So first I have to say a huge and belated thank-you for all the lovely birthday wishes ♥, and also to reassure: you have not missed the first chapter of Victory of Eagles! I am impatiently waiting for a pretty and nicely typeset PDF file from my editor, which I am assured is on its way any day now. (This will be going out on the Temeraire mailing list, which you can join/leave whenever you like at www.temeraire.org, and I will announce and post here afterwards as well.)

I would also like to point you all to the extremely shiny jewelry auction currently underway to benefit the Interstitial Arts Foundation, the publishers of Interfictions. Fabulous stuff for a fabulous cause! (You can also subscribe to iafauctions to follow the auction as new pieces are added one by one.)

Life has been a little mad lately mostly for very fun reasons, particularly because I ended up with three separate theater dates in six days -- the one I had planned, and the two unexpected sets of birthday presents. My verdicts: Macbeth: director Rupert Goold & Patrick Stewart both brilliant, see this if you possibly can. Rent: great dancing and fun energy, but badly over-amplified. Dangerous Liaisons: fabulous costumes and a Valmont I actually believed in as a seducer, some v. clunky dialogue in bits, rape scene extra-creepy because Cécile didn't feel like a period character.

Then there was the Cinco de Mayo get-together and the lunch with family and the planning for the Victory of Eagles launch and tour and somewhere in there there's been some OTW meetings, and recruiting another twenty coders and another forty revisions committed to the archive code, and finishing a short story (set in the past of the Temeraire universe, for Gardner Dozois's upcoming DRAGONS anthology), and hours watching david cook performances on youtube, don't mock me, and at the end of it all there is a slightly enervated me. *forms puddle and quivers*

And on that note, I will now go to bed before it hits 4am, oh dear.

So hey, I should have mentioned this before -- I'm at New York Comic-Con this weekend! I was on a fun panel today, which was lovely for me although I am afraid it does not help any readers here who might have wanted to come, sorry! and then tomorrow (Saturday, that is) I will be signing from 12-1pm at the Del Rey booth (#1920). I have heard conflicting reports on what I will be signing; there are definitely copies of His Majesty's Dragon to give away, but there may or may not be copies of the Victory of Eagles ARC too. :D

From beta session from the story I'm currently working on, set in ancient Rome, spurred by the mistake "we has received":

Francesca: it was so nuts it might be intentional
Naomi: lolcats rome
Naomi: heeeee
Francesca: but I don't think so!
Francesca: ahahah
Francesca: yes
Francesca: you really ought to!
* Naomi rewrites all my work in lolcats
Francesca: we has received testimony!
Francesca: wow, yes
Naomi: Temeraire: I can has cow?
Francesca: hee
Naomi: Laurence: No you can't has. Not yours.
Naomi: Temeraire: :(
Francesca: Napoleon: DO NOT WANT!

And now back to wrestling with both Mark Antony and Ruby on Rails, and also back to my carrot cake from Dean & Deluca, which surprised me (I have been Disappointed in carrot cakes on many occasions) by being really excellent and not over-full of raisins, with icing that is just a nice thin soft not-too-sweet smear instead of a layer of mortar. (I am not by any means eating this before eating actual dinner. No, no.)

Tags: conventions, loldragons

I am freshly back from Norwescon, but the first joyful thing I have to share is not about the con, but that the Organization for Transformative Works is now open for membership! \o/ And you can read all about it (in English, Čeština, Deutsch, Español, Français, and Italiano) at the otw_news community -- where, by the way, we are eagerly looking for more translators. You can also see our very cool (if I do say so myself, cough) roadmap for the design of our archive software.

I got to meet a whole bunch of really smashing fellow fans, including Rob Carlos, who started sketching in my Q&A at 11am on Friday, and less than 24 hours later handed me this piece, which he's put in the wiki: Temeraire, Lily, Maximus. Oh, and then as an afterthought he whipped out this one the very next day: Napoleon & Lien.

I also happily scored a copy of Pat Rothfuss's first book, another one by the very dapper Bruce Taylor, and two spectacular art books by Ciruelo, the artist guest of honor -- I've loved his work for years so it was an especial treat to meet him, and also to hopefully not-too-embarrassingly fangirl all over Dan Simmons. *g* I also picked up a truly fabulous feather headdress in the dealer's room and a couple of pieces by Mai Nguyen, but sadly wasn't able to stay for the art auction to try and grab the larger one. But it is just as well! Cons are dangerous places for the wallet.

