bits of book news

I’ll use my MNC icon, because two of the three have to do with that book.

First of all, the website for Chapters (Canadian book chain) now lists Midnight Never Come for sale, with a release date of June 9th. Amazon, though, has yet to post it.

Second, I got a proof copy of the front cover today, and it is indeed very pretty. They appear to have decided to do the title in gloss rather than foil, while the gloss on the floral pattern may or may not go away. The color is a lot richer than it seemed on the screen.

And thirdly, I finally have some concrete news about the intended reissue of Doppelganger and Warrior and Witch. The intent is to put them both out in August of next year, with a new cover for Doppelganger (to make it match W&W better), slightly different cover detailing for both, and — perhaps the biggest change — new titles! (I’m not positive yet what those will be; I’m waiting to see if my suggestion goes over or not.) The idea is to make them look more obviously related, since there’s frankly nothing on the cover of W&W as it stands that tells you it’s connected . . . until you read the back cover and get a giant spoiler.

Okay, back to work.

open letter

Dear Brain,

Why?

No, seriously. I know I asked you for ideas. But did you have to come up with this? I don’t know if you remember, but we just did the research thing a few bleeding months ago. Is that really what we need to be doing again? I mean, come on.

Yes, it’s a shiny idea. But still.

Okay, okay. Yes. This might be a good thing. Let me sleep on it, okay? STOP PESTERING ME. I have a game tonight, and need to stop thinking about the Shiny! If it really is shiny, it’ll still be shiny tomorrow. You know how this works by now.

So yeah. Knock it off already.

With slightly murderous affection,
–Your Writer

fans

Not the sort who send you e-mail or ask for autographs; the sort you hold in your hand, for cooling yourself.

Does anyone have a recommendation for how to hang folding fans on a wall in a manner that won’t damage them? The one time I’ve done it, I’ve put in two small nails just inside the outermost sticks, below the fabric, but that warped the fabric where the weight was resting on the nails. I’m looking for a better solution. (All I can think of is nails on either side of the pivot pin, but they’d have to stick out awfully far, and I’d still probably need small nails at the top corners to keep it open and flat against the wall.)

the previous post, condensed

If you list off the years in which the events of Elizabeth really happened, it looks something like this (with parentheses for the fuzzy dates):

1555
1554
1555
1558
1559
(1568)
1559
1579
(early 1560s)
(early 1580s)
1582
1570
1581
1560
1571
1586
1569
1572

. . . not quite what you’d call chronological, ne?

so how accurate is it?

With Elizabeth: The Golden Age opening today, I have decided that now is a good time to post about Shekhar Kapur’s first installment, the 1998 film Elizabeth. Researching Midnight Never Come gave me an interesting perspective on it; I can now recognize what is and is not historically accurate in it. (Short form is: much of what happens is true, but not in that order and at that time.)

So for the curious, I offer up this glossing of the film’s historical accuracy, with footnotes and educational precepts for the wise.

(I shouldn’t have to say it, but I will: here be spoilers aplenty. Don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.)

First, a note on the visuals. Kapur’s commentary track on the DVD is very interesting, and chock-full of information on such things. He recognizes that the Elizabethans did not in fact live in bare stone rooms (they preferred wood well-padded with tapestries and rush matting), and also that fashion did not follow precisely that trajectory. Those elements are as they are for thematic reasons.

Now, going more or less sequentially through the film:

Cut for stupidly long length; don’t say I didn’t warn you about that, either

I am (not so) mighty; hear me roar

Back to the gym today, for the first time in . . . a while. Man, I’ve been really bad about it, this last month or two.

Interesting article, snurched from Neil Gaiman, regarding the genesis of the notion that fat is bad for you. As he says, the most interesting thing about it is the insight into how people think and behave — the whole “informational cascade” thing. The actual discussion of nutrition is less compelling to me, except inasmuch as it helps me not flip out about what I’m eating. On the whole, my views on the matter remain unchanged: I figure I should eat more whole grains and more vegetables, and think twice about dessert.

And, of course, exercise. Hence going back today. I haven’t slipped as much as I feared, which is good. But I can tell I’ve gotten softer around the middle — all that candy and rich food will, indeed, get to you.

But I’d still rather focus on working out than what I’m eating.

Interview me!

So, here’s the deal. My publisher wants to include an interview with me at the back of Midnight Never Come, and I’ve been give the go-ahead to let the interviewer in question be you, Gentle Readers.

They’re looking for me to answer 7-10 questions about writing in general and Midnight Never Come in specific. I figure I’ll solicit questions from everyone, pick out the most popular and/or the most interesting, and send those in; the ones I don’t answer for the book, I may well post on my website as a bonus.

So post your questions in comments! Try to keep it writing- and/or this-book-related (no questions about my secret life as a Cambodian mortuary-worker-turned-spy), and try to post it by next Wednesday (the 17th) at the latest. (I need to send my responses to Orbit by the 19th.)

Here we go . . . .

Updated to clarify: Feel free to ask more than one question, and to repeat other people’s questions (since that’s how I’ll judge the popularity of a given topic).

hello, brain, my old friend

We’re up to 442 words on “How Heroes Fall” (its other possible title). Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but since this will consist of a bunch of vignettes around a theme, it’s a decent amount; it’s two vignettes out of some unknown total — maybe eight or ten.

This is, without a doubt, the most artsy-fartsy piece of crap I’ve ever written. My one hope is to make it good enough to remove “crap” from that equation. (Ain’t nothing gonna redeem it from artsy-fartsy-hood.)

