Wow. Here we are again.

As of today, we are fifty days from the release of Pocket Apocalypse, the fourth book in the InCryptid series, and the second book narrated by Verity's older brother, Alexander Price. This is it for him, at least for right now; this is where he takes a bow and wanders off into the wings to do something else for a while. Verity will be taking over again for book five before she hands the baton off to their little sister, Antimony, to narrate books six and seven. And just the fact that I can type that sentence with a straight face proves that I am the luckiest girl in the world.

So where are we right now? Well, I'm gearing up for some more giveaways, some of which will be totally effort-free (RNG 4 LYFE), some of which will require a little more work (fan artists, start your engines). I'm editing book five, and prepping for book six, which is the first in my new two-book contract. Thanks to everyone who bought Half-Off Ragnarok and made it possible for me to write Antimony's books. Please keep reading, so I can keep going. I want to make it all the way to the end of this series.

I'm still not sure what I'm going to do as a pre-release countdown this time (or whether I'm going to do one at all). Suggestions are totally welcome! And of course, we'll have another new short story going up on the website around the time the book comes out, featuring another Johnny and Fran adventure. We're coming to the end of their time as the focus of our historical narratives. I'm excited to be moving on Alice and Thomas, one of my all time OTPs, but I'm going to miss Johnny and Fran.

Thank you all, so much. Thank you for allowing me to tell these stories. Thank you for being here. And thank you for buying my books. This was a series that had a very narrow market when it started, and you bought enough copies to make DAW see that it had an audience, and that I should get to continue. Soon, we'll break through the candy shell and expose the true darkness of what people keep assuming is my fluffiest universe. Soon.

I can't wait.

The random number generator has spoken, and the winner of a copy of Chicks Dig Gaming is...

wenhaver

Please contact me via my website contact form within the next twenty-four hours to provide your mailing information. All information must be received via my website to be considered valid. If I do not hear from you within twenty-four hours, you will no longer be eligible to receive your prize.

Five more drawings to go!

...a copy of Chicks Dig Gaming!

Welcome to the seventh of the Twelve Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 25th (some other winter holiday). Each giveaway will have different rules, and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 29th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, still mailing shirts).

The seventh giveaway is for a copy of Chicks Dig Gaming. This is going to be a random number drawing, because that's working well so far.

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate that you are willing/able to pay postage.
3. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Monday, December 22nd.

Game on!

It's fifty days to the release of Symbiont, book two in the Parasitology trilogy. (Book three, Chimera, will follow in 2015.)

Parasite was my first hardcover, and my first non-Newsflesh work as Mira Grant. The reception it's received has been amazing, and I cannot wait for people to get their hands on the second book. Vixy says it's better than the first one. Trust Vixy. Fox girls never lie.

Fifty days. That isn't long at all.

It's long enough to be the world.

Fifty days. That's how long we have before The Winter Long will be on bookstore shelves (US on-sale date is September 2nd). Book eight. We made it to book eight. I remember when I was just caught in a loop, rewriting books one through four over and over again, making grandiose plans for book five, but never quite managing to break free and do anything new. Now I'm getting ready to start on book ten, and the path is very clear ahead of me.

Fifty days and five years: that's the distance between Rosemary and Rue and The Winter Long. At an average of 350 pages a book (average; please don't comment to say "but this one was only 338..."), that's almost 3,000 pages of Toby, with more to come. Honestly, I'm amazed she's lived this long, given everything that I've put her through. She's too stubborn to die and too fun to kill, which is probably the only thing that's saved her.

Fifty days and you get to find out everything I haven't been saying since book one. This is the volume where a lot of chickens come home to roost: it's always been planned as the game-changer for act one of the series. I think I managed to accomplish that. Early review copies are out in the world, and thus far there have been no spoilers, for which I am very grateful. I really like it when people can discover what I've done for themselves.

Fifty days. I'll be somewhere in Europe when this book drops (probably in Edinburgh, with Amal, hiding under whatever piece of furniture I can wedge myself beneath), twitchy and waiting for the reviews to come in, yet terrified of reading them. I wish I could be here to do my normal release day funtimes. I'm glad I'll be far away. Somehow, both emotions are succeeding in existing at the same time.

Fifty days. That's so long.

Fifty days. That isn't long at all.

Yesterday, with very little fanfare, we slipped under fifty days to the release of Sparrow Hill Road. In forty-nine days precisely—seven weeks, seven short, short weeks—Rose will be on store shelves, and everyone who missed her first road trip will have the opportunity to take it in a whole new way.

I am excited.

I am delighted.

I am terrified.

Rose is one of my favorite people. She's my pretty little dead girl and the spirit of Sparrow Hill Road; she's the girl in the diner and the girl in the green silk gown. She's a story about stories, and I am both beyond ecstatic that she's about to meet her wider audience, and incredibly nervous about the whole thing.

Let me tell you about Rose Marshall.

I promise she won't bite.

...I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'd promise never to do it again, but let's face it, you're going to be hearing this joke a lot over the next several months, frequently from me. So, uh, look, a punny bunny! Anyway:

As of today, we are fifty days from the release of Half-Off Ragnarok, the third book in the InCryptid series, and the first book narrated by Verity's older brother, Alexander Price. It's a little weird for me, since—like Verity before him—Alex gets to narrate two books on his first outing, and I've already finished the second. For me, he's an established protagonist with two complete adventures under his belt, and for you, he's the new kid on the block, taking over from someone many of you have already learned to love. So that's weird. And I'm still a little stunned that I get to write these books in the first place. Like, I can't even articulate how amazing this has been for me.

So where are we right now? Well, I'm gearing up for some more giveaways, some of which will be totally effort-free (RNG 4 LYFE), some of which will require a little more work (fan artists, start your engines). I'm editing book four, and prepping for book five, which is the last on my current contract (subtext: please, please, if you can, if you enjoy this series, buy it, so I can keep going). I'm getting ready for book launch, and looking in awe at the upcoming UK release of book one, and yeah. It's all amazing.

I'm still not sure what I'm going to do as a pre-release countdown this time (or whether I'm going to do one at all). Suggestions are totally welcome! And of course, we'll have another new short story going up on the website around the time the book comes out, featuring another Johnny and Fran adventure. We're coming to the end of their time as the focus of our historical narratives. I'm excited to be moving on Alice and Thomas, one of my all time OTPs, but I'm going to miss Johnny and Fran.

Thank you all, so much. Thank you for allowing me to tell these stories. Thank you for being here. And thank you for buying my books. This was a series that had a very narrow market when it started, and you bought enough copies to make DAW see that it had an audience, and that I should get to continue. Soon, we'll break through the candy shell and expose the true darkness of what people keep assuming is my fluffiest universe. Soon.

I can't wait.

There are twenty-five days remaining before the release of Midnight Blue-Light Special, the second book in the InCryptid series. I am...I'm still not quite sure that I believe it, honestly. This is such a difficult series to explain to people, because it's so silly and so serious at the same time, and I'm still a little bit in awe of the fact that I'm allowed to write it.

Thank you, thank you, to everyone who's taken a chance on this series. Thank you for looking at my pink, pink cover and my silly, silly cover blurb, and going "Sure, this is worth my time and/or dollars." Thank you for reading and reviewing and spreading the word. I honestly couldn't be here without you.

Thank you also to my agent, and to everyone at DAW Books, because let's face it, I can be a little odd sometimes, and when an author who's doing pretty well with a dark urban fantasy series says "I wanna write something with talking mice," you'd be forgiven for being a little, well, hesitant. But they didn't hesitate. They said "Seanan has done good things with strange concepts before, and they let me have my weird little world full of cryptids and blood feuds and secrets.

There are not enough thanks in the world for what I'm feeling right now.

Thank you all.

As of today, we are fifty days from the release of Midnight Blue-Light Special, the second book in the InCryptid series. I am...honestly, I am sort of in shock over here, still. This is one of those series that I desperately wanted to write, and never thought I'd be allowed to. Multi-generational family epic with talking mice and telepathic mathematicians? Seriously? But DAW believed in me, or maybe wanted to see if I'd actually produce the book I was talking about, and somehow that turned into a five book contract and a lot of time spent with the Price family.

