the essential kit

Whew!

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:26:21 GMT

We have arrived safely home again. The flights were uneventful, as they should be. On the train we were sat in front of 3 teenage girls who were being horrid in the way that only 3 teenage girls can be. (More or fewer mitigates the horror. Three is the perfect number for true awfulness.) So for two very tired adults, that was somewhat trying. I tell you what, though, there’s nothing like being around teenage girls to make me grateful that I’m no longer one myself. :)

Upon arriving home we decided we were starving, and went to look in the freezer to see if there was anything that could be made into a decent dinner. What we found was meat and blood frozen to the bottom of the freezer, and significant ice build-up on the walls and floor of it. Apparently there was a power outage of sufficient duration to make it clear we couldn’t risk eating anything in the freezer. (There was virtually nothing that perishable left in the fridge–it was all jam and mayo and cheese and butter and eggs, things that can warm without spoiling, but things which do not constitute a meal even when combined together unless there’s another element to add to the mix.) So we ordered pizza. o.o

That is, though, one way to make a person (or people) clean out a fridge/freezer. We went shopping for entirely new food this afternoon, came home, de-gunked the freezer (and the microwave, not that anything had melted in there, but as Ted said, he’d become afraid something might take his hand off every time he opened the microwave), and loaded it up with all kinds of healthy-looking foods which suggest that people who are not us live in this house. But OMG, we ate so much, and so richly, and got so little exercise while we were in the States that a diet of broiled chicken breasts, rice and steamed spinach really does sound like the way to go. It may be only the beginning of the holiday season, but we have done the Excess part to the hilt, and are for the first time in history prepared to actually eat sensibly and maintain portion control and achieve weight loss (or at the _very_ least maintenance) through December.

Boy, I’m glad to be home. :) We had a really fantastic time and I was so happy to see all the people we did, but I’m very glad to be home. :)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

quick post from SeaTac

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:29:32 GMT

I am bereft of ice cream–SeaTac doesn’t appear to have an ice cream parlour of any sort, which seems to me a terrible oversight–but am possessed of a beanbag chair and a wifi connection just a few yards away from my gate, so that’s not all bad. :)

A few minutes ago a man walking by said, “How are those beanbags working out for you?” and I gave him two thumbs up and said, “Pretty good!”, whereupon the woman with him said, “He got them installed here!” So I expressed my appreciation of the effort, because oh-so-much-more-comfy! Here I will remain until it’s time to board the plane. :)

Several people have emailed me to let me know that the Dabel Bros have, it seems, been acquired entirely by Dynamite. I knew something like this was in the works, but don’t know yet what it means for me and the Chance graphic novel (which the astute among you have noticed was not released in late November as originally scheduled. There’s no new schedule for it yet, either. I’ll let you know when/if there is.)

Let’s see. It’s been a very good vacation, but I think I’ll be glad to get home and only talk to the people in my head for a while. Kits (and Teds!) are not accustomed to this much socialization!

Okay, my tiny brain can’t put anything else coherent together, so I shall see you all, for some value of see, Sunday or Monday. *scoots*!

miles to Minas Tirith: 78.5

(x-posted from the essential kit)

yay fun!

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:09:00 GMT

Booksigning in Seattle was fun. Several people brought big stacks for me to sign (including Dermody books and comics! Yay!). Although I have piles and piles of my own books at home, somehow it’s different when somebody pulls out a 12-book-tall stack of well-loved books for me to sign. It looks like a LOT that way. :)

Saw many people, old friends and new, and had a very nice evening indeed. I’m a happy camper. Donno when I’ll post again, maybe not until we get home, but Ted and I have had a Very Good Vacation. Thank ALL of you who came to the signings and the kaffeeklatsch and everything, that was just wonderful! *dances and hugs you all*!

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Seattle signing!

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:47:47 GMT

A reminder that I will be signing at the University Book Store in Seattle Washington this very evening, from 7-8pm! I hope many of you will be there!

This is an event taking place downstairs on the far side of the cafe, rather than in the regular event area upstairs, so look for us there!

