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Posts Tagged ‘pay attention to meeeee’

Labor Day updates

I’ve basically been having an extended birthday weekend, Thursday through today. Yesterday my brother and sister-in-law had a lovely cookout; the night before I went with many friends to see an entertaining production of Cymbeline (albeit in the Presidio, which — ye gods and little fishes, freezing fog is freezing); the day before that, a whole chunk of goodies showed up in the mail: present from my parents, presents from my husband, signing check for A Natural History of Dragons, and <drumroll> my author copies for With Fate Conspire.

(I did not behave like Gollum over them. But only because kniedzw was watching.)

Updates:

Jim Hines has reviewed the book (WordPress mirror here), and hints at a little nifty something in store for you guys later on.

Joshua Palmatier has a guest post from me about the range of constraints history can impose on fiction.

And I totally forgot to mention before that Mindy Klasky’s Inside Track feature includes a chance to win a copy of the book! Comment either there or at the WordPress mirror to enter.

Bookday plus one

I neglected to mention before that With Fate Conspire will be a Main Selection for the Science Fiction Book Club’s holiday catalogue. That means all four books of the series have been picked up by the SFBC, which makes me really happy.

Woke up this morning to an e-mail containing my Booklist review; I can’t link to it, but I can quote Frieda Murray:

Brennan’s research is impeccable, and her pictures of a London not too well known on this side of the pond are first-class, as is the weaving of the human and fae settings. Her characters, both major and minor, are well drawn and memorable. Brennan’s own fans, historical-fantasy fans, and lovers of classic fantasy will find this a must-read.

Also, I’m featured over at Mindy Klasky’s blog, as part of the “Inside Track” feature, wherein authors go “behind the scenes” of their books. If you’d like to see me talk about the waltz I did with dates in this book, head on over there.

Let’s get Conspiring!

Thaaaaaaat’s right, folks . . . it’s the street date for With Fate Conspire.

I don’t mind admitting that I’m a little nervous about this one. I have a lot of reasons to be: it’s the end of the series (at least for now), which always raises the questions of “did I stick the landing?” Also, it’s my first hardcover release, which brings extra hopes and expectations. Also also, well, let’s face it: this is a rough time for the publishing industry, what with Borders going belly-up. Nobody really knows what that’s going to do to sales figures, but it’s going to be rocky, that’s for sure.

Which is by way of introducing a small plea: if you intend to buy this book, then sooner is better than later and in a store is better than online (unless you’re buying the ebook, of course). And if you like the series, tell people about it. (Heck, tell people about it even if you don’t like it! My ego will survive.)

Onward to the reviews!

Liz Bourke at Tor.com approves of the working-class and Irish bent of the book.

Cat Barson at Steampunk Chronicle reviews the book for fans of steampunk, and mostly likes it.

Sarah at Bookworm Blues hasn’t read the previous books in the series, and also isn’t a fan of faerie fantasy, but still enjoyed this one.

Also, I have the Big Idea slot today at John Scalzi’s blog Whatever (which previously hosted a Big Idea for Midnight Never Come). And finally, SF Signal has included With Fate Conspire as one of the three contenders in their most recent Book Cover Smackdown.

Now I need to decide whether my professional duty to go see my book in the store is strong enough to overcome the incredible soreness of my quads . . . ah, the downsides of biking for such errands.

yes, I do mean to use that icon

Looks like Tor is doing a giveaway for A Star Shall Fall on their site. All you have to do is leave a comment on that post there. So if you’re looking to pick up the book, go forth and comment! (They’re actually giving away three copies, it looks like.)

Also, in Fate-related news, this in from the Romantic Time review: “Appealing characters, a fully realized historical setting and more than a touch of steampunk flavoring collide to create a book that is difficult to put down.” So that’s pretty good.

And now I go back to preparing for my trip.

And sixty thousand words!

So, after a very difficult decision (in which I had to convince myself that buying extra icon space on LJ would only lead go overload in the long run), I have settled on not one but two winners for the A Natural History of Dragons icon contest. First, scottakennedy, for something wonderfully period (though I may ask you to switch the text just as soon as I make up my mind what I want!), and second, pathseeker42 for hitting a target she didn’t even know she was aiming at. From the book:

When I was seven, I found a sparkling lying dead on a bench at the edge of the woods which formed the back boundary of our garden, that the groundskeeper had not yet cleared away. With much excitement, I brought it for my mother to see, but by the time I reached her it had mostly collapsed into ash in my hands. Mama exclaimed in distaste and sent me to wash.