I am so blessed, I can't even begin to express it. The fact that I can tell these stories at all is an honor. The part where I get paid for it is like...what? Are you sure? Really? But I do, and it's amazing.

I'm still not sure what I'm going to do as a pre-release countdown this time. I did the alphabet for Discount Armageddon, but that really only works once. Suggestions are totally welcome! And of course, we'll have another new short story going up on the website around the time the book comes out, featuring another Johnny and Fran adventure. Lots of things brewing here in Chez McGuire.

Thank you all, so much. Thank you for allowing me to tell these stories. Thank you for being here. And thank you for buying my books. This was a series that had a very narrow market when it started, and you bought enough copies to make DAW see that it had an audience, and that I should get to continue. Soon, we'll break through the candy shell and expose the true darkness of what people keep assuming is my fluffiest universe. Soon.

I can't wait.

I made history three times this year.

Wicked Girls was the first single-artist CD (as opposed to a compilation) ever to be nominated for the Hugo Award.

I was the first woman ever to be nominated four times in a single year, although several men had managed to accomplish that particular hat trick.

I was the first person ever to be nominated four times in a single year...and actually win something. Every other four-timer has proceeded to lose all four times, thus providing that splitting your voting block is a dangerous thing.

Thankfully, this third bit of "making history" was not pointed out to me until the absolute last minute, since otherwise, I think I would still be under my bed, hissing madly at anyone who tried to poke a stick under there and get my attention. (I know my friends. Many sticks would be involved.) We're talking full-on "Seanan goes feral," which differs from "Seanan goes wild" in that it features less naked, more bitey.

I am still a little bit stunned.

Since I have a book coming out in fifteen days, I figure it's time to once again offer to answer your questions about the world. So...

I will make five blog posts detailing aspects of Toby's universe. Ask me anything! I will not answer every question, but will select the five that I think are the most interesting/fun/relevant, and will detail them to my heart's content. There's a lot to learn and know, and asking loses you nothing.

Leave your questions on this post. I'm declaring comment-reply amnesty for any that I choose not to answer this time, since otherwise, my wee head may explode.

Game on!

ETA: Things covered last two times we did this: inheritance, fosterage, madness, historical records, Cait Sidhe court structure, the Changeling's Choice, locational biology, where fae races come from, shapeshifters, and merlins.

I've sat down with my old buddy, the Random Number Generator, and together, we've selected the three winners* for this ARC giveaway.

From the United States of America, huggebear and junebug130!

From the United Kingdom, _the_firedancer!

Please contact me within the next twenty-four hours, via my website contact form, to provide mailing information. Contacting me through any other means will result in your message being ignored, and a new winner being chosen.

Congratulations to everyone who won, and watch this space for more giveaways!

(*I had to draw five numbers to do this, because the first two people selected had not listed their country of origin. Even if you're sure I know where you live, if the rules say "list your country or you can't win," you must list your country, or you can't win. I'm terribly sorry not to be sending ARCs to those two people. Please, please, follow the rules as written. I hate being forced to reject entries as much as you hate not to win.)

Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds. You and your arithmetic will probably go far. Or something like that. I am surviving! I am surviving this wet, cold, mucky, awful, no good at all weather week, and I'm doing it with cheer and elan, because I am on the New York Times Bestseller list. Nope. Not tired of saying that. Not gonna be, either.

Here is the current shape of my 2012, with travel dates and everything. Beautiful travel dates. Hope to see you sometime in the months to come.

2012

Publications:
Discount Armageddon, March 2012.
"We Will Not Be Undersold!", March 2012.
"No Place Like Home," April 2012.
Blackout (as Mira Grant), June 2012.
Ashes of Honor, September 2012.

"Rat-Catcher," middle 2012.
"Laughter at the Academy: A Study in the Development of Schizotypal Creative Genius Personality Disorder (SCGPD)," late 2012.

Conventions/Appearances:
Consonance, March 2-4, Newark CA.
Borderlands, March 17, San Francisco CA.
AggieCon, March 23-25, College Station TX.
Emerald City Comic Con, March 30-April 1, Seattle WA.
San Diego International Comic Convention, July 11-14, San Diego CA.
Confluence, July 27-29, Pittsburgh PA.
Chicon (WorldCon 2012), August 30-September 3, Chicago IL.
World Fantasy Convention, November 1-4, Toronto.
Windycon, November 8-11, Chicago IL.

No fixed deadline/being written/unsold:

"Fiber"
"Daughter of the Midway, the Mermaid, and the Open, Lonely Sea"
"These Antique Fables"
"Pixie Season"
Sparrow Hill Road
"Velveteen vs. The Uncomfortable Conversation."
"Velveteen vs. The Fright Night Sorority House Massacre Sleepover Camp, Part III."
"No Place Like Home"
"Stingers and Strangers"
"Loch and Key"
"In Sea Salt Tears"
The Chimes at Midnight
"San Diego 2014"
"We Are All Misfit Toys in the Aftermath of the Velveteen War"
Parasitology
Echo
"How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea"

We are now, Amazon's reindeer games notwithstanding, nine days from the release of Discount Armageddon. I am surprisingly calm, I think because I got all my hysteria out of the way early last week, when I got dogpiled by trolls. It's kind of amazing how that will burn the fretting right out of a girl. Book's out in nine days? Anyone calling me things I can't bring myself to repeat in front of my mother? No? Then we're totally cool.

It's interesting to contrast right now with nine days to Rosemary and Rue, when I was, well...let's just say that food and I were not long-term acquaintances during the few weeks right before that book came out. I was a screaming puddle of neurosis. I still am, to a certain degree; I'm not going to pretend that I'm not worried. Will people like this book? Will they like the world? Will they understand why I needed to start this series now, rather than waiting another x years to finish Toby?

(I got so annoyed at Joss Whedon when he left Buffy to work on Firefly, and I still think both shows would have been better served if he had stuck out the end of Buffy Summers and her story before moving on. So I get that particular "hey!" reaction. But books and TV are different, and this is only slowing Toby down a little bit, not leaving her entirely without supervision.)

I want this book to do well, partially because, well, no one writes a book they're hoping to see fail, but also because I want to spend so much time in this world. I want to write the full stories of four different generations, and that's going to take time. That's going to take commitment, and not just from me.

But oh, I love this world. And in nine days, reindeer games aside, you get the chance to maybe hopefully love them, too.

Nine days.

One month from today (give or take a few days, given shipping times and shelving patterns), Discount Armageddon will be officially released into the wild. People will be able to buy it, not just pre-order it. Reviews will hopefully become more common, without becoming dramatically meaner. My teetering pile of ARCs will be replaced by a teetering pile of author copies. The beat, as they say, will go on.

This is the first new series I've launched under my own name since 2009, when Rosemary and Rue came out. Feed was released in 2010, and I was a nervous wreck about it, but at the end of the day, Mira Grant was another person; if she failed, I would cry a lot, because Feed was a book I really, really loved, but it wouldn't crush me. But this...

I've had some people email me to sadly ask whether I'm tired of Toby. I'm not, and the sixth book comes out this fall (Ashes of Honor). She's just emotionally exhausting, and it's hard for new readers to get into the series without feeling daunted. Whereas InCryptid is something I've really wanted to write for a long time, with characters and situations that I really love, and it's a series and world I've put together with more experience under my belt, allowing me to avoid some of the flaws in Toby's world. Yes, flaws: Toby's world, for all that I adore it, is innately Eurocentric, and can be confusing sometimes, even though the only type of supernatural creatures to exist are the fae. There's a lot of history, and I sort of assumed everyone understood feudalism. It's my world, I made it, and I love it, but there's something amazing about starting from scratch.

A month before Rosemary and Rue came out, I was vomiting with terror. I'm calmer this time, although I'm still anxious as all hell. Will people like my baby? Will it do okay? Will the other new releases beat it up and call it names? Will sales be strong enough that I'm allowed to continue past the second book? It would make a tidy duology, but you've met me: two is never enough. I want to go much, much further in this world, and whether I get to do that will depend partially on book one. I am a bundle of anxiety and neurosis.

