4 exciting things ahead of us.

It's Friday. There's barely a weekend between us and Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], which officially hits store shelves in four days. I can barely believe that it's so close. I'm still a little stunned when I look at my shelf at home, and there's book four, staring at me. But the show must go on, and in honor of that fact, here are four exciting things coming in the next year.

4. Well, naturally, Deadline. The second book in the Newsflesh trilogy is coming out at the end of May, and it's exciting and terrifying and Feed was so well-reviewed that I'm considering disabling my Google spiders and hiding under my bed for a week when this one comes out, just to escape the inevitable comparisons. I think it's a good book. I even think it's maybe a better book. But it's not a sequel in the "do the same, only bigger" sense, and that makes me twitchy.

3. "Through This House" is my first novella set in Toby's world. More, it's my first novella appearing in a Charlaine Harris/Toni Kelner anthology, which still has me a little WAIT WHAT NO WHO IS DRIVING? BEAR IS DRIVING!! HOW CAN THIS BE?!? about the whole thing. I love the story, which bridges the span between Late Eclipses and One Salt Sea, but isn't necessary to enjoy either. And I love that I was somehow lucky enough to be allowed to write it.

2. Book Expo America! This is one of the biggest literary trade shows in the world. It's like, the Emerald City of giant book expos. I've never been before. And this year, I get to go. Lemme hear a "woo" from the crowd! Hell, I'll do it myself. WOO!

1. One Salt Sea. It comes out in September; I'm in final editorial revisions now; it's the book where, well, once again, everything changes. It's also the book I sometimes thought I would never finish, because it required admitting to myself that the series would make it five books, and I never quite believed that. But I did, and it did, and soon, you'll get to read it, and I'm so excited.

And that's four exciting things in the year ahead.

LATE ECLIPSES and Borderlands Books!

Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is nearly upon us, and you know what that means. TRAVELING CIRCUS TIME!

The Traveling Circus (this time consisting of myself, Betsy Tinney, Vixy & Tony, and Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff) will be descending on San Francisco's own Borderlands Books on March 19th, where we will do our best to blow the roof off with our characteristic mix of music, madness, and random, unexpected cheering. There will be a raffle, and the cafe will be open to fill your bellies with delicious food. This is Jeff and Maya's first day at the Circus, so please show up and help us show them how we roll.

I'll post a reminder when we get closer to the event, and of course, all events are listed on my website appearances page.

Also potentially of interest, for those of you who can't make it to the party: remember that Borderlands Books will take orders for signed and inscribed books, and will happily ship them all over the world. I'll be swinging through the store on Tuesday, where I'll happily sign any books that are waiting in my queue. So if you want a personalized book, drop the store a line, and trade some cash for the knowledge that my pen has been put to paper in your name.

It's really a book!

Because You Asked: Riding the Crazy Train.

I recently volunteered to make five detailed blog posts on things people wanted to know about the Toby universe, and provided a dedicated thread for them to make their suggestions. While these posts will not be specifically spoiler-y for published books, they will provide background material on the universe, and can be viewed as part of my functional canon. This is the fifth such post, and hence the last, for right now. Thanks for playing!

ellie101 says, "Amandine apparently went off the deep end in a big way, now she's only seen frolicking about the forest in ripped up clothes and such. Is there some kind of sanitarium for the fae that lose a few marbles? Does the Queen keep them locked in a dungeon somewhere? Or do the fae, taking a nod to the Hippie adage of "live and let live" just let the crazies roam?"

Further: "And building off of this burning question, if your crazy fae is a land/title owner is it then passed down, or since they're still around does it just stay theirs forever?"

Let's talk about the fae's rather casual approach to sanity, shall we?

Lots of people have noted that there seems to be a relatively, well, high number of seriously unstable individuals in Toby's world. Some of this is biological (please don't ask; much will be made clear in Late Eclipses), and some of it is just that when you're going to live forever, you get really, really, REALLY bored. Older fae disassociate themselves completely from the world on occasion, simply because the weight of everything they've seen and done and been and are can get to be too much for them to bear. They'll spend a few decades wandering the hills and dales, purging their psychic baggage, and then come back just fine, if somewhat divorced from the emotional context of their own memories. Fae madness is not an exact cognate for human mental illness. It is, ironically, how they stay sane.

Amandine is very young for this kind of crazy, being only around five hundred years old, but she's always been an over-achiever.

Fae sanitariums do exist, but are usually reserved for a) people who have been through some sort of severe trauma, rather than going naturally a little nuts, b) people who have been driven crazy, either through magical or mundane means, and c) people who have been brought in by relatives who don't want to see them get hurt. There's actually a real danger to grouping too many unstable fae in the same place, since there's always a chance they could decide to run away en masse and start a new Kingdom in the middle of the Mall of America. Most of the time, if someone is judged to be relatively harmless, they're just allowed to go wherever they want to go.

No fae landholder would turn away someone in need of help. So the crazier fae wander from knowe to knowe, being fed and cared for until such time as they wander off again. The ones who choose to stick to the woods, like Amandine, are likely to find food being set out for them in pre-established areas. In short, the fae treat their unwell like stray cats. There's not much else that they can do.

It helps that right now, all of Faerie is confined to the Summerlands, where it's reasonably hard to get hurt unless you're putting some serious effort into it. The climate is unpredictable but usually mild; fruit-bearing trees are common; game is easy to find and hunt; the monsters that exist are pretty well-aware that eating fae gets you hunted down and killed, and thus don't do it unless they're really, really sure they can get away with it. (Some of the wandering mad do go missing every year, it's true. So do some children...and some monsters. Crazy or not, purebloods fight back.) When some of the deeper lands are accessible, like Tirn Ailil or the Isles of the Blessed, things get a little more difficult. In fact, traditionally, the wandering mad were often exiled to the Summerlands, where they'd be less likely to get munched.

In the case of fae landholders who go mad, if there is no associated title, they keep their land until someone comes in to try deposing or otherwise disposing of them. Amandine has a tower that is basically the fae equivalent of a really nice house. The odds are good that she'll be able to keep her land until she sanes up enough to need it again. With titled fae, two questions come into play. "Do they have an heir who is ready to take on the position?" And "Do they have subjects who are willing to cover for them?" If the answer to the former is "yes," the odds are good that they stepped down when they felt themselves getting fuzzy. If they didn't, they may either be deposed, or simply have their heir step in as a short-term replacement. If the answer to the latter is "yes," they may well simply be covered for by their courtiers, who are unlikely to want to deal with a new regent.

If the answer to both is "no," well. They're likely to come back from their roving to find that they're no longer in charge, and that they aren't too popular with the new management.

So that's fae madness. Please keep in mind that fae madness is very different from genuine mental illness, and I am in no way commenting on humans with psychological problems by explaining the way things work for the denizens of Faerie. They're wired differently, both physically and mentally, and while you do get fae with genuine long-term psychological problems, they are the minority. Changelings are more likely to have issues with straight human cognates, and even they wind up modified by the differences in biology, psychology, and everything else.