In Translation (also, baking)

So, Nightwatch on the Hinterlands got picked up for Turkish foreign rights, and lo, this arrived in my mailbox this week. 

I love the cover art. It's kind of strange/cool to see your story in words you can't read, except for the proper names. While this isn't my first foreign rights sale, it is the first time I've gotten a copy. Pretty cool.

I would love to have more to report, but it is February. It's not even an especially dark month here (it should be raining. It isn't. That will change at the end of the week.), but it's a drag on the spirit. Nothing major, just many littles coming together to make a much. 

Thank the gods for steady D&D games and the friends that make them possible. 

And because I am (not so) low-key D&D obsessed, I took yesterday, Presidents' Day, to spend mostly in the kitchen, making D&D associated recipies. I've made Lord Eshteross's Maple Ginger Cookies with Turmeric (from Exquisite Exandria: The Official Cookbook of Critical Role) before, and they turned out splendidly this time as well. I don't actually own that cookbook yet, mind, so I can't speak to the rest. 

I do own Heroes' Feast, the official D&D cookbook (Shan, who is not Icelandic in any way, practices the Icelandic tradition of giving books as gifts on Christmas Eve. She figures cookbook and gaming is just doubling up on the awesome, and she is not wrong.) I did a test run of the vedbread (the D&D name in the book, and I have no idea what its real name might be).  It's a sort of savory not-at-all-cinnamon roll, where the dough is instead rolled around a combination of mushrooms, shallots, and cheese, and the dough itself has a fair bit of cheese worked into it as well. Tasty. A little more substantial  than "bread that accompanies soup" and more like "light lunch." They seem like a thing that may come with me to events where someone says "bring something savory, not a main dish, not a salad."  

And because I spent the day making dishes for my long-suffering husband to wash up, I feel better about the multiverse today. Also, I have tasty things to eat for lunches and snacks. 

And February is almost over.

Ashland Public Library Event!

 I was fortunate enough to participate in a virtual panel about women in SciFi with Julie Czerneda, Lena Nguyen, and Mur Lafferty, hosted by the Ashland Public Library. You can watch it here. 

Those of you who make a DC 10 perception check may note yours truly held up Nightwatch on the Hinterlands instead of Nightwatch Over Windscar and utterly failed to, like, describe the books. Let us attribute this to end of quarter brain. Yes. 

And instead, please enjoy this beautiful animation of the most recent book, Nightwatch Over Windscar, which follows templar Iari and the Five Tribes vakari ambassador Gaer as they try to figure out wtf is going on in Windscar, where the separatists are hiding, and wait, what is that noise...?

consider this your holiday letter

Happy December! If I seem enthusiastic, it is because the quarter ended last week--the teaching in the classroom part, anyway--and while I am not done with work (grading final projects, setting up next quarter's class webpage), I am at least done with the part that requires me to wear shoes for the next month.

Unfortunately I am not able to grade without typing, because that isn't much fun at the moment. Took a dive on a run the Monday before Thanksgiving--there was an oncoming bike, and I was busy watching him when I stepped into the dirt and sidewalk adjacent ground cover, rather than where I was stepping. I thought I had clear dirt. I found a pernicious root. I had time, as it tightened across my foot, to think oh fuck and then splat. A very stretched out, fully extended, but at least running uphill at the time splat.

Half of me hit the dirt, literally, and that half--except for a few neat scratches on my ribs--was fine. The half that hit the sidewalk was less fortunate. I got myself up before the poor cyclist could even dismount to assist, and toddled off toward home. At the time, I thought the scraped up knee was the issue. (Running tights are tough. Not a scuff on them, but the skin underneath was shredded.) I'd caught myself on the palm on that side, elbow flexed at about 90 degrees, wrist mostly flat, and everything straightened and moved. I feared for the wrist, but it seemed fine, and it was.

