Hello, everybody, 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 (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets updated and re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. 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 )

You've already heard about these, because you're wonderful and also here, but some of my deal announcements have finally gone public. Hooray! Namely...

The first two books in the InCryptid series, described here by Romantic Times as being about "a family of cryptozoologists who are trying to ensure the survival of endangered mythological species." They also call me "often scary, but always wonderful." I can deal with that as a description, personally.

Books six and seven in the Toby Daye books, which Romantic Times describes as "the adventures of a half-fairy in a dark and dangerous human world." Toby is a little more afraid of Faerie than the human world. At least the human world comes with coffee. A Toby without coffee is like a day without sunshine. Or oxygen. Or gravity.

And that's my next few years all charted out for your amusement. So when you wonder why I'm not coming to your birthday party, well. You can reference this post.

Tara, who is my good and loving and tolerant friend, and who does all the graphics for my website, is also a Barbie customizer. She takes normal, every day dolls and turns them into geek icons, like NCIS's Abby Sciuto, or damn near EVERY CHARACTER EVER to appear in an episode of Star Trek. I? Think this is awesome. And that, friends and neighbors, is why I asked Tara to make me a Barbie.

An Alice Price-Healy Barbie. Behold:



Alice! She has the head of an Aquamarine Birthstone Beauty, the right arm of a Hard Rock Barbie, and the body of a Harley-Davidson Barbie. Her shirt is an old, old piece of Ken's wardrobe; her tank top is Barbie Basics; and her hot camouflage pants are proof that she's more awesome than your Barbie. Oh, and did we mention the weapons? She has a shotgun, pistols, grenades, knives, smoke bombs, and a 1:6 scale machete. Yes. BARBIE WITH A MACHETE.



Alice knows what you're thinking. Alice doesn't approve.

My dolls rule!

It is now Sunday; Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] officially comes out in two days. This is terrifying and amazing. This is my fifth book. I mean, seriously, people, what the hell? Did I hit my head? Is this a really weird dream? How have I published five books?!

In honor of really weird dreams, I give you two stories I very much hope I get to tell.

1. I occasionally mention a book called Nativity of Chance. It's what I call my "Tim Powers book," because it's not the sort of book I usually write. It's about alchemy, and math, and language, and second chances, and siblings, and the families we find as opposed to the families we're given. It's about a girl named Dodger who loves numbers like she loves nothing else, and a boy named Roger who loves words like he loves nothing else, and the way they love each other. It's about Oz. It's about finding a place in a universe that loves you like a broken heart loves a last goodbye. I want to write it so bad, and I have to write at least five more books, first, because I'm just not good enough yet. But I can finally see good enough on a clear day, and that's very, very new.

2. The tenth InCryptid book is called Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld. It's the story of Alice Price-Healy and Thomas Price and why true love is bad for you, and all the books before it are necessary, in part, to put the pieces in position for this last big story. I desperately want the series to do well enough to let me get this far, to let me show you what it looks like in the forests of my heart. I am good enough to tell this story. I just have to show my math if I want you to love it the way that I do.

Let's go in reverse order, shall we? Because sometimes linearity just doesn't cut it. Anyway, the annual Locus Magazine poll for the best speculative fiction has been posted, covering those items published during 2010. Many excellent things are on the list already, and there are write-in slots for excellent things which you feel should have been included there, but weren't. The poll is open until April 15th, and everyone can vote, although votes cast by actual subscribers count for double. (This is one reason, among many, that it is awesome to have a Locus subscription.) Go, take a look, and help paint an accurate picture of what people loved about the speculative fiction of 2010!

I recently did an interview with the charming Katie Babs, who has posted our conversation for everyone to see. Being more sophisticated about these things than l'il ol' me, she even included graphics and other such awesome bells and whistles. It was a fun interview, with good questions, and I highly recommend taking a peek, if only so she'll feel that her site traffic justifies having me back someday!

Why, no. I do not have any pride. Why do you ask?

The cats continue healthy. Alice is a bit heavier than I want her to be, since recovering from her illness included a lot of gooshy food and spoiling, so we're trying to feed lightly for the moment. This might work better if a) Thomas weren't a growing boy, b) Lilly were more willing to be pushy about her food, and c) Alice didn't flop in the middle of the floor wailing about how she's starving to death and I am the WORST MONKEY EVER. Although, to be fair, Alice's flopping would be more believable if she didn't shake the floor when she did it. Yes, yes, you're starving, my little tauntaun. And next time there's a cold snap, I am going to crawl inside you to keep myself warm.

Thomas is growing at a truly staggering rate; it's like he's taken Alice's size as a personal challenge, and is determined to beat her before the next time he sees Betsy (I always assume my cats are trying to impress their breeder with their spectacular awesomeness). He's still the sweetest thing on four feet, which is good, since otherwise, I would be in trouble. He's very smart, and very curious. He's also stubborn as hell. Last night, he was on my lap, trying to play with the popcorn I was eating, so every time he reached for a piece, I would flick his paw. A normal cat would have grown annoyed and stalked off, furious at such callous treatment. Thomas started flicking me back. I love my Maine Coons.

I also love my Siamese. Lilly remains the lickingest cat in the entire known universe, as the patch of skin she licked off the inside my elbow last night while I slept will cheerfully attest. She's a little daunted by suddenly being the smallest cat in the house, but she's dignified enough (in all regards except for the licking) to hold her own against the fluffy tide.

And now...toys. As you may know, I love toys. My bedroom is like a terrifying cross between a set built for the Halloweentown movies and a toy store. I have well over a hundred My Little Ponies (and am collecting more every day), the entire current Monster High toy line, and a bunch of random assorted dolls, action figures, and weird things, including an anime-style Emma Frost, a hungry flesh-eating wasp-woman, and the Impala from Supernatural. It's a fun room to sleep in sometimes.

Anyway, yesterday, I got home to find a box on my porch. And inside that box...PONIES. Lots and lots of lovely Ponies, including Baby Racer (a yellow Baby Brother Pony with blue hair and a race car on his rump) and Applejack and some beautifully ringletted Candy Cane Ponies...

And Oakly. The My Little Pony Moose. Who has been on my Top 10 Wish List for ages. And now? NOW SHE IS MINE.

It's a good week to be a Pony geek.

Tara is making me a Barbie version of Alice Price-Healy, which has given me an excuse to go shopping for lots and lots of 1/6th scale weapons on eBay. This is incredibly soothing. It's shopping with purpose, and that purpose will result in my having the best. Barbie. EVER. The other Barbie she made for me, Lt. Anis Bihari of the USS Rutan, is currently off-site having her uniform tailored. I expect much joy when she returns. Oh, and they just announced the second wave of the Monster High Dawn of the Dance line, which will include two of my favorite dolls (Draculaura and Ghoulia).

It's a good week to be a toy geek, period. I am a happy blonde.

Words: 3,255.
Total words: 15,260.
Reason for stopping: chapter one is finished, and chapters two through four have been tweaked accordingly.
Music: mostly dance mixes. Fancy that.
The cats: presumably back in California.

So yeah, I did it again; what I thought was chapter one was actually chapter two, necessitating the composition of a whole new chapter one, and revision of the existing chapters, to make the new chapter one fit with the rest of the book. And, again, the book is infinitely better and more fun, right out the gate, for having had this new chapter one added. I should really give up on first chapters, and just plan to write them when I've finished the rest of the book, I swear.