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Busy busy days!

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:31:22 GMT

We saw a bunch of friends throughout the remainder of our visit in Fairbanks. Sunday night we were like, “….why exactly is it we’re not staying longer?” Well, because Ted’s mom had said she’d be off work the 19th-30th, and we could come those days, and, well, we didn’t really *think* any further than that, darn it. We didn’t think, “We could stay longer, see a few more people, do a few more things…!” Next time we’ll have thought of it in advance. :) So now we’re rushing through Anchorage and kind of going, “…yeah, we could have stayed longer here, too!” Next time we shall. :)

Anyway, so Monday in Anchorage was Family Day. My uncle and two cousins, plus five attendant children, came up from Kenai, and another cousin and his wife took time off work during lunch, so we all went over to Bear Tooth for lunch. The first ten of us were trying to stuff ourselves into the corner booth when oen of the waiters (a guy we recognized! He’s been working at Bear Tooth forever!) came over, took a look at us, and said, kind of gently, “The theatre is open…”

So we poured gratefully into the theatre, where the kids spent much of the next couple hours running up and down the aisles screaming happily while the adults more or less kept an eye on them and chatted. Very cute kids–my cousin Moira has four boys, ranging from a month to seven years old, and my cousin Kerry has a three year old girl. Emelia and I hit it off straight away, as her mother was putting a barrette Emelia didn’t want in her hair, so when I met her she was standing with both hands on her head and an expression of terrible dismay.

Naturally, I put both hands on my head and copied her expression of dismay, and about two seconds later she latched onto my thigh, there to remain on and off through the afternoon. :) (I speak Small Child quite well, apparently. Years ago my friend Jai’s two year old daughter was playing drums with the pots and pans, so I sat down with her and played too, and Jai said, “…you really are just a great big two year old, aren’t you?” :)) At one point, I was telling one of the boys something about “Uncle Ted”, although technically all those kids are (I believe) first cousins once removed. My uncle, though, thought the simplification of “aunt” and “uncle” certainly simplified things, since explaining to kids why all those adult people are cousins is sort of weird. I said I’d basically always figured it was easiest to call it by generation. :)

Anyway, it was really, *really* nice to see them, and I hope very much that next time we come over here we can get down to Kenai for a day or two. We split up around 2:30 so the Kenai people could get home–or at least get through Turnagain, where it was blizzarding–before dark, and bobbled over to Bosco’s with Emily-the-mad, who decided at the last moment to zoop off to Orycon and then stay in Anchorage a couple days after Orycon so we could see her. :) Bosco’s actually had a couple back issues of Chance 2-5, which was kind of nice to see.

We stopped by B&N, where I signed the books they had in, and did a bit of driving around to see how Anchorage had changed, then went to dinner with what Ted refers to as our outlaws–they’re Deirdre’s in-laws–and that was equally nice. A very splendid salmon dinner, which *laugh* was in a lemon sauce that the chef–the husband of the family–felt was too sour. We none of us had thought it was, but he jumped up, poured it out, and went to make a brand-new sauce. The little girl, who’s five (and a half) hadn’t eaten her salmon, which was unusual, and someone asked why sh e wasn’t eating it. “It’s too sour!” she shouted, which completely undid our (genuine) protests that it hadn’t been. :)

Today, which was planned as Friends Day, we ended up running errands and were somewhat late to Kaladi’s (got there at two after planning a 1:30 arrival). We blamed the Irish rubbing off on us. :) But we managed to catch everybody who’d been there, including our former boss from Internet Alaska, whom I had hardly expected to see at all. So that was entirely lovely, and our friend Melissa (who looks FANTASTIC!) also pounced us while we were still outside the coffee shop, and when we got in my college roommate Liz was awaiting us (as was our friend Kim, but I totally failed to recognize her, as she is vastly shorter of hair and blonder than the last time we saw her!). More and more people showed up through the afternoon–people from the Alaska chapter of RWA, high school friends, more high school friends, some fans whom I’d never met before but who had driven in from Wasilla, just lots of poeple! It was fantastic! And then we went out to dinner with a few of them, and another high school friend dropped by, and finally we all tumbled off, and now I’m waiting to have an internet connection so I can actually post this. :)

(posted Wednesday morning from the Anchorage airport, in fact)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

here we are!