But it's almost here. No matter what else happens, no matter what comes next, Discount Armageddon is almost here.

That's pretty much amazing.

Well, here we are. One Salt Sea 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 One Salt Sea to fuel your world-buster cannon? 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 One Salt Sea have a successful launch is...buy the book. Please, please, buy the book. During the first on-sale week if you possibly can (September 6th through 12th), 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 Borders is gone. I actually dare to hope that my on-sale date may be accurate this time. That said, I've heard unconfirmed reports of early copies found at Books-A-Million.)

Twenty-five days. That's how long we have between here and One Salt Sea. A dollar for each of those days would buy me a bucket of chicken from KFC, or two new paperbacks (with tax), or two tickets to a matinee, if someone else bought the popcorn. An hour for each of those days would give me time to take a nice long nap.

Twenty-five days.

I'm still amazed that this book is something real, that it's about to be something people can buy and have for their very own. I'm still sort of going "but but but the first one just came out, how can we already be on book five?" I'm writing book six. I'm dreaming book eight. And I'm scared as hell of the fact that book five is about to be on shelves.

I think milestones are always big and hard and scary. But this one is just weird. I am amazed and aghast and a little bit afraid of what comes next.

For Late Eclipses, I provided lists of facts and answered questions to ease people toward for release. What should I do this time? Suggestions welcome.

ETA: Guys, I can't, and won't, do drabbles. Not only are they very brain-intensive (and wouldn't you rather have book six?), but the effort of keeping them from being full of spoilers would explode my head. I've tried to indicate nicely that this isn't an option, and now I'm just saying it.

For me, every book has a theme song, one that doesn't always have anything to do with the actual book. It's just the piece of music that gets stuck in my head whenever I start thinking about it. And for One Salt Sea, the song is "Ten Years," by Talis Kimberley.

Here's how it was, after he left me,
Queen of this island, and mother of his child.
I knew the risks—war's always chancy—
Still, I was happy to wait, for a while...

In fifty days—less, if historical stocking oopsies bear out one more time—you'll be able to walk into your local bookstore and pick up a copy of One Salt Sea, the fifth of the October Daye adventures. In fifty days, you'll be able to find out what happens next. In fifty days, you're done waiting, for at least a little while.

I admit it: I'm terrified. Late Eclipses was incredibly well-received, and that makes the stakes even higher for book five. What's more, One Salt Sea is the book that, for a very long time, I couldn't write, because I was so sure that the series would never find a home that I ran out of steam about a quarter of the way into book five, over and over and over again. In a way, I never did write that particular book. The one you'll be able to buy is very different, even though the skeleton is the same. The Brightest Fell, my original book five, may never see the light of day...or if it does, it will show up as something new and strange. And that's okay.

Fifty days. I can barely believe it. We've come so far, so fast, and it's all so strange.

Thank you for coming with me.

Because ten years is a very long time
When there's no guarantee he'll come home,
And the war was so far away,
And I was still Queen...Queen, and alone...

(All lyrics quoted today are by Talis Kimberley, who is awesome.)
(All twitchiness is mine.)

We are now seventy-five days from the release of One Salt Sea. Two and a half months, basically, before the fifth Toby book hits shelves and people can buy it and it's just out there. In the world. Where people will read it, and talk about it, and do all the things that people do with books, whether they like them or not.

This never gets any less frightening. In fact, right now, it comes with an extra bonus dose of frightening, because this is the last Toby book for a year—my March 2012 release with DAW is going to be the first book in the InCryptid series, Discount Armageddon. So this book has to be amazing enough to keep people from forgetting about me.

It's scary and exhilarating and a little "wait, what?" Because this was always the book I couldn't finish. Book five is where I ran out of steam, because these books were never going to come out, and five finished books was just too much for my heart to take. And now it's about to be on shelves. In seventy-five days.

Remember that I have an ARC giveaway going now, which you can enter through tomorrow afternoon. I'll open my second giveaway next week; it's going to involve photography, since we need to have something slightly less wash-and-wear.

Seventy-five days to high tide.

Wow.

Okay, so. A few things...

1. I am still assembling the T-shirt spreadsheet. I had intended to finish last night, but then my home internet decided to emulate the mighty banana slug and travel at a speed of approximately three miles per hour, making navigating LJ borderline impossible. So if you haven't heard back from me, you do not yet need to worry. I will post one more time when the spreadsheet is done, saying "if you haven't heard back from me, worry." But if you followed the instructions (name, size, color, email address on the original post) or contacted me and asked politely for an exception, you should be fine.

2. I just found out that apparently, my drummer on Wicked Girls was never paid. I thought he'd been paid out of the money I gave my producer, but no, that all went to mixing. Given the math of albums, this is totally believable, but marginally, you know, inconvenient. So if you don't yet have a copy of Wicked Girls, or wanted to get one for a friend, now would be an awesome time to do so, as I now have an unexpected recording-related bill to pay.

3. I have a convention this weekend, and word counts to make, and I'm trying to post a piece of Newsflesh-related short fiction every day during the countdown to Deadline. So in the interests of maintaining my own sanity, I'm declaring amnesty from my normal "answer all comments" blog policy where those posts are concerned. I'll try to answer direct questions and the like, but I won't answer every expression of "yay, more story." I'll read and appreciate them all, I just need to use my time in other ways right this second. :)

4. My phone is dead. Not just a little dead; dead-dead, the great death from which there is no returning. So I'm a little grumpy, and only accessible via electronic channels right now. Some of which don't work from home, where the internet is toast. Did I mention that this was the best week ever?

5. There is no number five. I just didn't want to end the list on an even number.

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.

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

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

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

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

Ah, Saturday. A day for sweet relaxation. A day when the working author can at least pretend to get caught up on all her word counts. And, well. A day that marks Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] being exactly three days from release. (Yes, I know, some stores have it out early. This doesn't make me a happy bunny, so please stop telling me about it. OCD means never coping well when people change your math.)

Some people have asked me why, exactly, they should spend their hard-earned dollars on my books, rather than on all the other lovely things they could be spending their dollars on. So I am here to present you with three excellent reasons why you should buy my books. Take two. They're small.

Reason #1:



Reason #2:



Reason #3:



Buy my books so I can continue to feed the furry monsters that sleep with their many, many sharp kitten-teeth only inches from my tender flesh. (That's Lilly, Alice, and Thomas, in order. It's actually an older picture of Alice, but she was so damn cute that I couldn't resist.)

Three days!

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] is officially five days from release, and most of those days are part of the weekend, which means they'll pass in like, eight minutes, flat. The point of no return is sending nice postcards, and wishes we were still there. Sadly, we've passed it. In honor of passing things, here are five things I wish I'd known when I started publishing (but am probably glad I didn't).

5. By the time you've survived peer critique, the agent search, submissions, and editorial, you're pretty much accustomed to bad reviews. You'll never be used to them, but they're no longer the shocking "but...but...but I'M THE PRETTIEST PRINCESS" catastrophes they were in the beginning. This will do absolutely nothing to prepare you for the bad reviews which have nothing whatsoever to do with your book. Bad reviews I have received: "This costs too much, so it sucks." "This book had no sex in it and I wanted sex, so it sucks." "No one told me this book would have fairies in it." There is no avoiding these reviews. No matter how much you want to.

4. Everyone in the world is going to assume that you, as author, have a great deal more knowledge and control than you do. You will constantly be asked questions to which you will not have the answer, and some people will not believe you when you tell them that really, you don't know. Also, if you're wired anything like me, you'll start having trouble not snapping at people after the seventy-fifth time you're asked something. This is a problem, unless it was the same person asking the question seventy-five times. In that case, snap away.

3. Again, if you're wired anything like me, you'll probably have become a writer because you enjoy writing. It's what you do for fun. Yay, writing! This becomes a little complicated when suddenly, writing is also your job. Sadly, the odds are good that after about six to eight months of existential angst, you'll find yourself unwinding from a long session of writing by...writing something else. On the plus side, your agent will love you.

2. An awful lot of traditional publishing is "hurry up and wait." Patience is a virtue. So is the ability to distract yourself with bad television.

