Swan Tower

I've been so busy promoting the pattern deck Kickstarter up one side of the internet and down the other that I've completely forgotten to update about its progress here! We're at the halfway point of the campaign (it ends on September 5th), and as of me posting this, we've made it to 89% of our goal. Which is fabulous, but also I won't breathe easy until we're past the 100% line with a bit of cushion to spare. My thanks to everybody who's been spreading the word about this -- and don't forget, all of our add-ons are available at every tier! So even if the deck itself isn't of interest, you can back at $1 and still get access to signed books or bookplates, tea samples, personalized readings or horoscopes, art commissions, Tuckerizations, or your very own peacock brocade frock coat!

Meanwhile, we have some other promotional events lined up for the Kickstarter and the release of Labyrinth's Heart. This upcoming Thursday the 24th, from 4-7 p.m. Central time (5-8 Eastern, 2-6 Pacific, 9-midnight UTC), we'll be playing Rook & Rose D&D online, courtesy of New Orleans bookstore Tubby & Coo's! Our special guest player for this event is the wonderful author and editor Fran Wilde, and I have no idea what will happen in the game except guaranteed hijinks.

Alyc and I will also be at DragonCon, though I don't quite have a finalized schedule yet. If you're attending and would like anything signed, feel free to catch me after a panel or ping us to arrange a meetup; I know that getting into the dealers' building can be an incredibly time-consuming process, and we don't mind signing items in passing to save you hours of waiting in line.

Finally, two pieces of non-Rook & Rose news: first, from now until the 27th, the ebook of A Natural History of Dragons is on sale for only $2.99! And second, looking ahead to October, I'm going to be in conversation with Kate Heartfield to promote our mutual Norse-inspired works, her novel The Valkyrie and my The Waking of Angantyr. That's organized by Brookline Booksmith, and it'll be on October 27th at 5 p.m. Pacific (8 Eastern, midnight UTC).

I know there are other things I need to scrape together to post about, but brain am mush, so they will have to wait . . .

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/BN8GAJ)

It has been bonkers around here for the last two months or so, with a nigh-constant stream of interviews and promotional events. That's slacking off at last, but there are two more coming up that I want to particularly draw attention to . . .

First, this Sunday, February 28th, we're getting the band back together! Myself, Alyc, my husband, and two friends of ours from my grad school days (Emily Dare and fellow author Michael R. Underwood) are getting together for a Rook and Rose Blades in the Dark tabletop game. We all used to game together back in Bloomington -- and in fact, the only reason I use the past tense there is that Mike doesn't live out in the Bay Area with the rest of us, so he's not in our current gaming group. But he's offered to GM a one-shot game this Sunday, from 6 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Pacific until about three hours later, which will be streaming live on Twitch. (My first time doing this kind of thing for an audience, eek!) We'll be playing members of the Oyster Crackers, an Upper Bank knot of thieves that appear briefly in The Liar's Knot; I suspect we may run into the Rook. But I have no idea! It's in Mike's hands! This feels so weird and so awesome at the same time!

And second, on Wednesday, March 10th, Alyc and I will be doing an event with Tubby & Coo's, a great independent bookstore in New Orleans. This is set up courtesy of fellow author Bryan Camp, a New Orleans local; we'll have a reading and a conversation with him. That's at 6 p.m Central, which is 7 p.m. Eastern and 4 p.m. Pacific.

. . . plus some more interviews, but those are more of a "record it and then it'll go live later" kind of thing. Oof. Full court press in promoting The Mask of Mirrors has been fun, but it's also tiring, y'all.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/GPc5U0)

Y'all, there are so many giveaways right now for The Mask of Mirrors. In no particular order:

* Alyc and I are asking people to design a Rook and Rose cocktail and mocktail! (We want something celebratory to drink on the book's release day.) You have until noon Pacific on Monday the 18th to send us a recipe for either one or both, with the only real restriction being that Alyc loathes all forms of gin, so probably best to avoid that. We'll choose one winner in each category and send them a signed copy of The Mask of Mirrors, along with one of the gorgeous bookplates Orbit had made! (US only -- our apologies to people overseas, though we still welcome recipe suggestions from you.) You can post your recipes here or on Twitter or Facebook, or send them via our site.

* Beneath Ceaseless Skies is running their own giveaway, ending Wednesday the 13th. All you have to do is respond to that post with your favorite caper/thief story published in BCS (and there's a list of candidates to get you started). And in case you missed it, they have a Rook and Rose short story, too!

* And our publisher is running a giveaway, too! This one is open to both US residents and UK residents, with separate portals for each. That goes through the end of the month.

