they must need bears

Some reasonably awesome news on the overseas front.

Blood & Iron is going to be a graphic novel in France, brought out by Soleil Productions. Or more precisely, three graphic novels--volume 1 is forthcoming in January '09 (tentatively), and a second and third volume should follow on a yearly schedule.

It will be a French translation, obviously. No word yet if or when there may be an English version, but as Soleil does work with Marvel, there is hope. (It may wind up being a little like that classic Late Night With David Letterman bit where he had a team of translators take the Beatles' "Yesterday" from English through six other languages and back again, but then again, that might be an improvement! You never know!)

This pleases me no end. As some of you know, B&I started life as a graphic novel script, so in a way it's come full circle. And I get to fulfull my twenty-year ambition of seeing the Kelpie on a splash page.*

So here's to a glorious future for Sang et Fer, yah?

---

*::puts a quarter in the pun jar without even being ordered::

I just emailed the page proof corrections for Hell & Earth back to Jessica-my-editor. There were 14 of them in total. The Stratford Man is done.

I started work on this duology at Christmas of 2002, is anybody was wondering.

Wow, that feels... weird. Good. But weird.

I think, except for Shadow Unit stuff,  I get the weekend off.

ETA: Hey! This means I can spend all day tomorrow watching Soap on DVD and eating junk food! Wooo!

Five things twice make two posts... or one long eclectic one.

1) Profound and heartfelt thanks to everybody who offered opinions on my Quest for a New Laptop. I'm still not sure what I'm going to wind up with; I suspect I need to go down to a computer store and bang on keyboards a little. I even contemplate trying out a Mac for longer than fifteen minutes, on the theory that that might be long enough to get over my visceral revulsion for the interface, though how I'd manage that I'm not sure.

2) Thanks for the congratulations on the prematurely released Hugo nomination.The complete list of Hugo and Campbell award nominees is here.  Congratulations to scalzi, autopope, scott_lynch, casacorona (**points! MY EDITOR! MINE!), pnh, ianmcdonald, ellen_datlow, maryrobinette... and whole bunches and bunches of people who are not on livejournal.

The Campbell Tiara (yet another opportunity to look like a demented elf prince!) may be viewed here.

"Tideline," my nominated story, may be read here. And I'm guessing Asimov's is likely to put it up on the web too, and I will link it if they do.

3) Latest Criminal Minds fandom kerfuffle over leaked information from an upcoming issue of EW: my personal inclination is that the most entertaining possibility is the one where nobody on the team knows who the Daddy is, and they have to wait for the DNA test to come back...

Oh, wait. That's As the World Turns. ;-)

4) Livejournal boycott:

I'm not participating (obviously), and I won't be packing up for InsaneJournal any time soon--for a number of reasons.

One is because well, LJ hasn't actually done anything in contravention of their terms of service, and the revelation that this company is run by grasping money-hungry capitalists who disrespect their user base makes it exactly like every other company in the world. Corporations have no conscience. They are inherently sociopathic.

Two is because I have a permanent account, which means that not only is LJ not making any more money off me (except indirectly, by way of people coming to LJ to read this journal (God knows why you'ddo that) and thus encountering their ads), I don't have to look at their damned advertising.

Three is because, well, I have looked at InsaneJournal. Which site is exceedingly advertising-cluttered.

5) It's spring!

***

1) I might make 40K on the book today. Please God, let me make 40K on the book today. If I didn't have two conventions between now and then, I might actually be able to finish the dratted thing by April 21. Since I have I-Con and Penguicon to contend with, it's looking likely to be May. And then I have a novelette and a novella I have to write on exceedingly short notice.

Also in here somewhere, page proofs on Hell & Earth and All the Windwracked Stars. And finishing up "Ballistic" with the team, and doing the really real final draft of "Overkill."

So, in other words, Deathmarch continues until further notice. Or, as coffeeem and I have taken to saying to each other lately, "I'll think about that in June."