1. It never stops being terrifying, exciting, and basically the most interesting thing going on in your world. It may, however, stop being terrifying, exciting, and the most interesting thing in the world for your friends. Be prepared to buy interest with chocolate.

And now, ladies and gentlemen...Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is officially six days from release. That's less than a week! How am I supposed to get all my freaking out finished in less than a week? Since flailing around screaming that the sky is falling doesn't help with my countdown, here are six things you may not know about me.

6. I love snakes and spiders, have no fear of sharks, and tend to giggle hysterically when I'm on a plane and it hits a patch of turbulence that makes it feel like we're going to fall out of the sky. I am, however, morbidly terrified of pudding. This translates into a fear of any type of slug that isn't so ludicrously colored as to seem like a special effect.

5. I will not go into brackish water, because of the potential for leeches. Even if I am assured that there are no leeches in the entire country, I will not go into brackish water, because of the potential for leeches. Leeches are just not okay. Thank you, Stand By Me. In an attempt to conquer my fear, I kept a jar of leeches in my kitchen for a whole year. Those leeches were okay, because they were behind glass.

4. My collection of My Little Ponies is epic and vast, and contains almost all of the larger buildings from the original 1980s run of the toy line. Yes, including the Paradise Estate, which is roughly the size of a large card table. In that misty, far-off future where I actually have an office of my very own, it's going to wind up evenly divided between research material and plastic horses. Because that's just how I roll.

3. I grew up really, really, really poor, and I read really, really, really fast. These things combined mean that I grew up a dedicated re-reader, and will read books that I enjoy five, ten, or even twenty times. My count on The Stand is somewhere in the mid-fifties. The weirdest thing about my current bounty of available reading material is the lack of re-reading. I haven't read any of my favorites in over a year, and it's making me twitchy.

2. I have these long, elaborate, lucid dreams that seem entirely real when they're going on, even down to my needing to eat and use the bathroom in my sleep. They always end when someone tells me that I'm dreaming, and while they tend to be very realistic and grounded, they also tend to involve elements of "in a perfect world," like, you know, being published. Part of me spends every day afraid someone's going to tell me I'm dreaming.

1. My childhood idols were Vincent Price, Marilyn Munster, and Doctor Who. Considering that, and considering the way my life has turned out, I don't think I'm doing so bad. And I think they'd be proud of me.

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.)

We are now eight days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. I've been counting down to the book release with a variety of lists, some directly related to Toby's world, some not. Today is more like a "well, maybe." See, people ask me about my research. And today, I figured I'd acknowledge those questions by listing eight of the reference books I couldn't live without.

Not all of these books are currently in print. I can't stress that enough. I'm not saying "run out and replicate my reference library," I'm saying "these are the books I use." I've provided Amazon links where possible. Enjoy!

8. The Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook [Amazon]. The second edition of this book has come out in paperback recently, and it's so, so worth it if you're doing anything with characters who don't have modern American names. I use this book once a story, and sometimes more often. It won't replace the need for independent name research, but it takes a lot of the weight off.

7. An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures [Amazon]. Out of print. If the Toby universe has a folklore Bible, this is it. This seminal work by Katharine Briggs was, and is, regarded as the definitive work on fairy lore of its type. I have learned more from reading her footnotes than I learned in some folklore classes. While out of print, used copies are reasonably easy to find. This is a real must for anyone working with European fairy folklore.

6. The Book of Poisons [Amazon]. This is part of the Writer's Digest series about ways for writers to kill people. It's a beautifully put together and researched volume, and while parts of it naturally became out of date while it was still being edited, the historical and natural poison sections are invaluable. Just, ah, don't read it on the airplane.

5. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads [Amazon]. Is this a five-volume set of song lyrics with footnotes and no sheet music? Yes. Yes, it is. Is it an incredible cornerstone in our understanding of the evolution of English and Scottish folklore, and an absolute must for anyone working in those traditions? Yes. Yes, it is. Francis James Child, I salute you.

4. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [Amazon]. The Wordsworth reference dictionary collection is one of the most amazing, most frustrating reference sources in the world. They're impossible to find; there's no exhaustive list; even after years of tracking them down, I keep finding titles at used bookstores that I've never heard of before (and need desperately). Despite all that, if there's a Wordsworth in your area of study, get it. They're amazing reference books.

3. The Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology [Amazon]. This book is still in print. It also costs ninety dollars, so unless you're serious about your cryptid reference library, you can probably find cheaper alternatives. That said, I can use this book to kill rattlesnakes, spiders, and possibly home invaders, so it's totally worth it.

2. A Field Guide to the Little People [Amazon]. Nancy Arrowsmith's Field Guide is another of those absolutely priceless references for fairy and folklore, and had I made this list two years ago, I would have needed to add an "out of print" footnote. But not right now! This is a great book, and I'm so thrilled that it's available again.

1. The Monster Spotter's Guide to North America [Amazon]. Is this a serious work of cryptozoology? No. But it can lead you to new research channels, it can suggest cryptids you might want to look into, and it's just plain fun, which makes it a great reference book for the beginner. It's amazing how a fun gateway book can make a dry-as-dirt advanced course worth it.

Happy reading!

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.

We are now eleven days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. I like to read almost as much as I like to write, and I like to read urban fantasy. So here are eleven urban fantasies you should check out.

11. Dead to Me, Anton Strout. The first of the Simon Canderous adventures, Dead to Me is sort of like a big transcription of the most awesome Bureau 13 book you never got to play in. Simon has actually met Toby in comic strip form, which tells you just how cool I think he is. The fourth (and currently final) book in the series, Dead Waters, comes out real soon now, so this is your chance to catch up!

10. Spellbent, Lucy Snyder. Jessie Shimmer is to most of the lipsticked, high-heeled girls of urban fantasy as Bruce Campbell's Ash is to the movie star leading men of most horror movies. She laughs in their faces, and then she blows the living shit out of something, just to show how awesome she is. I could not love this book (and series) more if it came to my house and baked me cookies.

9. Death Most Definite, Trent Jamieson. I sometimes feel like way too much urban fantasy is set in the United States, when there's this whole huge amazing world out there in need of some shit randomly exploding. Trent Jamieson's Death Works series addresses this gaping hole in my life with style, elan, and yes, massive property damage, which is something I like in a good Australia urban fantasy.

8. Spiral Hunt, Margaret Roland. The Evie Scelan books use aspects of deep Celtic mythology that just blow me away, because they're the sort of thing that shows loving, passionate research. The fact that they are combined with a loving, passionate story about the world's most paranormally gifted bike messenger (who is a total bad-ass) is basically just icing on the cake. The cake of awesome.

7. Staked, J.F. Lewis. Maybe I'm pushing the definition of "urban fantasy" a little by including this hard-rock vampires and demons and extensive property damage oh my delight, but I really don't care. My post, my genre, my rules...and my stars, do I love this book. It's fun, it's frantic, and it's a whole new take on vampires. Including a main character who regularly bursts into flames.

6. Carousel Tides, Sharon Lee. This isn't urban fantasy in the "bright lights, big city" sense. It's urban fantasy in the "magic leaking in around the edges of the world, all the things you never noticed, but somehow always knew had to be there" sense, and it's brilliant. It's a sweet, brilliant book, and the fact that the scope of the setting is small makes the story that much bigger.

5. Night Shift, Lilith Saintcrow. I liked Dante Valentine; I love Jill Kismet. But more, I love where this series goes. Seriously, even if the first two books were shit (which they're not; they're good, and get better with each volume), it would be worth reading just to get to book five, which contains some of the bravest, ballsiest writing I have seen in this genre. Seriously awesome.

4. Summon the Keeper, Tanya Huff. Out of everything Tanya has written, I think I love the Keeper books the very best of all. I went through three copies of this book before I stopped reading them to death, and I only stopped because I developed a large enough "to be read" shelf that I don't have time for that sort of literary abuse anymore. This series remains fascinating and unique.

3. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull. This was one of the foundational works of modern urban fantasy. Without Eddy and the Fae, your bookshelf might look very different. I know mine would. If you haven't read War for the Oaks, and you like urban fantasy, you really should, if only so you can see where some of our modern tropes and traditions came from. Also, the book kicks ass.

