I Write Dead People

Folks - I've been sitting on this for WEEKS! I found out at Xmas and wasn't allowed to make it public until Simon & Schuster sent out their press release. Which they did. Yesterday afternoon. After the inauguration. How freaking cool is that?

Press release:

POCKET BOOKS IN CO-PUBLISHING AGREEMENT WITH JUNO BOOKS
TO PUBLISH CONTEMPORARY FANTASY FICTION

New York, New York (January 19, 2009) – Louise Burke, Executive Vice President and Publisher of Pocket Books, has announced a new co-publishing agreement with Juno Books, best known for contemporary fantasy novels that emphasize strong female protagonists in richly imagined contexts. Juno will become an imprint of Pocket Books, publishing one title per month with the first release, AMAZON INK by Lori Devoti, slated for June 2009.

Juno Books began its publishing program in Fall 2006 and quickly became noted in the fantasy fiction genre for such breakout successes as Carole Nelson Douglas and Stacia Kane and garnering critical acclaim for many of their titles.

“Pocket Books and Juno Books are a great fit,” said Louise Burke. “We’ve seen great growth in this category, are delighted to now have a dedicated line, and look forward to helping to cultivate a wider audience for Juno’s terrific roster of authors.”

Juno Books Editor Paula Guran said: "I'm tremendously excited about the opportunity to help take Juno to the next level through our association with Pocket Books. Both Juno and fantasy readers in general will gain immensely by sales and marketing reach of Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster, while still getting the best of our editorial sensibility."

Pocket Books Senior Editor Jennifer Heddle will work in concert with Juno Books Editor Paula Guran.
[end release]

What this means for me:
-- the Blood Lines series will be published by Pocket Books/Juno from now on
-- copies of the current 2 books may be hard to find right now as the agreement went into effect January 1, but my understanding is that both books will be reprinted at some point later in the year.
-- Blood Kin will be out in November (book 3)
-- because it's Pocket Books, those of us with Juno will more than likely get a great deal more exposure in the bookstores

So, much with the yays!!!

xposted from LiveJournal

As brought to you by Mme. Editrix, the incomparable Paula Guran:

For those of you in the not-so-know, Matters of the Blood will be re-released as a mass market paperback in September, 2008, followed by the sequel, Blood Bargain in November.

Both are available for pre-order at your favorite independent bookstore and/or the usual chains.

My next appearances:

Creatures'n'Crooks, Richmond, VA (August 23) (tentative)
Bouchercon 2008, Baltimore, MD (October 9-12)

 

If you haven't been following my LiveJournal blog, you don't know that I've pimped myself out at

livelongnmarry

 , fandom support for marriage equality. I'm offering 2 signed books (each of the 2 books in my Blood Lines series).

Stop by, tell your friends, help us pimp this great community and this cause. You don't have to have a LiveJournal account to bid, just make sure to post your contact information should you win.

Information on bidding and such is at the user info page for the community.

Well, at least, it's a book.

I have now received my author copies of Matters of the Blood. The actual books should be in the wild within then next couple of weeks or so.

Next event:
Book signing with the Sisters In Crime contingent at Olsson's Crystal City.
7:00 p.m. April 26, 2007

Hope to see folks there!

One day I turned around and it became winter. From balmy, nearly shirt-sleeve weather to frigid single-digit temps in a short week. This was quickly followed by the almost now-obligatory near-President's Day snow/ice storm.

Ah well.

That said, I'm busy coordinating my year's travel, mostly to promote my upcoming book, Matters of the Blood. I've sent registrations to the below cons. Hope to see folks there!

* May 4 - 6 - Malice Domestic
* May 25 - 27 - Mayhem in the Midlands
* July 6-8 - Readercon
* Nov 1-4 - World Fantasy

Wowza - has it really been that long since I posted?

This is what happens when you have a demanding day job - that I love, mind you, but yet, still quite demanding.

George Guthridge over at Storytellers Unplugged talks about writing what you don't know about. In writing classes, we are often told to write what you do know about. Tony Hillerman talks about writing about what you want to know about.

Like any writing "rules", I think there's a truth in each of those positions.

When I first started the novel that became Matters of the Blood, my protagonist, then named Kate, was a freelance geek. I picked this because it's something I know about...uhm, am, actually (the geek part, not the freelance). As I began to create Kate's world, I realized two things:

1. Any computer technology I'd mention would be woefully out of date in a year, not to mention by publication date.


2. I really, really, really did not want to write about work-related stuff.

After that revelation, I knew I had to do something else, because for the purposes of the story I wanted to tell, I didn't want Kate to be tied down to a regular job.

In the drafts that followed, Kate became Keira, supernatural scion of a large powerful and equally supernatural family, with a trust fund, a house and way too much time on her hands. Suddenly, it worked.

Now, I have no earthly clue what having a trust fund is like, but I'm sure I can imagine some of it. Besides, that was 100% a plot device to remove an obstacle that had no part in the narrative. That said, her financial situation as contrasted with Marty's lack of finances did create for some tension. And as we all know, tension is what makes for good story.

I also wrote what I knew: a small Texas Hill Country town, where the value of town is more loose settlement than actual buildings, roads and people. Rio Seco, Texas is a thinly veiled Lago Vista, Texas as it was in the mid-to-late seventies, when I lived and went to high school there. It was the perfect setting for my characters, and I utterly know the parts of Lago that are still nestled in my heart and memories...which is exactly what I wanted. The then version, colored and shaded by my own interpretation, not the now version, easily searched for on Google and Google Earth. (Although, I do admit to finding Lago on Google Earth, but that was quite recently, long after MoB was completed).

In the creation of the story, I made Marty the local funeral home director/mortician. Did I know about this? Only in the sense that once upon a brief time I worked for a software company that was developing funeral home management software. I knew enough to whet my interest. I knew enough to know that I wanted certain aspects of the funeral industry to peek through. However, MoB is not about the industry. I just needed to research enough for verisimilitude. Enough so that casual readers, even those familiar with funeral homes would accept what I wrote without being jarred out of the narrative. I think I succeeded. And yes, I did some research. Google is a wonderful place and can lead you to such fabulous resources such as product catalogs, photos of actual embalming rooms, and industry trade magazines.

In essence, in my writing, I tend to combine all of the what you know, what you don't know and what you'd like to know in some mashup that seems to work for me. After all, it's just about telling the story that's in your head in a way that others enjoy it, too.

-30-

One of the absolutely BEST things about being a writer is seeing your work come to fruition. In this case, the re-release of Matters of the Blood is now listed on Amazon.com.

Although, I prefer if folks buy at an independent bookstore, being listed here means it's real and on the "books" so to speak so that any bookseller can order it.

I'm considering this the rebirth of the book and of my infant career.

Next year, I'll be going to Malice Domestic and Balticon and I hope to make at least one other convention. In March, I'll be speaking at the Alexandria Public Library, along with 3 other Alexandria-based authors.

Life is GOOD!

...so doesn't bite!

Evidence:

The new cover for Matters of the Blood:

Pretty pretty!

Scheduled release: March 2007
ISBN: 0-8095-5790-8

It's definitely a whole other experience working with a publisher that is professional and is excited about my book. I'm really psyched!!