"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real."

Flashback: I was attending the Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco when I came across a table, staffed by a friendly, curly-haired brunette woman in round geek-girl glasses, which boasted a wide assortment of mad science-themed images, all centering around a pretty, realistically-proportioned mad scientist named Helen Narbon. This was relevant to my interests. I grabbed some of the hand-outs, chatted briefly with the brunette—who turned out to be the strip's creator, Shaenon Garrity—and moved on, unaware that I had just discovered a six-year obsession.

Narbonic turned out to be an epic tale of mad science, romance, destruction, and, of course, gerbils. I visited Narbonic Labs every day for six years. When I was in Europe, paying for DSL in exotic cafes staffed by people who liked to dodge the crazy American, I paid about half-a-quid for the privilege of my mad science fix. I have no regrets. And yes, "Oh, Helen" on Red Roses and Dead Things was inspired by this comic strip.

Narbonic eventually had to end, coming to a solid and satisfying conclusion. The strip was collected in dead tree editions, each with lovely bonus features; sadly, some of them are now out of print. Not so sadly, there are plans in the works for a single omnibus edition, which will doubtless blow a whole lot of socks off. In the meantime, the full archives of the strip are available online, along with Shaenon's ongoing Director's Cut (she's going back and adding commentary to every single day). It's so, so worth reading, although I warn you, you're gonna lose some time. (Yes, the art starts out fairly primitive. Watching it improve is one of the true joys of the strip, since the art gets more complex even as the story gets more addictive.)

But that's not the point.

After Narbonic, Shaenon teamed up with Jeffrey Wells on a new project: Skin Horse, the story of a Black Ops Civil Service Agency dedicated to helping—and almost entirely staffed by—non-human transgenic individuals. The main team consists of a genetically-engineered Siberian Husky named Captain's Fancy Valentine Sweetheart, a dangerously unstable and heavily medicated necrotic-American named Unity, a cross-dressing ex-Army psychologist named Tip, and their boss, Gavotte, who is, well, a swarm of bees.

Yes. A swarm of bees.

And did I mention the huggy cobras?

The first year of Skin Horse is available now in dead tree format, and seriously, that was the best fourteen dollars I've spent all year. (Some other amounts may have been equally awesome, but fourteen dollar amounts? Nothing beat it.) Talking lions! Killbots! Opera-singing silverfish! HUGGY COBRAS! Seriously. If you like fun, you'll love Skin Horse. Also, if enough orders come in unexpectedly, Shaenon's head may explode. You like making people's heads explode, right?

You can view the strips included in the book at the Skin Horse website totally for free, but you can't take the website in the bathtub (unless you feel like living dangerously). Go, read, enjoy, and experience the HUGGY COBRAS.

Ssssssss.

Today is the official release date for A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], available now in bookstores across North America. The Kindle edition comes out on March 9th; I do not know why there is a week's delay between the two, but it's a great opportunity for you Kindle-lovers to pick up a physical copy, read it, and give it your local women's shelter. ;)

Because this is What We Do Around Here, I present our resident little dead ghoul, Mel, all dressed up for the occasion. Not that she has anywhere to go, as she has a tendency to get herself barred from all pleasant social venues. Something about killing the other patrons...

But yes, it is my release day. I have an Amy and several puffy cats, and have thus far resisted the urge to smack my head against anything. Now help the bookstores empty their shelves by rushing out and bringing Toby home with you!

So y'all probably remember my deep and abiding love of the amazing wearable fairy tales made by chimera_fancies. Let's just say that if I have an impractical retail addiction, it's this woman's jewelry. (Also art supplies and BPAL, but that's another matter.) Every piece she makes is unique and incredible, and the fact that she has used my art to create her art makes me believe that the world can be a better place.

Well, starting tomorrow (at 7AM PST), she's going to be doing her Valentine's Day/Spring sale. You can see some amazing preview pictures by clicking here; these are but a small taste of the gorgeous wonder that is to come. To quote the lady herself:

"Like last sale, I'll put up several batches over a couple of days at different times so people in different time zones and on different work/life schedules have a chance to look. Will be first come/first purchased based on email only. Doing this one in plenty of time to get things out for Valentine's, I think. I will mail directly to gift recipients if you like, with notes included if you wish."