2. Bitten, Kelley Armstrong. This is not my favorite volume in Kelley's Women of the Otherworld series, but it's the first, and it's brilliant in its own right. Plus, if you like it, you've just unlocked a multi-volume series that persists in getting better and better with every page she writes. I am in awe of this world.

1. Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner. You can't read this yet. It's not out yet. But just you wait; it'll blow you away.

We are now twelve days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. I'm starting to freak out, and that means it's time to talk about things that make authors freak out. Here are twelve things about authors.

12. Asking an author who has just released a book (or is in pre-release for a book) "When's the next one?" is like asking a woman who's nine months pregnant "When's the next one?", only the author is probably not nine months pregnant, and is thus more likely to hit you. I am aware that this metaphor makes me out to be one of those faintly frightening women with twelve children, planning for twelve more. It's still true.

11. Most authors don't know where their ideas come from. Which doesn't mean you shouldn't ask; I seriously doubt I could be the one who killed that question in the hearts and minds of readers everywhere (although if I was, SFWA would probably saint me). It just means that when we answer you, we're probably lying.

10. No, that nice author you met on the bus once doesn't want to read your manuscript. I'm sorry. That nice dentist you met on the bus once doesn't want to clean your teeth for free, either.

9. An author on deadline is faintly neurotic, faintly obsessive, faintly hysterical, faintly depressed, and faintly insane. Sometimes just one of these; sometimes all five. Poke at your own risk.

8. Most authors are writing the genres they're writing because they love them. Telling a romance writer he or she should write a real book is a good way to find out how heavy that romance writer's satchel or purse really is.

7. I would do anything for love, but I won't do that. I would, however, do that for research, especially since research, unlike love, is tax-deductible.

6. Authors who say "I'm staying home to write on Friday night" aren't saying "I am lonely, please save me from myself." They're saying "I'm staying home to write on Friday night." This goes double for authors with day jobs.

5. I dare anyone who says writing isn't work to copy-edit and revise a three hundred page manuscript in under a month. Oh, and it has to be better when you finish than it was when you started. If you can do that, you can say anything you want.

4. Authors tend to be fiscally conservative, because there's rarely a guarantee of when the next check will come. This makes us dangerous in warehouse stores. We really do go "I could totally buy enough toilet paper wholesale to survive nuclear winter." Never look in an author's pantry.

3. Ways not to introduce yourself to a working author: "Nice to meet you. I read your last book, and it was shit." If you do that, please expect to get "Nice to meet you. I hope you have medical insurance," as a reply.

2. Everything eventually shows up in a book. Everything. Yes, even that. No, we're not trying to be mean. It's just how our brains work.

1. Authors write because we have to. It's how we're made. So please forgive us for those Friday nights, okay?

We're fourteen days from the release of Late Eclipses, my fourth published urban fantasy! And so I give you fourteen things about urban fantasy that I think you ought to know. You're welcome.

14. Urban fantasy has its roots in fairy tales and folk stories. Remember that when "Little Red Riding Hood" or "The Boy Who Had No Fear" were first being told, they were about contemporary people, in contemporary settings. Despite its relatively recent resurgence in popularity, urban fantasy is a very old genre.

13. You can usually tell the difference between urban fantasy and paranormal romance based on the covers (but not always). If the woman has a head and all her clothes, it's probably urban fantasy. If she's naked or headless, it's probably paranormal romance. If it's a fully-clothed man, it's definitely urban fantasy. If it's a shirtless man, it's definitely paranormal romance. Both genres like brooding gazes and leather trousers.

12. Not all urban fantasy is set in cities; you get urban fantasy set in small towns, rural areas, and even the suburbs. "Urban fantasy" is just a convenient label.

11. Much modern urban fantasy draws aspects from westerns, film noir, horror movies, fairy tales, and yes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's a good genre for magpies and people who enjoy writing snarky dialogue.

10. One of the big advantages of urban fantasy is the way it lends itself to writing series. If you want to do twelve books about the adventures of your Ikeamancer, you're a lot more likely to succeed in urban fantasy than in any other genre.

9. One of the big disadvantages of urban fantasy is the way it lends itself to writing series. Stories set in these worlds tend to splinter, and because the readers are there, it's harder to resist the urge to just roll with it. (I am a natural serial thinker, so this is perfect for me. Other people, it ends in tears.)

8. No, not all urban fantasy involves sex you don't want your mother reading.

7. The label "urban fantasy" is just an umbrella for something that can include comedy, horror, romance, adventure, mystery, wackiness, and good old-fashioned caper stories. It provides a frame. Individual authors will provide the details.

6. A lot of the issues people have with urban fantasy covers are there to give a visual clue as to the contents of the book. Tattoos, leather pants, and impractical shoes have become hallmarks of the genre, and they're likely to be on the cover whether or not they appear between it.

5. I created Verity Price partially to justify having a heroine wearing impractical shoes. I'm probably not the only one.

4. Good urban fantasy is enthralling because it's so immediate. The present-day world is there; all you need to do is buy into the changes.

3. Bad urban fantasy is bad because it's so immediate. The present-day world is there, and changes that aren't supported by the text are going to be jarring in the extreme.

2. Most urban fantasy writers are writing what they do because they love it. That's why it's such a rich, varied genre right now, with so many things to offer. Urban fantasy really does have something for everyone.

1. I love it, and read it, too.

(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.

So here we go again: as of today, we're fifty days away from the official North American release of An Artificial Night [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. (Of course, if the first two books are anything to go by, we're actually about thirty-five days away from my hysterical meltdown in the Borders near my office.) If I had a nickel for every day remaining before the official release, I wouldn't have enough to buy myself a Diet Dr Pepper. Which would be sad. I'd rather have a quarter for every day remaining before the official release. Then I could buy lots of Diet Dr Pepper.

Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] was my first book. A Local Habitation was my second. They taught me a lot about marketing, pre-release crazy, post-release crazy, going crazy from good reviews, going crazy from bad reviews, living by my own rules regarding engaging reviewers and trying to explain myself, hyperventilating when I see my book on shelves, and trying to look nonchalant when I really just want to be screaming "I WROTE A BOOK OH MY GOD YOU GUYS LOOK LOOK LOOK YOU CAN TRADE MONEY FOR GOODS AND SERVICES AND THE GOODS AND SERVICES ARE MY BOOK!!!" while jumping up and down and providing expository hand gestures. This whole process has been a learning experience, and while I'd like to claim that it has left me a calm and mature author, prepared for anything, the fact of the matter is this:

I am so totally going to cry the first time I see An Artificial Night on the bookshelf. And then I'm going to call Vixy and make shrieky bat-noises until she talks me down from my happy hysteria. Because that's just how we roll around here.

I leave for the San Diego International Comic Convention the day after tomorrow. I leave for Australia eleven days before the book officially hits shelves. And I'm Guest of Honor at Spocon next weekend. So clearly, my method for planning a book release mostly involves running myself ragged, falling down, and sleeping until it's all over. This apparently works for me, so who I am I to argue?

Fifty days. A year ago, I was worried that no one would like Toby, that she'd just disappear into the urban fantasy jungle and never be seen again. Now I'm worried about not letting people down, and whether they'll still like Toby now that she's been through a little more and grown a little bit and made up her mind about a few things.

Fifty days.

Wow.

Tomorrow, Feed is officially released. That's one. Saturday, Feed is guaranteed to be on sale everywhere. That's five. Numbers, numbers, numbers. I am defined by numbers. Numbers are my bread and my butter, and the things that keep me from going crazy in a bad way.

Both of these are prime. That's something.

I'm a lot mellower about this book release than I expected to be. This may be because I'm getting better at this whole "book release" thing, or it may just be that I'm still completely exhausted following all the crazy surrounding A Local Habitation and finishing Deadline, and simply lack the energy to be insane. I still teared up the first time I saw it on an actual shelf in an actual store (the Borders in Pleasant Hill). Which reminds me, these are the locations where you can buy a signed copy, right now:

* Borders, Pleasant Hill
* Barnes & Noble, San Bruno

Both stores also have signed copies of the Toby Daye books. If you're not local, or want something personalized, remember that I'll be appearing at Borderlands Books on Saturday, May 8th. The store does take requests for personalized books to be mailed basically anywhere on this planet. You can email or call them, and I'd be just tickled to sign a book for you during the event. (Plus, well, if you can't support your local by buying a signed book, be a sport and support my local.)

