Nifty!
My author copy of the German omnibus edition of Doppelgänger and Hexenkrieger just showed up. It’s hardcover, and has new cover art and everything! Verra shiny, sez I.
Posts Tagged ‘real book!’
Real bookses!
Today has not started off terribly well, but it’s at least partially ameliorated by the fact that I got author copies for A Star Shall Fall! They are so very shiny. (Okay, they’re actually not shiny at all; the cover is matte, not glossy. But you know what I mean.)
In celebration of this, and of the A Star Shall Fall contest, and of the discussion for Midnight Never Come and In Ashes Lie, I’m giving away some more copies on GoodReads — three this time, actually. Plus you still have one day to put your name in for a copy of In Ashes Lie. So it’s Yay Book Day here at Swan Tower, and you’re all invited!
Cover time!
This is the extra bit I alluded to yesterday, when I posted my research book list: I finally have a version of the cover that I’m allowed to post. (There may be minor tweaks before it hits the shelves, but they’re along the lines of fiddling with the text, rather than image changes.)
In honor of that, I’ve started putting the page for the book into proper order. Enjoy!
Also: since my image-manipulation skills end at being able to crop and shrink pictures. I will be grateful to anyone who can make a nifty icon out of this, so future book posts can use that rather than the comet image I’ve been employing.
bookbookbooksiesBOOK
Ahem. What I meant to say was, I have ARCs of A Star Shall Fall, and I am doing my very best not to hug them and squeeze them and call them George, but it’s hard, because you put in months and months and months of work, and this is the first point at which it really starts to seem like that thing you poured your brain into is actually going to be a book.
In honor of that, I’ll jump the gun by three days and give you what I planned to post one hundred days before the street date: the prologue. More excerpts will come later, and other goodies too; and if you leave a comment to this post, I’ll put your name into the hat for a drawing, the winner to receive a signed ARC of A Star Shall Fall. (With bonus copy of In Ashes Lie, if the winner doesn’t already own it; I’ve ended up with an absurd number of those, and need to send them to good homes.)
So. Enjoy the prologue, comment here if you want an ARC, and while you’re at it, think about bidding on a piece of Onyx Court history.
Edit: this particular giveaway is now closed. But stay tuned; there will be others.
Just a few hours left . . . .
Which is to say that you can probably already find Ashes in your local bookstore, since they’re generally on the lax side about when they shelve things. But officially, June 10th is the street date for my second Onyx Court novel. Get your dose of faerie politics + explosions today! (Or tomorrow.)
I should also mention that I’ve recovered from the delay imposed by my London research, and picked the next two winners for the Deeds of Men giveaway. I think we’re doing one more set after this, so if you want signed copies of the first two Onyx Court books, sign up now — I’ll do the last drawing next Monday.
street date, and icon needed!
Things have been so crazy-busy that I haven’t said anything about this before, but today is the street date for Warrior and Witch (the novels formerly known as Doppelganger and Warrior and Witch). Not that this means much, since they’ve been on shelves in many places for the last week or more, but y’know. Anyway, I highly encourage obsessive-compulsive tendencies toward completism, so go buy the new editions, to go along with the old!
Can anybody make me an animated LJ icon that shifts back and forth between the new covers? I’d like to have one all-purpose icon for that series.
Edited: Many thanks to jimhines for the timely satisfaction of that request.
July 1st things
The auction over at is open for bidding now. Look in the tags for “mod note” to find instructions on what to do, and where to post when you’ve won an auction, so they can track totals. Offerings range from more customized fanfic than you can shake a slash at to cookies to personalized clothing advice for those whose bodies don’t look like the fashion industry wants them to. And all the money goes toward charities for defending gay marriage rights.
***
I’m a bad writer for putting that one first and this one second, but hey, priorities. Today also marks the official release for Clockwork Phoenix, the anthology in which you can see me attempting to make Mesoamerican fantasy work. Ordering info behind that link. I haven’t read it yet myself — I’m waiting for my contributor’s copy, rather than trying to plow through it in the page-proof .pdf — but the bits I’ve seen look fabulous. Enjoy!
Happy Book Day!
It’s late enough at night/early enough in the morning that I’m going to break my usual rule (it isn’t the next day until the sun has risen or you’ve slept), and declare the beginning of Midnight Never Come Book Day!
(If I’d really been on the irony ball, I’d’ve announced it at midnight.)
So: today you can officially walk into a bookstore and expect to find the book! Borders appears to be stocking it in what I consider to be large quantities, with copies both in the SF/F section (remember to look for a trade paperback) and — at least in this town — on the “New in Fiction” rack. Which is awesome.