The elbow, however, having absorbed a great deal of force and shock, was sprained, which I discovered about the time I got home and tried to flex is beyond that 90 degrees in either direction. Oh ho ho, that wasn't happening. 

Since then, I have learned how very many things elbows are involved in besides bending, and how very unpleasant--or impossible--some of those things become. I have also learned how much of my yoga practice relies on straight elbows. 

I have not learned that I am bad at convalescing because I already knew that, and merely confirmed the continuation of that particular quality.

I could, and can, still knit, which is good! Because I have things* to finish by Christmas Eve. 

*Like that orange octopus D&D dice-bag beside Tinycat, except that one is mine.

a suggestion

Do you know what would make an excellent gift for whatever holiday or holidays you celebrate? I will give you one guess. Here. While you think about it, watch this video.

what I have been doing instead of writing

Please be advised: the iPhone's camera is fine, but I may have been asking too much, and also I am not an especially gifted photographer. Don't judge.

This summer I spent mostly outside on the deck, binging Dimension 20 and, appropriately, painting D&D miniatures. Because it is monster season, aka October, aka Halloween Month, I share with you the biggest and finest of my monsters. 

Behold the beholder! He's an obnoxiously colorful fellow. I don't see why beholders need to be grim and dark (the one I am painting for my godson is, but this one is a celebration of neon). The beholder is an iconic D&D monster, right up there with the mimic, and one of my favorites. But not my very favorite....

 

This is my favorite, both in D&D and personally: the red dragon. 

Of the D&D dragons, I like the look of the red and the green best, and but if I have to choose between acid and fire, well. Fire. Obviously. 

The First Three

This summer I took a much needed break from drafting fiction, and in between copyedits on Windscar and writing a textbook chapter, and getting on a plane and visiting my parents, I mostly painted the collection of D&D minis I'd accrued in the last year. (As I type this, I realize I should be posting them, but I'm not, so...later? I will post them.) 

I also acquired some acid dyes. I have a box of undyed handspun hanks in various types of wool (and maybe silk?--the fiber was a gift, and I just spun it.) I don't have a dedicated sink or studio, but I had always planned on using an old slow cooker to dye, rather than a burner, because I just don't have that much fiber and the slow cooker seemed neater and maybe a little easier. 

Then I started painting, and promised myself no dyeing until the painting is done, because I suspected it was going to be A Thing and I was almost a little sorry I'd bought the dyes at all, because acid dyes are toxic and fraught and why hadn't I just done Kool-aid dyes and woe, wah, at least there's a dragon and a beholder left to paint and I can put off the new hard thing.

And then the dragon and the beholder were finished. 

Honestly the hardest part was prepping the first hank, because I managed to give it a 3-hour tangle. Making the dye stock was a little dangerous--it had to happen outside, and very carefully so that the very toxic powder did not get off the plastic-and-damp-paper-towel-covered work surface--but not actually difficult. 

My first attempt was mostly blue, with a shot of purple thrown in for depth. I was trying for the kettle-dyed tonal look, so I immersed, but did not stir at all. My second batch was two hanks at once, in purple, but one of the hanks was an overdye of a bright turquoise blue/white yarn. I was expecting a less saturated color because the dye stock was less concentrated, and indeed, that is what happened. The overdye hank was more saturated on the whole, but also has bleed-through of the base color (an effect I like). Nous wants the lighter purple for a cephalopod dice bag I have promised him. 

Next up: a less saturated green, if I can manage it.

On the Bones of Gods

 The On the Bones of Gods reissue is here! 

Almost. The e-books will be out on July 12. The print versions, and the audio books, will take a little longer: February 14, 2023, because everyone wants a little revolution for Valentine's Day. 

The covers, though, are definitely here, and...here they are! The (original, just for this project) artwork is by Deborah L. Wright and the graphic design is by The Rat, Tan Grimes-Sackett. It is a grand thing to know artists and designers, and to be able to work with them on your projects. 

