Our winners have been selected—all three of them! Yes, three: my agent very kindly contributed a second ARC to the hardship giveaway. That means that whomever receives the ARC not from me will get it unsigned, but they will get it, which is fabulous. Our winners are...

tsgeisel
silvertwi
darkangel_wings

Please contact me by 9am PST tomorrow morning, via my website contact form, with your mailing information. Thanks to everyone who entered; more to come.

I don't think it's any secret around here that I've been running at warp speed basically since a month before WorldCon, last year. This has resulted in a general decrease in available content here at my journal, because slowing down enough to type an entry hasn't always been an option. So here are some things I've meant to blog about, and haven't:

1. I went to Disney World for a week, with Vixy and Amy and Brooke and Patty. My mother and sister were there, too, but we sort of had parallel-but-rarely intersecting vacations. This was ideal, as my idea of "fun at Disney" involves pin trading and shows and ice cream and frogs, while theirs involves luaus and smoking and ludicrous plush and more smoking. Our only real point of overlap is roller coasters, and we already had a full car.

2. Also I went to Disneyland for a weekend, with Vixy, my mom, and my sister. See above for the basics.

3. I watched a lot of television, in an extremely non-critical manner. I don't believe that you should shut off your brain completely while consuming entertainment, but sometimes I really just want to be all "you know what? I like what I like," and not be all analytical and thoughtful about it. This stops when somebody blows up a blonde girl.

4. I went to New York for a week and a half, where I saw the Counting Crows (with my agent), Ludo (with a large group of friends, my former editor, and my agent; I have a very full-service agent), and The Devil's Carnival (with several friends, including Tu, who I didn't even realize was on the East Coast until I found her in line).

5. Also there is a permanent haunted house called Times Scare in New York, open 365-days a year. If I lived there, I would wind up asking about a Frequent Dier's card or something, because I would be in there at least once a week, being chased by a man with a chainsaw and giggling unnervingly.

6. I wrote some book club articles for SFX Magazine. The second, which is about The Midwich Cuckoos, is out now. I need to think more about the responses some of the readers have had to the book (not to my article), because they're fascinating to me. But basically? I got paid for my Wyndham and telepaths obsession. Life is good.

7. I went to Maine! I stayed with Cat and Dmitri! I want to move to Maine! I won't, because I'm moving to Washington, but seriously, in another timeline, I have already bought a house on Peaks Island, and I am not sorry. I sort of envy that version of me.

8. An old friend from high school literally showed up on my doorstep. Randomly.

9. I ate six pounds of cherries and I'm not sorry about that either.

10. I am currently behind on word count in several areas, which is why comments are going unanswered for what feels like, to me, an unreasonably long time. But I'm catching up. Slowly. I think.

And those are some of the things I've been too frazzled to blog about.

Words: 113,490.
Pages: 380.
Chapters: 26.

Reason for stopping: draft two is finished.
Music: a lot of fan mixes, actually.
The cats: Lilly, in my tank top drawer; Alice, on the orange cat tree; Thomas, occupying half the bed.

And there we are; draft two is finished, roughly a month after draft one was put solidly to bed. All the edits have been processed, many words have been trimmed, many logic puzzles have been solved, and many more surely remain. The trimmed-down, slimmed-down manuscript is off to The Agent, who will savage it with sharp, sharp teeth and cruel, cruel claws, and it will be a better book as a consequence.

Next up, The Chimes at Midnight, which stands a good chance of losing the "The" before it ever sees print. But we shall see, won't we?

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

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

Anyway, here you go:

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

Back to New York!

Tuesday morning found me oversleeping, since all that puking the night before had left me totally exhausted. I eventually staggered out of bed and made my way downtown to the convention center where BEA was being held. Luckily, it was in the same convention center as New York Comicon, so I was able to find my way with relative ease, and did not wind up wandering lost through Manhattan for the rest of time. It could happen!

Alex at Orbit had already given me my badge, so I swung by registration to pick up a lanyard (v. important, lanyards) and called The Agent to let her know I was on-site. She promptly swooped in, grabbed me, and whisked me hither and yon to see people that needed seeing—including Toni and Charlaine, which was a wonderful way to begin the convention. Hugging and happiness followed, and then they settled in to do a signing while The Agent and I ran over to the Orbit booth to acquire copies of Deadline for their enjoyment. Happiness is giving early copies of books to your friends.

With the hauling about portion of our program complete, The Agent freed me to wander where I would. So I wandered.

Book Expo America is a lot like New York Comicon, scale-wise, which probably explains why they fit in the same convention center. Only instead of toys, you have books. And instead of media goodies, you have books. And instead of scantily-clad booth babes, you have booth librarians, which is kinda more awesome. And did I mention the books? It's like lit-geek Disneyland, only without the teacup ride.

Which is sort of a pity.

All too soon, I had to leave the convention center and head for DAW. Because I was running late, I cleverly decided to take a taxi. Unfortunately, my streak of "always pick the taxi with the driver you have no languages in common with" continued, and my request for the PATH station resulted in my being dropped at Penn Station. Argh. I found my way to the PATH (only about three blocks away) and hopped on a train, which delivered me promptly and without fuss to the correct locale. Hooray for trains!

Better yet, hooray for DAW, which was exactly as welcoming and familiar and wonderful as I hoped it would be. DAW is one of my favorite places to spend a day, and not just because I can usually cadge someone into taking me to visit the "take" shelves of free books scattered around the building. I love everyone there, and I'm comfortable there, which is rare for someone as twitchy as I am.

I had a nice talk with The Editor, and got my revision notes for Discount Armageddon, which is next on my agenda for working on. Eventually, The Agent showed up, and we all went out for delicious Indian food dinner, where I ate goat and chicken and mushrooms and fish and naan and om nom nom Indian. Seriously, we ate so much Indian food it ached. I wanted to go home and collapse.

...which was naturally the cue for me to be hauled through half a dozen BEA after-hours parties. Good: I saw (and hugged) Cat and John Scalzi, who looked as terrified of the noisy crowds as I did. I also saw (and hugged) Tempest, who had a fan, and looked totally at ease. And I met Scott Westerfeld! Serious awesomeness.

Eventually, The Agent noticed that I was wilting, and I was loaded into a cab with a driver who understood where I wanted to go and took me to the PATH station. I returned to Jersey City, staggered home, and collapsed into bed too tired to die. Which meant, of course, that Wednesday was going to be the big day in town...

Next: Wednesday at BEA, mojitos in my eye, and signing Deadline.

Monday dawned bright and (very, very) early, since DongWon had asked that I be at Orbit at nine a.m. to do some recording. Now, Orbit is located near Grand Central Station, which is very much Properly In Manhattan. I was staying in Jersey City, which is very much not Properly In Manhattan. It is, in fact, in a different state. As a California girl, this causes me a certain amount of existential confusion every time I need to go from one to the other very quickly, since I know, deep down in my soul, that it takes at least eight hours to go from one state to another. Such is the eternal divide between the East and West Coasts.

Since I needed to get to Orbit by nine, I got up at seven. This means that, on some level, I got up at four. There is a reason I occasionally demand love and caffeine from my editors. I am comfortable enough with Manhattan at this point that I was able to get myself to the office with a minimum of trouble (barring a brief "walking the wrong way up 6th Avenue" incident, and really, that could have happened to anyone), which is good, since I was carrying my laptop. Yes, the big orange one. Yes, the one that weighs as much as one of the cats. Why?

Because I was having dinner with The Agent and a few more of her clients that evening, which meant there was no way I was getting back to Jersey City. And if I was going to be at Orbit all day, I was damn well going to get some serious work done.

I beat DongWon to the office by almost twenty minutes, and was detained by security until he arrived. I am never letting him forget this. Never ever ever never. But! He did eventually show up, and we were able to get into the office, finally, where there were greetings and huggings, and presentations of really fancy chocolate (from me to the office, not from the office to me). I had time to inhale one doughnut and drink a bottle of Diet Dr Pepper, and then it was off to the recording studio, where a very nice engineer explained how a recording booth worked. Thanks, nice engineer! Nobody had bothered to tell him that I have three studio albums out. Sorry, nice engineer.

