Welcome to October, season of mists, mellow fruitfulness, and occasional accounting. I'm prepping for the winter, and that means paperwork. So here, then, is the October 2012 current projects post. The snows are coming, and we're almost ready to put a freeze on the year.

Anyway, this is the post in which I tell you what I'm working on, and you finally understand why I don't have time for tea. To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list, as are those that have been turned in but not yet printed (Midnight Blue-Light Special, Parasite). The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

Not everything on this list has been sold. I will not discuss the sale status of anything which has not been publicly announced. Please don't ask.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

Behold! For now I wear the human pants! Earlier this evening, I finished doing the redline edits on the physical manuscript of Late Eclipses, finished entering those edits into my manuscript copy, and finished processing the corrections in Vixy's gloriously detailed machete file. Then I kissed it goodnight, told it to wear its jacket, and shipped it off to The Agent once again. Ha.

The current book stats:

Pages, 400.
Words, 106,830.
Chapters, thirty-seven.
Cans of DDP, beyond counting.

So basically the book gained two chapters and lost a thousand words. It also gained a lot of awesome, which is good, because otherwise, it might have gained a date with a wood-chipper. I am very, very ready to be working on The Brightest Fell, aka, "Toby Daye, book five," aka, "Seanan, honey, can we please wait for Rosemary and Rue to come out before you finish the second set of three?" But dude, it's been waiting so patiently, and I've been neglecting it for so long. Book five needs love!

In conclusion...

...DINO DANCE PARTY!

So back on June 9th, I started the major surgical adjustments to the third Toby Daye book, An Artificial Night. Again, I know the exact date because I never ever ever throw anything away ever, and also because my planner tends to have notations like 'started rewrites today' and 'actually ran out of pickle relish' on the monthly view. Because that's just the way I roll. After spending most of yesterday threatening a single chapter with pitchforks and torches, I cleared the hurdle and raced to the end of the book. WINNER!

I still need to do more proofing and processing before the book gets shipped off to The Agent for further consideration, but the heavy lifting has been done; it's time to put away the machete, get out the scalpel and the staple gun, and start repairing the smaller, more easily overlooked issues. Even after spending several months in 'everything I know is wrong oh dear heavens did I really write that?!' mode, this book remains my favorite of the first three, and that's like, seriously magical.

VELOCIRAPTOR DANCE PARTY TIME!!!! Because nothing says 'I just finished a book revision' like dancing dinosaurs.

Still being me, and still being totally incapable of sitting still for more than a few minutes, I've already started the revisions on Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth of the Toby books. (This is the first book that comes after my current contract with DAW. So if you want to read it, y'know, encourage everyone you've ever met to buy Rosemary and Rue.) I'm also getting ready to seriously buckle down on the Newsflesh revisions, because nothing says 'detox after wallowing in urban fantasy for six months' like 'zombies and politics.'

I love the fact that right now, there's always something else waiting to be worked on. And, of course, the editorial process is going to be kicking in sooner than later, which will take me right back to Rosemary, and a whole new set of adventures. But for right now...

Dance!

Last night, after a lot of introspection, prodding, and generally gnawing at the idea like a velociraptor gnaws on a brontosaurus bone, I took the entire first chapter of An Artificial Night, shifted it to a separate file (where it wouldn't get in the way), and started working on a new first chapter. It contains a lot of the same elements and setting-establishment themes, but is, at the same time, a very, very different beastie. This has become a pattern. Every time I start revising a book, the first chapter seems to wind up in the recycling bin.

(I am at least reasonably confident that this won't happen with Newsflesh, since it starts with rip-roaring zombie adventure, or with Chasing St. Margaret, which starts with...um...Indian food. And I'm pretty sure taking off the first chapter of Upon A Star would cause the rest of the book to stop making any sort of linear sense. So it's probably safe.)

I find this part of the process insanely annoying -- I had a perfectly good front porch on this house! I was just getting used to it! -- but also deeply gratifying, because I have yet to build a new porch that isn't substantially better than the old porch. Plus, it gives me the excuse to really go to town with the chainsaw, and I always love that.

(Editing viciously and with little concern for life or limb, machete. Editing carefully, with surgical care and precision, scalpel. Editing in a way that leaves women weeping, strong men sick to their stomachs, and entire chapters broken and bleeding on the road to editorial perfection, chainsaw. I don't get to use the chainsaw very often. It is not an instrument for small adjustments. The chainsaw does not forgive authorial weakness. The chainsaw does not care. I love the chainsaw.)

I should be finished with the new porch by the end of today, and I'm just sort of amazed, because it's so very clearly a better porch, and it's so very clearly the porch we needed, and yet? I really thought the old porch was the right one.

It's a funny old game, writing.

Well, on May 29th, I started the major surgical adjustments to A Local Habitation, the second of the Toby Daye books. (I had actually started the revision process on April 13th. The fact that I can say this means that I really, really never throw anything away.) Yesterday, after lo these many hours of whacking my head against the keyboard and bemoaning the day I decided I wanted to be an author, I sent it off to my agent for review. Everybody dance!

No, seriously. Everybody dance. I DEMAND A VELOCIRAPTOR DANCE PARTY.

...okay, better.

Since I am apparently incapable of extended periods of idleness, I have already started the revisions on An Artificial Night, aka, 'Toby Daye, book three.' I'm so super-excited about working on this book, there are no words. Although I'm also a little skittish. I was talking to Rey last night, and said I didn't know what I was going to do with myself after the trilogy had been turned into DAW (beyond waiting for editorial comments, of course). He looked at me funny. I guess the part where I'm writing at least three other books that he's aware of sort of made that statement sound a little odd...

So now I'm happily hip-deep in An Artificial Night, still in that happy place where edits are new and exciting. They'll become a slog soon enough, but right now, everything is made of awesome.

Dance!

...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.

I've finished the first pass-through on A Local Habitation! Yes! Every chapter has been smacked with the editorial machete of Bringing Things Into Line With The Final Submitted Version of Rosemary and Rue! Now, this doesn't mean that it's done, submission-ready, ready for print, or anything fancy like that...

...but it does mean that I'm done with the really heavy lifting, and can start worrying about the pacing, the flow, the subtle points of continuity, and the fact that I somehow made it through multiple drafts of the book without noticing that I had a car suddenly materialize twenty-six chapters in. Win!

As I am still too sick to die, I will retreat with my triumph to update my continuity guide.

I have just finished the big payoff in A Local Habitation. What's left is cleanup and resolution, tying off loose ends, and about eighteen pages.

Wow.

My hands hurt.

I'm in the middle of revisions on A Local Habitation, the second Toby Daye book and the sequel to Rosemary and Rue. The following bit of nuttiness was the result:

Me: "Tybalt has just shown up. Wackiness is sure to follow."
Brooke: "Yay Tybalt! He'll know what to do."
Me: "Injury may be on his list."
Brooke: "Tybalt's to-do list: Items 1 through 7: INJURY. Item 8: INSULT. Items 9, 10: INJURY."

Two observations arise from this. One: it's good to be the King of Cats. And two...I love my proofreaders.