Our cook, a tall and gangly woman who nonetheless produced the most amazing soups and souffles (thus putting the lie to the notion that one cannot trust a slender cook) was the one who showed me the secret of preserving sparklings after death. She kept one on her dresser-top, which she brought out for me to see when I arrived in her kitchen, much cast down from the loss of the sparkling and from my mother’s chastisement. “However did you keep it?” I asked her, wiping away my tears. “Mine fell all to pieces.”

“Vinegar,” she said, and that one word set me upon the path that led to where I stand today.

If found soon enough after death, a sparkling (as many of the readers of this volume no doubt know) may be preserved by embalming it in vinegar. I sailed forth into our gardens in determined search, a jar of vinegar crammed into one of my dress pockets so the skirt hung all askew. The first one I found lost its right wing in the process of preservation, but before the week was out I had an intact specimen: a sparkling an inch and a half in length, his scales a deep emerald in color. With the boundless ingenuity of a child, I named him Greenie, and he sits on a shelf in my study to this day, tiny wings outspread.

Compare that to this:

Yeah, you see why I had to take both.

So congrats to you two! E-mail me your mailing addresses (send them to marie {dot} brennan {at} gmail {dot} com) and I’ll get ARCs of Fate on their way toward you shortly.

70 days and counting . . . . .

It is now seventy days until the release of With Fate Conspire, and that means it’s time for more goodies.

Ten days ago, it was the first excerpt; now it’s my research bibliography. (Not the most thrilling thing in the world, I know, but chock full o’ Victorian-period material, if you need that kind of thing.)

Also, because I’ve been too swamped to do anything more with this until now, I’ll go ahead and say the contest mentioned last time is still open. I need an icon for A Natural History of Dragons — something, y’know, natural historian-y and dragon-y — and if yours wins, I’ll send you an arc of Fate.

Save me from my lack of Photoshop skills, Obi-Wan Internetobi; you’re my only hope!

Er, I missed one hundred. Let’s go for eighty-one instead!

I’ve been so occupied with other things that I completely missed my usual “one hundred days until publication” landmark. Also ninety days. Eighty is tomorrow, but that’s the weekend, so let’s go with eighty-one days, and give you your first excerpt from With Fate Conspire!

“You were unable to stop them.”

In other news, I made it to forty thousand words on A Natural History of Dragons last night. I need an icon for that series, so let’s do a combined event here: post an icon (or even just an image) in the comments that you think would be appropriate for the adventures of my !nineteenth-century lady naturalist, and the winner will get an ARC of With Fate Conspire.

And I’ll try to keep on track better from now on. <guilty look>

Tune in for the thrilling conclusion!

The second half of Dancing the Warrior has gone live.

If you missed the first half, it’s here. If you missed the post about what this story is, that’s over here. If you want to know the story behind the story — i.e. where this thing came from — that’s up on my website. And if you’re interested in winning a signed copy of both doppelganger novels, but haven’t yet chimed in on the comment thread with your Hunter name, never fear; there will be a second drawing two weeks from now.

Enjoy!

Not a third book, but it will have to do.

Five years ago this month, my first novel was published, under its original title of Doppelganger.

In celebration of that anniversary, I dusted off — by which I mean “rewrote from the ground up” — an old novella related to that series, and sold it to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. The first part of Dancing the Warrior just went live, and the second part will be going up in two weeks, with the next issue.

But wait! There’s more!

You can enter to win a signed set of both doppelganger novels (the new edition, wherein they are known as Warrior and Witch). I’ll be giving away two sets, one for each half of the story. All you have to do is comment on the story thread, telling me what your Hunter name would be. Full rules are here; the important bit is that you do need to be a registered forum user, so that we can properly identify entrants. But registration is quick and easy.

Five years. Jeebus. Where did they go?

obligatory awards pimpage

If you’re a Hugo or Nebula voter, here’s what I published in 2010:

Novel
A Star Shall Fall

Novelette
“And Blow Them at the Moon,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies #50

Short stories
“Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes,” Running With the Pack, ed. Ekaterina Sedia
“Remembering Light,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies #44
“The Gospel of Nachash,” Clockwork Phoenix 3, ed. Mike Allen
“The Last Wendy,” On Spec #81
“Footprints,” Shroud Magazine #9

. . . I need to get back on the short story wagon, or I’ll have very little to list for 2011.

We now return you to a more interesting corner of the Internet.

more fiction!

It’s just raining stories of mine around here, ain’t it?

Erin Underwood of Underwords has put together a free fiction sampler for 2011, and it includes some stories from Clockwork Phoenix 3, including “The Gospel of Nachash.” So if you’re interested in me, um, fanficcing the Bible? . . . in full-blown King James Version style . . . with sekrit ingredients thrown in . . . then go check it out. And if you’re not, check the sampler out anyway, because I am only one of twenty-seven authors bundled into it, and there’s sure to be somebody else you enjoy.