I had all three of my e-mail accounts down to thirty e-mails or less when I went to bed last night; they’ve bounced up a bit since then, but not much. The fact that ninety unanswered e-mails counts as brag-worthy progress tells you what state they were in before.

I’m in a weird state right now. Not enough motivation to get anything done, but enough brain to want to get something done. Can’t figure out what to do with myself. Answer e-mails? Grade? Those would be useful. Write? Read? Watch something? Those would be entertaining. Clean up the house? I really ought to. But I can’t settle down to anything, it seems.

Meh. Stupid temperature dropping like a rock. We skipped right over the first two stages of fall, it looks like, and went straight to grey and dismal.

more help needed

Nearly a month ago, I posted soliciting suggestions for readings I could use in a course proposal I’m putting together. With the wedding and mini-moon in my wake, the time has come for me to revisit this, and put the finishing touches on it.

anima_mecanique and intertext came the closest to guessing the course topic: historical fantasy. Specifically, I’m choosing out seven novels set in various historical periods around the world, all of them more in the vein of “real history with magic slipped in” rather than “alternate history.” (Which is why His Majesty’s Dragon is not on the list.) The six I’ve chosen for sure so far are:

  • Euryale, Kara Dalkey (Republican Rome)
  • Sky Knife, Marella Sands (Classic Maya)
  • The Fox Woman, Kij Johnson (Heian Japan)
  • Ink and Steel, Elizabeth Bear (Elizabethan England)
  • On Stranger Tides, Tim Powers (Caribbean piracy)
  • Territory, Emma Bull (Old West)

I need one more to start the course off with, something set in human prehistory. Clan of the Cave Bear was the first thing that came to mind, but I’ve never read it myself, and I’m not sure it has what I need. So: can anybody recommend a novel of “prehistoric fiction” that includes fantastical elements as literally true? I know Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall does, but I was underwhelmed by that book; I’d like to begin with something really good.

Also, I need nonfiction readings. (I’ll put those requests behind a cut so they don’t take up too much space.)

(more…)

I’m back. (What’s left of me.)

So, I got married. And then I went to Vegas. (With a pause in there to teach two more days of class; I couldn’t just cancel a whole week.) Now I’m home.

Very, very glad to be home.

I’m trying to recover enough brain to deal with the backlog of e-mail that has built up over the last month or more. Most of the truly crucial stuff has been dealt with as it happened — I hope — but there’s a lot of non-crucial stuff owing. If any of that stuff involves you, Dear Readers, then please bear with me as I try to wade through it. Cerberus (my collection of three e-mail accounts) has grown a fine new set of teeth on all of its heads; dealing with those will take a little while.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying my return from the land of Flashing! Lights! and Brightly! Colored! Things! and did we mention the Obnoxious! Noises! The shows we saw (Penn & Teller, and Cirque du Soleil’s Kà and Mystere) were fabulous, but right about now, I’m taking deep pleasure in reading unmoving black text on a white page. And even writing a bit of my own; one of the flash vignettes that will make up the story “How They Fall” (if that ends up being its title) got scribbled down during my office hours today. I have hope this signals the return of my brain. It’s been missing for several weeks now; I’d love to see it again.

Given my limited time for reading, I’m often well behind the bestseller bandwagon, reading a book loooong after it made its big splash. So hop into the Wayback Machine with me, return to those days (whenever they were) that The Lies of Locke Lamora came out, and pretend I’m not horribly behind the times.

Y’all were right. It is a very good book: full of plot, fairly intricate and exciting, and Lynch does a good job of writing con artist characters whose cons are legitimately interesting. I liked it a lot.

I wish I didn’t have one big flaming problem with it.

But I’m afraid I do, and I started to notice it early on. We were 93 pages in (mass-market) before the first female character appeared, and I think another hundred or so before the next one showed up. In the entirety of that 719-page book, there were precisely two women who, in my opinion, had any real significance to the story.

I gave up on Sabetha appearing about halfway through; apparently she’s a surprise Lynch is saving for later books. I was disappointed with the end of Nazca’s involvement with the plot. After a while I stopped keeping mental count, but I’d estimate that maybe a third of the speaking roles in the novel belong to women, and most of them are minor, throwaway characters: the chandler they conned out of candles, the guard at the hanging, one of the random garristas among about half a dozen in a particular scene. Etc.

It’s all the odder because the setting, which most closely resembles a fantastic Venice, does not borrow the gender politics of such a time and place. Lynch does a laudable job of establishing that there are both men and women among the thieves, sailors, guards, alchemists, clergy, people in paintings, whatever; women apparently have the freedom to follow a variety of professions, as their intellect and physical capacity suit them. But when it’s time for those thieves, sailors, and so on to speak up and do things . . . .

My best guess is that his brain just defaults to “male” when inventing characters. Sofia and Doña Vorchenza both prove that Lynch can write interesting, intelligent women with a real influence on the story. It might just be that he needs to monitor himself more closely on this, and prod himself out of his defaults. Bug could have been female; Sabetha’s existence at least proves one can be a female “Gentleman Bastard.” Or Master Ibelin. Or the Falconer. I suspect this would be a relatively easy problem for Lynch to fix — I just hope he does so. Because it’s annoying to be distracted from my enjoyment of an otherwise good story by the relative absence of half the human race.

Is the sequel out yet? Has anybody read it? Is there progress in the right direction?

radio silence starts

Not like I haven’t been under a pretty thorough radio silence lately anyway, just with being insanely busy. But in half an hour I’m going to be kidnapped for the start of my bachelorette party, and then there are rehearsals and dinners and the whole gettin’ hitched thing.

When you hear from me again, I will be married.

(Assuming all goes according to plan.)