And then I get to fall down. And take a break until I have recovered enough to work on the edits on By the Mountain Bound and start plotting out Grail. Oh, and revise One-Eyed Jack & the Suicide King, if Roc decides they want to buy Promethean Age #s 5 and 6.

2) Am I signing up for programming at WisCon? I dunno. I have to decide this weekend. And figure out what my schedule for driving to I-Con is.

3) Today I have to go to the grocery store, cancel my old gym membership, call a DMV, and call somebody else I've forgotten I'm supposed to call, but I have it written down.

4) And then write eight pages. Or preferably a little more, as tomorrow is a busy day, and I suspect there will be minimal wordcount. Maybe I should buy some beer while I am at the grocery store. I should definitely buy some more naproxen.

5) But first, I have to shower for my massage therapy appointment. Because nobody likes a smelly patient.

Hey! I bring gifts today! Two long pieces of short fiction posted to my website. In anticipation of the publication of Ink & Steel and Hell & Earth this summer, and the mass market paperback release of Blood & Iron, two stories about Matthew Magus.

One from when he was just a lad, "The Rest of Your Life in a Day."

And one set about a year before Blood & Iron, "Cryptic Coloration."

Enjoy.

Also, I was a good Bear today and worked hard:

Progress notes for 19 March 2008

Chill:

New words: 2012
Total words: 30562
Deadline: May 1
Mammalian assistance: Dear Cat, when you have food, treats, toys, a clean litterbox, fresh water, and I have made sure your throne pillow is on the chair beside me, walking back and forth on my feet and lecturing is not likely to make anything in your life any better. Love, Monkey.
Reason for stopping: food and a bath





Darling du jour: Age and treachery, all right. In that she made him feel old. Old and overcautious.
Tyop du jour: the raws of his floodlamp, moisture-doted, Birds'-next soup
Jury-rigging: skipped ahead two chapters because I was going strong with Benedick, and I wanted to stay in his POV. I'll go back and start the other bit tomorrow.
There's always one more quirk in the character:  Benedick really is Jamie Hyneman. I can tell, because he has a Rich Internal Life. This makes his POV a lot of fun to write. Chelsea may be developing a personality, finally. She needs more of one on the next draft.

Today's words Word don't know:   cryo, whiffled, planetfall, affectless, murfle, deadswitch, regrown, thorned, thornbrake, downclimbing, golds, ghosty, incandescents, overstory, floodlamps, spiderweb,
Words I'm Surprised Word Do Know: bioluminescence, bedazzlement
Sustenance: stuffed portobello mushrooms. coffee. I am excited becauseI only have one more pot of the mediocre coffee left, and then I can start using the good stuff again.

Also, I am wondering if I can find a good recipe for chicken breast with grapefruit compote or something for tonight, as I have here a chicken breast and a grapefruit, that need to be used up.
Mean Things: giant arthropods, feeling old
Other writing-related work: Easter egg contest stuff for SU

Exercise: none
Miles to Lothlorien: 248.2
Guitar practice: finger-picking yesterday. Need to work on scales and strum patterns and that damned F chord today.
Mail: nomail

Man. Page proofs. Absolutely the worst part of this writing gig. The part where you have to carefully reread every word you wrote, and not fuss with them. Even when they're awkward, awful. Demonstrably bad. Your inner Jack Nicholson pounds around in circles in your head, swearing and shuddering, decrying your overuse of the word snagged and your repetitive and/or awkward sentence structure. He waves his hands in the air and bellows things like "Will this character ever stop displaying her teeth?" and "Do you realize you used the word "welled" six times in this paragraph?" and "What made you think you were a writer, anyway?" and "Page proofs? YOU CAN'T HANDLE PAGE PROOFS!"

