Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

Do you want to know how tired I am? I am so tired that I wrote a paragraph apologizing for not making this post on the fifteenth, like I normally do...before I checked the date and realized that it was the fifteenth of June right now. Isn't jet-lag awesome? In that way which is completely, totally, and utterly not even a tiny little bit? Anyway, this is the June edition of my monthly list of current projects, because I am your cat toy.

To quote myself, being too tired to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]on September 1st, 2009 (or pre-order it today). Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Newsflesh is off the list because it's being shopped, and that means I essentially can't have any contact with it until the process is done and editorial revisions begin. I miss you, baby!

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have dinosaurs and zombies to keep me company.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out! )

The ides of the month are upon us once again, and that means it's time for the April edition of my monthly current projects listing. At least this time I haven't just staggered home after a whirlwind tour of New York, New Jersey, and the New Jersey Pine Barrens, which makes me marginally more linear. Marginally. Again, these posts are labeled with the month and year, just in case somebody wants to find a specific entry later on. Anyway, this is the post where I make it cheerfully apparent that I do not actually ever sleep.

Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW; depending on the timing of the proofs, they may or may not ever appear here again, since my window for any further revisions on my part will be very, very narrow. You can buy Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]on September 1st, 2009 (or pre-order it today). Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues is off the list because it's under review with my agent, and is thus not being actively worked on. Newsflesh is off the list because it's being shopped, and that means I essentially can't have any contact with it until the process is done. I miss you, baby!

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have dinosaurs and zombies to keep me company.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out! )

Well, what happened around here in 2008? Let's see...

1) I signed with the eternally delightful dianafox, who has shown a remarkable capacity for taking the things I say (some of which make very little sense, filtered as they are through my sunshine-and-zombies Pollyanna worldview) and doing something functionally useful with them. Everybody needs a personal superhero.

2) I started this journal. Because everybody needs their sunshine-and-zombies updates as regularly as possible. No, seriously. How can you know what's happening in their magical playland if somebody isn't making a point of telling you on a regular basis?

3) I arranged to have my website fully revamped, thanks to the design talents of taraoshea and the technical can-do of porpentine. Now it's glorious, it's gorgeous, and it's changing pretty much daily as we hammer the text into place and start getting the various sections hammered into their desired configurations. Which matters because...

4) I sold the first three Toby Daye books to DAW! Yes! Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night have all been sold, after so many years in my head that it's really not even all that funny. Soon, the world will understand why I love these people so much. I hope.

5) I finished writing or revising six books in 2008. The three mentioned above, along with Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby, book four), Newsflesh (The Masons, book one), and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues (Coyote Girls, book one). So that's, y'know. Pretty productive of me.

6) I started work on three more books -- The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh), The Brightest Fell (Toby, book five), and Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, book one).

7) I recorded an album. Scaaaaaary. You can still place pre-orders for Red Roses and Dead Things at my website. I promise that it will be awesome. And filled with corpses.

So it's been a huge, exciting, amazing year, and next year is just going to be a bigger, more exciting, more amazing year. Thanks for being here, and I really can't wait to see what happens next.

So periodically, I spend time thinking about the best of all possible worlds -- I call it the world of sunshine and rainbows and zombie ponies, where it occasionally rains candy corn -- and what I'd like to have someday happen there. Beyond the million-dollar book deal, the New York Times best seller, and the death of the previously unknown, fabulously rich relative who leaves me the deed to his sprawling Victorian estate, I mean. Being an enormous comic book geek, I've actually considered who, in my perfect world, would get the chance to adapt my books. And because I'm a nice person, I thought I'd share.

Upon A Star should absolutely be adapted by Amy Mebberson (As If!, Divalicious, my princess icon). Not only is she a joy to work with, but her particular blend of gonzo-Disney and manga-inspired comic layouts would be absolutely perfect for illustrating the story of Corey Markham, accidental teen queen. It would rock my world in the most thorough of manners.

Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues would ideally be adapted by Chynna Clugston (Blue Monday), whose Archie-gone-wrong approach would be fantastic applied to Clady and company. Given Clady's horror movie fixation, having a slightly comic edge to the illustrations would keep things from getting too-too-bloody. Plus, Chyna draws awesome plaid. Plaid is key.

