a multitude of me

I will be in London at the Forbidden Planet on 18 September, 2008, from 6-7pm, to sign copies of HANDS OF FLAME (and any others of my books people would like me to sign!). I’m really looking forward to this signing, and hope a few England-based readers might show up and say hello. :)

A few months ago, The Falcata Times interviewed me, and that interview is now up in the Falcata Times #7. My interview starts on page 34, but there are a *ton* of other cool authors in there as well, so go read and enjoy!

Also, I’ll be writing a short story for a Morrigan Books anthology this fall, for publication sometime (I believe) in 2009. Looking forward to that, too–writing shorts is fun, and I only do it when people ask me to. :)

That’s all for now!

I have done a fairly extensive writeup of SDCC at my personal journal, mizkit.com, here, here, and here. The short version is it was a fantastic and exhausting week, and I hope like heck that I’ll be able to do it again next year. Hooray! :)

Breaking radio silence to announce I’ll be in San Diego Wednesday July 23-Sunday July 27 for Comic Con! Below are places I’ll be at specific times for certain, so if you’re attending the convention, please drop by and say hello!

THURSDAY, JULY 24:
4:00-5:00
The World of Dabel Brothers Publishing — Find out everything Dabel Brothers Publishing has in store for the rest of 2008 and beyond. From The Dresden Files to The Wheel of Time, to their unannounced licenses and much much more, be there as Dabel Brothers Publishing announces the upcoming creative talent on Wheel of Time and brand new licenses that are sure to make a lot of people shocked and happy, all at the same time. Featuring some of the NY Times bestselling authors working with Dabel Brothers Publishing. Room 7AB

6:00-7:00
Random House Publishing—Staff from the Random House Publishing Group discuss upcoming titles from Del Rey, Del Rey Manga, Ballantine, and Villard Graphic Novels. Room 10

FRIDAY, JULY 25
1:00-2:00
Looking at our World: Eye on the Present–Authors discuss how they use the supernatural in stories of contemporary society: Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld), LA Banks (The Vampire Huntress Legend Series), Kate Brallier (The Boundless Deep), Marjorie M. Liu (The Iron Hunt), C.E. Murphy (The Negotiator Trilogy), Justine Musk (Lord of Bones), Lilith Saintcrow (The Dante Valentine Series), and moderator Samantha Sommersby (Forbidden: The Revolution).

2:00-3:00
Looking at our World: Eye on the Present panelists autographing in the Comic-Con Autograph Area

SATURDAY, JULY 26:
11:00
Gold Eagle booth #1220 I will be here, signing books! HOUSE OF CARDS will be available. Other books should perhaps be purchased ahead of time and brought for signing. :)

THE QUEEN’S BASTARD is out today. Fine bookstores everywhere should be selling it.

I talk quite a bit about the nerve-wracking aspect of this book over at Magical Words today, and Joshua Palmatier invited me to participate in his author introduction series…where, it turns out, I talked about the nerve-wracking aspects of this book, albeit in a *slightly* different way. :)

I should be less nervous, maybe. It’s my tenth book, which you’d think would settle my nerves some in and of itself. It’s gotten some really nice reviews (money shot from Booklist’s starred review: “…the first of what promises to be an outstanding series featuring a masterfully intricate dance of politics and intrigue in a world with parallels to the Elizabethan era., and Kate Elliott said it was really good, which means more to me personally than Booklist, because ZOMG Kate Elliott! o.o). It has, in fact, already gone back to print, thanks to a big library supplier order, which, y’know, bodes well.

Still. Nervous. Excited. Hopeful. Very hopeful.

I’d love to astound my editor by having the book go back to print again by the end of May. It only (only!) needs to sell about 15,000 copies to do that. So send people to read the excerpt and to drool over the cover and help me make a little noise about this one, please? *looks charming and hopeful* :)

My editor at Del Rey sent a couple copies of THE QUEEN’S BASTARD ahead of the contracted author copies so that I could see them soonest. Oh my god. This is a beautiful, beautiful, *beautiful* book. Ted, in awe, said, “This is *hot*,” and it *is*. I cannot *wait* for this to go on the shelves so people can get it, because oh my GOD it’s gorgeous. I ran around the house shrieking and doing the beauty queen thing and being all tearful. It’s *so* pretty.

And it’s the mark of a couple pretty freaking significant landmark for me. First, it’s my first non-Harlequin book. Second, it’s my TENTH FREAKING NOVEL! ZOH. MY. GOD.

And third, I now have one million words in print.

Not too damned bad for somebody whose first book came out in June 2005, eh?

