Reading round-up, and a note for German Shattered Sigil fans

Upon hearing that a snowstorm was bearing down on Colorado, I made a cunning plan: I'd clear my schedule of all appointments/meetings/etc, beg my husband to do both drop-off and pick-up of 6yo from school, and take Tuesday as a powder day.

It was going to be EPIC. I was sure of it when I woke. Just look at all the snow that accumulated overnight! The ski slopes would have even more.

Then I realized I'd forgotten one very important fact: schools close when it snows this much. But in Colorado, workplaces do not, which means my husband must wallow his way to his office in the 4wd, and I'm on kid duty. Other skiers will understand the agony: there is epic powder, but I cannot ski it! (I considered taking the 6yo up for a ski day...but he can't ski more than blue runs yet. It'd be EXTRA torture to be on the slopes yet unable to ski the steep & deep.)

The agony won't last long. 6yo and I will have a blast sledding and snowball-fighting and building igloos. But in the meantime, while he and my husband shovel our walk (not our driveway; in Colorado nobody bothers with that--that's what a 4wd car is for), I'm catching up on my neglected little blog to post a few tidbits of news:

1) Reading Round-up: January was a crazy busy/stressful month (thanks mostly to day job), but I got some good reading in while on a business trip. On tumblr I posted a summary of my thoughts on my reads; my favorites were books from Janny Wurts and Ilana C. Myer. 

2) Note for German readers: a lot of folks have been asking via email when a German translation of The Labyrinth of Flame will be available. Sadly, a German translation is not yet in the works, but if you'd like to see Labyrinth of Flame auf Deutsch, the best way to get the wheels turning is for German readers to tell all their friends about the series and encourage them to buy Die Chroniken von Ninavel. Nothing gets a publisher's attention like sales!

3) Update on Labyrinth of Flame's print edition: good news! I've worked out a distribution agreement with the company that printed Labyrinth of Flame for the Kickstarter, so a general-relase print edition is coming soon! I will announce the release once it's ready to buy.

4) Note for Kickstarter backers: as I said in my recent update, if your reward included trade paperbacks and you have NOT received them, please contact me at courtney (at) courtneyschafer (dot) com. For those waiting on art prints, I'm hoping to start shipping them this week.

5) Podcast incoming: I had a great time on Saturday recording a podcast with fellow authors Kate Elliott, Helen Lowe, and our excellent host Paul Weimer of the Skiffy & Fanty show. We talked about worldbuilding and characters and the craft of writing series and it was so much fun. Not sure yet when the podcast will air, but I'll announce it here when it does. (By the way, the latest book in Helen Lowe's Wall of Night series, Daughter of Blood, just released--if you are not reading this series, you really really should be! It's epic fantasy with a terrific female lead (and some wonderful secondary characters), plus plenty of magic and wonder and action. Basically, everything I like best in fantasy!)

The Tainted City (a.k.a. Stadt der Magier) releases in Germany

Die Chroniken von Ninavel continues in Germany, hooray!  Today's the release date for Stadt der Magier ("City of Mages"), the German edition of The Tainted City.  Hope German readers enjoy it as much as they seem to have Die Blutmagier ("The Bloodmages") / The Whitefire Crossing.  I'll admit I have fun practicing my (rusty) German by reading the occasional blog reviews auf Deutsch that Google alerts sends to me.

In other news, Reddit's r/Fantasy forum put together a 225-book ranked list of "Under-read and under-rated fantasy", which also got featured on Tor.com - and The Whitefire Crossing is #3.  Sweet!  Seriously, it's great to know that those who've read my book feel strongly that more people should read it. Whitefire is in some pretty stellar company there, too. If you're looking for great fantasy to read, the list is a terrific resource.  My own TBR pile has sure gotten a heck of a lot longer.

In other other news, I'll be making an announcement soon about plans for The Labyrinth of Flame's release (at long last!) - so stay tuned.  And now, back to revision I go...

The German edition of The Tainted City (Stadt der Magier) has a cover & release date!

Halfway through NaNoWriMo, and I'm right around 25K words written for the month so far.  24,553, to be exact, though that number will increase further after tonight's writing session.  I'm quite pleased, especially considering I've managed it even while taking my son to visit family in Alabama, followed by coming down with a horrendous virus that knocked me flat for three straight days.  Fortunately, I've been striving for 2K per day, so when I had two days of 0 wordcount during my illness, it didn't set me back too badly!  Right now I'm at the point where I can actually count scenes until the end of my Labyrinth of Flame draft, which is pretty exciting.  Really looking forward to finishing this rough draft so I can start serious revision, the part I love most.

In other good news, the German edition of The Tainted City is officially up on Amazon.de, ready for pre-order.  Complete with new cover art and title, of course!  Die Chroniken von Ninavel: Stadt der Magier, a.k.a The Chronicles of Ninavel: City of Mages (or perhaps, City of the Mages).  Release date is May 16, 2014.  Check out the new cover!