Her prices are reasonable, her pieces are amazing (and surprisingly sturdy; note that the cats have as yet failed in their many, many attempts at killing mine), and these are some of the best Valentine gifts I've seen in a long while. Seriously, look and be amazed.

Wow.

If you're in the Seattle area, come to the Wayward Coffeehouse tonight at eight for HEAPING PILES OF AWESOME.

Dude, I dressed Mel like Captain Tightpants for you people. That counts for something, right? And our set list is made of win. And what Betsy does on "Mama Said" will break your heart.

See you there.

Since we're counting down to the release of A Local Habitation—seventy-one* days, but really, who's counting? Beyond, I don't know, me—it seemed like a good time to get some awesome new graphics out into the world, courtesy of the always-spectacular taraoshea. And so, without further ado, I direct you to take a look at the Icons and Wallpapers Page of my website. Go ahead. I can wait.

Now, aren't those amazing? The icon and wallpaper sets at the top are totally new, designed to go with A Local Habitation; we'll be adding a few more in January, but this was just a mind-blowingly awesome start. If you scroll to the bottom (or make use of the handy new navigation bar, of which I am justly proud), you'll find the wallpaper and icon sets for Winterfluch, the German edition of Rosemary and Rue which comes out this January. Tara did a remarkable job of recreating the feel and emotion of the cover without using any part of it in her graphics: that's all stock photography and CGI magic. She also relabeled several of the original Rosemary and Rue icons with the new title, so as to create a wider range of choices (this is going to be standard with non-U.S. releases).

I am beginning to get excited and scared and all that other good stuff. But the new graphics are gorgeous, and I totally recommend taking a peek.

(*Seventy-one is the twentieth prime number, and is the twin prime of seventy-three. It's also the permutable prime of seventeen. This has been your moment of prime number math geekery for the day. Sadly, I feel better now.)

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

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

And now I give you...the gang:



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

Ahem. Squee.

That is all.

Back in May, I posted about the damage that a bad cover can do to a good book. You can view the original post (and ensuing discussion) here. The consensus at the time was that having a bad cover sucks, and that if your book's cover is bad, it will probably impact the sales of the book. Not exactly rocket science, but still, it's a good thing to think about, especially since—as authors—very few of us have control over our own book covers, so it's good to be prepared to do damage control.

Recently, I got a look at the cover for an upcoming book in an urban fantasy/paranormal romance series That Shall Not Be Named, because I try to be polite like that. For purposes of discussion, we're going to call it An Armchair to Remember, book three in the Ikeamancer series. Our main character, Casey Carpenter, has inherited the family gift for communicating with furniture. Naturally, she uses this power to fight crime, since she doesn't really have anything else to do with her time.

On the cover of the first book, Cushioning the Blow, Casey was pictured as described in the text: reasonably pretty but not going to be anybody's new super-model, with dark hair that needs styling, a wardrobe that looks like it could handle her daily duties as a general manager at Ikea, and a few iconic items in the background. On the cover of the second book, From Desk 'Til Dawn, she was drawn slightly differently, but still believably the same character. Same basic styling, attitude, etc.

On the cover of An Armchair to Remember, she looks like a seventeen-year-old Goth hooker. Please join me in saying, um, what the hell?

Now, I understand that characters will look slightly different from cover to cover. Toby looks a little bit different on the covers of Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night...but these differences are, at least from my perspective, still allowably within the range of "this character is Toby." It's the variance between a picture of Alice drawn by Mimi and a picture of Alice drawn by Bill—they look different, but she's still clearly Alice Price-Healy, getting ready to kick your ass. You can draw the same character within a range and still have it believably stand for the same individual.

The cover for An Armchair to Remember isn't doing that. In fact, if I didn't know the book (the theoretical book), I'd guess that we were looking at the first in a spin-off series starring Casey's ironically trampy-campy younger sister, Carrie, who communicates with clothing and manages a Hot Topic in the mall. It doesn't look a thing like Casey. Casey wouldn't be caught dead in that outfit. It is, essentially, the equivalent of sticking Toby in a mini-skirt and push-up bra for the cover of Late Eclipses, after giving her a bleach job and some serious makeup.

How jarring is this for you? How likely are you to pick up An Armchair to Remember when it looks so different from the other books in the series—when the main character looks so different? Is this going to make you look elsewhere, or do you not care by the time you get to the third book in a series? What about new readers? If this was the first volume you'd seen, would you buy book one after digging it out of the back catalog? Inquiring minds (namely, me) want to know.

