Behold! My first ever starred review! I clipped one sentence for spoilers, but it's otherwise completely intact, as printed by Publisher's Weekly. Look:

Feed, Mira Grant. Orbit, $9.99 (608p) ISBN 978-0-316-08105-4

Urban fantasist Seanan McGuire (Rosemary and Rue) picks up a new pen name for this gripping, thrilling, and brutal depiction of a postapocalyptic 2039. Twin bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason and their colleague Buffy are thrilled when Senator Peter Ryman, the first presidential candidate to come of age since social media saved the world from a virus that reanimates the dead, invites them to cover his campaign. ... As the bloggers wield the newfound power of new media, they tangle with the CDC, a scheming vice presidential candidate, and mysterious conspirators who want more than the Oval Office. Shunning misogynistic horror tropes in favor of genuine drama and pure creepiness, McGuire has crafted a masterpiece of suspense with engaging, appealing characters who conduct a soul-shredding examination of what’s true and what’s reported. (May)

I just want to go around telling people "I shun misogynistic horror tropes in favor of genuine drama and pure creepiness." Hell, I want that on a shirt.

Win. Win and dinosaurs and pandemics and pie.

We are now fifty days out from the release of Feed [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], book one of the Newsflesh trilogy, and my first book writing as Mira Grant. It's my third novel, but thanks to the fact that it's a new genre, a new series, and a new pseudonym, it's managing to feel like my first. Because I needed an extra dose of crazy around here, right?

More seriously, I am, in order, excited, elated, and scared out of my tiny blonde head. I have a better idea of how this game works than I did when I was preparing for the release of Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], but in some ways, that just makes it more paralyzing—I know what can go right, and I also know what can go wrong. "Mira Grant" may be an open pseudonym, but the genre jump means I'm going to be getting placed in front of an awful lot of new readers, and I wind up praying they'll like me all over again.

Tara has finished the graphic design for MiraGrant.com, and Chris is hard at work getting the CSS we use for my regular site re-skinned to work with the new design. Because I am me, the content will start going live about ten minutes after he gives me the login information. My publisher is one hundred percent behind me, and early reviews are looking good. I still live in fear...but then, fear seems to be my primary motivator, so why change what works?

Fifty days until I destroy the world.

When will you rise?

...lostwind! You have until noon on Sunday to email me your address through my website contact link, at which point I will happily pop an ARC of Feed in the mail for you.

More giveaways to come!

1. My beloved personal superhero, dianafox, is giving away a copy of A Local Habitation. Read her post for details (and don't ask me about them, since it's not my giveaway). Here's your opportunity to make my agent give you stuff! A chance like this doesn't come along every day, not even for me!

2. You still have four hours in which to enter my random drawing to win a copy of Feed. I'll be picking a name at noon California time, and all you have to do is leave a comment. You now how to leave a comment, don't you? Just type some things into your browser and click.

3. The fantastic talkstowolves has gone to the trouble of working up a linked list to all the free fiction on the Locus recommended reading list! These are the stories that professional reviewers selected as the best of 2009, and they're totally free for you to read. So if you get bored, you should do that.

4. There is no number four. Move along, citizens, move along.

In honor of George Romero's birthday, I am giving away an ARC of Feed to one lucky commenter. This is a random draw giveaway. At noon Pacific tomorrow, I will use my magical random number generator and select a winner. They will then have until noon Pacific on Sunday to send me their mailing information (through my website), or I will pick another winner.

So please! Comment! Tell me your favorite thing about zombies, or why you want to read Feed, or what you'll do if you win, or whatever. (I mean, a comment beyond just "comment" is nice, but not strictly required.)

George Romero gave the world zombies. In honor of his birthday, so do I. Because zombies are love.

When will you rise?

So I'm hammering away on the sequel to Feed (which is potentially going to be going through a name change before much longer; watch this space for news), and I have about 13,000 words to go before the book is over. It's a little weird to realize that I'm so close to being finished with the first draft. Feed took me the better part of two years to write...but then, Feed required me to front-load a lot of the research, reading, and world construction that this book is cheerfully benefiting from. Half the work is done for me already.

I guess this means book three will be a cake-walk, huh? Or something like that.

(I find myself planning another trilogy after this one is finished, involving genetically-engineered parasites, mind-control, symbiotic evolution, and lots of other lovely things. The books are called Parasite, Symbiont, and Predator, at least for right now. Because I really needed to be working on more books, right?)

The German editions of Rosemary and Rue showed up today, and they are absolutely gorgeous. The book is called Winterfluch in German, and wow, do they have nice standard paperbacks over there. My mother promptly stole a copy, because that's what my mother does, and I've placed one ceremonially on my expanding shelf o' Things What I Wrote. I'm sure it's semi-cheating to have multiple editions of the same book, but if it has a different cover, I really don't care. It's increasingly amazing to look at the shelf. Stunning, and amazing. I can't wait to add Feed in the US and UK editions.

I'm catching up on NCIS before I head off to bed, to dream of zombies and parasites and cupcakes and blue cats and all those other wonderful things that keep me busy through my days. Hope your week is going wonderfully, and remember, Locus says you need a copy of Rosemary and Rue.

I am in the fascinating position right now of having two books in the ARC stage—A Local Habitation (Toby two) and Feed (Newsflesh one)—at the same time. This means there are ARCs all over my house, making people feel that I have an extravagent number of the things. My care and caution with giving them away is hence viewed as channeling my inner Scrooge, rather than conserving limited natural resources. (This makes me think of ARCs as some sort of rare bird. The migratory North American ARC, majestic in flight, aerodynamic like a brick.) The cats view them as natural enemies which Mommy Likes Better, and stalk them with ears flat and whiskers in full threat position. My mother attempts to steal them. And, occasionally, reviewers request them or contest entries win them. Right now, they're worth their weight in kittens, and as the window of their usefulness is narrow, I'm enjoying them while I can. Reviews of A Local Habitation are starting to appear, and various bloggers are starting to announce that they've received their copies of Feed, which means reviews of that should start appearing right about when I get my equilibrium back. Fun!

People periodically ask me* how ARCs get out into the wild. Well, there are three main ways, not counting contests. Namely...

1) You are already on a list, which is in the possession of my publisher, and they will send you one automatically. Most large review outlets are in this category. Feed is being sent to Fangoria Magazine, which is sort of like saying "Seanan, we're going to dip you in chocolate, roll you in selected pages from the script of Night of the Living Dead, and deliver you to James Gunn with a gift tag."

2) You contact my publisher and request an ARC. You probably need to prove that you have a review site or an affiliation with a legitimate review outlet. Your Livejournal is unlikely to count, I'm afraid. I'm sure there are exceptions, but you'll need a readership the size of like, Ohio.

3) You contact me through my website and request an ARC. I go through a lot of the same vetting steps as my publisher—I'll go read your blog, I'll look up the magazine you say you're affiliated with, I'll ask the magical moon ponies whether they've really seen you dancing naked at midnight in the middle of Mare Imbrium—before I decide one way or another.

