The Tainted City heads to Germany!

So I finally get to share some good news!  (I hate the part of publishing where you hear something exciting and then have to sit on it for weeks until everything's official.)  From Publisher's Marketplace deal announcements:

"German rights to Courtney Schafer's THE TAINTED CITY, to Lübbe, by Whitney Lee of The Fielding Agency, on behalf of Becca Stumpf of Prospect Agency."

Bastei Lübbe is the German-language publisher of The Whitefire Crossing, which releases there on August 16 (coming up soon! woo hoo!).  I'm delighted they've now bought The Tainted City too - not the least because I'd hate for German readers to reach the end of Whitefire and be left hanging!  (There's no official publication date yet for the German edition of Tainted City, but it's my hope there won't be too long of a gap between books.)  I confess I'm also very curious to see what Bastei Lübbe does for Tainted City's cover, since I quite liked what they did for Whitefire.  

In case anyone's curious how the author-publisher relationship works for a foreign deal...doubtless it's different depending on country and publisher, but in my case, I've been amused to see how hands-off the whole experience is (and how laid back I am about it, in contrast to my dealings with my US publisher).  Communication is like a game of telephone - if Bastei Lübbe needs something, they ask the foreign rights agent, who then asks my agent, who asks me.  I've heard that sometimes translators will contact authors directly to ask questions, but I've had no contact with the German translator.  Basically, I send Bastei Lübbe (via agent & foreign rights agent) the final version of the book, and then, poof!  One day it shows up on Amazon.de with a new title and cover.  And I just nod and go, "Cool."  Without ever looking at preorder rankings or worrying over publicity or sales.  I only wish I was this blase' about the US version.  Here's an example of the difference:

Night Shade: *puts up descriptive blurb for Whitefire on Amazon that contains something I consider a fairly significant spoiler (the exact nature of Kiran's identity and his reasons for leaving Ninavel)*

Me: AUGH!!!!  NOT OKAY!!!  Frantically contacts agent, brainstorms new cover copy with her help, begs Night Shade to take down and replace old copy.  Agent demands NS run future blurbs past us first.

Bastei Lübbe: *does exactly the same thing as Night Shade*

Me: *shrugs* Oh well.

I rather suspect the second relationship is the more healthy one.  Maybe one day when I'm a jaded veteran of the industry I'll be all zen about US versions of my books, too.  (Everyone who knows me: HAHAHAHA not likely.)      

Anyway, I'm thrilled The Tainted City will join The Whitefire Crossing auf Deutsch.  To celebrate, I shall leave you with a picture taken on a lovely dayhike my husband and I did in the Austrian Alps:

My husband enjoying a rest break on a trail near Hintertux, Austria.

One day I will climb in the Alps again.  And who knows, maybe I'll even be able to spot the German editions of my books in a shop!

Thursday Adventure: Dachstein Alps, Austria

Looking at the snowy peaks of the Rockies on my commute to work inspired me to show off some nice glaciated mountain pictures for this Thursday's adventure.  And if you want to see glaciated peaks, what better place than the Alps?  (At least for now.  I hear the glaciers are shrinking fast in Europe, just as they are everywhere else.  Famous climbs like the Eiger are becoming more and more dangerous, as the ice melts to leave friable rock that all too easily shatters and falls.)  

On our trip to Austria back in 2005, my husband and I hiked many beautiful mountains, but my favorite spot was the Dachstein massif.  Craggy, glaciated peaks with ice caves in their upper reaches, and abundant wildflowers covering the verdant meadows at their base, the Dachstein Alps are a hiker's paradise.  A climber's paradise, too, as they are home to some of Austria's most difficult klettersteig routes.  We had our sights set on the infamous Johann Klettersteig, but upon arrival in Ramsau, we found a storm had left a treacherous combination of verglas ice and deep snow coating the rock of the upper mountain.  We hadn't brought any crampons, hand axes, and other technical gear required for safe climbing in icy conditions.  So instead of attempting any summits, we trekked over the glacier and around the peak of the Hoher Dachstein, scrambling over ridges while wistfully admiring the other, better-prepared climbers.  Next time we visit, we hope to join them!

The Dachstein Massif, viewed from our hotel in Ramsau

The Dachstein Gletscherbahn gives access to the upper mountain for climbers and skiers.  (You can ski all year long on the glacier.)

Robert trekking on the glacier; the remnants of stormclouds still shroud the peaks

  

Sinuous curves on the glacier

The Hoher Dachstein appears at last from the mist

Climbers on the start of the klettersteig route up the Hoher Dachstein

Robert on the ridge beside the Hoher Dachstein

Climbers high on the route

Stark but beautiful scenery as the storm clears out

Climbers near the summit

Looking down from the ridge, at the village and meadows far below

Robert at the base of the Hoher Dachstein

Thursday Adventure: Eggersteig route up Ellmauer Tor, Austrian Alps

For today's adventure, I'm heading back to the lovely Austrian Alps.  A little while ago I shared pics from an ascent of Pyramidenspitze, which is part of the Zahmer ("tame") Kaiser.  There is also a Wilder Kaiser.  As you can imagine, my husband Robert and I were quite keen to explore those peaks.  Unfortunately the weather was too iffy for an actual peak ascent: cloudy/rainy with possibility of  thunderstorms.  So instead we set out one misty morning to climb the Eggersteig route up the Ellmauer Tor, which is a pass in the midst of some nicely rugged peaks.  The Eggersteig route has some steep 3rd-class portions and snowfield crossings, but like most popular routes in the Alps, any tricky sections have cables bolted along them.  We figured if the weather got truly bad, we could make a quick and easy retreat.

