Category: Shameless Self-Promotion

Liaden Pull-Quotes Needed

PLEASE READ ALL OF THE BELOW. Yes, it’s long, but it’s not as long as a novel, and all of us here like to read novels.

So! Baen has given its authors a homework assignment, which is to poll their readers — that’s you — for pull-quotes. These will be used for PR purposes.

Back in the day, we had a deck of quote cards that we used to give out at conventions, stuff like “If it lifts, we can fly it” or “Other people give their wives flowers.”

Pull-quotes are short and snappy. Pretty often, they’re dialogue or internal dialogue, because they lend themselves to short and snappy.

The problem we have, particularly, is that we’re lacking quotes from the books after I DARE. So, that’s your assignment.

WHAT BAEN PULL-QUOTES LOOK LIKE:

“There are entirely too many pretty iced cakes in this undertaking.”– Padi yos’Galan, RIBBON DANCE, Liaden Universe®, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

“Yes, I heard. Forgive my lack of appropriate consternation. Tinsori Light is not a regular environment. Strange things happen here.” — Jen Sin yos’Phelium, SALVAGE RIGHT, Liaden Universe®, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

HOW YOU CAN PLAY:

Go to this link and post a reply containing your quote in the form exampled above.
Yes, we do need the speaker and the title of the book from which the quote has been excerpted. No, we don’t need the page number.

THERE IS A LIMIT
Please confine yourself to no more than six quotes. Fewer is fine, too. Simply the fact of 26 novels makes it pretty certain that we’re going to overwhelm Baen’s system, but it’ll be fun for us — and we hope for you — to read what other’s found amusing/compelling/sad/true.

REMINDER RE WEBSITE HOUSEKEEPING
korval.com has human operators. We will accept new posts as quickly as we can, but we do sometimes take an hour off, or go to sleep, or go somewhere else. Don’t assume you’re being ignored if your reply doesn’t immediately go live.

AND! The Best Part

Thank you. Let’s have some fun!

DOORS INTO CHANGE available for preorder

Doors Into Change, by Sharon Lee, featuring three stories in her contemporary fantasy Carousel Series, is now available for electronic pre-order from the following vendors:  Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Everand.

Doors includes two short stories and a novelette.

“The Road to Pomona’s” is a rare precursor to the Archers Beach mythos, that examines the dangers of looking too far into fey matters, if you’re only a mundane human.

“The Vestals of Midnight,” takes place in one of the weirder and most dangerous corners of Archers Beach–the Enterprise, where things just “come in.” Only, what’s come in this time are children, and they’re in very great peril from the Enterprise’s ruling intelligence.

Novelette “Wolf in the Wind” serves up one of the Wise Ones who oversee the Six Worlds, and who might not be as impartial as their office demands.

The book will publish, electronically, and in a paper edition, on February 20.  At that time, it will also be available electronically from Baen.com

About the Carousel Books

So, I’ve had some Questions about the Carousel books (by Sharon Lee) and, more particularly, about the Archers Beach chapbooks.  Follows an attempt to bring everybody up to speed.

NOTE:  There are links embedded for the titles discussed.

In 2010, Baen Books published Carousel Tides, a small-town contemporary fantasy set in the fictional town of Archers Beach, Maine.  Tides was supposed to have been a one-off, but — I blame my brain, which eventually produced two more books in the series, Carousel Sun, and Carousel Seas, published by Baen in 2014 and 2015.

My brain also obligingly produced some short stories in the Archers Beach universe, which I eventually collected into three chapbooks.

Surfside, published in 2013, contained short story “Emancipated Child,” dealing with the town of Surfside, just next door to Archers Beach, which had long been without a Guardian; and very short story “How Nathan Archer Came to be a Prince in the Land of the Flowers (by Kate Archer as told to Sharon Lee)” dealing with — well.  What it says.

The Gift of Magic was published in 2015, collecting two stories that had originally been published on Baen.com, “The Gift of Music,” and “The night don’t seem so lonely.”  The first story talks about the healing power of music, in 1920s Archers Beach.  The second story is set in 1969, and deals with finding your home and your heart-family.  It offended some delicate sensibilities when it was published, so, yanno:  Good on you, Past Me.

Spell Bound was published in 2016.  It collected two longish stories first published on Splinter Universe:  “Will-o’-the-Wisp,” and “The Wolf’s Bride.”  The first story again has to do with families of the heart, as well as the nature of truth.  “Bride” is set in Sempeki, the Land of the Flowers, and it’s the origin story of Cael the Wolf, who appears in the novels.

Coming up, on February 20 (no link yet, because it’s still a-building) is Doors Into Change, which includes three short stories:  “The Road to Pomona’s,” “The Vestals of Midnight,” and “Wolf in the Wind.”  “Pomona” was first published on Splinter Universe, and then collected in Horror for the Throne.  It’s a precursor to Archers Beach, dealing with the danger of being able to see into the wyrd.  “Midnight,” first appeared in Release the Virgins, and pits Kate Archer (the lead of the novels, and Guardian of Archers Beach) against the power that inhabits what is possibly the strangest corner of her land.  “Wolf” is a slice of life from Archers Beach, where we find that some folks just aren’t meant to settle down.  The introductory chapters were posted on Splinter Universe; the chapbook includes the complete novelette.