There is no mouse exaltation of the day, as the mice do not appear in the new chapter one. I apologize, and promise more mousy goodness to come. Probably when it will annoy Verity as much as humanly possible.

I've actually been spending a lot of time in this universe lately, having finished a story set three generations before Discount Armageddon, and done some heavy revision on a few stories set to generations before. This series really is a family affair, and I work industriously to make that obvious. Also, it's fun to do period-piece cryptozoology.

I am, perhaps, easily amused.

So as you know, I really, really love it when I can get artwork to go with my books, whether it be a fabulous cover or illustrations of the characters themselves. It's a silly thing, but it helps me focus. I can't get photographs of the people in my head, so I settle for the next best thing, and regularly bat my eyes pleadingly at artists of my acquaintance. I'm pretty good at it (the fact that I'm willing to pay fair commission rates helps), and so I wind up going back to the same artists again and again. One of my favorite artists is Bill Mudron, who did the cover graphics for my third CD, Red Roses and Dead Things. He's awesome!

Part of what makes Bill awesome is his uncanny ability to take a simple request ("Draw this person who doesn't exist for me, okay? Oh, and make it cool...") and turn it into something amazing. So when I started working with Bill this most recent time, I felt confident in asking for some pretty tricky imaginary people—specifically, Alice Price-Healy and her wayward husband, Thomas Price, and Sarah Zellaby and Arthur Harrington.

Alice is the grandmother of Verity Price, the protagonist of Discount Armageddon; Thomas is Verity's grandfather (naturally). Thomas has also been missing for oh, about thirty years now, thanks to a really poorly-considered energy exchange with one of the nastier local dimensional gateways. Alice refuses to admit that this could mean he's dead, and has been wandering through the various levels of reality looking for him ever since. She's maybe not the most stable cookie in the box.

Arthur Harrington—he usually goes by "Artie"—is Verity's cousin. His mother, Moira Harrington-Price, is the daughter of Alice and Thomas, and his father, Theodore Harrington, is surprisingly good at dealing with his wife's family. This is because Uncle Ted is the most mellow man on the planet (it's a survival trait). Sarah Zellaby is considered a cousin, since she was adopted by Verity's mother's adoptive parents (yes, these books will come with a family tree). She's not human, but no one really holds that against her.

( Cut because posting large graphics without a cut tag is a really good way for me to get smacked upside the head by my friends.Collapse )

Well, here we are: the final current projects post of 2010. There are things that have been on this list since January. There are things that have magically appeared, sometimes startling everyone involved (but rarely startling anyone more than me). The year is ending, and for better or for worse, this is what I still have to do before I get to take a nap. This is the December list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list, as are those that have been turned in but not yet printed (Late Eclipses and Deadline). The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer (although this month's list is shorter than last month's list). But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Words: 4,229.
Total words: 12,005.
Reason for stopping: I have finished chapter three, and need to get dressed.
Music: lots of dance club music.
The cats: Lilly and Thomas, in the bed, Alice, prowling.

So chapter three is done. True to form, I have realized that the current chapter one is actually chapter two, and my next addition to this book will be the shiny new chapter one (also allowing me to move some of the "As you know, Bob..." into the new chapter one, thus distributing it a little bit better). I'm getting used to this particular quirk of my writing life, and while it still annoys me a bit, it no longer infuriates me. Yay for maturity!

Mouse exaltation of the day: "HAIL THE FAILURE TO IGNITE THE DOMICILE!" Gotta love the Aeslin mice. They are, without a doubt, worth their weight in kittens.

Let's see, other things I've realized...I have a misnamed cryptid race that's going to get corrected before Discount Armageddon is released, so you'll never know for sure what it was, but I need to make a note before I start working up my family field guides. Verity remains refreshing and awesome, even when she's annoyed, because she just can't stay annoyed for very long without outside assistance. And I think I need to find a source for So You Think You Can Dance Australia. It's...research. Yeah, that's the ticket.

What's sad is that in this case, it actually is.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

Another harvest season has come and gone, rich with tricks, treats, and unexplained disappearances in the haunted cornfield. I hope you have been well. Since my last letter to you, I have not wiped out mankind with a genetically engineered pandemic, or challenged any major religious figures to duels to the death in the public square. I have loved my friends and refrained from destroying my enemies. I have given out hugs, cupcakes, and cuddles with kittens freely and without hesitation. I have offered support when I could, and comfort when it was needed. I have not unleashed my scarecrow army to devastate North America. I have continued to make all my deadlines, even the ones I most wanted to avoid. I have not "accidentally" put tapeworm eggs in anyone's food. So as you can see, I've pretty much been a saint, by our somewhat lax local standards.

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

* A smooth and successful release for Late Eclipses, with books shipping when they're meant to ship, stores putting them out when they're supposed to put them out, and reviews that are accurate, insightful, and capable of steering people who will enjoy my book to read it. Please, Great Pumpkin, show mercy on your loving Pumpkin Princess of the West, and let it all be wonderful. I'm not asking you to make it easy, Great Pumpkin, but I'm asking you to make it good.

* Please let me make the revisions to One Salt Sea and Discount Armageddon smoothly, satisfyingly, and in a timely fashion, hopefully including a minimum of typographical and factual errors, plus a maximum level of awesome and win. If this request seems familiar, Great Pumpkin, it's because I make it just about every time I have a new book on the table, and this time is doubly important. One Salt Sea concludes a major arc in Toby's story, and Discount Armageddon kicks off a whole new series. I want them both to be amazing. Pretty please with candy corn on top?

* While I'm at it, please let the next books in their respective series be up to my admittedly nearly-impossible standards for myself. Let Ashes of Honor be exciting and worth the commitment, let Midnight Blue-Light Special be peppy and perfect in its insanity, and let Blackout seal the deal on the Newsflesh universe. It's wonderful to be working on three totally new books. It's also terrifying. There's a period at the start of a novel, where I'm trying to chip the shape of the story out of nothing, that's just scary as hell, and I'm there times three right now. Please show mercy, and let this work.

* I thank you for Alice's return to health, Great Pumpkin, and ask for your blessings as she continues her recovery. I thought I was going to lose her. I'm still shaky when I think about it. Please let her keep getting better, and please let her be exactly the same goofy, graceless cat that she's always been. While you're at it, please make sure Lilly and Thomas stay healthy, and that Thomas continues his incredible, faintly frightening growth. I think he doubles in size once a week. It's awesome. Look out for my cats, Great Pumpkin. They mean the world to me.

* As I approach the 2011 convention season, I ask for your blessings. Let things be smooth when they can, and let me take that which is not smooth with good humor, good grace, and a good sense of restraint. Let me be clever when I need to be, calm when I need to be, and a good guest for everyone who has been kind enough to invite me to their convention. Let me be the kind of guest that is remembered with joy, not the kind who is remembered with glum "and then there was the year of the great tragedy" stories.

* Thank you, thank you, thank you again for shining your holy candle upon the Campbell Award, Great Pumpkin. I hope only that I did you proud with my acceptance speech, and that you are pleased with my endeavors. It may be a little forward of me to point this out, but Feed is eligible for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards this year, and, well...any assistance you wanted to throw my way would be very much appreciated. I think my mother would catch fire if I came home with either award, and that would be fun to watch.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: While you're at it, can you please make Oasis get back to me? I'd really like to be done with Wicked Girls before I'm done with 2010.

Words: 3,982.
Total words: 7,776.
Reason for stopping: I have finished chapter two, and need to get dressed.
Music: lots of dance club music.
The cats: all three of them are in the bed. It's freaky.