Be aware that any time you elect for an option that includes the word "ask," you may get told "I'm sorry, no." ARCs are an extremely limited commodity, and just to make things more fun, the number printed tends to decline with each book. It's reasonable math. Your first book, you want to spread it as widely as possible. So you give more copies away, trying to create as much early excitement as possible. Your second book, well, some of that buzz already exists, right? So you don't need quite as many free copies out there, circulating and being read before the actual release date. As the number of people asking for ARCs goes up, the number of ARCs to be had goes down. This isn't the author being mean, or the publisher being dumb. This is using your promotional dollars as sensibly as possible.

What do ARCs have to do with promotional budgets? A lot. Page for page, making an ARC costs more than printing a hardcover. The print runs are small enough that they never tip over into bulk pricing, and since ARCs have no resale value (people selling them on eBay and earning my eternal annoyance aside), there's no way to recover the cost, beyond praying that sending the ARCs out into the world will result in positive reviews and higher sales. So as the "spread the word" value of the individual ARC goes down, the number of overall ARCs printed will also decline, putting those dollars back into the promo budget. I've been very lucky, and have received a decent number of ARCs for all three books to date. The definition of "decent" will continue to shift as days go by.

As a secondary note, if you ask me for an ARC, and I say "yeah, okay," and the ARC then shows up on eBay, I'm afraid I won't be sending you any further books. I can't afford the copies or the postage.

Hope this helps.

(*For values of "me" that mean "the Internet at large, only they use my name, so my Google spiders pick up the post and bring it back to me.")

First up, my short story, "Let's Pretend," will be appearing in the anthology Ladies of Horror, coming out in 2010. "Let's Pretend" originally appeared at The Edge of Propinquity (where my Sparrow Hill Road series will be launching in January). It's one of my rare vampire pieces, and is...nasty.

(It's also one of those stories that really makes me want to write "DVD extras" for a lot of my work. The first draft was written during a game of Three Beers and a Story. How do you play? Well, you drink three beers. And you write a story. Personally, I prefer Three Long Island Iced Teas and a Story, but that's sort of the X-Games variation.)

Secondly, the Orbit catalog for Spring/Summer 2010 is live, and includes the official press release on Feed. The book is available for pre-order now, and I am beginning to accept its reality, which is both exciting and terrifying. How did I get here? Where are we going? And why are we in this handbasket?

Finally, because it is THE MOST AWESOME OMG, Barnes and Noble has named Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] as one of the best urban fantasy releases of 2009. You'll pardon me while I scream like a girl, won't you?

2009 is drawing to a close; the number of days it has left to present me with awesome things is dwindling steadily. But this is a year that brought me my first anthology, my first novel, my first book release party, the first gathering of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show, my first Maine Coon, my first solicited artwork-for-pay that wasn't a personal commission, my first solo guest of honor slot, and so much more. 2009 is going down in the record books as a pretty good year to be a blonde.

Thanks for being here.

I actually got a Google Alert for Mira Grant that was about, well, me, rather than some random assortment of words that managed to trigger my poor dumb little spider! Damon at BSC posted his thoughts on the 2010 Orbit catalog, including some comments about Feed. Quote, "I think it could make a splash. I normally do not read these types of books, but I am willing to make an exception, I believe, for Mira."

Damon, I am going to do my damnedest not to let you down. And that is a promise from me to you.

Meanwhile, the Warren Public Libraries in Warren, Michigan had some really sweet things to say about Rosemary and Rue, including "It’s a gripping mystery with a lot of urban fantasy thrown in to the mix" and "Fans of any urban fantasy will do well here." There's also a strong recommendation for fans of Jim Butcher's work to give mine a look. From your words to the Great Pumpkin's ears, Warren Public Libraries!

Alice is sopping wet, thanks to my having had a minor bathtub incident, and is now squelching around the house like an animate mop. Attempts to dry her have been met with the cat equivalent of "No, Mom, don't wanna," so I figure I'll let her be wet for a little while longer before I bust out the blow-dryer. It's good when you can satisfy your cats with simple inaction. (Much better than being punched awake at 6:30 AM to provide affection, which was how we started our day. The joy of cats.)

My cheeks have swollen to the point that I really, really look like someone's been beating me, making me super-glad that Chris didn't come to hang out today; I would've been afraid to go out of the house in his company, since I try not to get my friends accused of introducing their fists to my face. If there were a zombie walk today, I would so rule the undead dance floor. As it is, I'm taking lots of painkillers and praying that the swelling goes down before I have to go back to work tomorrow morning. And that's the news from the pumpkin patch. What's new and cool in the world of you?

You may remember how last year, I commissioned the amazing, fantabulous, incredible Amy Mebberson to create a design for me to use as a "thank you" card. I loved the results so much that I decided I absolutely needed an updated version for this year, since the cast has changed a bit since then. Sadly, Amy is currently working for Boom! Studios, drawing awesome comic books, and is thus not available for commission work (sad for me, not sad for her).

Luckily for me, Bill Mudron—proprietor of Excelsior Studios—is currently open for commissions, and was receptive to my making pleading noises in his direction. This is because Bill is made of hammered awesome, and deserves all good things (and should absolutely be considered for all your commission needs). Bill did the cover for my third album, Red Roses and Dead Things (click here to see the back cover), in addition to several other awesome pieces for me, including Alice Price-Healy from the InCryptid series.

And now I give you...the gang:



From top to bottom (which corresponds roughly to "back to front"), you have Velma "Velveteen" Martinez hanging from the ceiling, Shaun and Georgia Mason flanking me while I attempt to work, Verity Price being friendly with mice, Rose Marshall wearing somebody else's coat and enjoying a nice beer, and October Daye, flanked by pixies and reasonably annoyed by the entire situation.

Ahem. Squee.

That is all.

There has once again been a massive influx of people, due to the fact that Alice is adorable—welcome, massive influx of people; it's nice to meet you, although I realize half of you will leave again as you realize that this isn't the all-kitten-doing-weird-stuff, all-the-time channel, and that's fine—I have decided to once again do the abbreviated "here are ten things you might want to know" version of the periodic welcome post. So here it is. Ta-da! (As a footnote, Alice is aware of your worship, and was puffy all over my face at 2AM last night.)

***

1. My name is Seanan McGuire; I'm an author, musician, poet, cartoonist, and amiable nutcase, presently living in Northern California, planning to relocate to Washington at some point in the next few years. I am a very chatty person, whether you're talking literally "we're in the same place" chattiness, or more abstract "someone has left Seanan alone with a keyboard, run for the hills" chattiness. This does not, paradoxically, make me terribly good about keeping up with email or answering comments in anything that resembles a reasonable fashion. We all have our flaws. Luckily for my agent's sanity, I am very good about making my deadlines.