My first task: recording the audio book edition of "Apocalypse Scenario." Super-fun! I managed not to get too into it, but wow was I glad to have done voice work before. It was nice and smooth and lovely. I followed it with two different podcast recordings, all done in the same wee room. Everything was professional and well-orchestrated, and before I knew it, it was all over, and I was being settled at the only open desk in the office.

Cue working. Type type type. Type type type. I was supposed to have lunch with some friends who were also in New York for BEA; when they didn't answer their phones, I had lunch with DongWon and Devi (another Orbit editor) instead. We went to a seafood restaurant, where I ate mussels and potatoes and hot fudge sundae, om nom. DongWon had to run before we finished eating, leaving Davi and I to talk about him behind his back. Ha ha, DongWon. Ha, ha.

Back to the office; more working; more whining at my computer. I actually had to borrow copies of Feed and Deadline to use as reference material, since otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to verify the continuity of what I was writing. This is why it's good to write at your publisher's. They'll always have copies of the books you need on hand.

Eventually, the day ended. Poof. And I, being the sensible girl that I am, loaded up my tote bag with my laptop and all the books I had managed to collect over the course of the day and went hieing off to downtown to meet up with The Agent for dinner. She had directed me to a library, in an alley, in an unfamiliar part of the city. I assume this is because she wants to see whether I will survive being eaten by a Grue. I found the library, and felt very smug about it, right until I went inside, went down to the floor where the YA author event I was meeting her at was being held, and discovered that I had, in fact, descended to a very unpleasant and specialized CIRCLE OF HELL.

Seriously. What seemed like several hundred people (and may have been just fifty, I don't know, it was a CIRCLE OF HELL) were crammed into an itty-bitty space, creating an immense amount of heat and noise. And somewhere in all that chaos was my agent. I sought. I strove. I gave up.

Spotting a woman with a Diet Dr Pepper, I begged to know where it had come from, and damn near wept when informed that she had brought it with her. Then I discovered, much to my surprise, that she was actually a book blogger I know through her reviews. And then she took me to the secret cluster of book bloggers hiding from the heat near the elevators. Yay! Much joy and chatter and hugging followed, lasting until The Agent appeared, her new client Claire in tow, to whisk me away to a less hellish locale.

Did I attack the first gas station we passed like it was the Promised Land, coming away with a sack of Diet Dr Pepper? Yes. Yes, I did.

We had dinner at a lovely place near Waverly Place (still no wizards), where we ate bread and cheese and I had fish and eventually went downstairs and was horribly sick due to a fish bone sticking in my throat. Since I had not retained dinner, The Agent bought me a cupcake. Happy times. Claire was awesome, but I was tired, and BEA was the next morning, so I returned to New Jersey and slept. FOREVER.

Next: BEA and DAW. It's acronym day!

Once again, we rewind to late May, when I was in New York City enjoying friends, humidity, publishers, and pigeons. Or, more specifically, we're rewinding to Sunday the 22nd, when I was scheduled to a) go into Manhattan to have brunch with The Agent, b) meet up with Will, and c) have dinner with several of my friends, including Batya, Alex, and the lovely Priscille. Everybody wins!

Foolishly, I thought that in New York, "brunch" meant, well, "brunch," and so expected to return to Jersey City during the day. Yes, yes, laugh at my pain. Anyway...

I rose, showered, dressed, and made my way to Manhattan, following the now-familiar path to the PATH train. I enjoy riding the PATH. It's easy and predictable and not really like riding the subway at all. Finding The Agent on the other end was easy, and we had a lovely, leisurely brunch at Cafeteria. I had a waffle with berries and cream. She had green eggs and ham (pesto is a magical thing). We split lemon pancakes with more berries and cream for dessert. Yes, I have now blogged what I had for breakfast. You have my permission to weep for mankind.

After brunch came the ceremonial Wandering Around Manhattan, wherein I actually did the traditional tourist thing and went shopping in New York. Sure, it was at Old Navy, where I bought half a dozen more tank tops in a variety of rainbow hues, but that counts, right? The Agent turns out to be hysterically funny in Old Navy, by the way, and even pickier about her tank top fit than I am. All hail compatible crazy.

We finished shopping and settled at the local Red Mango frozen yogurt, where The Agent ate yogurt and I didn't, because ew. Will came and got me, because he is awesome, and we bid The Agent what would be the first of many fond farewells. Will and I walked a great deal. I got an artisan Popsicle! Life is good. I also got to see Will's apartment, which was very clean and grownup, as befits a new law school graduate. Totally awesome.

After frozen treats and apartment visits, we made our way to the bus stop, hence to ride to the kosher Indian restaurant where we would be having dinner. Priscille wound up on the same bus, which was AWESOME, and much laughter and happiness accompanied us all the way to food, where we were met by Jon and Merav, Batya and Alex, a surprise Constance, and an extra bonus Jessica. Constance couldn't stay, but there was hugging, and then the rest of us went in to do some serious eating. I had goat. Who's surprised?

Dinner was followed by ambling aimlessly around the city, stopping by Dylan's Candy Bar, and finally drinking sugary things at Starbucks. Jon and Merav had actually driven into Manhattan, and so I was able to get a ride back to Jersey City, where I tumbled into bed, full of goat, happy, and ready to face the week ahead.

Which is good, because the week ahead was about to KICK MY ASS.

I am asked, with reasonable frequency these days, "Which do you recommend getting first, an agent or a book contract?" Because I, like everyone else, speak only from a place of my own experiences, I always answer, "An agent. They'll know what the hell they're doing."

Every aspiring author I've ever met has wanted an agent like a little girl wants a pony (in my case, like a little girl wants a bat-winged vampire pony that can fly and also devour the kids who liked to beat me up on the playground). Having an agent is like having a Loch Ness Monster of your very own, one that you can saddle up and use to shock and amaze your enemies as you ride it into glorious battle against Godzilla and the Easter Bunny. Having an agent will transform your life from an abyss of despair into a happy cartoon wonderland full of sunshine and zombie puppies. And sure, we understand that might not be quite true, but we all just know that the right agent will make everything okay, forever.

For a long time, I thought that the right agent for me didn't exist. That getting an agent would be sort of like getting a job: necessary, important, even pleasant at times, but still going to require me to swear less, brush my hair more, and wear uncomfortable shoes. I was willing to do these things, if I had to, but in my heart, I still wanted a bat-winged vampire pony to negotiate my contracts and strike down my enemies in my name. Because I am a simple soul.

Almost four years ago now, a friend of mine decided to introduce me a friend of hers, one who happened to be a working literary agent, looking for clients. The Agent and I exchanged some emails, going slow, navigating the wilds of acquaintance and understanding long before we reached the point where representation would become an option. It was a courtship, rather than a barroom hookup, and I am incredibly grateful for that, because anybody who's met me knows that my full attention can be an exhausting thing. She gets my full attention a lot.

Three years ago today, she asked if I wanted her to represent me. If I'd said "Yes!" any faster, I would have violated temporal causality.

The past three years have been amazing. They have been filled with firsts, seconds, thirds, and hundreds of wonderful, confusing, incredible things, and The Agent has been there every step along the way to explain, encourage, and assist. I call her my personal superhero for a reason—that's exactly what she is. Books on writing will tell you that the best thing a working writer can have is a good agent, and they're right, but what they won't tell you is that it's even better to have a good agent who understand you, understands the way you work, and is willing to see what you can do together.

So here's a happy, happy anniversary to my personal superhero, to the woman who helps me understand the business side of my chosen career, and to the only person ever to respond to my description of The Worst Book I've Ever Read by asking me to send it to them. Happy anniversary. Let's have ten more of these.

Friday night, I was chilling at my computer when an acquaintance of mine congratulated me. On what?, I wondered. A link was provided. I clicked the link. The link took me to the New York Times Best Sellers, which seemed like a bit of a cruel joke, since I would have known if I had made the list. Right? Right?

I scrolled down the list.

Late Eclipses, the fourth October Daye adventure, held the #32 slot.

