Category: Publishing

SALVAGE RIGHT RELEASE DAY!

Today is the official release day of the hardcover and ebook editions of Salvage Right, the newest Liaden Universe® novel, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

Below, for your reading pleasure, is a letter we wrote to accompany the eARC sent by Baen to industry professionals, which kind of puts Salvage Right into perspective, in our career, and explains why we’re quite so excited about this release.

#

Dear Readers,

We hope that 2023 has so far treated you well, and that as it continues to unroll, you will have many opportunities to share happiness, and to celebrate.

We’re writing because we have something to celebrate.

In July, Salvage Right, our one hundredth collaboration, also the twenty-fifth novel set in our original Liaden Universe® will be published. This is kind of a big deal for us, given that, after the publication of our third book, in 1989, our editor at the time told us that we had “no career,” going forward.

However, our current publisher, Baen Books, thinks that one hundred collaborations is a reason to celebrate.

When we first started out, intending to write seven novels, we made a solemn and serious agreement: If this thing we’re doing stops being fun, we’ll quit.

Thirty-five years, twenty-nine collaborative novels, and great sweeping swathes of shorter works, clearly, Lee and Miller have been having fun.

A little about Salvage Right – it is a space opera in the Lee-and-Miller style, which is Action! Adventure! Romance! Salvage Right comes complete with malevolent intelligences from a former universe, mad scientists, extended family, AIs, secret organizations bent on taking over everything, snarky dialog, and a morally gray group of unlikely heroes, who have come together to make the universe a better place, though none of them would exactly say that, if you asked them.

Although twenty-four books set in the Liaden Universe® have been published prior to this one, it is not a strict, in-line series that must be read in order. It’s a universe in which a large cast of characters interact as they see fit, and have adventures.

In many ways, Salvage Right is the quintessential Liaden Universe® novel. It was, first, a brainstorm – not the book we had been supposed to be writing at all (we’re writing that one now). Secondly, the characters took over at a very early stage. They were going to Tinsori Light, and it was going to be the party of the decade.

We do know better than to argue with our characters, so we let them have their head, and they did have a most wonderful party, which we were delighted to chronicle.

And here it is, for you. We hope you have as much fun reading it as we did, writing it.

Thank you for reading.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
The Cat Farm and Confusion Factory
February 2023

#

Buy links:
Amazon
BN
Kobo
Baen

SALVAGE RIGHT drops on July 4

Salvage Right, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, the 25th novel in the Liaden Universe®, and! our 100th collaboration, drops on July 4 — that’s next Tuesday!

Have you ordered your copy yet? Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like the thrill of opening your ereader and seeing a new book all lined up and ready to be read.

Not convinced that you want to read Salvage Right? Sure you do; it’s awesome, though we say so, who shouldn’t. Don’t believe us? About 1/3 of the book is available to read FREE at this link, to help you make up your mind.
Already read the eARC or the hardcover mailed from the Uncle?  Consider leaving a review, or talking about the book on your blog, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or wherever else books are talked about.

Want to talk SPOILERS?  There’s an ongoing reader discussion right over here.

Salvage Right News!

This is a Two-Part Message.

PART ONE:
The Uncle is shipping signed copies, er, now. We have received several reports of readers receiving their books. If you would like a signed copy of Salvage Right, which Amazon and other vendors will be releasing, UNsigned, on July 4, you may order it from the Uncle, while supplies last. We only signed a couple hundred of those — not like the Meisha Merlin days, when we were scrawling our names in upwards of 1200 books.
So! If you want a signed copy of the hardcover edition of Salvage Right, go here and order it.

PART TWO:
The Uncle is shipping early. This means that Those Other Venues will not allow you to post a review on their sites yet. However! Goodreads will let you post a review and Baen, too. NOTE: Both of those require you to have an account.

However, if you have a webpage, a FB wall, a Twitter account, a TikTok thingy, or whatever else there is out there in the March of Technology, do please take a moment to talk about Salvage Right. Even something as simple as: “My book’s here!” and the title is good.

And remember, if you have gotten your book, read it, and want to talk about it, there’s a spoiler discussion space right here.

Thank you all for everything you do.