Watch this space

 In anticipation of events on the Bird Site, I will be (finally) getting a newsletter going, and attempt (valiantly) to be more regular about blog updates. LOOK! There on the right! You can sign up! 

I promise to produce actual useful content when I am not staring down a day of student conferences, editor revisions on Windscar, and galleys for the reissue of Enemy and Outlaw.

In the meantime, proof of concept: here I am, with Nous, having ventured out to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire for the first time in two years. 

And so it is finished

Five weeks of Inconceivable MKAL, in pictures. Finished on time and on schedule, and just in time, because I'm expecting editorial notes on Windscar Very Soon Now(tm). I will be fabulously dressed while I edit, once The Patchwork Terror finishes his promenade.

 

Inconceivable!

I am a knitter, but I am a self-taught solitary who has never participated in a stitch-n-bitch or any other social knitting. I am a member of ravelry.com because that's where you find all the cool patterns, but I haven't updated a project there since The Early Days of Knitting(tm), when it was still a miracle to me that two sticks and some string could make things that were useful and beautiful, and also when I had more time to update my projects pages.

ANYWAY. I am an asocial knitter. I knew that there were things called Knit-Alongs, KALs, which sounded a lot like socializing to me, and also knitting on a schedule and usually not a project I was all that interested in. I mean, how many shawls do I need, really? I'm more of a sock and sweater girl, with a side of cowls and rugs for the handspun stuff. And then there's the subset of KAL, the mystery KAL (MKAL), in which the pattern is bought, sight unseen, and doled out with clues over the course of weeks.

I hadn't exactly sworn that I wouldn't do such a thing, but I reckoned it highly unlikely. 

And then one day, while prowling Ravelry's pattern library for something--I spotted As You Wish: An Inconceivable MKAL. My mind leapt immediately--because I am a GenX child of the 80s--to The Princess Bride. Surely, I thought, this cannot be a MKAL themed on the Princess Bride! Why, that would be... 

No, not "inconceivable," but so irresistibly cool a notion that I clicked on the link, and then the next thing you know, I'm looking at (and pricing, yikes) yarn and harrassing Nous for opinions about various colorways. I posted on Facebook (a semi-serious "talk me out of this idea, it's kinda A Lot, right?"), which garnered a lot more enthusiasm than I had been expecting from both knitters and non-knitters. I even took the mad step of joining the project message boards (though I want it known I have not actually posted a voidspit thing yet). 

To the surprise of no one, I bought the pattern and got a kit from Frabjous Fibers and Wonderland Yarns.  The name of the colorway is "Battle of Wits," which I chose partly for the the purple and the speckled hank and partly for the name. The first clue drops Feb. 22, and I hope by then to have cleared at least one of my outstanding projects off the needles, because I'm gonna be on a schedule, people. 

Expect to see updates. 

NIGHTWATCH-related links, plus jack o' lanterns

 Y'all, it is already in the 90s here this AM, in mid-November, which is not old-normal but may be new-normal and anyway, it's hot, which does not segue naturally into hey here are some interviews I did about NIGHTWATCH ON THE HINTERLANDS, but we post with the segues we have, not the segues we want. 

An Interview with Nerd Daily

An Interview with Paul Semel

I have turned in the NIGHTWATCH sequel (heretofore referred to as WINDSCAR) to my long-suffering agent, who will probably tell me it needs an ending because it kinda just stops, and...well, that is fair. But it just stops at 115K, so there can't be too much more. I hope. 

And I hope even more that November remembers it's the month of rain and chill, or at least grey skies. If this nonsense continues, I'm gonna start looking for sandworms.

And because I missed Halloween (well, I didn't miss it, but I missed posting), here are the Eason Collective jack o'lanterns of 2021. I am not sure why it took us so long to go full D&D, but I, for one, am not turning back. The beholder is Nous's creation. He does one seriously artistic thing every year, and it is his jack o'lantern. I favor simple shapes, but I am a sucker for dragons, so... dragon. Red, of course. 