Chapter two is done! Chapter two is done! I really meant to be further along in this book by now, but, well...new kitten, major flu, Alice nearly dying, OryCon, and extensive revisions on One Salt Sea mucked things up a bit. I'm getting back on track, and the first step was getting this chapter locked down. What's that? Is that a finished chapter? Why yes, I do believe that it is. CHEESE AND CAKE!

I love the InCryptid setting. It manages to be incredibly grim and serious, and incredibly light and fluffy, all at the same time. I often say that if we're working with a seriousness scale of one to ten, with Newsflesh being an eight or nine, and Toby being a six or seven, InCryptid is a two or three (except when it's not). And wow, is it refreshing to be able to say "you know what? You don't want to hear me, you just want to dance."

I think I'm going to work up an end-of-book "cryptid handbook" for the published books, including the names of the various cryptid species, and short descriptions of same. This will help a lot, with a lot of things, including my firm desire not to completely re-explain the cuckoos in every single volume.

I'm so excited!

It is with extreme pleasure and with no small degree of squeaky joy that I announce that the first two InCryptid books have been acquired by DAW Books. These urban fantasy adventures focus on the Price family of cryptozoologists as they seek to protect the cryptids of the world from humanity...and humanity from the cryptids of the world. The first two volumes are:

Discount Armageddon
Midnight Blue-Light Special

Cryptids and cuckoos and field guides, oh my! Words really can't express how insanely happy I am right now. I'm going to be working with the same team at DAW, which means I know I will have great editorial, fantastic in-house support, and a whole lot of sheer bonus fun. I'm so excited that you're all going to get the chance to meet these people. They're some of my favorites. And now, in the words of the Aeslin mice...

CHEESE! AND! CAKE!

We're already somehow halfway through November, which is a bit of an "um, what?" for me, but that means it's time for the monthly current projects post. I actually look forward to this one, most of the time, since it means I can demonstrate that I occasionally Get Things Done. Of course, it also means another month has somehow slipped away, which is a trifle stressful, but hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles. This is the November list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list, as are those that have been turned in but not yet printed (Late Eclipses and Deadline). The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Words: 3,794.
Total words: 3,794.
Reason for stopping: The Agent called. Hence my posting this the next morning.
Music: lots of dance club music.
Lilly and Alice: cat tree and STALKING, respectively.

What's this? Why, it's the first official word count for Midnight Blue-Light Special, of course. What's that? The second InCryptid book, and the sequel to Discount Armageddon. In short, my reward for finishing the fifth Toby book is the sweet, sweet embrace of ballroom dancers who spend their spare time acting as a guidance counselor for monsters, talking mice, brooding monster-hunters, and mathematicians with anti-freeze where their blood is supposed to be. Because that's just how I roll.

I have the first chapter and prologue done, and Very is starting to respond to my request that she pay attention to the plot outline. For Very, this is very rapid adherence to the rules of the road, and I'm extremely proud of her. And yes, she's a fictional character, but I haven't been working with her for a while, so I have to remember how all this works.

I'm back in the cryptid-filled streets of New York City, and I couldn't be more pleased about it if I tried.

Today is the 15th of October, or, as the Disney Channel likes to call it, "the fifteenth day of Halloween." Since I have to put up with a full month of Christmas every year, I am okay with getting a month of Halloween to soothe my wounded, ghoulish soul. Anyway, welcome to my monthly current projects post, the regularly scheduled update which provides the only non-hysteria-inducing answer to the question "What are you working on?" It has the extra added bonus of proving that I am able to stop time, since otherwise, even I don't quite understand how the hell I'm getting everything finished in a timely manner. Seriously, I don't think I sleep. This is the October list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list. Late Eclipses and Deadline are off the list because they have been turned in to their respective editors, and I am waiting for page proofs.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

It's August 15th, and that means I need to take a break in my preparation for Australia and make my monthly current projects post. This is the regularly scheduled update which provides the only non-hysteria-inducing answer to the question "What are you working on?" It has the extra added bonus of proving that I am able to stop time, since otherwise, even I don't quite understand how the hell I'm getting everything finished in a timely manner. Seriously, I don't think I sleep. This is the August list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list. Discount Armageddon is off the list because it has been turned in to The Agent. Late Eclipses is off the list because it has been turned in to The Editor.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Dear Great Pumpkin;

It has been some time since I last wrote to you, but you have never been far from my thoughts. I just figured you could use a break. Since our last correspondence, I have refrained from starting any riots or overthrowing any governments. I have been kind to my friends, and relatively merciful to my enemies. I have offered friendship and support to those around me. I have given people cupcakes. I have not brought forth the end of days, nor capered gleefully by the bloody light of an apocalypse moon. I have continued to make all my deadlines, even the ones I most wanted to avoid. I have not talked about parasites at the dinner table. Much. So obviously, I have been quite well-behaved, especially considering my nature.

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

* A smooth and successful release for An Artificial Night, with books shipping when they're meant to ship, stores putting them out when they're supposed to put them out, and reviews that are accurate, insightful, and capable of steering people who will enjoy my book to read it. Please, Great Pumpkin, show mercy on your loving Pumpkin Princess of the West, and let it all be wonderful. I'm not asking you to make it easy, Great Pumpkin, but I'm asking you to make it good.

* Please help me finish the revisions to Late Eclipses in a smooth, satisfying, timely way, hopefully including a minimum number of typographical and factual errors, plus a maximum level of awesome and win. I'm about halfway through, which is wonderful—I'm almost done!—and terrifying—soon I won't be able to make changes anymore!—at the same time. I want to bring this book to a close, so I can get back to work on the fifth Toby book and the third Newsflesh book. What I have is good. Please let the rest be amazing.

* Since I'm being a Greedy Greta today, please let me swing back into The Brightest Fell with speed and elan, overcoming all challenges in my pursuit of the perfect ending. Thanks to changes in the book's overall plot, I no longer know for sure whether book six will be Ashes of Honor or One Salt Sea, and I'd really like to figure that one out. Please let the book be good, and please let the book be easy on my sanity. The more time I have to spend stressing out over this book, the less time I spend preaching your gospel to the unenlightened, or lurking in corn mazes scaring the living crap out of tourists. You like it when I scare the crap out of tourists, don't you, Great Pumpkin?

* I thank you once again for my cats, Great Pumpkin, who are wonderful and beautiful and a comfort beyond all measure. Alice is huge, puffy, and utterly without dignity. Lilly is sleek, smug, and satisfied with herself. Both are glorious representatives of their breed, and now, as I look to adding a third member to the family, I turn to you. Please make sure I find the right kitten, Great Pumpkin, the one which will enrich and benefit my feline family in ways that I haven't even thought of yet. Keep them healthy, keep them happy, and keep them exactly as they are.

* Please help me write a successful, smooth, and most of all, correct conclusion for the "Sparrow Hill Road" series of stories. It's been exciting and educational, and I've enjoyed the process of delving into Rose's world, but as I start moving toward the end of this particular journey, I start worrying about my ability to stick the landing. Please help me stick the landing, Great Pumpkin. Rose has waited a long time for her story to be told in a truthful, respectful manner, and she deserves a narrative that gets her all the way to the last exit on the ghostroads.

