leahbobet | Entries tagged with sales

August 25, 2011 Progress Notes:

"Always Winter"

Words today: 750.
Words total: 1150. No, this doesn't add up right. I zorched about 125 words correcting a wrong turn.
Reason for stopping: Round number, it's past 11pm, and this is still World of Fusscraft.

Darling du Jour: He takes his meals in his study these days; in fact, barely leaves his study. His beard has grown untrimmed across his face, wild and white like some shell-shocked St. Nicholas, and the papers shift 'round him like endless drifts of snow.

Mean Things: Lost children. Being rudely yanked out of the fairy tale where you live and plunked square into a Gothic. Haunted house tricks. War. Blowing innocence to bitty bits.
Research Roundup: Middlingly famous British painters; Victorian parlor chairs; child evacuation during WWII; the rudest terms for Germans extant in 1940.

Books in progress: Erin Bow, Plain Kate.
The glamour: There is a farmer's market on my way home Thursday afternoons, and one of the booths, a bakery, is manned by a boy with the most infectious, improbable smile. I find myself buying a lot of pastry on Thursdays all of a sudden. *ahem*

Someone please remind this story that it's supposed to be the easy project. It's gone all fine-grained and finicky and puzzleboxy on me, and I just spent my whole evening assembling it with tweezers, word by word, through a microscope on 40x magnification.

(You know when I've gone to new metaphors for the writing process that there's trouble at the old homestead.)

In other, non-complaining news: audio reprint sale! "The Parable of the Shower" is going to appear in a future Podcastle. Having read this one live a few times myself, I will now extend my deepest sympathies to whoever gets assigned to read the second-person, present tense, language-of-the-King-James-Bible smack-talking angel story. And I will let you all know when it's up.

Current Mood: intimidated
Current Music: Death Cab for Cutie -- Meet Me On the Equinox

July 30, 2011 Progress Notes:

"On Roadstead Farm"

Words today: 500 on Monday, 650 today.
Words total: 6300.
Reason for stopping: The undergrads at the next table have turned to Middle Eastern politics, and the Tourette's-ish woman at the corner table is singing at top voice because nobody's paying attention to her, and productivity at the coffeeshop is officially over.

Darling du Jour: "That's not what I mean," Nat said, lean and sunburnt but still the same Nasturtium Blakely who'd played by the river with Tyler and me, forever frustrated that we were catching her imaginary lake trout wrong.
Words Hallie Won't Admit to Knowing: wavered.

Mean Things: Being condescended to a bit by your bossy friend. Or, shoe on the other foot, the remarkable lack of self-preservation your friend whom you love is exhibiting. The way everyone keeps kicking you out of your own kitchen, dammit.
Research Roundup: Some southeastern US geography, which I am bad at; shellfish indigenous to the North Carolina coast; image reference for the insides of oyster shells; common German-American surnames; spices indigenous to the US; current crops of North Carolina; rice cultivation in the US; sheep-shearing seasons; sheep varieties; sheep reproduction cycles; things sheep eat.

Books in progress: Darren O'Donnell, Your Secrets Sleep With Me; Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti, The Chairs are Where the People Go.
The glamour: Mild and lazy. Half the city is out of town for the long weekend, another quarter are at Caribana, and thus I can get a whole table! for hours and hours! in the coffeeshop, even on a Saturday afternoon.

Well, hello. I missed you too, LJ.

Lots of stuff on the Above front this week: Filled out a giant publicity questionnaire, did my second-pass proofreader's queries (three more clarifying questions to answer tonight, and that's finished entirely), had a playdate with Scholastic Canada to talk about Canadian marketing efforts and just see the office and such, and sold the second set of international rights for the book.

(Yes, the second. The first was just before Readercon, and I think I got too busy and never told you.)

So: Above will be readable in German, from Baumhaus, and now in Portuguese -- although in Brazil only -- from Novo Conceito, both publishers with pretty impressively diverse lists. Both of these editions drop in the next year and a half to two years. I will tell you when.

The other big thing that went on this week is that I pulled a ridiculous all-nighter to watch Toronto City Council's Executive Committee meeting in person on Thursday night/Friday morning, and while that sounds like a boring political nerd thing to do and a bad reason to spend an entire workday exhausted, it was in fact kind of ridiculously glorious. It also will probably merit its own post, later today or tomorrow.