Now that I've had the silly, let's have the sublime: I would absolutely love to have Discount Armageddon (and sequels) adapted by Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Mystery Date). Who else could do proper justice to a large colony of pantheistic demon mice? Or to the various cryptids and horrible things that litter Verity's world? She'd be totally ideal. If you don't believe me, check out Finder and be enlightened.

Newsflesh owes a lot to Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, which was the work that introduced me to the idea of gonzo journalism (and unlocked a whole new world of possibilities). So I would totally want Darick Robertson, the man who drew Spider Jerusalem and company, to be the one to handle bringing the Masons into an illustrated universe. It would be insane. Insanely awesome.

Toby is the series I have the most time, energy, and love invested in; I guess that means it would naturally be the hardest to select someone for. After a lot of angst and waffling, I'm going to say Pia Guerra (Y: the Last Man) probably comes the closest to what I see inside my head. Although I could be totally wrong. I don't know. It'd make a gorgeous comic, but only if drawn right.

What works, of your own or other people's, would you like to see in comic form? And who would you want to see behind the pencil? Rock me.

(For purposes of this post, 'post-weekend' means 'Thursday night to now.')

Well, things continue to be hectic around here, which is exactly how I like them, so I really can't complain. Since Thursday, I have...

* Finished the initial revisions on Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. This was draft one-and-a-half, to let me fix all the continuity glitches and authorial stupid that had managed to creep in around the edges; now I'm ready to kick off draft two, during which I'll lose 10% of my hard-earned word count and hit all my characters repeatedly with a hammer. Because that's social. I'm feeling super-good about this book, and I love, love, love the fact that it's finally, blessedly finished.

* Purchased tickets to head for Seattle for my first pre-Conflikt rehearsal. Conflikt is the Pacific Northwest's own filk convention, and I'm going to be their Guest of Honor in 2009 (it's a January convention). I'm super-excited, but I'm also super-nervous. Rehearsal will make the nervousness become less while the excitement becomes more. It's a match made in heaven. Plus I get to hang out with all my awesome Seattle area friends, and that never fails to make me happy.

* Processed a bucketload of edits on Late Eclipses of the Sun, aka, 'Toby Daye book four,' aka, 'Seanan, if you just sold the first three, what the hell is wrong with you that you're working on the fourth one already?!' OCD cat is working marginally ahead of the curve, yo. OCD cat is also endlessly amazed by the editing process, because, well...I'm a pretty good author. I think I can say that without bragging, since, y'know, sold the trilogy and all. But give me a bunch of good proofreaders with machetes, and things become amazing. I'm watching this book just get better and better, and it's incredible.

* Finished the third chapter of The Mourning Edition, bringing me one step closer to world domination through zombies. I like world domination through zombies. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

* Entered about ten pages of data into my Toby Continuity Wiki, where it gleams in hyperlinked, clickable glory, thrilling my OCD heart to no end. It's gorgeous. I'm trying not to think about the part where it's the beginning of several hundred cumulative hours of work, because it really is going to make my life infinitely easier, and just dwell on the part where it's gorgeous.

* Started Discount Armageddon, book one of the Price series. Because I know you're gonna say it anyway, say it with me now: CHEESE! AND! CAKE! Also, ballroom dancing, snarky chameleon girls in fancy hotels, apartments sublet from Yeti, and La Parkour. It's good at be this kind of crazy.

My weekend was awesome. How was yours?

Here go:

Chapters revised so far: sixteen
Total words: 71,220
Reason for stopping: finished through chapter sixteen, so it was time to flip the draft.
Music: weird cover songs from Merav.
Lilly: somehow spread out to cover the entire pillow.

It's official: this book gets the award for 'best proof that Seanan needs to never take more than six months to write a fluffy book,' because it has some of the most spectacular continuity errors ever. So far, my lead has changed home towns twice inside of the text (the final home town: Red Wing, Minnesota), one of my secondary characters has changed species -- which somehow, nobody noticed -- and my antagonist has completely changed physical description. As these aren't supposed to be that sort of shapeshifter, well...

This is draft 1.5 so that I can worry about fixing these problems and smoothing out my sequencing and all that without worrying about making cuts to the text -- hence the word count creeping slowly but steadily upwards. When I hit the end of the draft and start in on the second draft, I'll start whacking away until I lose ten percent. On the plus side, I have Brooke, so that ten percent will be largely modifiers.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades. And not because I'm suffering from degenerative retinal Kellis-Amberlee, either.

