I have to do this occasionally, or the file I use to store my links may actually CATCH FIRE and EXPLODE. True fact. It's been known to happen. Anyway...

Kenda over at Lurv ala Mode has posted a review of Late Eclipses, and says, "This series is an exceptional example of unique urban fantasy, with characters that grow more and more in depth with each installment. The plots for each book are twisted and complicated, enough so that interest is piqued and toe tip pressure never lessens since we’re constantly on them. The series isn’t complacent, as it ups the excitement and action and development overall with each book. And that, fellow readers, is how I like it." Yeah, that's a long pull quote, but it's an awesome review, and it waited a long time to be posted. So I'm sharing my enthusiasm.

Kristen at Fantasy Book Cafe has posted a review of Late Eclipses (and how is it that my early reviews are being linked so late this time? Uncool, blonde girl...), and says, "Late Eclipses had everything I’ve come to love about the October Daye series and then some since it exceeded my expectations. It’s a lot of fun with some very satisfying revelations and is the strongest installment in the series yet." Yay!

But what about the seeeeexy? Well, Rebecca at Dirty Sexy Books has posted a review of Late Eclipses, and says, "Is it too early to look forward to the next book in the October Daye series?" No. No, it is not.

calico_reaction provides our obligatory Livejournal review, and says, "This installment is my favorite to date, horribly difficult to put down. There's so many revelations in this book that really cast Toby and her purpose in a new light, and the cast is just delightful. I can't say more without gushing, so I'll shut up, and say that if you're an urban fantasy fan and you haven't at least read up to book three, An Artificial Night, you're missing out. And if you're already a fan, you definitely don't want to miss this one." Hooray! No, like, seriously, hooray.

Finally for this batch, SFRevu Review has posted a review of Late Eclipses, and says, "A great installment in a series that is becoming a must-read, Late Eclipses will satisfy even the most demanding urban fantasy reader."

On that short, sweet note, I conclude this review roundup and return to my word count for the evening. Catch you soon!

It's that time again: that time when the air is sweet, the daffodils are blooming, and a young girl's fancy turns to thoughts of BLOODY INTERNET SMACKDOWNS. Specifically, it's time once again for the BSC Review Book Tournament, wherein books published during the last year BEAT THE HOLY CRAP OUT OF EACH OTHER for your amusement. See how much we love you?

Currently, An Artificial Night is up in the first round of the Westeros Bracket, and Toby needs your help! She's up against Wizard Squared by K. E. Mills (which I have not read, but which I am sure is a fabulous book in its own right), and if you don't step in, she could get schooled.

So come on! Let's indulge in some good, old-fashioned schoolyard brawling. Because it's fun.

I am so easily pleased sometimes.

People of Earth, consider this your final warning: The Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show will be descending on Borderlands Books tomorrow, from six to nine in the evening. There will be cupcakes from Cups and Cakes Bakery, including the famous (or infamous) Mad Tea Party cupcakes originally conceived for the Emilie Autumn concert. (Chai cake, ginger buttercream, and strawberry jam.) We will endeavor not to eat them all before you get there, but it's gonna be hard.

There will be no actual snakes.

This iteration of the Circus includes Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, who have never joined us for this particular madness, and are going to go a long way toward rocking the proverbial house. We'll have a raffle, a Q&A period, book signings, and all the random cheering you can stomach. There may even be some random dancing. Do you hear me? RANDOM DANCING!!!!

Come help us celebrate the release of Late Eclipses, and my first appearance on the New York Times bestseller list. If you can't attend, remember that you can order signed and inscribed copies of any of my books from Borderlands, and they'll be happy to hook you up.

Hope to see you there!

It's time to do another review roundup, as not only are my links getting out of control, I've started losing things in the mucky morass of twisty words, and that's not fun for anybody. Least of all, let's be honest here, me.

Travels Through Iest has posted a Late Eclipses review, and says, "Late Eclipses is another welcome addition to Toby's exploits." Also (and I like this part), "Seanan is proving to be somewhat of a literary chameleon with this series, so far she's written them in a noirish Chandleresque style, something reminiscent of Agatha Christie and now Late Eclipses which has elements of a Grisham type legal thriller." I'm a lizard that writes books! I win!

Library Journal has posted a review of Late Eclipses, and says, "Vibrant writing and a likable narrator make this one of the stronger entries in the urban fantasy genre. It should appeal to fans of Jim Butcher's 'Dresden Files.'" Cool. Now can you help me get Jim's sales numbers...? 'Cause that would be keen.

Obligatory LJ review! janicu has posted a review of Late Eclipses, and says, "If you are an urban fantasy fan, you should read this, but don't stop at the first book, because the overarching storyline builds up as the books go along. It is rewarding to keep reading the series—if I think over what was revealed in this book, I become positively gleeful." Also, "To me, this series just gets better and better, and this is the best installment yet." Yay!

Scooper Speaks has posted a review of Late Eclipses, and says, "Seanan McGuire's October Daye series is the bom-diggity-dog." Yeah...the review's good too, but I'm gonna stop there, because that is awesome.

Finally for today, Julia at All Things Urban Fantasy has posted a review of Late Eclipses, and says, "Overall, Seanan McGuire has done a stellar job of developing her characters while interweaving action and suspense. As much as I enjoyed the romantic tension in Late Eclipses, it was the details about Toby's family, both blood relation and adopted, that truly touched me. The story as a whole has me on the edge of my seat for One Salt Sea in September, I am eager to find out how all this will play out." So am I!

So that's all for today; I'm going to post a few more review roundups soon, just in an attempt to take back my notes file. Between this and the convention ribbon order, let's just say that it's a mess in there...

Reviews!

April: Short story, "Riddles," in the anthology Human Tales from Dark Quest Books. This is a fairly small press, so you may need to buy the book online or ask your local bookstore to special-order a copy if you want one.

Short story, "Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box," through the Orbit electronic fiction program. This story is being released on April 18th, as a Kindle download. It's a Mira Grant story, but is not set in the Newsflesh universe.

May: Novel, Deadline, from Orbit/Orbit UK, under the name Mira Grant. This is the second book in the Newsflesh trilogy. I do not have ARCs. Please do not ask me for ARCs. Deadline is e-ARC only, and I do not have download codes or physical copies. All asking does is add stress to an already stressful time, and then I have to go hide under the bed for a little while.

September: Novel, One Salt Sea, from DAW. This is the fifth of the October Daye books, and was preceded by Late Eclipses. It will be followed by Ashes of Honor, probably in September 2012.

March 2012: Novel, Discount Armageddon, from DAW. This is the first of the InCryptid books, and will be followed by Midnight Blue-Light Special, probably in March 2013. Yes, InCryptid is taking the March slot in my year. Yes, I consider this a good thing. Doing two Toby books a year is fun, but I need to diversify sometimes.

That's the schedule!

To celebrate the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], here. Have an open thread to discuss the book.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned.

You can also start a book discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence.

Have fun!

Monday is almost over. Tomorrow is Tuesday, March 1st, which makes it the official release date for Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], the fourth of the adventures of October "Toby" Daye. This is the first book that wasn't part of my original contract. I'm excited and I'm terrified and I'm really grateful that you haven't all thrown things at me for doing this countdown. And now, for our last entry, I give you one big thing I learned from Late Eclipses.

You can always get better.

Every time you think you've already reached the bottom of the well, that you've found all your frog princes and golden balls, you can dive a little deeper, scrape away a little more of the muck, and find your way to another clear, cool spring. Every time you think "that's it, my best work is behind me," you can stretch a little further, and you can find something you didn't know that you were capable of.

Faith and trust and pixie dust will get you a long way. Work and dreams and testing seams will get you even further.

Thank you all so much for being here.

Since Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] comes out, you know, tomorrow, I figured it was probably time for a review roundup. Let's see what people are saying, shall we?

Diana at Fresh Fiction reviewed Late Eclipses, and says, "The October Daye series is gritty and glittering urban fantasy at its best and Late Eclipses is no exception." Short, sweet, and to the point. I like it!

Leslee at Night Owl Reviews made Late Eclipses a Top Pick! She says, "Every time I finish a book in this series, I think 'Oh, that was the best one! It can't get any better than that!' and then I get the next book. Ms. McGuire continues to improve on perfection with each volume." I think I may frame that quote and put it above my bed.

Tori the Book Faery reviewed Late Eclipses, and says, "Unlike past books, Late Eclipses has the perfect balance of action and investigating, and thus, was a book I was unable to put down." Rock and roll!

GlamKitty at The Literate Kitty (owner of a lovely bluepoint Himalayan) posted her review of Late Eclipses, and says, "Late Eclipses is chock-full of everything I can’t get enough of in this series." Also, "Bottom line? I am beyond thrilled with this latest entry in what is, hands down, my absolute favorite urban fantasy series." Glee!

Finally (for now), Rachel at Geek Speak Magazine has posted her review of Late Eclipses, and says, "Madness abounds, especially among those enemies, and Toby is caught up in a morass of political machination and unjustified vendetta that makes for a fast-paced, breathless, and ultimately very satisfying read."

That works for me.

Here's to tomorrow, to good reviews, to successful releases, and to me getting more caffeine before I'm forced to rampage. Happy Monday!

Because this has become a very popular question in the past few weeks, here's the status of the Toby Daye audio books:

Brilliance Audio, which has been wonderful to me, and a joy to work with, only initially bought the rights to record the first three volumes. Audio book production is not cheap, and that makes producers move with caution. Right now, there is no contract to continue the series. I'm very sorry about that, but it's the only answer that I have.