1. Sketched and started inking my third possible Borderlands bookmark. See, Borderlands Books in San Francisco does limited-edition bookmarks with interesting art on them, and—after my signing/book release party/circus sideshow earlier this month—they invited me to design one of the upcoming bookmarks. As is so often the case when I am paralyzed by choice, I said "screw it," and am doing multiple bookmark designs for them to choose from. The first one, involving clownfish mermaids, is completely done; the second, involving seahorse mermaids, is in rough pencils with some inks; now, so is the third, involving Allomai and a fuck-ton of ribbons. I find this soothing and infuriating and an excuse to buy more art supplies. Everybody wins.

2. Bought the new Kelley Armstrong book, Frostbitten. This was sort of a comedy of errors, since the guy at Borders hadn't put it on the shelves yet, but had put it on the "we're putting this on shelves" cart, which meant there were no copies in the back of the store. I eventually located the cart, thus locating my book, and money was exchanged, rather than bloodshed.

3. Read the new Kelley Armstrong book, Frostbitten. What? I read fast. Also, it was so awesome I couldn't put it down. I love Kelley Armstrong's work so much.

4. Watched the final episode of season three of Primeval, the second-to-last episode of season one of Warehouse 13, and two more of the audition episodes for the current season of So You Think You Can Dance. A few people have informed me that they don't believe I watch as much television as I say I do. To them I say: you're probably right. I think I watch substantially more.

5. Sort of accidentally knocked out a thousand words on Deadline, which will get included in the next word count post, because I'm feeling too lazy to bother with doing that much math right now.

How about you?

Last year, jimhines wrote a fantastic book called The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. My mother really really loved it, thus proving that a) she has taste, and b) Jim is trying to woo her away from me. Hmmmph. But since we're both DAW authors, it's not like I could stay cranky for long.

Well, in just two weeks, the sequel to The Stepsister Scheme can finally be yours. The Mermaid's Madness [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] comes out October 6th, bringing you everything you loved about the first Princess adventure, and so much more!

Because it's almost Jim's book-day birthday, I thought he needed a pretty little dead ghoul to make the day even more exciting. Mel was surprisingly mellow about being turned into sushi, probably because the ocean is full of sharks, and she likes anything with more innate killing capacity than she possesses. I was a lot less mellow when I realized that I was going to need to hand-color all that fish netting. Oh, the things I do for love...

Happy book-day, Jim! Hooray for The Mermaid's Madness!

Maybe I'm silly—absolutely I'm silly, have you met me? Silly is a part of my religion—but I sort of feel like, if I'm going to do Dead Girls for the books of my friends, I ought to do one for my own book. Just so that Toby doesn't feel like she's being left out and, I don't know, come for me in the night.

Not that she won't be happy to do that anyway, given half a chance.

With Rosemary and Rue officially hitting shelves one week from today (and unofficially hitting shelves all over the planet as I speak), I'm a little tense, twitchy, and flipped-out, but I've mostly reached a state of mellow acceptance. I expect this to last, oh, about as long as anything else has in the past few weeks, but at least I'm getting work done during this little lull.

So here's our Mel, reminding you what's important for the weeks to come:



Thanks, everybody, for being a part of the pre-release madness. It's been awesome.

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

Bill did the cover for my third album, Red Roses and Dead Things (click here to see the back cover), in addition to several other awesome pieces for me. Want to see exactly how bad-ass he is? Check out his latest:



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

Hey, folks! Lots of you suggested fanart contests of one type or another, but we've had very few entries in the latest ARC giveaway! Please join in the fun, and make something surreal for the rest of us to stare at.

Remember, original art, photography, icons, and just about anything else are being gleefully accepted.

Oh, and I got home alive from San Diego.

I try to avoid posts consisting of nothing but links, I really do. But this made my day so much better that I felt the need to share:

The A to Z of Awesomeness.

Truly the world is a wonderful place.

You may or may not remember my delighted review of Evernight [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] by Claudia Gray. What's more, you may not remember my enthusiastic recommendation of the sequel, Stargazer [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]. That's okay, because I remember these things, and I'm always more than happy to remind you. I try to be generous that way.