One day, five days, and my second book release of the year is fully and finally underway, the next grand adventure off and running. I am elated and terrified, and tired.

I need a nap.

When will you rise?

First order of business for today: the winner of our random ARC drawing! Statistically speaking, all numbers are equally likely when you're talking about random selection, but it's always a little bit surprising when the result is between one and ten. So today was definitely surprising, as the random number generator chose "four." So today's winner is apocalypticbob! Bob, please send me your mailing information via my website contact link. You have twenty-four hours. After that, I'll choose another winner if I haven't heard from you!

Second order of business for today: It is now nineteen days to the official "anywhere you go, you will be able to buy a copy of Feed for your very own, and isn't that terrifying?" release of Mira Grant's first novel. In addition to being hugely important in Stephen King's epic Dark Tower saga (say thankee), nineteen is a pretty awesome number in and of itself. It's the eighth prime number, following seventeen and preceding twenty-three. It actually forms a twin prime with seventeen (I like twin primes). It's the seventh seventh Mersenne prime exponent, and the aliquot sum of two odd discrete semiprimes, sixty-five and seventy-seven. All these things are awesome.

Nineteen days. By the time we finish this countdown, Amy will be here to keep me from flipping out on people, the final touches will be put on party planning, and I will hopefully have been able to pick up my Mira wig from the hair shop (I am so the Hannah Montana of horror). The cupcakes will be ordered. My reading will be chosen (yes, there will be a reading this time). Prizes for the raffle will be arranged. And I will hopefully still be breathing. Nineteen days.

When will you rise?

(Since there's some unclarity surrounding the release date for Feed, which Amazon insists is April 27th, and my publisher insists is May 1st, here's my official party line: The book comes out May 1st. It may actually come out earlier than that; it won't come out later. I am reserving my panic for May 1st, that being a good day for freaking out, and fully expect to be hyperventilating by late April regardless. But May 1st is the date that sits at the end of my countdown.)

The little "days until Feed comes out" counter on today's planner page reads "25." If I had a penny for every day between now and book release, I would have...a quarter. Which is still enough to buy a super high-bounce ball from a vending machine, or maybe some cheap generic M&Ms that look kind of like candy-coated bunny turds. Quarters are cool. I like quarters.

This is my third book release and my first book release at the same time, which isn't exactly an experience I was ever anticipating having. I mean, half of me is like "I should be so zen right now," and the other half is going "HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT I AM RELEASING A BOOK WHY IS THE ENTIRE WORLD NOT FREAKING RIGHT THE FUCK OUT?!" Then the zen half is forced to punch the hysterical half in the face, thus increasing the hysteria while reducing the zen, and eventually I just slink away to play with my My Little Ponies until the screaming in my head stops. Also, there is a lot of television involved in this particular healing process. Without cable, the world would be in serious danger right now, that's all I'm saying. Only Fringe and America's Next Top Model stand between you and the death of all mankind.

It's very difficult to yank my brain from fairy tale mode into politics-and-zombies mode, despite the fact that I'm currently ass-deep in edits for Deadline (and sinking deeper every day). It doesn't help that I can't do my normal "carry your netbook and work while commuting" routine, since my back is giving me trouble, and that means I need to minimize what I'm carrying. My netbook is small, yes, but it's dense, and it represents a fairly substantial carrying-capacity commitment, especially when I'm also toting around my purse, my lunch, and reading material for the day. Right now, my writing time is confined to those moments when I am sitting in front of an actual computer. And yes, it's driving me batty. But that's really nothing all that new, now, is it?

It all seems a little break-neck and terrifying, because Feed has been such a fast journey for me. I finished it and sold it inside of six months; the second two books in the trilogy were sold before they were even written. It's a trilogy, which means there's a beginning, a middle, and an end, unlike Toby, where the story gets to go as long as I think it needs to (and I think it needs to go a long, long way). This is the first time I've told a story this big that actually knows where to stop, rather than continuing to spread and grow. I've lived with the Masons for a few years now, but in the grand scope of things, those few years haven't been that long. And now I get to share them. And it's scary. And it's wonderful.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest.

Rise up while you can.

Last night when I got home from a trip to Borderlands Books (where I was roundly snuggled and nose-licked by Ripley the Sphynx), I found a box on my front porch. The box, when opened, proved to contain twenty copies of A Local Habitation. Not ARCs—actual, finished books, suitable for fondling, screaming over, and putting on bookshelves. Alice promptly started trying to eat them. Not to be outdone, Lilly promptly started trying to eat the box that they came in. I have emailed my publisher to thank them for the cat toys.

I called my mother, whose usual response to "Mom, I just got _______" is to show up at my house and refuse to leave until she's managed to acquire a copy for herself. "Mom, I got my author's copies of A Local Habitation," I said.

"Wow!"

"So are you coming over?"

"Not tonight."

You could have knocked me over with a feather. (There are plenty of feathers to be had in my house because, again, cats.) "What? Why not?"

"Idol starts in half an hour."

So now we know where I rank in my mother's eyes. Not second, as I always feared, but third, behind Jim Hines and American Idol. As I cannot swear eternal vengeance against American Idol, I'm going to have to swear it against Jim Hines. He has a lot less in the way of professionally-trained security guards and hungry lawyers. I mean, sure, he's got goblins and all, and to this I say, again, cats.

It's a little freaky to be able to look at A Local Habitation and see it all book-shaped and real, with a bar code and a price tag and an ISBN and everything. I don't think it's ever going to get less freaky. Sometimes I still wake up and wonder "did I really sell the books? If I turn on the light, will they really be sitting on the shelf?" Thus far, they always have been, but my dreams have fooled me before. Although I'd like to think that if I'd dreamt the last few years, there would have been more candy corn and semi-appropriate nudity.

Thirteen days. That's all that remains before A Local Habitation is available on store shelves, waiting to be taken down, read, and enjoyed. Hopefully, lots of people will find and adore it, and hopefully, some of them won't have read Rosemary and Rue, creating a beautiful synergy through which many, many copies of both books will be sold. (Crass commercialism? Well, yeah. But I'd like this series to last for a long, long time, so I think this desire makes perfect sense. Anyone who looks noble and says "I don't care if my book sells well, I just care if it's loved" is either independently wealthy, insane, or messing with you.)

Thirteen days. That's all that remains before the second of Toby's stories is out there for anyone to read. That may be the weirdest part of all this. I mean, I'm used to my friends reading drafts and telling me what they did or didn't like, and I'm used to my publishers (all of whom I know) reading things and telling me what to fix, but there's no possible way for me to know every single person who reads my books personally. It just isn't going to happen. So there are all these strangers out there choosing me to tell them stories, and it's just...it's amazing. There was even a four-star review in the new issue of Romantic Times, a glossy, awesome, nationally-published magazine:

"McGuire's second October Daye novel is a gripping, well-paced read. Toby continues to be an enjoyable, if complex and strong-willed protagonist who recognizes no authority but her own. The plot is solid and moves along at a not-quite-breakneck pace. McGuire has more than a few surprises up her sleeve for the reader."

This is all very real, and very wonderful, and Great Pumpkin, I just hope it goes spectacularly, and that I don't catch fire.

Thirteen days. Wow.

I am not a Triskaidekaphobe; if anything, I'm more of a Triskaidekaphile. I love the number thirteen. I spent the entire year that I was thirteen wandering around feeling lucky (and even extended it into my fourteenth year by quite a bit, insisting that I needed to get thirteen months, weeks, days, and hours of being thirteen). I've always considered Friday the 13th to be "my lucky day," and I love years like 2009, where the stars align just right and we get three Friday the 13ths in a single calendar year. (This year, 2010, the stars have not aligned just right, and we're only getting one, in August. I hope to spend it in Australia, where I will use its potent payload of sheer good luck to not die horribly.)