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:18:31 GMT

Running slightly late, due, we claim, to living too long in Ireland and nothing is done on time, but now we’re at the Kaladi Bros next to Title Wave on Northern Lights Blvd and will be here until…later! (I’ll update when we leave!)

(5:30pm and we’re leaving now! bye!)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

saying no is hard!

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:50:58 GMT

Maaaaaan. I’ve been invited to two anthologies in the past week, and it’d be so fun to do both of them, but I swore to myself I wouldn’t accept any more anthology invitations until next October. And I was wibbling on one, at least, because I’d been told about it before my No More Anthologies rule, but I remembered I had to do a proposal (for more Inheritors’ Cycle books) between writing WORLDBREAKER and RATTLESNAKE DANCES next spring, so nooooooooo, no anthologies for me. *tries to stay smart* :)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

that went well.

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:02:28 GMT

The book signing went pretty well, I think. Sold around 20 books, which isn’t bad for Fairbanks, and saw one friend from the North Road where I grew up whom I hadn’t seen in probably 20 years, plus another one who had no idea I was writing for a living, and did a wonderfully classic double-take when he saw me. :) And a third whom we had no idea was living in Fairbanks, but who is in fact actually working part-time at the B&N, so that was all-around awesome.

Ted, more than once, went dashing off to the shelved books to get copies of books I’d sold all the copies of (HEART OF STONE and THE QUEEN’S BASTARD, mostly) from my little display table. Ted is an awfully good guy.

One woman, the mother of a fan who lives in Chicago, came by with a bag full of books that her daughter’d sent to have signed, so that was awesome. Equally awesome was the fact that the grandmother accompanying the mother saw fit to move two large display/signs so people could actually see me when they came into the store. :)

Another gentleman whose wife had gone to UAF’s creative writing program told me the story of how they’d met when she’d picked him up off a fantasy bookrack at a used bookstore. :) She’d apparently come to Alaska with a fella, and they’d broken up shortly after arriving, so she’d gone to drown her sorrows by stopping by the bookstore, and found someone she knew to talk about it to. She said, “I guess I’m free to date now. Maybe him,” she said, gesturing to my storyteller. “He’s kind of cute. Tell him he should ask me out.”

“Ah!” said the friend, “that’s my friend John! John! Ask Mary out, she thinks you’re cute!”

That was thirty years ago. :)

Anyway, so it was a good day. We did a very little bit of shopping before the signing, but there were no mad crushes of people (though the parking lots were all crammed full), and we had a specific shopping list, so it was pretty strategic strike. That’s the only kind of shopping I like to do anyway, so it was all good. :)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Book signing today!

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:42:15 GMT

A last-minute reminder that I will be signing books at the Fairbanks Barnes & Noble from 1-4pm today!

(God, I hope at least a few people show up!)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:22:17 GMT

Happy Thanksgiving to all and sundry!

Yesterday we bundled off to see the Forbeses, who are old family friends of mine, and spent a splendid three hours or so talking and being entertained by their 7-month-old son, who was Absolutely Fascinated by Ted. We think it was the goatee. :) And we also ran into another friend when we stopped for lunch, so yay for small towns. :)

The house is very warm with the fire going and the oven having been on since about 8am, and I have the terrible sleepies. I may be forced to go for a walk, even though it’s 5 degrees out. OTOH, 5 degrees feels pretty warm after -25. *laugh* Ted, on…Monday, I guess, when it’d warmed up, said, “See! I told you we’d acclimatize quickly! Our blood thickened right back up!” I told him I didn’t think it was that our blood had thickened at all, just that 30 degrees warmer is in fact an awful lot warmer. If it had been 5 when we got here, not -20, we’d be whining about how miserably cold 5 degrees was. :)

I’m terribly confused by being hours and hours behind people instead of hours and hours ahead. I’ve gotten used to being on Irish time and it’s bizarre to think the east coast is currently four hours ahead of me instead of five hours behind. My tiny brain cannot handle it!