Spending October at home is for the birds!

Tonight I leave on my third trip of the month, this one to World Fantasy. The weird thing is, it’s the first time this month I’ll be flying on my own dime; the first trip was my GoH gig at Sirens, and the second . . . last weekend, my publisher sent me here:

About a stone’s throw from the Kodak Theatre, no less. But it isn’t nearly as exciting as you think.

I was not there to meet with a high-powered Hollywood producer about how they want to pay me lots of money to film one of my books. I was there, instead, for the Southern California Independent Booksellers’ Association annual meeting. This is an industry event that brings writers in to schmooze over dinner with staff from local independent bookstores. I’d never done one before, so it was interesting; the authors got fed beforehand, so we wouldn’t have to choose between talking and eating (or end up talking with our mouths full), and then during everybody else’s meal we got shuttled from table to table, chatting up the people there.

Serendipity was my friend at this event. Not on the travel side — two-hour flight delay on the way there, three-hour on the way back, for a flight that’s a little more than an hour long — but with the new friends I made. I got to the hotel just in time to fling myself into nicer clothing and run downstairs, whereupon I got my registration and stood trying to catch my breath, wondering if I would have anything other than the basics in common with the other writers there. (They come from all corners of publishing, nonfiction as well as fiction, children’s picture books to adult.) But lo, I was not standing a full minute before I heard the phrase “historical fiction” come from two women nearby.

I drifted closer.

Then I heard Newton’s name.

I drifted closer still.

Ended up with two new friends. One was a writer of historical fiction, Laurel Corona, who’s bopped all around the timeline even more than I have; her most recent book, Penelope’s Daughter, is set in Homeric Greece, and her next involves an eighteenth-century mathematician, Émilie du Châtelet. The other, Deborah Harkness, is (if memory serves) a professor of history whose debut novel A Discovery of Witches will be coming out soon; it’s about a researcher at the Bodleian Library who comes across an alchemical manuscript that gets her into all sorts of trouble. Oh, and Deborah’s a giant Tudor geek, too.

Nah, we didn’t have anything to talk about.

Best part was, Deborah was at my third table, and so were two women currently reading her novel and loving it. And the table host was a big SF/F fan. So I spent the dessert course geeking about alchemy and how Newton was a complete jackass. Friends, this is what we call success.

Anyway, that was my Hollywood adventure. Now I go off to the much colder environs of Columbus, Ohio. Send me warm thoughts . . . .

after-action report

The reading went swimmingly. Quite a good number of people in attendance, and the stories went over well. For the curious, my final choices were:

1) “The Wives of Paris” — even if nobody had voted for it, I might have read this one, just because I’ve been looking forward to doing so for ages. As it also got a goodly number of votes in the poll, my desire had some justification to back it up.

2) “A Heretic by Degrees” — lots of votes for the various Driftwood options. I didn’t get the new story revised, so opted for this one instead. Especially because Borderlands readings are about the only opportunity I get to read longer stories; usually time constraints prohibit it.

3) a selection from A Star Shall Fall — if you’ve read the book, I did the two scenes where Irrith goes hunting in what Ktistes claims is a bad patch but isn’t really, and finds the, er, special room. (Circumlocuting so as to avoid spoilers.)

Now, back to the revision mines.

rounding up the week

More collated linky, and then maybe next week I’ll get around to posting about Ada Lovelace and her wings.

Another guest-blog: me at Tiffany Trent’s LJ, talking about researching in order to get things wrong.

More “And Blow Them at the Moon”: the giveaway is ended (Scott will be picking a winner soon), but if you’d like to listen to the story, the podcast version is now available. I enjoyed this recording immensely — like, meant to just check it out, but ended up listening to the whole thing — because Scott arranged for a British reader, who does a marvelous job with the accents. He even does a Cornish accent for the knockers! Or something I presume is a Cornish accent, anyway! (I have no idea what they sound like. Which is Reason #17 why he’s a better reader for the story than I am.)

Further reviews of A Star Shall Fall: Mark Yon at SFF World, which he sums up as “An ambitious tale and a pleasing triumph. Wonderful.” His comments make me very happy. Watch out for borderline spoilers near the end of the review, though. Locus also had a very good review, though it isn’t online, but this bit is pretty quotable:

There’s a sly brilliance to Brennan’s ongoing tales where the city of London moves through history . . . A Star Shall Fall has room enough for intellect and emotion, great issues as well as an array of individuals and personalities: self-mocking wit, bluntness, and ardor among others. As fear of the Dragon mounts, humans and fae come together in powerful scenes that both reflect and find ways to transcend the gap between beings with such very different experiences of Life and Time.

