A Year in Pictures – Proof Pistol

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I can’t remember the details for certain, but the Royal Armouries exhibit in the Tower of London has a small collection of weapons that I think were designated “proof” pieces: official examples of standard armaments produced by various craftsmen. This is the grip of a proof pistol, with the red seals marking it as such.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Shield and Crocus

I always love it when my friends’ books come out, because: dude! Book! By a friend of mine! That’s awesome!

But it gains extra awesomeness points when it’s a book like Mike Underwood’s Shield and Crocus, because I’ve been with this one very nearly from its earliest days: I read what I think was the first draft, years ago, back when Mike was saying “what happens if I take this Clarion story of mine and try to make it a bit biggOH HOLY GOD IT’S GROWN TENTACLES AND IT’S TRYING TO EEEEEEEEEAT MEEEEEEEEEEEE,” and I’ve offered various bits of feedback and assistance since then. I’m bouncing-in-my-seat happy that it’s made the journey from his brain to the shelves. My blurb for it compared it to Perdido Street Station and David Edison’s The Waking Engine, because it has that kind of setting, sort of New Weird-ish (but less heavy on the grotesquerie than some). If that sounds like your cup of tea, you should check it out.

Because today, my friends, it is out in the world. There’s a preview on Tor.com, or you can buy it from Powells or Books-a-Million or IndieBound or Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon (whose imprint 47North are the publishers). You can also get it in audio form.

Congratulations and happy bookday to Mike!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Meet the Rewards: Tarot Readings

I meant to post these a while ago, rather than in the last week of the Kickstarter — but hey, better late than never, right? So over the next few days, I’ll be making a few posts to talk about the non-book rewards available for Chains and Memory, and why I chose them.

First up are the tarot readings by my friend Emily Dare. I included these because Kim is a divination major at Welton, and tarot is her preferred tool, so it’s something that’s both very fitting for the story and also kind of unusual. And I asked Emily to participate because pretty much any time* Kim sits down with a tarot deck in this series, that’s Emily’s handiwork you’re seeing: I tell her what I want the reading to convey, and she reverse-engineers that to say what cards Kim should get, what layout she would likely use, etc. For Kim’s big reading in the early part of Lies and Prophecy, that ended up adding quite a lot of depth to the scene, because of Emily’s suggestions for how to complicate the process. And that’s exactly why I look for outside help: I could sit there with the itty-bitty Rider-Waite booklet and try to make something up, but I wouldn’t get the nuances and the neat little details that make it seem more real.

(Which is pretty much a true statement of any instance where I recruit help on a particular topic for a story. It’s always good to ask the people with the hands-on experience; they know the things you wouldn’t even think to ask.)

So that’s it for the first of the special rewards. I’ll be back later to talk about the miniscript, Tuckerization, and the t-shirts. Stay tuned!

*The exception being the Tower scene in Lies and Prophecy. I made up that particular reading all on my own.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.