Now, this does not mean you should flood Brilliance with demands that they continue; they need to know that there's a market, but no one likes to be nagged. It does mean that you can increase the chances that the series will continue in audio form by buying additional copies of the existing recordings for friends or family members who might have an interest in audio books.

I've occasionally seen people say, when authors made posts like this, "It's not my job to support your career." This is absolutely true, and I am in no way asking you to support my career (beyond, you know, buying books to feed my cats). But! If you are someone to whom the audio book editions are important, the best way to get more audio books is to buy things from and provide feedback to my audio book publisher. I can say there's a demand until I'm blue in the face; if the sales figures don't support it, I will not be heard.

Again, Brilliance has been nothing but a joy to work with. I would love to do more Toby with them. If the sales figures of the first three volumes support that, I will hopefully be able to do so.

Current stats:

Words: 115,732
Pages: 427
Chapters: thirty-five of thirty-five
Started: February 15th, 2011
Finished: February 26th, 2011

So it turns out that when I'm really focused and not working too much on anything else (largely because I knew that failure to handle my revisions would make me useless as far as finishing anything else goes), I can get from one end of the longest Toby manuscript yet to the other end in eleven days. In case I ever need to go in for land-speed trials or anything crazy like that.

My timeline is fixed; my dialogue is tighter; my blocking is clarified; some questions have been answered; some new questions have been raised. I feel much more confident in Ashes of Honor now that I think I truly understand where the ground is at the end of One Salt Sea. It's a better book than it was eleven days ago. The Machete Squad has it now; I believe it will be a better book still when they're done with it. And then I can focus on the things yet to come, like Newsflesh three, and Toby six, and InCryptid two.

Sleep is for other people. Not me, and not Toby.

But it's a book, and I'm going to bed.

I recently volunteered to make five detailed blog posts on things people wanted to know about the Toby universe, and provided a dedicated thread for them to make their suggestions. While these posts will not be specifically spoiler-y for published books, they will provide background material on the universe, and can be viewed as part of my functional canon. This is the fifth such post, and hence the last, for right now. Thanks for playing!

ellie101 says, "Amandine apparently went off the deep end in a big way, now she's only seen frolicking about the forest in ripped up clothes and such. Is there some kind of sanitarium for the fae that lose a few marbles? Does the Queen keep them locked in a dungeon somewhere? Or do the fae, taking a nod to the Hippie adage of "live and let live" just let the crazies roam?"

Further: "And building off of this burning question, if your crazy fae is a land/title owner is it then passed down, or since they're still around does it just stay theirs forever?"

Let's talk about the fae's rather casual approach to sanity, shall we?

Lots of people have noted that there seems to be a relatively, well, high number of seriously unstable individuals in Toby's world. Some of this is biological (please don't ask; much will be made clear in Late Eclipses), and some of it is just that when you're going to live forever, you get really, really, REALLY bored. Older fae disassociate themselves completely from the world on occasion, simply because the weight of everything they've seen and done and been and are can get to be too much for them to bear. They'll spend a few decades wandering the hills and dales, purging their psychic baggage, and then come back just fine, if somewhat divorced from the emotional context of their own memories. Fae madness is not an exact cognate for human mental illness. It is, ironically, how they stay sane.

Amandine is very young for this kind of crazy, being only around five hundred years old, but she's always been an over-achiever.

Fae sanitariums do exist, but are usually reserved for a) people who have been through some sort of severe trauma, rather than going naturally a little nuts, b) people who have been driven crazy, either through magical or mundane means, and c) people who have been brought in by relatives who don't want to see them get hurt. There's actually a real danger to grouping too many unstable fae in the same place, since there's always a chance they could decide to run away en masse and start a new Kingdom in the middle of the Mall of America. Most of the time, if someone is judged to be relatively harmless, they're just allowed to go wherever they want to go.

No fae landholder would turn away someone in need of help. So the crazier fae wander from knowe to knowe, being fed and cared for until such time as they wander off again. The ones who choose to stick to the woods, like Amandine, are likely to find food being set out for them in pre-established areas. In short, the fae treat their unwell like stray cats. There's not much else that they can do.

It helps that right now, all of Faerie is confined to the Summerlands, where it's reasonably hard to get hurt unless you're putting some serious effort into it. The climate is unpredictable but usually mild; fruit-bearing trees are common; game is easy to find and hunt; the monsters that exist are pretty well-aware that eating fae gets you hunted down and killed, and thus don't do it unless they're really, really sure they can get away with it. (Some of the wandering mad do go missing every year, it's true. So do some children...and some monsters. Crazy or not, purebloods fight back.) When some of the deeper lands are accessible, like Tirn Ailil or the Isles of the Blessed, things get a little more difficult. In fact, traditionally, the wandering mad were often exiled to the Summerlands, where they'd be less likely to get munched.

In the case of fae landholders who go mad, if there is no associated title, they keep their land until someone comes in to try deposing or otherwise disposing of them. Amandine has a tower that is basically the fae equivalent of a really nice house. The odds are good that she'll be able to keep her land until she sanes up enough to need it again. With titled fae, two questions come into play. "Do they have an heir who is ready to take on the position?" And "Do they have subjects who are willing to cover for them?" If the answer to the former is "yes," the odds are good that they stepped down when they felt themselves getting fuzzy. If they didn't, they may either be deposed, or simply have their heir step in as a short-term replacement. If the answer to the latter is "yes," they may well simply be covered for by their courtiers, who are unlikely to want to deal with a new regent.

If the answer to both is "no," well. They're likely to come back from their roving to find that they're no longer in charge, and that they aren't too popular with the new management.

So that's fae madness. Please keep in mind that fae madness is very different from genuine mental illness, and I am in no way commenting on humans with psychological problems by explaining the way things work for the denizens of Faerie. They're wired differently, both physically and mentally, and while you do get fae with genuine long-term psychological problems, they are the minority. Changelings are more likely to have issues with straight human cognates, and even they wind up modified by the differences in biology, psychology, and everything else.

It's Friday. There's barely a weekend between us and Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], which officially hits store shelves in four days. I can barely believe that it's so close. I'm still a little stunned when I look at my shelf at home, and there's book four, staring at me. But the show must go on, and in honor of that fact, here are four exciting things coming in the next year.

4. Well, naturally, Deadline. The second book in the Newsflesh trilogy is coming out at the end of May, and it's exciting and terrifying and Feed was so well-reviewed that I'm considering disabling my Google spiders and hiding under my bed for a week when this one comes out, just to escape the inevitable comparisons. I think it's a good book. I even think it's maybe a better book. But it's not a sequel in the "do the same, only bigger" sense, and that makes me twitchy.

3. "Through This House" is my first novella set in Toby's world. More, it's my first novella appearing in a Charlaine Harris/Toni Kelner anthology, which still has me a little WAIT WHAT NO WHO IS DRIVING? BEAR IS DRIVING!! HOW CAN THIS BE?!? about the whole thing. I love the story, which bridges the span between Late Eclipses and One Salt Sea, but isn't necessary to enjoy either. And I love that I was somehow lucky enough to be allowed to write it.

2. Book Expo America! This is one of the biggest literary trade shows in the world. It's like, the Emerald City of giant book expos. I've never been before. And this year, I get to go. Lemme hear a "woo" from the crowd! Hell, I'll do it myself. WOO!

1. One Salt Sea. It comes out in September; I'm in final editorial revisions now; it's the book where, well, once again, everything changes. It's also the book I sometimes thought I would never finish, because it required admitting to myself that the series would make it five books, and I never quite believed that. But I did, and it did, and soon, you'll get to read it, and I'm so excited.

And that's four exciting things in the year ahead.

Well, here we are. Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] comes out in one week, exactly. If past trends hold true*, people will begin reporting sightings in the wild any day now. This will either cause me to clap my hands, cry, hyperventilate, or all of the above. Safe money is, as always, on "all of the above." And so here are seven things you can do to help with this book release!

7. Talk about the book. Are you excited that it's coming? Awesome. Are you excited about the series as a whole? Awesome. Do you plan to use Late Eclipses to fuel your world-buster canon? Rock on. Word-of-mouth is the best advertising there is.

6. Review the book. Do it on your blog, on Amazon, on Goodreads, wherever you feel comfortable. Reviews help more than almost anything else. (But please, please, do not send me copies of your Amazon reviews. I try to avoid that particular pitcher plant of pain.)

5. Loan copies of Rosemary and Rue to people you think might be interested. The first hit's free!

4. Do not poke at me with sharp, sharp sticks. I am a very thinly-stretched blonde right now, on account of book release and all, and I am neither fast to respond nor particularly well-suited to being jabbed at. Please, be gentle, and understand that right now, you're looking at a longer than normal response time.

3. I love fan mail, and I respond to everything I get, although it can sometimes take a while. Please don't get upset if I don't answer right away.

2. Also? Please don't ask for kitten pictures. Seriously.

1. And the number-one thing you can do to help Late Eclipses have a successful launch is...buy the book. Please, please, buy the book. During the first on-sale week if you possibly can, because that's the week that counts against all the bestseller lists. Making those lists is a long shot, but a girl's gotta dream, right? So if you're planning to buy the book, please, go out and do it. Let's see if we can hit the NYT.

If we do, I promise to faint.

(*Past trends may not hold true. Traditionally, early copies have been spotted at Borders, and I don't know whether Borders will be receiving any shipments of Late Eclipses. I actually dare to hope that my on-sale date may be accurate this time.)

Thanks to everyone who participated in my recent massive drawing for free copies of my books! After feeding everyone's names into an Excel file (to sort them) and then into a random number generator, the winners are...

