Spells of Blood and Kin is getting closer and closer, you guys. You can now preorder it from a whole bunch of different US retailers here, or of course, from Indigo. And take a look at this cover! It looks even better in person–I am the proud possessor of a mockup (my cover wrapped around a similarly-sized hardcover, since mine won’t be printed for a while yet) and I can’t even describe the rush of seeing it brought to life. Next step for this writer: copyedits! I have a word list from the copy editors detailing things they’ve corrected, and I need to review the changes. (Side note: it’s hilarious to me how many swears appear on the list. Apparently I don’t spell profanity as well as the rest of my vocabulary. For instance, did you know “douche bag” is two words, not one?! It never occurred to me to look that up.) One thing I love about this process is the incredible number of talented people who are involved in making this book the best it can be. I’m grateful to every one and I look forward to thanking them all properly, including those I haven’t yet met… and […]
In which we have art!
Look at this beautiful illustration–by Richard Wagner, for my story “A Brief Light” in Interzone #252. I love the mood of it: I want to say “haunting”, which is a metaphoric word usually, but in the context of this story, it’s literal. This is my second story for Interzone, and like the first, it has ghosts in it. It’s also about love, loyalty, family, unfinished business, inheritance, and creepy birds. […]
In which there is art!
You guys, I can’t even tell you how excited I am by this. I’ve never had an illustration for one of my stories before, and this one is beautiful! It’s for “Haunts”, coming out in Interzone #249 in November. This story has its roots in an eclipse, back in 1993 or thereabouts. I lived in a small city with a fountain in a square downtown. My best friend and I watched the sun go dark and then we went for breakfast. As often happens with stories, I can’t quite describe how I got from that eclipse to this rather dark story about an ex-duelist selling off her fingers to keep her failing school from closing. I can tell you it has some other hidden ingredients from the time of the eclipse–a kitten who only lived a few days, a house in the west end where the lilacs were all cut down–but how those little realities are woven into this fiction, I can’t even explain. There were some wrong turns–I finished the first draft of this story a few years ago, but I didn’t finish the final draft until quite recently, and it changed a lot in between. Now it’s finally […]