I stared at it for a few minutes before calling Vixy and asking her to click the link. I didn't tell her why, because let's face it, I wanted to know if she could see it, too. She made inquisitive noises as she scrolled...and then she started shrieking. Okay, so yeah. She could see it.

Lots of screaming and flailing followed, as well as a phone tree that managed to double back on itself about seventeen times. Oxygen was not a priority. The Agent eventually returned my call, and then we spent a lovely half-hour or so going "Oh my God" a lot, which is basically what I was hoping she would do (sometimes, being coherent is for other people). The cats watched all of this with disdain, thus proving that the essential laws of reality had not changed, and eventually, I watched Fringe and went to bed.

I'm a New York Times bestselling author. Me.

I still can't believe I'm not asleep.

Welcome to the second, and hopefully final, portion of my not-a-con-report for Arisia. I really did have a wonderful time in Boston, snow and all, and I'm definitely going to be going back. Eventually. After I've had the opportunity to take a nice nap, and maybe watch a whole lot of really, really dumb television. Anyway, here are the summarized highlights (and lowlights), for your amusement and edification.

My candy corn hat! The Agent knows me too, too well, it seems, and when the time came to give me the last piece of my holiday gift, she led me to the dealer's hall and purchased me a felt candy corn hat from one of the local vendors. Yes. I now have a hat that looks like a piece of candy corn. TREMBLE WITH FEAR, MERE MORTALS. I wore this hat to almost every serious panel I had during the weekend, and proclaimed proudly that wearing it provided that I was a professional. I never said what kind of professional.

The Mad Science song circle! I didn't make it to very many filk events this year, sadly, because I was busy with other programming and also wound up spending most of Sunday vilely ill (more on this in a moment). But the Mad Science circle was awesome, and Ben Newman sprung a positively wicked new science parody on me. It was a very cool circle, and I'm so very glad I got to go.

Alice and Josh! My life is better when it contains large quantities of Alice, and since I had to leave my beloved Maine Coon in California, I supplemented diet of Alice with a local fan and acquaintance of mine from this blog. She and her husband took me to dinner, where I ate, unsurprisingly, shepherd's pie, and then she and I sat and talked for like an hour and a half while he ran off to a panel. It was a really nice, relaxing way to spend an evening, and I had a wonderful time. Since they didn't run screaming, I assume they did, too.

Meeting Toni! My friend Toni lives near Boston, and was able to come out to the convention on Saturday, transforming herself from "my Internet-only friend Toni" to "my friend Toni, whom I have met in real life." She brought her husband, who was witty and fun to talk to, and I brought Diana, who was witty and fun to talk to and bought me chicken fingers. There were exchanges of books and hugs, and life was very good. It's nice to have people transform from words on a screen into actual humans. It makes me happy.

The Guest Breakfast! Arisia had a special breakfast event on Sunday, where people could buy tickets to have a special, intimate breakfast with the Guests of Honor and Special Guests. Each of us had a table of our very own. Sadly for me, someone at the next table over was wearing a mango-based perfume, and the breakfast went rapidly from "yum yum, free fruit" to "quietly excusing myself, walking to the bathroom, vomiting copiously, and walking back to my table to resume being entertaining." I would become progressively sicker for most of the day. It was so much fun. My poor roommates had to deal with my basically being a creepy dead girl from a horror movie. How I try their patience.

Cat and Seanan strike back! Cat and I are getting pretty good at our urban fantasy girl version of "An Evening With Kevin Smith." Every time it happens, the crowd gets a little bigger, the questions get a little smoother, and our comfort levels get a little higher, which leads to, you know, more swearing, more craziness, and more references to Lord Byron's penis. It's a victory for everybody! This installment of the Cat-and-Seanan Show was pure hammered awesome, and we only had to decline one question, which is possibly a record. More impressively, I wasn't even able to walk without throwing up an hour before the panel. So this is what I do for love.

Better Off Ted! Diana and Cat introduced me to this show, and Cat's Netflicks account allowed us to wallow in it each night before bed. I now require the box sets. And maybe a meat blob.

Post-antibiotic science fiction gone wild! My final panel was on Monday morning, and was all about post-antibiotic science fiction. It turned into "Seanan defends her thesis on causative agents for the Black Death" for about twenty minutes, which seemed to be fun for everyone, if a little more mentally rigorous than I had wanted to be that early in the morning on the last day of a convention. I recommended not licking things as a way to avoid infection. You're welcome.

Flying home! Actually, the flight was pretty lousy. But my cats made up for it.

See you next time!

I am not going to write an Arisia con report. I'm not good at them under the best of circumstances—they either wind up obscenely long and take six months to finish, turn into a series of comic strips, or make no sense—and these are not the best of circumstances, what with the "two conventions in two weekends" and "under a whole lot of deadlines" parts of our program. So these are the summarized highlights, for your amusement and edification.

Arriving in Boston! Persis picked me up from the airport, because a) Persis loves me, and b) I had made it quite clear that fuck you people, I am not going outside in the snow unless it's to enter a private car. No, I am not a prima donna; I simply refuse to take the bus or other forms of public transit when you have A FOOT OF SNOW on the ground. My sunny California upbringing can't handle the reality shift. I did, in fact, remain entirely inside the hotel until Monday afternoon, when I went outside in the snow, entered a private car, and returned to the airport. So screw you, New England winter; I am not your chew toy.

Hanging out with Rene! My room wasn't ready yet when we got to the hotel, so I wound up sitting with Rene, the Fan Guest of Honor, in the lobby Starbucks for about an hour. Rene was conchair for the Montreal WorldCon, and is a really neat guy. Plus he helped me get my luggage up to my room. Class act, yo.

Cat and Diana! My roommates for the weekend were the lovely Cat "The Crusher" Valente, and the equally lovely Diana "The Destroyer" Fox. They both arrived Friday afternoon, and seriously, it was like spending the entire weekend having an awesome slumber party with awesome people and our own private bathroom. Our hotel room looked like it had been hit by a localized tornado. A tornado of RAW AWESOME. I couldn't have asked for a better time. Plus? They brought me presents. (I also brought them presents. I like to share.)

The Paranormal Romance Weather Report! My first panel of the weekend was on the appeal of paranormal romance and the flirtation with the mainstream. The only panelist I'd met prior to sitting down at the table was Kelley Armstrong, which was sort of neat. We talked for an hour, and it was a lively and engaged discussion, but didn't come with as many book recommendations as people expected...so I used my closing comments to provide a cable-news style weather report on offerings in the urban fantasy and paranormal romance genres. Yes, complete with a "and next, here's John with sports!" closer. It was more fun than it should have been. Seriously.

Shawn! My good friend Shawn lives in Massachusetts, and swears he actually likes New England winters. This is because Shawn is insane. He actually came to the convention to see me! It was awesome. He is a good Shawn, and shall be renowned in song and story.

Shaenon Garrity, big-time star! Shaenon was the Webcomics Guest of Honor, which meant that her adorable mad science illustrations were all over the program book (awesome), and that she had the big box of Skin Horse strips available for people to paw through and purchase. I got one of my favorite strips. And also? A hug.

Ellen and Delia! Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman are a) mad awesome, b) very sweet, and c) just plain cool. They're also involved with the Bordertown revival, about which I will blog more very, very soon. And Ellen? Ellen gave me an ARC of the new Bordertown book, about which I will also blog more very, very soon. So who has an ARC of the new Bordertown book? THAT WOULD BE ME. Dude, the trip was worth it for that alone, I swear.

Having an Irish pub attached to the hotel! One of the two hotel restaurants was an actual Irish pub, with actual Irish pub food. I basically ate shepherd's pie for every "real meal" I had during the weekend, and while that may not have been awesome from a Weight Watchers standpoint, it was pretty damn cool from a "don't flip out and kill everyone in a ten-mile radius" standpoint. You may now thank the Irish pub for saving mankind.

...okay, so even when I'm doing the quick-and-dirty highlights version of a con report, I can't condense it very well. Tune in next time, for more things that were awesome, or at least interesting, since "Seanan has an allergic reaction to some lady's perfume and spends the bulk of Sunday yearning for death" is totally making the list.