* I haven't said anything up to now about what I really want this year, Great Pumpkin, but...you know I've been nominated for the Campbell Award. You know that if I win, I'll be given a tiara, in Australia. You know that this is essentially what I've wanted my whole life. Some little girls want to be Prom Queen; I wanted to be Princess of the Kingdom of Poison and Flame. Please shine your holy candle upon the Campbell, Great Pumpkin, and, if you see fit, I will thank you in any speeches I have to give (which might be worth it right there).

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: While you're at it, can you please turn your graces on InCryptid? I really love these books. I want to be able to write more of them.

I really, really love commissioning artwork to go with my books. Having something to look at helps me focus in a weird way that's difficult to explain without maddened waving of my hands and possibly a few declarations of "Ice worms, dammit!" One of my favorite artists to commission is the ever-lovely Amy Mebberson, who did the art for my 2008 thank you card. She has since gone on to better and brighter things, becoming an artist for Boom! Studios, which doesn't leave her much time for private commissions...so when she opened briefly for specialized commissions to be picked up at the San Diego International Comic Convention, I jumped on it with both feet. Victory!

...of course, now I had to decide what to ask her for. I settled, after much deliberation, on the lovely Miss Sarah Zellaby, arguably the oddest of the current crop of Healy girls. She was adopted by the Bakers (Evelyn Price-Healy's parents) after being orphaned at an early age—if you can call "losing the host family your biological parents brood parasitized you to" being "orphaned." Sarah would. She was too young to know what she was at the time, and she still misses her human family.

Sarah's a cuckoo. A telepathic, ectothermic (cold-blooded) mammalian parasitic wasp with a decentralized circulatory system (she has no heart). She's also a mathematician, and a bit embarrassed about her species, so her cousins try not to give her too much grief about it. Verity would be dead a dozen times over if not for Sarah. This has not helped Sarah in her quest to get a life that doesn't involve textbooks, tomato milkshakes, and apologies.

I give you...Sarah:



Squee.

It is now April 15th, which means a) I am way closer to the release of Feed than my nerves appreciate, and b) it's time for my monthly current projects post. This is the post wherein I prove to the curious that I either don't sleep or have access to some mechanism for stopping time (don't I wish). There's a reason I start to giggle and twitch whenever someone asks me "What are you working on?", and this post provides a bit of explanation. It also serves as something I can point to when the question gets asked, which it does. This is the April list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first two Toby books (Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation) are off the list because they are now in print. Feed is off the list because it is in the process of being printed, and it's too late for me to make changes of any kind. The third and fourth Toby books (An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses) are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise. Discount Armageddon and Deadline are off the list because they have been turned in to The Agent.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

I am now four days out from the release of A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. The uncontrollable twitching hasn't started, largely, I'm assuming, because I've been too tense to twitch. I literally coughed myself into a migraine yesterday, which only went away when I went home and went to bed.

In an effort to keep myself breathing, I am now going to envision my perfect world. A world of sunshine and zombie puppies, where all I have to do is watch horror movies, take long walks, go to conventions, and write. In that world, I don't have to put things aside because there's no time.

I want to live there.

4 Things I'd Love to Write.

4. It's been on my "current projects" post for a while now, because hope springs eternal, but I really, really want to write this crazy math/language/Greek philosophy epic urban fantasy monster called The Nativity of Chance, which should probably have moved into the head of Tim Powers, but wound up with me instead. It's book one of a trilogy, and it's so deliciously messed-up that I just want to spend some serious quality time in its loving arms.

3. Lady of the Underground is the sequel to a romantic comedy I wrote a few years back, called Chasing St. Margaret. (I'm planning to revise Chasing St. Margaret this year, probably on the plane to Australia, and get it into publishable form, because I love it so.) Lady of the Underground would give me an excuse to spend more time with some characters I really adore, and that's just an awesome concept.

2. Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld. It's the tenth book in the InCryptid series, and the story of Alice Price-Healy's quest for her wayward husband (who is going to be getting so punched in the face when she finds him). Don't judge my series-oriented ways. My idea of pacing is not like your Earth idea of pacing.

1. The rest of Toby. I want the world to arrange itself so I can write this series until it's finished and over and done. And then I will do a little dance, and it will be glorious.

I have all these things I want to talk about. Like, my little running junk file contains about three dozen links, and a long list of blog topics (written in my customary all-caps shorthand, so the word "fuck" is pretty heavily represented—sometimes I'm a Kevin Smith movie). Instead, I spent much of my morning mastering the phrase "working for our robot overlords—did I say 'overlords'? I meant 'protectors,'" in American Sign Language. This is a highly useful phrase, and one which I am currently using quite a lot. Sure, I'm using it quite a lot because I just learned how to say it, but the theory is sound.

Other things I can say in ASL:

* The turtle couldn't/can't help you/me/us.
* I will kill you with a chainsaw now.
* I have a parasite inside my brain.
* Ninja!
* Giant metal Santa Claus.
* The salad of infinite despair.
* Moose lobotomy time. Call the moose lobotomist.
* Die in a fire.
* The Black Death.
* Octopus fellatio.
* Science/mad science.
* I want to eat your brain.
* ZOMBIE.

Naturally, I have learned these specific phrases because they are extremely useful in my daily life, and not because I enjoy signing "the salad of infinite despair" at people when they annoy me. Honest.

My current adventures in ASL are strongly fueled by the fact that I have essentially managed to freezer burn my brain as I race through Deadline like I'm being pursued by a pack of rabid weasels. The book is about 15,000 words from over, and I have a very solid idea of what all those words need to be; it's just a matter of getting them onto the page. I alternate between wanting to snarl at anything that keeps me from writing, and wanting to keep myself from writing, since soon, I won't have a book anymore. There will be other books. There will be edits and revisions on this book. But it won't be the same, and it will never be the same again, and after this, I only get to spend one more book in this universe. That's going to hurt. In the course of three volumes, I'll have essentially written four and a half Toby books-worth of story (these are big-ass books), and that makes the Masons and their companions really well-established denizens of my head. I'm going to wind up writing the parasite trilogy just to get myself through the grieving stage. This is, by the way, why I am drowning in series.

(I have friends who only write in single volumes. Bam bam bam, book book book, done. They view my addiction to series with horrified confusion, and some of them have commented that they wish they could do that. In the spirit of the seaweed always being greener in somebody else's lake, I envy the people who can write a book and be done. The closest I get to writing a book and being done is plotting to give certain characters only one POV volume in the InCryptid series. My brain is wired oddly.)

One of my "waiting in the wings" protagonists is a woman named Alice Price-Healy (Verity's grandmother), whose tastes run to camouflage pants, fabrics that can be easily treated for bloodstains, and lots and lots of weapons. She's a hopeless romantic, having spent the last thirty or so years spelunking through the various dimensions surrounding her own as she tries to find her missing husband. Who is probably getting punched in the face if and when she finally finds him, since she's been scared to death for decades now. Anyway, my darling fireriven pointed me to something on Etsy, and in browsing the seller's other items, I found a red glass heart pendant with an old-fashioned six-shooter charm dangling from it. I stared. My inner Alice announced her covetousness.

I bought the necklace. It arrived in yesterday's mail, and it is awesome. Best of all, when someone asked me where I found it and what made me buy it (since I don't buy much jewelry that isn't from chimera_fancies), I was able to honestly reply "Oh, the one of the people who lives inside my head told me to." Sowing confusion is fun!

