Friday Cat Blogging Flat Cats in the Sun

Three flat cats in the sun.



One in a ball.



One in a sprawl.



And one melted all down the wall.



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Speaking of ball shaped cats…



Bonus Princess in the sun.

OMG! OMG! Sooooo Awesome!

Here's the cover art for PRECINCT 13, my WiP. It's actually a bit overdue at the publisher, but I'm frantically writing and should have done soon. Because, DUDE, I so want to write a book as AWESOME as this cover!!!

What do you think?

MMP for TDD

Use your decoder rings for the subject line! It means that there will be a mass-market paperback edition of Tall, Dark & Dead coming to a store near you in April of 2012 (or via Amazon.com pre-order today!)

If you're still scratching your head and asking, "Grandma, what's a mass-market paperback?" Well, honey, back in the late Jurassic, when your nana was young, MMPs were pocket-sized books you used to see on newstands. Most of nana's favorite books were mass-market paperbacks. In fact, nana is *so* old, we used to just call them "paperbacks," because there really weren't a heck of a lot of trade paperbacks to confuse them with.

Well, guess what? They still make 'em, and I'm super-psyched to be getting one!! And I hope they sell like HOTCAKES... no, child, I have no idea what a hotcake is or why they sell so well...

Writing A Series Description

So, one of the things that they don't tell you about in author school is that you are very likely to be spending good bits of your life writing things that look nothing like fiction. Bios, synopses, blurbs for other people's books, book and series descriptions for cover or marketing or bookstores, opinion pieces, essays on various writing and marketing topics, introductions, and on and on and on.

Today, a bookseller asked me where she might find a good series description for Fallen Blade. Unfortunately, I couldn't point her to one because, to the best of my knowledge no one has yet written one beyond the basic pitch-style one sentence version I've been using while answering fan mail and the like.

That goes a little like this: Fallen Blade is a high fantasy/detective noir hybrid. Which is true enough, but hardly adequate. Especially since I've now written a couple of the books and things change as you write.

So here's my attempt, let me know what you think…

Fallen Blade:

The Fallen Blade series is fantasy-noir set in a world that never was.

Fallen Blade follows the adventures of Aral Kingslayer and his living shadow familiar, Triss. Aral Kingslayer was a sorcerer and assassin once upon a time, perhaps the best in the world, one of the fabled Blades of Namara, Goddess of Justice. With Triss at his side, he killed the kings and generals that the law couldn't touch.

That was before. Before they murdered his goddess and burned her temple to the ground. Before they outlawed his kind. Before the wanted posters and the death sentence and the whiskey bottle. Now, Aral's living on the edge of disaster in the city of Tien, a jack of the shadow trades, working in the darkness while he tries to find his way back to the light. The series begins with Broken Blade, in 2011 with Bared Blade and Crossed Blades following in 2012.

Alternatively:

The Fallen Blade series is a noir-inflected traditional fantasy set in a darkened world of the mythical past.

What do you do when your goddess is murdered? If you're a former temple assassin with a huge price on your head, like Aral Kingslayer, you go into the shadow jack business, solving problems and doing odd jobs on the fringes of the underworld in the ancient city of Tien. It's a long step down from killing kings for the Goddess of Justice, but at least it provides Aral and Triss, the living shadow who is his secret partner and familiar, with a reason to keep going.

The Fallen Blade books follow Aral's adventures as he and Triss try to find a new cause. The series begins with Broken Blade, in 2011 with Bared Blade and Crossed Blades following in 2012.

And Breaking News

As @neilhimself tweeted, a University of Wisconsin-Stout theatre professor has gotten in trouble for having Firefly and Anti-Fascism posters on his wall.

I would have directed you to the link Neil offered, but he seems to have broken the Internet again.

Because I Know You Count On Me...

Because I know you count on me to keep you up-to-date on all the Internet explosions, I give you The DC Reboot: The Big Sexy Problem.

I found out about this from an incredibly thoughtful response on Ms. Snarky's Awesometastic Comic's Blog (via Michael Mirrim on FB).

Women have always struggled particularly in comic fandom. I agree that it seems silly/offensive to imagine that by driving them away, DC can sell more titles.

Lookie, Lookie!

Look what I just found available for pre-order on Amazon! Why it's my February release and final book in the vampire princess of St. Paul series, ALMOST EVERYTHING. If you TRULY love me, you will order early and often!

As a particularly noisy fan-grrl about Star Wars, I find this post on SF Signals from A. Lee Martinez about "Why You Should Stop Telling Fans to 'Get Over It'" lovely, just lovely.

I am going to try to commit this line to memory, actually: "We tell stories, create art, etc. because we want to have something to care about. It's the whole point."

Yeah. EXACTLY.

I wouldn't scream if I didn't CARE. And, I can only hope that out there, somewhere, there's a fan screaming about my universe.

Friday Cat Blogging

Mighty hunter stalks the veldt, or the video game…
whatever.



Nose down is sexy! Zzzzzzz



Hiding, duh!



Otter cat needs a really wide slide.



Cat light, cat dark.



Leaping and pouncing mostly, why do you ask?



Worship me, and I won't have to kill you.