Finally, another public appearance for me: I’ll be down in SoCal on October 23rd for the SCIBA Author Feast and Trade Show (yes, it’s really called that). SCIBA is an independent booksellers’ association, so this is an industry event rather than a fan one, but if any of you will be there, be sure to say hi!

Er, that’s only four things. Uh. Here, have cats in an IKEA store.

I hope five things really do make a post

I hope that one of these days I will regenerate enough brain to post about a bunch of things piling up in my head: Ada Lovelace, Babbage’s childhood attempt to summon the devil, the manga I’ve been reading lately, etc. But that day is not today — not if I want to also get my writing done at a reasonable hour — so let’s just get on to the reminders and such.

First, something unrelated to A Star Shall Fall: if you missed it over the holiday weekend, I’m the most recent guest on Jim Hines’ “First Book Friday” series, talking about Doppelganger.

Second, tchernabyelo, you’re the winner of the birthday giveaway! Since you clearly don’t need to be introduced to the Lymond Chronicles, you can have your pick of either Fire and Hemlock, or Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, or (if you already know and/or have both of those books) something else entirely, which we can discuss in e-mail. Drop me a line at marie [dot] brennan [at] gmail [dot] com with your mailing address and your preference.

Third, kinderjedi is the winner of the Sirens discussion giveaway. Same instructions as above, except that your prize is a signed copy of A Star Shall Fall.

Fourth, if you envy kinderjedi their win, you have a until the end of the day Wednesday (where I think “end of the day” is defined in a vaguely East Coast U.S. fashion) to leave a comment on the BCS forum thread for “And Blow Them at the Moon,” after which I will pick one commenter to receive a signed copy of the book.

And fifth, if you’re curious about the book itself, Kelly at Fantasy Literature recently reviewed it, so you can see what she has to say.

Oh! Sixth! (Which makes this TOTALLY a post, even if the five six things individually are not all that substantial.) I will be doing a reading and signing at Borderlands Books on September 25th. That’s in San Francisco, for those who are anything like local, and it starts at 3 p.m. I hope to see some of you there!

Sing it with me!

Happy Bookday to me, Happy Bookday to me . . . .

Actually, Happy Bookday to all of you, if the release of A Star Shall Fall was something you were looking forward to. As of today, it ought to be on the shelves of discerning bookstores everywhere (in the U.S. and Canada, anyway).

Now seems a dandy time to link once more to my essay on the merits of buying a book from a bookstore, rather than from an online seller. If you have a choice of which way to go, choose the physical store; it will help keep me in business as a writer, just a bit more than an online sale would. (E-books are a whole different game, of course.)

Or, if you’d like to try and get a signed copy direct from me instead, you have two ways to do it (both of ’em with fairly good odds). First, you can participate in the discussion threads on the community: the fifth and final thread is up today, asking about the city of London, and previous threads are here, here, here, and here. I didn’t realize there would be a fifth question today, so I’m extending the deadline on this giveaway a little bit, to the end of the day on Friday; any comment left on one of those threads before then will make you eligible to win a copy of the book.

Second, you can read “And Blow Them at the Moon” (an Onyx Court short story over at Beneath Ceaseless Skies) and join in the discussion for that in their forums. For this giveaway, you have until the next issue goes live at the end of Wednesday next week.

If you’re looking for other goodies, like my London photos or the soundtrack for the novel, all of that is on my site.

Aaaaand I think that’s it, at least for now. If anybody needs me, I’ll be here in the corner, alternately bouncing and chewing my fingernails off . . . .

It’s ‘splody time . . . .

<bounce> I’ve been looking forward to this.

“And Blow Them at the Moon” has gone live at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This is an Onyx Court story (though not the one I sold yesterday), and I am very pleased with how it’s turned out. It also constitutes the last pre-publication goodie for A Star Shall Fall, which comes out (eek) next Tuesday; Magrat, the main character from this story, will be showing up in the novel, too.

And, because chances to win a signed copy of the book are just FALLING OUT OF THE TREES, YO, the editor at BCS has conspired with me to give one away over there: all you have to do is leave a comment on the story thread in their forums. (You’ll need to be a registered forum user, so we can contact the winner.) That runs two weeks, i.e. until the next issue goes live. Together with Laura Anne Gilman’s virtual birthday party and the Onyx Court discussion threads on the Sirens community, you have three, count ’em three chances to get your hands on a copy. And don’t forget, there’s the secret history charity auction, going until Saturday! Bidding stands at twenty dollars, and every bit of it goes to help flood relief efforts in Pakistan.

(I promise actual content will return to this LJ pretty soon. But I’ve got a friend’s wedding this weekend, and the book release next week, so at the moment spare time to write interesting posts is in short supply. If you want reading material from me, have a story.)