returning to this series, but I was keen to keep going. The intent is for Tor to put out the comet book in 2010, and the Victorian book in 2011. Both will be trade paperbacks, with a possible later reissue as mass-market. And OMG I can’t wait to write these things.

I’ll in London again in early June, doing the research round. Look for Trip-Blogging Part Three then, and ongoing posts about my reading and wordcounts, which I will endeavour to make interesting. (In fact, stay tuned for revelations as to which recent questions on this journal have been secretly comet-related . . . .)

Eighteenth century, here I come!

A mixed wiktory

“Remembering Light”

Man, I finish this thing before game, only to find out game’s been canceled. Curse you, zunger! <shakes fist>

Oh well. Thanks to that deadline, I managed to get a fourth story completed before the end of April (if only just barely). It’s a flailing mess in places, because I kept changing my mind on certain details, like how Noirin’s world is falling apart and what exactly Last was trying to get out of all of this, but that is, as we say, what revision’s for.

I now have four Driftwood stories, of which two have been published; the other is a little flash piece that doesn’t mean much unless you’re already familiar with Driftwood, hence not something I’m every going to try to sell. But that’s enough for me to legitimately feel like this constitutes a set — especially once I find the time to revise this thing and get it on the market.

But right now, we’re going to go put something on the Magic Picture Box and drool on ourselves for a while. Because cramming three thousand words of this thing out of my head and onto the screen in a couple of hours has left me more than a little brain-dead.

Almost . . . there . . .

“Remembering Light”

Nearly 2K more on this story, as of this afternoon. Can I finish it before it’s time to go to game tonight? Ergo, before the end of the month? Let’s find out . . . .

last excerpt

Normally, when posting novel excerpts, I just go from the beginning until I reach a suitable stopping point a suitable way in.

In Ashes Lie, however, is a nonlinear novel: it cuts back and forth between the four days of the Great Fire, and the events leading up to that point. Because of that, I’ve decided to skip ahead, in order to give you a taste of the Fire scenes. (Don’t worry about spoilers; the only thing you really need to know is that Nicneven — mentioned in an earlier scene — has grown to be a major threat against the Onyx Court.)

I don’t really get into the mode of Blowing Shit Up until later, but hopefully that will whet your appetite just a little.

(If you missed or want to re-read the earlier excerpts, they start here.)

That’s it for IAL samples — you’ll have the rest of the book in a little over a month — but stay tuned for a few more treats . . . .

more linky

Both of these are at least tangentially writing-related.

First, the humor: “Six Writers Who Accidentally Crapped Out Masterpieces”

Second, the analysis: Daily Kos on Dollhouse. Not normally a place I look for writing about TV, but I found it an interesting post. Truth is, I haven’t been watching Dollhouse, not because I think it sounds bad, but because I think it sounds like a concept that’s doomed to failure given the environment of TV production, and I don’t want to get attached to it only to have it pulled out from under me. But I suspect the analysis given there isn’t far off the mark. It doesn’t automatically negate the criticisms I’ve also heard — just because Whedon is trying to do this kind of thing doesn’t mean he’s succeeding — but I’m thinking of opening a betting pool as to how many papers on Dollhouse there will be at next year’s ICFA.

What a fascinating modern age we live in.

On the one hand, this is fascinating, and a great example of using modern technology to collate information usefully and accessibly.

On the other hand, I’m not sure how good it is for anybody’s peace of mind to be able to hit “refresh” on a map of swine flu cases.

Still — fascinating. And more interesting to me than the CDCEmergency Twitter feed.

odds ‘n ends

“A Tiny Feast” — The first paragraph made me think it was not my kind of story, but then I read on. The New Yorker does occasionally publish fantasy . . . .

More on Strunk & White — since the last piece I linked to had gone behind a paywall by the time I got around to doing so. Five perspectives on the book, none of them entirely flattering.

About that used copy of Ashes — Or rather, about other books in the same situation. Definitely there’s something a bit whiffy about the whole affair, though I couldn’t say for sure what’s going on.

Supposedly it takes five things to make a post. I guess that makes this 60% of a post, then.

Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

Yes, folks, I’m doing it again. In fact, I’m doing it even more than in the past two years: I’ve decided to toss up, for free, on my website, all of my fiction published prior to the end of 2006.

Two things swayed me in this decision. One is the relative lack of value in the reprint rights. If anybody was going to put these in a Year’s Best anthology, they would have done so, well, years ago. I’m lazy about marketing the reprint rights to magazines, and (given the situation) my likely payoff on it is low anyway. And I’m not exactly at a point where anybody’s looking to put out a collection of my short fiction.

The other is that I’ve come across a couple of blog posts in the last year to the effect of, “here’s Marie Brennan’s website, she’s got some of her short fiction up there for free, and reading through it makes me want to buy her novels.” I gotta figure, that’s a good thing. And sure, that isn’t necessarily a reason to add more, but — see point #1 above.

So here you go, a (small) bonanza of my older stories:

The rest of the stories from that period are already available, either because I posted them in previous years, or because they’re still in the online archives of their respective magazines. The one exception is “White Shadow,” my first short story sale: since that’s in an anthology, I don’t feel I should post it with the rest.