Rosemary and Rue winner #1: amber_fool
Rosemary and Rue winner #2: bahnree

An Artificial Night winner #1: Dayle Dermatis
An Artificial Night winner #2: myre_angel

Late Eclipses winner #1: gwyd
Late Eclipses winner #2: lilysea

And now, the fine print! Each of you has twenty-four hours to contact me, via my website contact link, with your mailing information. If you're outside North America, we can work out postage payment at that time. If I do not hear from you within twenty-four hours, I will draw another winner for your prize. I kept the file just in case this happens.

Thanks again to everyone who tossed their name into the hat; watch this space for more giveaways and drawings.

We are now nine days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. I've been talking a lot about books and reading and stuff, but I haven't been talking all that much about what makes me write. Since inspiration and ideas are an integral part of the writing process, I figured that today would be a good day to post about nine things that inspire my writing.

9. Music. I have an entire YA series that was inspired, without irony, by listening to the Counting Crows song "Have You Seen Me Lately?" while half-asleep. I hit the line "I was out on the radio, starting to change/Somewhere out in America, it's starting to rain," and suddenly I had this whole complicated story in my head. It was pretty awesome.

8. Biology. I like to read books about parasites and diseases and the weird new discoveries we're making in the cloud forests of Borneo, and all these things lead to new concepts that will inevitably appear in my writing. Almost all the cryptid biology you're going to encounter in InCryptid comes from this particular exercise.

7. Travel. I love finding new places and new environments to set things in. It's a rare trip where I don't come away with at least one new concept gnawing on the back of my brain, going "oh, oh, no, really, come on, let's destroy Melbourne!" Or, you know. Something like that. Travel broadens your list of available things to smash.

6. Listening to my friends talk to each other. If I have a conversation with Kate, barring unexpected disconnects, I know roughly how we'll both react. If I listen while Kate has a conversation with Vixy, anything goes. I find that listening to conflicting viewpoints from people I know well can make me write a lot of interesting things.

5. Movies. No, I'm not saying "I go see a movie about robots and then I write a robot book." I'm saying "I go see a movie about robots, and there's this interesting moment in the middle where someone wants some pudding, and I start thinking about it, and then it's twenty minutes later and something's exploding and I have no idea what's going on."

4. Sociological constructs. I often think "wouldn't it be nice if society did..." for values of "did" that can involve damn near anything. And then I construct worlds to justify society doing whatever it is I've said "wouldn't it be nice" about. Sometimes this requires trilogies.

3. Dreams. Like almost every other author I've ever met, sometimes things come to me in dreams. I am not ashamed of this. My dreams kick ass.

2. Irritation. Haven't we all thought "sure, but I could do it better" about something? With me, the "something" is often a story or a concept or even a real-world event, and the result is often unnerving.

1. Paying attention. I walk a lot. I look around me a lot while I walk. The number of stories this has caused is legion.

We are now ten days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. Since this is the fourth book in the series, people who've been following since the beginning have come to know a great deal about Toby and her world. So here is a list of ten things that have surprised me about these books. (Note: These are ten things about the text of the books themselves, not ten things about the publishing process.)

10. Danny. No, seriously. Danny was not originally in Rosemary and Rue; he was added when I revised the book for publication and needed to shuffle the action around a little bit. So I gave this big Bridge Troll a walk-on role, and figured I was finished. The joke turned out to be on me, as Danny gradually became a bigger part of the cast, and is now utterly integral.

9. In the same vein...Quentin. Quentin has been a part of the series since the beginning, but was originally intended to be much more of a mini-me for Etienne. You know, mannerly, proper, well-trained, and regularly scandalized. Then came the revisions on A Local Habitation, and suddenly he had ideas of his own. I love him so much more this way, but wow, was it a shocker.

8. The pixies. They were supposed to be setting. They turned into something a great deal more important, and more fun to write. Even if they don't make sense, as such.

7. The fae being nocturnal. In the original drafts of the first few books, almost everything happened at night, but it was never explicitly stated that the fae were nocturnal. Despite their magic being damaged by sunrise, and despite midnight being explicitly stated as "fairy time." Luckily, I caught on before anything saw print.

6. The Luidaeg. Like Danny, she was supposed to be a one-time character, someone who showed up, did what she needed to do, and then left. But Toby just had to start bringing her bagels...

5. April.

4. The naming structure of the months. All the fae with month names have those month names for a reason. It's even a good one. But I never dreamt that the series would include more than just October herself, much less the sheer number of them to have fetched up at this point.

3. The names of the books themselves! The original name of book one was Hope Springs Eternal, to be followed by The Fall Won't Kill You and Winter of Our Dismemberment. Yes, it was a seasonal theme. No, I don't know what I was thinking. Yes, I like these names better.

2. The importance of geography. I know most of the Kingdoms in North America, and most of the Duchies and large political divisions on the West Coast. I never thought this would be important. I am an idiot.

1. Toby's diet. I have no idea why she eats some of the things she eats. At least she's happy? Also, ew.

It's time for my exciting Book Four GIVEAPALOOZA!!!! (Cue iCarly excited crowd noises.) Because Late Eclipses drops in just eleven days, I want to get everybody excited through the most basic means available to me:

Giving things away.

Specifically, I am giving away six books: two copies each of Rosemary and Rue (book one, for beginners!), An Artificial Night (get caught up!), and Late Eclipses (because new releases are awesome!). This giveaway is open only to North American addresses, unless you indicate in your entry that you're willing to pay postage. I'm really sorry about that, I just can't afford to both give books away and ship them overseas.

So here's how this will work:

1. Leave a comment on this entry. Leave it on the entry, please, not in response to another comment (replies to comments cannot win).
2. Indicate which book you want.
3. Indicate why you want it. Be as factual or as ridiculous as you like. Is it your birthday? Do you plan to encase it in amber and throw it in the ocean? Are termites involved? Have a party!
4. If you are outside North America, and willing to pay postage, include this in your comment.

...and that's all. The winners will be selected by our old friend, Random Number Generator, on Tuesday, February 22nd.

Game on!

ETA: Guys, remember, An Artificial Night is book THREE. I sadly do not have any copies of book two in this giveaway, and if you try to read book three or four without reading books one and two, you're going to be really, really confused.

We are now thirteen days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], and to celebrate, here are thirteen things about San Francisco!

13. Yes, parking is as difficult to find as I make it out to be in the Toby books. In fact, it's usually slightly worse; because Toby has magic (and narrative flow), she usually manages to find street parking after only a paragraph or two of driving around. The rest of us usually wind up paying for our parking. Lucky Toby.

12. In areas like Valencia, you can walk for miles without seeing a Starbucks, although you will encounter dozens of small, independent coffee shops and cafes. In areas like North Beach and the Financial District, you can find a Starbucks every two blocks. It's like the city has a median average to maintain, and has decided to dump them all in the same place.

11. Many San Francisco natives rarely, if ever, visit the rest of the Bay Area, and are surprised when interesting things happen in the East Bay. (Not 100% true, but definitely supported by my personal experience.)

10. San Francisco is a city which never met a hill it didn't think "hey, I could put houses there, and people will totally figure out how to park at an eighty-seven degree angle." And because parking is at such a premium, people do.

9. It may be apocryphal that Mark Twain once said the coldest summer he ever spent was in San Francisco, but there's a reason so many people believe it. Thanks to the marine layer, we often have heat waves in December, and cold snaps in July.

8. Despite the hills and the messed-up weather, we still have joggers. Joggers are insane.

7. San Francisco's pigeon population is fairly epic, and most of them are pretty healthy, because there's so much food dropped by the tourist trade. Also, they eat their own sick. It's disturbing and fascinating, like an avian recreation of The Lottery.

6. Cable cars, not really worth it. No, seriously. They're not.

5. Ghirardeli Square sells a sundae called "The Earthquake" which costs around twenty dollars and needs at least five people to eat it. It's a towering monument to gluttony, and all visitors to our fair city should treat it as a mandatory undertaking. Unless you're lactose intolerant or diabetic.

4. San Francisco proper covers a span of 46.7 square miles. That's why we have South San Francisco, San Bruno, and Colma. Because otherwise, we'd run out of space really, really fast.

3. A team of fae without human disguises on could probably run the Bay to Breakers without anyone saying anything but "cool costumes, man."

2. The Ferry Building Farmer's Market is one of the best in the state. It's huge, diverse, and a little bit scary, since who really needs an heirloom tomato the size of a human head? Me, that's who. Now gimme.

1. I do an incredible amount of geographic research when introducing a new location in the Toby books. Half of it gets thrown out the window in the interests of not turning into a guidebook, but I do it. And this city is really weird. That's what makes it so great.

Current stats:

Words: 114,399
Pages: 421
Chapters: five of thirty-five
Started: February 15th, 2011
Finished: ???

It's been exactly three months since I locked down my submission draft of One Salt Sea and sent it off to The Editor: long enough that the text now looks faintly alien, like maybe I wrote it, or maybe it was written by someone who was really, really good at faking my style. This is the perfect position to be in when starting revisions, which is good, because revision time is upon us at last.

The first five chapters have now been revised to fix issues pointed out by my editorial review, correct timeline glitches, and fix things that became visible only after three months of having nothing to do with the book. I'll probably do three to five more chapters tomorrow night, and then ship the .ms off to the Machete Squad, so they can make sure I'm not breaking anything. Thus will the pattern go, until the book is done and mailed back to The Editor for final review and printing.

It's a book. When the hell did that happen?

(This post was supposed to go up yesterday, when we were fifteen days from the official release of Late Eclipses. I was ill, and so it didn't get posted, and you are thus getting a double-dip today. Either I'm sorry or you're welcome, depending on your point of view.)

