• Mood: happy
• Music: Emilie Autumn, "Dead Is the New Alive."

A few non-novel writing bits.

In addition to writing more books than is strictly good for me*, I write a lot of short fiction and even a few essays. I love the act of writing, the process of editing and finishing something, and some stories want to be shorter than novel length. Some stories need to be shorter than novel length. I really love "Lost," but it would lose a lot of what makes it work (at least for me) if I tried to stretch it out much longer. "A Citizen in Childhood's Country" is the same way. I may go back to that universe, but the story itself is complete and closed.

Anyway, this year, I joined the writing staff of The Edge of Propinquity as one of their universe authors, telling the story of Rose Marshall, whose adventures began the night that she died. I'm currently committed through 2010; after that, Jennifer (the managing editor) and I will look at my time commitments, and decide whether I'll be chasing Rose down the highways of America for a second year. This is actually awesome, because it means I get to treat my twelve stories as a self-contained "season." I keep picturing it as a television show on HBO or maybe the BBC, complete with opening credits and screaming theme music. It's fun.

talkstowolves has posted a long, lovely Rose Marshall retrospective, including a review of the first Sparrow Hill Road Story, "Good Girls Go To Heaven." She says...

"In one short story thus far, Sparrow Hill Road has managed to introduce me to an area of folklore previously unconsidered and left me considering it (i.e. truck-drivers and highway diners); evoked a believable urban legend and made the central figure of that urban legend multi-faceted and sympathetic; and enchanted me and fired my imagination with the intoxicating glimpses of a myriad of Americas, clothed in daylight, twilight, midnight. The other sides. The ghostside."

Also...

"I absolutely cannot wait to see more of this series unfold and discover where Rose Marshall goes. Also, though I am always excited to investigate my best-loved field, I cannot deny that Seanan has provided me with a fresh infusion of enthusiasm for urban folklore."

Meanwhile, over in the Livejournal Doctor Who community, the author and essay list for Chicks Dig Time Lords [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] has been announced. This is my first real non-fiction sale, and I'm thrilled. Especially since Tara, my dear friend and graphic designer, is one of the book's two editors, which makes this very much a "family affair."

Chicks Dig Time Lords is small press, and won't be available in all stores, but can be ordered online, and I hugely recommend it for fans of Doctor Who. Yay!

It's gonna be a fun, fun year.

(*I have three coming out in 2010: A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, and my debut as Mira Grant, Feed. It's a wonder I get any sleep at all.)