You don't even think about the plot structure at this point, or character arc, or narrative development, Because it's too late! The relationship is over! It's like going through your wedding album after the divorce! All you can do is pick the scabs and think, "If only I had known then what I know now--"

Occasionally, though, you find a sentence or a phrase you don't hate.

So far, I have found two:

"immoral as glaciers, righteous as stones." and "A raven with a crooked wing perched upon an eave, smiling as well as could be expected."

Those can stay.

The rest of the book, I'm not so sure about, right now.

---

In other news, songlyrics.com exists to provide the definitive proof that most people cannot handle a close reading to save their lives.

---

And she's got red lipstick and a bright pair of shoes.
She's got kneehigh socks for to cover a bruise.

So I have some quibbles with the biography of Doc Holliday I'm reading now (and more on those when I do the book report), but it just earned its keep.

As a writer, I find that when I'm working with a historical person, there comes a moment when one tiny detail, one little anecdote, makes them snap into reality for me. Pop. The telling detail. The perfect thing. Bang, the person makes sense, and I know them, and I can write them properly.

I've had a hard time finding one of those for Doc. He's so mythologized, and we have so little of himself in his own words, that it's hard to get a handle on him. He's contradictory, elusive, sharp-edged. Loyal to his friends, terrible to his enemies, soft-spoken until he's as foul-mouthed as a cat, kind to women and children, and a right bastard when in his cups. Maybe a bit bipolar, to apply a modern buzzword.

Anyway, in the midst of a discussion of how Doc's friends and enemies in Tombstone viewed him, there's a passage on his relationship with the town's children, with quotes from a few people who apparently viewed him with great fondness as kids, bringing us to this line:

[Billy] Hattich said that Doc was friendly, generous, soft-spoken, and a favorite with the town's kids because he always carried candy in his pocket.  (Gary L. Roberts, Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, p 160)

And my first thought is, aw. That's kind of revealing, right there.

And then my second thought is, well of course.

...horehound.

ow.

( And now, for the Dramatis Personae full of incredibly geeky jokes. )

There's something to be said for being able to write "Sir Not Appearing In This Novel" entries in one's cast list.

( I can has Stratford Man book covers. )

I can has the edit letter for Ink & Steel. (Edit letter for Hell & Earth still forthcoming.) Jessica-my-editor-Jessica has come up with a tidy solution to the Cliffhanger Issue, which I will be adopting.

Oh yes I will.

So, that's what I'll be working on until it's time to go to VP.... and probably once I get there, too.

Sigh. This damned story is determined to be a novelette at least. And the pacing is stately like a stately thing.

I think the novelette is attempting to be lingering and elegaic in feel. Or, as we say in the trade, "dull as ditchwater."

That's probably unfair. I am really bored with it, but that happens a lot, and some of the stories that most thoroughly bored me to tears when I was writing them have done amazing well out in the world. "And the Deep Blue Sea," for example, which I wrote wincing at every word. And Undertow, which bored me to gnawing my own wrists when I was writing it.

I dunno, maybe I'm just jaded.

Still, another 1100 words and change tonight, despite being out all day.

Tomorrow is slated a writing day, and thank dog, I am out of social commitments for a while. Because seriously, I am reaching the point of never wanting to see a human being again.

Possibly not even the cat.

This is a sign that it's time for some hardcore introversion, I think.

So it appears that I am going to have to write a Wrong Draft of King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree first, and then try to make it a Right Draft later.

Wait. Let me 'splain.

See, this thing that I am writing currently is a very straightforward narrative, with a bit of a mystery and an investigative plotline. It's kind of like, oh, "The Deep Blue Sea." Only with a mystery. But the problem is, I suspect thematically that what I need as a structure for this story is something much more like Memento or "L'esprit d'escalier." Because the structure should support the theme, as well as the narrative and characterization supporting the theme, and one of the themes of this thing is the fallibility of memory, conflation and construction and suppression thereof.

And apparently, I have to write a draft in which the story just happens, first, so I can figure out how to make it the story that will support that narrative.

