Category: Blog

Well, let’s see. . .

Several questions from the depths of the Roll Call, so! Answers.

*Book tours happen at the whim and/or planning of the publisher.  If we have helpers on the ground, Steve and I will occasionally do a book tour, or visit a bookstore local to the vicinity of an SF convention or WorldCon.  We were in Colorado some years back — 2006, I think — as GoHs at CoSine; and in Denver Itself for the WorldCon in 2008.  We did not do a bookstore tour at either of those cons; the local bookstores being largely uninterested in having second-string scifi writers come to their stores.  We are Further Constrained by the fact that we don’t fly, which limits the venues to which the publisher can economically send us.  Which is to say:  Unless we’re in Denver for Another Reason, and one or two or three of the local stores are willing to host a signing, our book tours, at least, will probably not reach Denver.

*I’m not certain I understand either the need or the desirability for a Collected Liaden Works for Kindle.  That being said…to the best of my knowledge, Baen is selling two bundles of novels — Korval’s Legacy and Phase Change, but I think that only gets you ten or twelve.  Surely, if one has a Kindle, there’s a way to make a category, say, LIADEN, and stick all your Liaden books under that category?  Just a thought.

*The reason we have not Mentioned the Rest of the Geography, Fauna, and Population (if any) of Planet Surebleak is because!  all the stories thus far have happened in the Port and the City, and neither Steve nor I feel like writing a Forbes Guide to the Surebleak Outback.

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As reported elsewhere, you may now pre-order the Audible version of Alliance of Equals.  Here’s the link.

Yes, we are aware that Audible has the book listed as AN Alliance of Equals; we have written to them on the topic.

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It’s a warm and pleasant day  here at the Confusion Factory.  I have vacuumed, and done a blankie run, the latter no doubt being the reason why I have three Large Cats asleep on my desk, all within the reach of my hand.  The coffeepot is hissing through its cleaning cycle; and I need to sort laundry.  After lunch, I will make a Sincere Effort to actually add words to the working manuscript.

I hope everyone is having a fine and relaxing day.

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Today’s blog title is brought to you by Julie Brown, “Brand New Girl.”  Here’s your link.

. . .the behinder I get.

Yeah.

So!  Book the Next has shrunk again, as last night I Officially Removed that questionable 5,652 words, and placed it in a file named “Five of 5.”

This brings the word count for Book the Next right down to 32,777.  As a colleague said, “It would be so much easier, if writing a novel were only about stringing words together until you have enough.”

So, that.

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One more question from the Roll Call:  Will there be a Jethri and Tan Sim story?

…one assumes that this is not a request for slash, but for a novel, and the answer is — Don’t know.  It’s not on the current list, but we’re pretty sure to have another list, sometime in future.  What we chose to write about is predicated on a number of factors, the most important of which is — What do we feel like writing?  As people frequently mention, it takes us a long time to write a book — far too long, in fact, to live with characters we dislike or a story we didn’t really want to write.

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Several people in a number of venues have asked where they can find more of Tolly Jones.  This is pursuant to yesterday’s posting of “Wise Child” (which is here, if you missed it).  Tolly, of course, makes an appearance in Dragon in Exile, and is also present in Alliance of Equals and! Book the Next.

There is some curiosity about Where Disian Came From.  First I heard of her was in Book the Next, when Tolly casually said something, and I was like, “Wait, what?”

Folks also want to know the “rest” of Disian’s story — which, she having arrived fully formed, so to speak, I happen to know!   Sorta.  What I don’t know yet is where that story belongs.  And, no (to forestall a frequent variation on a theme) I won’t just tell you.  Just telling you is not a story, but it very well may ruin the story, in that, having just told you, I’ll be bored, and won’t write it.

Writers are twisty wights, no getting around it.

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Steve and I have had a go at putting together a blog tour for Alliance, and our first stop was at YA Authors You Never Heard Of.

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He’d asked Disian, once, how moving through Jump looked to her. And she’d waxed rhapsodic enough that he’d decided right then and there that a man might have no better use of his time than to seek out the Uncle and offer to do whatever it took, so long as he ended up downloaded as the main brain of a spaceship.