I am pleased* to announce that the release date for Rosemary and Rue, the first of the October Daye books, has been officially confirmed and announced as September 2009. Yes. Nine months from now. On store shelves. Actual store shelves, not just shelves on the bookstore inside my head (they have very affectionate store cats).

Watch this space for news, updates, contests, giveaways, and hyperventilation. But for right now, I resort to the obvious:

HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD SEPTEMBER 2009 THAT'S LIKE PRACTICALLY TOMORROW THAT MEANS I'LL HAVE BOOKS AT OVFF AND WORLD FANTASY AND OH MY GOD AND I CAN'T BREATHE AND MADE OF WIN AND DINO DANCE PARTY TIME FOR EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahem. That is all.

(*By 'pleased,' we mean 'incandescent with glee and hasn't stopped squealing for the past hour.' It's a specialized definition.)

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.

Six months ago today, my agent called me while I was at work to tell me that I was getting everything I wanted for Christmas, because we'd just sold the first three October Daye books to DAW. This was right after we finished putting book one, Rosemary and Rue, through a really torturous revision process -- seriously, it was like taking a machete and a staple gun to a classroom full of kindergartners -- and started the revisions on book two.

A month later, book two, A Local Habitation, was ready to be turned in to my publisher, and a month after that, in July, I went to New York to turn myself in to my publisher. It was the most surreal summer of my life. It hasn't really gotten less surreal since then.

In September, I turned in my final author-draft (distinct from the final 'my editor has had time to review and request rewrites' draft) of book three, An Artificial Night, to DAW, and started working seriously on book four, Late Eclipses of the Sun. (No, it's not under contract. Yes, I believe in being prepared.) And during that time period, I finished Newsflesh and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues, and started on The Mourning Edition and Discount Armageddon.

It's been a busy six months.

We don't have a publication date for Rosemary and Rue yet (obviously); my new website has yet to launch; all the frantic writing and revision has done a number on my social life and my recording schedule; we haven't even started shopping the next few books. There's going to be a lot of work that has to get done before I can actually start saying 'go buy my book' and praying for an audience. I know that. And it doesn't matter, because six months ago today, we sold my first novel.

I am still the happiest blonde there is.

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.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

I have been a very good girl since last Halloween. I have given cookies and candy and cake to people who needed them. I have been kind to spiders. I have revered the pumpkin in all its forms. I have not drowned anyone in a well. I have not unleashed an army of the living dead, obedient to my every whim, and commanded them to destroy all that which might oppose me. Also, I have not called down the pandemic. So clearly, I have spent the entire year on my very best behavior.

This year, Great Pumpkin, I am asking for the following gifts:

* Awesome cover art. Please, Great Pumpkin, make sure that the cover art for Rosemary and Rue is made entirely of wonderful, and save me from the terrible specter of the bimbo on the cover of my book. (To quote the Bohnhoffs: “She is sultry, she is sexy, she is nowhere in the text, she is the bimbo on the cover of my book.”) I have great faith in my cover artist and my publisher, but it never hurts to plead for supernatural aid from the most superior of all squash.

* A fantastic convention season. I’m going to be the Music Guest of Honor at Duckon, Great Pumpkin, and Jim Butcher is going to be the Author Guest of Honor. Please help me to be the very best Disney Halloween Princess that I can possibly be, and smite those things which might attempt to oppose me. Please assist me in winning the hearts of all those who meet me, and all me to position myself well for a best-selling novel. Also, please make sure there’s edible food within walking distance of the convention hotel.

* The perfect kittens. My oldest cat is very old, Great Pumpkin, and in the interests of keeping my younger cat from going insane, I am in the market for Siamese kittens. I am looking for a chocolate and a lilac, both Classic, both with the sweet temper and massive size that I associate with the breed. They need to be sturdy, or Lilly will devour them while I sleep, and that will both make me sad and force me to go looking for new kittens. I don’t have time to go through this twice, so please help me get it right the first time.

* Quick, successful sale of the InCryptid series, wherein the various members of the Price family alternately protect and pummel cryptid ass for the sake of the ecological balance of the planet. If you give me this, Great Pumpkin, I promise to find a way to work you into the narrative, either as a benevolent protector of the pumpkin patch, or as a destroyer of the weak. The choice is entirely yours. Also, if you can, could you make sure the contract is for the first four? Because I really want an excuse to write them all.