And now I am almost out of battery, and beginning to grow irritable at the noisy people, and it's time to pack this thing up.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: coffeeshop radio

In internet time, I did sort of miss a bunch of that. Sorry, peoples. Things were busy here, and there have been health issues (mine and other people's) and deadlines (mine and other people's), and it was all exceedingly stressful. Blogging has been about five thousand items down my list on any given day.

That said, here's some of it?

1) First off, a fiction sale: "The Ground Whereon She Stands", which is a story about boundaries, lesbian hedgewitches who actually wear clothes, and the subtleties of interpersonal communication, will be appearing in a future issue of the (reanimated) Realms of Fantasy. I'm not sure what the pub date is, but when I know, you will also know.

2) Today is issue day for Ideomancer, which I am willing to admit was one of those major sources of stress this month. Despite that, this issue's a really, really good one: we have fiction from

intertribal,

beccadelarosa, and Stephen Case, and poetry from

hawkwing_lb (who is also going to be doing some book reviews for us), Kelly Rose Pflug-Back, and WC Roberts. At the height of my stress I was doing some proofreading of it, and went damn, this is a good TOC.

We are, of course, reopened to subs. Please form an orderly queue.

3) I have been thinking, due to about a half-dozen things that happened last month, about the nature of friendship: what that word means to me and other people, and the web of expectation and self-fulfilling prophecies that results from what weight we assign that word.

There may be an essay in this one of these days. Right now it's mostly just a mental tumbleweed.

4) I need, if anyone has it, a word for the quality of being present, of be-here-now. In-the-momentness. I don't mean a made-up word. A real one.

5) For the first time since spring, I am noodling at a short story. It has a title and 100 words. I don't know what the title, which is decidedly right, has to do with anything, and I don't know what's with the thing about the fingers. I am putting myself in the hand of fate on this one.

6) For those keeping up on the saga of Above as it trundles through the publication process, I expect line edits next week or week after. Also, a Locus announcement in the next issue or the one after that.

That's most of what I can think of right now that bears repeating.

How was your month?

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Nick Cave -- Darker With The Day

Home from work this evening to find out that Goblin Fruit will be taking some poems: "For Pomegranates", which I read at this year's Rhysling Poetry Slam at Readercon,* and "Little Songs", which some of you may remember as the formal Petrarchan sonnet about music and poetics and boyfriends with bonus! dirty Greek pun. They'll be appearing in the autumn and winter issues, respectively.

I owe a few tips of the hat on these. They were the first poems I'd actually written in about two years, since I took the Modernist Poetry course that taught me how little I actually knew about poetry, and I ran them by a lot of people. I commend to you

chibibluebird,

ericmarin,

hawkwing_lb,

matociquala,

rushthatspeaks,

sovay,

stillnotbored and

txanne as poetry critiquers of excellence.

*The streak of selling every unsold poem I read in public continues.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: 102.1 The Edge

Almost four months, in fact.

Above will be published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic, due to the good graces of the ever-hypercompetent Caitlin Blasdell and Cheryl Klein, who is 1) kind of scary brilliant and 2) now my editor.

So you'll get to read the thing after all.

Happy Friday. :)

Current Mood: indescribable
Current Location: La Dayjob
Current Music: none

Sooooo all that revising I did all week? Tres worthwhile.

"Stay", the story about wendigoes, pomegranates, Raven, and the ethics of cold-weather communities, will appear in the inaugural volume of Chilling Tales: From the Great White North, a new annual anthology series of Canadian horror edited by Michael Kelly and published by Edge.

What with all the working on long-form stuff lately it's been a while since I got to report one of these, and I will unabashedly say that selling stuff feels nice.

The book should be out in March 2011, premiering at the World Horror Convention in Austin. Considering I know some of the other names on the TOC so far (*cough*Claude*cough*

jsridler), I commend the book in general to your attention.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: TV on the Radio -- Wolf Like Me

We at the Casa are pleased to inform that "Three Days and Nights in Lord Darkdrake's Hall", which originally appeared in Strange Horizons, will be reprinted in audio at Podcastle sometime in the near future.

This has been your announcement, and now I must make some tea.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Jann Arden -- Could I Be Your Girl?

It pleaseth me, gentles all, to let you know that "Parable of the Shower", which some of you may remember as the shower angel story, has been accepted at Lone Star Stories. For the people who aren't those some people, suffice to say that this is probably the most high-wire stuntwriting I've ever done.