In case you need a graphic of the gorgeous cover art by David Mattingly to dress up your post:

The weekend at the Cat Farm

We are aware that, for some folks in the US, this is a three-day weekend.  Given that MaineDOT has told us that a sizeable percentage of those folks are heading for the Maine beaches, we here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory will be staying home.

Our festive weekend plans have expanded to include signing the 14 cases of Salvage Right that appeared in the driveway yesterday, courtesy of Melissa and her Big Brown Truck.  Also on the agenda is writing, reading, embroidery, and messing with the cats.  There may be a half-day in there somewhere so we can have cheese and crackers and a glass of wine in the middle of the day, just like those writers you see in movies.

After we have signed and reboxed the 300ish copies of Salvage Right, they will be put on another Big Brown Truck, bound for Minneapolis and Uncle Hugo’s SF Bookstore.  If you want to be sure that you will be getting one of those signed copies, you may pre-order here

Please note that Uncle Hugo’s is the sole source for signed copies of Salvage Right.

Tangential aside:  No, we have no news of an audiobook edition as yet.  The ebook edition will be released simultaneously with the hardcover, as has been Baen’s pleasant habit since the beginning.

Ribbon Dance — that’s the book due to be turned in +/-August 7 — has cleared 95,000 words, which means that shadow on the horizon?  Is The End.  We’re rowing as fast we can to get there.

For those playing along at home, Ribbon Dance is the direct sequel to 2020’s Trader’s Leap, detailing the adventures of the Tree-and-Dragon Trade Mission as it seeks to determine if Colemeno is the break they’ve been looking for.

On the topic of Far Future Planning, Steve and I are intending to attend Astronomicon in October.  After that, we’ll be at Boskone, in February 2024.  We’re also tentatively planning to attend the NASFIC in Buffalo, should it be chosen.

I’m not sure we can justify World Fantasy, in October 2024, but I’d sure like to go back to Niagara Falls, so — who knows?

So, that’s everything doing, I think.  Here’s a picture of Sprite, atop the Salvage Right mountain.

Various and Sundry News of the Day

Yes, yes, it’s been forever since I’ve done anything but tell y’all what I’m reading.

My excuse is that I’ve been working on Ribbon Dance — the sequel to Trader’s Leap, due at Baen in early August, no pub date yet.  There’s not much to tell except that I’m on the downward side of the mountain — +/- 90,000 words to the good, and maybe another 20,000 to get to the end of the story.  I’ve been working down inbetween the sentences for the last few days, building bridges, trimming up scenes, inserting (and deleting),  and going back and forth to make sure that guy actually said that thing, or failed to do so when he had the opportunity, which makes for very boring blogging.

I can tell you that Ribbon Dance is shaping up nicely, though it has a far different vibe from Salvage Right.  As, indeed, it should.  I think you guys will like it.

Speaking of Salvage Right (see what I did there?), the eARC is still available from Baen, right here.  If you click “Sample” on that page, you’ll find links to the first 45 chapters of the novel.  Yeah, they’re short — needs must — but that’s still about 150 pages — a very generous sample.

If you’ve read the eARC, or the sample chapters, and would like to talk about it with other early readers, Steve and I made a spoiler discussion space available here.  Also, if you’ve read the eARC, please consider leaving a review at Goodreads, or on your FB wall, or your blog, or other book-friendly spaces that you may frequent. Advance chatter helps sales.

Sales!  For those who prefer to wait for the official hardcover/ebook publication –your day is fast approaching:  July 4, in fact.  We have no news as yet regarding an audiobook edition.  Recent history suggests that there will be at least a six month gap between hardcover and audiobook releases.  This is, I mention for the folks in the back, out of the control of the authors.

If you’d like a signed copy of Salvage Right, you can preorder one — or more! — from Uncle Hugo’s.  Here’s the link.

We now move to a topic of interest to those who purchase paper editions of Pinbeam Books chapbooks (Pinbeam Books being the Lee-and-Miller indie arm).  Pinbeam Books paper editions are printed on demand by Amazon.  And Amazon will, in a few days, be raising the price it charges us (and all the rest of the folks who do POD publishing through Amazon) for paper.

Steve and I have talked this situation over, and have decided that we will not — that’s NOT — be increasing the cover price of existing Pinbeam Books paper editions.  We may possibly increase the cover price on Pinbeam Books paper editions, going forward.