2. My name is pronounced "SHAWN-in", although a great many people elect to pronounce it "SHAWN-anne" instead. Either is fine with me. I went to an event where we all got name tags once, and the person making the name tags was a "SHAWN-anne" person, who proceeded to label me as "Shawn Anne McGuire". I choose to believe that Shawn Anne is my alter-ego from a universe where, instead of becoming an author, I chose to become a country superstar. She wears a great many rhinestones, because they're sparkly, and she can get away with it. Just don't call me "See-an-an" and we'll be fine.

3. I write: urban fantasy, horror, young adult, supernatural romance, and straight chick-lit romance. I occasionally threaten to write medical thrillers, but everyone knows that's just so I'd have an excuse to take more epidemiology courses. I love me a good plague. I believe that editing is a full-contact sport, complete with penalty boxes, illegal checking, and team pennants. My editing team is the Fighting Pumpkins. We're going all the way to the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS this year, bay-bee!

4. I find it useful to keep a record of the status of my various projects, both because it warms the little Type-A cockles of my heart, and because it helps people who need to know what's going on know, well, what's going on. So you'll see word counts and editing updates go rolling by if you stick around, as well as more generalized complaining about the behavior of fictional people. I am told this is entertaining. I am also told that this is possibly a sign of madness. I don't know.

5. I currently publish both as myself, and as my own evil twin, Mira Grant. My first book under my own name, Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], came out from DAW in September 2009. The sequel, A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], is coming out in March 2010, also from DAW. Mira's first book, Feed [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], will be out from Orbit in May 2010. I don't get very much sleep.

6. I am a musician! More specifically, I'm a filk musician. If you know filk, this statement makes total sense. If you don't know filk, think "the folk music of the science fiction and fantasy community"—or you can check out the music FAQ on my website. I have three CDs available: Pretty Little Dead Girl, Stars Fall Home, and Red Roses and Dead Things. I'm currently recording a fourth CD, Wicked Girls, which will be out sometime in 2010. I write mostly original material, and don't spend much time in ParodyLand. It just doesn't work out for me.

7. Things I find absolutely enthralling: giant squid. Plush dinosaurs. Siamese and Maine Coon cats. Zombies. The plague. Pandemic flu. Horror movies of all quality levels. Horror television. Science Fictional Channel Original Movies. Shopping for used books. Halloween. Marvel comics. Candy corn. Carnivorous plants. Pumpkin cake. Stephen King. The Black Death. Pandemic disease of all types. Learning how to say horrifying things in American Sign Language. Diet Dr Pepper.

8. Things I find absolutely horrifying: slugs. Big spiders dropping down from the ceiling and landing on me because ew. Bell peppers. Rice. Movies that consist largely of car chases and do not contain a satisfying amount of carnage. Animal cruelty. People who go hiking on mountain trails in Northern California and freak out over a little rattlesnake. Most sitcoms. A large percentage of modern advertising. Diet Chocolate Cherry Dr Pepper.

9. I am owned by two cats: a classic bluepoint Siamese named Lillian Kane Moskowitz Munster McGuire, and a blue classic tabby and white Maine Coon named Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire. Yes, I call them that, usually when they've been naughty. The rest of the time, they're respectively "Lilly" or "Lil," and either "Alice" or "Ally." I'm planning to get a Sphynx, eventually, when the time comes to expand to having a third cat.

10. I frequently claim to be either a Disney Halloweentown princess or Marilyn Munster. These claims are more accurate than most people realize. Although I wasn't animated in Pasadena.

***

Welcome!

To begin with, here is today's exciting press release of awesome exciting awesomeness:

The cover graphic for Feed has been officially released by my publisher (Orbit).

Click for the artist's commentary, and then come back to join me in squealing, flailing excitement. Feed is the first of three volumes in the Newsflesh trilogy, all of them being released under my pseudonym, Mira Grant. Feed will be on shelves in May 2010 (yes, the same month as my appearance at MarCon in Columbus, Ohio—when they invited me, they got two guests for the price of one). Which brings us to...

...my page proofs for Feed arrived today, and they are intense. Thank the Great Pumpkin that I have some long stints on airplanes coming up, because otherwise I'd worry about my capacity to finish reviewing a manuscript of this length in the time allotted. As it stands, the folks at OVFF may see a lot less of my smiling face than they were expecting, because I have got a lot of work to do. But it will all be worth it, and it will all be completely awesome when it's done.

The end of the world was just the beginning.

When will you rise?

October 3rd is World Virus Appreciation Day, the holiday where we celebrate the wonders of the virological world. If it wants to kill you, today's the day to rejoice in its existence...or at least to be glad that you don't have it. Yet.

I love the existence of this holiday, and—after considerable consideration—have decided that this year, once again, I'm going to celebrate my favorite virus of them all. No, not the Black Death, although it holds a truly special place in my heart. I mean Kellis-Amberlee, the hybrid virus created when the Kellis Flu met up with Marburg Amberlee, fell in love, and started having little zombie-making babies.

Yes, it's a fake virus. No, I don't care, because not only have I spent the last several years working on the virology behind Kellis-Amberlee, but it's been responsible for my learning more about real-world viruses than anyone outside the fields of epidemiology or virology ever needed to know. Seriously! Kellis-Amberlee was created sloppily and in about five minutes; it was refined over the course of almost two years, and involved auditing epidemiology and virology courses, talking to doctors from the CDC, and reading most of a library on infectious diseases.

Because of Kellis-Amberlee, I've learned about cholera (nasty), pandemic flu (actually nastier), Ebola (scary), and yellow fever (scariest bitch on the block). Before I started work on Feed, all I knew about smallpox was that we were missing a bunch of it, and that was probably bad; now I know exactly why that's bad. Miraculously, I sleep pretty well at night despite this knowledge.

I love viruses and diseases. I love Kellis-Amberlee. And today, I love World Virus Appreciation Day. Remember, if I sneeze, it's only because a droplet-based transmission is another way of saying "I love you."

Dear Great Pumpkin;

With Halloween fast approaching, I felt it important to write and let you know that I have continued to be a very good girl. I have offered advice to people who asked for it, and not offered advice to people who didn't want it. I have allowed others to sample my candy corn without removing their fingers. I have hugged my friends and told my loved ones that I love them. I have not invoked any ancient evils to rise from their graves in the great corn maze and destroy an unsuspecting populace. I have made all my deadlines, even the ones I wanted to miss. And the swine flu still isn't my fault. So you see, I have been a very good girl, especially by my standards.

Today, Great Pumpkin, I am asking for the following gifts:

* Wonderful, easy, successful book release parties during which no one sets anybody else on fire. Please, Great Pumpkin, grant me two glorious nights, filled with wonder and joy and lots and lots and lots of book sales, because it turns out that I'm very nervous about this whole thing. Please let me be a Halloweentown Cinderella at the October Ball, only without the glass slippers, and let it all be wonderful. Also, please let there be lots of cookies. I'm a big fan of cookies.