Second person, present tense, in the language of the King James Bible. No harness, and no net.

It made me snicker a lot.

I am glad it has a home. *g*

Current Mood: devious
Current Music: Alabama 3 -- Bulletproof

"A Thousand", which is about paper cranes, Vancouver, and the rather unfair communication traps inherent in a certain kind of fairy tale, will be appearing in a future issue of On Spec.

Also, via

time_shark, Clockwork Phoenix has made the Locus Recommended Reading List, with stories by Laird Barron (

imago1) and Tanith Lee singled out for extra recommending. This is further proof that it is an awesome anthology and should be read by you, the consumer. Also, it may cure the King's Evil, but this is not a guarantee.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Peter Mulvey -- Charlie

I am chuffed (well chuffed?) to announce that "Mister Oak", a Wildean fairytale about a tree and the girl he loves, will appear in a future issue of Realms of Fantasy. This'll be my third story to appear there.

As for the haircut, I just liked the sound of it, but I will probably get one this week. :p

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: none

BAD!

Today started with my boot buckle catching on my tights just as I was putting my boots on to leave and putting a giant run in them. And then I forgot my wallet at home and couldn't buy myself a hamburger for lunch, as I had dearly wanted to. And then we tried to go get some coffee at the Tim Horton's downstairs, but it was closed, as was every other coffeeshop in the entire government (private sector, catch your ass up, it was only 4:15!). And then my blood sugar started crashing (luckily after that I secured a snack and things improved).

GOOD!

I found out in French today (there is a nice Interpreter at work who runs an informal weekly French class on Tuesday lunch) that the French phrase for browsing, as in not-buying-just-browsing, is "leche-vitrine". This translates, literally, to "licking the windows". The complete intensity of that visual metaphor has had me in hysterics all day.

BAD!

My fridge is still broken. I threw out three and a half pounds of ground beef last night and am none too pleased about that. I have huddled all the remaining perishables into the freezer, where there is some faint cold air. I don't know yet when there will be a new fridge, although I am assured it's before the end of the week.

GOOD!

More on the lineup for Clockwork Phoenix 2 over at

time_shark's:

I cannot certify this as the absolute final table of contents yet, but it is the list of every story accepted to date. And so, The List So Far:
# Forrest Aguirre (experimeditor), "Never nor Ever"
# Saladin Ahmed, "Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela"
# Kelly Barnhill, "Open the Door and the Light Pours Through"
# Leah Bobet (cristalia), "Six"
# Marie Brennan (swan_tower), "Once a Goddess"
# Gemma Files (handful_ofdust) and Stephen J. Barringer, "each thing i show you is a piece of my death"
# Joanna Galbraith, "The Fish of Al-Kawthar's Fountain"
# Mary Robinette Kowal (maryrobinette), "At the Edge of Dying"
# Claude Lalumière, "Three Friends"
# Ann Leckie (ann_leckie), "The Endangered Camp"
# Tanith Lee, "The Pain of Glass" (a story of the Flat Earth)
# Ian McHugh, "Angel Dust"
# Steve Rasnic Tem, "When We Moved On"
# Catherynne M. Valente (yuki_onna), "The Secret History of Mirrors"

That's just got hot all over it.

BAD!

...aaaand she's coughing again.

GOOD!

My dinner's ready. And I think I am having tea with

ksumnersmith tonight.

So in balance, looks about even.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Course of Empire -- Coming of the Century

Announcements appear to be happening, so I will announce too:

"Six", which some of you will know as a story about gardening, roof-sheep, and the apocalypse, will appear in Clockwork Phoenix 2.

Since the other acceptances I've seen announced on the friendslist include

swan_tower and

maryrobinette (ETA: and

experimeditor,

ann_leckie, and

handful_ofdust), consider me composed of chuffed with a side of pleased and some yay! to go.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: none

My meatpuppet is achy and sleepy today for some undisclosed reason, but there is nonetheless good news coming down the pipe:

"Miles to Isengard", which is about a boy, a nuke, and a cross-country drive to a volcano, will appear in a future issue of Interzone.

This is a market I've been hoping to crack for a while now. So yay, little novelette! Make Mama proud!