Seriously, though, I think my brain is bruised. I'm going to go home tonight and knock out another 3,000 words or so before watching Leverage, and tomorrow night, I'll go home and knock out 5,000 to 8,000, since I have no bedtime on Fridays. And after I do this a few more times, the book will be over, and I'll need to start occupying my time with something else. Like The Brightest Fell, and starting Blackout, and petting the cats. Oh, and learning how to say "behold, for now I wear the human pants" in ASL.

You know. The important things.

It's the ides of January, and that makes it time for the monthly current projects post, wherein I prove to the curious that I either don't sleep or have access to some mechanism for stopping time (don't I wish). There's a reason I start to giggle and twitch whenever someone asks me "What are you working on?", and this post provides a bit of explanation. It also serves as something I can point to when the question gets asked, which it does. This is the January list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first four Toby books are off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. You can pre-order A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise.

The first Newsflesh book, Feed, is off the list because it has been turned in to The Other Editor. Not only that, but my page proofs have been finished and returned. You'll see this bad boy again when it comes rolling off the presses! Discount Armageddon is off the list because the first draft has been finished, and it'll be a little bit before revisions start.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

I need to design a graphic family tree for the InCryptid books, since family is such a central (and unavoidable) concept. Does anybody have any recommendations for ways to do this, or want to help me by putting a tree together? I won't promise to be your best friend, but I will look endearing and mention you in the acknowledgments...

Current stats:

Words: 11,360.
Total words: 101,678.
Reason for stopping: I sort of, well, ran out of book.
Music: the Discount Armageddon play list.
Lilly and Alice: my lap and the orange cat tree, respectively.

First draft stats:

Pages: 353
Chapters: twenty-five, plus a prologue and an epilogue
Started: August 22, 2008
Finished: November 28, 2009

Given how much time this book spent being "lower priority" than things with actual deadlines, fourteen months is a very respectable time to get from beginning to end. Midnight Blue-Light Special should go a lot faster, if only because I completely understand my world now, and what it's supposed to be like. I know the rhythm, I know the beat, and I can dance to it. I am...I'm staggered right now. I've been saying for a few weeks now that I was probably going to finish the book this month, but there's a huge difference between saying and doing. I've done. Draft one is done.

Draft two is going to involve smoothing out the continuity, fixing the pacing, and generally book-doctoring like whoa...but it'll probably be done by the end of January at the very latest, and that's with taking a backseat to Blackout, which gets to take over as my primary book now. Discount Armageddon is done.

I'm amazed and a little off-balance. I am now going to go eat ice cream and watch TV.

Current stats:

Words: 5,017.
Total words: 90,318.
Reason for stopping: in the middle of the big boom in chapter twenty-three. BOOM.
Music: this week's episodes of NCIS and Dexter.
Lilly and Alice: taking up a physically improbable amount of space on my feet.

I...um...yeah. So I have this thing where every day, I put any specific writing goals for the day on my to do list. Because the to do list is my lord and master. Right now, every day, I'm putting "2,000 words, DA" on the list, and every day, I'm checking it off before plowing onward for another few thousand words. Why? Because I have hit the point where I literally can't stop. I eat, sleep, breathe, and dream this book. I inhabit this book even when I'm not working on it. I'm spending half my time (or more) in a fictional reality full of madness and monsters and manic dance numbers breaking out in the middle of nowhere. This is normal for me as I approach the end of a first draft. It really is. But it's been a while since I did this part, and it's making my fingers hurt.

90,000 words means that I'm 15,000 words, give or take, from the end of draft one. I realize I've been hitting that data point a lot, but um, holy crap, end of draft one. This is the book I started on a whim. The book I never lost enthusiasm for, but shelved repeatedly while I worked on things that had actual deadlines. The book that, let's be serious here, kicks off a new series. I needed three of those, right? They're like cats. You're not a crazy cat lady until you have more than four (even if Margaret says that by 2014, mathematics prove that 80% of all books will be written by me).

Also, at my current rate of speed, you won't be getting these updates for all that much longer. So there's that.

Soon, I hope to explain to the people who've only read Toby why, exactly, I felt the need to spend my time in a universe filled with cryptozoologists in skimpy outfits, asbestos blondes, ketchup milkshakes, ballroom dancing, high heeled shoes, and, of course, talking mice. And my answer to them will be, in no uncertain terms...CHEESE AND CAKE!

Current stats:

Words: 7,137.
Total words: 85,301.
Reason for stopping: about midway through chapter twenty-two, totally exhausted.
Music: my evolving Discount Armageddon mix.
Lilly and Alice: asleep in my tank top drawer, being a puddle of blue and white fur.

The speed with which this draft is suddenly materializing is a little scary, and is making me feel faintly hag-ridden. Seriously, there's "my normal writing speed," and then there's "writing to make a deadline," and then there's "holy Great Pumpkin in the sacred patch, where the hell did the day go?" Assuming this book comes out at exactly the estimate, I have fewer than 20,000 words left to go. Second draft will cut ten percent of that. (Actually second draft will cut twenty percent, but half of what I cut will be replaced by clarification, necessary bridgework, and general textual repairs. That's what second draft is for.)

After this draft is done, I have to focus fully on Blackout and The Brightest Fell while my proofreading pool crawls all over the text and rips it into tiny bleeding shreds. (For Christmas this year, I'm getting a bloodbath! Just what I always wanted.) I figure I should have space on the docket to get into Midnight Blue-light Special sometime around May...you know, when I have the Guest of Honor slot and the book coming out. Gosh, it's fun to live inside my head sometimes, in the sense that apparently even I don't think I need to sleep. Sleep is for the weak and sickly, right?

I am so in love with this book right now. I am so in love with this series right now. I am so in love with this world right now, with its reality shows and its cryptid-owned strip clubs and its many, many expeditions into the sewers of Manhattan. I can see where a second draft is going to be absolutely necessary, but right now? Right now, I am just enjoying the hell out of the ride.

I can't wait for you to meet these people.

Current stats:

Words: 5,227.
Total words: 78,264.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter twenty, taking a break before chapter twenty-one.
Music: my Sarah Zellaby mix.
Lilly and Alice: sitting in the bedroom window, raptly watching the kitty cable.

Day by day and word by word, I get closer to the end of the first draft of Discount Armageddon. I'm really excited, and I've hit that point where anything but writing is difficult to maintain for more than fifteen or twenty minutes. I have to take breaks from time to time, but they're just that; breaks between bouts of frantic typing, rather than the things I have to break myself away from. This is awesome. This is especially awesome because I know the way my brain works, and if it's currently this fixated on InCryptid, it's because I'm getting ready for a massive run on another project. Judging by the things that have started creeping around the edges of my mind, I'm going to guess that the "other woman" in this equation is Blackout, the sequel to Feed, which was already on my holiday docket.

This book has been fun and surprising and silly and snappy and a few dozen things I really wasn't expecting when I kicked it off. Better still, it's been the doorway to a brand new series. I need those from time to time. Part of what I love as a writer is the act of creating a world, stepping inside it, and shutting the doors behind me. (This doesn't explain my seeming inability to write completely stand-alone books, but as long as the series keep making sense, I'm not going to whine about it overly much.) I love the things it's forced me to learn in order to write it, and the things I got to just sort of...stumble over. Like some of the freaky things Mother Nature has done in the real world.

25,000 words to go, give or take, and then it's time to make my exit and make my way into other drafts and other disasters. I can barely believe I'm this far along. I can barely believe it's taken me this long.

CHEESE AND CAKE!

Current stats:

Words: 5,183.
Total words: 73,047.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter nineteen (and started chapter twenty).
Music: my Rose Marshall mix.
Lilly and Alice: flopped on the floor, being deeply endearing.