As of today, you can also enter the competition! Short form is, there will be a series of mini-puzzles, for which there are hints scattered around the site. (Not all new or changed content is a hint, though; I sent in some belated modifications for the site, which are being instituted as fast as they can manage.) For every question you answer right, you will be entered into the contest. Check back regularly for updates!
Also, don’t forget my own mini-competition: if you send me a picture of my book in the wild, you’ll be eligible to win a copy of my short story “The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe.” You can post those here, or e-mail them to me at marie dot brennan at gmail dot com.
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Review dump:
The verdict is in from Locus, and they liked me. “Brennan ably combines elements of danger, romance, and individual moral choices that could affect the fates of great realms, for a tale that’s rich in plot and character. She interweaves historic and fantastic details with scholarship, inspired acts of imagination, and a keen wit.” That’s another one to hug close and grin idiotically over.
John Ottinger at Grasping for the Wind has a few criticisms, but on the whole he enjoyed it: “Brennan’s ability to maintain historical accuracy while writing an exciting and fast-paced novel filled with elves, fairies, the Wild Hunt, and brownies makes this story worth reading.”
I don’t believe I remembered to quote from the Romantic Times review before. They gave it four stars, and said “This story of courtiers from different but parallel kingdoms is ripe with palace intrigue, Machiavellian double dealing and star-crossed love.”
I’ve also collected a couple of Amazon reviews, one two-star from a disappointed reader who prefers my first two books, one five-star from someone who enjoyed it a lot.
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Not a review: I’m guest-blogging today for miladyinsanity, talking about travel and book research.
Happy Book Day!
a sighting
My local Barnes & Noble has two copies of MNC on the shelf. (Two signed copies, now.) Which is another landmark in the Really Real Book progression. I’ve seen it out in the world for myself! In my home country, even!
Another victory: both my Gmail and sundell.net accounts are down to ten messages each, from the giant backlog created by my travels. I still have things I need to deal with, but the insurmountable pile has mostly been surmounted.
Happy, er, Surprise Book-Day!
So, turns out I’ve had it wrong all along: for my UK readers, May Day is the debut of Midnight Never Come! (Apparently I am, in fact, distracted enough to miss this fact. For U.S. readers, it’s still June 9th.) If you’re a Brit, then hie thee to a bookstore bookshop and get yourself a copy!
You can read the first of several upcoming interviews, this one with The Book Swede, who asked me some very thought-provoking questions about the background and content of this novel.
::squeak::
Don’t ask me why I got the UK version first — but ten copies of Midnight Never Come just showed up on my doorstep.
<happy squeak>
I am ever-so-faintly sad that my copy-editor’s diligent work in Americanizing my spellings was ported over without change; I’d love to see the UK editions of these books carry British spellings. (My natural state, for the record, is neither fish nor fowl — colour but favorite; theatre but center. And grey. Always grey.)
On the other hand, they managed to slip through an incredibly last-minute change I asked for, that they would have every right to deny. So I’m grateful for that.
Fifty-six days and counting . . . .
Ich habe Buch!
You know what’s a wacky experience?
Flipping through a book and thinking, “I wrote this . . . but it’s all in weird funny-looking words with too many capital letters!”
Or, to put it differently — I have the German edition of Doppelganger! They sent me four author copies, which arrived yesterday. It’s very strange, I tellya. I can pick out enough words in German to be able to figure out which bit of the story I’m looking at, but not enough to read it much at all, so it’s very alien-looking. And man, some of those nouns get long. But it’s also boggling to think that somebody — one Axel Plantiko — spent who knows how many hours reading over my words and working this strange alchemy upon them.
It’s my book . . . but it isn’t.
Anyway, many thank-yous to Herr Plantiko, and eeeee! German book!
after-action report
I think I enjoy World Fantasy more every year, as I learn more of how I best operate there. When I first show up, I’m pretty useless: bad at recognizing faces I haven’t seen in a year, bad at worming my way into conversations, bad at social small talk. Warming up takes a while. But I know that now, so I don’t feel stressed by the usual “oh god I can’t find anybody I know and my foot is looking for opportunities to get into my mouth and I’m not having fun yet.” I’ll get there. It just takes time. By Friday I’m doing better, and now I know that my mental list of panels I’d like to see doesn’t even reach the status of guidelines, let alone actual rules; I’ll go if I feel inclined, but if on my way there I get waylaid by a conversation, whatever. I said this weekend, and I really mean it, that I go to WFC for the conversations. For the lunches and dinners and hallways and relatively quiet corners of room parties where I can get into discussions of Mesoamerican kingship, recent TV series, Kit Marlowe’s sexuality, butt-shot urban fantasy covers, gender issues in SFWA, and the abominations of Leviticus, to name a few topics of the last few days.
