Swan Tower

If you want to whet your appetite for next month, Tor.com has posted an excerpt from Voyage of the Basilisk.

It seems a good excuse to remind you all that you have until the end of this month to send a letter to Isabella and get one in return. (Those of you who have sent one already will be getting replies soon: my progress on those has been slowed by the necessity of finishing and revising the draft of the fourth book.) I have to say, I’ve been touched by the number of personal elements people are incorporating into their missives; it’s wonderful to know that this story speaks so deeply to their own lives, in one way or another. I hope my replies will do that justice.

And now, back to the revision mines!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

It’s four weeks and counting until the street date for The Tropic of Serpents. The talk is starting . . . .

1) Excerpt from the book on Tor.com

2) Liz Bourke’s review on Tor.com (which I believe wins the prize for being first out of the gate)

3) Publishers Weekly liked it

4) So did Kirkus, but I don’t think that one will go live for a few days. (Holy crap, that’s three books in a row of mine that they’ve liked. I think it may be a miracle.)

5) Brief interview with the UK site Female First, on A Natural History of Dragons

6) I’ve sent pronunciations to the narrator for the audiobook of TToS. I’m delighted to say that Kate Reading is continuing with the series, and this one will be out a lot closer to the print date than the last one was.

7) Speaking of the UK, it occurs to me that ANHoD will be out there very soon! I actually don’t know the precise street date, but I think it’s in the next two weeks. (Again, #2 should follow in quicker succession, I think.)

I think that’s all for now. But as we get closer to the street date, things will be picking up rather rapidly, I imagine!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Almost forgot this. (Technically it's now the 11th where I am, but I'm pretty sure it's still the 10th for most of you, so it isn't exactly late.)

The last excerpt from With Fate Conspire is up; one last scene apiece for our protagonists. You can read those, or start at the beginning and read the whole thing.

(But be warned: the excerpt skips over some intervening bits, so as to focus on Eliza and Dead Rick; when you pick up the book, don't overlook those!)

Twenty days and counting . . . .

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.

Twenty days and counting; the last piece of the excerpt has gone up. (Beginning is here.)

Over on the sirenscon LJ, the discussion of Midnight and Ashes continues with a new question, regarding time and point of view in the novels. The first question, about the connection between the mortal and faerie worlds, is still open; you don't need to be a con attendee or even an LJ user to jump in.

And speaking of things you don't have to be a con attendee to do, there are four days left to submit a recipe for the drink contest. There's been some by e-mail already, and I'm looking forward to trying these things out!

I posted a new excerpt from A Star Shall Fall (beginning of the whole is here).

And while I'm tidying up my browser, I might as well make this a linkdump post and add in two other things:

Cat Valente on the power of the suit -- which I note mostly because, as I was saying to a friend recently, I have essentially no fashion registers between "jeans and t-shirt" and "formal wear." I've sort of acquired a degree of business casual, left over from the year when I was teaching my own (non-archaeology-related*) classes, which you can see in action at ICFA and other warm-weather cons, but most of the time I default to a higher degree of slobbiness. But I really enjoy dressing up, i.e. actual fancy wear. It's just the middle registers I don't have much use for.

The Pleasures of Imagination -- what struck me in this was a bit near the end, where the author said,

I have argued that our emotions are partially insensitive to the contrast between real versus imaginary, but it is not as if we don't care—real events are typically more moving than their fictional counterparts. This is in part because real events can affect us in the real world, and in part because we tend to ruminate about the implications of real-world acts. When the movie is finished or the show is canceled, the characters are over and done with. It would be odd to worry about how Hamlet's friends are coping with his death because these friends don't exist; to think about them would involve creating a novel fiction.

And I immediately thought, "hello, fanfiction." Because the aftermath of trauma is one of several fertile areas out of which derivative works can sprout.

This has been your not-at-all-regularly-scheduled schizophrenic link post.



*My theory was that when you're assistant-teaching intro to archaeology, you'll actually get more cred by showing up in jeans and a flannel shirt than a skirt and heels.

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.

I blame April Fool's Day. I had been debating whether I wanted to post the next tidbit from Ashes as scheduled on that day, given the traditions, and I ended up clean forgetting to post anything until today.

So, a little belated, have some more excerpt.

(Or start at the beginning.)

On the bright side, you'll get the next goodie quite soon.

. . . and counting.

As with last year, I'm going to dole out bits of stuff to keep you all interested between now and the release date of In Ashes Lie, on the tenth of June. Expect something every ten days, assuming I can keep myself organized enough to put everything together, and alert enough to post it when the appropriate day rolls around.

Today? You get your first taste of the book.

That's right, folks; it's time for another bit of Midnight Never Come. You can start at the beginning, or pick up with with the new material. There are two scenes posted, one introducing Deven, the other for Lune.

There will be one more addition to the excerpt before the book's publication, and several other goodies of a different kind. Read and enjoy!