Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

The random number generator has spoken, and the winner of a signed copy of either Libriomancer or Unbound is...

kay_gmd

Please email me via my website contact form. I will be passing this email on to Jim, so he can determine which book you want and make sure you get the right inscription.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and if you haven't already checked out Libriomancer, give it a shot. It's available in paperback, and it's the doorway to a very big adventure.

I am pleased to announce that my first non-fiction book, consisting of essays taken from my various blogs and poetry from my two self-published chapbooks (Leaves From the Babylon Wood and Pathways Through the Babylon Wood, both of which are loooooooooong out of print) is available now from NESFA Press.

Click here for information on Letters to the Pumpkin King.

With introductions by Catherynne Valente and Elizabeth Bear, and an absolutely gorgeous cover by David Palumbo (I covet this artwork), I could not be more pleased. It's a hardcover, so the price point is high for what is essentially my blog in paper form, but you can use that paper form to kill spiders, which is pretty damn cool.

Here is what some people say. All of them are biased toward liking me, so:

"This book is bursting with Seanan-brain. You should read it." —Jim C. Hines, author of Libriomancer.

"Seanan McGuire knows how to beguile with the very best. She can whisper spells and secrets by the ballad and the bushel. But here she simply tells it as she has seen and lived it, with bravery and a loud voice, and that is magic, too." —Catherynne M. Valente, author of The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon In Two.

"Seanan is rough and potent magic. Her work may not change you, but it is likely to change your experience of the world." —Elizabeth Bear, author of Stiles of the Sky.

"I've read Seanan’s fiction and nonfiction for years. Because she's smart. Because she's funny. Because she's insightful. Because she uses the word 'f***' in original and interesting ways." —Jim C. Hines, author of Libriomancer.

Letters to the Pumpkin King! Get your copy today! (And yes, Borderlands is planning to stock them, if you're coming to the release party.)

My dearly beloved friend Jim Hines (http://www.jimchines.com/) has a new book out today: Codex Born, the sequel to Libriomancer. The magic of books has never been so real, or so incredibly dangerous.

I really, really loved this book, which I felt expanded and improved upon the world of the original, so when Jim asked if I would be willing to host a giveaway, I was happy to oblige. This is that giveaway. The rules:

1. Leave a comment on this post, naming the first book that really changed your life.
2. Identify your location in the world (US, non-US).
3. If non-US, confirm that you are willing to pay postage (for we are poor writers).

The winner will be chosen by RNG on Friday, August 9th, and Jim himself will be sending a signed copy of Codex Born to the winner. If you're not familiar with the series, you're in luck: book one, Libriomancer, is out today in paperback, so you can get all caught up.

Books! Magic! Awesomeness!

GAME ON!

ETA: Guys, I know it's tempting to discuss people's awesome taste in books with them, but please DO NOT REPLY to comments on RNG giveaway posts! It confuses the RNG, and has resulted in people NOT getting the prizes that they should have received!

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is currently open for voting! This award uses the same nomination and voting mechanism as the Hugos, even though the Campbell Award is not a Hugo, and will be presented this year in Chicago, during the Hugo Awards Ceremony. Having been on the Campbell ballot in 2010, I can testify that it is a huge, huge honor to be nominated, and that it gets your name in front of a lot of eyes that might not otherwise have heard of you.

(I can also testify that winning is amazeballs best thing oh my sweet Great Pumpkin corn maze paradise wonderful. But that's probably true of winning most awards that you really, really want.)

If you are currently a member, either Attending or Supporting, of Chicon 7, you are eligible to vote for the Campbell Award, along with the Hugo Awards. If you're not a member, either Attending or Supporting, you can view the membership rates by clicking right here. A Supporting Membership comes with voting rights and the complete Hugo packet, and is only $50.

Because writers who are eligible for the Campbell are, by their very nature, relatively new writers, it's possible that you don't know anything about this year's candidates. Jim Hines has sensibly decided to help you with this little problem, and has conducted interviews with all five of this year's nominees. Go, read, and be enlightened!

We have a truly awesome class of Campbell nominees this year; any one of them is worthy of the tiara. Because remember, the Campbell is one of only two major genre awards that comes with a tiara (the other is the Tiptree).

In closing, I present the comic strip I drew to commemorate my own eligibility:



TESTIFY!