* An easy, or at least not insanely painful, editing process on The Brightest Fell, which is definitely going to need a lot of editing before I hand it over to The Agent, much less The Editor. My first drafts are always excitingly messy, so I'm not particularly worried—the fact that it's book five, and book one just came out, means I have some breathing room—but I really would like breeze through the rewrites, just this once, so that I can get on to Ashes of Honor, preferably before A Local Habitation hits shelves. I will find it much easier to sleep once books four through six are put safely down, and when I sleep, I'm not destroying the world. You like the world, don't you, Great Pumpkin?

* Once again, I must request continued health for my cats, without whom the entire universe would be at risk from my unstoppable wrath. Alice is growing up gloriously beautiful, Great Pumpkin, although I continue to suspect that you may be her actual father (it's either you or an otter, and I oddly find you substantially more plausible). Lilly is continuing to do well with her new "sibling," and seeing the two of them rampaging through my house, destroying things at random, fills my heart with joy.

* Clean, timely page proofs for A Local Habitation and Feed, since right now, I am a blonde without deadlines. I do remember that I promised you three short stories with the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad, as well as the origin stories for Hailey and Scaredy, in exchange for the trilogy sale. I keep my promises. Watch this space for further developments, Great Pumpkin, and thank you again.

* A beautiful fall season. You like the autumn as much as I do, Great Pumpkin, because it is in the autumn that the world truly honors and appreciates your glory. So please, talk to the weather, and make sure that this autumn is one that we'll remember for years to come. And not because the entire state falls into the ocean, or catches fire, or is invaded by flesh-eating locusts from beyond the veil of time. Make this a beautiful, wonderful season, Great Pumpkin, and make it a treat without any tricks. Please.

* Please help me to finish Discount Armageddon in a satisfying, respectful, ass-kicking way, hopefully involving lots of explosions and snappy one-liners. I really want Verity and her family to find a home (and not just so Alice can finally find Thomas), and that means I need to get past the first chapter of their story. What I have so far is actually pretty solid. Please make it amazing.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: You really did amazingly with the house for the Newsflesh trilogy. Thank you so much. You da squash.

So I'm in the middle of a super-fast clean-and-jerk on Feed, before I kick it back to my editor. I'm processing comments tonight, and just got this little beauty from Brooke, referring to my tendency to occasionally lean on unnecessary modifiers:

"LARGELY. I wish to efficiently move you on a collision-free path to AN ALLIGATOR'S GULLET."

I love my proofers. I love them so hard.

That is all.

In twenty-six days, Rosemary and Rue will be available on shelves all across the country. Anyone who's pre-ordered from Amazon will be receiving their copy. This includes, I know, a great many people outside my home country. So in twenty-six days, Toby will be on her way around the world.

I fully expect to be finished with my first editorial pass-through on Feed by the end of the weekend. The book has become tighter, faster, slicker, and yes, even better than it was when I started. I should need another week or so to get edits back from the early-reader pool and do my serious editorial rewrites (some of which have been tabled for now, to preserve momentum), and then I'll be ready to turn it in. Which is good, because that leaves me free to go crazy over Rosemary.

In six months, twenty-seven days, A Local Habitation will be following Rosemary and Rue onto store shelves. You'll be able to walk into a bookstore and say "I want Seanan McGuire's book," and the response will be "which one?"

In two and a half weeks, I'll be flying to Seattle to appear with a whole bunch of awesome authors in the official Grants Pass book launch extravaganza. I will sign books. Books that were available in stores. I will eat cake. I will not cry.

In a few minutes, I'll zip my suitcase, load it into my mother's station wagon, and take off for Canada, where I'll be attending WorldCon not as a fan, not as a convention organizer, but as an honest-to-the-Great-Pumpkin professional writer. I'm allowed to have professional opinions now! I'm going to be on panels where I get to talk about them, even, and I get to wear my pumpkin-orange LA Confidential dress again, and hug my editor, and generally be a Halloweentown Princess to the stars.

Here I go again.

See you soon.

* Pick up Canadian currency from my bank, where hopefully, no one will say "Canadians have money?" Once was funny. Twice may well be grounds for punching somebody in the nose. I like my bank. I don't want to get thrown out for assaulting a teller.

* Revise and process the editorial notes on the next thirty pages of Feed. I'm currently on page 251 of 544 (this includes the dedication page, but does not yet include the acknowledgment page); I need to hit page 281 before I can go to bed tonight. I like sleep. Sleep is my cuddly friend. I like zombies. The fact that zombies are a prerequisite for sleep around here probably says something about my psyche.

* Attempt to unearth my dresser from beneath the epic pile of crap that accompanied me home from San Diego. This may or may not be something I can accomplish without the use of a flamethrower.

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Attempt to integrate the epic pile of crap that accompanied me home from San Diego into my bedroom without causing some sort of avalanche or otherwise hitting critical mass and opening a black hole into another dimension. Of course, if the objects responsible for opening the black hole influence the dimension on the other side, it will be a dimension filled with flesh-eating My Little Ponies and telepathic velociraptors. So that might be a nice place to have a vacation home.

* Trade the July pages in my planner for the shiny, new, relatively unmarked September pages. Immediately start filling the September pages with to-do lists, deadlines, goals, and the other unavoidable roadmaps of being me. I actually find this process quite soothing, in a nit-picky, obsessive sort of a way. Here is my month. I have scheduled panic attacks, showers, and laundry. Go me.

* Finish chapter four of The Brightest Fell, aka "the fifth Toby book," aka "well, at least she won't be done with the entire second trilogy before the first book comes out." (The Toby books aren't really trilogies. It's just that I tend to outline them three at a time, because it's an easy number to deal with, and people are less frightened by "oh, I'm working on the second trilogy." Apparently, math and logic are not always our friends.)

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Inform Alice that I am not going to fish the cat toys out from under the bed a third time.

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Pull my towering stacks of trade paperbacks into one mega-stack and put the damn things away before I lose a cat beneath a pile of Hack/Slash. Since Lilly eats comic books, this would be a fitting end, but it would make me sad, and I don't have time for that right now.

* Update three entries in the Toby continuity wiki. I'm getting close to being done with the data-entry from the original continuity guide, and that means soon, I'll be able to start updating things to match current continuity, as well as adding extra information on characters whose profiles are still just skeletons. If there's ever a fan wiki, we can have a race.

* Ignore the Maine Coon telling me that her toys have disappeared under the bed.

* Go to Dairy Queen.

* Sleep.

We knew from the day we started shopping the Newsflesh trilogy that they would probably need to be published under an open pseudonym. There are a lot of reasons for that. The easiest to spot is "avoidance of over-saturating the market"—after all, as a relatively untried author, it's probably best if I not compete with myself.* Oddly, this isn't the biggest reason, just the first.

(*Before there's a general hue and cry of "but I'm planning to buy both," I should probably explain. I know that the readership of this journal is highly likely to buy both. This is one of the main reasons that I love you. The Internet readership I already have is a large portion of why we knew it would have to be an open pseudonym. It's the random bookstore browsers we're trying to avoid frightening away, the ones who won't know me from Adam until they get their hands on a copy of Rosemary and Rue or Feed.)