Last year, kodykeplinger declared December 11th to be Agent Appreciation Day, a holiday devoted to the adoration of every writer's personal superhero. Since December 11th fell on a Saturday this year, I've bumped my observation of this holiest of days to today, when there's a little more chance of my sitting still long enough to say "thank you."

It remains true that every day is Agent Appreciation Day at my house, except maybe for the days where I want to have a Doctor Who marathon instead of making my deadlines, and only the fear of The Agent's wrath keeps me at my keyboard. It's still nice to have an excuse to say, in public, "I appreciate this woman, and everything that she does for me." So today, I appreciate The Agent. Great Pumpkin knows, she deserves a little appreciation every once in a while.

Why are writers so protective of their agents? Because we are. Even when we're mad at them for not answering our phone calls/not thinking that a paranormal romance about steampunk space pirates with a super-evolved pod person as the heroine will sell/not understanding why it's so important that we spend a weekend dressed as Emma Frost and falling off our shoes, instead of making our deadlines, we're protective.

There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, we're frequently protecting them from total strangers going "will you introduce me to your agent?" (My answer, by the way, is generally not positive, and on the rare occasions where I offer to introduce someone to The Agent, she gets an email from me warning of the pending introduction. So emailing her cold, saying I sent you, doesn't actually work.) We're not trying to be nasty, and we're not trying to say "no, you can't join our special club." But we're also not going to sneak people we don't know through the back door, past the rest of the pending submissions. We are not magical doors to representation, and because our agents will often feel obligated to look at any real referrals, we try very hard not to be too extravagant with who we send their way.

Two, our agents are the people who take care of us. I mean, as protective as most authors are of their agents, our agents are ten times moreso. They're the ones who understand the weird little clauses in our contracts, tell us when interesting opportunities open up, and keep us from being eaten alive by our editors. When there's a problem, the agent fixes it. (That goes for problems on both sides. If I get behind on my word count, The Agent will probably be poking me about my deadline before either The Editor or The Other Editor. Because that's her job.) Since our agents take care of us, we feel a little obligated to do the same for them, at least to the best of our abilities.

Does this mean we don't want to share our agents? Hell, no. I want The Agent to sign twenty people who become New York Times best-selling authors and get six figure contracts and can afford their own diamond-plated ponies, because then she'd be able to eventually afford an island, and she'd probably let me genetically engineer dinosaurs as long as I kept meeting my deadlines. An agent is only as successful as their client list, and the more really successful clients an agent has, the more not-so-successful but-oh-so-wonderful clients they can afford to keep working with. It turns into a delicate balancing act that I'm really glad I don't have to perform.

I once heard somebody say that we don't work for our agents, they work for us, and so the submissions process shouldn't seem so much like a job interview. I view it as more like the relationship between a householder and their butler. A good butler is for life, and that's not a contract to be entered into lightly. If the butler can't like you, then they can't work for you, and you wouldn't want them to. My agent works for me. I also work for my agent, just like most people would agree that Bruce Wayne works for Alfred as much as Alfred works for Bruce Wayne. And because they have that relationship, he gets to go out every night and be Batman.

Why do I appreciate my personal superhero?

Because she lets me be a superhero, too.

While I was in New York the week before last, I did a lot of traveling via the PATH Train, a fairly simplistic transit system whose entire purpose is to get people from Jersey City to Manhattan, and vice-versa. This is normal for me. I am an old hand at riding the PATH, and no longer become in any way distressed about it.

Only the thing is, on Sundays, the PATH bounces through Hoboken on its way from Jersey City to Manhattan. This is a very jerky, bumpy, throw-you-around-y section of track, since it's not part of the everyday commute. Also on Sundays, they run fewer trains, resulting in a greater density of people on each individual train.

Can you guess what's coming next? I bet you can guess what's coming next.

Sunday, Kate and I got on the PATH to head into the city to have lunch with The Agent and another of her clients, followed by dinner with Betsy (Wollheim, not Tinney; it would have been a clever trick to somehow have dinner with my Seattle Maine Coon breeder whilst in New York). The train was very full when we got on; we had to stand. I got whiter and whiter as the train moved, trying desperately to keep from crying.

When I started screaming every time the car jerked to one side or another, some nice people let me have their seat. Thank you, nice people. I took my emergency pain killers and cried. "Take more painkillers and cry" was pretty much the mantra of the day, which would otherwise have been absolutely lovely. Because Betsy is a golden goddess who shall be renowned in song and story, she even drove us back to Jersey City after dinner. I have sent her a thank-you card.

My back has been out ever since. It's getting better, slowly, but it's been long enough since I had a flare-up this bad that, well, I'm being sort of a wimp about it. I cry a lot. I've been to the doctor for more painkillers, and I'm trying to schedule a spinal epidural, but right now? Right now, I just cry a lot. Part of me is glad that I'm missing OVFF and World Fantasy and my Alabama corn maze, because I am in SO MUCH PAIN right now that I wouldn't really enjoy them anyway.

So if I seem a little curt, or a little out of it, that's because I am either in extreme pain, or legally stoned to prevent the extreme pain from being a problem. Show mercy, I beg of thee. And please, Great Pumpkin, let this be over soon.

Last night was all about me and Cat Valente and the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art, home of the New York Science Fiction Review series of readings. Because, you know, when you import yourself a couple of fairy tale girls, the only thing to do is stick them in front of a large crowd and wait for the fun to begin.

But the fun has to begin at the beginning...

My flight got in right on time, which was a small blessing, since I wasn't really sleeping very well. Mind you, the fact that I was able to sleep at all made me a lucky girl. I had actually upgraded my ticket to Main Cabin Select, as that was the only way to get out of being crammed into a middle seat for five hours in the air. I turned out to be the only person in my row, and was able to pull the "belt yourself into the middle seat, curl up like a pillbug, and sleep" trick. Blessed empty seats, how I adore thee. But there were screaming babies on the plane, and there was turbulence, and it was not a restful night.

Jon and Merav collected me from the airport, and—after dropping Merav at work—Jon drove me home...where Kate was already waiting on the front stoop. Whoops. We went inside. I plugged in my laptop to make sure nothing was on fire, and the phone calls began, making it quite clear that a nap was not in my future. Well, fine, be that way, universe. After showering and changing my clothes, we were off, to meet The Agent in lovely downtown Manhattan, and eat lunch. Because without sleep and without food, I was going to murder someone.

(Incidentally, this was the first time The Agent got to meet Kate. They got along. So when they destroy your puny planet, don't worry. I'm sure they'll make you a nicer new one before long.)

Lunch was challah French toast and mussels, at least for me. Om nom. From there, we went to a lovely tea house The Agent knew about, where she and Kate drank lovely tea, and I passed out on a love seat. Eventually, The Agent went off to do something else, and Kate stole my headphones, while I...passed out on the love seat again. But then! A Cat Valente came and joined our party! Hooray! Kate and Cat sat and chatted while I achieved that nebulous state known as "wakefulness," and we set out for the venue. With one of those "only in New York" stops along the way, to buy hand-crafted artisan popsicles. No, seriously. I mean it.

We ate our popsicles, giggled a lot, and walked onward, to the SoHo Gallery of Digital Art...and into our very own fairy tale. The walls were covered in our books, our faces, our everything, and it was incredible. It was like a dream. I squeaked. We stared in awe. And then, because we needed our fairy tale faces in this fairy tale place, we ran off to change our clothes, Cat into a mad awesome tailored suit, me into a bright orange skirt and green top. And then the flood began.

We were both a little worried, in that abstract author way, that no one would show up. It turns out that what we should have been worried about was violating fire code, as the room wound up so packed that we ran out of chairs, then ran out of wall, and finally, ran out of places to stand. Wow. Everyone from DAW came—I got to meet Saladin!—and so did most of my New York friends, along with people like K. Tempest Bradford and Ellen Kushner and Teri Windling OH MY GOD I MET TERI WINDLING.

Ahem.

Cat read an absolutely gorgeous piece from The Habitation of the Blessed. I read "Laughter at the Academy: Field Studies in the Development of Schizotypal Creative Genius Personality Disorder." Everyone sighed and swooned at Cat's reading; everyone laughed in the appropriate places at mine. I got to shout "IGNITE THE BIOSPHERE!" in a room full of people who'd actually come to hear me do just that. It was magical.