I missed the SF SqueeCast's Awkward Episode—although you don't have to; you can listen to it, and all the awkwardness, here—and that made me Very Sad. This was the episode for saying awesome things about each other, which is something that, well. It's socially awkward, and hard to do. We feel weird sometimes, being overly positive about our friends. It's like "I love you, I have to be critical of you, because no one will believe me if I say you did something awesome."

Screw that.

Catherynne Valente is proof that the universe intends for all us fairy tale girls to find one another, given enough time, enough space, and enough raw need. Our paths wound through the same wood for a very long time; the last ten years of my life are peppered with mutual friends offering to introduce us to each other, and it just not working out. And I'm glad, I'm so glad, because we needed to reach the same stage in our stories before we could recognize each other. I'm the Lily Fair to her Snow White; she's the Ozma to my Dorothy; she's the sister I didn't know I was looking for, for so very long. And she's amazing. She really is! It's not just because I love her: I am actually very critical of her, because I love her. Her Russian political fairy tale, Deathless, is out in paperback today, and I give copies of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making to every little girl I know.

Jim C. Hines was one of the first people to welcome me to DAW when I signed with them for the October Daye books. He was friendly, he was knowledgeable, and he made a scary process a little less unknowable and terrifying. For that alone, I would love him always. So of course he has to be funny, and smart, and an awesome blogger, and a great writer who re-imagined some of my favorite fairy tale characters into ass-kicking heroines who don't need saving, by anyone other than themselves. He's like the Lego of fantasy authors, constantly being reconfigured into something new. The awesome, gender-neutral Lego of my childhood, not the sexist, pink-and-purple Lego Friends of today. He's a gentleman, a scholar, and one of the best men I know. I'm proud that he's my friend. You should read all his books.

Elizabeth Bear always struck me as vaguely terrifying. She was smart, she was loud, she wrote lots of books, she won a Campbell Award, she had a Giant Ridiculous Dog...terrifying. And then I met her, and realized she was terrifying because in another lifetime, she was my best friend all the way through school, and echoes of the time she shoved me off a roof in that reality kept overwhelming my sense of this one. It sounds weird, but it's true: we met, and I instantly knew that I'd known her forever, and wanted to keep knowing her forever, because not knowing her made my life less awesome. Her upcoming book, Range of Ghosts, is one of those things I shouldn't have loved, and did, because it was just that well written, and that infused with the raw awesomeness of the woman who had written it.

Paul Cornell still thinks I'm capable of being shy when put in front of a microphone, and wrote some of the best Doctor Who novels ever conceived. Also some of the best episodes.

John Scalzi sometimes shows up in my dreams, usually taking poor, confused me by the hand and leading me to where I'm supposed to be (often, it's a plane).

Tanya Huff changed my life forever with her books, and then changed it again with her friendship. I am beyond blessed to know her.

Amy McNally is planning to fiddle the Devil for my soul when he comes to collect on the crossroads bargain that I clearly made when no one was looking.

And then there is Vixy.

If Cat is my sister in story, Vixy is my sister in soul: she's the wicked girl I was looking for all my life, without ever knowing what I was trying to find. Some of the happiest moments in my life have included her, and they were all the more amazing because of it. I am eternally grateful to the filk community, for throwing us into the same space, and to OVFF, for giving me an excuse to say "hey, you want to sing with me?" Vixy makes me a better writer, a better performer, and a better person, because I feel the need to live up to her example. She makes me a better friend. For that, I am so grateful that there aren't any more words.

I can't list everyone in the world, or my fingers would fall of. So I say to those who read this: Happy Valentine's Day to each and every one of you, and if you don't celebrate Valentine's Day, happy Horny Werewolf Day. May you be happy, may you be loved, may you be warm and safe and dry. May you have stars to steer by, wish on, and follow, and may you find your sisters and brothers and lovers and children in these woods, waiting for you, where you always knew they'd be.

Last night I dreamt that I had somehow become involved with a television show based on the old Gammarauders RPG, and that jimhines had been hired to write the novelizations of said show. He wrote a whole book focusing on one of the characters I'd introduced to the show, a sort of candy-cane punk rock girl who drove a giant air-breathing octopus (it made sense in context). I, of course, read the whole book, because I am me.

I was having a discussion with Alan at Borderlands about how I felt about the whole thing after I finished it. "Did you like it?" he asked.

"I did," I said. "I hope it sells lots and lots of copies and makes lots and lots of money."