Genre separation is a much larger part of why I was happy to agree to writing under a pseudonym. Rosemary and Rue is fairy tale noir. It's dark, it's gritty, and it's occasionally brutal...but I would still hand it to a savvy teenager without fear that their parents would beat me to death with a baseball bat later. You could adapt the Toby books into PG-13 movies without gutting them. I won't cringe when I see high school students discussing them on my forums. Feed, on the other hand, is distopian political science fiction/horror. It has a high body count. There's gore, there's sex, there's bad language. I love it to death and consider it one of the best things I've ever written, but I so don't want you to buy it for your niece who loved Toby on the basis of my name alone. Putting a different author's name on the cover is a screaming neon sign that maybe the contents are also going to be different.

Do I expect the name to hurt sales? No. My publisher is savvy and good at what they do, and I'm really hoping this book will build a reasonable level of pre-release excitement, since it's going to be incredibly fun to do the viral marketing for. But I do expect it to make people pause and read the back cover before giving in to expectations.

So we knew I'd need a pseudonym, and after the trilogy sold to Orbit, they confirmed it. That meant we needed to pick one.

There are a lot of factors that go into selecting a good pseudonym. First off, it should be pronounceable (thus knocking my real name cheerfully from the running), and it should fall within the first half of the alphabet. That gets you a good spot on the shelf, which is important for catching the eye of the casual browser. People aren't tired of looking for something to read when they get to you. Who is Aaron Aardvark? Probably a best-seller. Your pseudonym shouldn't sound too much like the name of an author already working in your genre. We're not porn stars here. Calling myself "Maya Bone-hoff" or "Jane Hinds" isn't going to increase my sales, although it might get me slapped.

Your pseudonym should also be something you're willing to answer to in public, and don't hate. You should know what it means, since no one wants to choose "Variola Majors," thinking it's pretty, and discover later that they've just named themselves "smallpox." The Agent and I sat down and came up with a list of about twenty options, some mix-and-match, some not, all of which I was willing to live with (and all of which were somehow a complicated horror movie or television joke), and sent them to The Editor II. He gave us his preferences, we winnowed, we argued, and we settled on "Mira Grant."

"Mira" is an interesting name, in that it appears in a great many languages, always with a different meaning. The version I was looking at was from the Romany, meaning "little star." It isn't short for anything, despite its resemblance to "Miranda," and I will answer to it in public. Plus, since my real signature includes both a capital "M" and a capital "G", I shouldn't have issues during signings.

And that's why I am Mira Grant. First person to catch the horror movie in-joke in my pseudonym wins a prize (and if you already know, no hinting!).

It begins today.

At 11:53 AM, CDT, in the city of Peoria, Illinois, a man named Jonathan Dowell will be hit by a car while crossing at a busy intersection. Despite flying more than three yards through the air and hitting the ground with a bone-shattering degree of force, the man will proceed to get up again, to the general relief of bystanders. This relief will turn to bewilderment and terror as he lunges at the crowd, biting four people before he is subdued. By nightfall, the first Peoria outbreak will be well underway.

At 10:15 AM, PDT, in the town of Lodi, California, a woman named Debbie Goldman will be jogging along her usual route, despite the record-breaking heat and the recent warnings of her physician. Her explosive cardiac event will go entirely unwitnessed, as will her subsequent revival. As she makes her way along the road, she will find a group of teenagers out for a walk; in the struggle that follows, three of the six will be bitten. The Lodi outbreak will begin to spread shortly after two o'clock that afternoon.

At 11:31 AM, MDT, in a research laboratory just outside Denver, Colorado, two of the test subjects currently being treated with Marburg Amberlee will go into spontaneous viral amplification as the live virus bodies being pumped into their systems encounter the resting viral bodies already there. The details of this outbreak are almost entirely unknown, as the lab will be successfully sealed and burned to the ground before the infection can spread. Denver will be spared the worst ravages of the Rising until the second wave begins, on July 26th. Some will say that the tragedy which follows will come only because of that temporary reprieve; they weren't prepared.

The Rising begins today.

Are you prepared?

Well, my editor—Mira's editor—somebody's editor said very nice things about acquiring the Newsflesh trilogy. I am pleased and flattered.

Meanwhile, over on InevitableZombieApocalypse.com (which may be the best domain name ever), word is being spread, although they credit me, not Mira, as the author. Can one's own pseudonym come stalking in the night to wreak vengeance? It bears consideration. (They got their info from Media Bistro, which has a somewhat larger piece.)

The odds that I sold my soul at the crossroads for fame and fortune seem to be getting higher. On the plus side, it means the constant attendance of the Everything You Ever Wanted Fairy; I am hence not particularly disturbed.

Whee.

It is my considerable pleasure, absolute delight, and no small amount of awed bafflement, to announce that the Mason trilogy has been sold in a three book deal to Orbit, with concurrent publication by Orbit UK. They will be published beginning in 2010, with Feed (working title: Newsflesh) coming out sometime mid-year. All three books will be published under the name "Mira Grant," my shiny new open pseudonym. I have a pseudonym and a horror series. You have absolutely no concept of how much this makes me feel like Stephen King right now.

We sold the Mason books. Alive or dead, the truth won't rest.

Rise up while you can.

(PS: Please don't ask "why the title change" or "why the pseudonym" on this post. I'll post explaining both when I get over sitting here looking stunned and giggling to myself.)

Dear Great Pumpkin;

I have continued to be a very good girl in the days since I last wrote to you. I have provided places for tired people to sleep, liquids for thirsty people to drink, and food for hungry people to eat. I have shared my ice cream and my candy corn. I did not spike the liquids for the thirsty people with interesting poisons. I have purchased and erected a cat tree so virulently orange that it sears the eyes of the unbelievers. I have not summoned the elder gods from their eternal dreaming. I have not purchased a chainsaw. Also, the swine flu isn't my fault. So clearly, I have been on my very best behavior for quite some time now.

Today, Great Pumpkin, I am asking for the following gifts:

* Freedom from typos, printing errors, and other plagues of the written word. Please, Great Pumpkin, guide my red pen through my page proofs and allow me to present Rosemary and Rue as the best book that it can possibly be. Please let all the errors be mine, and let them be reasonably small ones, so that I won't be forced to throw myself on my own machete. That would make me sad. Also, that would be messy.

* Wonderful author appearances, following a fantastic convention season. DucKon is approaching fast, Great Pumpkin, and so is the San Diego Comic Convention, which I'm going to be attending in full-on Disney Halloween Princess-mode. After that comes WorldCon in Montreal, and after that...after that, my book comes out, and I'm doing signings and raffles and all sorts of other things, many of them for the first time. Help me represent the orange, black, and green with honor, with dignity, and without overdosing on candy corn.

