Read the first chapter of The Labyrinth of Flame

Happy November, everyone!  Good luck to those of you doing NaNoWriMo.  On Nov 1, 2007 I sat down to write the very first line of the first draft of The Whitefire  Crossing.  Now here I am, seven years and many, many words later, closing in on the end of Dev and Kiran's story.  (Seven years.  Good God.  Doesn't feel that long at all!  You might think I'd be bored with my characters by now, but nope.  Think I have even more fun writing them these days than I did in book 1.)

In celebration of my writing anniversary - and excitement over nearing the homestretch of my revision! - I'm offering up a first look at The Labyrinth of Flame.  The first chapter is up on my website: hope you enjoy.

The 2nd and 3rd chapters will follow in Dec & Jan.  Hey, and if you're going to World Fantasy, you won't even have to wait for Dec for Ch 2.  I'll likely share the first scene of Ch 2 at my reading, which is at 10am on Sun the 9th.

And now, back to picking out which books I'll get to read while traveling to WFC (yay for airports and reading time!)...

First draft of The Labyrinth of Flame is finished!

Hope those of you in the US had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday (and those of you elsewhere had a lovely weekend too).  I sure did: partially because we just enjoyed an awesome few days in Utah's canyon country, but mostly because late one night in our Moab hotel room while my husband and son snored, I wrote the final scene of the first draft of The Labyrinth of Flame.  This after writing 56,345 words during November: hooray for NaNoWriMo, and all the encouragement and support I've gotten from fellow writers in the trenches!  I am so thrilled to have a complete draft of the book, I can't even tell you.  

Lest any readers get too eager, I must point out that this is a rough draft.  Very, very rough.  Way more rough than my first draft of The Tainted City was when I finished that one.  For The Tainted City, I worked in kind of a spiraling process, revising old chapters at the same time I was writing new ones.  I tried this initially with Labyrinth, but it didn't work; I kept getting sucked into the revision trap.  So instead, I went back to the method I used for The Whitefire Crossing: get the story down, worry about making it pretty later.  That worked, but oh man, the draft is very definitely not pretty.  It's a sprawling mess of a document, full of bracketed notes to myself and backtracking and horrible prose and basically I would never, EVER show it to anyone else, not even my closest friend.

But!  For all those caveats, the arc of the story is now solidly in place.  No more mistiness and uncertainty: I know the full sequence of events, and all the character motivations behind them.

The breathtaking span of Landscape Arch, revealed in the fog.

And now at last I get to do my favorite part of writing: revising.  I love taking the bare-bones idea of a scene, paring away all the mess of the first draft, and fleshing it out into something rich and tense and real.  They say the devil's in the details, but for me, that's where joy lies as well.

Canyon sandstone: from a distance, it looks smooth, but get close, and you see all kinds of fascinating, intricate details

I don't know how long this revision will take me; my best guess right now is 5-6 months.  I also don't know yet what'll happen when the book is finished for real: will it go through traditional publication, or will I release it myself?  Some parts of the future are still hidden in the fog.  But I promise the moment I have news about the book's release, I'll post it.  In the meantime, I'm rolling up my sleeves and launching gleefully into revision.

NaNo Update, and a few book recs

It's a cold, snowy day outside, which means I'm spending way too much time staring out the window and dreaming of winter adventures...

My husband Robert skiing powder in Snowbird's Mineral Basin

Me preparing to jump a cornice at Arapahoe Basin

Me and Robert after hiking up to Highlands Bowl, at Aspen Highlands.  Skiing down, you get to enjoy some of the steepest in-bounds terrain in the state.  Great stuff.

But I'm not spending all my time fantasizing about skiing deep powder.  I'm up to 36,446 words written for the month, well on my way to 50K, with only about 9 more scenes to go to finish my first draft of The Labyrinth of Flame.  Woo hoo!

And hey, f you're looking for something to read while you wait for me to finish Labyrinth, I've got a few suggestions:

• Miserere: An Autumn Tale, by Teresa Frohock.  If you're wondering why you should check it out, Justin Landon did a feature on the book for his "Under the Radar" column on Tor.com.  I couldn't agree more that Miserere is both criminally under-read and a great story.  

