Making your own day

It seemed like August 29, 2009 was a long way away. And practically speaking, it was. Since the first hint of interest I got from Solaris to today, it's been two years, three months. Something like that. And then it was a year spent writing the book, and most of another year going through edits and making plans for book two. And while I've been distracted by the Solaris business and have shifted my attention to Eva Forge, Veridon will always be my first book, and will always have a special place in my heart. I love that world, I love the characters, I love the themes and the visuals and just...everything. I want to write more of it. But mostly, I want people to read it and love it, too.

And today's the day that can start happening on a grand scale. It is my book day, the first day of my professional life, the last day of my excuses. There are days we remember because of what happened to us. There are days we hold close because of happenstance, of luck, of birth and death and memory. There are days that are important to us.

And then there are days we remember because we made them important, because we worked hard, we threw ourselves into each night, each page, each word because it's something we wanted. Because it was important to us. There are days we forge out of nothing but ourselves.

Today is that day. Today is my day.

Mondays are monday

Busy weekend. My inlaws are coming to town, and that is always preceded by a furious round of cleaning and trimming and what have you. It's hectic. Add in the usual work madness and, well. Busy.



But on Friday I stopped by my local barnes & noble and they had the book in stock, so I signed their two copies and then went and had a beer. Very satisfying. There was a little while there that I wasn't sure HoV would make it onto US shelves at all, but now all the B&N's in the chicagoland area are showing copies on shelves, so that's good. Again, very few reviewers ever received copies, so this book is dropping out of the sky. Life.



So, inlaws, acquisition mailing for DSA, and then book, book, book. And book during those first two things, because Book! Sorry I'm rambling. Just one of those days.

Two weeks. What do I have to show for my two weeks, since I last updated this thing? I'm probably 20% through the first draft. I really need to buckle down on that. I'd like to get the first draft done by the end of the year, so I have a couple months to polish before I kick it over to Lou. But my in-laws are visiting next week, and work is still busy. Oh, I'm buying a new furnace *and* an air conditioner. The furnace is blown, and the A/C is the same age, and we'd rather get it done and save on labor. Plus that tax credit is just...crazy. And there you have the rockstar life of the sf/f writer. It's nonstop. It does not stop.

I think about junk mail

So I've been absent from here. This is a super-busy time at work, and I ended up at the office for a good portion of the holiday weekend. Hours have been long enough that my off-time is mostly spent staring at walls or, you know. What was I talking about?

I'm still managing to get out on Tuesday nights to write. I've had to abandon the handwritten manuscript thing, so that time has gone to typing in the stuff I've already written. Finished with Chapter Three last night. One more night like that and it's back to original material. Though honestly I've been sprinkling new text in as I go. Wrote a happy dialogue last night, or at least a dialogue that made me happy. It may be a little over the top, since it's mostly old men swearing at each other, but I can always tone it down later. There are some names in there I still don't like but again, they're just placeholders. All stuff that can be done or redone later, once the structure is down. Anyway. Book progress.

What else, what else. Flight and hotel booked for World Fantasy. Membership taken care of. Oh, and I'm going to be interviewed while I'm in San Jose. That should be entertaining.

And that line break represents a two hour meeting stuffed to the gills with math and schedules. So I'm going to go and let my head unknot. You take care, now.

A whole new Rebellion

As Woodrow notes in the comments of the last post, Rebellion Press has purchased Solaris. You can read about the details here. It looks like Solaris will continue as a parallel imprint to Rebellion's other line, Abaddon Books, and will be under the editorship of Jonathon Oliver.



I don't really know what impact this will have with current or future Veridon works. Ideally, this announcement would have been made a couple months ago, so booksellers would have the comfort of knowing Solaris was going to be around when the question of picking up my book was being asked. I think it's too late to alter the US numbers, but it will definitely help in the long run. Overall I'm encouraged by this. When I first heard about this deal, back when it was all still tenuous and wrapped in lawyers and not something I could talk about, there were a handful of concerns I had. Most of those have been addressed, and I suspect the other questions will be at least answered in the near term. My biggest concern was that Solaris would just be dissolved into Abaddon, but that doesn't seem to be the case. My second biggest concern was that I don't remember having seen an Abaddon book in a US store. Their distribution on this side of the pond didn't seem that thorough to me. As you can see in the press release, they've secured Simon and Schuster to distribute, which is who Solaris was using. So that should be seamless. Hurrah!



Until I (really, my agent) talk to the new editor, I have no idea what the new group's plans are with future Veridon titles. Of course my first priority now is to Eva Forge and the Pyr series. If we start unrolling Veridon titles as well... I could be a busy guy. But we'll see.



Long and short: I'm happy. Lots could have gone wrong with this, and it certainly has impacted the release of HoV. But that is behind us, and there's nothing to be done about it now. Onward, my children, into The Future!

The days advance

This is an unusually busy week at work, but I'm trying to touch base here as often as possible. It seems that people I *don't* know may actually be reading this thing, finally, so maybe I should be a little more...I don't know. Prolific? Something.

Secret spy technology has revealed that it looks like both Borders and Barnes & Noble will be getting copies of the book. Not very many copies, but I'll take a shallow yet wide distribution. Makes sell through easier, I tell ya what. So on the 29th, all ye faithful march can march into your local bookseller and hopefully buy a little slice of Veridon.

I've gotten some questions about whether Veridon has much of a future. The book was sold and written as the first in a series, but I wanted it to be able to stand on its own. With Solaris being up for sale, future acquisitions were obviously put on hold. That all happened a couple months after I had submitted an outline for book two, tentatively titled The Dead of Veridon. That book is not written, and may never be written. I'm hoping that at some point in the future I'll be able to revive the series, either with the new Solaris (if it gets purchased) or some other publisher. Unfortunately, I can't work on something just for the pleasure of working on it because my writing time is so limited. There are things I want to do with the narrative, though, and I really hope I get the chance.

In the meantime, as most of you know, I've sold the first book in what may be a new series to Lou Anders at Pyr. Everyone knows how much I admire Lou and what he's doing with the imprint, so I really couldn't be happier. The new book takes a lot of the elements I loved from Veridon and added in a lot of other stuff I also love. It's still early days (I'm on chapter five) so you'll get to hear me bitching about narrative entanglements and word counts for months to come. Lucky you.