The odds are decent that you've seen this by now, if you were online at all this past weekend. But since I'm going to be posting about the Hugos a bit this week, I thought it might be kind of me to put the whole ballot up here for people to review. If you don't need to know, don't click the cut. Life is simple!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Hugo Awards, they are given each year at WorldCon to celebrate the best the science fiction and fantasy fields have to offer. They are voted on (and people are nominated by) the members of the World Science Fiction Society. You can become a member by joining the current year's World Science Fiction Convention.

This is important, and we will talk more about it later. But what you should know right now is a) if you're going to WorldCon, you can vote, and b) if you're not going to WorldCon, but you want to have a say in what we, as a community, recognize, you can obtain the right to vote by purchasing a Supporting Membership to the current WorldCon. Supporting Memberships cost $50, and get you access to the entire electronic Hugo Voter's Packet, which contains all the nominated fiction of the year, as well as other exciting goodies. This is a more than $50 value, grants you the opportunity to find out what we as a community think warranted inclusion on a Top 5 list for the previous year, and lets you be a part of making history.

And now...the ballot.

( Click here if you're curious, or just want the reminder.Collapse )

...and between myself-as-me and myself-as-Mira, I am on the ballot four times. Which is the first time a woman has ever been on the ballot four times in a single year. I'm nominated for...

Best Novel, Deadline.
Best Novella, Countdown.
Best Fancast, The SF Squeecast.
Best Related Work, Wicked Girls.

I am both insanely excited and paralyzed with fear, which means I feel sort of sick to my stomach. Thank you, thank you, thank you a thousand times to everyone who nominated; it means the world to me, and we have made history this year.

Congratulations to all the nominees, especially Jim Hines (Best Fan Writer), Betsy Wolheim (Best Long Form Editor), the voice of Toby, Mary Robinette Kowall (Best Novella), Paul Cornell (Best Novelette) and my beloved Cat Valente (Best Novella). I'll post the full ballot soon, when I get over the twitching and the nausea.

Thank you so much. This is such an honor. I am so lucky. I can't stop crying.

Thank you.

Wow, it's been a while since we've had one of these, hasn't it? The proofer spotlight is my way of publicly of thanking the tireless workers in the Machete Squad, who go through endless reams of bad prose and bizarre typos so that you won't have to. Seriously. I would have a lot more problems on the publisher end if I didn't travel with a trained squad of comma-killing, modifier-munching bad-asses. Hail to the Machete Squad!

It used to be a lot easier to get new proofreaders, because I didn't need to find people with the time, appropriate skill set, interest, and proven ability to keep their mouths shut until publication. I could literally just throw thirty people at a project, let them winnow themselves out, and keep whoever survived. Now I need to practice care and...gulp...discretion. But once in a while, someone new comes along.*

Enter Lauren and Priscilla.

Lauren has an amazing eye for time. She actually catches flow and logical progression in a way that none of the other currently active Machete Squad members tends to manage, which makes her invaluable to our cause. She also does line edits and presents herself with a dry, entertaining wit (I like funny in my critique). She's worked on Blackout, One Salt Sea, and Ashes of Honor, and she's amazing.

Priscilla is great with dialogue, flow, and detail work. She's one of my Manhattan-area subject matter experts, which is good; she's also a keen eye applied to general editorial matters, which is great. She's fun, she's funny, she's accessible, and she's enthusiastic, which is not something to be overlooked in measuring the value of a proofreader. She's worked on Discount Armageddon and Midnight Blue-Light Special.

And those are my newest proofers. Look upon their works, oh ye mighty, and rejoice!

(*Please do not comment here volunteering to read for me. I just wind up feeling awkward when I have to turn you down. I don't solicit readers in public, and I don't currently have any openings in need of filling. Thanks for understanding.)