I got bored and was left unsupervised with art supplies. This is never safe for the people around me. What's more, I was left with art supplies, the desire to make a book advertisement, and the capacity to compose cheesy lyrics. Be afraid! And so I give you...

The Evernight Alma Mater.

Dear Evernight, so tall and proud
And spookily you stand
Like something from a horror film
That lays waste to the land.

Your looming windows watch the night
Like blind and angry eyes,
Your judgment falls on each of us
As from your steps we rise.

Dear Evernight, with pride we come
To learn what you impart,
We pray that you will let us live,
Though you don't have a heart—

Your uniforms are well-designed
To make the bloodstains blend,
And what we learn to shatter here
We also learn to mend.

Dear Evernight, your hallowed halls
Will teach us how to thrive,
And those of us who graduate
Are lucky to survive!

...it sort of scares the cats when I sing it in the shower.

...well, Tanya Huff's new book, anyway. Today is the release of The Enchantment Emporium [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies], the latest awesome adventure in awesome adventuring from Tanya Huff, the woman who basically woke up one day and said "hmmm, I think I'll create a genre." (Seriously, if you like books about vampires, or anything in the urban paranormal class of books, you should buy this book just to say thank you.) Better, she and I share a publisher, which means I had the opportunity to find out early just how awesome The Enchantment Emporium really is.

How awesome?

Damn awesome. I've been reading and loving Tanya's work for years, but I haven't enjoyed one of her books this much since Summon the Keeper (which I read about eight or nine times over the course of a single summer, because I loved it that much). The Gale family is enthralling, their mysteries just mysterious enough to keep me reading, and just clear enough not to become annoying. The language is gorgeous, and the story is a hell of a lot of fun. If I have any complaints, it's that this isn't a series yet, so I can't promise more. Then again, sometimes the best stories are the ones that stand all by themselves.

The Enchantment Emporium: because while we can't be absolutely certain WalMart is ripping holes in the fabric of space and time, who wants to take the chance?

Available now from a bookstore near you, assuming you live somewhere where there are actually bookstores. If not, it's available from Amazon and Mysterious Galaxies (here, have the links again: [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]), and there's even a Kindle edition if you live in an atmosphere hostile toward paper.

Yay!

Having been asked to provide personal notes to go with my personal list of places I knew needed to receive ARCs of Rosemary and Rue, and being the balanced, reasonable, under-achieving person that I am, I decided to slack off, and just fill in some pre-printed mad libs...and if you actually think that's true, you should really go take a look at my website. "Balanced, reasonable, and under-achieving" is about as accurate a description as "made of enchanted pumpkin pie, stapled together by magical weasels from the moon." (Actually, the latter description may be more accurate. I like pumpkin pie...) Viewing this as an excuse to acquire new art supplies (always an aspiration of mine), I promptly went to the art supply store, where I acquired...

* Two packs of watercolor greeting card blanks
* A new set of gorgeous watercolors in a cunning stack
* Two new watercolor brushes

...yes, I probably ought to seek help, but I really don't care. I am a content and comfortable addict, whose habits mostly just inconvenience my capacity to put anything away. I've spent a comfortable week composing, sketching, and painting watercolor "thank you for reading" notes to be sent off to my publisher. Since I really wanted to get them into the mail today, I spent about two hours last night doing a watercolor marathon as I finished off the detailing on the various cards.

Enter Alice.

Alice loves water. Watercolors are, surprisingly enough, largely based on what? On water. So Alice thinks that me doing watercolors is awesome. So awesome, in fact, that she really wants to help. Guess what doesn't actually help me do fine detail watercolors? Wow. Good guess.

Step one, set up watercolor station. Take brushes away from Alice.
Step two, start working. Discover that Alice is drinking the water I use to clean my brushes. Take water away from Alice.
Step three, clean brushes. Discover that Alice is now drinking the purple paint. Take paint away from Alice.
Step four, reassure self that yes, this is non-toxic paint.
Step five, discover that Alice is now licking the paint off one of the envelopes. Take envelope away from Alice.
Step six, put Alice off the couch.
Step seven, put Alice off the couch.
Step eight, give up and let her drink the damn paint water if she really wants to. At least she's not drinking the actual paint.
Step nine, discover that Alice is now a blue classic tabby and purple and orange and green.
Step ten, put everything away on a very high shelf, resolve never to work in oil paints.