We now move on to convention appearances.  The next convention Steve and I are planning to attend is Astronomicon, October 27-29, in Rochester, New York.  Here’s the link.

We have a couple of podcast interviews coming up — with Annie’s Bookstop and Culture Wars.  We’ll update you when those go live.  In the meantime, here’s a link to Writers Drinking Coffee, where Steve and I had a grand time talking to Chaz and Karen Brenchley and Jeannie Warner.

. . . and I think that catches us all up for the time being.

Thank you all for your continued patience with the vagaries of the writing life, and for your ongoing support of our work.

 

Story Count!

. . . because there have been Questions Asked.

Lee-and-Miller’s 100th collaboration: Salvage Right, July 4, 2023, Baen
101st collaboration: “The Last Train to Clarkesville,” The Last Train Outta Kepplar 283C, edited by David Boop, Fall 2023, Baen
102nd collaboration: “Songs of the Fathers,” in From Every Storm:  Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 35, November 2022, Pinbeam Books
103rd collaboration: “Interventions,” awaiting acceptance for a possible August 2023 publication
In process: Collaborations 104 and 105: Nameless novel set in the Redlands; Trade Lanes
And while we’re counting, let us not forget Lee-and-Miller collaboration number 99:  “Gadreel’s Folly,” Chicks in Tank Tops, edited by Jason Cordova, January 3, 2023, Baen

Talkin’ Turkey

It’s Thanksgiving Day in the US.

We here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory are planning our usual low-key event with an afternoon meal centered around carbs and tryptophan.  P’rhaps a movie will figure in somewhere, or a game of Scrabble — or both.

Last week, Real Life™ intruded far too much into my rich fantasy life, leaving me Very Snarly.  So, yesterday, I opened the WIP, shoved RL into a closet, and wrote.  Felt good.  Much less snarly this morning (and yes, I did sleep in — call me a slave to pleasure).  Planning on writing some more today.

I love it when my job’s not work.

I do have some Physical Therapy homework to do — and that will be work — but after that?  I’m as free as the wind.

In other news — this by way of a PSA, hoping to save someone else a moment of despair.

Tuesday, I dropped my beloved Moonman C1 demonstrator fountain pen.  This by itself is not unusual.  What won the prize was that, this time, I dropped it directly on its nib.  Yep, down into the wood floor like a ill-aimed dagger.  And, yes, the nib was bent, but only a little.  I thought I could still write with it, but, um — no.

So, I went over to Jetpens to order me in another, because by ghod I adore this pen, and I had a Bad Fright.  There were no Moonman pens.  For the search “moonman c1” I was offered “Majohn.”  It was, as I say, a Black Moment.  Then, I noticed that Majohn offered C1 demonstrators, and when I clicked on that image, I was given the information that “Moonman” is now “Majohn.”  Personally, I don’t know why you would abandon “Moonman” as a company name, but it’s not my company.  Suffice that the Majohn C1 demonstrator is what I wanted, and what I ordered in.

Fans of the coon cats will be pleased to know that they go on very well. Firefly has settled in beautifully.  She and Trooper still have the occasional technical meeting.  Sprite and Firefly groom each other and nap together from time to time, while Belle continues her path of Benevolent Disregard.

In other news, From Every Storm:  Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 35 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, is now available from all the Usual Suspects, including Baen.

We had an especially good run of preorders for this title — thank you all.  Steve and I are very grateful for you, our readers, and your support down a career that was declared dead for the first time more than 30 years ago.

I think that catches us up nicely.  Enjoy your day, whatever it brings.

Here’s a picture of my office, doing the work it was built to do.

 

In which 42 is the answer

Where on earth has the woman been again? you ask.

Welp.  Avoiding the news, if you will have it.  Also — page proofs for the anniversary edition of Scout’s Progress landed and I’ve been going over those.  Finished Monday night and passed them to Steve for his go-over.

I managed to finally get the five boxes of “our papers” into a UPS truck — no thanks to UPS — and on their way to Northern Illinois University, where resides the Lee-and-Miller Archive, about which A Word.