In the Toby books, people tend to swear by (and on) a variety of things, including trees (oak, ash, elm, yarrow, pine), representative symbols for fae ideals (root, branch, rose, thorn), and the three major monarchs of their world. Brooke, being seized by an imp of the perverse one day, went through and actually made a list of all the times people swear by one of the monarchs...and what body parts they swore by.

My proofreaders are special, yo.

So here, for your enlightenment, is the cussin', as listed by Brooke, who is insane.

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF ROYAL FAE SWEARING

Swearing by Oberon:

In Oberon's name (Rosemary and Rue)
Oberon's bones (R&R)
Oberon's blessed balls (A Local Habitation)
Oberon's blood (R&R, An Artificial Night)
Oberon's teeth (ALH, AAN)
Sweet Oberon (Late Eclipses)
Oberon's hairy balls (LE)
Oberon's honor (LE)
Oberon's ass (LE, The Brightest Fell)
Oberon's balls (R&R, ALH, AAN, LE)

Swearing by Titania:

Titania wept (AAN)
Titania's teeth (AAN)
Sweet Titania (AAN, LE, TBF)
Titania's bones (LE)
Titania's rose (LE)

Swearing by Maeve:

Sweet Lady Maeve (RR)
Maeve's tits (ALH,TBF)
In the name of Maeve (AAN)
By the boon of Maeve (AAN)
Maeve's bones (RR, AAN, TBF)
Maeve wept (AAN)
Maeve's tree (LE)
Sweet Maeve (LE)
I swear to Maeve I'll shoot you (LE)
Maeve's teeth (RR, AAN, LE, TBF)

Swearing is fun!

Yesterday afternoon, at the request of my/Mira Grant's publisher, I took my little FlipVideo camera and my little clicky-flashy digital camera down to Cups and Cakes Bakery to document the process of making the famous BRAIN CUPCAKES. Because, well, it seemed like a good way to kill an hour or two. The bakery is closed on Tuesdays, so Tuesday was the best time to have a slightly off-kilter author come in and point cameras at things. It was fun!

I am aware that this thread is useless without pics. Pics will be coming soon, although the odds are reasonably high that they will be posted, not here, but on the Orbit website. Why? Because dude, brain cupcakes. Also, that way Orbit has to do the video hosting, not me. I like things that lead to other people doing the video hosting. Things that lead to other people doing the video hosting are keen.

It turns out, by the way, that people are a lot less willing to accept random cupcakes from a random stranger when those random cupcakes look like tiny frosting brains. This is more of a sign of a survival instinct than I usually see from the human race these days, so I'm going to take it as a good thing. It probably didn't help that I looked bone-tired while offering the tiny brains to people, which created an overall air of "zombie pastry chef" that can't possibly have appealed to the public at large. Many of my friends, sure, but the public at large, not so amazingly much.

I love the simplicity of these tiny sugary treats, their iconic awesomeness, the way that they just say, very straightforwardly, "this is what I am, I am a brain, you can cope." I find myself pondering other ways to make cupcakes relevant to my various projects (although with some projects, this requires no effort at all—Velveteen gets red velvet cupcakes with vanilla frosting and rainbow sprinkles, for superficial childishness atop adult complexity; Clady just gets whatever you're not eating...), because dude, cupcakes.

Everybody loves baked goods.

Two years ago today, I got out of bed (way too early), put on clothes (because nudity is frowned upon on public transit), and went to work. I don't usually remember what I was wearing on any given day, but this one, I do: jeans, bright yellow tank top, pink-and-yellow Chimera Fancies pendant that reads "fairy changeling this is all a dream." It was an ordinary start to what seemed likely to be an ordinary day.

Two years ago today, The Agent was shopping the Toby Daye books, trying to find just the right house for my debut series. I mean, really, we knew what Just The Right House was: DAW Books. It was the very first publisher we'd been in contact with, after being referred there by one of their existing authors. They had exactly the right sort of atmosphere, and they'd published a lot of books I've really loved. I wanted to work with these people. All I could do was hope that they wanted to work with me.