(x-posted from the essential kit)

alaskakaka pictures!

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:45:54 GMT

A few of ‘em, anyway. Fat ravens, Books My Friends Wrote sighted in the wild at B&N, a layered turtle cheesecake, sunset, stuff like that. :)

Me & ellenmillion

THE MERMAID’S MADNESS, by jimhines!

suricattus’s newest novel!

Sunny skies at 1:30pm, Nov. 24

(x-posted from the essential kit)

dry alaska is dry. and dark.

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:15:50 GMT

Agghlg. Dry Alaska is dry. I could sleep in a tub of lotion and I would awaken with all the lotion having schlucked into my skin and I would still feel dehydrated. This is not an aspect of Fairbanks that I miss. Nor is the early dark, though that’s not so bad right now. The sun’s gone down in Barrow and won’t be up again until late January, but Fairbanks still has almost eight hours of light. It won’t be until the solstice that it’s down to three. Still, when it’s full-on dark by 5:15, I do find myself getting pretty sleepy.

I do miss the amazing white frosted trees and the indirect gold sun and the pale blue skies that come with extreme cold and dry. Not enough to live here again, you understand, but it is absolutely beautiful.

We had a smashingly good Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Turkey and ham and stuffing and corn and green bean casserole and mashed potatoes and three kinds of pie (oh man, Ted’s mom made a strawberry rhubarb crumble to die for), and everyone seemed to have a good time as we ate too much. We watched movies, played cards, and did a small gift exchange. We now have a gift certificate to the comic shop. I know what *I* want to spend it on, but I’ll see if Ted can be convinced. :)

We filled up the car while we were driving around yesterday–$45 for 13ish gallons (which, in terms of gas prices in Ireland, is still dirt cheap), and it got us off on the topic of how we’d changed, living in Ireland. Ted said, “It does my head in to throw everything away,” a phrase which I thought was proof of change both in content and semantics. :) I don’t even know if there’s a recycling company *in* Fairbanks, but recycling cuts down on our garbage by about 70%, and composting takes care of another twenty percent of it, and after four years, we’re completely in the habit of it now. It’s extraordinarily weird to just throw things away.

And it’s equally odd to drive twelve or fifteen miles to get into town. I’ve become so very accustomed, whether in Longford or Cork, to living within walking distance (and in walking weather) of everything I need, that the idea of living somewhere as spread-out as Alaska is truly peculiar. But what *really* throws us is the size of the vehicles, and the fuel inefficiency of them. We were saying to each other, “If we still lived here, we wouldn’t own the Jeep anymore because of the price of gas,” but I wonder if that’s true. If we moved back here, we wouldn’t own a Jeep, because it would seem huge and awkward and gas-guzzling, but I’m not absolutely certain we’d have switched it out if we’d been living here all along.

Also, we went out to shop yesterday morning, with ‘morning’ being the operative word. The shops (which they refer to as ’stores’ here) are all open early and remain open until late. It’s very strange. And they think *I’m* very strange *indeed* when I say, “I don’t need a bag!” and whip out one of my little foldable cloth bags. :) But it drove me nuts, last time we were here, to keep getting plastic bags at the stores. So wasteful!

All right, off to lunch with friends, and then to make a cheesecake!

(x-posted from the essential kit)

first e-books, now vanity publishing

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:10:12 GMT

Last week (the week before? very recently, anyway), Harlequin Books–the parent company which publishes my Walker Papers novels–decided to try to take a chunk out of Ellora’s Cave profits and open Carina Press, an e-book-only press for…well. Smut*.