Nightwatch on the Hinterlands is here!

Nightwatch on the Hinterlands is loose in the world.  You can acquire it in all the usual places, and you should, because Tinycat said so. Do you want to argue with Tinycat? 

(Spoiler: you do not. She is more obstinate than either of the kaiju boy-cats. She will wear you down.) 

=

As many times as this happens--and this is #6--a book release day is a rush. So much goes into producing a novel--I wrote it, yeah, but my amazing agent, Lisa Rodgers, and the incredible team at DAW, are the ones who make sure the story is dressed polished and ready to go outside. So thanks to all of them for getting the story to you. 

I had fun writing this one (which is not always the case), and I hope you enjoy reading it, too. 

The Golden Cowbell

Back in June I received notice from a librarian at the K. Weldon Library (International School of Geneva, La Châtaigneraie Campus) that How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse was the winner of a Golden Cowbell award. Which--cool! I am delighted to win awards, and delighted that Rory is a hit with a) kids at all and b) kids who don't necessarily speak English as a first language. So yay! 

After a very long journey, with a stop off at JABberwocky, it arrived. 

I was expecting a cute little tourist-sized cowbell, the kind my mother has hanging on her wall from the trip we took to Switzerland was I was...10? I think. This, however, is not that cowbell. 

On that trip to Switzerland, I remember waking up in the hotel to the sound of cows being driven up the actual street outside to their mountain pastures. They wore bells, and those bells were very loud and distinctive. Functional bells

This is one of those bells. It is also quite lovely. I smelled the leather strap when I opened the box. The bell itself is heavy and shiny. The brass fittings on the strap are very shiny (the astute observer may see me reflected in the cow as I took this photo). I was delighted to receive the award and now I am doubly, triply, extremely delighted to receive the bell itself. 

Thank you, students who voted for Rory!

Happy New Year

 This winter break was especially short--just shy of two full weeks, which seems a lot until you realize there were two holidays in there, and all the website-building and asynchronous video recording and general class-prep stuffed into that same time. Then it's oh god, teaching starts when? and a cocktail. 

Of course I still found time to procrastinate the knitting of my cardigan and avoid making those videos a bit longer  to do something fun. Nous got the figure for me last fall ("that hat!" he said, "those boots! And the tiny skulls!"), and she's been languishing on my sewing table, daring me to find time to paint. So finally, I did. She took the last couple eps of S3 of The Repair Shop and the whole season of Bridgerton. 

The photo quality is Aging iPhone SE in the miserable winter afternoon light, which lets me say honestly that she does look better in person. I am by no means a pro painter, but my eyesight's holding up and my hands are steady and I'm improving. 

Also, I'm really proud of those tiny skulls on her braid and belt. 

Anyway, I thought she was a fine way to spend the waning week of 2020, and a good first creative accomplishment for 2021. 

I podcasted! And wrote some guest posts. And am late to all the parties.

Okay. Finally, now that my grading is done (though not finalized), and the quarter is mostly wrapped... the long delayed list of publicity and posts related to HOW THE MULTIVERSE GOT ITS REVENGE (which, for the record, would make a fantastic holiday gift. Audio book, ebook, paper. All three!)

• The Worldshapers Podcast in which yours truly talks alot.
• Fresh Fiction:  Guest Post
• Tor.com: Guest Post
• The Nerd Daily:  Interview
• PaulSemel.com: Interview
• YA Books Central: Spotlight & Guest Post

And if you are tired of me, here are a lot of other people saying very nice things about REVENGE. 