Two years ago today, my phone rang. Caller ID said that it was The Agent—that's actually what her number is saved as in my phone book, because I am sometimes a little bit bizarre about such things—so I excused myself to take the call.

The Agent said three words to me. "We got DAW."

This was followed by a lot of other information about contracts and money and publishing schedules and blah blah blah fishcakes, because I had really checked out completely. Out of the conversation, out of body, out to lunch, buh-bye. I made all the appropriate noises of assent, and managed to sound like I wasn't crying, because years of fake-it-til-you-make-it has made me really, really good at that sort of thing. (Severe back injury plus chronic pain issues plus "suck it up" equals I can sound perky and happy about my situation while being consumed from the toes up by a giant snake. It's awesome. Also sort of bad, because my automatic response to trauma is frequently "gosh, what fun.")

Eventually, the call ended. I went outside. I called Vixy. I made horrible shrieky bat-noises, causing dogs all around San Francisco to bark themselves hoarse, run in circles, and slam into trees. Pigeons lost the ability to fly and splattered down on the pavement like really disturbing rain. Vixy, upon determining that I was shrieky with joy, not distress, made suitable noises until I calmed down enough to tell her what was going on. Then she started shrieking, too. It was a shrieky day.

Two years ago today, I sold the first three Toby books. Today, I have three framed cover illustrations on my living room walls, and five framed covers hanging scattered through the rest of my house. I have books on the shelf with my name on them, and published reviews in places like Locus and the Onion A.V. Club. I have a contract for two more Toby books after those first three, and my fingers crossed for more after that.

Two years ago today.

Wow.

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets updated and re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.Collapse )

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.Collapse )

I love Thanksgiving. I love the excuse to gather people in a teeming locust-mass, turning life into a potluck adventure of giant birds and pumpkin pies. I love the way the house smells once the first bird gets underway, and the sound of chopping, and the random things folks do to innocent asparagus. Most of all, I love the fact that it's a day where people are expected to stop, look at their lives, and really see what they're thankful for. Not what they're supposed to be thankful for; what they are.

Two years ago today, I was still struggling to finish the book that would become Feed, and still wondering if I was being silly in my refusal to abandon my dreams of being a novelist. Now I have one book on the shelves and five more coming out. All four of the covers that I've seen so far have just been amazing. I have an agent I love (and who puts up with my crazy like a real trooper). I have two editors who make me better than I could ever be on my own. I have two publishers who support me. I have anthologies with my name on the table of contents. I am so thankful for all these things that there are barely words.

I am thankful to the unpaid coal miners who labor on the tropical island where my private reality show is filmed. They scold me when I'm heavy-handed, cut out my sloppy adjectives and wishy-washy modifiers, and generally make me strive to become a better writer. These are the people who sometimes get asked to flip around revisions on a short story six times in sixteen hours. I love them so.

I am thankful for the health and happiness of my cats. Losing Nyssa was even harder on Lilly than it was on me, because Lilly just didn't understand. The fact that she has been able to bond with Alice the way she has is just such a huge relief. Alice herself is a revelation every day, as she grows into all her puffy glory, and Lilly remains the cat I've been praying to have since I was seven years old. I'm so lucky to have them.

I am thankful for the reception that Rosemary and Rue has gotten out there in the big wide world. I had faith in my book, I loved my book, but there's nothing like getting that first positive review and realizing that your faith was at least a little justified. Thank you, thank you, to everyone who's read it, who's liked it, who's encouraged me, and who's said they're excited about the next one. It means everything to me.

Finally, I'm thankful for all of you. I don't know many of you very well, if at all, but that doesn't matter; knowing you exist, participate, read, and care? That makes all the effort worthwhile.

Thank you.

Today, I'm processing edits to The Brightest Fell (Toby five) and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. Because whiplash is AWESOME. (Actually, I find working on edits for two totally dissimilar projects at the same time strangely soothing. It means that when my eyes start to cross, I can just switch files and let the other book work the kinks out.