* Finally, you've got about two days left (as of this post going live) to enter a Booksweeps giveaway for fifty epic fantasy novels, The Mask of Mirrors included! That one ends in the wee hours of the morning for U.S. residents on Thursday the 14th.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/LPGSI6)

If you missed yesterday's Twitter giveaway for Driftwood, never fear; Beneath Ceaseless Skies has another opportunity for you. All you have to do is go to this post and leave a comment naming your favorite short story of mine (whether published in BCS or elsewhere). There are already a number of comments -- and I confess, it's fascinating to see what people choose! You have until midnight Pacific time on Wednesday, August 12th to toss your hat into the ring.

"Ask Me and Three Other People Anything" doesn't quite have the same catchy ring as "Ask Me Anything," but the concept is the same! The creative team for Born to the Blade (myself, Michael R. Underwood, Cassandra Khaw, and Malka Older) are all doing a joint AMA over on Reddit today. So far we've been asked everything from what it's like working on a collaborative project to who would win in a bare-knuckles brawl, Merry & Pippin on one side and Sam & Frodo on the other. If you have anything you'd like to ask, whether it's of me or someone else or the team as a whole, head on over and let us know!

I meant to post this yesterday but didn’t have the time, so now it’s six days to the release of Within the Sanctuary of Wings instead of a whole week!

As in past years, I will be doing several bookstore events and conventions to promote the release of the book. If you’re in the vicinity of any of these places, I hope to see you there!

Saturday, April 29, Borderlands Books, San Franscisco, CA

• 3 p.m. — reading, Q&A, and signing

Monday, May 8, Poisoned Pen, Phoenix, AZ

• 7 p.m. — reading, Q&A, and signing

Tuesday, May 9, Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, CA

• 7:30 p.m. — reading, Q&A, and signing

Friday, May 26 – Monday, May 29, BayCon, San Mateo, CA

• details TBD

Friday, June 30 – Sunday, July 2, Denver Comic Con, Denver, CO

• details TBD

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

I have survived our housewarming party, and with that in my tail-lights, let me catch up on a few things. And by a few, I mean a lot.

Like my newest Onyx Court story! “To Rise No More” is the tale of Ada Lovelace’s childhood friendship with faeries, and also her ambition to build herself a pair of wings to fly with. No seriously, I didn’t even make that part up. (The wings, not the faeries. But she did also refer to herself as “Babbage’s fairy helper,” so, y’know. Maybe not that part, either.) It went up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies on my birthday, which I found to be excellent timing.

Shifting gears to a different series, the Barnes and Noble blog has just revealed the cover to Lightning in the Blood, which is the upcoming sequel to the still-upcoming-but-will-be-out-next-Tuesday Cold-Forged Flame. As I said on Twitter, I didn’t know until I saw it that one of my life goals was to get a Giant Hunting Cat onto a book cover, but I can check that off my list now!

And while I’m at it, I’ve finally gotten an excerpt from Cold-Forged Flame posted to my site. One week — one week and it will finally be out . . . .

Also, I’ve been busy with the Roundtable Podcast, hosted by Dave Robison and Marie Bilodeau. And I do mean busy, as I’m in not one but two episodes. The first is part of their “Twenty Minutes With” series . . . which, with the introduction and everything else, wound up being more like Fifty Minutes With. But dear god, the introduction alone is worth it: Dave Robison has a habit of describing his guests in epic terms. I have never heard my own life sound so much like a superhero origin story.

So that’s the first episode; the second is part of their “Workshop” series, wherein a writer (or in this case, a writing pair) describe a project they’re working on and then get feedback from the assembled hosts. We dug into an urban fantasy premise for this one, a setting where a new drug is causing people to develop magical powers, and had lots of thinky thoughts on both the way the drug fits into the world and how to write the “psycho ex-girlfriend” trope in a sympathetic and complex manner.

And finally, I’ve got myself a brand-new setup on Imzy. Where by “brand-new,” I mean “there’s basically nothing there yet” — but I figured I should mention, for those who are busy exploring this new site. Then, having done that, I decided to spend my other community-creation slot on putting together one called Dice Tales, which is a spin-off of the blog posts I’ve been doing at Book View Cafe. Speaking of which: the most recent installments there are “Keeping Up with the Joneses,” on power escalation over the course of a campaign; “With Great Power,” on the GM’s ability to screw players over and responsibility to use that wisely; “GNS,” on Ron Edwards’ old Gamism-Narrativism-Simulationism framework; and then a two-parter that consists of “Game Planning I – Arcs, Acts, and Chapters” and “Game Planning II – Sessions and Scenes,” which are pretty much what it says on the tin. But the Imzy community is not just a place to reblog those posts; I’m hoping it will become a great discussion of storytelling in RPGs more broadly. So if you’re on Imzy and you find that kind of thing interesting, come on over!