It's time for the August installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain what I'm working on and what its status happens to be! Please note that Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation have once again vanished from this list, as they have finished another stage in the revision process and been returned to DAW. The next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear.

The cut-tag endures, because this list is getting slowly longer and longer. This is a natural consequence of living inside my head, where the darkness is. The darkness and the pumpkin pie and the bats. The bats have plague, by the way.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out! )

Here go:

Words: 6,980
Total words: 70,060
Reason for stopping: finished THE ENTIRE BOOK. YES, IT'S DONE.
Music: largely, musical soundtracks.
Lilly: conked out on my bed.

First draft stats:

Pages: 246
Chapters: twenty-eight
Started: July 21, 2005
Finished: August 11, 2008

I think this may be the longest shortest first draft I've ever written -- the book is less than half the length of Newsflesh, yet took over a year longer to finish. I blame this on the tragic fact that Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues kept getting relegated to the literary status of 'other woman' -- the book I really loved, yet turned to only after I'd finished my obligations to more 'important' commitments. If I were Clady, I would have long since tracked me down and kicked me in the teeth, that's all I'm saying here.

The bulk of the work on this book was done in the past eight months.

I still intend to go back and flesh out some of the earlier sequences a bit more thoroughly now that I know what my overall pacing looks like; because of that, and a few continuity adjustments, I'm planning to declare a 'draft 1.5' and add to the text, before cutting ten percent with draft two. It makes sense if you're me (and is actually how I managed Newsflesh, which turned out to have two missing chapters). But it's done. It's finally done. And I think it's a better book for having taken the time, because I've learned so much in the past few years.

It's done. Tonight, I will sleep the sleep of the just and the joyous.

It's done.

Here go:

Words: 2,320
Total words: 59,020
Reason for stopping: finished chapter twenty-three.
Music: lots of really, really random-ass cover songs.
Lilly: harassing Terence without pause or mercy.

So I was complaining about needing more word count on this book, and talking about how I was going to go back and tweak with things and add more meat to the text. And then? A chapter that wasn't in my outline at all showed up and demanded inclusion. Hello, new chapter. How've you been? Me? Oh, I'm fine. Anyway, I'm back on track with my outline now, although I've managed to add over two thousand words without actually finishing one of the five chapters I have left to go...and that's sort of awesome, since this chapter is wicked-cool and made of win. No shirtless Jason, but still, total win.

The book has some very visible pacing problems, probably because the poor thing has had to deal with me starting and stopping more times than rush hour traffic; it really got caught in an unenviable position on the work-list, first as my backup book during Newsflesh and then as my backup book during the high-octane Toby revisions. Now that it's the primary book, it's like it can't believe I'm not just going to yank the football away again, and I can understand that, really I can. That doesn't change the fact that I'm going to hammer the rest of it like...something that hammers things really, really well, and then I'm going to edit it thoroughly, fix all the pacing problems, and throw a dino dance party like the world has never seen.

I really love my screwed-up little high school lycanthropes. And I can't wait to have them out of my head.

Ahem.

I have just -- I mean, within the past fifteen minutes 'just' -- finished the first pass revisions on Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth book* in the Chronicles of October Daye. That's several hundred pages of text that I have now pummeled to within an inch of its text-y little life. Since I haven't closed the proofing pool on An Artificial Night yet, this book gets to go to bed and mellow for about a week, like fine wine. Tomorrow, I'll start processing Brooke's truly epic edits on Newsflesh. For right now, however...

For right now, I shall CELEBRATE MY TRIUMPH by opening a can of peas, getting a Diet Dr Pepper, finding my art supplies, and going into the back of the house to watch crappy horror movies and ink. Because that's just how we roll around these parts.

Tomorrow, there will be zombies. Tomorrow, poor Clady may actually get my attention focused her way again. Tomorrow, I will consider -- seriously consider -- turning my attention back towards Grace, Chastity, and their little homovore problem. But that's all tomorrow. Tonight, I bask in the glow of my success. Tonight, I consume legumes.

Tonight, I watch TV.

(*This is the first book not covered by my current contract. Just FYI.)