Today's gem from the proofing mines comes by way of Vixy, who comments:

"I don't usually get involved with lagoon maintenance, but I think "seriously" might be a candidate for alligator chow."

Isn't that sweet? She's worried about the health of the alligators in Brooke's lagoon! This is really why my proofing pool works so well. They really care about one another. And I'm starting to think that our cute school mascot may be the alligator.

So I'm in the middle of a super-fast clean-and-jerk on Feed, before I kick it back to my editor. I'm processing comments tonight, and just got this little beauty from Brooke, referring to my tendency to occasionally lean on unnecessary modifiers:

"LARGELY. I wish to efficiently move you on a collision-free path to AN ALLIGATOR'S GULLET."

I love my proofers. I love them so hard.

That is all.

Time once again for my favorite semi-regular feature, Horrible Things What Seanan's Proofreaders Say To Her. Today's special guest star is Brooke, taking us for a tour of her wonderful, terrible lagoon with the following gems.

* "Sort of" and "real" need to have a totally hot double date together in the wishy-washy modifier bistro, which is way more romantic than this sentence. Hop in, guys! Alligatormousine will take you right there! Chop chop! Cupid awaits!

* This digression is mildly boring. Toby is bored because she's bad at it, but not the kind of bored where she starts fights, so I'm bored too.

* Needs a serving of Pronoun-Aid, The Handy Kitchen Helper That Clarifies While-U-Wait.

* That would be a really affecting sentence except for how it starts with almost. ALMOST! ALLIGATOR AQUACISE HOUR! 10% discount when you sign up for two classes at the Lagoon fitness center!

Bless you, Brooke, for the way you abuse me. Also, I suggest you lock the doors tonight before you go to bed. I know where you sleep.

1. I'm not dead! Since it wasn't widely advertised before I went away, I'm in New York for Business Purposes (tm) this week, hanging out with the wonderful crew at DAW, meeting other fabulous people (hi, Colleen!), and generally being A Good Little Author. This has resulted in some truly fantastic things, many of which I'll be sharing when I'm not so tired that I just want to fall down and sleep for a month or more.

2. No, I haven't had a chance to try data recovery tricks yet -- I haven't had a chance to sleep. My flight landed at 7:05 AM on Wednesday, and I've basically been running since then (witness this being my first opportunity to get to the Internet). I'll be at Jon and Merav's on Saturday, and Will will be there; between Geek Thing One and Geek Thing Two, if it can be fixed, it will be fixed. I'll keep everyone posted.

3. On a similar note, while I try to answer every comment made on this journal, I'm not even going to pretend to bother with the data loss post. There's lots more of you than there is (are?) of me, and I'm tired enough that I'd start quoting nursery rhymes and giggling a great deal. Not actually attractive or entertaining. Well, potentially entertaining for you guys, but...

4. There's news on the Ravens in the Library front: while there have been printing delays, the editors are expecting books Real Soon Now. So if you were planning to order a copy before you missed the first wave, now's the time. Remember, I'll smile pretty and even sign it for you if ask me to.

5. Tomorrow, Sheila (my editor) and I are going to go to the New Jersey Pine Barrens, land of cranberries, blueberries, and cut-rate horror movies. I'm very excited about this, because I'm, well, still me.

That's all for right now; the good stuff gets to wait until I'm awake. I miss everybody. Be home soon.

The cast of my personal reality show (So You Want To Edit One of Seanan's Novels?, hosted by Jane, the alcoholic muse who's probably going to get a spin-off on VH1 one of these days) tends to rotate -- not because we kick people off the island, but because editing for me can be a fairly time-consuming experience. Folks who watch me blog periodically comment on how many things I seem to be doing at one time. People who edit for me know how many things I seem to doing at one time, because they're expected to critique them. All of them. At my idea of 'a reasonable speed.' And since I write like the bastard daughter of Quicksilver and Mother Goose, my idea of 'a reasonable speed' is not like your Earth ideas.