In the Q&A afterward, someone asked us if we'd ever considered doing a photo shoot as Snow White and Rose Red.

And Cat and I laughed.

Okay, like, wow. How is it October? It's not supposed to be October. It's supposed to be, I don't know, somewhere comfortably in the middle of August (only then I suppose the Hugos wouldn't have happened yet, and I'd still be a neurotic mess, so maybe that's not the best thing for me to be wishing for). I love the fall, it's my favorite time of the year, and I love October, it's my favorite month of the year, and since I both need a three-week-long nap and a finished draft of the fifth Toby book, this whole "welcome to October" thing isn't working out for me as well as it otherwise might.

On the plus side, however, I'm mostly packed for tonight's red-eye to New York. I'll be met on the other end by Jon (of Jon and Merav), who will carry me off to my East Coast home in Jersey City. (Let's face it. Once I understand how to handle your recalcitrant plumbing, I basically live with you.) I will then take a really long nap, because good ye gods, red-eye flight, before a) letting Kate into the flat, b) calling The Agent about lunch, and c) heading into Manhattan for the big adventure.

What big adventure, you may ask? Why, me, reading with Cat "the Crusher" Valente at the New York Review of Science Fiction. TWO AUTHORS ENTER, BOTH AUTHORS PROBABLY LEAVE. I'm so excited! When you put me and Cat on the same stage, and give us a microphone, a good time is basically guaranteed. The doors will open at 6:30 PM, and there's a five dollar suggested donation. I recommend arriving early, for good seating (although I don't think there's going to be a splatter zone). Cat put it really well. She said, "Sometimes I get matched up with another reader with whom I become friends, but being paired with one of my sisters and shipmates just makes everything so fun and relaxed. Plus, we encourage each other dreadfully." So come and see us encourage each other dreadfully! It's going to be a fabulous time.

I'm also going to be at the New York City Comic Con this upcoming weekend, as both myself and my own evil twin. Seanan will be doing the Penguin Panel on Friday night, and a signing at the Penguin booth on Saturday. Mira will be doing the Zombie Panel on Saturday night, and a signing at the Orbit booth (also on Saturday). I'd love to meet you! Please, swing by if you're at the convention! Just, y'know, please don't show up for my Seanan-signing with eight copies of Feed, or my Mira signing with all the Toby books. I try not to antagonize my publishers like that.

I get to see The Agent, and The Editor, and all my New York friends. I get to eat interesting food and ride the PATH train and generally have a wonderful time. All while making word count every night, because a girl has got to eat (or she'll end up on the street). And then I get to fly home, and keep making word count, because word count never rests.

Anyway, if you're in New York, I hope I get to see you, and if you're not, I hope I get to see you some other time. Any pending prizes will be mailed when I get back, as I am a bad blonde, and forgot to buy new book mailers.

Oh, babe, I hate to go.

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.

One of the answers you'll almost always get when you ask an aspiring author what they need to do to further their career is "I need to get an agent." Having an agent is like having a magical unicorn that lays golden eggs, craps rainbows, and grants wishes following you around making your life awesome. Having an agent will transform your life from an abyss of despair into a happy cartoon wonderland full of sunshine and zombie puppies. And sure, we understand that might not be quite true, but we all just know that the right agent will make everything okay, forever.

My agent is not a magical unicorn, but there are aspects of the "I want an agent" dream list that actually work in the real world. I mean, it's an agent's job to understand the business side of the publishing world, partially So You Don't Have To, and partially because Holy Crap, That's Complicated. Also, getting good enough to get an agent is a sign that you've worked pretty hard, and you're pretty dedicated to this "writing" concept. It's possible for really good writers to make it without an agent. It's actually harder for really bad writers to get an agent in the first place. (To all those agents I applied to when I was a teenager: I'm sorry you had to read that. Thank you for being so nice about it.)

Almost three years ago now, a friend of mine decided to introduce me a friend of hers, one who happened to be a working literary agent, looking for clients. The Agent and I exchanged some emails, going slow, navigating the wilds of acquaintance and understanding long before we reached the point where representation would become an option. It was a courtship, rather than a barroom hookup, and I am incredibly grateful for that, because anybody who's met me knows that my full attention can be an exhausting thing. She gets my full attention a lot.

Two years ago today, she asked if I wanted her to represent me. I said "are you crazy?"

The past two years have been amazing. They have been filled with firsts, seconds, wonderful, confusing, incredible things, and The Agent has been there every step along the way to explain, encourage, and assist. I call her my personal superhero for a reason—that's exactly what she is. Books on writing will tell you that the best thing a working writer can have is a good agent, and they're right, but what they won't tell you is that it's even better to have a good agent who understand you, understands the way you work, and is willing to see what you can do together.

So here's a happy, happy anniversary to my personal superhero, to the woman who helps me understand the business side of my chosen career, and to the only person ever to respond to my description of The Worst Book I've Ever Read by asking me to send it to them. Happy anniversary. Let's have ten more of these.

1. My beloved personal superhero, dianafox, is giving away a copy of A Local Habitation. Read her post for details (and don't ask me about them, since it's not my giveaway). Here's your opportunity to make my agent give you stuff! A chance like this doesn't come along every day, not even for me!

2. You still have four hours in which to enter my random drawing to win a copy of Feed. I'll be picking a name at noon California time, and all you have to do is leave a comment. You now how to leave a comment, don't you? Just type some things into your browser and click.

3. The fantastic talkstowolves has gone to the trouble of working up a linked list to all the free fiction on the Locus recommended reading list! These are the stories that professional reviewers selected as the best of 2009, and they're totally free for you to read. So if you get bored, you should do that.

4. There is no number four. Move along, citizens, move along.

2010 debut author kodykeplinger has declared this to be Agent Appreciation Day. Now, around my house, every day is Agent Appreciation Day (except maybe for the days where I want to watch horror movies instead of making my deadlines, and only the fear of The Agent keeps me at my keyboard), but still, it's nice to have a day dedicated to appreciating somebody. So today, I appreciate The Agent, and I appreciate her by making a post I've been pondering for a while. Namely, why are writers so protective of their agents? Because we are. Even when we're mad at them for not answering our phone calls/not thinking that a paranormal romance about steampunk space pirates with a super-evolved pod person as the heroine will sell/not understanding why it's so important that we spend a weekend dressed as Emma Frost and falling off our shoes, instead of making our deadlines, we're protective.

There are a couple of reasons for this. I mean, one, we're frequently protecting them from total strangers going "will you introduce me to your agent?" (My answer, by the way, is generally not a positive one, and on the rare occasions where I offer to introduce someone to The Agent, she gets an email from me warning of the pending introduction. So emailing her cold, saying I sent you, doesn't actually work.) Now, we're not trying to be nasty, and we're not trying to say "no, you can't join our special club." But we're also not going to sneak people we don't know through the back door, past the rest of the pending submissions. We are not magical doors to representation, and because our agents will often feel obligated to look at any real referrals, we try very hard not to be too extravagant with who we send their way.

Two, our agents are the people who take care of us. I mean, as protective as most authors are of their agents, our agents are ten times moreso. They're the ones who understand the weird little clauses in our contracts, tell us when interesting opportunities open up, and keep us from being eaten alive by our editors. When there's a problem, the agent fixes it. (That goes for problems on both sides. If I get behind on my word count, The Agent will probably be poking me about my deadline before either The Editor or The Other Editor. Because that's her job.) Since our agents take care of us, we feel a little obligated to do the same for them, at least to the best of our abilities.

Does this mean we don't want to share our agents? Hell, no. I want The Agent to sign twenty people who become New York Times best-selling authors and get six figure contracts and can afford their own diamond-plated ponies, because then she'd be able to eventually afford an island, and she'd probably let me genetically engineer dinosaurs as long as I kept meeting my deadlines. An agent is only as successful as their client list, and the more really successful clients an agent has, the more not-so-successful but-oh-so-wonderful clients they can afford to keep working with. It turns into a delicate balancing act that I'm really glad I don't have to perform.