*beams like a fool*

Email from my editor at Del Rey indicates I ought to be getting copies of THE QUEEN’S BASTARD pretty soon here. TQB is my tenth (including the novella, which I do) published novel. I feel like I should do something celebratory! But I don’t know what. I’d like to run a good contest, and…I donno! Ideas?

I’m featured this week over at Harlequin’s paranormal romance blog, where I talk about HOUSE OF CARDS and … mostly about HOUSE OF CARDS. Go forth, if you feel so inspired, read, comment and make them think I’m a really big draw to the blog. :)

P-Con starts tomorrow! I am GoH! I think it will be fun! …I’ll be an utter *zombie* on Monday, mind you, but it’ll be fun. And Ted is on a panel about what it’s like being married to a full-time writer, which I’m quite looking forward to attending. :)

Iiiii…am closing in on 100K on THE PRETENDER’S CROWN. About…well, 2K more, technically, because I’ve got a 2000 word scene that fits in later that’s not part of the actual current build-up of words and pages. 4K in straight beginning-to-end terms. I think I’ll go write for a while longer today, and maybe I’ll get up early enough to do some work before catching the train to Dublin tomorrow. (*Maybe* I’ll actually do some work over the weekend, but mostly that thought inspired a “bahahahahah!” in me, so probably not. So it’d be nice to hit 100K by tomorrow afternoon, don’t you think?)

Two posts in one day! Whatever is the world coming to? Well, this:

I haven’t yet posted about Match It For Pratchett because I’m easily distracted by bright shiny objects, but I have been meaning to. On the off chance anyone reading this hasn’t heard, Terry Prachett, who was recently diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, has donated half a million British pounds (approximately $1m USD) to Alzheimer’s research. His fans, within a matter of days, had started the Match It for Pratchett fundraising effort, which has the aim of raising an additional half million pounds, to bring it up to a nice round million.

In the past week, some £34,000 has been donated. The Alzheimer’s Research Trust in Britain is stunned and overwhelmed; according to their figures, $25US pays for an hour of their high-end research, so this kind of money really does make a significant difference to them.

My agent, Jennifer Jackson ( / arcaedia) has just posted the following:

Also–the person reading this blog that makes the highest donation by midnight on Saturday, the 22nd (and sends me some verification thereof), I will read and review your synopsis plus 50 (or so) pages of a work-in-progress (limited to novel-length fiction in the adult/YA genre categories I actually represent). You can go directly to the tipjar on the Match It site and make a donation. You can send verification to jjackson [at] maassagency.com

I *unquestionably* have the most awesome agent in the universe.

I am also hoping to get, at the very least, a Match It tip jar set up at the front desk for P-Con, and hope to get tickets handed out to everybody who donates. At the end of the weekend we’ll draw from a hat and I’ll give a signed copy of the complete Walker Papers series (so far) to the winner, or possibly books 1 and 2 of the Negotiator and will send 3 along when it comes out, if the winner prefers that.

I love my tribe, I really do, and I’m terribly proud of them for this effort.

And on a not exactly related, but not exactly not, topic, I’d like to raise a glass to Arthur C. Clarke, who was one of the pioneers of the world we live in.

A couple of weeks ago I got email from Joshua Palmatier inviting me to participate in the Great Plot Synopsis Project, wherein he was asking a bunch of published writers to post a book synopsis in order to help show aspiring writers how they’re done. (Joshua keeps having good ideas like this and then *following through on them*. I think he’s an alien.) So today is the Great Plot Synopsis Project Post Day, and I’m posting. :)

I have blatantly stolen the Synopsis Q&A Joshua posted in the post that inspired all of this.

Please note that there are SPOILERS for URBAN SHAMAN behind this cut. The book synopsis is replicated in its entirety. As it happens, because of how this particular synopsis is written, it’s not *very* spoilery, but it is spoilery! So be warned, and now you can, if you wish,

Read the rest of this entry »

In an impassioned plea from comments, Heather writes:
I see with dismay and a tinge of mournful disbelief that your Negotiator series is billed as a trilogy. :( Only three? Could you so easily leave this fantastic world you’ve created? If it must be a trilogy, can you nevertheless continue with Margrit and the Old Races in another series? Oh, please!

Margrit’s story will be wrapped up with the third book. I do have about eight other ideas for stories set in the Old Races world, and she may be a supporting character in some of those, but writing them is a long way out: I’m planning to finish the Walker Papers before I go back to the Old Races, so it’ll be several years before I return to that world.

The good news is that there’ll be a Janx and Daisani short story in an anthology published by Subterranean Press released next year (I think released next year o.o), so there’ll be at least a hint here and here of more of the Old Races. :)