I am enormously appreciative of all my readers, editors, and proofreaders (and yes, these are three very different things, although some folks wear more than one hat). Right now, I'm being enormously appreciative of Lu, who had to leave for a few books to go off and have a life -- I know, right? -- but is now back in the saddle and scolding me viciously for my first draft tendency to hit people upside the head with two-by-fours when I'm trying to make a point. It's people like her who get me to stop hitting unless it's necessary.

Lu, this moment of sincere appreciation is for you. Because you just rock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's new with you?

From the Wanlorn:

"Your love of colons is disturbing and bad."

(The Wanlorn also tends to tag my more dramatically twisted sentences with 'LOL' and 'FAIL.' Everyone should have a proofer like her. After going through one of her edit files, I am immune to all future editorial cruelty. How I adore her.)

I also have an enormous file of logic problems from Vixy, who basically attacked the entire manuscript with a giant stick marked 'this makes no sense.' Sometimes I wonder why I let her live. And then I remember that I'd be sad if she were gone.

Ah, the joys of editing.

It's time for another glimpse into the marvelous mind of Brooke, where the Modifier Lagoon Resort provides a happy home for all your unwanted metaphors and wishy-washy phrasing. You know how parents tell kids that the rabid dog is now romping happily in the green grass of a farm that's very, very far away, and it can't call to tell them what a wonderful time it's having because dogs don't have thumbs? The lagoon is like that. Remember the lagoon when you need a place for your modifiers to have...fun.

Anyway, today's specific gem from the proofing mines:

* I've largely skipped a few drafts. Maybe you thought you could sneak by, largely. Maybe you thought I was largely losing my touch. Maybe you thought we'd largely gone soft on WISHY WASHY MODIFIERS. Well you're WRONG. LARGELY! LAGOON! NOW! DROP AND GIVE ME 50 GATOR-PUSHUPS!

And this, after my protagonist made a reference to Pop Tarts:

* Pseudo-pastry deserves a word-construction MEDAL. <3

So now I'm short a few modifiers, but hey, I got a medal! In a much more general sense, Brooke has a major talent for going 'this conversation makes no sense' and phrasing it in such a way that I can actually step back and find my way out of whatever logical cul-de-sac I've managed to run down this time. Brooke. Because Canadians make life better.

I have a lot of people who work very hard for me in the salt mines of my fiction, laboring under a never-ending burden of misplaced commas, inaccurate blocking, this sentence no verb, and completely missing clauses. They are all wonderful. Both by default -- volunteering to proofread for me makes them wonderful -- and in the actuality of the awesome work that they deliver. Seriously, they rock me.

And then there is Vixy.

Most of my proofreaders sleep at night confident in the knowledge that I won't begin instant-messaging them with editing questions at eight o'clock in the morning. Not Vixy. Most of my proofreaders know that there's little chance of my showing up on their doorstep demanding clarification of an editorial point. Not Vixy. She puts her life on the line every day, so that I can turn in a better book.

Every proofreader has their own strengths and weaknesses, and Vixy is, without a doubt, the single best blocker I've ever had the pleasure of working with. She always knows where everyone is standing, and has managed to catch blocking errors that required me to get out a bunch of dolls and recreate the scene. Her tireless efforts and boundless patience are so genuinely peerless and incredible that there simply aren't words for how much I appreciate them.

Plus, she harasses me if I don't finish chapters. And that's a valuable service for everyone. All hail Vixy! All hail.

(I don't have a Late Eclipses of the Sun icon yet, so you're getting my Rosemary and Rue icon, instead. Oh, the humanity.)

So last night, I finished some fairly serious surgical adjustments to the end of Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth book in the Chronicles of October Daye. I also processed a huge whacking stack of edits from Brooke, who once again waded into the alligator pond with machete swinging, whistling a happy song. I love my editors so very much sometimes. Most of the time, actually. They're just fabulous people.