But why is Friday the 13th unlucky? One could argue that it has become unlucky because so many people believe it is, and there's value in that position, but what started it? Here's the fun part: no one really seems to know for sure. It's a combination of unlucky thirteen and unlucky Friday, and it just bumbles around being baleful at all the other days on the calendar.

So why is thirteen unlucky? Some people claim that Judas was the thirteenth person to join the table during the Last Supper (which doesn't explain why "thirty" isn't unlucky, too, that being the number of pieces of silver he's supposed to have received). Others think it came from the Norse, where alternately, Loki was regarded as the thirteenth god of the pantheon, or just the thirteenth person to show up at Baldr's funeral, having also arranged Baldr's death. (So you know, if you arrange my death, you're not invited to my funeral.) There's an old superstition that says that when thirteen people gather, one of them will be dead within the year, which is statistically viable in certain cases, and not so much in others.

There are also a lot of cultures that hold thirteen to be lucky, one way or another. The Torah describes the thirteen attributes of mercy, and boys become men on their thirteenth birthdays. Italy considers thirteen to be a lucky number, as does Colgate University. Thirteen is when kids can see PG-13 movies unaccompanied, and believe me, that is incredibly lucky when it happens. Also, thirteen is a prime number, which always leaves me well-disposed.

So maybe it's all Friday's baggage. Sure, we tend to regard Friday as lucky in the modern era—it's the last day of the work or school week, it's the day when all the new movies open, and it's the day when bedtime is suspended—but for a long time, Friday was viewed as unlucky. Maritime folklore holds that it's a bad idea to start a long voyage on a Friday. Jesus may or may not have been crucified on a Friday, and "Black Friday" either means "day of horrible disaster" or "the day after Thanksgiving, when we create horrible disasters in the mall parking lot." Who knows?

The theories on why we've decided Friday the 13th is singularly unlucky range from the ancient (Frigga is pissed off about Christianity) to the political (the early Christians made thirteen unlucky because the pagans considered it lucky) to the osmosis of popular culture (Thomas W. Lawson's 1907 novel, Friday, the Thirteenth). Regardless of why it happened, it's unlikely to unhappen any time soon, especially not if Jason and his machete have anything to say about it.

Happy Wednesday the thirteenth! Try not to walk under any ladders.

(Real quick: g33kboi, this is my last call. You have won an ARC of A Local Habitation. If I do not receive email through my website "contact" link with your mailing address by bedtime tonight, I will give your prize to someone else. For serious.)

As of today, we are fifty days away from the official release of A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. (Of course, if Rosemary and Rue is anything to go by, we're actually about thirty-five days away from my hysterical meltdown in the Borders near my office.) If I had a penny for every day remaining before the official release, I wouldn't have enough to buy myself a cup of coffee. I would have enough to make a penny roll, though, which is always soothing. I like penny rolls.

Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] was my first book. It taught me a lot about marketing, pre-release crazy, post-release crazy, going crazy from good reviews, going crazy from bad reviews, living by my own rules regarding engaging reviewers and trying to explain myself, hyperventilating when I see my book on shelves, and trying to look nonchalant when I really just want to be screaming "I WROTE A BOOK OH MY GOD YOU GUYS LOOK LOOK LOOK YOU CAN TRADE MONEY FOR GOODS AND SERVICES AND THE GOODS AND SERVICES ARE MY BOOK!!!" while jumping up and down and providing expository hand gestures. It was, in short, a learning experience, and while I'd like to claim that it has left me a calm and mature author, prepared for anything, the fact of the matter is this:

I am so totally going to cry the first time I see A Local Habitation on the bookshelf. And then I'm going to call Vixy and make shrieky bat-noises until she talks me down from my happy hysteria. Because that's just how we roll around here.

I only have one convention between now and book release—Conflikt, in Seattle—and unlike last year, I'm not the Guest of Honor, which means that I have time to breathe. Of course, I have a convention immediately after the book is released (Consonance, in Santa Clara), but again, not Guest of Honor, just Head of Programming, so I'll be able to stop and stick my head between my knees every once in a while. This is A Very Good Thing, especially since, once A Local Habitation is safely out, I'm going to be putting on my Mira-pants and going immediately into freaking out over Feed.

Fifty days. A year ago, I was worried that no one would like Toby, that she'd just disappear into the urban fantasy jungle and never be seen again. Now I'm worried about not letting people down, and whether they'll still like Toby now that she's a little more comfortable with her new apartment.

Fifty days.

Wow.

Once again, we can celebrate the awesome-ness of the geekery of the world through a spectacular book release counter! Yes, from now through the release of A Local Habitation, we'll be counting down the days to the ultimate awesome, with this totally bad-ass treat.

( Cut because we care. Also to spare your screen from going wicker-kapow.Collapse )

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.)

I was going to post about how today was a hundred days from the release of A Local Habitation and isn't that exciting and isn't it terrifying all at the same time. I was going to post about how today marked the point at which "far from release" became "near release," and all my inner Muppets danced. And then I was looking at my planner pages, and I thought "something about my math looks off."

And then I re-counted.

And then I freaked out.

Today is ninety-one days from the release of October Daye, book two, A Local Habitation. If I had a penny for every day remaining, I wouldn't even be able to buy a can of soda (taxes being what they are). Thanks to my little math error, I have just been dropped off a scheduling cliff, falling past "safely remote" and into "ha ha, gotcha." Yes, it's only nine days, but there's a psychological element to "one hundred" that isn't there with "ninety-one." (Although ninety-one is seven times thirteen, which is pretty awesome. That makes it a semiprime: a natural number that is the product of two prime numbers. Even when math betrays me, I love it so.)

Part of my calm, measured, perky productivity is the fact that I am really a lot more tightly scheduled than most people who haven't actually seen my planner ever realize. Losing nine days is a shock to the system that I didn't particularly need today, and while I'll recover in reasonably short order, I can't say I'm very happy right now.

Arrgh.

EDIT: Here's irony for you: I made another math error. Yesterday was ninety-one days to book release. Today is ninety days to book release. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go Xerox my head.

According to my infallible little planner countdown, A Local Habitation will be released in one hundred and thirteen days. One hundred and thirteen is the thirtieth prime number (I love prime numbers), following one hundred and nine and coming right before one hundred and twenty-seven (my personal favorite prime). It's a Sophie Germain prime, which means that p2 + 1 is also a prime number. Two hundred and twenty-seven, totally prime. Is that not awesome?

Okay. Maybe it's just awesome if you're me. One hundred and thirteen is also a Chen prime, a Proth prime, and an Eisenstein prime with no imaginary part. There's a lot of other fun stuff you can do with this particular number, including treating it as a permutable prime (with one hundred thirty-one and three hundred and eleven). And? One hundred and thirteen is three and a half months to the release of A Local Habitation.

That's a pretty big shocker, huh?

I'm just getting really started with my pre-release madness. Wallpapers and icons are being prepared. The countdown tool is going to be assembled as soon as the graphics are ready. My website is being relaunched, streamlined and spiffed up for the sake of ease-of-use. ARCs are going out, both to reviewers and through fun giveaways. People are starting to get excited. I'm working on the next promo comic.

One hundred and thirteen days. That's, like, absolutely no time at all. That's, like, tomorrow. And immediately after that, I'll put on my Mira-pants and begin working toward the release of Feed. Last year at the San Diego International Comic Convention, you couldn't buy any of my books in the dealer's hall. This year, you'll be able to buy three.

How's that for a slice and a half of creepy pie? Mmm. Tasty, tasty creepy.

I was intending to make this post yesterday, on the actual two-month anniversary of Rosemary and Rue being released into the wild. Tragically, intentions only count in horseshoes and hand grenades, and my post-World Fantasy exhaustion resulted in my spending the evening watching Supernatural and playing "Plants vs. Zombies." I'm actually not all that sorry. I really needed the rest. All that being said...