Speaking of anthologies, though — I’ve submitted all of these pieces to AnthologyBuilder (which already has a couple of my stories), so as soon as those get processed, you should be able to have them printed in a POD collection of your own design. There isn’t quite enough yet to make an entire Marie Brennan collection, but it’s getting there. (Think of it like iTunes for stories, and you’ll have the general idea.)

For more technopeasantry, go here.

Excitement! Of a furnishings sort!

This is what a thousand bucks looks like:

Which, by my standards, is a grotesque amount of money to spend on a chair. But I’m trying to think of it less as “a chair,” more as “an investment in the future of my musculo-skeletal system.” (And probably some nerves, too.) Good office chairs are ‘spensive, and good office chairs with cervical support? I’m lucky the one I liked best turned out to be the cheapest one I was looking at.

I need to take care of my health, and that means putting an end to this chronic shoulder tension and increasing problem with lumbar stiffness. I should have made a purchase like this years ago, honestly — it isn’t like grad school doesn’t involve equally large amounts of time at the computer — but it was the full-time writer thing that made me finally bite the bullet. No more cheap chairs scrounged from used furniture stores. This is new, and well-made, and about the only thing it doesn’t do is give me a massage while I work*.

And man, you know you’re kind of a geek about your work life when the purchase of a new office chair is a really exciting event. <g>

*Though I do have one of those Homedics pads.

I might get this one done *before* the end of the month.

“Remembering Light”

I had about 700-800 of that already, from some work about a week ago; the rest is new. And this is, in fact, a new Driftwood story. I’m having fun riffing off the random idea I came up with for the world this one centers on, extrapolating the consequences of it. Yay for putting sunlight at the heart of a story.

Probably could finish this in two more days — possibly one — I just need to figure out how to steer the characters to the idea that got this story rolling in the first place. And decide whether I’m trying to stick that extra strand in there or not.

writing-ish things

Important one first: John Klima of Electric Velocipede is looking to move some stock and help out his finances to boot. Head on over there to see what’s on offer — back issues of EV, plus chapbooks. If you’re looking for my fiction, issue #13 is the one you want; that has “Selection,” which might very well be the oddest short story I’ve ever written. It also has Rachel Swirsky’s excellent “How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth,” which I suspect some of you would really dig. (If you perked up at the word “post-human,” then yes, I mean you.)

Sillier, but very true: a rant against Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. I’ve become more jaundiced about that book over time, so it’s good to see my jaundice backed up with some evidence.

And a distinct moment of oddity: someone on Amazon claims to be selling a copy of In Ashes Lie for the low, low price of $1,000 dollars. Yes, that’s a comma, not a decimal point (and yes, that’s American-style notation). No, I have no idea what’s up with that. Even if they’ve gotten ahold of an early copy, a thousand bucks??? WTF, mate.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled whatever you’ve been doing.

web help needed

I need the assistance of someone who can code a web-form type thing for me — basically, something which will ask people for their e-mail addresses, give them the a chance to opt in to a few things, and then send them along to a different URL when all of that’s done.

Any takers?

Today’s ponderable

I’d like to talk about portal fantasies. Or rather, I’d like you to talk about them.

By that term, I mean the stories where people from this world go into another, more fantastical world. Narnia, for example. Once upon a time, these seem to have been more popular; now, not so much. And if I had to guess, I’d say that’s at least in part because of the way a lot of them were transparent wish-fulfillment: Protagonist (who is an emotional stand-in for the author, though only in egregious cases a Mary Sue) goes to Magical Land where things are more colorful and interesting than in the real world. And maybe they stay there, maybe they don’t.

Talk to me about the portal fantasies you’ve read. Which ones stick in your mind? What was your response to them, both as a kid and now? Which ones did the wish-fulfillment thing extra transparently, and how so?

(Yes, I actually have a special interest in the bad examples of this genre. In fact, if you approach this entire question as an academic curiosity of the structural sort paired with a authorly eye toward writing a deconstruction — not a parody — of the tropes, you’ll be on the right track.)

Portal fantasies. Talk to me about ’em. Good, bad, ugly, laughably naive. What’s your take?

back on schedule

Today, you again get a Midnight Never Come tidbit, to whet your appetites for In Ashes Lie. (I have to get variety in here somehow.)

This time, it’s a look behind the scenes at the relationship between the novel, and the game it’s based on.

(It should go without saying, but: DO NOT FOLLOW THAT LINK IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK. Spoilers abound. In abundance. Of aboundishness.)

While I’m at it, I’ll also link to something that’s been up on my site for a couple of days now: the first piece of Marie Brennan fan-art that I’m aware of. (tooth_and_claw — I don’t feel I can count commissioned or Memento-inspired pieces, or you’d be the first.) It’s a portrait of Lady Lune, painted by the British artist Mark Satchwill. The original is sitting on my desk as we speak, because of course I’m going to buy it — what kind of ego-stroked author do you think I am???

Enjoy, and I’ll have something else for you in ten days.

Words I Cannot Spell, #17

Jeapordize Jeopordize Jeopardize.

I rarely make use of Wordperfect’s little “is this the word you’re looking for?” box, but man, I need it for that one. Every time.