An Artificial Night is still with my agent, who's reading it over so that she can suggest any changes before I turn it in to my editor. We figure turning in the first two books of the trilogy six months ahead of deadline means I can be a little more leisurely with book three (and besides, my due date is still more than a year away). Someone asked me yesterday if I was planning to have the entire second trilogy finished by the time the second book came out, and I just looked at them blankly. Of course I do. Duh.

This is the part in revising a book where I really start to fall in love with it again. We haven't found and fixed all the flaws, obviously, or it wouldn't still be in revisions, but most of the major structural damage has been resolved. The porch has been torn down and replaced with something sturdier, we've had the landscapers come in and do the garden, and the plumbing has stopped making that weird clanking noise. It becomes a little bit more like a book with every day that passes.

I'm excited. Because this is made of awesome.

Me: I'm sadly tempted to -- once I have an announced release date -- make a set of icons that read, y'know, 'X weeks to Rosemary and Rue,' with a per-week 'have you...?' question.

Amy: I think you totally should. You're going to be practically vibrating while you wait for it to come out. It's not nearly as crazy (though totally awesome, I'll happily admit) as the essays on writing you've been doing.

Me: The essays were borderline accidental!

Amy: *tries not to laugh* *EPIC FAIL*
Amy: I love you, honey.

Me: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Amy: Um. Let's just start with how you have to describe something that could well turn into your first nonfiction book as 'borderline accidental.' Emphasis on the 'borderline.'

Me: Are you implying that I did this to myself on purpose?

Amy: No! Absolutely not! Just that you're the sort of person who can do this by ACCIDENT.

Me: ...sadly, yes, I am.

Amy: Whoops, I slipped. Where'd those forty thousand words come from?

(To be specific, today we're spotlighting Amanda-the-physicist, not Amanda-who-isn't-a-physicist. Why doesn't real life work like fiction, where two people are only allowed to have the same name if one of them promises to die five pages later?)

Amanda was one of the first people ever to get their hands on Rosemary and Rue, in a much earlier form. She's also one of my longest-running proofreaders, having now been involved with every book in the series. Oh, and she's married to Michael, the man that Newsflesh was functionally inspired by. All of which makes her an awesome friend, but not necessarily an awesome proofreader.

Luckily for me, she is an awesome proofreader, and because she's known me -- and been reading for me -- for so long, she's capable of making statements that might be offensive coming from just about anybody else. Right now, she's proofreading Late Eclipses of the Sun (the fourth Toby book), and had this to say:

"Okay, hon. During the Shadowed Hills sequence, they are all still having a major attack of stupid."

Behold the honesty! Being a) an academic, b) a folklore geek, and c) a scientist, she then proceeded to support this argument with fully two pages of 'this is why all your characters are dumb right here.' Seriously, two pages, not of edits or continuity catches, but of detailed and nit-picky textual critique. I'm going to lose my entire weekend to rewrites solely based on this set of notes, and I am overjoyed.

Good writers are made by talent, practice, persistence, luck, and alcoholic muses with sick senses of humor.

Great writers are made by their editors.

Quietly he lurks, sharpening his knives, sharpening his wits, and booby trapping his escape routes, lest one of his cuttingly funny, cuttingly accurate comments causes me to bay for his blood. He is...SUNIL, SECRET NINJA PROOFREADER.

And he has just made me laugh so hard that peas came out of my nose. Actual peas, out of my actual nose.

This hurt.

Sadly, it's difficult to quote Sunil's edits directly, despite the fact that they are some of the funniest shit I've encountered in days, because, well, they're very dependent on the text around them. But he's hysterical. You gotta take me word on this one. I meant to just check to make sure he'd used one of my standard editing formats, and wound up processing eight chapters of commentary, because it was too damn funny to stop going through.