And now I must roast a chicken for my dinner.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: PJ Harvey -- White Chalk

This is the post of all the things I haven't posted because I've been too busy 1) with the convention thing and 2) being sick after the convention:

First off, two poetry sales. "Going Back" is going to be in the Fall issue of Goblin Fruit, which is why they let me read at the Goblin Fruit reading last week despite the riffraff that I clearly am. Anyone who's a fan of speculative poetry ought to be reading this 'zine, as it is full to bursting with incredible stuff.

The second is "The Murdered Woman Comes Home", which is actually live as of yesterday in Flashquake. The direct link's here.

Next up, another review of Clockwork Phoenix, this one at Bibliophile Stalker, and yes, we are still pre-publication on this thing:

Eighteen stories all in all and one element I found in common among all the stories is that they were comfortable to read, usually going for an elegant and minimalist writing style rather than verbose, choking paragraphs. A recurring theme of this anthology is that it attempts to evoke the reader's sense of wonder.

I am told there will be launch shenanigans for this book at Readercon. I think.

Speaking of which, Readercon panels are up. They'll be asking people shortly for panel preferences, and I figured...y'know, self-evaluation's an imperfect art. Is there anything that you guys want to hear me expounding upon?

Okay, I guess we needed less housekeeping than I thought. *flourishes the figurative feather duster*

That's the news.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: the symphony of clogged eustachian tubes

It is late and I am goofy, so:

I come to praise Pseudopod, who are lovely and professional and mean it for serious when they say they pay upon acceptance. Y'know how much frustration it is to work with someone who is sloppy and unprofessional and doesn't seem to care about what they do? It is just as much a joy to work with people who are together, focused, and clearly deriving happiness from what they're up to.

I come to praise

delta_november and

jo_etal, who host fun parties with good food and interesting people and tea, and yet let riffraff like me show up. *g*

I come to praise

stillnotbored, who shares her market tips selflessly and prods people to send things places.

I come to praise whoever in my building left that box of free books in the lobby and thus just got me a new copy of Waking the Moon. Paying forward books is all to the good.

Pursuant to said market tip sharing, new webzine Oddlands has accepted poemy poem "Kryptonian International Remembrance Day". I'm not sure which issue, but it was great news to come home to.

And now, ohmigod, bed.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: none

"Furnace Room Lullaby", which appeared originally in Fantasy Magazine #5, has been accepted for audiofication at horror and dark fantasy podcast Pseudopod.

This is my first audio reprint sale, if not the first audio version of a story: "Bliss" is part of an audio version of Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2006, and "After the War" was recorded at Readercon last year and is still up on the Sybil's Garage blog.

In other news, "The Sorceress's Assistant" is reviewed at The Fix, and "Bears" gets an honourable mention over at one

lastshortstory reviewer's Year's Best. Those happened a little while back, but I have been trying to find a post that's sufficiently pertinent to reviews to shove them in. :p

So yes. Yay!

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Hawksley Workman -- Anger As Beauty

"Bell, Book, and Candle", which is a story at an odd angle, full of sinister blasts from the brass section and literalizations of metaphor and a Carnival city after its own personal apocalypse, will be appearing in Clockwork Phoenix sometime this spring.

I am delighted. :)

That's all!

Current Mood: delighted!
Current Music: The Tragically Hip -- Tiger the Lion

January 3, 2008 Progress Notes:

Above

Words today: 750.
Words total: 16,500 MS Word.
Reason for stopping: My brain hurts. It took a lot just to get that.
Liquid Refreshment: Lemon blossom tea.
Munchies: Linguine with tomato sauce and roasted garlic oil.
Exercise: A whole afternoon hauling about the city.
Mail: Prezzies from

stillnotbored! I now have a truly mad amount of yarn.

Darling du Jour: Whisper's father thought there ought to be young men; there comes a time (Whisper said, and the lines came out sharp in her face even by lamplight, and her fingers rubbed each other as if they were terrible cold) when respectable young women need to be out of their father's houses for the good of all involved.

(Whisper's story again. I swear it isn't really that long. Maybe three pages.)

Tyop du Jour: N/A
Words MS Word Doesn't Know: N/A

Mean Things: Teller's terrible, terrible naivete. Passive-aggressive pissed-offed-ness.
Research Roundup: Toronto water table height. Y'know, there are insane logistical issues around having an underground society. Although that's one of the things we're pointing out by writing this.
Books in progress: Barth Anderson, The Patron Saint of Plagues.

