Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

People of Earth! If you have been waiting for the ebook release of Velveteen vs. The Multiverse, wait no longer! Finally the files are here!

Like the first volume, Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots, the ebook is priced at $9.99. I understand that this is high for an ebook, but a) it's a small publisher trying to recoup costs, and b) all the stories remain free to read online. So please buy the ebook to help me feed my cats, and please don't complain about the cost. If you don't like the price, you can always read the exact same stories here on my blog, free of charge, forever. (The stories as they appear in the books have been edited lightly for continuity, and checked for spelling and grammar errors. They are still 90% the same as they were in their first appearance.)

The wait is over! Let the wild rumpus begin!

ETA: IsFIC is dealing with some technical issues. I will not respond to questions about technical issues. I know nothing of the technical issues. I cannot help you. I'm sorry.

So it's done: the story is told, and we've all had time to sit back and digest it. There was a lot of evolution, growth, and change between "Velveteen vs. The Isley Crawfish Festival" and "Velveteen vs. The Epilogue," and I like to think that was a good thing.

The character of Velveteen has been with me for a long time; there are sketches of her dating back to high school, which puts her in about the same era of inception as Toby Daye. That may explain some of their similarities: the parental issues, the trust issues, the perpetual poverty and fear of going hungry. These are all things that I was struggling with during high school, and for several years after. While I don't base my characters off of myself intentionally, there's an aspect of "write what you know" that is simply unavoidable. She didn't have a civilian name for years, but when the time came to start writing her story down, I named her Velma, after a friend of mine who needed a pick-me-up. And thus was Velma Martinez properly born.

The first "Velveteen vs." story had a weird genesis. See, I was getting ready to go to Worldcon in Melbourne, Australia, and I realized that going to Australia is expensive. Like, it costs a lot. So I started doing things to save money. I cut back on caffeine and new book purchases, and I began selling blog sponsorships. I did the math on how many dollars I would need to save every day, and said "pay me this much money and that day is yours." And people did!

My very first sponsorship was for an anonymous group called The Crawfish Minions. Wanting to start the sponsorships off with a bang, I decided I'd write them a little story about crawfish. Velveteen seemed like the perfect character to fight river-dwelling crustaceans, and somehow my "little story" grew into the first Velveteen adventure. This is also the reason for the early installment weirdness in that one: I hadn't paused to think things through just yet. The shape of the world was there, but there's more snark in the narration (the characters would always remain snarky, I wrote them), and Velveteen monologues at the Claw for no apparent reason (something which she thankfully never did again). Still, people liked it a lot, and it was fun, and things progressed from there. As they always do. To quote Amy: "Where'd those 10,000 words come from? Did you trip?"

I did at least sit down to figure out a bit more of the shape of the setting before the second story. I knew who Sparkle Bright and Action Dude were, their relationships to Velveteen, and what had really caused their falling-out before I wrote "vs. The Coffee Freaks," although it wasn't until "vs. The Flashback Sequence" that I realized just how deeply Sparkle Bright had been, and still was, in love with Velveteen. You can see the signs if you go back to Yelena's early appearances; she's very clearly dealing with a crush, and very clearly has no idea how to handle it. Whereas poor Aaron was just clueless from day one.

A lot of the secondary characters were unplanned, including several who became incredibly important. Jackie Frost and the Princess were intended as one-offs, showing that Velveteen had friends outside of The Super Patriots, but once I'd allowed them into the story, they refused to leave. The Princess was always transgender; it's part of her origin story. I honestly wasn't sure I'd be able to reveal that on screen until the scene with Jolly Roger's ship, which gave me an opportunity to force everyone into stating their birth names. Tag was introduced because otherwise Velveteen's inevitable reunion with Action Dude would be too easy. Um. Sorry, Action Dude. Didn't mean to break your happy ending.

Maybe the most important of the accidental characters was Victory Anna. I knew that Polychrome needed to have a girlfriend, and I knew that I wanted her to be a gadgeteer, because we didn't have one in the main cast. I wanted to show that power set, even if it was only for one story. So I introduced a time-traveling steampunk gadget-girl, and just sort of ran with it. Because Yelena is described as looking a lot like my friend Torrey, I described Victoria as looking a lot like Vixy. Yes. I just built in the opportunities for cosplay.