Very atmospheric, even if the desert looks more Sahara-like than Mojave-like. For those who haven't been to the Owens Valley in California, which was my inspiration for Ninavel's environs, here's a picture:

The Mojave desert in the Owens Valley.  Lots of sagebrush and prickly pear cactus, not so many sand dunes.

But the thing about covers is, they're not meant to be exact depictions of the world within the book.  They're meant to SELL the book.  So I'm quite happy with the German cover - I think it looks intriguing and evocative, and goes quite nicely with their cover for the first book.  I hope German readers agree!

And now, back to the word mines. The end of Labyrinth is in sight...

Boulder's Aquapocalypse, and other news

The rain rain rain came down down down, in rushing rising rivulets... That's exactly what we got in Boulder this last week. Nonstop rain, much of it heavy, oversaturating the soil and raising the creeks to gargantuan levels until on Wednesday night into Thursday we got the infamous "100-year flood" that Boulder officials have been muttering dark warnings about for years.

Boulder Creek in flood.  I took this pic on Friday, so water levels are already far less than they were at the height of the flood!

Thankfully, when we bought our house in Boulder we made sure to buy out of the city's multiple flood plains, so Casa Schafer was spared serious flooding. That said, thanks to a leaky foundation and supersaturated soil, we did get water trickling (and sometimes pouring!) into our underground storage area through various cracks. The sump pump kept it more or less under control, though, so we never suffered more than a few inches.  We did get a nice lake in our backyard:

My husband and son standing in the newly-created Lake Schafer

But nothing like the neighborhoods near the various creeks, some of which got slammed:

Parking lot of Boulder's main library on Friday: check out the mostly-submerged bench on the right!

Looking down from a bridge at a flooded bike path on Friday

Really, Boulder was fortunate: the damage here was nothing like the devastation in Lyons and some of the mountain towns, where roads and gas lines got completely ripped out, leaving people stranded without heat and power.  But watching the creek roar past from the surviving bridges is yet another stark reminder of how fragile we are in comparison to nature.

In happier news, look what showed up on my doorstep mere hours before the flood sirens went off:

Author copies of the German edition of The Whitefire Crossing (a.k.a. Die Chroniken von Ninavel: Die Blutmagier)! 

Holding a foreign edition of The Whitefire Crossing in my hands is definitely another mindblowingly cool authorial moment.  Hooray for my German publisher, Bastei Lübbe!  

A few other authorial bits of news:

• Want to see a back-cover-copy style summary of The Labyrinth of Flame?  Then check out Fantastical Imaginations's "Upcoming Fantasy Novels in 2014, Part 2" in which I and a bunch of other authors discuss our upcoming releases.  (But beware spoilers if you haven't read the earlier books in the series; the summary does have spoilers for both Whitefire Crossing and Tainted City.)
• Whitefire Crossing got used as a (good!) example in author Violette Malan's post at Black Gate about how to gracefully handle exposition. How cool is that?

Oh yes, and since this came up on Twitter - for anyone interested in getting signed copies of The Whitefire Crossing and/or The Tainted City, I bought up a bunch of the books back when I thought Night Shade might go to bankruptcy court (I figured better safe than sorry!).  I'm happy to sell signed copies direct to readers until I run out.  Email me (courtney (at) courtneyschafer (dot) com) for details.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag zu den Chroniken von Ninavel!

I may not have a book releasing this year in the US, but I've got a "book birthday" coming up tomorrow in Germany!  August 16 is the official release day for The Whitefire Crossing's German edition, a.k.a. Die Chroniken von Ninavel: Die Blutmagier.  My fingers are crossed that German  fantasy readers will enjoy Dev and Kiran's adventures!  Just yesterday I officially signed and sent back the contract for the German edition of The Tainted City, and I hear the publisher also wants to see The Labyrinth of Flame as soon as I finish it, so I have every hope the entire trilogy will be available auf Deutsch before too long.

Haha, and for any readers who wince at Dev's profanity in the Shattered Sigil books - you can always give the German versions a try!  When I took a peek at the preview my German publisher made available through Google books, I discovered to my combined surprise and amusement that all of Dev's f-bombs have been carefully translated out.  ("You've got to be fucking kidding me" => "Boy, you've got to be kidding me"; "Fuck you, Cara" => "Don't you talk, Cara"; etc.)  I've no idea of the publisher's reasons - maybe they want to aim for a younger readership, or maybe German fantasy readers are more bothered by profanity?  While it's true Dev's foul mouth was a deliberate choice on my part, I'm not upset over the change, since I figure the Germans know their market best.  (Besides, the English versions of the books are still exactly as I wrote them.  No harm, no foul...so to speak. :)  It does make me wonder if other foul-mouthed fantasies (e.g. Joe Abercrombie's) have been cleaned up in translation.  Perhaps I will dust off my rusty German and go read some to find out!