* Happiness for my entire family, including my recently-married baby sister and her wife. I am very tired of people trying to say that my baby sister’s marriage is in some way dangerous, Great Pumpkin. She’s happy for the first time, and it’s wonderful to watch, and if anything, her joy is a testament to why people get married at all, not a sign of the marital apocalypse. Please make the stupid go away, Great Pumpkin, so we can all stay happy.

* An army of velociraptors, genetically-engineered to obey only my commands, and equipped with lasers on their forearms. I promise I will only use them to bring glory to your name, Great Pumpkin, and that I will leave enough of the world’s population alive to properly honor you on the next Halloween.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

So I'm in the process of translating the Big Book of Faerie -- my several-hundred-page continuity guide for the Toby Daye series -- into the wonderful Wiki that Chris set up for me. This is naturally a slow and somewhat painful process, made more slow and painful by the fact that the document got way, way too big for Microsoft Word about, oh, a hundred pages ago, and is thus full of broken bookmarks and dysfunctional hyperlinks.

I've created templates and blank pages to use as guides for the various types of page -- this is what a character needs, this is what a place needs, this is what a fae race needs. And this is forcing me to really face the fact that despite having a continuity guide the length of a novel, there's a lot of stuff that simply has never been written down.

Talk about a way to make me start twitching.

It's natural that the continuity guide would be slightly out of date: I have, after all, finished and submitted two full-length manuscripts since January, with a third currently under review prior to submission. I'm in the process of writing and editing the fourth book, and yeah, the fifth is absolutely sitting in the queue waiting for me to attack it. (I'm planning to direct all this attention squarely on Rosemary and Rue when I start having things like 'a release date,' but as I am secretly an atomic-powered robot from the future, I have a lot of energy to spare just now.) It's just...

I think part of me always thought that when I wasn't looking, all the upcoming plot twists and complications and that little subplot I'm planning in book seven and and and all just...appeared in the continuity guide. They were written down somewhere. I could get hit by a bus, and one of my friends could finish the series.

Clearly, this is not the case. And just as clearly, I've got a lot of continuity to do.

So Chris fixed my wiki yesterday -- it was having template issues -- and I am now beginning the long, slow, deeply painful process of transitioning my Toby continuity guide. Why long, slow, and deeply painful? Well, in part because the actual document is so very, very out-dated at this point. See, I sort of hit the point where MS Word (my prior format) couldn't keep up with my hyper-links and bookmarks anymore. And when you combine that with the difficulty of searching a several-hundred page document, well...

I'm going to try finishing one page per day until the continuity wiki a) contains all the data from the original file, and b) is actually up-to-date. This is meaning lots of searching through the text of the various books, most especially Rosemary and Rue, since that's the place where continuity begins. It's going to be a lot of work.

That sound you hear is my tiny OCD heart actually jumping for joy.

I'm currently formatting Toby's page, which is going to be the single most complicated, being as she's, well, Toby, and the sheer depth of information that I can get without becoming unreasonable is just staggering.

This is awesome.

Three months ago today, we officially sold the first three October Daye books to DAW. At that time, we'd just finished putting the first book, Rosemary and Rue, through the editorial wringer to end all wringers; I could practically teach a seminar based on the process of revising that book. A month after that, book two, A Local Habitation, was ready to be turned in to my publisher, and I was just getting things underway with book three, An Artificial Night.

Two months ago, I was in New York, meeting my editor and my publisher and -- in a weird, sort of existential way -- my future, because this is what I've wanted my whole life, and it's become basically impossible to say 'but it's never going to happen.' It is going to happen. It's all happening right now.

In the past three months, I've learned more about the publishing world than I had managed to learn in the previous thirty years. In the past nine months, I've learned more about myself as a writer, and the craft of writing in general, than, again, the previous thirty years. I've finally figured out where the pieces go. An Artificial Night is almost ready to be turned in, now. I'm working on Late Eclipses of the Sun, aka, 'book four.' I've finished Newsflesh. I've finished Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. I've outlined InCryptid, in all its weird and wonderful glory. I'm moving forward, and I've come so far, and I've got so far to go.