The Wilder Kaiser

Heading up to the Stripsenjoch saddle to reach the start of the Eggersteig route

Before you start the Eggersteig route itself, you first climb up a nice easy trail to the Stripsenjoch saddle, where a full-service alpine hut offers coffee, apfelstrudel, and other delicious pastries.  (My husband LOVES being able to get hot coffee and strudel in the middle of a hike.  I have more ambivalent feelings - I mean, so much for the wilderness experience! - but on the other hand, the germknödel with vanilla sauce I had on this hike was pretty damn tasty.)

A happy Robert at the Stripsenjoch hut.  There are so many of these huts in the Alps that most Austrian hikers don't bother carrying food, they just assume they'll stop at a hut and buy a meal.  When we did Pyramidenspitze, Robert's relatives were all, "Oh no, you can't do that route!  The huts all closed a few years back!  What would you eat?"  Coming from Colorado, where not only do we have to carry all food needed for a hike, but I was taught in mountaineering school to always, ALWAYS bring twice the amount you expect to need (in case you get stranded by weather or injury & need to survive an unexpected bivouac,), I had to laugh.  

Mist fills the great saddle of the Ellmauer Tor.  The Eggersteig route climbs the cliffs below the saddle.

Me ascending a ledge in the mist.  At last I understood why Austrian routes have trail markers every five feet.  It's for days like this one!  You would NOT want to wander off route here.  

Robert taking a break and enjoying the view down into the valley.

The cliffs were amazing.

Helmets on!  More to protect against the danger of rockfall than anything else.  (Always higher on wet days, plus the route is popular enough we had to worry about rocks getting accidentally kicked down by those above us.)  The climbing is not at all difficult.

Robert near a snowfield crossing.  I had to admit I was glad of the cables.  At this time of year (mid-summer),  the "snow" was bulletproof ice, and a slip would mean a very long fall.

Hikers crossing a snowfield in the upper section of the Tor.

Negotiating the rocks

Me near the highest point.  The route continues over to the other side of the mountains, but then you need either a car shuttle or an overnight stay.

Thursday Adventure: Pyramidenspitze, Austrian Alps

For this week's adventure, I thought I'd break away from New Zealand and head to a different, equally beautiful part of the world: the Austrian Alps.  My husband Robert is Australian by birth, but his parents are originally from Austria and Germany, and he still has many relatives living in the tiny Tirolean village of Epps where his mother grew up.  Robert and I went together to Epps in the summer of 2005, and spent several lovely days exploring the mountains near the village.  One of my favorite hikes was an ascent of Pyramidenspitze, the second largest peak in the Kaisergebirge.

On the road to Pyramidenspitze

Not only was the scenery spectacular, but the route up the peak is a "klettersteig" climb - basically, you ascend cliffs via the use of fixed protection (iron rungs, cables, etc), rather than needing technical climbing gear.  (The more well-known name for this type of route is the Italian "Via Ferrata" - literally, iron way.  The first via ferrata were put up during World War I in the Italian Dolomites; these days, they've become a popular form of sport climbing in the Alps.  The US has very few such routes, since most US climbers hold to a "leave no trace" wilderness ethic.  But in the Alps, where enormous metal crosses already adorn every summit and solitude is a vanishingly rare commodity, the climbing community understandably takes a far different outlook.)

Pyramidenspitze is quite an easy klettersteig climb, with just a few sections of rungs and cables.  More difficult routes require specialized protective gear, and ascending them can be an undertaking as challenging as any technical climb - but this one was just a nice, fun, easy introduction to the whole klettersteig idea.

Me on the trail.  The klettersteig part of the route goes up the cliffs on the righthand side of the picture.  You can't really see the wildflowers in this picture (they're too small), but they were  incredible.  The Alps are far wetter than US ranges like the Rockies and the Sierras, and so have a far greater profusion of flowers and other greenery in the valleys.  

A curious chamois checks us out.  

Impressive cliffs...and this is what they call the Zahmer ("tame") Kaiser.  

Ascending a klettersteig section. Sure makes for an easy ascent compared to scrambling up peaks in Colorado.

Robert on the klettersteig route

Robert taking a break (just look at those cliffs! Oh, how we wished we had our technical rock gear...)

On the summit of Pyramidenspitze.  Pretty much every single summit in the Alps has a massive cross like this one.  Must be deadly in a thunderstorm.

Looking down at the town of Durchholzen from the summit.  

The even more rugged terrain of the Wilder Kaiser is visible in the distance.