Recently in publishing, ho! Category

I was supposed to spend the week at my brother's, but both he and I have come down sick and I think I will be curled up in bed with an audio book instead of driving over (which would have also occurred with the company of an audio book, heh).

On the other hand, the Midnight Moon Café is graciously spotlighting Demon's Fall.

Also, All Romance eBooks has released the anthologies containing the Just One Bite contest finalists. My story, "Lilith," is in Just One Bite, Volume Two. You do have to register in order to "buy" it, but it's absolutely free.

Happy Thanksgiving to the Americans out there!

So all my musing on audio books was not for naught. I've been told that Audible.com will release an audio version of Demon's Fall on December 7th. I know nothing else about it, and I'm sure this is a job best left to professionals. I'm curious as to whether they'll get a male narrator, so as to match the POV; and I'm sure there'll be all sorts of intonation and expression that I never imagined. My imagination came up with the equivalent of musical scores, with tempo notations and fermatas, but I suspect the readers are competent enough on their own. We'll see how it turns out!

I wonder if there's a sweet spot for audio book length. Since these days most folks don't have to fumble with cassette tapes, I don't see many abridged works. I figure that most listeners don't count on being able to finish a book in one session anyway, and in fact it might be advantageous to have a longer work so that you don't have to switch books mid-roadtrip. (I got the 6-MP3-CD player edition of my car expressly for this purpose.) And my current audio book is L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s hefty Imager's Intrigue, which clocks in at 19 hours and 46 minutes. (The entire trilogy went a long way toward increasing my Audible app "level.") But perhaps some folks prefer something shorter?

In any case, it's exciting to have my work coming out in a new medium. You'll no doubt see another post from me on this second release day.

Since this is my release day, I suppose I should talk a bit more about Demon's Fall. (You can find it at Carina Press.) I'll try to discuss a specific aspect of the story, and then expand it out to a more general discussion.

Today: the title.

It started out as Gutter-wing, which I'm still fond of, but I can see how the title would lead a reader astray. When I had to come up with a list of alternatives, I coughed up:

Uncaging the Angel
Feather-fall
A Game of Souls
Angel in the City of Demons
A Kiss for the Last Coin
Wings White as Snow, Red as War

...why, yes, I was getting desperate at the end there.

We settled on Demon's Fall — for a demon who falls in love, and out of his ever-so-wicked ways. (Actually, my take on demons is that they're quite prone to human pettinesses and generosities rather being wholly given over to a particularly diabolical spirit.) And I have to say, seeing a title emblazoned on a gorgeous cover really wins you over.

Titles I have loved:

Hush, Hush (paired with a gorgeous cover)
Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep
The Knife of Never Letting Go
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

Note that these aren't necessarily romance. (I am a little saddened by how generic many romance titles are. I'm sure there's a bingo card out there with romance title keywords like "duke," "mistress," "billionaire," and such.) But they're all evocative and have a deftness of wording far beyond Stephen King's advised blunt, horror-appropriate titles of "The [insert noun]." They made me look twice at the books. Titles rarely have the visceral power of a cover, but when they work for me, they work.

Of course, a catchy title is not necessarily an appropriate one, and vice versa. Fantasy sagas in particular are prone to using made-up place or people names which are meaningless until you read the book. Accurate? Sure. But unlikely to grab a newcomer by the throat and say, "Read me. Now."

And here's the final cover for Demon's Fall. I'm pretty much in awe of Frauke of Croco Designs, the artist. She somehow took the vagueness of my character and story descriptions and rendered it into something beautiful.

Copyright © 2010 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited. Cover Art used by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited. ® and ^TM are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated companies, used under license.

Edited to add: You can find the first chapter of this book here.

I was taken with the concept of Drollerie Press's double anthology Trafficking in Magic/Magicking in Traffic, and it provided the last oomph necessary to finish up "Unsilenced" — a story about the different prices people will pay for power. One is an empress who seeks even more; one is a madwoman who has all of it anyone could dream of.

I can finally announce that it's been accepted! And I'm actually looking forward almost as much to seeing what other stories will be alongside mine.

I got the countersigned contract back from Carina Press for Gutter-wing -- renamed to Demon's Fall -- so it's all official! The executive editor was kind enough to actually call me about the acquisition, which was an exciting first for me. Things moved along at a steady clip from there:

Revisions are already done, and I'm quite happy with them. (I've been lucky with my editors so far, across all three publishers.) It does seem to be a struggle for me to give the heroine's arc proper weight and curvature when I write from the hero's POV. The cover art request is also in, and I'm quite curious how that'll turn out. And while there isn't a firm release date yet, I've got an idea-seed for a connected short story I'd like to post at the same time. Now to find the time to write it while navigating the new job...

Drollerie Press has released my story "Sea Gifts" in an ebook collection with the same title. I'm particularly proud of this one. I wrote the beginning--The sea brought gifts to the isle-witch--then went on to find out that a dragon's skeleton was among those gifts. Korean folktales are rife with mention of the Dragon King who rules the seas, so I borrowed him, and gave him a human shape and a taste for revenge...and human cooking.

It was probably also inspired (in a backbrain sort of way) by Patricia McKillip's Changeling Sea, which also deals with dragons from the sea and unwise sorceries. It's a lush tale with wry moments, short and sweet and a little wistful.

In any case, you can get "Sea Gifts" from Drollerie here.

It's been a crazy week — NaNoWriMo, the Project of Doom at work, apartment maintenance needs suddenly popping up — and yet I've got a grin on my face. My first book is out! Happiness is seeing your cover smack on the homepage of the publisher's website.

At the same time, some writerly part of me has moved on already and it's asking, "What? That old thing?" And this is even with the accelerated electronic publishing schedule, on a scale of months instead of years. Since Summer-set was accepted, I've finished a handful of short stories and another novella, and my brain is thoroughly occupied with what I hope will be a novel by November 30th. Because it's the reader's job to fall in love with the words (or I hope that's what the reader's doing). It's the writer's job to love creating the words, and that means coming up with new stories, always moving, always dreaming of the next tale.

I'm incredibly behind on emails, even to the point where I only just remembered to send out an announcement to my mailing list members. (I sent them an extra treat as an apology.) In the future, I must remember to actually let people know about these exciting occasions — and yes, there will be future releases.

Despite my resolution to get this one in early, I finished up the submission package for "Gutter-wing" just today. It actually came out to be longer than the minimum length, which makes me think I'm getting the hang of this novella thing.

I had fun with this setting, probably because it was so different for me — I don't think I would've tried it at all if the anthology description hadn't sparked a wayward neuron. Thankfully I'm not tempted by any of Samhain's other anthology calls at the moment, so I should be all good to go for NaNoWriMo.

It's up on Samhain's "Coming soon" pages as to be released on November 10, 2009!

I'm excited, but this is a (self-imposed) deadline as much as a day to count down to — I am determined to have another novella done and submitted before the first one's published. If I can write just a little faster, I might be able to manage two releases a year, and it does seem like speed matters in an e-published writer's career.