Rosemary and Rue has now been available for two full months. People I don't know and never will have bought and read my book. (Sometimes I can tell who doesn't know me, because they call me "Mr. McGuire" in their reviews. I find this adorable.) People have loved it, people have hated it, people have called it original and amazing, people have called it the usual urban fantasy fare. I have stopped having chest pains when suddenly confronted with large book displays. I have stopped having stomach pains when stores had other books in my genre, but didn't have mine. I have, in short, calmed down a lot. Much like a woman who spends a year planning her wedding, then finally realizes she can do other things, I am basically recovered.

Which is good, because now it's time to get ready for A Local Habitation. Which is, I think, a better book than Rosemary and Rue (and I do believe Rosemary and Rue to be a good book; I wouldn't have bothered trying to publish it if I didn't). Rosemary and Rue was the book that established my world, and that means that large chunks of textual real estate did have to go toward making the rules coherent and clear; without the rules, the whole towering palace comes tumbling down. It was also the book that made the largest number of introductions—much like inviting all your friends who've never met to the same cocktail party. A Local Habitation gets to skip all that, and go straight to the "smashing stuff" part of our program. I like smashing stuff.

I have learned a lot about self-promotion, event organization, not taking everything personally, keeping myself pointed in the correct direction, organization of the world in general, and not exhausting myself too much. I have learned that no matter how much I feel like I've thrown my book at everyone in the known universe, there will always be people going "Who are you again?" I have learned that a bad review is not the end of the world, and that a good review is exactly as awesome as I always hoped it would be. I have learned to take the time to breathe.

And now, in a hundred and thirty days, I get to learn all these lessons all over again.

Whee!

In two weeks, Rosemary and Rue will be on bookstore shelves. That means that I have thirteen days left in my "days before Rosemary" countdown. Thirteen days. That's just...it's so bizarre. I mean, I've been working with this world, this character, this vast, sprawling story, in one form or another for more than a decade. And now, in thirteen days, anybody will be able to just walk into a store, slap down their money, and walk out with Toby in their hands. Anybody.

That's incredible.

So many good things in my life have been associated with the number thirteen. It's my favorite number. It's also Vixy's favorite number, and meeting her was one of the things that's made the last five years of my life so fantastic. I sold the first three Toby books to DAW on May 13th. Thirteen is the sixth prime number (here's the math geeking you've been waiting for); it's lucky and unlucky at the same time, which is basically the story of my street pennies-and-swamp pratfalls existence, in a nutshell. And now I'm in the middle of one of the most amazing thirteens of my life. Thirteen days before my first book comes out.

That's still incredible.

To celebrate, I'm running an ARC giveaway through Goodreads; it's completely random, and I have no influence over the results, so please don't try to bribe me with candy corn. Not for that, anyway. I'm always open to being bribed with candy corn for other reasons, like, say, you want the sky not to fall on your head. Give me candy corn, and I will continue to do my best to keep that sky right up there where it belongs.

I'm also putting together a list of Things You, Too, Can Do To Help, because it seems like a good way to calm myself down. I like making lists. Making lists is soothing. Oh, and I'm twitching. I'm twitching a lot.

Thirteen days. This is becoming so damn real.

10. I will be on a plane for San Diego in a little over twenty-four hours, on my way to the San Diego International Comic Convention. The SDCC is one of my favorite conventions, because it is, for all the chaos, really remarkably relaxing. I go, I smile, I speak, I shop. And shop, and shop, and oh, yes, shop. I love flea markets, and the SDCC dealer's hall is like the world's best combination of "the comic book store" and "the indoor flea market." Only this flea market has an artist's alley. Life is good.

9. As part of my preparation for San Diego, I took my mother for a pedicure last night. (There's logic here, I swear. The logic is largely "I didn't want to walk home after getting my nails done.") Neither of us is much of a pedicure girl, but sometimes it's nice to just let somebody attack your heels with a pumice stone. Besides, I have super-cute shoes for the parties in San Diego—kitten-heeled green Italian leather—and they require having super-cute toenails to go with them.

8. Alice woke me up five minutes before my alarm by kneading the hell out of my hip, and then throwing herself down across me like a fuzzy blue blanket possessed of most imposing puffiness. This was far, far more pleasant than being woken by the actual alarm could possibly have been, and made hauling my carcass out of bed much easier. After the Blue Team decided to let me get up, that is. Between the two of them, I really don't get to do much that my cats don't approve of.

7. Next up in my reread of the collected works of Stephen King: The Stand. This is one of my five favorite books of all time. Just having it in my purse makes me happy. (Not as happy as IT, which is why IT is slated for rereading at the end of August/beginning of September, but surprisingly close.)

6. According to this week's new releases list, the next volume of the collected hardcover Creepy comes out tomorrow. (Ironically, I won't be able to pick it up until next week, since, well, San Diego, but just knowing that it's on the trucks makes me happy.) These books are basically my childhood in handy, easy-to-shelve form, and their very existence enhances the universe incredibly. I am a happy girl.

5. Rosemary and Rue comes out in forty-one days. Forty-one is the thirteenth smallest prime number. (The next is forty-three, with which it comprises a twin prime.) It is also the sum of the first six prime numbers (2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13), and the sum of three primes (11 + 13 + 17). I love forty-one for being prime, and I love Wikipedia for knowing all this crap.

4. I have a hula hoop! And when I get home tonight, I get to use my hula hoop! I get to stand in the front yard and hula like I've never hula'd before. Well, actually, just like I hula'd last night, only maybe a little bit better, because I've had more practice. I can't take my hula hoop to San Diego, so I have to get my hula in now, while I still can.

3. Rebecca has BPAL waiting for me in San Diego. Specifically, Rebecca has a fresh bottle of Bad Luck Woman Blues (basically my signature aromatherapy calm down Seanan, you can't unleash the pandemic perfume) and a bottle of the new Zombie Apocalypse scent. I am a lucky girl.

2. I have season one of Leverage on DVD. Tonight, I will sit on my couch, ink art cards, and watch con men, thieves, and grifters as they do their con man, thief, and grifter things, and my cats will purr, and the DDP will be cold, and the tomato sandwiches will be incredibly drippy and get all over the damn place, probably causing at least one incident with my art supplies, and life will be good.

...and finally...

1. I am healthy, I have a cute haircut, I have orange toenails, I have a book coming out in less than a month and a half, I have wonderful friends, I have beautiful cats, and I'm about to take off for the world's biggest comic book convention. Life doesn't suck.

How's by you?

In two months (sixty-one days, one thousand four hundred sixty-four hours), Rosemary and Rue will officially Become Available In Stores. If you've pre-ordered a copy, it will be waiting for you behind the counter, or possibly already in the mail. I will be doing my best not to live entirely on candy corn and pumpkin cake (and I will also be failing, because that is just a resolution I cannot keep).

Two months.

This is so little time that it's seriously blowing my mind, because I just can't wrap my head around the idea. Two months. This time last year, I hadn't finished the rewrites on A Local Habitation, and my editor hadn't even seen An Artificial Night...and this time next year, I'll have three books on store shelves, patiently waiting for you to pick them up and take them home with you.

Two months.

Sixty-one is a prime number, the twin prime of fifty-nine.

Two months.

This really doesn't seem real right now.

It is now sixty-seven days to the release of Rosemary and Rue. According to Wikipedia (source of a great deal of numerological wisdom that I don't actually have to type up from scratch), sixty-seven...

...is the nineteenth prime number. (The next up is seventy-one, the next down is sixty-one.)

...an irregular prime. (Don't ask.)

...a lucky prime. (Again, don't ask.)

...the sum of five consecutive primes (7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19).

...a discriminant to the Heegner number -67. (I don't even know what this means, but it's cool.)

...since 18! + 1 is divisible by 67 but 67 is not one more than a multiple of 18, 67 is a Pillai prime. (This, I do know, but it would take an hour to explain, and I'd need puppets or something.)

Also, apparently, "In a Voronoi diagram created using points from the prime spiral, no prime less than 10242 will have a rounder Voronoi cell than 67." Cool, huh? There is no Highway 67, making it the highest two-digit number not currently designating any highway in the Interstate Highway System of the United States. Oh, and in the Prisoner game I was in once, my ex-boyfriend was "67."

Pardon me. I'll just be over here with my ravens and my writing desks, going cheerfully mad.