* Continued health for my cats. I have to admit, Great Pumpkin, you came through big time with that whole "perfect kitten" thing that I asked you for. I was dubious at first, since "Maine Coon" and "Siamese" are not the same thing, but Alice is amazing, and has won Lilly over completely, which is really what matters. (And if you think I don't know you had a hand in this, you're out of your gourd. So to speak. Betsy hasn't had a blue in years, and don't think I missed those smoky orange undertones. You are a very cunning supernatural force. I bow before the sanctity of your patch.)

* The perfect house for Newsflesh, wherein the Mason twins deal with politics, the Internet, blogging, dead stuff, each other, and their completely insane co-workers as efficiently and politely as possible. "Polite" usually means "with bullets and bitching." If you give me this, Great Pumpkin, I promise you at least three more short stories featuring the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad, and another Velveteen adventure involving the denizens of Halloween. If you give me a trilogy sale, I'll actually do the origin stories for Hailey and Scaredy.

* A lack of total meltdown over this swine flu thing. I know it's not the slatewiper pandemic, Great Pumpkin, because you would never do that to me this close to my first book's release date. So clearly, this is just a minor plague, meant to remind the world that we need to wash our hands more often. Please let people remember to wash their hands and cover their mouths and take deep breaths (okay, maybe not that last one), so that we can get through this without anybody setting anybody else on fire.

* My galleys. Please let them come today, Great Pumpkin, as my twitchiness is beginning to bother people. I think some of them are becoming concerned that I may destroy the planet in a fit of pique, and frankly, I share their concern. Please, Great Pumpkin, help me to leave enough of the world's population alive to properly honor you on the next Halloween.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: You did an amazing job with the cover thing. Thank you so much.

Well, what happened around here in 2008? Let's see...

1) I signed with the eternally delightful dianafox, who has shown a remarkable capacity for taking the things I say (some of which make very little sense, filtered as they are through my sunshine-and-zombies Pollyanna worldview) and doing something functionally useful with them. Everybody needs a personal superhero.

2) I started this journal. Because everybody needs their sunshine-and-zombies updates as regularly as possible. No, seriously. How can you know what's happening in their magical playland if somebody isn't making a point of telling you on a regular basis?

3) I arranged to have my website fully revamped, thanks to the design talents of taraoshea and the technical can-do of porpentine. Now it's glorious, it's gorgeous, and it's changing pretty much daily as we hammer the text into place and start getting the various sections hammered into their desired configurations. Which matters because...

4) I sold the first three Toby Daye books to DAW! Yes! Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night have all been sold, after so many years in my head that it's really not even all that funny. Soon, the world will understand why I love these people so much. I hope.

5) I finished writing or revising six books in 2008. The three mentioned above, along with Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby, book four), Newsflesh (The Masons, book one), and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues (Coyote Girls, book one). So that's, y'know. Pretty productive of me.

6) I started work on three more books -- The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh), The Brightest Fell (Toby, book five), and Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, book one).

7) I recorded an album. Scaaaaaary. You can still place pre-orders for Red Roses and Dead Things at my website. I promise that it will be awesome. And filled with corpses.

So it's been a huge, exciting, amazing year, and next year is just going to be a bigger, more exciting, more amazing year. Thanks for being here, and I really can't wait to see what happens next.

The tiny little part of my tiny little blonde head that controls essential tasks—those things that have to be done, but which I absolutely dread and abhor doing, like formatting submissions, writing cover letters, and outlining projects—decided that the perfect time to write the series outline for the Mason Trilogy* would be while I was all hopped-up on cold medication. Because my brain is special.

Series outlines are the bane of my existence. Basically, they're your "short pitch," your chance to try to sell your story in a format that's longer than a cover letter, but shorter than the whole manuscript. Series outlines are sort of like high school book reports: they're packed with spoilers, and they strip out most of the detail of a story. "A young girl travels to a foreign land, kills the first person she meets, and teams up with three strangers" levels of stripping out the detail.

Feed is over five hundred pages long. Deadline is on track to be just as long. I have no real idea about Blackout, but I'd be astonished if the last book in the series was somehow shorter than the first two. I managed to condense all three volumes to nine pages. My agent loves me right now.

Fear me. And now? I'm going back to bed.

(*This may or may not be the official name of the series, but since all three books are about Shaun and Georgia Mason and their exciting journalistic adventures, it's as good a name as any. My original name for the project was "a good excuse to study virology and talk about zombies a lot," so this is really a pretty big improvement, marketability-wise. I'm great at naming books. I'm terrible at naming series.)

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire, and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets reposted roughly every two months, to let new people know how we roll around here. (I will make no more Clueless references in this post, I promise.) Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.Collapse )

So earlier this year, I commissioned the amazing, fantabulous, incredible Amy Mebberson to create a design that I could use as a 'thank you card' to be sent to people who needed book-specific thanks (my editor, my agent, my proofreaders, all those nice people who've said nice things about my book -- the usual). Since all the cards have now been sent, and most of them have been received, I thought I'd finally post the card and share its awesome with the world. See?



(Clicking the picture will take you to a larger version.)

From left to right, that's Georgia and Shaun Mason (Newsflesh), Clady Porter (Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues), me (hence my default icon), October 'Toby' Daye (Rosemary and Rue), and Corey Markham (Upon A Star). I'll eventually be putting a wallpaper version of this up on my website, once the retool hits that point. Aren't they awesome? Truly, this is the definition of glee. Glee! And yeah, I'm already contemplating a 2009 version...

Art is awesome.

And now, the lovely raelee brings us proof that I have grown up to be a real author: a jack-o-lantern carved to recreate a scene from one of my books (specifically Newsflesh).



You know you're doing something right with your life when zombie pumpkins are being carved in your honor. I'm just saying.

So periodically, I spend time thinking about the best of all possible worlds -- I call it the world of sunshine and rainbows and zombie ponies, where it occasionally rains candy corn -- and what I'd like to have someday happen there. Beyond the million-dollar book deal, the New York Times best seller, and the death of the previously unknown, fabulously rich relative who leaves me the deed to his sprawling Victorian estate, I mean. Being an enormous comic book geek, I've actually considered who, in my perfect world, would get the chance to adapt my books. And because I'm a nice person, I thought I'd share.

Upon A Star should absolutely be adapted by Amy Mebberson (As If!, Divalicious, my princess icon). Not only is she a joy to work with, but her particular blend of gonzo-Disney and manga-inspired comic layouts would be absolutely perfect for illustrating the story of Corey Markham, accidental teen queen. It would rock my world in the most thorough of manners.

Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues would ideally be adapted by Chynna Clugston (Blue Monday), whose Archie-gone-wrong approach would be fantastic applied to Clady and company. Given Clady's horror movie fixation, having a slightly comic edge to the illustrations would keep things from getting too-too-bloody. Plus, Chyna draws awesome plaid. Plaid is key.

Now that I've had the silly, let's have the sublime: I would absolutely love to have Discount Armageddon (and sequels) adapted by Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Mystery Date). Who else could do proper justice to a large colony of pantheistic demon mice? Or to the various cryptids and horrible things that litter Verity's world? She'd be totally ideal. If you don't believe me, check out Finder and be enlightened.