This past week, Harlequin has decided to jump on the vanity press wagon. They’ll edit and publish your book for the bargain price of something like $6K, and then they’ll take 50% of the royalties on a book that’ll never go into the bookstores. I could rant, but author Jackie Kessler does it so well I’ll just link to her, and then follows up with Harlequin’s response after the Romance Writers of America said, “Sorry, we can no longer consider Harlequin a legitimate publisher,” and the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America echoed them. Anyway, it’s a big mess and I’m absolutely agog that somebody thought it was a good idea**.

*Don’t get me wrong. Smut sells fantastically in e-book form. I’m in no way slamming it. If I were going to write erotica I’d almost certainly look at Ellora’s Cave as the first market. I’m just sayin’ that’s basically what they’re looking to sell.

**I really can’t actually believe anybody at Harlequin *did* think it was a good idea. Apparently HQN’s parent company needs money, and I can see somebody at *that* level deciding it was a good idea, but holy beans.

(x-posted from the essential kit)

greetings from the fwozen north!

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:33:01 GMT

After the longest Thursday in history (it lasted something like 33 hours, thanks to the time change), we arrived safely in Fairbanks, where one inhalation of the brisk winter air reminded us why it is we don’t ever want to live here again. Not even a deep inhalation, you understand, because the dry cold air makes you start coughing before you can pull in enough for a *deep* inhalation. :)

I’m awfully glad to be here, though. Today was clear and (cold, obviously) utterly gorgeous. I had forgotten, kind of, how far apart things are here. We dropped Ted’s mom off for her haircut at a hairdresser several miles from where they live, which is just not at all something the Irish would generally do. We’ve gotten really used to living within a completely walkable distance of things, and I was bemused at the distances we were travelling today.

Driving on the correct side of the road hasn’t been bothering me, but I keep trying to find light switches for the bathrooms outside the bathrooms themselves. I have been changed. :)

Vague plans for Christmas shopping tomorrow. Definite plans for Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner on Sunday, which, due to a fluke of circumstances, it appears Ted will be largely responsible for. Fortunately, we are all quite certain he can handle the pressure. :)

miles to Minas Tirith: 68.5

(x-posted from the essential kit)

pack pack pack

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:58:26 GMT

clothes are packed. toiletries are packed. netbook is packed. kitchen is clean. laundry is done. sheets are changed. reservation sheets are printed. passports are packed. stack of books is increasing. camera is packed. shopping list for parents is written.

*thinks*

arright, well, we have the passports and the reservation stuff, anything beyond that can be replaced. hidey ho!

miles to Minas Tirith: 64.6

(x-posted from the essential kit)

repeating myself

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:54:42 GMT

I once more point people at my environmentalism temper tantrum, mostly because it’s faster than typing it all out again. Triggered this time by

- the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas failing to have the balls to do what needs doing, ie, a total ban on tuna fishing for years to come. Yes, I get the impact of that on ordinary fishermen, I am from a fishing community myself, and frankly it’s not Joe Bob with his single boat that’s the problem, it’s huge conglomeration fleets and giant ships sponsored by corporations, but none of that matters, because the goddamned end result is the same. Furthermore, I recognize that a significant part of the problem is also a lack of ability/desire/follow-through on policing the fisheries to ensure the sanctioned catch isn’t being disregarded, but none of that diminishes the fact that that the ICCAT lacks the balls to do its job

- Sean goddamned Parnell, the new governor of Alaska, vowing to get polar bears removed from the endangered species poster child list because he can’t let a few dumb animals stand in the way of the state’s prosperity

- the unshocking news that gosh, there’s almost certainly not going to be anything binding coming out of the upcoming climate change summit–because hey, why not lower expectations plenty early, especially when countries are already being handed concessions on the topic while on a national scale in the US, Republicans just flat out walked out of a climate bill discussion because THAT’S HOW WILLING THEY ARE TO FIX THE PROBLEM.

God, maybe you guys are right. Maybe I should write a book. Except I don’t know that I could sell it on proposal (Big Idea Environmental Fiction is not my gig) and I don’t think I could afford to write it on spec with my other contracted books.

*headdesk, anyway*

(x-posted from the essential kit)

On vacation

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:27:13 GMT

Catie is on vacation. If you need to contact her, please leave a message at the tone.

*BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*

TRUTHSEEKER revisions are done and delivered. “Cairn Dancer” revisions are done and delivered. “Perchance to Dream” revisions are not done, but are so minor I won’t count them against my vacation. I am now officially On Vacation until the 7th of December. Yay!

Also yay: I got paid yesterday, and am once more extremely grateful for all my readers. In honor of you, Ted and I had a real life Date Night where we went to a movie in the evening and then went out to dinner. (Movie: 2012. As advertised, the special effects were pretty awesome. We enjoyed it. We want the DVD extras.) So thank you all for my movie and dinner. And rent. And kitty kibbles, and everything else. :)

I will now stagger to bed and sleep the sleep of the just, or at least the sleep of the “so full of Indian food I cannot stay awake any longer”. :)

miles to Minas Tirith: 51.4
ytd wordcount: 251,500

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Anchorage booksigning FAIL

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:40:28 GMT

I have been unable to arrange a book signing in Anchorage.

Instead, Ted and I decided that rather than try to make a dozen different meet-up arrangements, we would plonk ourselves down at the Kaladi Brothers coffee shop next to Title Wave Books on Northern Lights Blvd, and hope that people come to us. We’ll be there from about 1:30pm on Tuesday, December 1st up until the point where we decide to go somewhere else to eat dinner.

Our movements will be trackable via this blog, Twitter, and Facebook, and should be fairly up-to-the-minute, since I’ll be carrying my netbook with me on this trip. Hopefully we will see you there!

(x-posted from the essential kit)

I am told…

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:04:28 GMT

…by a reliable source (twitter) that several of the Walker Papers are at half price at Audible.com.

I went and got a flu shot today, because we’ll be spending 30+ hours in a metal tube with dry recycled air over the next few weeks. The nurse said, as they’re inclined to, “This will feel like a sharp pinch.” I dunno. I’ve pretty much always thought it didn’t feel anything like a pinch, but that it feels a lot like somebody sticking a needle into your arm. :)

I was beginning to think today was going to be another “you spent four hours working and are still 95 pages from the end of the book” day, but I seem to have finished the major revisions. I have to revise at least two scenes still (& go back and put something in that got cut in the last revision round, I’m pretty sure), but it’s not all new material, so it will go much much more quickly. And now I only have 82 pages to go to the end of the book!

And I finally reached 250K for the year today.

miles to Minas Tirith: 44.6
ytd wordcount: 250,500

(x-posted from the essential kit)

dinner

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:20:11 GMT

I have had for dinner seared pork steak with an apple stuffing and gravy, applesauce and peas, followed by dark chocolate strawberry cordials for dessert.

We did not go out for dinner. This is what Ted made.

I have the best husband *ever*.

(x-posted from the essential kit)

mostly about the weekend

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:29:56 GMT

This morning I started out with 90 pages of revisions to go. I wrote 2800 words today. Now I have 95 pages of revisions to go. *weeps*

So last Thursday Ted and I went into Dublin to meet GRRM, or at least to get him to sign books for us. This mostly involved standing in a very long line with increasingly achy feet, but involved some chatting with friends, which was great. When we got up to the man himself, the guy in front of us, with whom we’d spoken some, took out what must have been a first edition hardback version of A GAME OF THRONES, with a cover I’d never seen.

“Ah!” said Mr. Martin, “don’t get mugged on your way out of here, this one’s worth about a thousand dollars.”

I happened to be carrying a copy of the SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH anthology, which is a great big thick hardback book, as well as my paperback CLASH OF KINGS, so I put the paperback down on the signing table, said, “Excuse me,” to GRRM, and made as if to whack the guy in front of me over the head with SONGS so I could steal his thousand dollar copy of GoT. There may be photographic evidence of my utter lack of propriety, but my coat, which I was carrying over one arm, flew up in front of my face, so possibly there’s photographic evidence of *someone* but not *necessarily* me trying to mug a guy at the GRRM signing. :)

Ted and GRRM were both wearing flat caps, and GRRM clearly recognized Ted later at the after-signing meet-up, which I suspect was in part because of the cap. :) We didn’t stay at the meet-up very long, but it was all around a very nice evening.