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

Totally irrelevant to the actual choosing of a winner, but relevant to my curiosity: here’s how the “favorite character” voting fell out.

Natalie had an early lead and never lost it. Though for a brief time in the middle the second-place contender drew near, she wound up with twice as many votes as her closest competitor, making her the clear victor. Yay, Natalie!

Second place was . . . . Suhail! And behind him, Jake. Other candidates included Tom, Jacob, Heali’i, the dragons en masse, and the sparklings in specific. :-) If I count secondary votes, though — the respondents who said “Character A, but I also really love character B,” then Greenie got a vote, Heali’i got more support, and Jake pulls up to be tied with Suhail for second place. Natalie also got a secondary vote, though, so she remains ahead of even Suhail + Jake + Jake’s secondary votes combined. So I guess y’all like her. ;-)

But I’ve made you wait long enough. According to my highly scientific random number generation method*, the winner is . . .

. . . beccastareyes, on Livejournal!

Send me your address, and I’ll get the ARC out to you as soon as I can!

Thanks to everybody who sent in their votes. Keep an eye on this space for more giveaways in the upcoming weeks!

.

*i.e. dice

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

There’s a few days left in the Lady Trent’s Friends of Nepal fundraiser, with a variety of items still for sale (including some new additions from Linda Nagata and Vonda McIntyre) — plus, of course, donations also put you in the pool for lottery prizes. The page currently says the goal is $750, but I’d love to hit $1K before this is done; it’s a nice round number. :-)

Over on Twitter I joked that I should not resort to blackmail, like saying “Donate or Isabella loses a finger to frostbite in the last book!” But the truth is, I was already thinking about having Isabella lose a finger to frostbite. So really, what I should say is that you have a chance to save her from that fate! (Carrot, not stick.) If we hit $1000, she will make it safely through the series with all ten fingers intact!

. . . yes, writers are horrible people. :-P

But onward to the business promised by the title of this post. By far the hottest item in the sale part of the fundraiser was the ARC of In the Labyrinth of Drakes, due out next spring; all five copies were gone in about twenty-four hours. I know that for some of you in foreign countries, eBay’s estimated shipping costs were prohibitive, since they don’t calculate that according to the cheapest methods. To make up for that, I’m doing a giveaway of my own, with no purchase required. All you have to do to enter is be signed up to my mailing list; both current subscribers and those who sign up now will be included in the pool. On Friday I’ll use a random number generator to pick a winner. (If you win and don’t want the book for whatever reason, e.g. you haven’t read any of the series or you already got an ARC through other means, you can decline and I’ll pick a new recipient.) Here’s your chance to get a signed ARC for free!

. . . but you should still donate if you can. You don’t want Isabella to lose a finger, do you? >_>

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

Mary Robinette Kowal and I will be going on tour again in May, for Of Noble Family (her) and Voyage of the Basilisk (me — out two weeks from today!). We’re hitting a few of the same locations as last time, but also some new ones; check below to see if we’ll be anywhere near you!

Tuesday, May 5, Chicago, IL

• 6 PM — reading and signing at DePaul University

Wednesday, May 6, San Diego, CA

• 7:30 PM — reading and signing at Mysterious Galaxy

Thursday, May 7, Petaluma, CA

• 7 PM — reading and signing at Copperfield’s Books

Friday, May 8-Sunday, May 10, Coos Bay, OR

• Topsails & Tea
• reading and signing at 2 p.m. on the 9th

Tuesday, May 12, Beaverton, OR

• 7 PM — reading and signing at Powell’s Cedar Hill Crossing

Thursday, May 14, Salt Lake City, UT

• 6 PM — reading and signing at Weller Book Works

Saturday, May 16, Scottsdale, AZ

• 2 PM — reading and signing at Poisoned Pen Bookstore

Sunday, May 17, Houston, TX

• 2 PM — reading and signing at Murder By the Book

Monday, May 18, Raleigh, NC

• 7 PM — reading and signing at Quail Ridge Books

Tuesday, May 19, Chapel Hill, NC

• ? PM — reading and signing at Flyleaf Books

Wednesday, May 20, Asheville, NC

• 7 PM — reading and signing at Malaprop’s

I will also be at BayCon the following weekend, and may have a Borderlands event in there somewhere, too. I’ll post the details here when I know about that for sure.

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