I have been absent for all of November, in part because of revisions and in part because of general stress and anxiety. I have copy-edits for Cast in Conflict on my computer now. Copy-edits are the part when I realize: Oh, I’m an idiot. Again. (If I made no mistakes, if I were competent the first time, I wouldn’t have to deal with … my mistakes. And neither would anyone else. Paralyzing writer-brain at it’s finest.) Writing has therefore been slow. Well, worse than slow. I realized, with the new West novel, that I had made a critical error (character introduction) and that the book would be much better if I fixed that. Which means, because of my process, losing 110k words of writing and starting again at the … Continue reading
As promised, for those who have already read The Emperor’s Wolves and wish to discuss it, this is the post on which you can do so. It goes without saying that the discussions will involve spoilers, and if you hate spoilers, avoid this particular post. I am behind in absolutely everything T_T. I will be absent in a vain and flailing attempt to catch up. 2020 has not been the year for great focus =/.
Today is release day for The Emperor’s Wolves. As of today, the book should be available in print, audio and ebook. I love the cover. I love one small element in the print version – not the title page, but the blank page that follows a title page – it’s not entirely blank. Three years ago, give or take a few months, I was one of the authors featured at the pixel project. One of the things I offered to encourage donation was a short story prompt. I was willing to write about either a familiar character, or a single word prompt — like, say, Dragon. The person who donated could choose. The person chose Severn. So I sat down to write a short story. Or rather, a novella. If I miraculously ended up with a short story, I’d be fine, but … Continue reading
This isn’t so much a social distancing post as an update. I’ve put the short stories on hold until the revision for Cast in Conflict is done and back to the editor — it’s going to be a bit late =/. Release week for The Emperor’s Wolves is coming up, and in theory it’s the time when I try hard to make myself more available on social media — and I will try, but, well. Revisions. Cast in Conflict. I also believe that when it comes down to brass tacks, readers would rather have another book than … more Michelle babbling frenetically on the internet. I will, however, continue the short stories after the revisions are gone and the release date has been celebrated, because we are not out of covid-19 social distancing … Continue reading
I mentioned earlier that I am one of the (many) guests at this year’s Confluence — which is going online, and is called C’monfluence. It’s free — although they’re accepting donations if people both want and can afford them. Most of the sessions will be held on Zoom; some of it will be held on discord — the links of which are also on the web-site. HOWEVER: all of the zoom events require registration or pre-registration, and there might be a channel limit to the number of people they can reasonably support. The complete list is available now on the web-site with registration links, and I’ve just cut and paste the parts of the schedule that actually involve me >.>. I don’t quite know how the discord will work – it … Continue reading