It's weird and a little scary to think about, but I'm about 30,000 words from the end of the first draft of Discount Armageddon. After I finish the first draft, I'll take about six weeks to let my proofreaders argue about commas, another six weeks to finish a second draft, and then...the book is done. The silly, head-smashing, ass-kicking, ballroom dancing, talking mouse extravaganza that kicks off the adventures of the Price family is almost done. I'm speechless. I'm stunned. And I'm deeply delighted, because finishing this book means setting it free for all of you to read.

The thing about living inside my head is that it's very weird in here, and very cluttered. I sometimes liken my writing habits to my television viewing habits; I sometimes change channels and watch something else for a little while, because some days are Masters of Horror days, and others are So You Think You Can Dance days. Both are totally valid, and totally necessary. Working with Verity and the rest of her wacky, wonderful family recharges me when I'm exhausted from other projects, and vice-versa. They all feed into each other.

Soon all the world will understand the glory of the Aeslin mice, the importance of religious ritual, how difficult it is to dance a good tango, and why gorgons hate wigs. But in the meanwhile, I shall continue to be a little stunned at how far I've come from deciding that Verity Alice Price, daughter of Kevin Price and Evelyn Price-Baker, needed a book of her very own.

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.

Current stats:

Words: 7,773.
Total words: 67,864.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter eighteen.
Music: the new mix Merav made for me.
Lilly and Alice: back in California. I miss my kitties.

Discount Armageddon—the first of the InCryptid books, chronicling the adventures of the Price family as they try to study the cryptids of the world without getting eaten by them—is now two hundred and thirty-seven pages long, featuring action, adventure, snarking, and talking pantheistic demon mice with a fondness for religious ritual. It's ballroom dancing as a combat style, it's asbestos blondes and gorgon barmaids, and it's more fun to write than should really be legal. It's also sad, because at this point, I have somewhere between 30,000 and 36,000 words to go, and that doesn't seem like enough.

On the plus side, once I finish this, I get to start digging my teeth into the sequels. And believe me, Midnight Blue-light Special is going to be a hoot and a half, once I get there. And after that...hoo-boy. I really think I like this roller coaster.

What's really interesting is that this is the first series I've started knowing from the starting gate that it was a series, and more, that it was more than just a few books long. Feed was a stand-alone; Rosemary and Rue was an adventure that I didn't quite understand. This time, I know what I'm getting into.

Oddly, I couldn't be happier.

Current stats:

Words: 3,620.
Total words: 60,091.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter sixteen, bedtime.
Music: my soppy love songs and angry punk scramble.
Lilly and Alice: asleep on the bed and begging for attention, respectively.

When last we left our intrepid manuscript, it was four pages shy of two hundred pages (one of my big personal milestones for any book). Well, now it's two hundred and eleven pages in length, complete with the whole of chapter sixteen, which was, um, exciting to work on in so many ways. I love anything that involves Holy Feasts and fried chicken, and this book gives me the opportunity to mix-and-match the two with wild aplomb. Besides which, we are now officially at the high point of that big hill, and it's all bang-bang-boom from here, baby. Bang-bang-boom.

Sadly, while I understand that I'm currently busting pages on this book primarily because my hindbrain is occupied, stegosaurus-like, with the contemplation of the big science questions for Blackout (and this book will hence shortly be tabled again, in favor of things which have current deadlines), I could not be more pleased with how things are going. Oh, there are bits to fix and errors to catch, but on the whole, it's clean, it's quick, and it's just fun, in a way that so very few things are.

CHEESE AND CAKE!

As it is now the fifteenth of October, it is once again time for me to make my monthly current projects post. Some people measure out their lives with coffee spoons; I seem to have taken a slightly more masochistic approach. This post and its kin, by the by, are the reason that I burst into tears and flail around like a squid on an electrified floor every time someone asks me "What are you working on?" The answer just takes too long to actually deliver. Anyway, this is the October list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first four Toby books are off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. You can pre-order A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise.

The first Newsflesh book, Feed (formerly Newsflesh), is off the list because it has been turned in to The Other Editor, and I won't see it again until the page proofs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Current stats:

Words: 5,811.
Total words: 56,471.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter fifteen, bedtime.
Music: show tunes and the cats being crazy.
Lilly and Alice: finally exhausted, now that they can't bother me anymore.

I literally stopped just shy of two hundred pages—just shy! I could taste that milestone, dammit—because the chapter was over, and I couldn't bring myself to mess around with my word count just for the sake of a little extra length. Besides, with the book now more than halfway to 60,000 words, we're going to be ringing that particular bell any day now...and yes, I am now past the halfway mark, which is supported by the plot arc, the behavior of the characters, and the place where the chapter breaks. I am giddy.

The best thing about this universe is that it's completely silly in some ways, yet takes itself completely seriously, much like the horror movies of the early 1980s. This is life or death, people, even when the "or death" part of the equation is being represented by hopping, screaming yams (the yams hunger for the taste of human blood). And whenever things get slow, Verity just kicks somebody else in the head, thus speeding them right back up again. I have a fight scene coming up that's going to make me giggle for days. Days.

Life is good.

Current stats:

Words: 3,674.
Total words: 50,660.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter fourteen.
Music: a lot of angry goth-punk. I'm in a mood.
Lilly and Alice: sprawling atop high things, dozing.

Progress continues! Discount Armageddon has now shattered the 50,000 word mark, which is always a milestone for me, since by that point, I'm so fully committed that it isn't even funny. Also, under my current estimate of length, I'm within 3,000 words—or one more day of really solid writing—from being to the halfway point. That makes me incredibly happy. Since I have three books going right now (by which I mean "three books I'm really actively writing, as opposed to just plinking at"), anything that makes it seem like one of my babies is preparing for bed is just delightful.

Things that this book contains: ballroom dance. Cryptozoology. Snark. Free running. A strip club with a funny name. Mixed drinks. High heels. Snares. Throwing knives. Talking mice. Illegal sub-lets. Coffee shops. Math. Things this book does not contain: vampires. All told, I'm pretty happy with my "have" to "have not" ratio, especially since Verity keeps kicking people in the head.

Life is good.

Current stats:

Words: 4,385.
Total words: 46,986.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter thirteen.
Music: the Counting Crows, mostly. Because that's a shock.
Lilly and Alice: home from the vet and totally healthy. Yay, annual exams.

Apparently, officially becoming a novel was what it took to make me really start busting pages on Discount Armageddon, which has just gained another chapter and nearly 5,000 more words. Said chapter includes snark, combat, snark, sewers, snark, Land of the Lost jokes, snark, ballroom dancing applied to a field situation, and snark. Also, Sarah Zellaby—arguably one of my favorite characters in this series—has finally made her full-scale appearance, and she's just as awesome to write as I've been anticipating.

I'm starting to see the shape of the rest of the book more clearly as I near the halfway point. I now anticipate the full manuscript as coming in somewhere around 102,000 words, for the first pass, and reducing to approximately 99,000 words after I go through and do the obligate clean-and-jerk of all those little unnecessary bits that always creep in during the writing process. What's more fun is that I'm starting to see the shape of the series more clearly at the same time, and this is never not going to be fun to write.

Especially if Verity keeps kicking people in the head.

Current stats:

Words: 3,972.
Total words: 42,601.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter twelve.
Music: a lot of university competition acapella and stuff from Glee.
Lilly and Alice: sleeping peacefully, because they are cats, and hence evil.