Jesus, brain. A little help here!

---

Also:

Dear Bear,

You May Not Have an Evil Ringmaster.

Love, Bear.

Some bloggers review Whiskey & Water:

Swarm Of Beasts here.

The most interesting thing about this novel, to me, is that it has a number of things that ordinarily would push all my buttons and make me go squee. Like sexy devils! And sexy angels! And sexy Kit Marlowe! And cute gothy people! And then-- it turns around and stays too honest and dark and brutal to actually make me go squee. It's not even the turned-up melodrama of everybody dying beautiful tragic deaths; it's something quieter than that, and harsher in its own way.

Russ Allbery here:

Bear doesn't have quite the touch with multicornered politics between Heaven, Hell, and other powers that Neil Gaiman has, but I found her take quite satisfying. The twist she brings to Hell that I haven't seen done before is to take several major literary conceptions of the Devil (Milton's, Marlowe's, etc.) and populate Hell with them, as rivals and occasional allies. It's more satisfying than the normal picture of one Satan and his subservient devils and it's a springboard into exploring differing conceptions of evil, rebellion, pride, and outlooks on what Hell and temptation should be. The powers are handled with suitable impressiveness and distinction: tragically impressive physical force, beauty and pride, and devious manipulativeness are all present and have their time in the sun.

Click the links for full reviews. Not very spoilery in either case!

Also, a review at Romantic Times by Natalie A. Luhrs, here, which is brief so I will not quote from it.

When one hasn't been practicing guitar enough, one is prone to blister when one starts up again.

---

In other news, that good news about the Promethean Age books? I'm allowed to tell you now.

Item 1: There will be a mass-market paperback release of Blood & Iron in June of 2008. *\o/*

In practical terms, this means if you have been putting off buying the trade, and want it in that format, now is the time to buy one, because the trades will likely be remaindered before the mass-market is released. If you have been putting off buying Blood & Iron because you don't love me fourteen dollar's worth, it means you will be able to get the book for seven or eight bucks.

Item 2: Publication dates and cover concept for Ink & Steel and Hell & Earth have arrived.

And this is really good news. Ink & Steel and Hell & Earth are being published, not in 2008 and 2009, as previously planned, but back-to-back in summer of 2008. Exact dates are pending, but I would bet on July and August, or June and July.

Which means I will be doing a lot of revising and then CE manuscripts this autumn and winter, yes yes.

Also, cover concepts. It looks like I&S will get Elizabeth I on the cover, and H&E will have... the Mebd.

Morgan, need I mention? Is cranky.

An unrelated item:

Amazon is listing a publication date for Dust, which is December 26 of 2007. This may or may not be accurate, but it's certainly possible. In any case, that's (technically speaking) a January 2008 pub date, because the ways of publishing are mystical and strange.

---

In additional other news, I've just more or less completed the massive website update and you can now find a whole bunch of online fiction linked in one convenient place, on my Short Fiction Pimpin' Page. There are three new, previously-unavailable stories: "The Cold Blacksmith," "Los Empujaderos Furiosos," and "House of the Rising Sun."

More will eventually follow, as I intend to keep the site content coming. Next step? Decent excerpts of the various novels. 

We seem to have an official title for the third Promethean Age book, which means I need to go update my website.

The first half of The Stratford Man, fondly known as Will & Kit's Bogus Journey, is hereby officially dubbed Ink and Steel.

Hopefully this will be its last title...

Here's how you pronounce Matthew's name. To within a reasonable approximation.

This seems like a good time to quote a bit of elaine_andraste's musing, something that might have been in Whiskey & Water if it hadn't been cut for length considerations.

You see, that book is 155 thousand words. And I sweated every single one of them. Talk about being hard up against your length limit....

Anyway, this, in a somewhat different form, never made it in:

I guess I owe you good people some exposition. Well, actually, I owe you the rest of the story about Keith. But for some reason, I'm reluctant to get into that. So I'm going to talk about Faerie.