The glamour: A day hauling around the city -- mostly shopping -- with my mother and sister, after someone pulled the fire alarm this morning at nine. The fire alarm in here sounds like an air raid siren. I am so tired I think I'm punchy. *g*

No. I know I'm punchy.

Day Three:

Oh, we didn't want to do that tonight, did we?

Unexpected sale tonight! "A Brief History of Night, Before Sleep" will be appearing in a soonish issue of Chiaroscuro. So that's the first sale of 2008, sort of. I count them by when I sent them out, so technically this one falls back a bit in the official by-year count.

ETA: Um...and wow, it's up already. In this issue. Fastest sale-to-pub ever.

Also, unexpected yarn! I got some Expected Yarn: the required material and implements to make these, and then some sparkly blue on-sale stuff because it was there and on sale while at the yarn store with the blood relatives. However,

stillnotbored's box was also full of yarn: baaaaaby alpaca, sock yarn, a pretty soft purple-pink mix. My yarn stash, previously confined to a tote bag (and my crystal fruit bowl. don't ask.) is now spilling out onto the dining room chairs and building bridges onto the table.

I put it all on my brand spanking new Ravelry profile, wherein you should friend me if you have one too, and realized I am frighteningly heavy with yarn.

I may need some new patterns. And a containment team, stat.

Current Mood: silly
Current Music: none

--for when I put aside studying for Semantics and announce a few sales.

"Lost Wax", which originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, will be reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy, edited by Mike Ashley. It'll be alongside work from people like (Hugo-award-winning author) David D. Levine, Andy Duncan, (Hugo-award-winning author) Tim Pratt, and a bunch of other people who didn't blog about their reprints where I could Google them, but are probably equally awesome writers. *g*

And then, "Bears", which was in Strange Horizons last month, will be translated into Italian (!) and reprinted at Intercom SF. This is my first translation. It feels fancy. :)

Finally, the Story Formerly Known as "Kimberley Ann Duray Is Not Afraid" (there's been an editorial request to change the title) will be appearing in a future issue of Strange Horizons, with enough lead time for me to think up a new title.

All three should be early-to-mid 2008. :)

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Supergrass -- Roxy

Last week? Busy.

First I had to get rid of a cold that was either Delia Sherman's via

matociquala or my cousin's via my mother's house, which apparently carries cold germs. Then I had a family birthday dinner, two days at work (Saturday a large-group signing), and most of a day helping move a friend. Then it was today. *g* So I did not post things on the internet.

(Also interestingly? When you hit five or six days without even really checking your internet stuff, the internet starts to fade into something trivial, with pointless slapfights and minutiae (much like the ones I'm recounting) that just aren't that important. This fascinates me a little and I may do future tests on the half-life of the internet in one's brain.)

So here are things that happened while I was busy:

As you might have seen here, "Fitcher's Third Wife", the poem I read at the Rhysling Poetry Slam at Readercon, will be appearing in Mythic Delirium #17. First sale to this market!

There are several blog reviews/comments on "The Girl From Another World":

-- Book-O-Holic likes it fine, and says nice things about other recent SH stories.

-- So does Littlebird-Blue.

--

stephanieburgis is further nice to the story.

-- Joe Sherry, who has a lot of rather thoughtful commentary on other SF things elsewhere in said blog, likes it but is not so keen on the ending.

-- Variety SF does not know what it is about, and asks the internets if they do.

Also!

--

lastshortstory has a short review of "After the War", as well as many other pieces of recent short fiction. (Thanks to Matt Kressel for pointing me at this one.)

I have a few content posts upcoming, including a big book report post and some issue things and an interview meme from

ksumnersmith, but right now I think I will have myself some lunch.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: none

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Drowning Nor Waving

This girl's life among the electrical lights

Entries tagged with sales

Everything, everything ends.

A big week for Above. And, people are overrated.

November.

The rare, elusive sale post.

I have been waiting a very long time to make this post.

I love it when work and results are directly linked this way.

Quick reprint announcement:

This is not Eden. This is Compton.

Two Things, Brief

Sale and a Haircut

Good! versus Bad!

And a sale.

Goooooooooal--

Housekeeping!

Non-Burial

Two for One at the Good News Truck

Woot!

Thud: Above, An Unexpected Sale, Yarrrrrrn

Three is the Magic Number--

From the Land of Miscellania...