YES! YES! WE ARE NOW OFFICIALLY A NOVEL! SUCK IT, SHORT FORM!!!!!

Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyway, with this installment, Discount Armageddon officially crosses the 40,000 word mark, moving solidly into "novel" territory. My little baby book is all grown up! It's been a slower process than is normal for me, largely because it's managed to collide with so many rewrites and deadlines for other projects, but it's finally there; it's finally an actual novel. Because it's awesome.

I'm now through chapter twelve. The plot is on the table, the major players are all solidly in place, and I've had the opportunity to get geeky about several really horrific cryptid races, along with the little scraps of trivia that always make me so happy. (Nothing is more fun than going "but we don't need that, we're not on the jackalope migration routes here" in the middle of an otherwise unrelated statement.) The manuscript has passed the hundred and fifty page mark, and the end is finally in sight. Very, very far ahead, but still, in sight.

Bill Mudron—proprietor of Excelsior Studios—is currently open for commissions! Bill is an awesome guy to work with, fast, responsive, and has really reasonable prices. I'm pimping him out because I can't throw any more commission work his way right now (not unless Santa decides to surprise me with a lottery ticket), and he's just plain awesome to work with.

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. Want to see exactly how bad-ass he is? Check out his latest:



That is, in fact, Alice from the InCryptid series, looking like she's basically getting ready to start shooting and not stop until everything she's shooting at has stopped moving. If you're looking for art, Bill is totally your guy, and I can't recommend him highly enough.

Current stats:

Words: 4,051.
Total words: 38,629.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter eleven.
Music: mostly the Counting Crows and random selections from Verity's playlist.
Lilly and Alice: really interested in the bedroom window.

Well, we're still a novella by SWFA rules, since we're still shy of that magical 40,000 word mark...but we're getting closer every step of the way, and best of all, I don't feel like any of it is padding. Yes, I'll probably lose the standard 10% in the final revisions, but right now, everything that's in the text is there because it needs to be there. It's got a good beat, and you can dance to it.

Welcome to chapter eleven, where Verity and Dominic meet more of the family, Sarah is creepy, and I get to go more in-depth on the cuckoos, aka "my favorite horribly creepy and upsetting cryptid race (now with bonus central characters)." I love it when my creepy is actually integral, rather than being sort of like parasitic mistletoe: interesting to look at, gradually killing the tree. But dude, it's up to a hundred and thirty-seven pages of gooey cryptid goodness, and I am a happy, happy girl.

Current stats:

Words: 4,506.
Total words: 31,016.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter nine.
Music: the DVR's kind presentation of the first part of the So You Think You Can Dance
Lilly and Alice: sprawled on the floor.

So it turns out that what I thought was the end of chapter nine wasn't actually the end of chapter nine. What I just wrote, that was the end of chapter nine. All that other stuff is in chapter nine, too; it's just a longer chapter than originally believed.

In other news, Verity is presently stark-ass naked.

I love this book.

Current stats:

Words: 6,075.
Total words: 30,086.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter eight.
Music: my ass-kicking Verity dance music play list.
Lilly: dead to the world.

Behold! For now I wear the human pants! Cryptid pants. Whatever. Now with extra ballroom dance, thanks to subject-matter expert Betsy Tinney.

I love my creepy cryptozoologists so hard.

It's the fifteenth of February, which means it's both the Feast of St. Markdown's, and time for the February edition of my monthly current projects listing. I've decided to actually start labeling these with the month and year, just in case somebody wants to find a specific post later on. Anyway, this is the post where I make it cheerfully apparent that I do not actually ever sleep.

Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW; the next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues is also off the list; it's under review with my agent, and is thus not being actively worked on. Newsflesh is off the list because it's being shopped, and that means I essentially can't have any contact with it until the process is done. I miss you, baby!

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have dinosaurs and zombies to keep me company.

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

It turns out that marker coloring while watching television is just as mindlessly soothing as inking and penciling. Who knew? (Well, actually, I did, from the last time I decided to play around with my vast collection of markers. Which I expanded by twelve over the past few days, thanks to Prismacolor releasing several new colors over the past year. Damn you, Prismacolor. Damn you.) Anyway, here's the second set of six art cards. Again, clicking the graphic will take you to the larger version.



From top to bottom, left to right, you have my first Upon A Star art card, with Corey in Babylon Archer mode, my first Discount Armageddon/InCryptid series art card (hi, Verity!), my second Toby art card, a random drawing of me with velociraptors, my second InCryptid art card, and my second Velveteen art card. This one's for the ladies -- ACTION DUDE and THE CLAW!

I have several more cards finished, but scanning only in sets of six makes sense and saves time, so I'm going to stick with that for now. The hardest part of this batch was Corey's hair, since my henna Prismacolor decided to start dying in the middle, and I had to color most of her with the broad end. I think some of these may wind up getting sold off to pay my art supply bills. Yeesh.

In other news, it's been a busy day.

10. I appear to have started doing art cards. (Because, as Brooke said, I need something to do with all that spare time that I had just lying around.) For those of you who are unfamiliar with the art card 'concept,' they're little pieces of original artwork, done on 2.5"x3.5" cards. Mine are Micron and Prismacolor on bristol paper. I've done three so far, one to go with Grants Pass, one to go with Ravens in the Library, and one of Velveteen and Sparkle Bright during their first year with the JSP. I figure I'll use them as book giveaways. Right now, they're just being colorful and soothing; two things that I need more of in my life.

9. My reboot on Late Eclipses of the Sun appears to have done exactly what I was hoping it would do; the new first chapter is about ten times stronger, faster, better, and generally bionic in all possible regards. Now I'm working on the revisions to chapter two, just to really lock down the changes to the continuity, and once that's done, I can start processing my editor's notes on An Artificial Night. I'm spending so much time with Toby these days that we should really start charging her rent, I swear.

8. I write more poetry than is strictly healthy, sometimes in batches of two to five hundred poems at a time. (These batches are called 'Iron Poet' rounds, and are a variation on a standard writer's workshop exercise. They make me happy. I may be crazy.) I managed to write five poems yesterday, including a counted devan (although I skipped the internal rhymes on the zipper, because I didn't feel like giving myself a migraine) and a counted technical terza rima. Take that, everyone who said there was no use for structured poetry in the modern world!

7. My story in Ravens In the Library is getting an accompanying illustration. This is...this is amazing. Not just because the illustration itself is amazing -- I saw the sketch, and it is -- but because I didn't expect an illustration at all. It made me cry. More and more, I begin to believe that 2009 is the universe giving me one big incredible birthday present.

6. It's not entirely visible to the naked eye, but my website continues to creep closer and closer to being entirely done. We should be getting the first few essays up there soon, and Chris is working on the functionality that will allow me to update and edit the front page all on my lonesome. Meanwhile, Tara works secretly behind the scenes on Wonderful Surprises that only a golden graphics girl could possibly provide. Prepare to be amazed.

5. I get to spend the weekend working on Discount Armageddon! (Quoth Dan: "I don't know anybody who gets as excited about being told what to work on as you do.") I love deadlines, I love directions, and I love Verity. She's so happy to see you. And so happy to kick you in the head. Pleasantly, I just put together my Verity playlist last night, consisting almost entirely of dance music and things with a BPM of over 120. Because Verity just looooooves the beat, yo.

4. It's new comic book day! Always the most wonderful day of the week. At least in theory -- other days are sometimes surprisingly awesome.

