So...
The galleys for The Sharing Knife, Vol. 4: Horizon arrived via UPS yesterday from Eos. So far (I'm now up to Ch. 7) they look very clean and nice, and I am actually rather enjoying the story again, despite having read the text, in various iterations, about a thousand times previously. Until the mini-book tour in January/February, and whatever attendant PR chores come with it, this is the last official work on this book before I throw this literary baby into the great ocean of commerce to sink or swim.
Ch. 5 of the New Miles got written last week/weekend, despite all the distractions, which this week includes guys with big machines tearing up my street to install new gas lines and meters. Which would have been OK, but they blocked access the one morning my contractor chose to come and do some more work on my basement... or not. That was a project that was supposed to have been completed before my book tour last spring, sigh. It now looks as if it's going to drag on till my book tour next winter...
No more Miles till I slog through these galleys, anyway, regardless of the deconstruction going on around me.
Ta, L.
Subject: (Chat) Au Riismed
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008
So....
My treat from the mailman today was author's copies of Shards of Honor in Estonian, in which language it is titled Au Riismed. No, I have no idea what that means. The cover is very pretty, however, one of those where the artwork is glued on to the end boards like certain YA books in this country -- in this case, a picture of a deep canyon with some futuristic air vehicles and a lot of big pink bubbles floating in the air that I would guess to be the vampire balloons, which suggests the painting was actually made just for this book. And neatly avoiding the whole question of what the characters look like, I might add. I like it -- it signals genre clearly without being violent or garish.
The printing is clear and paper looks to be of good quality, and the binding is sewn.
The publisher, Varrak, has -- of course -- a website: www.varrak.ee
Oh ho, and here's the book's page so you can see the cover for yourselves -- http://www.varrak.ee/product/3429/
So, "Otsi" means "search" in Estonian. Who knew?
I shall have to leave further explication for any Estonian-speaking listees.
Ta, L.
Subject: KFAI interview archived -- temporarily
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008
Hiya --
I am reminded to mention that the interview I recorded earlier this summer for local radio station KFAI is up in their archives. They don't retain their archives for more than a few weeks, iirc, so if you want to hear it, do so soon.
http://www.kfai.org/node/13735
The show is described:
"8/14/2008 Write On Radio!
Poet LouAnn Shepard Muhm joins us by phone to talk about her new collection of poetry, Breaking the Glass. She hails from Park Rapids, Minnesota, and she will be reading Saturday, August 23 at Magers and Quinn at 6 pm with Athena Kildegaard and Argie Margolis from Morris and Francine Sterle from the Duluth area.
In the second half of the show, Steve McEllistrem talks with award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer Lois McMaster Bujold. She discusses her newest book in the Sharing Knife series, Passage."
Since I was recorded separately, I haven't yet heard the first part of the program. Streaming audio, if you find and push the right button.
Ta, L.
Subject: (Chat) book news: The Vorkosigan Companion
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008
Whew...
I've spent all my working time for the past 4 days slogging through the final proofread of the e-galleys for The Vorkosigan Companion, ably (and exhaustively) edited by Lillian Stewart Carl and John Helfers. I still have one article left to read through. Dear Ghu, what a lot of Stuff I've made up over the last 25 years.
It contains original articles, interviews, the forwards for the NESFA Press editions that double as quite varied and interesting articles in their own right, and a huge alphabetical concordance that tries to cover every person and place ever mentioned in the books (proofing the V's was a day's work right there.) Reading the galleys has given me a new appreciation of just how much meticulous work went into this on the parts of its editors and contributors.
Some of the material will be recognizable from interviews and essays on my website, from which we drew heavily, but considerably re-edited. Several of the Listees contributed articles or work, too.
I'm not sure who will be the purchasing audience for this, but it could certainly double-in-brass as a media or gaming (or ficcing) story bible.
To be published December 2008 by Baen Books.
Next up: not, alas, New Miles Ch. 5, but the galleys for Horizon, rumored to be impending shortly.
Ta, L. (My con crud from Denvention is almost entirely cleared up, though, yay!)
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