Faerie is too big to talk about comfortably. Especially today, when the world is grown so narrow, but still has just as much stuff crammed into it as ever before. Any one bit of legend spoken picks up echoes across time and space, and if you cock an ear, you can hear them all. Sometimes the original voice gets lost in the reflections. I imagine it was bad enough when it was this shire and that shire, this county and that county, Wales and Scotland and Ireland and England and maybe Normandy. But now it's changed, and as we're driven into corners and as our rememberers are pushed from place to place, the lines overlap and the legends get tangled.

Morgan, for example. Sometimes I think she changes every time I look at her, and I expect that someday her little cottage will get up on chicken legs and walk away. Especially now that we have all these damned Ukrainian werewolves hanging around.

Well, let me give you an example of what I mean. Like Black Shuck, for example. Once upon a time, if you came across him in Norfolk, you knew what you were getting into. But nowadays, these days, he's all mixed up in this black dog and that black dog, in Harry Potter and Conan Doyle and who knows who else? So you have to guess.

What story is he this time? What story am I this time?

I imagine the stories are only going to blend further. Which might not be a bad thing. I wonder if Ameratasu would want my job.

I'm thinking of this now, because of Fionnghuala. The funny thing is, she's dead; she crumbled into dust when her curse was removed, like so many wanderers in Faerie. But I've met her--and I've met Arthur too, though he's dead also.

But, I was talking about Nuala. Like Morgan, like Black Shuck, she persists because her legends is anything but unique. The wide world is wrapped in stories of those transformed into swans, with their more-true-than-human loves and their raw unmelodious voices. The heights and valleys are haunted: white wings swathe a woman's soul--or a man's--from steeping mountain to glacial blue Ural lake, Carpathian forest to Adriatic isle, ghost-wind taiga to sweltering Indian jungle. The whole world plays host all to swanmays and apsaras, Odette and Odile and Olrun, Urvaci and Kessel Djibak and the swan-maid servants of Othinn One-Eye--Sigrdrifa, Mist, Svanrikr, Grimhildr, Skeggjöld, and all their bloody sisters. Cygnus the king (perhaps-son of Poseidon) flies in legend alongside the Swan Mistress of the Ainu, and while the Swan Knight abides in Camelot, the seven Wild Swans return each night to shelter their sister's bed. Bunyip turns Aboriginal hunters into black swans as punishment for stealing her cub. Men in the wild places of Germany and Russia take swans to wife, first stealing their feather dresses to bind their wings, and in New York City, Brother Theodore told the tale of how each day he would walk from Amsterdam Avenue to the Hudson River at two in the afternoon, there to be transformed into a glorious swan for the swim to Jersey City.

And every story among the stories true. Fionnghuala's brothers and sisters, all. They all exist, or none of them can.

Stories are really tricky that way.

---

And! another round of book reports, after a long hiatus...

In my defense, I attended a workshop and convention and wrote most of a novel during that gap.

#45: Doris Lessing, The Cleft.

No actual book report for this one, as I have written a review of it for another publication. More to follow.

#46: Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss

Overall, excellent. Strongly characterized, well-written, fast-paced. The ending might be a bit... facile... in that everything ties up just a little too neatly, and too much by chance. The setting, both in terms of coastal Maine and the derelict NYC punk scene, are quite spectacularly rendered, and as I am currently working on short stories that involve (1) aging rockers and (2) the coast of Maine, I am going to have to be careful not to get infected.

Also, there might be a spec element, if you want to insist on such things in your reading. Then again, there might not.

#47: Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind

I've never seen the movie, but I'm interested in game theory, the manifestations of genius, madness, cognition, and neurology, so this was a natural for me. Dense going in places, remorseless and precise, I liked this a lot, and I hope Sylvia Nasar is never moved to biographize me.