15. Formal courtship is still alive and well in Faerie, and involves a great deal of poetry, flowers, and elaborate ritual. It is customary for the person being courted to thank the person doing the courting for each step after the first, to remind them that they have an obligation to finish what they've started. If you see a couple of moon-struck young fae thanking each other a lot, they're engaged in a formal courtship.

14. Most purebloods speak and utilize the ritual language of flowers when courting; every bouquet is a poem in and of itself. Never buy a Daoine Sidhe flowers from Safeway, you'll just confuse them.

13. The majority of fae marriages do not result in children, and are dissolved without issue by the participants. In these cases, it's not even really considered a "divorce," so much as a parting of the ways, and there is almost always no resentment between them. In some cases, people will even dissolve a marriage, and then turn around and marry the siblings of their former spouses, just because they're bored, but enjoy the overall dynamic of their extended family.

12. Same-sex marriage is relatively common, and even well-regarded, especially by families who do not have titles of their own; long-term fostering leading to formal adoption will usually provide these couples with an heir, and provide the foster's original family with a closer tie to the nobility.

11. Setting quests for a suitor is acceptable, if currently somewhat out of fashion for anyone lower in rank than the heir of a Duke.

10. Because sexual relations with a mortal are not considered infidelity, many married couples will take human lovers from time to time, just to break up the tedium.

9. Marriage to a human is not considered legal or binding under fae law. Consequentially, all changelings are considered bastards.

8. Purebloods have access to incredibly rich, complicated foods in the Summerlands. Their wines are beyond mortal comprehension, their cakes a doorway into divinity. This does not prevent them really, really liking Hershey's chocolate. Many otherwise expensive courtships are heavily centered around Mr. Goodbar. No one knows why.

7. Arranged marriage still occurs among some races of fae. This is a hold-over from when Faerie was very young, and they needed to make sure people were as distantly related as possible. (Fae genetics are weird and not the topic here, and all members of any given race are descended from the same First, but they still wanted to avoid marrying their sisters when possible.) The underground races are especially fond of arranged marriage.

6. But not the Gremlins. Gremlins marry for love, or because you have a really big...forge. There's nothing a Gremlin girl likes better than a man with a really big forge.

5. There are different rules for courtship between a man and a woman, two men, two women, a man and two women, or a woman and two men. Beyond that, they sort of make it up as they go along.

4. Yes, group marriage occurs. It's especially common among Centaurs, Satyrs, Cetacea, and Gremlins. As a rule, we don't ask. Especially not about the Gremlins.

3. It is considered exceedingly rude to break off a courtship in the middle for anything short of "My liege has arranged a marriage for me" or "We're going to war." Once the courting period has been finished and you're just dating, it becomes a lot more acceptable.

2. Watching really traditional purebloods try to court their human lovers is funnier than anything currently on weeknight TV.

1. The fae believe in true love. Even when it hurts them. And because they're going to live forever, they're usually willing to wait until the time is right to buckle down and pursue it. This can make them infuriating to humans and changelings, because they're so damn slow...but when they marry for love, it tends to be forever.

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! I've got two awesome things to share with you from our buddies at Conjure Oils.

First up, lm is doing a decant circle of ALL the Toby Daye scents. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the decant circle concept, this means she's going to order full bottles of the various perfumes, make little "tester" vials of perfume, and then send them out to the circle's paid participants. This is a great way to sample a lot of different scents without committing yourself to a whole bottle. Follow the link above for more information, and her specific rules.

(Note: This decant circle is not specifically affiliated with either me or Conjure Oils. So you'll need to go through lm with any questions or comments. I'm just sharing the love.)

Meanwhile, over at Conjure Oils, Varja has very kindly made the Toby scents available as products from the Oddment Emporium. It's a special order, so you'll need to let her know what you're asking for. Did you want Toby Daye soap? May Daye sugar scrub? Well, for the first (and possibly only) time, you can have it. Be still my heart.

And that's your cosmetic update. Have a joyous Lupercalia!

I recently volunteered to make five detailed blog posts on things people wanted to know about the Toby universe, and provided a dedicated thread for them to make their suggestions. While these posts will not be specifically spoiler-y for published books, they will provide background material on the universe, and can be viewed as part of my functional canon. This is the fourth such post.

sumeria asks, "How relevant really is the existence of "royal" members of the Cait Sidhe, if they determine the ruler by combat? I had assumed there was no real royal family until Tybalt made such a big deal of Raj being the only younger royal there was and Toby seemed to assume that Raj would one day replace Tybalt. Or is it just that only royals can fight for the right to rule? (also, the assumption that Tybalt will be replaced seems odd to me, just in that if he's immortal, he should theoretically grow stronger, not weaken with age)"

Come one, come all, to the Jellicle Ball! It's time to talk Cait Sidhe.

Now, the first thing we have to address is "Why do the Cait Sidhe get their own government?" The short form is that they went to Oberon and petitioned him for it, and he was so impressed by the fact that they had the audacity to do so that he gave them what they wanted. Ask and ye shall receive, in other words. Part of what made it possible for them to get away with it is their relationship with the Shadow Roads. There are other races in Faerie, like the Candela, who can access something similar, but only the Cait Sidhe can use the Shadow Roads for distance travel, or to connect places that are geographically unconnected. So when they asked for their own government, they were able to promise that their Courts would only use space that no one else had a claim to. At the time, the Cait Sidhe had a good relationship with all three of their Firstborn, and were able to get them to back the claim. So the Court of Cats was born.

The Court of Cats is not subject to the whims of the local monarchy, although it is subject to Oberon's Laws...with one major exception. Cait Sidhe are permitted to kill each other over succession, providing it happens openly, and is not a matter of assassination. They have a violent society, and their laws reflect that.

Cait Sidhe don't handle succession the way the regular Courts do, in part because they accept all their changelings as full members of their society. It's rare to find a Cait Sidhe Court that doesn't include multiple human- and cat-form changelings, none of whom are looked down upon for the circumstances of their birth. This means that bloodlines get complicated, as there are Cait Sidhe who are the children of fae who were the children of a changeling and a pureblood, or quarter-blood children who were born in the Court and have never entered the mortal world. Many Cait Sidhe Kings and Queens have bevvies of changeling children, using their existence to prove that they can provide for their people. So heredity is not necessarily a factor. So what does "royal" mean?

"Royal," among the Cait Sidhe, is a measure of strength of magic. A royal Cait Sidhe must be able to travel the Shadow Roads without hindrance; carry others with them; transform from cat to human and back again, without any unwanted traits bleeding over from one shape to another; cast basic illusions; open doors between the deepest Court of Cats and the Summerlands; create Courts by hewing small spaces out of the Shadows and keeping them open, essentially as temporary shallowings, until they are no longer needed; command loyalty; and die and come back. This is not a comment set of skills. Most Cait Sidhe can access the Shadow Roads, cast illusions, and change forms...but not all of them. Some Cait Sidhe are always bipedal, or always cats. Some Cait Sidhe have tails in their human forms, or no tails in their cat forms. And so it goes.

There are also specific talents related to Kings of Cats and Queens of Cats, but that's something for another day.

Royal Cait Sidhe are relatively rare, which is probably a good thing, since it means that succession fights are also relatively rare. Most areas will have a King and a Queen, each with their own Court; Kings and Queens of Cats do not tend to get along very well, and will very rarely operate their Courts in the same city. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, Tybalt maintains the Court of Dreaming Cats in San Francisco, while the nearest Queen is centered in Berkeley. They can, and do, enter one another's territory, but for the most part, they tend to stay in "their" cities.

Courts must have royals to stay stable. Their Kings and Queens are their protectors, and the lines which keep the Cait Sidhe from becoming totally lawless, and thus a danger to the rest of Faerie. Part of the agreement with Oberon was that the royal Cait Sidhe would do this thing, no matter how much they didn't want to.

Kings and Queens must take their thrones through combat. This is true. Most of the time, however, this combat is ritual at best; it's fairly rare for a sitting King or Queen who hasn't become a total despot to be forcibly deposed. Cats don't necessarily like responsibility, after all, and being King or Queen for all time is going to get boring. Kings and Queens of Cats tend to adopt potential heirs, train them, and then, if they judge the heirs to be suitable, essentially cede the throne. The fight still happens, and it's a pretty bloody one—the throne can't go to an unsuitable ruler—but it's not as serious as it would be if they didn't already intend to step down.

Toby assumes Raj will eventually take Tybalt's place because she assumes Tybalt will either a) get himself killed somehow, or b) get bored. He's been King of Dreaming Cats since the late 1800s, which isn't that long for a fae reign, but is a very long time for a cat. Also, the fact that he allows Raj to stay means that he's probably considering giving up his throne sometime in the next ten to seventy years.

Once Tybalt is no longer a King of a specific Court, he'll still be a King of Cats, and may eventually have another Court of his own. That won't happen until he's ready for it, however; witness Barbara from ALH Computing, who was a Queen without a dedicated Court, and seemed happy that way.

And that is Cait Sidhe succession. Any questions?

ETA: This is the "how do they govern" post, not the "detailed biology" post. No further questions about Cait Sidhe biology will be answered. Thank you for understanding.

I recently volunteered to make five detailed blog posts on things people wanted to know about the Toby universe, and provided a dedicated thread for them to make their suggestions. While these posts will not be specifically spoiler-y for published books, they will provide background material on the universe, and can be viewed as part of my functional canon. This is the third such post.

cbpotts says, "One wonders who keeps all the stories of the fae; have they historians or sociologists or a league appointed to keep track of a vaguely accurate record of everything important. It can't possibly be all word-of-mouth; there are too many people and it's too complex. So which of the Fae keep track of the rest of it?"