Somebody said recently that we don't work for our agents, they work for us, and so the submissions process shouldn't seem so much like a job interview. I view it as more like the relationship between a householder and their butler. A good butler is for life, and that's not a contract to be entered into lightly. If the butler can't like you, then they can't work for you, and you wouldn't want them to. My agent works for me. I also work for my agent, just like most people would agree that Bruce Wayne works for Alfred as much as Alfred works for Bruce Wayne. And because they have that relationship, he gets to go out every night and be Batman.

Why do I appreciate my personal superhero?

Because she lets me be a superhero, too.

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.

So a while ago—not that long ago, but not yesterday—I made a post about the author/agent relationship, and why I think literary agents are so damn important. I like my agent. I know that state isn't universal, but neither is liking your haircut, and I'm pretty cool with that, too. I try to be mellow when I can.

This morning, I was pointed to a post over on GalleyCat explaining why nobody needs an agent. Apparently, the electronic revolution means that the "middleman" between author and editorial is no longer necessary. Who knew? Or at least, that middleman is on the way to becoming fully outdated. Naturally, at least one literary agency feels differently, and has said as much. I suggest reading both links before continuing, because I, too, feel differently, and will now say as much.

These are the things I do: write books. Make changes according to the requests of my editors. Discuss possible changes with my editors. Review page proofs. Blog. Run blog giveaways of ARCs and published books. Attend conventions. Write outlines and proposals for books I want to write. Play Plants vs. Zombies. Watch TV.

These are the things my agent does: get my books to the editors who are most likely to not only appreciate them, but work with them in a way that is beneficial to both the publishing house and my career. Negotiate advances. Negotiate sub-rights. Protect my interests in areas like audio, comic book, and foreign rights. Make sure that I get paid on time. Follow up with my editors when things are unclear, or when I need more time to finish something. Check in with me to see what space I have on my plate. Understand the industry. Explain things like "co-op" and how marketing budget works. Tell me where my energy needs to be spent, rather than where I necessarily want to spend it.

Beyond the fairly standard notation that many major houses no longer consider submissions from unagented authors, the agent serves a thousand functions that, frankly, I don't have time to deal with. It's possible that I would have time for them, if I wasn't writing four books at once; on the flip side of that, I can also say that if I was dealing with all the functions served by my agent, I wouldn't have time to write four books at once. It all feeds back to a question of resource allocation, and I have chosen to externalize certain resource needs in the form of my agent.

Agents don't just negotiate the size of your advance; they negotiate contracts, which are huge, complex, complicated things. Without an agent to go through the contract and understand it, you need to not only speak the crazy language of literary rights, you need to have strong feelings on all those things. What do you think about comic rights, merchandising rights, foreign rights, audio rights, film rights, the right to construct an amusement park based on your work? What do you think of the time the contract says you'll have to review your page proofs, of the concept of seeing your copyedits, of the way the next work clause is worded? Do you understand half of what I just said? 'Cause honestly, without my agent, I wouldn't, and even now, I'm a little vague on some of the specifics, although I'm learning.

Agents deal with your editors, and can mediate when, say, you miss a deadline because your cat got sick and you just can't cope and what do these people want from you?! Well, they want you to hold to the terms of your contract, and they want you to make a lot of money, because everybody would like to have a lot of money, and if you make a lot of money, so does your publisher. But without that buffer between yourself and the publisher, it's very possible that you could flip out and take somebody's face off, thus ruining the working relationship. Instead, flip out on your agent, and they'll take care of making nice while you hyperventilate in a corner.

A good agent will help your career in a hundred ways...and more, they're very often an excellent gatekeeper, because as soon as you're salable, the agents will be happy to let you know. It's not their job to get you to that point, but once you get yourself there, their job begins, and that job is a hard one. Frankly, it's not a job I'd want to do.

Are literary agents outdated? No. Are literary agents like having the cheat codes to the publishing industry? Yes. You still need to understand what you're doing, but they can make things go a lot more smoothly, and they can keep you from dying too many times before you finish level one. That's more than worth the cost of their commission.

So here I am, in New York. (Technically, as I write this, here I am, in New Jersey. It seems like I always wind up staying in New Jersey while here, and commuting to New York. This is because the East Coast is made entirely of tiny little postage-stamp states. Postage-stamp states. I realize and understand that this is a California thing, but really, I don't feel that I should be able to casually wander over state lines and not really notice.) Since arriving...

...the motor on the fridge has decided to die, filling the apartment with smoke, covering the kitchen floor with water, and triggering an impromptu dinner party, complete with enormous and only semi-expected mob. One member of the mob, upon encountering certain jet-lagged idiosyncrasies of mine, wailed, "But my Seanan List* didn't include what to do about the liver hat!" Sometimes it's nice to be me.

...visited the GINORMOUS Manhattan Apple Store, in which a charming young man at the Genius Bar was kind enough to inform me that my iPod was, in fact, dead beyond all reasonable repair. He offered to zombie it for a short period of time, but made it clear that this manner of resurrection was counter-recommended, and would probably result in an army of undead Apple products shambling around the city. As I have things to accomplish this week, I declined, and will be getting a new iPod.

...visited FAO Schwartz, home of the giant piano, and many, many, many toys. I did not actually buy any toys, largely due to their tragic dearth of dinosaurs. I judged their stock most harshly. I judged their stock most harshly with the powers of my mind. (I did not, however, judge their MUPPET FACTORY with anything beyond delight and glee. Because dude, MUPPET FACTORY.)

...went to Serendipity 3 with The Agent. We consumed frozen hot chocolate, which was amazing, and had lunch, which was less "amazing" and more "faintly horrifying." My chef's salad contained a pond's-worth of watercress, an orange, a cup of fruit salad, steamed asparagus, and avocado. This is what those of here in the real world like to refer to as "overkill." We split a sundae after eating. This, too, was overkill, but in the good way, since we received roughly enough hot fudge to replace all the mucus in the average human body.

...ate an apple cider doughnut. What the hell is wrong with some people?

...went to visit everybody at Orbit (Mira's editor). I'd already met my editor (at World Fantasy) and my contact in the marketing department (far more pleasant than Vel's Marketing Department), but it was a real treat to meet all the other folks involved in making the book a reality, including the art director who did the cover design (which is, I must admit, fucking fantastic). After our meeting, The Editor2 took The Agent and I out for lunch in Grand Central Station. Sadly, this involved cutlery and bread service, rather than hot dogs of questionable origin and things scraped off of crusty bakery trays, which is what I think of when you say "hey, let's go eat in the train station."

...passed out cold from a migraine and lost approximately sixteen hours. Because sometimes, jetlag hates me.

(*She was actually equipped with a Seanan List to assist her in surviving our encounter. Presumably this list came with a box labeled "In Case of Seanan Break Glass." The contents of the box are left to your imagination.)

How's been by all of you?

I am a professional. I am aware of what is and is not appropriate conversation for polite company (although I sometimes forget when the topics of "pandemic disease" or "zombies" come up; sadly, I can be goaded into gleeful explanations of latency and droplet-based transmission just about anywhere, including the dinner table). I wear real grown-up shoes when I have to take business meetings, and I have a calm, measured telephone voice.

All this being said, there's a reason I don't usually take phone calls in my house.

The Agent called to discuss my upcoming trip to New York, during which we're going to be doing several dinner-type things, some meeting-type things, and a lot of hanging out. During our forty-minute or so discussion, she was treated to...

"Ow! Ow ow OW! Goddammit, Alice, get your claws out of my fucking leg!"
"No. No, you can't have that. No, that isn't yours. No."
"Get off of there! Jesus, cat, I swear, I will skin you."
"I can get new cats, you know. Better cats. Smaller cats. Cats that don't do that."
"Alice, give back my bra."
"I'm serious, Alice. Give me back my damn bra."
"THAT'S MY FUCKING BRA, CAT!"
"Okay, I give up. Just do whatever the fuck you want."

...all while we were having a serious business discussion. I swear, the fact that she hasn't drowned me and put me out of her misery is something of a miracle.

