Russia!

.

As always, I'm on the road again. This time, I'm off to Moscow, for Roscon, the Russian national science fiction convention. I'll be blogging if I can, but if circumstances don't permit... Well, then I won't. We'll see.

This will be an adventure for me. Wish me luck. And check this blog periodically, to see how things are going.

*

One Last Plug and I'm off to Russia!

.

There's a certain irony to packing for Russia so soon after my episode for The Witch Who Came In From the Cold was published. All I can say in my behalf is that Tanya, the Russian magic-wielder and KGB agent who is indisputably the hero of this series (sorry, Gabe!), is also the closest thing there is to a Good Guy in this battle of ideologies-and-sorcery. So at least I'll arrive in Moscow with clean hands.

Over at the Serial Box blog, Ian Tregillis has some kind things to say about me. Apparently he was worried about what I might do in my episode. And I understand that perfectly. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to bring in something unexpected, something disruptive, something that would be a real pain in the butt for him to deal with... But that's not the way this sort of game is played. Each episode builds on the previous ones and builds toward the next.

Anyway, the other writers are all likable guys. I got a kick out of working with them. So, no, I played nice.

More importantly, as Ian says in his post, episode 6 was basically the last of the set-up episodes. By the end of it, you know who everybody is, what kind of people they are, what powers are in play, and what's at stake. So now the game begins for real. As Ian wrote:

At this point we're transitioning into the second half of the season: we've almost pushed the boulder all the way to the top of the mountain. A few more nudges, and that sucker will be unstoppable. So my job in "Radio Free Trismegistus" was to clear the path for the avalanche by kicking a few pebbles down the hill.

This is a crucial moment in a plot-driven story. It's the still moment of  equipoise when the reader has put together what's going on and can anticipate how things are going to fall together -- or, as may very well be the case, apart.

From this point on, the series depends on how well the writers can satisfy the readers' expectations while simultaneously confounding them with surprising developments.

Can the Cold Witch gang do it? My money says yes.


And speaking of Russia . . .

On Wednesday I fly to Moscow for Roscon, the Russian national science fiction convention. I speak no Russian, alas, but I'll have a friend with me who can translate.ds

So if you're going to be there, be sure to say hello. I'd be delighted to meet you.

*

The Most Boring and Glamorous Job in the World

.

I'm probably exaggerating here -- there must be something simultaneously more boring and more glamorous than autographing signature sheets to be tipped into limited-edition books. But I honestly can't think of what that might be. And I've certainly never done it, whatever it is.

Years back, I had an Easton Press limited edition book and the way it worked then was that you got paid a dollar per signature page. It wasn't a challenging job. I had to stay alert so my autograph didn't devolve into a scrawl (I take that sort of thing seriously) but at the same time, it was undemanding enough that I could do it while watching television.

Sign name. Flip paper. Sign name. Flip paper. Over and over and over. At some point I realized that I was earning hundreds of dollars an hour doing a job that made working as a short-order cook at McDonald's seem like a hoot by comparison.

I thought about this yesterday as I was autographing sheets for the Fall of the Towers trilogy, three of Samuel R. Delany's earliest novels. I wrote an introduction for the Centipede Press edition and, believe me, I felt honored to do so. Chip's books were very important to me when I was learning how to write and my admiration for him remains undiminished. In his influence on science fiction, he is second only to Robert A. Heinlein. So, quite seriously, my writing the intro was a bigger honor for me than it was for him. And autographing the sheets was a small price to pay for it.
early work by

But, my goodness, it's a boring job.


Oh, and the image up above . . . ?

That's a bit of promotion that the folks over at Serial Box did for "A Week Without Magic," the episode I guest-wrote for The Witch Who Came in from the Cold.  Pretty nifty, huh? Though I doubt very much that Tanya would wear such a dress. She's a career KGB agent, a witch caught up in a covert magicians' war, and deadly serious. (One of my favorite moments in my episode is when an acquaintance yanks her chain by asking "Has the KGB finally issued you a sense of fun?") Anyone who imagines Tanya dressed like that has obviously seen way too many Bond movies.

Which, not coincidentally, is a part of the plot.

But if you want to know how, you're going to have to go to Serial Box and either buy the episode or subscribe to the series. I recommend subscribing. It really is a lot of fun.

You can read an essay I wrote for the blog about writing the episode here.

And you can buy or subscribe here.

*

"Not So Much," Said the Cat

.

Publishing is a funny business. Not long ago, I announced that my latest short fiction collection, The Dala Horse, would be published this summer by Tachyon Publications. And that statement is, with one small exception, still true.

Now the collection will be called "Not So Much," Said the Cat. Same table of contents, same publisher, same author. So why the change?

Funny story. The Dala Horse, the collection, was named after "The Dala Horse," the story, which is contained therein. The story was published on Tor.com, which routinely offers stories from its site in e-format at 99 cents a pop. So when The Dala Horse, the collection, was put up for pre-order on Amazon, their systems connected the two separate items and made the obvious conclusion that they were different versions of the same thing. So the link to buy the story went below the link to buy the print book.

Looking exactly as if you could buy the entire collection for 99 cents.