My cards are done, and you can barely tell how much "help" I got. And since the paint is non-toxic and Lilly loves bathing Alice (whether she needs it or not), everything is basically back to normal. Except, perhaps, my nerves.

First, thank you to everyone who chimed in. I heard some versions of the legend that I'd never encountered before—including one from my own backyard!—and since the hitchhiking ghost is one of my favorite urban legends, this was awesome. Several people cited songs about hitchhiking ghosts, which I thought was even cooler, since I have what is essentially a song cycle about a hitchhiking ghost named Rose.

For the curious, and those who've always, let me tell you about Rose Marshall:

• "Pretty Little Dead Girl." This is the title song of my first album, Pretty Little Dead Girl, and appears on Stars Fall Home. I consider this the "urban legend" version of Rose's story, as well as the "filthy libel" version.


• "Graveyard Rose." The other side of Rose's legend. This is the one they tell in truck stops all across the country, at least inside my head.


• "Waxen Wings." She was a girl with hopes and dreams and prayers of her own, once upon a time. Things didn't turn out well. Things so often don't, for girls like Rose.


• "When I Drive." I've never been sure exactly how Rose died, except that she did it on the road, and she did it in a way that left her stranded. I think she was trying to get away.


• "Counting Crows." When you're eternally sixteen, and eternally trying to hitchhike your way to home, you sometimes get a little lost along the way.


• "Hanging Tree." Rose falls in love over and over, and they always grow up, and leave her. She's like a dead Peter Pan that way.


• "On Dead Man's Hill." But before they leave her, they love her, at least for a little while; at least until they outgrow her. Someday, maybe one of them will get her home.

I do love my pretty little dead girl. Which brings us to today's special bonus! You may remember that I've occasionally posted really awesome artwork done by the remarkable Amy Mebberson. Amy isn't currently taking private commissions, since she's busy doing art for the official Pixar comic books, but I am equipped with many, many secret hidden goodies. And today, I bring you...

( Let me tell you about Rose Marshall, the sweetest girl that you'd ever see...Collapse )

(Please note that the things in my subject header will not necessarily be presented in the order in which they were, um, presented. Don't mind me, I'm very blonde today.)

Travel plans, take one: As many people have been able to put together from my vague rumblings, I'm heading for New York a week from, um, yesterday. Yeep. This is almost purely a business trip, as I'm going out to see my publisher, have lunch with my agent, and generally behave like a grown-up member of human society. (Kate even managed to get me into wool pants. Everybody say 'thank you, Kate.') I'm taking a red-eye flight from San Francisco on Tuesday night, and I'm going to be gone until the Ides of March. Internet access will almost certainly be limited during this time, because dude, I'll be in New York. Also, this is going to be Yet Another Trip to the East Coast during which I don't get to go to Maine. Given the estimated temperature in Maine at this time of year, that's probably for the best.

Travel plans, take two: I'm taking a much shorter trip at the beginning of April, flying up to Seattle to see my dearest darlingest Vixy and Tony, catch the pure hammered awesome that is Sooj in concert, and, oh, right, pick up my brand new kitten from Pinecoon Maine Coon Cattery. Pinecoon is run by Betsy Tinney, who's also serving as one of my subject matter experts for Discount Armageddon. It's weird to think that I'm about to have a cat that isn't a Classic Siamese, but I wasn't able to find any local catteries with kittens -- and I'll be honest, I fell in love with Betsy's cats the minute I walked in. I'm not happy about leaving Lilly alone while I go to New York, but at least I know her only cat status isn't going to last for long. Plus, my kitten? Is awesome.

Number geekery: According to today's count, Rosemary and Rue comes out in 180 days. This is a good number, but I liked yesterday's number better, because 181 is a strobogrammatic prime. A strobogrammatic prime is a prime number that, given a base and given a set of glyphs, appears the same whether viewed normally or upside down. It's one of the only primes that can't be defined with a simple algebraic equation. Also, depending on the way a given language writes its numbers, certain primes change from strobogrammatic to not strobogrammatic. And this is so cool. There just aren't words for the awesome. (I am a total number geek.)

And now, behind the cut, the cool.

( We cut because this graphic is not small, and breaking your browser is rude.Collapse )

...or, to stop paraphrasing Grease II, who might that irritated looking woman with the brown hair, the sensible clothing, and the large knife be?

