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2016 work schedule
Want to know what I’m doing this year? Or at least, what I’m trying to do? Here. Let me tell you!
Publishing MAGIC & MANNERS
I’m in the very last stages of getting MAGIC & MANNERS out into the world–the last bits (the ISBN bar code, mostly) are being generated for the cover, it’ll be handed off to a professional to convert it into e-books, and it’s the first book I’ll be publishing through the Ingram self publishing system, which will theoretically make it order-able in bookstores all around the country/world. Official pub date is February 16, 2016, and the audio book will be out right around then too! And I can’t STAND not showing off the cover, so this post is also a Cover Reveal!
(SQUEE!!!! Cover art by the magnificent Tara O’Shea at Fringe Element!)
Finishing REDEEMER
That means finishing the draft, revising it to get fix all the NOTE:s left in it (which include things like description, slang, word repetition, just all sorts of things), then sending it to my editor, who will tell me everything that’s wrong with it. Then I’ll fix it, send it back to her, give it to my parents to beta-read, get line edits/polishing details, do THOSE, send the manuscript to the copy editor, do THOSE, get the book laid out and e-files made for it, get the cover art finished, get ISBNs, get it out to the Kickstarter backers, perhaps see about submitting it for proper reviews, and finally get it out into the reading public’s hands.Revising BEWITCHING BENEDICT
which involves everything listed above from “fix it, send it back to her” and goes on pretty well through the end of that paragraph. Perhaps not review copies for that. Maybe not even print copies right away, IDK.Revising IMMORTAL BELOVED
closer to REDEEMER than BENEDICT, except it needs to go through two pre-editorial revision passes, for Reasons. With luck, the revision process on both of these books will be something I can do while REDEEMER is with Matrice.Writing SKYMASTER
which is the last of the YA quadrology I’m writing for my nephew, and which may turn out to be a Kickstarter project, which entails everything under the ‘Redeemer’ header except for for FOUR BOOKS AT ONCE.Writing KISS OF ANGELS
the Grace O’Malley novella, & another 8 or so Old Races short stories (get them HERE first!), and overseeing production on one, possibly two (depending on how the short story project goes) Old Races short story collections.Writing
the 2nd Walker Papers/Skinwalker crossover novella with Faith HunterRevising
the epic fantasy proposalWriting
the climate change series proposal.Writing
if I have _time_ after all that a sequel to either REDEEMER or MAGIC & MANNERS or BEWITCHING BENEDICT ahahahahahaha -
No Dominion
After fighting at her side for over a year, Gary Muldoon must leave shaman Joanne Walker to face a battle only he can win…
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oh, that’s nice.
I don’t typically read reviews, but periodically my editors will send one directly to my mailbox and I read it out of a sense of obligation. Usually they’re nice, because generally my editors wouldn’t bother sending me bad ones. :) So a nice BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER review from Publisher’s Weekly landed in my mailbox, courtesy of my SubPress editors, and it is thus:In this strong collection of 11* short stories, a mixture of reprints and originals, Murphy (Raven Calls) returns to the setting of her Negotiator trilogy. The spotlight is on two immortals: the dragon Janx and the vampire Eliseo Daisani. Both friends and enemies, they cross paths regularly over the centuries, often drawn to and influenced by women. “From Russia, with Love” features the titular powerful Russian witch; “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” brings in Susannah Stacey, a would-be vampire hunter in 1870s Chicago, and Vanessa Grey, Daisani’s long-lived assistant. Murphy plays with styles and tone, injecting a sense of myth into “From Russia, with Love,” evoking hard-boiled sensibilities with “Chicago Bang Bang,” and lacing other tales with mystery, romance, and action. Ranging from vignettes to novellas, these offerings grant glimpses of a much larger world, fleshing out its history and pleasing series fans.
*pleased*
*10. I’m pretty sure it’s 10 stories… o.O
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triumph complete. :)
I couldn’t help myself. I did up the formatting properly and I’m quite happy with it. I’ll have a proof copy printed, and perhaps I’ll do a give-away with it or something once I’ve had a look over it to see what detail work might need fixing.
And yay, my ad is up at Bitten By Books! I’m running a 2 month ad there to see if it boosts sales any, and then in October I’ll be doing a guest blog there and elsewhere to see if /that/ makes a difference to sales. This is all very interesting stuff to me, finding out what all Makes It Go.
Mikaela commented on the earlier post about Doin’ It Right, saying, “Well, you might not plan to sell them now. But who knows, maybe you plan to sell them next year or something :). ( Unless you are sitting on awesome news.)”
which I thought I would lift the reply into public space for, in case anybody else had wondered the same thing:
I am not, sadly, sitting on awesome news. I have to wait and see how BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER does with SubPress. If it does well enough and they want to give another one a go, I’ll probably split the ORSSP stuff into 2 new collections, and write “Kiss of Angels”, the Grace O’Malley story, as a novella for the anchor piece for one, use “Year of Miracles” as the anchor for the other, and write a bunch more short stories to fill out both of them so they’ve got a lot of new content to go along with the stuff people’ve read.
But that all depends on how BYD does. :)
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making print on demand files
I spent most of yesterday (work-time, anyway) turning the ORRSP and Year of Miracles into a POD for my non-e-reader family members. With a few minor exceptions that I may not be able to defeat because I’m using Open Office instead of a Proper Layout Program, I’m quite happy with it. In another life, this is what I do for a living.
The exceptions, in case anybody knows how to fix them, are as follows:
– I’d like the page numbering/headers to not start until the first page of the stories, which happens to be page 13
– I would like to remove the header information on each individual page that the stories begin on
– I’d like to be smarter than the table of contents and get it to line up in a nice 2-column layout, but hell if I can manage it o.OOther than that, though, yes, quite pleased with myself. And having done it once will make doing the NO DOMINION limited edition easier, which is my excuse for having spent a whole day doing that, although really I just wanted to do it. :)