Ah, the fascinating life of the archivist and historian. I actually mean this—fae historians are more Indiana Jones than small-town librarian a lot of the time, since their books really can get pissed off and rewrite themselves, or turn you into stone, and sometimes, you really do lose entire libraries for three hundred years due to a don't-look-here charm gone horribly wrong. Sure, there's also a lot of time spent cataloging and filing things, but your job, really more fraught with peril than the average small-town librarian's (statement not universal to all small towns; Buckley, I'm looking at you...).

Every fae kingdom has a Library. Yes, with a capital-L; Libraries are a big, big deal. They're not affiliated with the local crown, and are instead considered neutral ground, answering only to Oberon...which means that for several hundred years now, they've been answering to nobody at all. That means that the filing has gotten a little lax, and there are a lot of uncollected overdue fines. Since the Libraries are considered neutral ground, they're often the subject of resentment from the local nobility, and with Oberon missing, that means they're also unprotected by anything beyond their own security. Most of them have gotten really picky about who they issue library cards to.

Most archivists, historians, and librarians apprentice to or even Foster with the Library itself when still young, being literally raised to the craft. Others come to it late in life, since the neutral status of the Libraries makes them the perfect place to flee for sanctuary. More than a few fae criminals have found second lives for themselves inside the Libraries, where as long as they follow the rules, they will be allowed to shelve books and transcribe manuscripts until they decide to go back outside and face the music. The Libraries are allowed to deal with their own as they see fit...which does include violations of the Law. So those who seek sanctuary with the librarians had better really, really mean it.

Traveling historians are generally considered untouchable, even by local nobles who would happily burn the Libraries themselves down if they thought they could get away with it. The fear of Oberon and his frequently rather heavy-handed enforcement of the rules hasn't gotten any weaker as time has gone by. Most historians are aware that this is a tenuous respect, and don't do anything to endanger it—basically, no one wants to be the straw that breaks the camel's back and causes the Kings and Queens to start testing the neutrality of the Libraries.

Periodically, Libraries will disappear, either due to natural disaster, someone "accidentally" dropping a match, or because they're anchored in Faerie, and Faerie is not a reliably predictable place. Sometimes they reappear again later. Other times, they don't. Some Libraries are hidden so well that they've basically disappeared, unless you know a guy who knows a guy who knows someone who has a library card. The Library in the Kingdom of the Mists is one of the missing ones; it was last seen during the reign of King Gilad. No one's really gone looking for it. Libraries are problematic, as they tend to maintain records, and records have an unpleasant habit of telling truths people don't want told.

The Library of the Kingdom of the Mists is called the House of Stars, for reasons that no one save for maybe the Librarians who work there can really explain. Assuming you can, you know, find them. The Head Librarian when the place when missing was a Puca named Magdaleana Brooke. The odds are decent that if the place still exists, she's still in charge. Without Oberon around to intervene, no new Library will be opened in the Mists to take its place.

And that's Libraries and archives. Any follow-up questions?

I recently volunteered to make five detailed blog posts on things people wanted to know about the Toby universe, and provided a dedicated thread for them to make their suggestions. While these posts will not be specifically spoiler-y for published books, they will provide background material on the universe, and can be viewed as part of my functional canon. This is the second such post, and is taken from multiple related questions.

faithfulcynic asked, "Can you break down Court hierarchy for us and talk a little about title inheritance? I know that the King of Cats has to be won but is that the same with other courts? Would a changeling ever have a shot at ruling a court? Could Sylvester ever rule them all? Does relationship to the Big Three play a part?"

hanabishirecca said, "Toby's universe has a complex system of fiefdoms and courts that have been seen to be caught in a supernatural version of real world politics. Sovereignty seems to be shaky in many cases...I don't necessarily want an entire political history lesson, but I'm fascinated with the division of territory. I'd love to know what it takes to be appointed your own title and piece of land, to what lies at the very top of the feudalistic rankings. Really, anything on this would make me happy."

And drakos_inferno said, "I'll echo a few other people—can we get a who's in charge flow chart of some sort?"

Let's talk politics! Yaaaaay!

So first off: who's in charge? Oberon. Dude doesn't even need a title. He's just, you know, Oberon. He's also missing, and has been for several hundred years, along with both Maeve and Titania, who are also in charge. When the three of them fight, watch out. They're collectively known as the King and Queens of Faerie; that's their territory, that's their fiefdom, and that's where their word is law. Again, however, missing, and even before they went missing, they needed the equivalent of local governments to save them from spending all their time telling their kids to stop hitting each other. Enter the fae system of governance. Now, the main thing to remember here is that all these people essentially serve at the pleasure of the President. If Oberon says you lose your throne, you lose your throne. If Titania says you're finished, you're finished. So fae monarchs are always, always aware that they could be deposed just for wearing shoes that Maeve doesn't like. For the most part, they muddle through anyway, because power is neat.

At the top of the non-Three fae government food chain, you have the High Kings and Queens. There's usually one of them to a region, with "region" being determined by a combination of population density, amount of time the fae have been living in the region, and whether anyone's gone to war to schism off a new High Demesne. (Note: This is a dangerous proposition. If you don't have the buy-in from the majority of the current reigning High Kings and Queens, no one's going to help you do it, and you're going to get your ass kicked.) There are currently quite a few High Demesnes, but the one we're primarily concerned with is North America, the royal seat of which is located in Toronto.

The original High Kings and Queens were chosen by Oberon, Maeve, and Titania, and were a fairly broad representation of the races and ideals of Faerie. In the modern era, most of them are Daoine Sidhe. Make of this what you will (and hint, "we like assassinating people for their thrones, it's fun" is a perfectly reasonable line of thought). At this point, the title is hereditary, unless you manage to get yourself deposed. High Kings and Queens have absolute authority over those Kingdoms contained in their High Demesne, unless contradicted by one of the Three, which hasn't happened recently (for obvious reasons). They mostly don't mess with things, unless those things are threatening to mess with them.

Once the original High Kings and Queens were chosen, they proceeded to choose Regional Kings and Queens. Think of it as sort of like the relationship between the President of the United States and the Governor of Oregon. Yes, the President is technically the boss of him, but odds are good that he can do almost anything he wants, short of killing his constituents, before the President gets involved. Again, these positions started as a good racial and idealistic mix, and have managed to maintain a bit more of their diversity, largely because a sitting monarch can only be deposed by a) the Three or b) actual warfare—taking a throne away from someone without a good reason is one of the only things the High Kings and Queens can't do. So once the Daoine Sidhe started deposing the High Kings and Queens, the Regional Kings and Queens got a lot more passionate about maintaining large armies. It's fun! Again, once given a throne, the throne is hereditary, and will remain with a family until that family is wiped out, deposed, or manages to piss off the Three.

Now we hit the tricky part. See, not all parts of a High Demesne will be part of a Regional Kingdom. In North America, for example, the High King and Queen maintain Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador as their own private holdings; the first Regional Kingdoms are Frozen Sun (Manitoba and Minnesota, roughly) to the west, and Lakes to the south. That means that all crimes committed in the private holdings of the High King and Queen go straight to them, with no intermediate monarch. Sort of like going to the Supreme Court over a traffic ticket. Oddly, this doesn't make their populace any better-behaved.

Let's keep things getting trickier. Dukes/Duchesses, Marquis/Marquessas, Counts/Countesses, Viscounts/Viscountesses, Barons/Baronesses, Earls, Lords/Ladies, Knights, and a variety of other lesser nobles fall under the Kings and Queens. Most of the time, it'll follow the ranking of the list above. But not always. In some areas, a Marquis may be considered to outrank a Duke (not many, however). This is basically the local ruler's to decide. There are quite a few unlanded nobles at this point, thanks to Faerie's many, many wars, and an unlanded noble will always be outranked by a landed noble of the same title. So...Sylvester, a Duke, outranks Evening, a Countess. Simon, an unlanded Baron, outranks Toby, a knight, but would be outranked by a landed Baron. Again, all these titles tend to be hereditary...

Unless, of course, your children are changelings. Changelings cannot inherit lands or titles from their fae parents. They can be granted by the crown, but that is the only way for them to rise in fae governance, and even then, it's going to be very local. Toby was knighted by Sylvester. Most people in the Mists will respect that, if only to avoid pissing off Shadowed Hills. If Toby were to travel to the Kingdom of Angels, who knows what would happen? A changeling can, of course, take a title by force of arms, but any changeling who chose to do that would need to be prepared to have a lot of people gunning for them. A lot of people.

Titles are passed either when the title-holder dies, as in the case of King Gilad Windermere, the former regent of the Mists, or when the title-holder chooses to step down and cede all right to their place. This prevents assassinations, at least most of the time. The only way a forsaken title can be reclaimed is if the current holder dies with no named heir, and the former title-holder is judged entirely without blame in their death. This doesn't happen very often. There are some "lost" titles, connected to objects, family lines, missing knowes, or ancient mysteries. It's doubtful whether those claims could be proven if they were brought forth, but wouldn't it be fun to try?

You'll note that the Kings and Queens of Cats are not covered here. This is because they are considered, by Oberon's edict, to essentially have diplomatic immunity in any of the "noble" Courts, so long as they don't go interfering. They settle their succession in completely different, and usually quite bloody, ways.

So that's the quick and dirty version of politics in Toby's world. If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to ask them here.