"Is she really supposed to be the missing princess of Thatllbetheday?"

"Actually, yes. See, there's this note at the crypt of Buddy Holly, and..."

...and then I woke up, before I found out what the note said. But wow, is my subconscious weird sometimes.

Last night when I got home from a trip to Borderlands Books (where I was roundly snuggled and nose-licked by Ripley the Sphynx), I found a box on my front porch. The box, when opened, proved to contain twenty copies of A Local Habitation. Not ARCs—actual, finished books, suitable for fondling, screaming over, and putting on bookshelves. Alice promptly started trying to eat them. Not to be outdone, Lilly promptly started trying to eat the box that they came in. I have emailed my publisher to thank them for the cat toys.

I called my mother, whose usual response to "Mom, I just got _______" is to show up at my house and refuse to leave until she's managed to acquire a copy for herself. "Mom, I got my author's copies of A Local Habitation," I said.

"Wow!"

"So are you coming over?"

"Not tonight."

You could have knocked me over with a feather. (There are plenty of feathers to be had in my house because, again, cats.) "What? Why not?"

"Idol starts in half an hour."

So now we know where I rank in my mother's eyes. Not second, as I always feared, but third, behind Jim Hines and American Idol. As I cannot swear eternal vengeance against American Idol, I'm going to have to swear it against Jim Hines. He has a lot less in the way of professionally-trained security guards and hungry lawyers. I mean, sure, he's got goblins and all, and to this I say, again, cats.

It's a little freaky to be able to look at A Local Habitation and see it all book-shaped and real, with a bar code and a price tag and an ISBN and everything. I don't think it's ever going to get less freaky. Sometimes I still wake up and wonder "did I really sell the books? If I turn on the light, will they really be sitting on the shelf?" Thus far, they always have been, but my dreams have fooled me before. Although I'd like to think that if I'd dreamt the last few years, there would have been more candy corn and semi-appropriate nudity.

Thirteen days. That's all that remains before A Local Habitation is available on store shelves, waiting to be taken down, read, and enjoyed. Hopefully, lots of people will find and adore it, and hopefully, some of them won't have read Rosemary and Rue, creating a beautiful synergy through which many, many copies of both books will be sold. (Crass commercialism? Well, yeah. But I'd like this series to last for a long, long time, so I think this desire makes perfect sense. Anyone who looks noble and says "I don't care if my book sells well, I just care if it's loved" is either independently wealthy, insane, or messing with you.)

Thirteen days. That's all that remains before the second of Toby's stories is out there for anyone to read. That may be the weirdest part of all this. I mean, I'm used to my friends reading drafts and telling me what they did or didn't like, and I'm used to my publishers (all of whom I know) reading things and telling me what to fix, but there's no possible way for me to know every single person who reads my books personally. It just isn't going to happen. So there are all these strangers out there choosing me to tell them stories, and it's just...it's amazing. There was even a four-star review in the new issue of Romantic Times, a glossy, awesome, nationally-published magazine:

"McGuire's second October Daye novel is a gripping, well-paced read. Toby continues to be an enjoyable, if complex and strong-willed protagonist who recognizes no authority but her own. The plot is solid and moves along at a not-quite-breakneck pace. McGuire has more than a few surprises up her sleeve for the reader."

This is all very real, and very wonderful, and Great Pumpkin, I just hope it goes spectacularly, and that I don't catch fire.

Thirteen days. Wow.

So today is Tuesday—hooray!—but for me, it's essentially Monday, because I spent the real Monday in a haze of sedatives, painkillers, and other exciting pharmaceuticals associated with having lots and lots of dental work done. I now have two permanent crowns on my upper right rear molars, and can actually eat crunchy foods, like apples and carrots. This is very exciting for me. I'm living the dream, and in the dream, I can chew. (Years of poverty plus a pronounced phobia of dentists mean that I have a lot of work ahead of me. Fortunately, I have a very understanding dentist who specializes in working with the phobic, and who understands that I need to keep my iPod on at all times to keep from panicking when I hear them talking about what they're going to do. Oblivion is my anti-phobia buddy.)

In keeping with the week's established medical theme, I'm going to be spending the afternoon with my doctor, being poked and prodded and (one hopes) declared to be in as good of health as can be expected. This is a necessary first step in scheduling my next spinal epidural, IE, "those periodic injections which render Seanan capable of continuing to walk and interact like a normal human being." It's probably too much to hope that the procedure could happen before OVFF, but I'm guardedly hopeful of shoving it into the week between OVFF and World Fantasy, when I'm already going to be off from work and can thus spend the day in bed without any guilt.