Newsflesh owes a lot to Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, which was the work that introduced me to the idea of gonzo journalism (and unlocked a whole new world of possibilities). So I would totally want Darick Robertson, the man who drew Spider Jerusalem and company, to be the one to handle bringing the Masons into an illustrated universe. It would be insane. Insanely awesome.

Toby is the series I have the most time, energy, and love invested in; I guess that means it would naturally be the hardest to select someone for. After a lot of angst and waffling, I'm going to say Pia Guerra (Y: the Last Man) probably comes the closest to what I see inside my head. Although I could be totally wrong. I don't know. It'd make a gorgeous comic, but only if drawn right.

What works, of your own or other people's, would you like to see in comic form? And who would you want to see behind the pencil? Rock me.

Today is World Virus Appreciation Day, the day when we give our most dearly beloved pathogens just that extra little bit of love that they so richly deserve. In honor of this infectuously awesome holiday, I'm offering my favorite entries in the fields of horrible diseases. Namely, some lists. How I adore lists. Especially lists of ten things.

( Click for Seanan's ten favorite movies about disease, books about disease, and, well, diseases. Because sharing is super-fun.Collapse )

Happy World Virus Appreciation Day! What's your favorite virus?

Me: "We should really have some political icons."
Rae: "For what?"
Me: "The Ryman/Tate ticket."
Rae: "But what would they say?"
Me: *provides various campaign slogans*

*long pause while everyone else in the world realizes what's going on*

Rae: "Check your email."
Me: *makes noises only bats can hear*

In other news, behold my fantabulous new Ryman/Tate campaign icon! Because I support a future in which somebody else's dead aunt doesn't eat me as I'm trying to go to the store for another bottle of Diet Dr Pepper. Also because it makes me giggle.

It's time for the August installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain what I'm working on and what its status happens to be! Please note that Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation have once again vanished from this list, as they have finished another stage in the revision process and been returned to DAW. The next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear.

The cut-tag endures, because this list is getting slowly longer and longer. This is a natural consequence of living inside my head, where the darkness is. The darkness and the pumpkin pie and the bats. The bats have plague, by the way.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

I've been editing Feed for the past several days. It is thus, perhaps unsurprising that my Gmail's targeted advertising currently thinks it should be trying to sell me zombies. That being said?

I am not in a very good mindset to have the news box at the top of my email announce 'WARNING: ZOMBIE OUTBREAK' when I load my inbox.

I'm just saying, maybe the people who do this targeted advertising stuff should pause and consider whether telling their system to go ahead and pick up on certain key words will cause the recipients of those targeted ads to start scrambling for their emergency zombie survival kits and scaring the folks around them. And that maybe, they should further consider that if those recipients were to, say, take a machete to someone who happened to be walking a little funny, they might try launching a frivolous lawsuit. 'But Officer, Gmail swore that there were zombies!'

Maybe.

In other news, I have resumed breathing.

Ahem.

I have just -- I mean, within the past fifteen minutes 'just' -- finished the first pass revisions on Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth book* in the Chronicles of October Daye. That's several hundred pages of text that I have now pummeled to within an inch of its text-y little life. Since I haven't closed the proofing pool on An Artificial Night yet, this book gets to go to bed and mellow for about a week, like fine wine. Tomorrow, I'll start processing Brooke's truly epic edits on Newsflesh. For right now, however...

For right now, I shall CELEBRATE MY TRIUMPH by opening a can of peas, getting a Diet Dr Pepper, finding my art supplies, and going into the back of the house to watch crappy horror movies and ink. Because that's just how we roll around these parts.

Tomorrow, there will be zombies. Tomorrow, poor Clady may actually get my attention focused her way again. Tomorrow, I will consider -- seriously consider -- turning my attention back towards Grace, Chastity, and their little homovore problem. But that's all tomorrow. Tonight, I bask in the glow of my success. Tonight, I consume legumes.

Tonight, I watch TV.

(*This is the first book not covered by my current contract. Just FYI.)

It's time for the July installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain what I'm working on and what its status happens to be! Please note that Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation have returned to this list after a brief vacation, because they've finished their initial review at DAW and are now entering the glorious revision process. Ah, progress. It smells like fear.

Also, this time we're cut-tagging, because the list has, as is so often the case with me, managed to get longer. My brain, ladies and gentlemen. Nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

Updated book stats:

Total words: 149,220.
Previous words: 156,890.
Loss between drafts: 7,670.
Total chapters: thirty-one chapters, divided into five 'books' and a coda.
Total pages: 544 (30 page decrease).
Draft one started: September 4th, 2005, on the plane back from Seattle.
Draft one finished: December 27th, 2007, sitting at Tony's kitchen table, in Seattle.
Draft one edits finished: June 3rd, 2008, in my bedroom.
Draft two started: June 3rd, 2008, also in my bedroom.
Draft two finished: July 7th, still in my bedroom. I don't move much.

I have finished the second draft of Feed, my epic novel of zombies, politics, blogging, how George Romero accidentally saved the world and the tragic duty of the journalist. Now I get to process copy-edits and frantically jab my subject matter experts with sticks. ("Hey, you said my tech was outdated. Dude, can you tell me how? Please? Ack!")

Seriously, this book has been so much work, and there's more work to come, but wow, has it turned into something amazing. I am so very proud of this entire thing. It's huge and sprawling and epic and wonderful, and I still love it, even after hammering my head against it for all this time. Which I think is a good sign.

I love my little zombies.

Right. Today, I have...

...processed three full sets of edits for An Artificial Night, one of which was twenty pages long and may as well have been subtitled 'everything you know is wrong.' I have now repaired everything I know. Everything I know is now right, and it's a better book (as it almost always is after one of these experiences). But oh my stars and garters, that took hours.

...brought my initial rewrites on Newsflesh up through chapter eighteen. Note that Newsflesh is over five hundred pages long. I have essentially rewritten an entire book this week, with another entire book to go, just as soon as I wake up. This terrifies and thrills me on multiple levels, and it's really very cathartic to wade into the text with a machete and giggle hysterically as I remove the unnecessary words.

This week, I have...

...started the revision process on Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth book in the Toby Daye series, which is currently subtitled 'please let the first three be incredible, mind-blowing successes, so that I can sell this book, because I love it so.' Because I am occasionally an insane workaholic, I'm already more than a hundred pages into the revision. It's very soothing. I'm enjoying it.

This weekend, I'm going to get back to work on Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues, because I feel like a slacker. (Yes, I'm aware of the sheer insanity of that statement. Carry on.) And with all this done and yet to do, I am going to bed, where I will sleep the sleep of the just.

Good night, world!

It's time for the June installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain what I'm working on and what its status happens to be! Please note that Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation are temporarily off this list, because they're under review at DAW. They'll be reappearing when the editorial process kicks in.