We don't have a publication date for Rosemary and Rue yet (obviously); my new website has yet to launch; all the frantic writing and revision has done a number on my social life and my recording schedule; we haven't even started shopping the next few books. There's going to be a lot of work that has to get done before I can actually start saying 'go buy my book' and praying for an audience. I know that. And it doesn't matter, because three months ago today, we sold my first novel.

I am the happiest blonde there is.

Upon returning to my humble abode, I discovered that a) my room looked like it had been hit by a small explosive device, b) my cats missed me, c) I get a lot of mail in the course of a week, all of which was cascading off my desk and enhancing the appearance of being under siege, d) my cats missed me, e) it is possible to be too damn tired to feel like getting online, f) my cats missed me, and g) Morpheus has a mean right hook. Half of Sunday was lost to the blessed, blessed mists of sleep, where I enjoyed the wonders of not being awake, and my cats enjoyed the wonders of knowing exactly where I was at all times. It's good to be easily satisfied.

Since returning home, I have turned in Rosemary and Rue* with all editorial notes incorporated, started processing the editorial notes on A Local Habitation, processed a bunch of edits on An Artificial Night, and chewed through another twenty pages of Late Eclipses of the Sun. The universe has thus decided to reward me by revealing the identity of my cover artist. Moreover, the universe has decided to reward me by confirming that he's contracted for the first three books, meaning that we'll have an ultra-consistent look and feel to the volumes. (This is the part where I faint from joy.) Best of all, I don't have to try keeping it a secret, which might cause me to actually explode -- I have permission from DAW to share the glory. I think this is probably because they don't want me to try holding my breath for however long. Are you curious? Do you wanna knoooooooow?

Well, click here, and you can find out for yourself.

Yes.

YES.

THAT IS THE MAN WHO GETS TO DRAW TOBY.

I realize that I'm supposed to be cool and professional and above dancing around waving my hands in the air and screaming. I am sorry to say that I have not yet achieved that level of zen, and am, instead, dancing around waving my hands in the air and screaming. It's fun! You should give it a try. And seriously, look around the galleries, and just marvel at how insanely lucky I am to be working with this publisher. I have total faith that my cover art is going to be the kind that gets it right, and that's just amazing.

Best. Monday. Ever.

(*I know I keep saying that, but dude, you have no idea how nice it is to know that it's not pending anything anymore -- it's gone -- and I can now treat the text as canon, rather than some sort of weird Schrodinger's canon. 'The book is neither alive nor dead until your editor opens the file.' The file has been opened. The book is alive. We can begin sending out invitations to the birthday party.)

So here's the skinny on the first four books:

Rosemary and Rue. First-pass editorial is done, and the book has been sent off to DAW to get cuddly with my editor, who will hopefully find it to be an amazing construction of chocolate chips and chainsaws, and thus be able to pass it straight on to the line-editors. While I'm wishing for impossible things, I'd also like a zombie pony full of money.

A Local Habitation. I have my editorial notes from The Editor and The Agent, and I'm about to start processing them. This should be a lot of fun. I find that every book improves immensely as it goes through the editorial process, even if, occasionally, it comes out the other side looking extremely different than it looked going in. This hasn't been officially 'turned in' yet, but it's getting very close.

An Artificial Night. We're still in 'game preserve' edits on this one -- I've been working industriously, and The Agent has seen it, but it hasn't gone to DAW yet. I'm planning to finish the home-team editing before the end of July, and I'm shooting to have the book turned in on an official basis by the end of the first week in August. This will be awesome, as it will free up a lot of my brain for working on...

Late Eclipses of the Sun. Book four! Book one of the second set of three, since almost everyone seems to think in trilogies these days! I'm in the middle of rewriting this one, and by 'the middle,' I mean 'currently, I'm on page 277 of 375, and things are rocking like a cruise ship in a tsunami.' I haven't turned the lions loose on it yet, but dude, the improvements are vast and epic as it is, and I can't wait to move on to the next stage.

After I finish with the LE revisions, I'm going to focus on The Brightest Fell, aka, 'book five,' and then move on to other projects. Because standing still is for other people. Also because I really enjoy having several books written past the point of 'current' in the series, since that means I have the luxury of changing my mind before the deadline.

It probably says something that my reward for finishing book four is going to be quality OCD-girl time with my brand-new continuity Wiki, but I'm trying not to think about that overly-hard.