Of course for now the books have joined my sad unread pile, while lies behind the terrifying stack of the copyedited MS that I am supposed to be working on right now. My current excuse is the copyeditor switched to blue pencil from red, and all my copyediting pencils were carefully chosen blue exactly for contrast! argh. But I have dug out a few hot-pinkish ones from my old box of colored pencils and hand-sharpened them with a penknife since they are too crumbly for the pencil sharpener (uphill in the snow! both ways!) and must go back to the grind.

Last bit of glee: while I was at the con, Bill of Subterranean Press sent me the hot-off-the-presses limited edition! I don't know if I mentioned what they're doing with the covers -- after some back and forth with Dominic Harman (who did the gorgeous original UK covers), the decision was that for the first three, we'd do modified versions of the three UK covers, and then starting with book 4, Dominic will be creating new art in the UK-cover style, for a complete matching set. \o/

Tags: conventions, otw, temeraire

ETA: edited to add direct permanent links to the other participants' posts!

jpsorrow put together this idea, which I thought was fun, of posting a successful synopsis: the kind of short summary you might send along with a query letter to get an agent or editor interested in seeing the full manuscript. The idea is to give any of you out there who are aspiring writers (or just curious!) a bunch of examples that were used to help sell a book.

My examples here are a little atypical: Betsy got interested in His Majesty's Dragon just from the manuscript itself, but they were interested in additional books; so she then asked me for synopses of the next two books before we agreed on the first three-book deal.

NOTE: Spoilers galore within! This is actually an important tip: do not worry about spoiling your prospective agent/editor. Give them all you've got. You will also note that there are many, many differences between these synopses and the eventual books, not least the titles.

( Original Synopsis for Throne of Jade )

( Original Synopsis for Empire of Ivory )

You don't get to see the rest of the original synopsis for Book IV because it is spoilery for future books. :D

I would ramble on a lot more about the changes but I am running around like mad getting ready to leave for Norwescon -- hope to see some of you there! Here's my schedule for the con.

And here for you to check out are links to ( more Plot Synopsis Project participants! )

Tags: plot synopsis project

Going straight from one much-extended deadline to another, I have managed (with much indulgence from the editors) to get my story in for Fast Ships, Black Sails, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer's pirate anthology from Night Shade books, full of fabulous piratey goodness from many amazing writers, including fellow lj'ers matociquala and truepenny!

My own story is "Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake" (cough, please ignore the multiple signs of title indecision you might find littered across various mentions of the anthology -- either I have a title when I start or I wrestle with it for ages afterwards). I had really a ridiculous amount of fun writing this; in my own head it was a mix of Georgette Heyer, those old Sinbad movies with the stop-motion monsters, and Orlando. (Whether any of this got onto the page you'll have to tell me if you read it. *g*)

I am currently doing the last real edits on Victory of Eagles (well, okay, what I have mostly been doing is re-reading all Heyer's regency romances in a fit of post-book laziness, but edits are also getting done), and then I have a whole seventeen months before my deadline for book 6. \o/ I have been working on a Temeraire book nonstop since I started His Majesty's Dragon in January 2004, so now it feels like glorious vistas of playtime stretch out before me! Thanks to various spurts of procrastination over the last few years, I have the beginnings of a couple short stories, a screenplay, and three novels -- the hard part is going to be choosing what to work on. *dances*

Meanwhile, I am going to be at Norwescon in Seattle from March 19-23, New York Comic-Con April 18, and Balticon May 23-25, and then, gulp, apparently there is a book tour up ahead. *quivers in fear* I don't have details yet but it will probably involve hitting San Diego Comic-Con. More news to come!

The first chapter of Victory of Eagles will go out over the Temeraire mailing list (signup on the website) and be posted here soon as copyedits are done, so look for it probably the week after I get back from Norwescon.

whee!

Tags: appearances, conventions, temeraire

Victory of Eagles final draft^* is in.

110,000 words. Comes out in July.

*falls over*

^*but there's always the copyedit stage!

Lots of exciting OTW-related posts and discussions taking place -- just linking to a few! There's merryish's post about the merits of fanfic, sockkpuppett's about transformative work, and posts more specifically about OTW on otw_news itself, boingboing, Ethan Zuckerman's blog, Kristina Busse's blog, Tobias Buckell's blog, and a rousing thread on John Scalzi's Whatever -- and for anyone else who may be wondering, yes, please do feel free to link us and pass it along!