• Publishers Weekly: Review 
• "This fantasy-space-opera hybrid provides no shortage of action, interstellar hijinks, and fuel for future installments. Series readers will be pleased."
• Fresh Fiction:  "Most Anticipated New Releases: Fall-Winter 2020!"
• Amazing Stories: "Science Fiction to Look for October 2020"
• Smart Bitches Trashy Books: Review 
• "Both the first and second book in this duology are excellent... I'd love to read more about Rory and her group of friends."
• Tor.com: Exclusive Excerpt
• The Quill to Live: Review
• "...A fun fusion of different science fiction and fantasy concepts that kept me engaged the entire time... How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge is a fantastic book that checks all of my boxes for something I highly recommend."
• Girl Who Reads: Review
• "This is a fascinating mix of magic and space opera... A great story."

I am happy that this book seems to be delighting people, because my god we need some delight about now. Did I mention it'd make a great gift?

The Patchwork Terror and Murdercat, BFFs

And because it is a lovely almost-winter day here, and the sun is warm, here are two house tigers, extra fluffy, catching a few rays.

HOW THE MULTIVERSE GOT ITS REVENGE

 What happens when happily ever after...isn't?

This was not an easy book to write for a variety of reasons, but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I hope that you like it, too.

Get a preview of REVENGE

 ...which is out on Oct. 27. Holy shit, that's next Tuesday. 

(No, I am not being a smart-ass. I just, you know, calendars and time and teaching and all this.)

So! 

Tor.com has an excerpt posted, if you're curious. 

I've also got a guest post up on Fresh Fiction about world-building and genre-blending.

 And...just in time for Halloween, a live-actor read of one of my short stories, "Increased Tolerance," which was published by Crossed Genres in 2009, and performed here by "Nobody Reads Short Stories." There's even an interview with me at the end, which honestly gives me the vapors to admit to in public, but HEY. It's the times we live in.

And if you've made it this far, I will be reading at World Fantasy next weekend, and also participating on a panel about fairies on Halloween. More details upcoming!

How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge

Y'all! Here comes the sequel to How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse! Publication date is October 6.

What can I tell you about this book? The cover art is gorgeous, obviously, and you should go preorder it, obviously.

Oh, fine, you want more detail than that. Okay. The premise is this: I wanted to look at what happens in the so-called happily ever after--which is to say, I wanted to take the idea of happily ever after, set it on fire, and roast marshmallows over it. So here's what happens when our princess decides to go off and (try) not be a princess anymore and finds out that political ignorance is not only not bliss, it's also a liability.

Plus! New xenos! Space battles! A special guest appearance by the green fairy!

Preorder now at:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Indiebound
Book Depository

RORY THORNE and Kirkus and a podcast, oh my

So. Big news this morning. HOW RORY THORNE DESTROYED THE MULTIVERSE is on the Kirkus Best SF&F of 2019 list. 

This is... I mean... wow? Yeah. Wow. The other names and works on this list are some very fine company.

Also, here I am on The Great Big Beautiful Podcast, which was a lot of fun.

And since I'm here, blogging and all, I might as well catch you up.

October was obnoxiously busy but it's over now and hey, no matter how crammed full of stuff it was, last year we were moving, so by that metric this October was just fine. I went to my first convention, World Fantasy 2019, in which I met my editor and a bunch of cool folks with both my agency and my publisher, and also had a blood vessel burst in my eye (before meeting people! of course!). I didn't get to nearly enough panels and readings, because conventions seem to be scheduled at the worst moments of a teaching quarter, so that even if they are more or less local, one still cannot attend for the full time.

Now it is November. The holidays are thundering up on us, but for the moment: a respite.

Orion is happy in his sunbeam. May you all be similarly content.

It's Pub Day for RORY THORNE

...which is not to say Rory's off in a pub somewhere. Or that I am off in a pub somewhere. (Truth: I was at a union bargaining session this morning, after which I wished I were in a pub somewhere, but alas, no).

Pub is short for publication, as you all know, so if you didn't preorder your RORY, you can go get it now.

And reminder! I will be at Mysterious Galaxy this Sunday, 4 pm, if you're in the neighborhood and feel like coming by to see me talk/read/answer questions.