At the NIU Rare Books and Special Collections Library, there is a corner reserved for the papers of SFWA members (that’s the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America).  Steve and I being SFWA members, we have the right to increase the amount of paper held in that collection.  So, there’s a Big Pile called SFWA under which there are separate piles by Author.  Our papers will be available for public viewing on January 1, 2024.  No, this does not mean that you can walk in and start taking papers out of boxes.  Those interested will need to interface with Special Collections staff in order to view the materials.

So, that’s how that works.

What else?  Oh!  Steve and I celebrated the 42nd anniversary of Doing the Legal with a very nice Italian dinner at Amici Cucina.  In further celebration of the day, I have a new mechanical clock (this makes number four in the house.  We may have a clock problem.).  It’s a very nice, reserved little Wythe Barrister shelf clock modeled on a design from colonial Williamsburg.

In other happy news, the D(elivery) and A(cceptance) money arrived from the publisher, and! the Jan-Jun 2022 eroyalties.  Those being the last substantial payments we expect this year, unless we get hit with a film option, which we don’t expect and neither should you.

As previously advertised, we have two books up for preorder.

In chronological order, these are!

From Every Storm:  Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 35 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.  Included are two reprints, WSFA award nominee “Standing Orders,” “From Every Storm a Rainbow,” and original story, “Songs of the Fathers.”  You may preorder from your favorite bookstore.  Be aware that this is not the case if your favorite bookstore is Baen, which will have the book for sale on November 23, Release Day.

Also up for pre-order is Salvage Right, the 25th novel set in the Liaden Universe®, also by happy coincidence authored by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.  Salvage Right will be published on July 4th, 2023, and at the moment only the hardcover is available for preorder, from, again, All the Usual Suspects.

Now that Things have mostly settled down, I will again be getting back to the Redlands novel, and trying not to think too hard about my cataract surgery, upcoming in the first two weeks in December.

So, that’s where I’ve been, and what I’ve been doing.

To sum up:  We here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory are busy and mostly happy.

And hoping you’re the same.

 

Yule chapbook update

From Every Storm: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 35, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller has been submitted to the Usual Vendors for preorder.

At the moment, it is listed on:

Amazon
Apple
Kobo
Smashwords
Vivlio

. . . with more being added as things work themselves through the distribution network. So, if you don’t see your favorite vendor in the list above, keep checking back.

Things You Should Know, Part One.

  1.  Yes, you will be able to download the ebook edition of From Every Storm from Baen on its November 23 release day. At this time, Baen does not accept pre-orders.
  2. Yes, there will be a paper edition.  No, you cannot pre-order the paper edition, because the only way to make a paper book through Amazon (which is what we use) is to put it on sale now.  In fairness to everybody, we’ll push the Sell My Paper Book button a little closer to the official release day.  Yes, I know that Other Publishers can put their paper books up for pre-order, so you don’t have to write to tell me that, thanks.

Things You Should Know, Part Two

From Every Storm is a chapbook compilation of three Liaden Universe® stories, one of them never before published. The storms of the title spring not so much from the desert or the deep blue sea but from the minds and hearts of humanity, where greed wars with truth and justice, and where sometimes the supposed end of storm is a mere hurricane eye portending greater potential for damage ahead.

First up is “Standing Orders,” a finalist for 2022’s WSFA’s Small Press Award for Short Fiction, originally published in Derelict, a 2021 ZNB anthology. What happens at the end of a war that no one really won, where victory came at the price of acting more like the enemy than the High Command ever should?

Next is the previously unissued “Songs of the Fathers” a story dealing with Shan yos’Galan’s sometime trade partner Lomar Fasholt and her family as they struggle to follow her Mother’s religion as it morphs from loving to acquisitive, from flexible to aggressively rule-bound. Lomar’s a good mother and wife but her self-exiled family’s suffered greatly through this storm of changes. Will they find hope amidst the tumult?

Finally, there’s “From Every Storm a Rainbow,” the 2021 holiday story from Baen.com, wherein Sinit Caylon comes face to face with the perfidy of her absent brother while the accountant’s guild is trying to help Clan Mizel come about after years of of her mother’s abdication of responsibilities to Ran Eld. Sinit thinks the storm must be about over until it become obvious that between them her mother and brother may have fatally endangered the clan’s brightest future.