Victory Anna was supposed to be a one-off. She absolutely wasn't supposed to become the first character other than Velveteen to have a story focusing on just her (and remains one of only two who have been given their own narrative: the other was Jackie Frost). And she definitely wasn't supposed to turn into a member of the "core team."

Whoops.

On the whole, this series of stories evolved into something larger, more complex, and more honest than I could ever have intended. It's about figuring out who you are and being willing to fight for it, because nothing comes free; it's about forgiving people who hurt you, and sometimes even letting them back into your life; it's about love. Because love is good, and we need more of it.

It took me a long time to tell Velveteen's story.

I think it was worth the wait.

Title: Velveteen vs. Everyone, Part II.
Summary: The time for patience is over. Now is the time for war. Not everyone is going to walk away, but a point comes when it is no longer safe to care.

( The fall of Dead Ringer was initially unremarked... )

Title: Velveteen vs. Jolly Roger.
Summary: The time for patience is over. Now is the time for war. The first step? Finding allies powerful enough to make the war winnable...

( Celia Morgan, Governor of Oregon, shook her head... )

Title: Velveteen vs. Legal.
Summary: When The Super Patriots Inc. finally go too far in their ongoing war against Velveteen and her friends, will she be able to take it lying down? Or will this finally be the straw that breaks the plush camel’s back?

( Celia Morgan was accustomed, as Governor of Oregon, to dealing with people whose concept of 'patience' had been left behind somewhere between their homes and her office door... )

Title: Velveteen vs. Vegas.
Summary: What happens when a former child superheroine and her allies finally decide that it's time to go up against the greatest enemy of all? Where can they find the information they're going to need to win?

( This is a terrible plan... )

Title: Velveteen vs. The Robot Armies of Dr. Walter Creelman, DDS.
Summary: The continuing adventures of a former child superheroine and her allies, who include Rainbow Brite's lesbian little sister, an escapee from a Rankin-Bass cartoon, and a deeply irritated Victorian gadgeteer with a raygun that used to be a toaster. No, really.

( Victoria Cogsworth managed not to slam the door to her borrowed bedroom behind her, although it was a near thing... )

Title: Velveteen vs. The Uncomfortable Conversation.
Summary: What happens when a former child superheroine finds herself back in the business, whether she likes it or not? And what happens to her allies?

( It was a beautiful Portland night, which meant that it wasn't raining, although it had been raining an hour earlier, and would probably be raining again in another hour... )

...and wow, are these not being mailed out before Christmas; the Post Office looks like a circle of Hell right now, and I can't imagine entering it for anything less than a little slip that says "We have your package, it's meowing and smells like candy corn, we can only guess that it is a genetically-engineered Maine Coon that never sheds, claws things, or makes unpleasant smells in the middle of the night while you're trying to sleep." So these beauties will be sent out after the new year.

With that, the two winners of our sponsored copies of Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots are:

greenman23
salexa

Please send your mailing information via my website contact form ASAP. Since I'm not promising quick postage, I'm going to be lenient this time; you have until Christmas to get it to me. If I do not receive your info by then, new winners will be chosen.

Thanks to everyone for playing, and big, big thanks to the generous sponsors of this giveaway. You make the holidays brighter.

Happy holidays!

So in the November post I mentioned that it was weird to be coming on Christmas and not planning for Disney World. Then I realized I could fix that, and so we're going to Disneyland for my birthday in January. (January 5th. I like birthdays.) PROBLEM SOLVED!

Anyway, this is the post in which I tell you what I'm working on, and you finally understand why I don't have time for tea. To quote myself, being too harried 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 all books currently in print are off the list, as are those that have been turned in but not yet printed (Midnight Blue-Light Special, Parasite). 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 horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

Not everything on this list has been sold. I will not discuss the sale status of anything which has not been publicly announced. If you can't remember whether I've announced something, check the relevant tag. Please don't ask why project X is no longer on the list.

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