I recently volunteered to make five detailed blog posts on things people wanted to know about the Toby universe, and provided a dedicated thread for them to make their suggestions. While these posts will not be specifically spoiler-y for published books, they will provide background material on the universe, and can be viewed as part of my functional canon. This is the first such post.

Quoth seawench:

"What are the rules for fostering fae children like Quentin? How long do they have to stay? Do the fae families get anything in return? If children are so precious, why would parents give them up for extended periods? Do fae families ever foster changelings, or do they only foster purebloods? Are fae parents more likely to foster children with another fae race, or within their own?"

Fosterage! I love fae fosterage. Basically, it's the system via which fae children, especially the children of fae nobles, can be shipped off to live with other households for a certain period of time. There are five basic types of fosterage: Educational, Economic, Exchange, Protective, and Control. To complicate things a bit further, there are two styles of fosterage: Open, and Blind. The types of fosterage break down as follows.

* Educational. You're shipping a kid off to learn something he or she couldn't learn at home, whether that's "how to deal with living near the ocean," "how to handle a large mortal population," or "how they do it in the Kingdom of Silences." Most fosters in the equivalent of their teens are sent out for educational reasons. The general consensus in Faerie is that the young are better at learning to adapt to extreme situations; children are expected to get the bulk of their education before they reach maturity. After that, they may apprentice to a trade, but that's learning specialized things, not general "how the world works." Many, if not most, noble children will be sent on an educational fosterage if they're expected to inherit someday, because they need to learn to deal with people outside their home fiefdom.

* Economic. You can't afford to keep your child properly, either because you literally don't have the resources, or because you do some sort of job that doesn't allow for childrearing (sailors, soldiers, some specialized diplomatic positions). It's considered lucky and important to have a child, even if they don't live with you, and some fae have used the proof of fertility represented by an economic fosterage to further their positions in life. It is extremely rare for an economic foster to be returned to his or her original parents, and some will even be adopted by the families which foster them. When changelings are fostered, it is almost always for economic reasons, and they are almost always taken by families who are already fostering one or more pureblooded children. This provides playmates for the purebloods, without the necessity of stealing babies from the mortal world (historically popular, currently frowned upon).

* Exchange. You give me one, I give you one. Exchange fosterages are rare, simply because they require two households of relatively equal social standing to have children of approximately the same age. In cases where this occurs, the children will be swapped for a pre-determined period of time, allowing for the creation of an educational fosterage with the additional benefit of strengthening ties between the households.

* Protective. There is a reasonably good chance your household is about to be wiped out for political reasons. Your fiefdom has just gone to war. There's a dragon in your backyard. For whatever reason, your kids are no longer safe, and need to be shipped off to live somewhere else until they can be sure nothing's going to eat them back home. Protective fosterages can be very short, lasting only a few weeks. They can also turn unintentionally permanent.

* Control. Nobles will sometimes insist that the children of those lesser nobles within their domain come and live with them as fosters for a certain period of time. This does a lot to keep the lesser nobility from rebelling. It's also the most miserable type of fosterage, and sometimes backfires, as some fae parents will decide to go ahead and rebel anyway, since they have nothing left to lose.

Multiple types of fosterage can be combined, with educational/exchange and educational/protective being the most common. The styles of fosterage are somewhat simpler:

* Open. "This is Carl, the son of Bob and Marsha. He'll be staying with us for a little while."

* Blind. "This is Suzy. She lives here now."

The only type of fosterage that can't be blind is control, since you tend to lose control when you don't tell anyone whose kid you've got there. Quentin is on a blind educational fosterage; he's stated several times that he's in Shadowed Hills to learn, and no one seems to know who his parents are. There can be a lot of reasons for that, ranging from "his parents are criminals" to "his parents have a lot of enemies" to "we just don't want people sucking up to him because of who his family is." Shadowed Hills is a generally ill-regarded Duchy, since it tends to be modernist, so it's most likely to be one of the former, although nobody knows for sure except, presumably, Sylvester.

The length of a fosterage is set by both the parents and the foster parents, and can range from "until I can come to get him" to "until she reaches maturity." Declaring someone as your foster makes you legally responsible for them, and releases their biological parents from that responsibility, until the fosterage has been dissolved. A foster parent can't dissolve the fosterage unless the child does something so incredibly bad that they have no choice; abandoning a foster without really, really good reason is considered the height of impropriety, and the fae care a lot about such things.

Fae families can be compensated for fostering a child/allowing their children to be fostered in a variety of ways, ranging from reputation ("My child is fostered with the High King") to improved marriage prospects ("My son is being fostered by the family of the girl he's going to marry") to not being invaded ("My daughter, um, isn't here anymore..."). Some families are compensated financially; this usually happens with the parents of changelings whose children are being essentially purchased to be playmates for purebloods.

Fae parents give up their children for many of the same reasons humans do. They want them to have better lives; they want them to have good educations; they want them to be safe; they don't have a choice in the matter.

Most fosters are sent to live with families of a race that is the same as, or closely related to, their own. This is by no means universal, but it's considered "the norm." Daoine Sidhe will almost never choose foster parents who aren't also Daoine Sidhe, while Gremlins will foster to anyone who owns a forge and doesn't mind being asked a lot of questions.

Speaking of questions...are there any follow-up questions on fosterage? No spoilers, please.

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions for my latest wacky ARC giveaway. The random number generator has spoken, and our first winner is...

...alicetheowl! Alice, please email me via my website contact form within the next twenty-four hours to claim an ARC of Late Eclipses for your VERY OWN. Blah blah failure to contact me will be taken as not wanting your prize, blah blah picking a new winner, blah blah do not taunt happy funball, blah blah YAY YOU'RE A WINNER NOW LET ME MAIL YOU THINGS!

Our second winner, selected by using the random number generator again, this time on a list of my favorite questions, is...

...seawench! Congratulations! Lady of the Waters, please email me via my website contact form within the next twenty-four hours to claim an ARC of Late Eclipses for your waterlogged enjoyment (book is not waterproof, management is not responsible for damages stemming from attempting to read in your submerged living room). Again, blah blah blah blah follow the rules or I'll have your voice and it'll be NO LEGS YOU FOR, YOUNG LADY.

And that's our giveaway! More to come, because I like giving out prizes when I'm twitchy (and wow does waiting for a book to drop make me twitchy). Thanks again for participating, everybody, it was super fun!

1. I'm still taking entries in my "ask a question, win an ARC" drawing. Remember that two prizes will be awarded, one by our old friend, Random Number Generator (oh, Genny, you're so capricious), and once by me choosing the best question of the bunch. Please, please don't ask for spoilers. Ask questions that would potentially be found in an FAQ, even one as profoundly silly as mine.

2. I'm a Barbie girl! Well. Sometimes. The brilliant Tara O'Shea (who does my website graphics, and isn't she amazing?) does Barbie customs, because she is marginally insane, and is now making me my very own Alice Price-Healy, because I am marginally insane. Tracking down 1/6th scale weapons and camping gear is surprisingly soothing. As is the part where, when I'm done, I get to ship it all off to Tara, and not deal with it until it comes back as a real, live Barbie of one of my characters. My life is so hard sometimes. (This will not be my first custom Barbie. That honor goes to Lt. Anis Bihari of the USS Rutan. She has spots!)

3. According to DAW, finished copies of Late Eclipses now exist, and I should have mine in a week or so. So you can look forward to pictures of Thomas putting the now-traditional toothmarks in the cover of my file copy, right before I start hyperventilating.

4. Yesterday, I went to two flea markets with my mother and youngest sister, both of whom acquired Immense Amounts of Crap. Despite bringing my naked Gloom Beach Draculaura along so that I could try clothes on her (Monster High dolls can wear many Bratz and Moxie Girl fashions), I managed not to buy anything except for a bottle of water. I compensated for this by swinging through the Berkeley Half-Price Books and acquiring yet another sack of books I won't get around to reading for a month or more. I need help.

5. And by "help," I mean "I need someone to come over and shelve things with me for about seven hours solid." Even that may not conquer the leaning piles of literature and restore my capacity to see the floor, but I am occasionally a crazy idealist where such things are concerned.

6. In an effort to not be a total wreck today, I spent about two hours last night sitting on the couch, watching telly. Specifically, the post-Superbowl episode of Glee, which I loved, and the first episode of the North American Being Human, which I loved. So it was a night full of love. That's even before you take into account the seven-month-old Maine Coon draped across my lap, loving me so loudly that I had to turn up the volume on the TV (kid has a purr like a lawnmower).

7. CD Baby has sent me their restock request, and so I'll be mailing them restock of Wicked Girls, Red Roses and Dead Things, and Pretty Little Dead Girl tomorrow. If you're looking for Stars Fall Home, I really am sold out, but Southern Fried Filk has several, as do many other filk dealers I know.

That's my Monday. What's new in the world of you?

With Late Eclipses approaching fast, I am naturally spending a lot of time thinking about Toby's world, and blogging about Toby's world, since I want everyone to be as excited as I am. So here is your invitation:

Ask me a question.

This has no connection to the current ARC giveaway, which asks you to ask simple, FAQ-style questions that don't require extensive spoilers or flowcharts. What this is connected to is, well, the big questions. Like when I posted about the rules governing fae marriage. The ones that require serious thought, and a genuine desire to know.

How does fae marriage work? Where did the Changeling's Choice begin? What happened to the Roane? Questions too big, and too complicated, to answer in the FAQ. Now, because I apparently wasn't clear enough the first time, I WILL NOT GIVE SPOILERS. Please don't ask me where someone is, or whether someone else is coming back, or whether you're ever going to see Gillian again (a question which has started to make me clench my teeth). Ask me about laws and rules and universe, about etiquette and speciation and trends in fashion.