Frying Pans and Dead Stars

From New Scientist, I give you frying pans and dead stars.

Mostly because I just wanted to say that.

Friday Cat Blogging on Monday…Oops

Whazzatzzzzzzzzzzzzz?



Noble is my middle name



Sunlight and sleepy cat



I'd go to the sun, but then I'd have to move



That's where the treat is supposed to be. Get on it.



Clever, that's me.



Evil cat can kill with yoga

Play List of the Damned

I think blog interviewers can smell fear or dorkiness or something, because, inevitably, they ask me this question: Do you have a play list for each of your novels? If not, can you think of a few relevant songs?

I always FAIL play list.

I haz no play list. In fact, I write all my novels to silence, or at least what passes for silence in a mostly empty house with a few cats, gerbils, and some fish. Sometimes I bust out and write in a place as noisy as a coffee shop, but I almost never consciously listen to whatever is playing on the overhead speakers because my brain wants to either listen to the story of the song, or sing along.

I will, occasionally, plug in my .mp3 play and hit random, but the songs that come up are so incredibly dorky that if I admitted to owning them legions of fans would desert me for the mere fact that I really kind of still dig Mike and the Mechanics.... (What? "Silent Running" is a great song! It's science fiction!)

sigh.

NASA APOD - Sunspot

Here is one of the sharper views of the Sun ever taken. This stunning image shows remarkable details of a dark sunspot across the image bottom and numerous boiling granules which appear like kernels of corn across the top. Taken in 2002, the picture was made using the Swedish Solar Telescope operating on the Canary Island of La Palma. The high resolution image was achieved using sophisticated adaptive optics, digital image stacking, and other processing techniques to counter the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere. Currently a sunspot group is crossing the Sun that is so large it can be easily seen by the cautious observer even without magnification.

Do not look directly at the sun, even if you have been told there are lovely, large sunspots crossing it. Everyone knows this, right?

In Case You Missed It...

It's kind of the talk of the town: Authors Say Agent Tried to Straighten Gay Characters in YA.

With some interesting follow up on Sherwood Smith's LJ.

Also, some interesting numbers about GLBT YAs in general.

The Last of Everything, As it Were

I got some bad news from my agent yesterday afternoon. It seems that Peguin is _not_ interested in more stories about Ana Parker, alas. So, ALMOST EVERYTHING will be the final installment.

Luckily, I've been down this road before with the Garnet Lacey series, and I actually wrote ALMOST EVERYTHING as a possible ender for the series. I had HOPED to write another set of books in which Ana is the Queen of the Vampires, and then another triology where she's the Empress, etc., etc. all the way up to Goddess, perhaps!

But, as it turns out, she'll always just be a princess. :-)

The silver lining is that I'm still hard at work on PRECINCT 13, so you can look for more things by me in the near future. I'm planning to propose a sequel to PRECINCT 13, as well as something, as the Monty Python folks would say, completely different.

So... fingers crossed.

New Nearby Planets

... like 50 of 'em, and a bunch are even Earth-like.

Me thinks we may have neighbors. Perhaps they fly saucers... ;-)

Lunch Date with Adam!

MinnSpec Meetup will be hosting a lunch with the newest Wyrdsmith, Adam Stemple, at the Lund's in Uptown next Sunday, September 18 at noon. Adam Stemple, author of Singer of Souls, Stewart of Song, and other pieces, will speak with the group. Bring your writing related questions for a relaxed Q&A session over lunch. The Meetup page can be found here.

Adam Stemple's website: http://www.adamstemple.com/.

Lund's "Uptown" can be found at 1450 West lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408.

Friday Cat Blogging

I am art cat, ooh and ahh for me.



I'm arty caty too, and thoughty to boot!



That's no moon it's a cat station!



Nope nothing to see here, move along.



Of course, I'm comfortable, don't I look comfortable?



I was told this was the place where the snacks happen…



Peek-a-boo!



I haz a flavor and it is pure elegance!

How scary is it?

Quote from last night's Wyrdsmiths' meeting:

"It's scary; but not, you know, RUTGER HAUER scary!"

Take that in whatever context you wish. :)

Oops, He Did It Again

Because everyone's talking about it, you should read this review of Orson Scott Card's newest book HAMLET'S FATHER at Rain Taxi.

Contemplate the FAIL.

NASA APOD

In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

Friday Cat Blogging

Do these stripes make me look fat?



I was gonna tag you it, but I decided to nap instead.




I'm sorry, is my eeeeevil showing again?



Dude, this is the best…have you ever really looked at your paw?



Holy shit, is that a camera?



No, these aren't my crazy eyes, why do you ask?



And then, I LOLed, like this!

Covers!

Here are the covers for the second book in the Tales of the Kin cycle, Sworn in Steel:
(click on either one to enlarge)

U.S.

U.K.

Current release date is slated for early April, 2012.

Also, in related news, Among Thieves and Sworn in Steel have both sold in Poland and Russia, while rights to Among Thieves recently sold to Bulgaria. My characters are now much better traveled than I am, but I'm not complaining. :)

ETA: And yes, the extra rapier across Drothe's back on the U.S. cover is there for a reason.... ;)