Does this give you a clue?

In other news, yes, that is the cover illustration for October Daye, book two, A Local Habitation. Not the cover, mind you -- the cover illustration. I'll be posting the book covers here as soon as they're finished and I'm allowed, but since my awesome awesome awesome cover artist has posted the illustration, I'm allowed to link to it. (I'm also allowed to order a print. Because my walls need to have Toby hanging from them. It's a moral imperative.)

Please note that Toby looks better, cooler, and more just plain Toby than I ever dreamed she would be. We used to play this game of 'how bad can it get?' when talking about my eventual book covers. These games usually included words like 'blonde' and 'chain-mail bikini.' Instead, I got a genuine snapshot of the bitchy, curt, wonderful woman who lives inside my head, and now everybody else can see her, too.

I am happier than words can express.

Since I taunted everybody with the idea of art cards earlier today, here; have a scan of the first six. (This is the smaller version, since nobody loves a graphic the size of Kansas. If you click on it, you'll go to the fully-sized graphic. It's not massive, but it's not tiny, either. Because, y'know, that's a really exacting set of measurements.)



From top to bottom, left to right, you have my first Ravens in the Library art card, my first Grants Pass art card, a random drawing of my pretty little dead girl, my first Velveteen vs. art card, my second Ravens in the Library art card, and my first Rosemary and Rue art card.

I have no real idea yet what I'm planning to do with these, other than, well, apparently 'draw a lot.' I've got another Velveteen card to ink and color, another Toby card, another Grants Pass card, and two Discount Armageddon cards. Three, technically, if you want to count portraits of Antimony as a part of Verity's book.

Because all those buckets of spare time had to go somewhere...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Review the proofs for my new album, Red Roses and Dead Things. Decide that they are, yes, sufficiently steeped in mad science, horror, and awesome sauce. Return them to the printer. I should be receiving my albums on January 26th, which is what we call 'cutting it very, very close,' but will still allow me to do a formal album release at Conflikt II.

* Announce the awesomeness that is Ravens in the Library, a benefit anthology for SJ Tucker. Announce this to, among other people, my mother, who responds with an hour-long rant about the state of American medicine. I could charge admission to my mom when she's worked up about something, I swear.

* Receive edits for my Ravens in the Library story. Review the edits, and determine that yes, they're pretty much all accurate. (This is why I have people who read for me. It's a vital part of not looking like a total idiot every time I turn something in.) Life is good.

* Approach the cage where the supine form of Late Eclipses of the Sun lurks, waiting to strike. Poke a stick through the bars. The book does not respond. Rattle the stick around. The book does not respond. Unlock the cage. Suddenly get attacked by five hundred pages of snarling, possibly rabid manuscript. Decide to start work on Saturday, when I have access to a bone saw.

* Turn in some website corrections to my long-suffering, utterly fabulous web dude, Chris. (Mysteriously, Chris is setting up the new interface so that I can make certain small text changes on my own. I think, perhaps, working with the world's most obsessive editor is getting to him.) (I love you, Chris.)

* Do a lot of inking to make the items listed above less aneurysm-inducing. Because nothing says 'soothing' like three panels of cross-hatching.

What's new with you?

So y'all may have noticed me talking a goodly amount about the works of jimhines lately. This isn't because he bribed me, ironically enough; it's just that I find his books deeply entertaining, and I have a very low threshold for amusement sometimes. And it is in the spirit of my low threshold for amusement that I take this opportunity to remind you that The Stepsister Scheme comes out tomorrow. I haven't posted my full review of the book yet -- although I have posted my mother's -- but I found it to be a fun, fast, flippant take on the classical fairy tale heroines of old. Less 'Joss Whedon does Disney,' more 'Warren Ellis and Steven Moffat do the Brothers Grimm.' (Knowing Ellis and Moffat, they're either doing them in, or doing them some serious physical damage in an alleyway.)

I would happily hand this book to an eleven-year-old girl who likes to read, having been one, and thus having a decent recollection of what I would just skim over because hello, still boring. I would just as happily hand it to any adult friend, male or female, and be like, dude, check it out.

So anyway, The Stepsister Scheme, by Jim Hines, from DAW Books. January 6th, 2009. Help yourself through the post-holiday hangover with some ass-kicking princesses and a whole lot of wacky fun.