3. All my television is coming back on the air. I'm a huge TV freak. It's what lets me decompress after a hard day of working and writing and worrying about working and writing; it's also what I do with the other half of my concentration when I'm inking. (Most of the shows I watch are more verbal than visual, and have clear cues when I actually need to be paying attention to the screen.) I really appreciate the fact that the things I watch are staggered enough to make sure I almost always have something new.

2. This time next week, I will be heading for the airport, heading for the sky, and heading for Seattle, baby.

...and the number one good thing about today...

1. Oasis just called me, and THE CDS ARE DONE!!!!! They're mailing them out from the Oasis warehouse today, and they should supposedly hit my doorstep on Friday. This gives me time to actually arrange for CDs to reach Seattle, prep the first batch of pre-orders to mail out (probably the first twenty or so, more if I can possibly swing it), and generally get my hysteria out of the way. It also gives me time to use the CD boxes to build myself a little fort and crawl inside it to hide from the universe.

What's new and awesome in the world of you?

* I'm writing my world description outline for the InCryptid books, which is a lot of fun, since it lets me make statements like 'insect-derived exothermic placental mammals with a decentralized circulatory system' in a completely serious, sincere way. (I love my insect-derived exothermic placental mammals. They're so wonderfully creepy. Also, I would not want them in my house, and neither do you.)

* The Brightest Fell -- also known as 'Toby Daye, book five,' also known us 'uh, Seanan, isn't book one due out next year?' -- is now well underway; I finished chapter seventeen last night, with a great deal of giggling and clapping of my hands. This is also why I haven't been posting many word counts recently, since every time I think 'well, I'll just hop projects now,' The Brightest Fell slaps me upside the head and drags me back in. I think this is because the book really, really wants to be finished. And who am I to argue? I like it when books want to be finished. It makes me feel productive.

* I am seriously considering writing a book about zombie virology. Just because it would give me an excuse to go and hang out at the CDC asking weird questions without getting looked at funny. Also, if you haven't read Zombie CSI by Jonathan Maberry, you totally should. The slowly developing zombie non-fiction genre for the win, yo. (It's true facts about fictional things. This makes it, bizarrely enough, non-fiction. I love the world sometimes.)

* Lilly's best silly parlor trick is once again seasonal: yes, my cat will sing 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' as a duet if you simply start the song and pause at the right places. Behold the beauty of the Siamese. Unfortunately, this means she gets pissed off if you try to sing the duet with another person. The point in Elf where Will Farrel and Zooey Deschanel sing it together drives her into a furious rage. Which is actually really adorable, as long as she's not in your lap when it starts.

* Yes, I am intending to clip her claws before we go to see Santa, in the hopes that this will prevent her from clawing Santa's balls off. Be good to Santa. Let him keep his balls.

* I have decided to use Zip-a-tone on the Conflikt program book cover, to give it that little extra 'zing.' I haven't actually used Zip-a-tone in years, since digital coloring has largely eliminated the need for it, but really, who doesn't love an art supply that requires use of an exacto knife? I'm gonna have me a slice-and-shade party, and it's going to be awesome. The awesome doubles if I don't have to go to the emergency room afterwards. I'm hoping for double awesome.

* The second Hack/Slash omnibus comes out this month, along with a reprint of the first omnibus edition. Hack/Slash is the ongoing story of Cassie Hack, a horror movie final girl who fought back and then kept on fighting. Imagine Buffy if she'd been created by James Gunn and Vincent Price instead of Joss Whedon. And if they'd been doing acid at the same time. This is pretty much my favorite currently on-going comic book, and I highly recommend it. A Christmas gift for the ages!

* Evil Dead: the Musical opens in Martinez, California on January 6th, 2009. Tickets are $25 for cabaret seating, $30 for splatter zone seating. The splatter zone is awesome, but make sure you finish eating (it's a dinner theater) before the song 'Look Who's Evil Now,' as the fake blood tastes terrible. It also smells weird, which could totally kill your appetite.

* The growth of my website continues. It's like an evil alien weed, come to destroy all within its path. The latest addition: you can now access the 'review' page from the discography. Yes, there's a lot of text there right now. I'm going to trim it down to about half that, and increase the font size. We're just getting what exists in place before we start messing with content.

And that's my today. What's yours?

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 )

Current stats:

Words: 543.
Total words: 24,011.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter seven.
Music: lots of things on random shuffle.
Lilly: dead to the world.

Five hundred words feels a bit, well, anti-climactic, but since it brings me to the end of chapter seven, I figure I won't complain too hard. This book is currently spec-ed out as coming in somewhere in the 80,000 to 100,000 word range, so I'm very close to being a quarter of the way there no matter what yardstick I'm using. Yippee!

Writing a book is a lot like riding a roller coaster. Sometimes it goes so fast that you're barely aware of what's happening until you're going 'wait, did we just...?', and other times, you're trundling slowly up the track, totally in the moment, just waiting for the plummeting to start. Right now, I'm about two-thirds of the way up the first of the book's really high hills, and I think there's probably a corkscrew waiting at the bottom.

I can hardly wait.

Current stats:

Words: 3,200.
Total words: 23,468.
Reason for stopping: it's time for bed.
Music: the new We're About 9 album.
Lilly: in my lap, like a big fuzzy sausage that purrs.

I feel like I've been horribly neglecting this book as Late Eclipses of the Sun and the setup for The Brightest Fell devour my brain. At the same time, slipping back into Verity's world is like putting on a pair of well-loved fuzzy slippers. Fuzzy slippers that may decide to digest my feet and lay eggs in my chest cavity, but still, fuzzy slippers.

Oh, and since the last time I posted a word count, I didn't know the name of the third Verity book yet, here you go: Professional Goreography. (Yes, the second word of that title is pronounced to sound like 'choreography.') It's possibly my worst book title pun yet, and that's saying a lot coming from the author of Newsflesh.

I am now at the point where my plot is driving the situation, rather than my need to introduce characters and setting driving the situation. I love that particular click-over moment in my books. (There are books where situation is in the driver's seat from page one -- Upon A Star anyone? -- but I usually go for the slower build. It's more satisfying.)

I am a happy kitty.

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.

Current stats:

Words: 3,598.
Total words: 20,268.
Reason for stopping: the end of chapter six is ours.
Music: lots of Broadway musicals.
Lilly: sacked out on the bed with her head on my planner.

Woo! Forward momentum! Late Eclipses of the Sun is eating the bulk of my attention right now -- to the point where look, it's even getting mentioned in the word count post for a book from a completely different series -- but I'm really glad I blocked off today for working on Discount Armageddon, because wow, does Verity improve my outlook on life. She's refreshingly blunt, and just so much fun to play with.

My cast is still fresh and new to me, so it's awesome watching the way that they react to various situations. Yes, I'm setting up a series, but the world is entirely shiny and new, and allows me to do whatever I darn well want with it. Yippee!

Because I've been asked: yes, this is an ongoing series, but it's structured to allow for natural stopping points every two or three books. The first two books focus on Verity, and are Discount Armageddon and the followup, Midnight Blue-Light Special. The third Verity book will be number five in the series, and doesn't have a name yet.

Whee!

And now, the October installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain why I have no social life to speak of right now! (Says the woman who's about to go to Alabama for a weej.) Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW; the next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Newsflesh and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues are also currently off the list; they're under review with my agent, and are thus not being actively worked on.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. Because, I have dinosaurs and zombies to keep me company.

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