By Friday night I’m doing pretty good. Saturday’s usually a swimming success. At some point on Sunday I’ll start to hit my limit: I’m ready to put on my headphones and bury my nose in a book for the trip home. And that’s okay, too.
But it isn’t all cookie-cutter routine, either. Every year I expand the circle of people I know. And this year featured the new experience of increased contact with folks from my publisher, specifically members of the publicity departments in the US and UK. I got trotted out for a lunch with some of the book-buyers for Borders, not as the featured attraction, but to smile and make small contributions to the conversation; mostly I learned quite a bit about how the publisher sells the books to the store, before the store sells them to the customer. And I discovered that the publicity guys Have Plans for Midnight Never Come. Not national-tour level plans, but we all agreed that’s not even a good idea for someone at my stage of things. Cool website plans, though, most definitely. I don’t know how much of it will turn out to be pie-in-the-sky, but I love the notions we were batting around.
Speaking of that book, I got anecdotal proof of the quality of its cover: people were very eager to pick it up and look at it, including some total strangers during the autographing session. (And with nearly a dozen people spontaneously approving of the author photo on the back, I am finally reassured I managed to get a non-crappy picture of myself. Readers will expect me to look like that for the next thirty years, I imagine.)
And hey! Amazon has it listed for pre-order
Put all that together with a royalty statement that tells me Doppelganger and Warrior and Witch are both still doing bang-up business, and right now? Things are looking pretty good.
almost-real book!
Originally the plan was for me to revise Midnight Never Come in October, copy-edit it in November, page-proof it in December, and then they’d print ARCs (Advance Reading Copies) in January.
Then I got that “hey, could you revise this sooner?” request in September. Turns out that was because they wanted to print ARCs in November.
(This, incidentally, meant copy-editing would be pushed back to January. Or so I was told. Until three hours later, when I was told that no, the freelancer who does that work was available, so we’d be doing it on November after all.)
Anyway, you may have noticed that today is still October. So, oddly enough, was yesterday — the day a box full o’ ARCs hit my doorstep.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! Booksiesbooksiesbooksiesbooksies!!!!!!!!!!
Ahem.
I held off on posting about it until I could surprise a few people who needed to be surprised with the ARCs I was giving them (the last of those being tooth_and_claw, but I’m not shipping it to Italy when you’re coming back here before too terribly much longer). I have more I need to send out, of course, but those people already know they’re coming.
I’m going to be curious to see how this ARC ends up comparing to the real book. Remember, we haven’t copy-edited the thing yet; it’s printed straight from the manuscript I sent my editor, but typeset like a real book. Only I’m not sure whether that will end up being the real typesetting, or whether it’s just something temporary they threw together while the final typesetting gets worked out. The cover, though, isn’t just full-color (something they don’t always do for ARCs) — it’s the full-blown really real cover, with the foil for the title and the spot gloss. Even color ARC covers often lack the special effects the finished deal will have (the title on the Warrior and Witch ARC, for example, isn’t embossed).
So it looks almost exactly like a real book, except for the big white notes saying it’s an advance copy of yadda yadda and here’s how it’s being promoted.
June is so terribly far away . . . .
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.
cover!
Final version, or at least final enough that I’m allowed to post it.
A few notes. First of all, this is the kind of cover that will look much better in print than on the screen, because as I found out the hard way, the details depend heavily on your monitor settings. If you can’t see the building in the background, you aren’t really getting it all. (Yes, there’s a building in the background. I promise. I didn’t see it until I tried a different computer.)
Second, there are two details that can’t be conveyed in an image. The title will be printed in silver foil, and the floral pattern winding through will be done in a spot gloss on an otherwise matte cover. Or at least that’s the current plan.
I’m quite pleased with it. Authorial nitpickiness aside (there’s always authorial nitpickiness), it’s a nice, elegant cover, and I like their choice of a pull-quote for the top; that’s a line from a John Dowland song I found just as I was doing revisions back in August. I’ll leave it as a closing note:
“Time stands still with gazing on her face,
stand still and gaze for minutes, houres and yeares, to her giue place:
All other things shall change, but shee remains the same,
till heauens changed haue their course & time hath lost his name.”