The five best questions will get full blog posts about them, explaining whatever facet or facets of Faerie they touch on. I get to determine "best," although you're all welcome to weigh in or ask secondary questions.

Publishers Weekly has spoken on the subject of Late Eclipses, and they say:

"In October 'Toby' Daye's fourth outing, following 2010's An Artificial Night, the half-Fae private detective is once again run through the wringer when problems plaguing the San Francisco Fae community strike home on a personal level. First, in an unprecedented, unexpected move, the Queen of the Mists promotes Toby to countess. Given that the Queen hates her, it's quite obviously a trap, but not something Toby can refuse or avoid. Subsequently, several of Toby's closest friends are struck down through poison and illness, and she's accused of murder. Has an enemy from Toby's past resurfaced, or is she losing her mind? Physically, emotionally, and magically drained, faced with tragedy and despair, Toby's forced to deal with the long-hidden truth behind her Fae heritage. In this tightly plotted adventure, McGuire mixes nonstop action with a wealth of mythology to deliver a wholly satisfying story."

They like me! They really like me!

Pardon me while I dance THE DANCE OF JOY.

Whee! Time for another ARC giveaway! Once again, I'm giving away an ARC of Late Eclipses, the fourth book in the October Daye series, which comes out in twenty-seven days. So you could get an early chance to find out what's going on! Also, I'm actually giving away two books this time. Curious? Read on!

If you've been to my website recently, you may have noticed that my Toby FAQs are a trifle, well, sparse. Whole books are missing. Since I'm getting ready to shuffle things around to make room for InCryptid, I'd like to fix this. So here's what you need to do to enter today's ARC giveaway:

1) Leave a comment on this entry containing a suggested question for one of my FAQs. FAQ-type questions only, please, like "Is the date at the beginning of An Artificial Night correct?" or "Why has Quentin's hair changed color?", not "Will Toby and Tybalt ever get together?" or "Is there going to be a movie?"

2) Leave the comment on its own, please, not as a reply to someone else's comments. Comments on comments can't win, even if they have the BEST QUESTION EVER.

3) That's all.

Now here's the twist: I will be choosing two winners. One will be chosen by the random number generator, cruel mistress that it is, and the other will be chosen by me, based purely on my personal "that's the BEST question" reaction. Also, I will use your questions to improve the FAQ, so really, everybody wins.

I will choose a winner at 2PM PST on Tuesday, February 8th.

Game on!

As of today, we are less than a month (twenty-nine days) out from the release of Late Eclipses. Since February is so short, I'm kicking off the pre-release month of fun now, and beating the rush. Also, that might do a little to preserve my sanity, and I'm fond of my sanity. It's my cuddly mental buddy.

To start our pre-release month right, here's an exciting announcement: Conjure Oils has released the rest of the current Toby Daye perfume line. There are now TWENTY-ONE scents available, including "Toby Daye" (cut grass and copper), "April O'Leary" (ozone and electricity), and even "January O'Leary" (ozone and pine). I don't have my sample packs of the new scents yet, but if they're half as awesome as the original seven, they're going to knock your socks off.

The Toby perfumes are available only in the 5ml bottles, but if people express interest in doing a decant circle, I will open a space in my website forums for you to set things up. (I can't run it myself, I can enable it for all of you.) These are open-ended, so there's no need to rush right out, act now, etc., and they make an awesome gift for the BPAL-lover in your life. Also, if we collectively buy enough of these, maybe she'll make more.

I live a fairy tale life, I swear. And I wouldn't want it any other way.

Blah blah links, blah blah drowning, blah blah I wanna go watch iCarly with the cats. So here is your super-rapid-fire review roundup, mostly Feed, some others.

On the Brink of Insanity has posted a Feed review, and says, "The science level explanations for the virus is amazingly well done. Grant made the possibility of a viral outbreak that actually creates zombies seem very real. I also really enjoyed the details given about the character's living conditions and the new technology and how one goes about surviving in a nation filled with zombies and what freedoms people are willing to give up to stay alive."

Dawn of the Lead has also reviewed Feed, and says, "For me, World War Z has always—since I read it, that is—been THE zombie novel. That position is now heavily contested by Mira Grant's Feed, the first part of her Newsflesh trilogy." Dude, win.

Post Whatever has posted a Feed review, and says, "Feed bucked my vision of what a zombie story would be. Sure, there were gory undead running around, along with super-charged security to help keep the living alive, but I didn’t expect to find a political campaign and an engaging conspiracy theory inside this book, regardless of what the cover blurb said."

Remember Sparrow Hill Road? Well, Rise Reviews has reviewed the last issue of The Edge of Propinquity to feature our darling Rose, and says, "'Thunder Road' of Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road series is far and away the best piece in this issue of TEOP. And for anyone who enjoys darkly all-American fare, this series is very satisfying to read." All of Sparrow Hill is available to read for free, in the archives!

Here's something you haven't seen in a while: a review of A Local Habitation, posted by Lesley W.'s Book Nook. Lesley says, "I loved this. Not quite as much as the first in the series, but it's definitely one of my favorite books of the year. October is an imperfect heroine. She makes mistakes, she's obtuse about some things. I think she wants to do the right thing, though, but she knows that that can come with a heavy price." Rock on!

That's about what I have time for right now. I'm going to go feed the cats.

Point the first: the winner of our random drawing "picture of your pet with one of my books" contest is...the_liz666! Please contact me via my website contact link within the next twenty-four hours to claim your prize. If you don't, I will choose another winner. Also, can I just say, I am SO VERY GLAD this was an explicitly random number-based contest? If I had to choose from the awesome, awesome entries, my head would have exploded. There was Perry the Platypus! And cats! And videos! And fish! AND A FRIKKIN' TIGER! I have the best fans in the whole world.

Point the second: I recently received some old ARCs from my publisher, found during one of the rare but vital "let's clean all the things" sessions. Is anyone out there doing cool art projects with books right now? I have two copies of A Local Habitation and three of An Artificial Night, and I'd love to see them turned into something awesome. Let me know if you have any ideas about where these books could go. (Donating them to a women's shelter doesn't work very well, because they're ARCs; they don't stand up well to repeat reading. Turning them into art, on the other hand, is both awesome and forever. Everybody wins!)

Point the third: I need to do a few more contests, naturally, before finished copies of Late Eclipses start showing up. Does anybody have any cool suggestions? And no, "Just give it to me" doesn't could, and may get you swatted at.

It's time for another ARC giveaway, this one requiring slightly more effort than the usual "random draw." I've noticed that there's always a spike in book orders right after I post pictures of one or more of my cats being adorable with a book (expect pictures of Thomas with An Artificial Night in the near future). So we're doing pet photography again! The rules:

1. Take a copy of my book.
2. Take a pet (your own, or someone else's, although you should ask before borrowing the neighbor's cat).
3. Take a picture.
4. Post the picture.

Entries will be taken until the morning of Monday the 24th, at which point I will use the random number generator to choose from amongst the eligible submissions. I reserve the right to award a second prize if there's a picture that just slays me, like if someone gives a copy of Feed to a tiger or gives a copy of Rosemary and Rue to a dolphin. Be creative, have fun, and show me your pets!

(Yes, small children in cat costumes count as pets for purposes of this contest, but they have to be yours.)

Words: 4,721.
Total words: 11,838.
Reason for stopping: I have finished chapter three, and will now have a shower.
Music: totally random shuffle.
The cats: Lilly, orange cat tree; Alice and Thomas, prowling around the hall.

Chapter three is done! Chapter three is done! According to the usual length of these books, 10% of the finished manuscript is done! Okay, that's...less reassuring than I expected it to be, since that makes me think about the other 90%. Let's focus on chapter three being done, shall we? I've set up everything I need to get things moving, and now it's time to rock and roll.

The initial waves of edits have been coming in, and getting processed, despite the insanity of convention season. February and March are light months for me, if you don't count the part where March contains an actual book release, so I should be able to stay pretty much on top of things. I'm so excited about this book, and about Late Eclipses coming out, as that will bring you all one step closer to my current status quo. Being three books ahead of everyone else is hard.

Alice is now sitting next to my desk chair and glaring loudly. I'm serious, it's impressive how loudly this cat can glare. I think I need to go brush the Maine Coons, lest they elect to smother me to death tonight while I'm trying to sleep.

Next up, more Blackout!

Words: 3,478.
Total words: 7,117.
Reason for stopping: chapter two is done, and it's time for bed.
Music: totally random shuffle.
The cats: Lilly, cat bed; Thomas, sleeping in my laundry; Alice, unknown.

And now, with the completion of chapter two, the good ship Ashes of Honor is ready to set sail for the proofing mines. Oh, the dangers it will face, the flashing machetes, the chomping alligators...but it will sail out the other side divine, filled with properly-placed commas and cars that don't inexplicably disappear in the middle of a chapter. I love the proofing mines so. And I fear them even more.

This has been a crazy-productive week, which is good, since my initial figures for 2011 basically say "write 2,000 words every day OR DIE IN THE PIT OF SNAKES." So every day where I can write more than 2,000 words buys me a little time to myself. Or, you know, time to write something that wasn't on the original list. You know, the usual craziness that goes on around here.

Alice has just wandered into the room and informed me, loudly, that it is time for bed. I'm going to take the cat's word on things.

Goodnight, world.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through my brain
Were bunny girls bitching, and men not quite sane,
And fairy tale murders and pandemic flu—
My friends hope my holiday dreams won't come true—

And Tara is working on graphics so fine
To help and promote that new novel of mine
(The fourth in a series that you may have read,
With Toby and Tybalt and new things to dread).