So I'm merrily cruising around my reading list—amusingly enough, and you'll understand why in a moment, right after composing a lengthy letter to my agent—when I discover that a friend of mine (hi, Jim!) has linked to an essay about literary agents. Now, I'm a big fan of literary agents. I go to have a look. Hmmm. The essay in question is titled "The Talent Killers: How literary agents are destroying literature, and what publishers can do to stop them." That's a mouthful and a half. I proceeded to read the essay, that being what one does in such a situation. Then I read an essay from Beth Bernobich about why agents are not, in fact, servants of the devil. And then I read Jim Hines's post on the topic.

And then I thought about it for a while.

And now here I am.

(As a digression: titles are important. I realize that not everyone aspires to grow up perky, pithy, and easy to say, but seriously? For an essay title? One that actively insults a large group of people whom you admit have the ear of the person or people you're trying to reach? This doesn't work for me all that well. Just saying.)

Look: many authors do not have agents. The agent-to-author ratio is scary, especially since you don't have to have some sort of training before you can tack "author" onto your name. Most agents are already representing several clients, and may not be able to estimate how many clients they can take in any sort of firm number. I, for example, am relatively self-starting; point me at something, tell me it has a candy center, and I'll check in with you next month. Olga over here, she needs daily contact or she starts to freak out, and when she freaks out, she's not getting anything done. An agent who could handle four of me may be hard pressed to handle one of me, plus Olga. Being an agent is something like trying to plan a dinner party, only instead of dietary restrictions and seating plans, you have amount of hand-holding and sanity exams.

Also look: many authors, who have written good, salable books, manage to sell their first book, or even their first several, without the aid of an agent. It's true that the number of major houses willing to consider unrepresented authors is down. It's also true that the number of accessible small press houses willing to consider those same authors is up. It can be difficult to tell the genuine small houses from the predators playing "print on demand," but if you want to be an author, you're going to spend hours in the research trenches. Researching publishing houses is the least you're going to be expected to do. The sentence to remember here is "who have written good books," not "who have written books." Typing "The End" is actually just the beginning.

I didn't find an agent the first time I tried. I didn't find an agent the tenth time I tried, either. And you know what? I'm glad. The books I was writing when I first started my search were...well, let's just say they weren't the best books in the history of mankind. Actually and honestly, they were, well, pretty damn bad. I had talent and I had enthusiasm, but what I needed was practice and time. (I know people whose response to this is "a good agent would have recognized your talent and taught you what to do." Sadly, no. World of no. Author to agent ratio again, remember? I would be seriously unhappy if my agent said she wouldn't be returning phone calls for a month because she'd found some green new writer to exhaust herself over. What's more, when I was that green new writer, I wasn't ready to hear a lot of the things that needed to be said. An agent who took me on then would have exhausted themselves for nothing.) My books are better because I had to face rejections and ask myself what I was doing wrong.

There's also the point of writing to sell vs. writing from the soul—or, as a friend of mine said recently, "I'm selling out as fast as I can." Something being popular doesn't make it bad, and wanting a client with an easy-to-pitch first book isn't bad either. Your future sales will be determined, in part, by your initial sales, and most publishers are going to be a lot more willing to take an "out there" second novel. Sell your vampires and you may find your race of symbiotic plant-people from the Outer Limits gets a much warmer reception. If an agent says "What else have you got?", it's not a judgment on your book. It's part of the necessary dinner party planning.

Finally—because I could talk about this topic for hours, and that means it's time to stop—keep in mind that when you're talking about people who read books and sell books for a living, reading comprehension really, really matters. Someone asked me the other day what I thought she had to do if she wanted to make it. I said "read the submission guidelines." They're sort of like airport security; if you set off the metal detector after you've been told to empty your pockets eight times, you may miss your flight. Well, if you ignore an agent's—or publisher's—submission guidelines, you may find yourself in the same situation. Metaphorically speaking.

In conclusion (for now), agents good, reading comprehension good, not getting signed not an evil plot to destroy your soul.

Promise.

This is not a book review. There may be a book review later, once a) I've finished the book, and b) I've finished being all excited about the book, but right now, this is not a book review. See? It doesn't even have the book review icon. What this is is an excuse to squeal and jump around and clap my hands over Stargazer [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies], the new book in the epic Evernight Saga from Claudia Gray. (I really like having an excuse to write 'epic saga' in a context that doesn't make me feel all dirty inside.)

Stargazer takes us back to Evernight Academy, where Bianca's problems are just beginning. I'm about halfway through the book, which officially hits shelves tomorrow, and I'm ecstatic. It's smart, savvy, well-paced, well-plotted supernatural romance for the teen crowd that's well-written enough to rock my happy adult world, smoking-hot enough to be enthralling, and yet PG-13 enough not to make my fifteen-year-old niece feel uncomfortable if I see her reading it. It is, in short, made of pure awesome.

(Look. Fifteen-year-olds are going to read smut. I'm not saying this is good, I'm not saying this is bad, I'm just saying this is. That said, when I was fifteen, I would have been seriously tweaked out if I'd seen my Aunt Jennifer reading the same smut I was reading, or having her see me reading it if I knew she knew that it was smut. Reduce discomfort in the teenagers of the world. Label your plot-to-porn ratio clearly.)

Stargazer officially comes out tomorrow. Because The Agent is awesome, she arranged for me to get an early copy, which I am devouring like it were the first pumpkin pie of the Halloween season. I'll doubtless finish it tonight, and do more flailing about how great it is later, after I've had time to let it sink in. For right now:

1. Evernight was awesome.
2. Stargazer is possibly more awesome.
3. Claudia Gray is hence declared to be awesome.
4. Support your local vampire academy by buying Stargazer.

The Evernight Academy Spirit Squad thanks you, and will reward your loyalty by not eating your cat.

I think 'get an agent' is one of the goals almost universally shared by aspiring authors. Having an agent is like having all the good cheat codes to the video game; it's like having the natural mathematician on your Academic Decathlon team, or having the guy who knows the whole town by heart on your side in the scavenger hunt. Whether it's true or not, we just know that the right agent will know everybody, will understand everything, and will be able to open doors we don't even quite realize exist.

To a degree, this belief is true. Not only is it your agent's job to understand the business side of the writing business -- not entirely So You Don't Have To, but partially, because there's a lot to understand -- getting good enough to get an agent is also a sign that you've reached a certain degree of skill. It's possible for really good writers to make it without an agent. It's actually harder for really bad writers to get an agent in the first place. (To all those agents I applied to when I was a teenager: I'm sorry you had to read that. Thank you for being so nice about it.)

Almost two years ago, a friend of mine sent me a letter introducing me to another friend of hers, one who happened to be a literary agent. The Agent and I started chatting via email, taking it slowly, navigating the wilds of acquaintance and understanding long before we reached the point where representation would become an option. It was a courtship, rather than a barroom hookup, and I am incredibly grateful for that, because anybody who's met me knows that my full attention can be an exhausting thing. She gets my full attention a lot.

A year ago today, we stopped courting.

The past year has been an amazing ride of wonderful, dizzying, confusing things, and The Agent has been there every step along the way to explain, encourage, and assist. I call her my personal superhero for a reason -- that's exactly what she is. Books on writing will tell you that the best thing a working writer can have is a good agent, and they're right, but what they won't tell you is that it's even better to have a good agent who understand you, understands the way you work, and is willing to see what you can do together.

So here's a happy, happy anniversary to my personal superhero, to the woman who helps me understand the business side of my chosen career, and to the only person ever to respond to my description of The Worst Book I've Ever Read by asking me to send it to them. Happy anniversary. Let's have ten more of these.

Well, what happened around here in 2008? Let's see...

1) I signed with the eternally delightful dianafox, who has shown a remarkable capacity for taking the things I say (some of which make very little sense, filtered as they are through my sunshine-and-zombies Pollyanna worldview) and doing something functionally useful with them. Everybody needs a personal superhero.

2) I started this journal. Because everybody needs their sunshine-and-zombies updates as regularly as possible. No, seriously. How can you know what's happening in their magical playland if somebody isn't making a point of telling you on a regular basis?