We also swung down to Dawson Street, where the … Harris & Tweed, or something like that (Hodges Figgis, apparently), bookstore is. We had been told my books were being carried there, and lo, they were! So I signed the ones they had, then went and introduced myself to their SF/F guy, who looked at me in vague bewilderment, mostly because he had a hand-written list beside him of books he was ordering, and my name was on it for the TAKE A CHANCE* graphic novel, and it struck him as exceedingly unlikely that one of the authors on the list he’d just written out had walked up to introduce herself. :) Anyway, apparently my books sell quite well there, and though they didn’t offer to do a signing, they did offer to order in 20 or so copies of DEMON HUNTS when it comes out, and to do a face-out display thing and get me to sign the books and all, so we felt it was *well* worth having gone by. Also, they have a really good SF/F selection (for Ireland), and we may have accidentally bought a handful of books. So it was goot!

*He wanted to know what TAKE A CHANCE was, and I explained it was a graphic novel, which he seemed quite pleased about, as they have a pretty good GN section there. But he was confused because he hadn’t been able to bring it up in the system, and was somewhat dismayed to hear that was because the graphic novel has been delayed indefinitely.

(also, randomly, I think this mood icon is a particularly *terrible* choice for a mood of ‘fine’, because in this frame Gambit has been stabbed through the chest with a GIANT SWORD and Rogue is telling him “While I live, you don’t die.” That’s really not ‘fine’, I don’t think… (except I see that it's not the option on LJ, so this bit makes no sense, does it.))

miles to Minas Tirith: 38.05
ytd wordcount: 248,600

(x-posted from the essential kit)

on signing tours

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:25:03 GMT

For the record, I’m not going on a signing tour in a couple weeks. I’m going home to Alaska to visit family and friends, and am stuffing a couple of book signings in on the way through.

But since I’ve been talking about the signings, many of you have hopefully suggested you would very much like me to come to your location and sign books. I, too, would like to go to your location and sign books. I think it would be tremendously awesome. I would, however, have to sell about 300% more books than I do in order to make it even vaguely feasible. It’s not a lack of promotion on the publisher’s part, or a writer having to do all the publicity leg work herself. It’s pure finances.

As a rule, when you buy one of my books new, I get about a dollar from that sale. That’s the money I live on, day to day. That’s what I pay bills and rent and student loans with. So in order to fly to New York on your average economy ticket, I’d have be certain of selling, oh, say, an additional 600 books at a signing in order to break even. And that’s not including food or hotel, so throw those in and even if you’re being very cautious with money you’re looking at needing to sell an additional thousand or twelve hundred books to not lose money on the prospect. And really, most people at book signings bring the books they’ve already bought to get them signed, so even if by some incredibly unlikely stroke of luck I had 1200 people show up to a signing (and I’m much more in the realm of “if 40 people show up it’s an unqualified success”), the odds of selling 1200 books would be infinitesimally small. So although I have a good solid readership (for which I am *extremely* grateful), there just simply aren’t enough dollars coming in to support a self-financed book tour.

Ah! you say, so get your publisher to send you on a tour!

Well, the finances for the publisher are basically the same. My sales numbers–which, like my readership, are good solid numbers–are not nearly that good. I’m not a bestseller in terms of moving a large enough quantity of any given novel in the first month of publication. Over my career thus far my books have had what the industry refers to as “legs”–in other words, I’m still selling a lot of copies of URBAN SHAMAN, even 4.5 years after it came out. Now, if I could get everybody who’s bought a copy of URBAN SHAMAN to buy my next book the month it came out, yeah, I’d probably all of a sudden get to have shiny words like “USA Today Bestseller” or possibly “New York Times Bestseller” in front of my name. And there’s a degree of self-perpetuation to that, so once you start reaching that status it may become worth it to the publisher to (probably) lose money on financing a tour themselves, in hopes of making it up in sales down the road.