Whee!

I have just finished my first post-editorial pass through Rosemary and Rue, book one in the Chronicles of October Daye. All changes suggested by a) my proofreaders, b) my own neurosis, and c) my editor have been incorporated into the text, which continues to get cleaner and crisper and more all-around happy-making with every smack of the machete.

I've also updated the continuity guide (yes, again) to reflect the new canon. I honestly can't wait for publication, not just because, dude, PUBLICATION, but because I so very much want to have official and formal and unchanging canon. I'm really looking forward to being forced to live with my decisions. It seems like it's going to be a pretty awesome thing to complain about.

Chris is setting up a Wiki for me to transition my continuity guide into, because that's going to be so much easier to work with than my current enormously massive .doc file that it isn't even funny. Infinite links! Category pages! Related pages! Truly, my geeky little heart swoons with the anticipation of making my already-obsessive database even larger, and more obsessive. And I found another month this morning, bringing the total of months represented in the series up to six. Behold!

Now I am going to turn in my manuscript, get dressed, and go to Starbucks. Because that's just the way we roll.

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 )

So back on June 9th, I started the major surgical adjustments to the third Toby Daye book, An Artificial Night. Again, I know the exact date because I never ever ever throw anything away ever, and also because my planner tends to have notations like 'started rewrites today' and 'actually ran out of pickle relish' on the monthly view. Because that's just the way I roll. After spending most of yesterday threatening a single chapter with pitchforks and torches, I cleared the hurdle and raced to the end of the book. WINNER!

I still need to do more proofing and processing before the book gets shipped off to The Agent for further consideration, but the heavy lifting has been done; it's time to put away the machete, get out the scalpel and the staple gun, and start repairing the smaller, more easily overlooked issues. Even after spending several months in 'everything I know is wrong oh dear heavens did I really write that?!' mode, this book remains my favorite of the first three, and that's like, seriously magical.

VELOCIRAPTOR DANCE PARTY TIME!!!! Because nothing says 'I just finished a book revision' like dancing dinosaurs.

Still being me, and still being totally incapable of sitting still for more than a few minutes, I've already started the revisions on Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth of the Toby books. (This is the first book that comes after my current contract with DAW. So if you want to read it, y'know, encourage everyone you've ever met to buy Rosemary and Rue.) I'm also getting ready to seriously buckle down on the Newsflesh revisions, because nothing says 'detox after wallowing in urban fantasy for six months' like 'zombies and politics.'

I love the fact that right now, there's always something else waiting to be worked on. And, of course, the editorial process is going to be kicking in sooner than later, which will take me right back to Rosemary, and a whole new set of adventures. But for right now...

Dance!

One month ago today, we officially sold the first three October Daye books to DAW. Rosemary and Rue, the first, had already been through the editorial wringer over here on my end of things; A Local Habitation, the second, had just started the editing process. (An Artificial Night hadn't even been touched.) One month later, book two is just about ready to be turned in -- the goal is to have the last few tweaks in place by Monday -- while book three is being industriously rewritten. I've even started thinking about working on book four.

It's all starting to feel real. Finally. It's all starting to feel less like the universe pulling some cosmic joke, and like it's something that's really and genuinely happening. It helps that the editing process is frequently painful, frequently grinding, and frequently disrupts my sleep. It's substantially harder to disbelieve something that isn't letting you go to bed.

There are roughly twenty million things still to get done. I mean, Rosemary and Rue hasn't started the editorial process at DAW (which is a whole new ball of wax), my new website hasn't launched yet, and I still need to buy my tickets to New York. There's going to be a lot of work that has to get done before I can actually start saying 'go buy my book' and praying for an audience. I know that. And it doesn't matter, because one month ago today, we sold my first novel.

I am the happiest blonde there is.

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.

My first trilogy has been purchased by DAW Books! This set of urban fantasy/mysteries is best described as 'fairy tale noir', and will be coming soon to a world near you. The order is:

Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night

I am grateful, excited, delighted, and really looking forward to the full-contact editing bonanza that's sure to be coming my way. There's nothing more exciting than a red pen, a machete, and a whole manuscript to explore. So this is the beginning of the process. Now, we make our hack-and-slash way to the end!

Yay!