Today is the book-day birthday for The Mermaid's Madness [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by jimhines, a gentleman and a scholar if ever there was one. He's also a fellow member of the DAW Mafia, and just an awesome all-around guy...plus the book is amazing. My mother liked it better than she liked the first one, and we all remember how much she liked the first one. I highly recommend The Mermaid's Madness as a good investment of your book-buying dollars for this week. Join the Princess party now, and beat the rush!

I spent a good chunk of Sunday accidentally taking a six and a half mile walk through the cities of Concord and Clayton. I was trying to get to a friend's house for a barbecue, and I overshot by a little bit, assuming you consider four miles, much of it uphill, to be "a little bit." I had never walked some of that route before, so it was educational. I also hadn't walked all the skin off my heels in quite some time, so it was painful to boot. I am now wearing thick socks and bandages, and have no intention of taking that walk again any time soon. Still, it was a pleasant, if unexpected, little adventure in getting to know my home town a bit better. (Quoth a woman who saw me walking by with my iPod on, a Super Double-Gulp in one hand, and a book in my other hand, "Now that's multi-tasking.")

Autumn has arrived at last; I was forced to break out my duvet Sunday night, and woke this morning under a cascade of cats, since not even Alice's innate insulation robs her of the feline desire to snuggle up to the nearest human and leech as much heat as she possibly can. (They promptly stole the warm spot when I got up. This is because they're cats, not idiots.) Next up, umbrellas and the annual hunt for a pair of shoes that I haven't already worn past the point of being waterproof.

And that, for the moment, is that. What's new with the rest of the world?

1. BART is not on strike. I would say "yay, the unions reached a settlement," but since I left Lilly alone with my Internet-equipped computer just before the strike was called off, I'm going to opt for "yay, my Siamese is not fire-bombing the California coastline to protest Mommy not coming home for a week." Don't mess with the Siamese. You will regret it.

2. Fourteen days. Just saying.

3. My new Netbook is a joy and a wonder, except when it's royally fucking stuff up. Most recently, it has elected to royally fuck up the .ms of Red Hood's Revenge that I was giving a quick polish for Jim. I'm attempting file recovery now, and if that doesn't work, I'll just go through the .ms a second time. Thankfully, it was relatively clean.

4. Also thankfully, my Netbook did not elect to royally fuck up the latest draft of The Brightest Fell (Toby Daye, book five). This is A Very Good Thing. I would be substantially less sanguine about that particular rewrite. There might be screaming, and possibly the eating of human flesh. Mmmm, human flesh.

5. The incredibly awesome stick insect that has been sticking to Kate and GP's front door frame for the last few weeks was gone this morning when I went out to meet the bus. I wish him all good things in his future endeavors, and hope that he is not inside the house, preparing to crawl into someone's ear.

6. I have decided that I don't like second books in trilogies that don't admit to being trilogies when I pick them up. There will be more on this later.

7. I want a nap.

How's by you?

Well, I'm about to get going; I've got a few last non-computer things to do around the house, and then I'll be off to catch the bus to get to the train station to take the train to get to the airport to board the big metal sky-bird and fly to Michigan. I'll be in Ann Arbor for the next two days for business reasons, getting back to California late Wednesday night.

(If I'm very, very lucky, I'll make it to my hotel in time for Fringe tonight. But I'm not counting on it.)

Entries will be taken for the random draw Rosemary and Rue giveaway through Friday morning, when I'll be selecting the winner. Remember, if your number comes up, you'll have seventy-two hours to claim your prize before I give it to somebody else, so it's a good idea to keep an eye on what's going on over here. There will absolutely be other giveaways over the next several months, since it's a great way to get copies out there into the world. Also, if you're attending the San Diego Comic Convention, word is we'll have a stack of the lovely things for handing out. A stack. How cool is that?

There have been a few alterations to the Appearances Page over at my website. The lovely folks from DucKon will be getting me my panel schedule in the next week or so, so you'll have plenty of time to plan our awesome adventures in discussing _________. I'm hoping for a nice plague, and maybe something that's dead, but still moving around.

I'm going to miss my cats, but I get to meet jimhines in the flesh for the first time. In all things there are balance.

See you when I land.