3) I arranged to have my website fully revamped, thanks to the design talents of taraoshea and the technical can-do of porpentine. Now it's glorious, it's gorgeous, and it's changing pretty much daily as we hammer the text into place and start getting the various sections hammered into their desired configurations. Which matters because...

4) I sold the first three Toby Daye books to DAW! Yes! Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night have all been sold, after so many years in my head that it's really not even all that funny. Soon, the world will understand why I love these people so much. I hope.

5) I finished writing or revising six books in 2008. The three mentioned above, along with Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby, book four), Newsflesh (The Masons, book one), and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues (Coyote Girls, book one). So that's, y'know. Pretty productive of me.

6) I started work on three more books -- The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh), The Brightest Fell (Toby, book five), and Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, book one).

7) I recorded an album. Scaaaaaary. You can still place pre-orders for Red Roses and Dead Things at my website. I promise that it will be awesome. And filled with corpses.

So it's been a huge, exciting, amazing year, and next year is just going to be a bigger, more exciting, more amazing year. Thanks for being here, and I really can't wait to see what happens next.

* I'm still taking pre-orders for the new album, Red Roses and Dead Things (the album details and track list are here, and will shortly include a cover graphic; you can order there, or by going directly to the order form). The tracks went to my mastering engineer, so we'll be closing the pre-orders shortly. If you wanted to sponsor the album (and thus be named in the liner notes), now's the time to do it. In other news, Jeff Bohnhoff is a golden god, Chris Mangum is a golden god, and I am a tired bunny.

* The finished manuscript for Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby Daye, book four) has been turned in to my agent for review. I call this 'making sure she doesn't have any spare time over the holidays,' because I'm just considerate like that. I'm about a hundred and eighty pages into book five at this point, so I guess misery just loves company. (Actually, I'm not miserable at all. I'm ecstatic. But that's also because I'm insane.)

* Updates to my website are continuing; they just slowed down a little bit because My Web Dude is also My Album Liner Notes Design Dude, and even all his awesome can't do eighteen things at the same time (and I am not his day job). Watch for FAQs and the 'Thoughts On Writing' landing page, coming soon.

* The part of my brain that never really believes I'm doing enough wants me to do a lengthy, illustrated essay on being a good convention guest. I think my brain is out to get me, I really, really do.

* I'm prepping for my holiday trip to Seattle by making packing lists, mailing presents, and searching in vain for a better method of mailing comic strips. I may have actually found one. It just requires...testing.

* I am wearing socks covered in grinning jack-o-lanterns. Halloween is every day.

That's all for now in the world of me. What's up and new in the world of you?

It's time for number seventeen in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. There will eventually be fifty essays in this series, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing; once number fifty has been written, I'll need to find something to do with my time. Maybe I'll, I don't know, write a book or something. Not all the essays will be of use to everyone, but I'll at least attempt to make them entertaining.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #17: Have Faith In Your Editor.

This is actually a thought that applies to everyone who writes, whether you're doing essays for a class or trying to craft the Great American/European/Australian/Martian/Whatever Novel. It's publishing-oriented in the sense that I do believe that work intended for publication requires more extensive editing, and we'll be talking about that. It's also writing-for-fun-oriented, in the sense that we want our readers not to bludgeon us to death with trout. Here's today's expanded topic of discussion:

A good editor looks good when you look good. They're trying to help you. Listen to them. Not everyone is a good editor. After a few experiences with the bad ones, you'll learn how to recognize the difference.

It's impossible to provide the experience necessary to tell a good editor from a bad one, at least in part because that definition will vary from person to person. Sometimes the variation will be slight; other times, the variation will be large enough to become incomprehensible. So we're going to try to cover the generalities today, and more importantly, we're going to be discussing the reasons that we need to be edited at all.

Ready? Excellent. Let's get started.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on editors, being edited, and why these things are necessary.Collapse )

The tiny little part of my tiny little blonde head that controls essential tasks—those things that have to be done, but which I absolutely dread and abhor doing, like formatting submissions, writing cover letters, and outlining projects—decided that the perfect time to write the series outline for the Mason Trilogy* would be while I was all hopped-up on cold medication. Because my brain is special.

Series outlines are the bane of my existence. Basically, they're your "short pitch," your chance to try to sell your story in a format that's longer than a cover letter, but shorter than the whole manuscript. Series outlines are sort of like high school book reports: they're packed with spoilers, and they strip out most of the detail of a story. "A young girl travels to a foreign land, kills the first person she meets, and teams up with three strangers" levels of stripping out the detail.

Feed is over five hundred pages long. Deadline is on track to be just as long. I have no real idea about Blackout, but I'd be astonished if the last book in the series was somehow shorter than the first two. I managed to condense all three volumes to nine pages. My agent loves me right now.

Fear me. And now? I'm going back to bed.

(*This may or may not be the official name of the series, but since all three books are about Shaun and Georgia Mason and their exciting journalistic adventures, it's as good a name as any. My original name for the project was "a good excuse to study virology and talk about zombies a lot," so this is really a pretty big improvement, marketability-wise. I'm great at naming books. I'm terrible at naming series.)

Six months ago today, my agent called me while I was at work to tell me that I was getting everything I wanted for Christmas, because we'd just sold the first three October Daye books to DAW. This was right after we finished putting book one, Rosemary and Rue, through a really torturous revision process -- seriously, it was like taking a machete and a staple gun to a classroom full of kindergartners -- and started the revisions on book two.

A month later, book two, A Local Habitation, was ready to be turned in to my publisher, and a month after that, in July, I went to New York to turn myself in to my publisher. It was the most surreal summer of my life. It hasn't really gotten less surreal since then.

In September, I turned in my final author-draft (distinct from the final 'my editor has had time to review and request rewrites' draft) of book three, An Artificial Night, to DAW, and started working seriously on book four, Late Eclipses of the Sun. (No, it's not under contract. Yes, I believe in being prepared.) And during that time period, I finished Newsflesh and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues, and started on The Mourning Edition and Discount Armageddon.

It's been a busy six months.

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 six months ago today, we sold my first novel.

I am still the happiest blonde there is.

I have, in fact, discovered the single best reason for an author to have an agent. Namely:

Your agent won't think you're crazy.

I think a lot. I mean, no matter what else I'm doing at any given point in time, the odds are pretty good that I'm thinking. As I write this, I'm thinking about, well, writing this; I'm thinking about Discount Armageddon, which I've started outlining; I'm thinking about Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues, which I'm planning to work on tonight; I'm thinking about the song that's stuck in my head; I'm thinking about processing edits in Newsflesh; I'm thinking about packing for the weekend. All these many, many trains of thought are running at the same time, and while the conductors in my head are pretty good about keeping to the timetable, there's always the chance that some switch is going to get thrown wrong, and the wrong train is going to hit the station.

For the most part, I've learned not to answer 'how are you?' with 'I think Moira married an incubus' or 'if viral amplification was underway when the body was put into cryogenic suspension, what would happen when you thawed the person out?'. Note the use of the words 'for the most part.' When Chris asked me what I thought of Hellboy II, I looked at him with deep and bone-searing sorrow, and replied "Evening* has the wrong hair color." That's just how it goes sometimes.

Conversations with my agent are different, because my agent understands that I, as a writer, am in some ways a little bit to the left of 'normally sane.' So when she says 'how are you?' and I reply 'you can totally apply ballroom dancing to demon hunting!', she says 'that's awesome!' instead of 'perhaps it's time to stop the Masters of Horror marathons.' Now, it's true that sometimes, she needs to summon me back to the world of linear thought long enough to answer serious questions, like 'when can you give me a manuscript?' or 'do you really think it's a good idea to start another series right now?', but it's not a judgment, it's a business need.

My agent is the person who, at the end of the day, doesn't mind the fact that I don't need a segue to start explaining the mating habits of the North American Yeti (messy), the rules of succession in fae politics (messier), or the patterns of Kellis-Amberlee incubation in a closed population (messiest). She throws herself on that conversational grenade daily, for the good of all the rest of you.

How I adore her.

(*A character in Rosemary and Rue. You'll all get to meet her when you read my book. So much will make sense when you read my book. Like why I twitch so much.)