I’d greatly love to reach that status, or be in a position where it’s financially feasible to take myself on a signing tour and go all over the place to meet people. But for the moment, I’m really only ever going to be able to manage signings at places that I’m going to anyway, and sadly there just aren’t that many of those places to begin with. :)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

questions answered

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:18:46 GMT

I asked people on Facebook to ask random questions for me to answer. Q&As behind the cut. :)

which of the old races is the most like your personality? I don’t think any of the Old Races are much like me in personality. Margrit, though, is probably more like me than most of my characters, although it’s Joanne who ’sounds’ like me.

Is there a book after the Pretenders Crown? I sure hope so. I’m writing a fantasy duology for Del Rey right now, but as soon as that’s done I’ll be pitching the rest of the Inheritors’ Cycle books to them.

Is Joanna going to hook up with the captain?? You’ll have to keep reading to find out. :)

If you had to choose a theme song for each of your main characters, what would they be? (oh, god, I’m really bad at this kind of question.) Um. Let’s see. I might give Belinda “Ballroom Blitz”. :) Joanne would have some kind of classic rock, probably. Maybe “Summer of 69″. Margrit…oi. Um. Y’know, I kinda want to say the Imperial Death March, based on her not letting go once she’s decided to do something…

If you only had 1 day to be awake what day would it be? Wow, how very shades of DAYWORLD. :) Whatever day the revolution was being held!

If you had to choose, which would you rather be? Vampire or Werewolf? I’ve really never cared for werewolves, but traditional vampires are so limited with the no sunlight thing I might say werewolf anyway.

What’s the one song you think everyone should hear and why? Music questions are hard. Maybe Tommy Sands’ “1999″, which is a song about the futility of the Troubles in Ireland and how many years and lives were wasted. He wrote it in the 80s, and its final line had been (something to the effect of) “Why couldn’t we learn our lesson back in 1989?”, but by the time I heard it in the 90s he’d had to add another verse, and it ended with “back in 1999?” I’m very glad to think he may never have to add another verse, but it’s a beautiful, sad song that reflects the senselessness of ongoing war everywhere.

If you weren’t an author, what would you be? Almost certainly an actor.

If you could be Rogue for one day what would you do? Fly until I fell out of the *sky* (I said, assuming the classic Rogue/Carol Danvers powers)!

If you could change one thing about your favorite story (that you’ve ever read), what would it be? …actually, I wouldn’t change anything about my favorite story.

If you were a vampire, would you live in a northern latitude where you could be out for 6 months of the year and then either have to leave or hole up underground (and if so, which)? I would totally spend my time commuting between Barrow and Cape Horn (since I kind of figure a vampire would have a hard time getting taken on as an over-winter researcher on Antarctica…).

(x-posted from the essential kit)

bookstore signings poll

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:01:31 GMT

This is more so I can perhaps give the bookstores some sense of what to expect/order/etc than for my own self-aggrandizement. Regardless, I didn't put a "no" option on the 'are you attending' because I didn't figure that'd be very helpful, since most of my 600+ friends list do not live in Seattle and Fairbanks. :)

View Poll: #1482005

Fairbanks book signing!

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:58:06 GMT

There will be a book signing event in Fairbanks, Alaska!

Where: The Fairbanks Barnes & Noble

When: 1-4pm on Friday, November 27th, 2009

What: I will definitely be signing, and my books will be for sale. I may do a reading or two, since I’ll be there a while.

Further details: The Fairbanks B&N is leaning toward mostly bringing in copies of WALKING DEAD to sell. I’m also encouraging them to stock up on first books in all of my series, but if you’re in the Fairbanks/North Pole/Nenana/etc region and would like books other than URBAN SHAMAN, WALKING DEAD, HEART OF STONE and THE QUEEN’S BASTARD, let me strongly encourage you to call then (907-452-6400) sooner rather than later to put an order in for the books you want. It’ll encourage them to have copies on hand, and they’ll be ordering books for the signing next week, so you’ll want to move briskly!

(x-posted from the essential kit)