One of the best things about becoming a better writer has been the change in the kind of edits that I tend to get. Because, you see, when I no longer need regular lectures on pacing and character development, it becomes possible for my editors to focus on more important things, like causing me to breathe vegetation.

Best end to a Monday night ever. All hail Sunil!

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

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

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

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

I am the happiest blonde there is.

Quoth Brooke:

"I love a good semi-colon, but damn isn't worth one. Comma or full stop. I vote for full stop. Quorum of me. Motion carried unanimously."

You heard it here first, folks: Brooke is a quorum. All the tiny digestive bacteria in the belly of the Brooke have full voting rights, and we poor fools are outnumbered in our mono-organic shame.

And now it's time for more quality adventures in Brooke's Lagoon, where all my wishy-washy modifiers are eventually banished:

"The word very doesn't make first any firster. Misbegotten modifier lagoon has a special wading pool for you, very, with your very own, very hungry family of caymans."

...and...

"Oh, in FACT! I thought it was all a dream! IN FACT. LAGOON. SPLASHY SPLASHY."

...and...

"Yoohoo, very! (whistles) How'd you get out of the lagoon, you little rascal? ALLIGATOR HOSPITALITY SQUAD! PLEASE ESCORT VERY BACK TO THE LAGOON."

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, when you're booking your next vacation, choose Brooke's Lagoon! Maybe you'll never be seen again, but all those postcards that manage to make it back to civilization will be really, really well-edited.

When she's not making me snort Diet Dr Pepper over the editing process, Brooke is a pharmacologist, and helpfully broke her knee in a motorcycle accident. This makes her perfect both for checking the medical details in Newsflesh -- a wacky zombie adventure that will not include glaring pharmaceutical or 'riding your bike without dying horribly' errors. She's concise, generally accurate, and incredibly pointy when she wants to be. How I adore her. (It helps that she's a fellow member of the Orange Army, and while she fights my pandemic-lovin' ways, she shares my desire to turn the entire planet over to the giant squid.)

This is Brooke. Adore her, because there's a more than reasonable chance that she's heavily armed and might destroy you for the sake of her own petty amusement.

Deborah has grown jealous of Mary and Brooke and their apparently untouchable position as apples of mine eye, and has come out of left field with an ENTIRE COMMANDO SQUAD to support her claim to awesomeness. Behold:

* "The No-Punctuation Brigade is pulling a raid and arresting this comma. Bye-bye."
* "The comma from before has been relocated to this prison: he lives here now."
* "The No-Punctuation Brigade is arresting that first comma as looking suspicious."
* "The No-Punctuation Brigade is now employing snipers and has picked off the first comma. Head-shot."

From Brooke, in reaction to a bit of text:

* "Hee hee hee. Thoughtbubble with Raysel holding a flame-thrower, setting Sesame Street on fire."

Also from Brooke, on her never-ending campaign against my tendency towards excessive verbiage:

* "LARGELY. LAGOON. NOW."
* "Usually, you look like of lonely and awkward there. Why don't you come over here, to my nice, soothing LARGELY LAGOON. The alligators will cuddle with you."
* "Yoohoo! Free daiquiris in the LAGOON. What? You say the lagoon smells like lye, and no one ever seems to come out of the lagoon? Ha ha, what a card you are!"

Let's review. My manuscripts are a) apparently monitored by a crack commando squad that believes in shooting innocently misplaced punctuation in the head, and b) have a direct connection to a death-trap lagoon full of alligators.

I knew I liked writing for a reason.

...sitting down at your computer to find yourself informed, gleefully, that the complete technical reconstruction of the computer storage and wireless equipment used by the protagonists of your zombie political thriller has become the weekend project of two of the biggest hardware gurus you know. Oh, and a veterinarian is attacking your animal action sequences, and there's a pharmacologist on-call to check your medical technology.

I have the best subject-matter experts in the universe.

