The TBR Pile

One of the best parts about finishing my draft of The Tainted City is that I can now READ again.  Books!  That are not mine! I cannot tell you how excited I am about this.  I didn't give up reading entirely during the last few months - that would have been like trying to give up breathing - but I restricted myself to nonfiction and/or books I'd already read; those are easy for me to read in tiny little bits and put down without getting sucked in and losing hours of writing time.

But that was like taking little sips of an energy goo drink while slogging up a mountain, when your body's screaming for a real meal.  And now...now at last I can gorge myself on all those lovely books I've been salivating over these last few months.  In the last 5 days I've read a book a night, and it's been *wonderful*.  Sadly, my reading pace will now have to slow down a touch - it's time to dive back into The Tainted City and start working on my own list of enhancements/cuts/revisions.  But this time I don't intend to stop reading new books entirely.  So I appeal to you - what books should I make sure to catch up on?  Here's what I've got so far....

Since finishing, I've already read:

The Serpent Sea (Martha Wells)
Black Heart (Holly Black)
The Alchemist of Souls (Anne Lyle)
Songs of the Earth (Elsepth Cooper)
The Salt Road (Jane Johnson)

The TBR list, in no particular order:

And Blue Skies From Pain (Stina Leicht)
The Straits of Galahesh (Bradley Beaulieu)
Range of Ghosts (Elizabeth Bear)
Throne of the Crescent Moon (Saladin Ahmed)
Control Point (Myke Cole)
Scourge of the Betrayer (Jeff Salyards)
The Black Opera (Mary Gentle)
Faith (John Love)
When We Were Executioners (J.M. McDermott)
Bitter Seeds (Ian Tregillis)
Servant of the Underworld (Aliette de Bodard)
Osiris (E.J. Swift)
The Killing Moon (N.K. Jemisin)
The Desert of Souls (Howard A. Jones)

Next week I plan to start up my Monday book rec feature again, to highlight those books I particularly enjoyed.  So again...what other interesting books have I missed these last months?  If you know one, tell me.

The Two Sweetest Words in Authorhood

THE END.

Or more poetically, to borrow the final line of Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles:
We have reached the open sea, with some charts; and the firmament.

The Tainted City is finished!  And on my birthday, too.  My husband and I will do some serious celebrating tonight, let me tell you!  And then I will watch Game of Thrones on DVD, and read books, and speak to my friends, and get outside in the mountains, and all the thousand things that have fallen by the wayside in the last weeks as I raced to finish a coherent draft.

And oh god, how painful that was.  My husband and son and I were all sick last week.  Because my husband is awesome, he agreed to let me run away to a hotel this past weekend for a 24/7 writing marathon without any toddler-related distractions.  Of course, a few hours after I left for the hotel, I got a phone call: the 3yo woke up screaming saying his ear hurt, and screamed nonstop for 3 hours after.  I ended up going home from the hotel at midnight to help my shell-shocked husband take him to the ER.  It was just an ear infection (a new experience for the kiddo; this was his first), but even post-motrin and antibiotics, the 3yo did not sleep for the rest of the weekend.  Which means my husband did not either.  But he insisted I go back to the hotel & keep writing, because he was just as anxious for this book to be done as I am.  Maybe more so.  (He has been wondering these last few months if he even has a wife.)

Of course, the book isn't really done.  Not yet.  There will be revisions and copyedits and all that jazz.  (I already have a list of things I want to enhance or cut or adjust that I'll be working on while I wait for "real edits".)  But god damn, it's an entire coherent story, and that feels SO AWESOME.

Final Stats:
Manuscript Length: 164,509 words (heh, I thought it would be ~150K. Not so much. Though I suspect I'll be doing some significant cuts in revision.)
Deleted Scenes File Length: 34,122 words (good God.)
Number of Day Job and Real Life Things That I Have Been Shoving Off For Far Too Long: approximately 10 zillion.

Happy Birthday to me!  And now I shall party.

State of the City

Breaking radio silence to say congrats to the recently-announced Hugo and Campbell award nominees!  And special congrats to fellow Night Shade author (and alumni Night-Bazaar blogger) Stina Leicht for her Campbell nomination.  Stina's a terrific writer - I loved her debut novel Of Blood and Honey, and I'm really looking forward to reading the sequel And Blue Skies From Pain - so I'm thrilled she made the Campbell shortlist.  Also, congrats to the authors who made the David Gemmell Morningstar award shortlist!  Voting's gonna be tough for me, I've read and loved several of the novels.

So. Two work weeks left until my deadline for The Tainted City...time for the final push to the end.  I'm taking vacation from the day job these next weeks so I can write on the days my 3 year old is in preschool, and praying nobody gets sick or any other life mishaps get in the way of finishing.  Latest stats:

Current manuscript length: 135,251 words
Deleted scenes file length: 24,080 words (gaaaah!)
Number of scenes left to go: I don't want to think about it.
Number of spree candies consumed: way, waaaaay too many.  (I hate coffee, tea, soda, pretty much everything with caffeine, so I use sugar instead.  Back at Caltech, I used to eat pixie sticks and tubes of icing during finals week to stay alert.  Might resurrect that tradition now...)
Songs currently in heavy rotation on my Tainted City playlist: (I listen to music while writing whenever possible, and latch onto songs that have music or bits of lyrics that remind me of scenes/characters/relationships in the book - I play them to quickly get "into the zone" for writing.)