• Master of Whitestorm, by Janny Wurts.  This one's a backlist title that's newly available on Kindle and other ebook formats.  I haven't read it yet myself, but I'm about to: I hear it has ice climbing!  Plus I know from reading some of Janny's many other excellent novels that a story of hers won't disappoint.  

Also, if you're in the UK, today's the release date for Mazarkis Williams's Tower Broken, third in the Tower and Knife trilogy.  I am so jealous of you UK folks; word is Tower Broken won't release here until fall 2014.  Having enjoyed the first two novels in the series, I shall be anxiously awaiting!

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...

Good luck to my fellow NaNoWriMo-ers!

Six years ago today (six?! holy crap...) I sat down to write the very first words of The Whitefire Crossing as an eager but nervous first-time NaNoWriMo participant. (That first line actually remains exactly the same as I first wrote it Nov 1 2007, oddly enough. Practically all the other words got rewritten before publication, but not the opening sentence.)  Now, six years later, I'm embarking on NaNoWriMo once more - this time hoping to close in on the end of the first draft of The Labyrinth of Flame, the final chapter in Dev and Kiran's story.

I've even signed up for NaNo officially.  (I didn't in 2007; my friends and I just aimed for 50K on our own).  This time I figure the camaraderie of the full NaNo experience could be fun - so if you're one of the dedicated souls trying to pump out 50K this month, you can find me there as ColoradoGirl.

As a published author, the first day of NaNo this time just feels like any other writing day.  I'd already upped my pace to 2,000 words a day over this last week of October, so if I can keep that pace up, I'll be in fine shape.  And 50K is likely to be less than a third of the novel, since I write long-ish books!  (The Tainted City was 176K as published.)  But that said, I can't help but be carried along on the excitement of everyone participating, both newbies and long-time veterans.  The real point of NaNo is to make your book a priority; to put aside distractions and all the criticism of your inner editor and let the story flow.  It's a wonderful experience, whatever your goals.  So good luck to everyone participating this year - may we all reach 50K and beyond!

Happy Halloween!

Yay for Halloween!  I love Halloween, and not just because these days I get to share in my son's breathless excitement over trick-or-treating.  Candy and costumes and creatures out of our darkest imaginations...what's not to like?

Our freshly-carved pumpkins.  

Though it feels strange to be celebrating, knowing how so many people out east are struggling to recover in Sandy's aftermath.  The monsters of our childhood imaginations may not be real, but plenty of dangers lie in wait, and there's no such thing as perfect safety, for all we like to convince ourselves otherwise.  My heart goes out to those who've lost their homes, and had their lives forever altered.

Here in Colorado, untouched by the storm, life goes on apace.  I've been quiet online these last days, thanks to a looming work deadline.  I'm leaving for World Fantasy on Thursday, and really looking forward to reuniting with writer-friends and enjoying all the con has to offer.  I'm not doing any official programming other than the mass autographing session on Friday night, so it's a rare chance to just relax and hang out.  Well, except for one teensy thing...NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, and this year I'm taking the plunge once more.  (This'll be my 2nd time doing NaNo; the first time was back in 2007, when I first started The Whitefire Crossing.)

My goal this time is to get a nice big head start on my first draft of The Labyrinth of Flame.  I may not make 50K, but I'd like to reach at least 30K by the end of the month.  I can't wait to dive into the story!  These last two months, I've pretty much been spending all my scant writing time on interviews, guest posts, and other non-fiction writing, so I'm really itching to get back to "real" writing again!  I know how Labyrinth begins, and I know how I want the story to end - the rest, I look forward to discovering along the way.

In the meantime, since I fear I won't have time to prepare a Thursday Adventure post before leaving, here's a link to last year's Night Bazaar post in which I shared my favorite Halloween reads.

And if you've got any burning questions, either about the Shattered Sigil books, or even mountaineering, rock climbing, canyoneering, or figure skating - mark your calendars!  I'm doing an "Ask Me Anything" next Thursday Nov 8 over at Reddit's r/Fantasy: you can leave questions any time during the day, and I'll answer them "live" at 8pm CST.