My tickets are purchased, my plans are all set,
I'm wracking my brain to guess what I'll forget,
And Vixy and Tony are waiting with glee
For the holiday gift that I'm giving them—me.

Two thousand and ten is a year nearly spent!
Oh, the things that we did, and the places we went!
I'm still with the agent—now more than two years!
She still knows I'm crazy, and yet she's still here.

Toby's first three adventures are there on the shelves,
Full of wise-cracking Cait Sidhe and put-upon elves,
And two more adventures are coming this year,
Which ought to be good for your holiday cheer.

In March, Late Eclipses, and Deadline in May
(My evil twin, Mira, says you should obey),
And then in September, there's just One Salt Sea,
To close out the year and tell us what's to be.

InCryptid and Velveteen, Babylon Archer,
And so many more are prepared for departure
At seanan_mcguire the updates are steady—
I'm keeping you posted. You'd better get ready.

The year yet to come will bring wonders galore,
And I can't start to guess at the great things in store,
So whatever you celebrate when the world's cold,
Be it secular, modern, or something quite old,

I hope that you're happy, I hope that you're warm,
I hope that you're ready to weather the storm,
And I wish you the joys that a winter provides,
All you Kings of the Summer and sweet Snow Queen brides,

And I can't wait to see what the next year will bring,
The stories we'll tell, and the songs that we'll sing.
The dead and the living will stand and rejoice!
(I beg you to rise while you still have a choice.)

The journey's been fun, and there's much more to see,
So grab your machete and come now with me,
And they'll hear us exclaim as we dash out of sight,
"Scary Christmas to all, and to all a good fright!"

And the winner of the very first ARC of Late Eclipses is...

georgiamagnolia!

Now, the administrative:

You have twenty-four hours to contact me via my website contact form with your mailing address. If I do not receive your mailing information within this time frame, I will choose a new winner for the ARC. I'm planning to do some pretty massive mailing on Thursday, so there's a lot of potential here for an early January delivery. I'm just saying.

Thanks to everyone who signed up, and watch for more giveaways coming soon!

Yes, it's time for the moment you've all been waiting for: the moment where I give away the first ARC of Late Eclipses, fourth book in the October Daye series. Because I am an enormous dork, I literally waited to open this giveaway until I had my book-specific icon in place. STOP JUDGING ME. I am a dork, I embrace my dorkitude. Anyway...

Who wants to win an ARC? About what I figured. I'll have some more effort-intensive contests in a little bit, but first up, it's our old favorite, the random drawing. To enter, please do the following:

1) Leave a comment on this entry. Leave it as a comment on the entry, please, not on someone else's comment. Comments left on other comments cannot win.

2) That's all.

Please don't comment going "pick me, pick me," if you could be so kind. I don't pick anyone. The random number generator picks the winner, and it is a cruel mistress which has never yet picked a comment containing "pick me." Instead, why not tell me why you're excited about this book? I'd really love to know.

I will choose a winner at 2PM PST on Tuesday, December 21st.

Game on!

We are now seventy-five days out from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], the fourth book in the ongoing saga of "Toby tries to drink a cup of coffee without something trying to eat her face off." Poor Toby.

My ARCs came last night. The large print of the front cover (which is gorgeous, and can be ordered directly from the cover artist, should you ever decide that you want Toby watching you sleep) is on my living room wall. I expect I'll have my cover flat for the actual book soon, and then that, too, will wind up framed and hanging somewhere in my house (the living room is sort of filling up). And sometime around the middle of February, finished copies will appear, like a magical gift from the Bookmaker's Elves.

It's all getting very real.

Late Eclipses is the book that takes me out of "trilogy" territory, and into the big wide world of "the series." Toby's story has never been a trilogy, but people have persisted in calling it that, because that's how we're conditioned to think about things that come in blocks of three. Late Eclipses is also the first book that wasn't a part of my initial contract. DAW could easily have published An Artificial Night and said, "Well, that was fun, what other series do you have?" Instead, they said "We believe in Toby," and they bought this book. I am so grateful. I am so determined to prove that they were right.

I'm really proud of this book. A lot of things get resolved here, and a lot of things get set up; all the rules of Toby's world are fully in place, and I don't have to deal with them anymore. Plus, the whole of what I consider to be the "central cast" is now in place, which gives me a surprising amount of freedom. I'm happy. I hope you will be, too. (And remember, a pre-ordered book makes a lovely holiday treat for someone. Maybe even for yourself. I'm not picky, here!)

Book four is already almost here.

Wow.

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 )

I keep saying that the dead of winter is when we need to be reminded that we're allowed to have nice things, since that's when nice things often seem to be the furthest from our grasp. And so it is with awe and delight that I announce that the next two October Daye novels have been acquired by DAW Books. These urban fantasy/mysteries continue the adventures of October Daye, under-caffeinated changeling detective, and will be coming soon to a world near you. They are:

Ashes of Honor
The Chimes at Midnight

...that's books six and seven, respectively. I am grateful and staggered and overjoyed and a little dizzy over the idea of being able to bring more of Toby's adventures to the world. I'm going to be working with the same team at DAW, which is awesome, and I'm really looking forward to wading into these books and taking the steps necessary to make then wonderful.

The world gets more Toby!

Happy holidays!

Will faithfulcynic please pick up the white courtesy telephone*? The random number generator has smiled upon you, and you have won a copy of A Local Habitation. Hooray! Life is good, especially when it's Tuesday, and you're winning things.

I'm going to be continuing to post giveaways and do drawings during the weeks to come, because dude, it's December. We need a little shiny happiness that doesn't involve going within a mile of the mall.

More to come!

(*By "white courtesy telephone," of course, I mean "send me your shipping information via my website contact form." Any other means of contact will result in your book not being mailed to you, possibly ever, because I am occasionally a blonde of very little brain.)

And now, for our fourth winter giveaway, we're returning to the expected, and I'm giving out a copy of An Artificial Night (October Daye, book three). We're sticking with what works, because that's about what I have the bandwidth for, so it's going to be a random drawing—leave a comment, potentially win a book. Yes, it will be signed, and yes, if you're winning it for someone else, I will happily mail it to them.

Start reading now, and you'll have time to get fully caught up before book four comes out in March! Or get a copy to give to a friend! The drawing for A Local Habitation is also still going, and will remain open until a winner is chosen later today.

Just comment here to be entered in the drawing. A winner will be chosen Saturday afternoon. Game on!

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.

hvideo, please pick up the white courtesy telephone; you have won a copy of Rosemary and Rue, which I will happily mail to you or to the person of your choice (although if you want this puppy mailed internationally, you're going to need to pay for postage).

Please email me through my website contact link to let me know where to send your book!

Words: 3,639.
Total words: 3,639.
Reason for stopping: chapter one is finished at last!
Music: mostly modern folk.
The cats: Lilly, bed; Thomas, floor by my feet; Alice, unknown.

Chapter one of the sixth Toby book is finally done! I hate first chapters. I have like, a 20% success rate with first chapters—almost every first chapter I've ever written has had to be chucked out the window and replaced with something else by the end of the draft. Sadly, this doesn't mean I get to start books on chapter two and go back later to fill in the "how we got in this hand basket" part of the narrative. But oh, how I wish I could.

The really fascinating thing about starting a book this far into an ongoing series is how vague I have to get in posts like this one, because otherwise, I'm giving away who lives, who dies, and who has been transformed into a piece of garden statuary for mouthing off to the Queen of the Mists one time too many. But it's so nice to be making progress, and it's so nice to finally be getting my teeth into this adventure, which has been simmering patiently away on the back burner for ages while I fought my way through One Salt Sea.

Today we're going to jump high, cheer loud, and look pretty, y'all.

Word.

For our second winter giveaway, we're just going to stick with what works: the random drawing. Leave a comment, potentially win a book. Specifically, potentially win A Local Habitation, the second book in the October Daye series. Come in at the beginning, and you'll have time to get fully caught up before book four comes out in March! Or get a copy to give to a friend! The Rosemary and Rue drawing is also still going, and will remain open until a winner is chosen on Sunday afternoon.

Just comment here to be entered in the drawing. A winner will be chosen Tuesday afternoon. Game on!

For our first winter giveaway, let's go with a classic: the random drawing. Leave a comment, potentially win a book. Specifically, potentially win Rosemary and Rue, the first book in the October Daye series. Come in at the beginning, and you'll have time to get fully caught up before book four comes out in March! Or get a copy to give to a friend!

Just comment here to be entered in the drawing. A winner will be chosen Sunday afternoon. Game on!

Behold! For now I wear the human pants! I have processed all machete squad and agent notes on One Salt Sea, gone through the book end-to-end to make sure everything still makes sense, returned it to The Agent, and made final tweaks based on her commentary. Now it's finally off to have a nice nap on The Editor's desk while she's in Australia, which means a) I made my deadline, and b) I can finally get to work on Ashes of Honor.

The current book stats:

Pages, 420.
Words, 113,912.
Chapters, thirty-five.
Diet Dr Pepper consumed, probably equivalent to Loch Ness.

Despite vicious trimming and dropping several sub-plots, One Salt Sea still wound up fifty pages/almost 7,000 words longer than Late Eclipses, because frankly, there's a lot of shit going on, and very little of it is "padding" in any sense of the word. Toby has matured a lot from where I first met her, in the short story that pre-dated Rosemary and Rue, and it shows. I've matured a lot as a writer, and that shows, too. This book is so much better than I expected it to be, and I'm so excited to have The Editor turning it into something even more awesome.

In conclusion...

...DINO DANCE PARTY!