Also, this time we're cut-tagging, because the list has, as is so often the case with me, managed to get longer. My brain, ladies and gentlemen. Nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

...sitting down at your computer to find yourself informed, gleefully, that the complete technical reconstruction of the computer storage and wireless equipment used by the protagonists of your zombie political thriller has become the weekend project of two of the biggest hardware gurus you know. Oh, and a veterinarian is attacking your animal action sequences, and there's a pharmacologist on-call to check your medical technology.

I have the best subject-matter experts in the universe.

I would make a comment about needing a good virologist about now, but I already checked the functionality of the Kellis-Amberlee filovirus by several folks at the CDC, so I figure I'm probably doing okay in that department. I love the CDC. My friend Shawn constantly worries that they're going to start tapping my phone looking for signs that I'm planning to destroy the human race with genetically modified smallpox, but that's okay; everybody needs a hobby. And I already have several political junkies, a few news junkies, and at least six zombie experts on-call.

(This includes me. I practically have a PhD in the living dead. Again, everybody needs a hobby.)

This is going to be the most fun book revision process ever.

Updated book stats:

Total words: 156,890*
Total chapters: thirty-one chapters, divided into five 'books' and a coda.
Total pages: 574.
Started: September 4th, 2005, on the plane back from Seattle.
Finished: December 27th, 2007, sitting at Tony's kitchen table, in Seattle.
Updates finished: June 3rd, 2008, in my bedroom.

After six months of being allowed to sit quietly in a drawer maturing, I'm finally starting the process of line-editing and revising Feed, my epic novel of zombies, politics, blogging, how George Romero accidentally saved the world and the tragic duty of the journalist. I forgot how much this book excites me just by existing. I love the setting, I love the characters, and I love the structure of it all.

Now it's time to really get down to brass tacks, and start beating this baby into shape. Even assuming the standard 10% loss between drafts, it's going to remain the longest thing I've ever written -- and quite frankly, I think it's the best.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest. Rise up while you can.

(*After the additions requested by my first draft proofreading list, this is an increase of 6,802 words. Which is a very amusing number.)

I've been sick for over a week now. There have been a few flashes of feeling better, but they've been short-lived, and always seem to be followed by things like last night, where I woke up at one o'clock in the morning feeling like I'd been gargling flesh-eating alien spiders. (I wasn't. At least, I don't think I was. If I'm wrong, I suppose we'll find out when they hatch. Also, it should be noted that Brooke supports my theory that alien spiders are responsible for many of the ills of mankind, although this may be because she thinks it's cool. She's right.)

Sadly, the ongoing construction of a tiny viral empire inside my body has left me with the laser-like focus of an eight-week-old cocker spaniel puppy. I can focus on small things, like peeling an egg or inking a single line. Larger things, like folding my laundry or excavating the bedroom floor? Not so much. My room has achieved a level of trashed previously known only in myth and legend. I simply lack the energy to deal with it. All I've eaten today is a cup of sugar-free Jello and some egg whites, because nothing else has any real interest in staying down. I am, in short, being punished for my sins by an angry plague-based god.

Despite my illness, I've been industriously processing edits, which is good, since otherwise, I think they would crush me beneath their weight. I think there may be a ground war over my opinions on comma usage sometime soon. I support this notion, because it would be funny. We've hit the stage where they're almost entirely pedantic things, like 'you have broken another obscure rule of grammar whose existence you never really considered before, but which will be used to sentence you to an eternity of torment if you don't fix it right now' and 'you spelled 'Rayseline' wrong.' This is the most pleasant stage of editing. The stage where I can actually fix things with relative ease.

I managed to get a good start on one of the drop-in chapters for Newsflesh on Friday, to my surprise and delight. Georgia Mason is one of the easiest point-of-view characters I've ever worked with -- most of them take a few pages or even a chapter to come all the way 'on', but she was there, and absolutely herself, from the very first paragraph. She's not the easiest person to live with, mind you, but she's an absolute ball to write for. Even if I do need to regularly restrain myself from going off on six-page rants about the state of virological research in her version of modern America. Depending on the density of editing to be done, I may be able to finish the first drop-in chapter tonight, get it all integrated with the rest of the text, and start in on drop-in chapter number two. Progress is exciting!

Of course, it's also likely that I'm going to crawl home tonight, fall on my head, and not acknowledge the world again until Tuesday morning. Because Martian Death Flu is also exciting.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee.

Today, I begin doing the major surgical adjustments to A Local Habitation. This is, honestly, one of my favorite parts of the writing process. The book is done -- for certain values of 'done' -- and I can see the entire shape of it, all stretched out upon my screen like a patient etherized upon a table. Now I can start determining which of its major organs it really doesn't need, which ones can be easily extracted, and which ones need a little more beefing up. It's a really rewarding period in the evolution of the text.

I managed to get some work done on Lycanthropy yesterday -- not as much as I would have done on, say, a day when I wasn't down with Martian death flu, but since I'm sick, and a next-day review of the text has shown it to be pretty darn good, I'm a happy girl. Clady is just plain fun to write for. I can't wait until everyone else gets to meet her.

Also on the happy-happy joy-joy side of things, when I finish the surgical adjustments to A Local Habitation and send it off, I should be able to take a month or so off from playing in Toby's backyard to address the changes I've been wanting to make in Newsflesh. Because everything is better with zombies. Even chocolate chip cookies. And since I have steadfastly refused to allow my love for the living dead to insert them into any of my other ongoing series (except for Deathless, but that's a special case, given my protagonist), I figure I deserve a little bit of a zombie break. ZOMBIE BREAK!!!!!

Life is good. There's so much writing to be done!

These are likely to come up with a fair amount of frequency, because, well, that's just how this sort of thing tends to work. So here's a list of projects you're probably going to hear about, one way or another, with a reasonable degree of frequency:

Rosemary and Rue.
October Daye, book one. Urban fantasy/fairy tale noir, modern setting, first-person protagonist. Status: sold, under review.

A Local Habitation.
October Daye, book two. Urban fantasy/fairy tale noir, modern setting, first-person protagonist. Status: sold, in current rewrites.

An Artificial Night.
October Daye, book three. Urban fantasy/fairy tale noir, modern setting, first-person protagonist. Status: sold, pending rewrites.

Late Eclipses of the Sun.
October Daye, book four. Urban fantasy/fairy tale noir, modern setting, first-person protagonist. Status: pending rewrites.

Newsflesh.
Modern political/zombie horror, near-future setting, first-person protagonist. Rise up while you can. Status: pending rewrites.

Upon A Star.
Young adult comedy/romance. Drama kids are awesome. Modern setting, first-person protagonist. Status: pending rewrites.

Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues.
Coyote Girls, book one. Young adult horror/supernatural romance. Modern setting, first-person protagonist. Status: now writing.

There are lots of other books floating around here -- some finished and slated to be worked on further, others pending getting started -- but these are the ones you're likely to hear the most about, at least currently. I'll probably update this list from time to time, as things move from 'project' to 'print', and new things take their places on the workshop floor.