There are few things that annoy a reader more than buying what he/she thinks will be a collection and winding up with a single story. Similarly, there are few things that annoy a publisher as much as being put in a situation where they look like they're trying to pull a fast one on the reader.

Amazon is notoriously resistant to making changes in situations like this. They simply will not separate the two titles.

So it turned out that the easiest way to solve this problem was to change the name of the book.

On the bright side, I know have a new brilliant cover for my collection. That's it up above. By the aptly-named Elizabeth Story. I think it looks terrific.


Above: The cat is, of course, Beelzebub -- but "Not," as he says, "the famous one, obviously" -- who plays a major role in "Of Finest Scarlet Was Her Gown." Also, of course, in the collection.

A Week Without Magic

.

The writers working on The Witch Who Came In From the Cold meet on Skype to hash out the plot and make sure all their episodes support each other and lead naturally into one another -- did you know that? I was a part of one of these meetings but because electronica do not like me, while I was able to see and hear what everybody had to say, I could not make my microphone work and so my contributions were limited to text messages: HA HA THAT'S GOOD and I CAN CHANGE THAT, NO SWEAT.

Which was a pity because it was a very warm and supportive group. Lots of laughter. Lots of good ideas. If meetings had been like that when I held down an office job...

Anyway, this week, my episode, "A Week Without Magic" goes live. You can buy (and previous episodes) here.

You can read a quick interview with me, and discover my favorite quotation, here.

And as part of the project, there's a thing called From the Writers' Room, where each of the writers reflects on her or his episode. I believe mine will be posted later today. You can read it (and the others) here.


And the big news is...

Simultaneous with all this comes the news that Serial Box is "parnering" (as they say) with SAaga Prss at Simon & Schuster to release the print version of the first season of TWWCIFTC in print format. The book containing Season One will hit the stores in the summer of 2017, shortly after the second season wraps up.

This is also good news for fans of two other Serial Box projects: Bookburners (about the Vatican's black-ops anti-magic squad) and Tremontaine. The latter is a prequel to Ellen Kushner's fantasy classic Swordspoint and the last time I saw Ellen, she was almost giddy with how much fun she and her team were having with it.

*

The Witch Who Came In From The Cold

.

My newest project is definitely a departure for me -- I agreed to play in someone else's universe. I've done collaborations enough in my time, and the pastiche or two, to be sure. But writing an episode for The Witch Who Came In From the Cold was a very different experience. from those.

For one thing, Serial Box, the publisher, has an intriguing approach to their ebooks, more akin to television than to traditional publishing. The books are published serially, one episode a week. This requires several writers working in the same voice, with a lot of oversight and several passes of editing for each text.

So there was a great deal of work to do and it all had to be done on schedule. Luckily, though, the project was a hoot.  From the press release:

Through a haze of cigarettes and vodka in Prague, deep in the heart of the Cold War, a special force of spies rely on sorcery to win their games of intrigue… 

While the world watches the bitter rivalry between East and West fester along the Iron Curtain, the Consortium of Ice and the Acolytes of Flame continue waging their ancient war of magic. Kept to the shadows, this secret contest crosses the lines of politics and the borders of nations with impunity – the intrigues of spies may know clear sides but the battles of witches spill out over all. Tanya Morozova is a KGB officer and the latest in a long line of Ice witches and sorcerers; Gabe Pritchard is a CIA officer and reluctant Ice recruit. Enemies at one turn, suspicious allies at the next, their relationship is as explosive as the Cold War itself. 

The premise was fun, but I doubt I would have signed on if I didn't like characters. Tanya makes for a great lead -- smart, honest, ruthless, and totally unaware of how badly she is in need of a sense of humor. Gabe, who ends up being her foil more often than he would like,  has perhaps too much of a sense of humor for his own good. The secondary characters are well-drawn and interesting to boot.

The writer I heard mentioned most often in discussions of how the writing should go was, of course, John Le Carré, he being the master of this sort of thing. But I also kept thinking of Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch books because, as in them, one side of the battle is definitely the Bad Guys. But the moral status of their opponents is iffy at best. 

The Lead Writer for the series is Lindsay Smith. The other writers are Ian Tregillis, Cassandra Rose Clarke, Max Gladstone, and, for Episode 6 only... me.

The series has gone life and my episode, A Week Without Magic, is coming up soon. If this sounds like your sort of thing, it's available via SerialBox.com, the Serial Box Publishing iOS app, and wherever ebooks and audiobooks are sold.  Or you can just click here.

*

The Only Serious Drawback to Being a Writer

.

Most of the time, being a full-time writer is a pretty good gig. You get to pick your own hours. Nobody yells as you for staring thoughtfully at a blank wall for an hour or two. Every now and again, somebody buys you a ticket  to Moscow. I put in my years as a cubicle-dweller and I can attest to the superiority of the freelance life.

Except.

Except when you're sick. That's when you miss the nine-to-five grind. Most particularly, that's when you miss sick leave.

I have the grunge. I'll be fine in a day or two. But in the meanwhile, I'm sick... and nobody's paying me for it. I'm losing money!

Sheesh.

I'll see you on Monday.


Above: The fiction factory is closed for the duration. I'm going to crawl back into bed now.

*