We're reading all of these and already planning to mine them to expand our FAQ, but I thought I'd share this bit I posted in the discussion on the Whatever -- many of the concerns I'm seeing raised are about the commercialization of fanfic, and we really do want to clarify that this isn't what the OTW is about.

( OTW and fan works )

And now, I must go watch Supernatural like a good fan, and then go write more of book 5, like a good pro. *g*

Tags: otw

Yes, so, this is one reason among others ("others" including struggling on towards the end of book 5 -- not quite there yet, but getting close) why I have been scarce and quiet of late:

The Organization for Transformative Works

Our shiny new website, written and revised and designed and built by the work of a great many incredibly talented fans, says it all better and in more detail than I can, but here's the basics: the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fanculture in its myriad forms. I myself have been and am a fan long before I am a pro, and the community of fan creators in particular is really in many ways my home. I believe deeply that transformative work enriches both those who do it and those who inspire it, and I am so very excited about this project.

If you like what you see, and you're interested in following along on future updates, we have a whole slew of places you can watch: mailing list, del.icio.us account, Twitter channel, and the otw_news community, which is mirrored on LJ, on GreatestJournal, InsaneJournal, and JournalFen. The website announcement and our first newsletter are both up now in all those places, with details on our various projects and what's going on right now.

Hopefully some of you here may be interested in fanwork and fanfic yourselves, and find common ground with the org and want to get involved -- please do join us!

(also, yay, boingboinged! \o/)

Tags: otw

wrote 14,000 words

made nytimes bestseller list

killed some monsters in GuildWars

*flail*

I've added a warning to the last post -- there are a few spoilers in the comments now. Apologies; I entirely encouraged people to post comments on the book and should have thought to make a separate "spoilery" thread, so it's my fault not theirs.

Since there are now spoilers over there already, I'll do the reverse now -- if you would like to post spoilery reviews/questions, let me ask you to do so over there, and keep this thread spoiler-free!

And in that vein, answering some non-spoilery questions:

Empire of Ivory will be released throughout the UK on November 5 of this year -- not a very long wait! The US and UK publishers are planning to keep future releases more close together, as I understand.

Book 5, Victory of Eagles, will be out in the US in Summer 2008, in hardcover, and further books in the series will probably come out about that same time.

On the UK cover art change: I love both the original and new cover styles to bits, personally. I am sad about there being a change, because it spoils my fabulous matching set, but it's not my decision -- cover art is a choice marketing makes.

I *am* very happy that Dominic is doing the covers for all of the Subterranean Press limited editions, which will include Empire of Ivory and I very much hope future volumes also), so there will be at least one complete set with his art, and I hope he'll make those covers available as prints via his website too, as the limited eds are pricey.

(Incidentally, the Subterranean website now has thumbnails up of the really beautiful interior layout.)

Okay -- so again, any non-spoilery stuff, welcome here; spoilers, over there please! I'll do a roundup of spoilery questions in a couple of weeks and answer them in a batch then.

And now back to work. *g*

Tags: empireofivory, temeraire

I am away from home pounding away at Victory of Eagles, but I poke in briefly to say that Empire of Ivory is out today in the US! I confess I am hideously nervous; this really feels more like a second book than Throne of Jade or Black Powder War did, because they came out so close to the first. Let me know if you see it out there! (And there is also the neat box set of the first three books out now too, but there weren't that many sets made, so I don't know how likely it is to spot that.)

( spiffy cover slideshow below the cut using amazon widget )

As always I would love to hear what you all think of the book, positive and negative and anything in between, either here in comments or as reviews on Amazon or your own favorite online bookstore. And I am a firm believer in not jumping in to discussions about my own work, so if you are kind enough to link me to comments in your own LJs or blogs, have no fear that I will come barging in when you're having a discussion meant for the reader and not for yours truly, even if I love to eavesdrop. *g*

(And if you do have questions for me, please do keep dropping them here -- I, uh, have been lectured on the need to get my act together and so I will hopefully soon be getting some help in making sure they don't languish on here unanswered forever.)

ETA: NOTE - SPOILERS IN COMMENTS!

Tags: empireofivory, temeraire

:D

Tags: worldcon