Shelter (Icon of Coil) I can't find shelter in this world / I'm searching for another world where I'll feel safe 

Poisonous Friend (Seabound)  Sometimes I watch her kill / cold eyes and no restraint / and I wonder how it feels to annihilate a friend  (Note: I actually like the "Severed Heads remix" version best, but that version doesn't seem to be available online anymore...)

In the Pit (Combichrist)...a.k.a. the Jylla song. I'm all f**ked up now I want you to care / want it right now, I want you to care

Daimonion (Project Pitchfork) You've got to get to know yourself / or are you just a marionette / following the subtle rules given by the mighty

Undisclosed Desires (Muse)...a.k.a. the Dev and Cara song.  I want to reconcile the violence in your heart...I want to exorcise the demons from your past 

Headhunter (Danny Tenaglia cover of Front 242) I'm looking for this man / to sell him to other men / at ten times his price at least

Two weeks.  Not long!  See you on the other side...





 

Cover Art for The Tainted City!

Poking my head out of my writing cocoon to say: The Tainted City has cover art, woo hoo!  (Also, the book is now available for preorder at Amazon!).  The artist is the enormously talented David Palumbo, who did the art for The Whitefire Crossing.  Check it out:

Cover art for The Tainted City

I don't know about other authors, but for me it's both amazing and surreal when I first see cover art for my book.  I guess because the art is the first proof that the manuscript you've slaved so hard over is going to be a real, honest-to-gosh book sitting on the shelves...something other people will actually read.  (Whether or not that idea inspires glee or panic depends on the day!)  First all I can think is a resounding, Keanu Reeves-style Whoa.  And then all day I keep running back to the computer to peek at the art again, like it might've vanished when I wasn't looking.  (Just the other night my husband had to be all, "Quit staring at your cover art and finish writing the darn book!")  Can't wait to see what the final cover design will look like, with title and all!  And in the meantime, yes, back to finishing the story...             

Silent Running

In one month and ten days, I must turn in The Tainted City to my editor.  This week, something I thought would be one chapter multiplied into two, which leaves me with (still!) 5 chapters to go, and not much time to write them.  I'm going to need every spare moment to do it - so, for the next month or so, no more Book Rec or Thursday Adventure posts.  I might do a few super-short "progress update" posts as I close in on the book's end, mostly for my own benefit.  I'll also still occasionally be around on twitter, since it's easy enough to fire off a 140-char tweet as I zoom past the computer in pursuit of my toddler (writing actual story prose in scattered five-second bursts sadly does not work for me).  But other than that, I'll be pretty scarce.  In the meantime, wish me luck, have a great spring, and I'll see you in late April.

Tainted City Stats:
Current manuscript length: 120,918 words.
Deleted scenes file length: 21,307 words.  (Sigh!)
Chapters left to go: 5
Number of times I've used the words "bitter," "sardonic," and "wary": far too many.

Book Rec: The Serpent Sea (Martha Wells)

Ok, so I'm kind of cheating on this book rec: I haven't yet read The Serpent Sea.  It is sitting on my Kindle, waiting to be my reward when I finish writing The Tainted City.  But oh gosh, it's so hard to wait.  The Serpent Sea's predecessor, The Cloud Roads, was one of my favorite reads last year.  Great adventure, wonderful characters, and some really fascinating worldbuilding (Wells sets the novel in a secondary world populated by a myriad of nonhuman races, all with their own cultures, appearance, and customs).  In addition, Wells does some really neat things with gender roles, and manages to make the traditional theme of "loner finding his place in the world" feel fresh and exciting.  (Just goes to show how the power of a story lies in its execution!)  I've been salivating for The Serpent Sea ever since finishing The Cloud Roads last year - especially since I have full confidence The Serpent Sea will be an equally great read, after having loved all of Martha Wells's many previous novels.  (Besides, I've seen some very good reviews for The Serpent Sea, like this one, and this one.) 

So if I'm looking forward to the book so much, why wait?  Well, I'm not one of those people who can read new books in little bits and bobs.  Once I start, that's it...I keep right on reading until I finish.  Since I read fast, that's only a couple hours.  But right now multiple-hour chunks of time are so precious and so desperately needed for writing that I simply can't afford to give one up, not even for a book I'm anticipating with such excitement.  But!  You are probably not in the same situation.  So, if you've read The Cloud Roads, hurry up and get The Serpent Sea.  If you haven't yet read The Cloud Roads, you're in for a treat: start there, and then jump right into the sequel.  If you've any taste for adventure fantasy with great worldbuilding, you won't regret it. 

The Greatest Adventure

So this week's excuse for bailing on blog posts is that I've been busy organizing my son's birthday party (coming up this weekend: 18 toddlers bouncing around a gymnastics gym full of trampolines.  The energy in the room should be enough to power a small country or two, eek!).  At not-quite-3 years old, he's an old hand at the climbing gym, the skating rink, the swimming pool, and our local trails.  Sadly he's never been much of a backpack baby - too energetic to sit still for more than a few minutes! - so unlike some of our friends with young kids, we haven't been able to do serious hikes with him yet.  But soon enough, I expect he'll be outhiking me up peaks and beating me down mogul slopes.  (I'm also hoping he'll share his parents' taste for science fiction & fantasy!  We're off to a good start there, with Jane Yolen picture books and the like...)

So anyway, no official adventure post this week.  Instead, here's a few pics to prove that adventures don't have to stop once you have a kid:        

Toddlers make great climbers

Hiking near Telluride