In honor of this most exciting event, I present another shot of my resident Pretty Little Dead Girl, this time in full-on Cinderella mode. (I promise you that the only similarity to the book is the archetype. Jim's Cinderella is a lot less likely to slit your throat, empty your pockets, and leave your body by the side of the road for the crows to peck at.) Now that I'm free from the confines of the calendar, I'm finding myself with an assortment of really odd, occasionally really amusing pin-ups. Because my brain does not believe in allowing me to have any of that mythical thing referred to only as 'down time.' Expect more randomness in the weeks to come, although I'm likely to save them until and unless I have something appropriate to post (like, say, this).

Whee!

I've spent the past year idly working on a calendar of 'Pretty Little Dead Ghouls' -- twelve months, twelve pin-ups, twelve implications of horrific violence either just past or just around the corner. All accompanied with chipper quatrains. Because I am just marginally odd that way.

This post contains twelve fairly good-sized images, each of which links to an even larger image. If your connection doesn't deal well with such things, here's a link to the gallery:

http://pics.livejournal.com/seanan_mcguire/gallery/0000qt1b

Let's take a peek, shall we?

( Because nothing says the new year like a lovely calendar, here's a lovely calendar for you to enjoy. And be a little bit afraid of.Collapse )

Hey, folks. So...

1. I am still in Seattle, land of weather that is entirely alien to me.

2. I'm not dead. I'm just experiencing some rather awesome technical difficulties when it comes to accessing Livejournal. Seriously, it's like my data is being delivered by carrier pigeon. I can post -- barely -- but answering comments is a task akin to stumping the Sphinx at Trivial Pursuit. So posting will remain infrequent until a) this problem is resolved, or b) I go home.

3. The house concert on the 3rd is still on, for all you local folks. The set list is smoking, and we're going to be doing a variety of songs that most of you won't have heard before. Including, terrifyingly enough, 'Dear Gina.' (I love this song like burning, it's creepy as hell, and it's always creepier live. That's just how this stuff works.) Be there or be, I don't know, elsewhere.

4. Voodoo Doughnut is quite possibly the place where good pastry gets to go when it dies. I mean, I ate a Captain Crunch doughnut. How often do you get to say things like that, in this world or in any other?

5. I've finished the latest 'Velveteen vs.' story, which will be going up here soon, and have mapped out the next six or so. My poor little superhero, she never gets any breaks. But she does occasionally get broken. Coming soon, 'Velveteen vs. the Eternal Halloween.'

6. I've also finished doing the base inks for the Conflikt II program book cover, and I'll be doing the zip-a-tone over the next few days. It's essentially made of awesome. Awesome, and tentacles. Which are essentially the same thing, so hey.

7. I've finished through chapter twenty of The Brightest Fell, also known as 'Toby Daye, book five.' My 'write far enough ahead that even if you get hit by a bus, the series can continue for years' plan is definitely working. Memo to self: avoid the bus.

8. Interpretive dance of the bacon on John Scalzi's cat = totally fun, and totally funny.

9. I do, however, miss my own cat, and expect her to start trying to destroy Oregon in her maddened rampage any day now. Which, well, would be amusing, if nothing else.

10. I don't really have a tenth thing. The list just looked incomplete and a little bit lonely when I tried to leave it off at nine, so I figured I'd come up with something. What I have come up with is, apparently, the fact that I got nothin'.

How's with all of you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Art is awesome.

Look what the amazing, fantabulous, incredible Amy Mebberson made for me! (PS: You totally want to track down and buy her comic book, Divalicious. I'll review it properly when I have time, but for right now, it's two volumes -- a mere twenty dollars! -- of sheer awesome, incredibly well-drawn, and fully rockin'.) But anyway:



That's Verity Price, front and center, looking like she's about to go and kick some serious cryptid butt. The three women behind her are the three generations that came before her. In red, plaid, and a rather rabid expression (she has grenades), we have her grandmother, Alice. In green, curls, and a deceptively placid expression (she has grenades, too), we have her great-grandmother, Fran. And in yellow, ruffles, and a manic grin (her husband has grenades, she has an army of devoted followers), we have her mother, Evelyn.

Did I mention that the cast of InCryptid is sort of scary?

Art is awesome.