I would make a comment about needing a good virologist about now, but I already checked the functionality of the Kellis-Amberlee filovirus by several folks at the CDC, so I figure I'm probably doing okay in that department. I love the CDC. My friend Shawn constantly worries that they're going to start tapping my phone looking for signs that I'm planning to destroy the human race with genetically modified smallpox, but that's okay; everybody needs a hobby. And I already have several political junkies, a few news junkies, and at least six zombie experts on-call.

(This includes me. I practically have a PhD in the living dead. Again, everybody needs a hobby.)

This is going to be the most fun book revision process ever.

Today's gem is from Amanda, who says:

"The comma doesn’t want to live here, hon. Set it free to go do honest work somewhere else."

Gotta love those punctuation activists, working hard to improve the living conditions of commas everywhere.

The latest cuts are in from my crack squad of machete-wielding flying monkeys (aka, 'the editors), and today, Brooke has decided to take up arms against a sea of modifiers, and by mocking, end them. There are a lot of gems in the latest batch of editor commentary, but these are, without a doubt, my favorites:

* Dear initially and various: you have ten minutes to clear out your desks, and then security will escort you out of the sentence.

* SOMEWHAT. STRUNK AND WHITE ARE HERE. DO NOT STRUGGLE.

* Really, even, and remotely. Please join somewhat in the WISHY WASHY MODIFIER TRUCK for immediate transportation to a pit of quicklime.

* Just because the word "circumlocutions" has "circus" in it doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, don't use unnecessary -- or, God forbid, wishy-washy -- modifiers, or Brooke will come to your house, and she will end you.

This has been a public service announcement.

I have a nasty tendency to forget to put the end punctuation of a sentence inside the ' marks when I'm constructing a sentence. So rather than punctuating like this:

"It was very much 'screw you, I'm taking the dog.'"

I'll punctuate like this:

"So it was all 'hate you, hate Kansas'."

Now, this is Not Exactly Correct. And one of my fabulous proofreaders just pointed it out to me by saying:

"The punctuation is LONELY outside of its proper kennel, Seanan! Let it in! Let it snuggle down inside the quotation marks with the rest of the sentence!"

...I love my proofreaders. I love them like burning.

When I write a book, I generally start with, well, text. After which, I poke the text with a stick until I'm sure it won't decide to eat somebody, and pass it off to my first tier of proofreaders (called, imaginatively enough, 'Tier One'). Tier One is normally five to eight people; they're selected from a small pool of prior proofers who have proven good at handling my specific first draft follies. Tier Two gets the text when it gets finished for the first time. It's about the same size as Tier One, and tends to be a little more vicious. Tier Three combines Tier One and Tier Two, along with about five new people. Yes, I have a large proofing pool. (No, I'm not looking for more -- these are people I know through a variety of channels, some of whom are in writer's groups with me, others of whom have just proven very, very good at what they do. What they do often involves grenades.)

I'm always fascinated by the way different people approach the editing process. I know authors who don't let anyone see anything until the book is finished for the first time. Authors who hit a single chapter eighty times before moving on to the next one -- they may be slow, but dude, when they finish a book, it is finished. Me, I tend to run as fast as I can from one end to the other, editing and correcting as I go, and throwing chunks of text to the wolves as frequently as I can.

Right now, I'm processing edits to A Local Habitation provided by Mary, who has developed a vendetta against the British comma. Seriously, she's like some sort of twisted naturalist, stalking them through the wild paragraphs, and clubbing them to death like baby harp seals whenever they're stupid enough to come into her sight. I'm afraid she's going to start taking shots at me. She's also going to war against my tendency to insert semi-colons wherever I can swing it. This is why I love Mary so very, very dearly. Also why I will never actually let her near me with a red pen.

I have about five stacks of edits to process after this (gulp), and then it's on to the denouement, which will hopefully do me a favor and not hit me like a ton of bricks. Ah, editing. Ah, criticism. Ah, snark.

What are your feelings on editing? How much is too much -- and how mean is too mean?