Now, the Carousel books did not sell all that well, but they don’t seem to be as much of a surprise to people as the chapbooks, which sold even less well.  I hope that the above clarifies matters for everyone.

 

In which mortality is hard

A couple days last week were consumed by reading the page proofs for the mass market edition of Salvage Right (by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller), which will be published on April 30.  I only found seven errors, which means that the Tyop Hunt through the eARC was very thorough.  You guys are good!

This weekend, my plans are to sit with “Wolf in the Wind” and write it a proper ending, so it can be folded into a chapbook with “The Vestals of Midnight,” and “The Road to Pomona’s,”  which will mean that all the Archers Beach/trenvay stories will be published.  Hopefully, next week, I’ll be able to get back to WIPnovel, from which I have been away too long.

The tax packet is here — and act of High Optimism by the Accountant, but, hey, it’s better to have it on hand and fill in the blanks as various paperwork arrives rather than have to do it all in one Mad Rush.

In and around things, I’m doing a homework assignment for our publisher, which is gathering Series Quotes Down the Ages.  This is producing a Certain Amount of Melancholy, on the theme of Absent Friends and Not Going Home Again.

There are a surprising number of reviews and blurbs, from a surprising range of sources. Of course, the internet was cozier Back Then, and the field smaller.  It was possible to know most of the people who were writing science fiction, and a lot of the reviewers.  For all I know, it’s still easy to Know Everybody, and I’m just Out of the Loop.  I do note that a lot of the review sites from which I have quotes are no longer in business, or greatly reduced from what they were, back in the latter part of the last century, and the beginning of this one.

My plan is to share some of these reviews, on Xitter, Bluesky, here; and make a page on Welcome to Liad.  I mean, I’m doing the work, why not make it pay for itself, am I right?

So, to get us started, here’s a review from Melisa Michaels, who falls into the category of Absent Friends:

“The Liaden series is a delight . . . Lee and Miller have taken standard space adventure fare, added a touch of romance, and turned the whole into powerful stories that are at once sly comedies of manners, exciting adventures, complex spy thrillers, and compelling tales of human drama. Best of all, they’ve done it in literate yet comfortably transparent prose that brings their alien worlds, societies, and people vividly to life . . . I could not put them down, and now like any fan I am impatiently awaiting more.” —Melisa Michaels, author of Cold Iron and Sister to the Rain

 

The Liaden Universe® Award and Gift-Giving Post

So, it’s the time of year when people ask writers what they saw published in the current year.

There are a couple of reasons for this.  One is that books make great gifts! and we’re coming up on a gifting time of year.

The other is that some folks read for and nominate in the various awards that are floating about.  The end of the year is coming up right briskly, and they want to make sure that they’ve read as widely as possible.

That said, follows the list of What Lee-and-Miller published in 2023:

“Gadreel’s Folly,” novelette, Chicks in Tank Tops, edited by Jason Cordova, published by Baen Books, January 2023

Salvage Right, novel, published by Baen Books, July 2023

“Interventions,” short story, Solar Flare: Solarpunk Stories, edited by Patricia Bray and Joshua Palmatier, published by Zombies Need Brains LLC, July 2023

Not a long list, but quality counts.

For those who are thinking in the direction of gift-giving to readers who may need some sarcasm, hope, and good triumphing over evil in their lives, not to mention cats, norbears, and sentient trees,  I cannot recommend the novels and stories set in the Liaden Universe® enough.

There are 25 novels published in the Universe, which may sound . . . overwhelming.  However!  There are arcs within the Universe, which may be more manageable.  A brief list of those arcs, with titles listed in order, is below.

Theo Waitley (coming of age as a pilot):  Fledgling, Saltation, Ghost Ship, Dragon Ship, The Gathering Edge, rejoining the rest of the characters in Neogenesis

Jethri Gobelyn (coming of age as a trader): Balance of Trade, Trade Secret, Fair Trade

Prehistory:  Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon

Space Regencies (for fans of Georgette Heyer):  Local Custom, Scout’s Progress, Mouse and Dragon, joins the Theo Waitley arc in Fledgling

The Dutiful Passage (space traders):  Conflict of Honors, Alliance of Equals, Trader’s Leap, Ribbon Dance (publishing in June 2024)

Agent of Change (action adventure):  Agent of Change, Carpe Diem, Plan B, I Dare

Korval in Exile (action adventure):  Dragon in Exile, Neogenesis, Accepting the Lance, Salvage Right

Standalone within the series (coming of age as the new kid in a new culture):  Necessity’s Child

For more information about reading order in the Liaden Universe®, check out this link

For more information about which titles have been combined with other titles in omnibus editions, click this link

Thank you for reading.