1. I reached 60,000 words on the goblin book today, and most of the rest of it is spinning its armature in my head, like weird cyborg nano-spiders and maybe I'd better just abandon that metaphor right there.

2. It is finally November here, cold and dark and rainy. Secretly, I like this kind of weather.

3. So last year, the entirely cromulent Pat Rothfuss did a huge auction-type thing to benefit Heifer International. This year, he's going to do it again, which I mention because (a.) hey, heads up, especially though by no means exclusively to Rothfuss fans, since I understand there is to be lots of non-Rothfussian Cool Shit as well, and (b.) I have donated two item-sets for the auctioneering thereof:

i.) A complete signed set of the hardbacks of the Doctrine of Labyrinths (Mélusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, Corambis).

ii.) A signed copy of The Bone Key, plus signed manuscripts (for which read: print-outs) of the four uncollected Booth stories: "The Yellow Dressing Gown," "The World Without Sleep," "White Charles," and "The Replacement."

Watch Pat's blog for more news on the auction. Right now he's raffling a Tuckerization in The Wise Man's Fear.

4. Speaking of the Doctrine of Labyrinths, I got the cover flats for the mass market paperback of Corambis last week, and my editor's assistant is making page-proof noises. So, yes, there will be a mmpb edition--although I don't know for sure, it'll probably come out in April--and if you have noticed any typos, you may win my eternal gratitude by posting a comment with the specifics here.

5. And speaking of the Doctrine of Labyrinths, I had a dream Sunday night that, while it claimed to be a new subplot for the goblin book, was actually an AU about Methony, including Mildmay as a toddler.

matociquala very kindly distracted me from my book by sending me this link, to which I said, "Holy shit that's amazing." And then said, "You know, this Ivan Zubkevich, he looks a lot like Mildmay." Check out that upper body musculature.

So, you know, if you're trying to visualize Mildmay, here's a good starter. Also, seriously? Holy shit that's amazing.

elisem is committing art again. I have bought a pendant, "Yes, No, Always, Never," because it is absolutely an illustration for Corambis. Which is freaky, because Elise hasn't read Corambis yet.

Also, for those of you optimistically playing along at home, this means that it is suddenly much more likely that the story about Cardenio Richey, the Principia Caeli, and a serial killer in the Lower City will (a.) be written, (b.) feature the Kalliphorne and her husband, and (c.) be titled "Yes, No, Always, Never."

Jeez. I kind of have an endorphin rush off that.

An anonymous commenter has asked if I know of any online plot synopses of the first three books of the Doctrine of Labyrinths. I don't--and before anyone suggests it, I am not, repeat NOT, going to write one myself--but if you do, or have any other helpful suggestions for a reader wanting to get back up to speed before reading Corambis, please reply to their comment. Thank you all.

Today I shipped books to Canada, Germany, and Australia.

You know who you are.

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Also, kate_nepveu, two of those packages were my contributions to con_or_bust. And for the rest of you, a reminder that the accessiblehouse auction continues until April 25, where you may bid on--among many other items of great shininess--a signed set of the Doctrine of Labyrinths hardbacks (current bid $200) and/or a signed trade paperback of The Bone Key (current bid $50).

My scanner has had its Helen-Keller-at-the-pump moment, and can communicate with Annie Sullivan (a.k.a. Genghis the Laptop). Ergo, as promised, the card I drew of the first trump of the Sibylline: The Guide.




(N.b., this is not and never was intended to be more than a rough sketch, which I inked in hastily for scanning purposes.

(Also, for those who are interested in drawing their own cards--or who want to make sense of the whole deck of the Sibylline--I will mention that I prefer Thoth to Rider.* Do with this information what you will.)

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*ObTrivia: although both decks are popularly and traditionally associated with men (Aleister Crowley and whatsisface Waite), they were both drawn by women.

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[Ask your question(s) here.]

1. Tomorrow, being April 7, is the official release date of Corambis. I will be celebrating by starting another round of Q&A, so be thinking of your questions. You can ask anything you like, although, of course, I am not obligated to answer.

2. My box of copies of Corambis came today, which means that my items for the con_or_bust and accessiblehouse auctions will not be delayed, but will ship as soon after the close of the auctions as is physically possible for me. So this is a good time to remind you about the auctions:

con_or_bust, helping fans of color/non-white fans come to Wiscon, auction ending April 13 @ midnight:

• a signed set of the hardbacks of the Doctrine of Labyrinths (Mélusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, Corambis); also personalized if the winning bidder so desires; current bid $200
  
• a signed trade paperback of The Bone Key; also personalized if the winning bidder so desires; current bid $25

accessiblehouse, helping Peter and Ericka keep their house which has been extensively renovated to accommodate Ericka's disabilities, auction ending April 25 @ noon:

• a signed set of the hardbacks of the Doctrine of Labyrinths (Mélusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, Corambis); also personalized if the winning bidder so desires; current bid $200
  
• a signed trade paperback of The Bone Key; also personalized if the winning bidder so desires; current bid $42.50

So here is the thing about which I am thinking--and I should note that I am genuinely puzzled. This isn't sarcasm or rhetoric.

One of the things that the unimpressed Publishers Weekly review of Corambis mentioned was that it probably wouldn't make sense if you hadn't read the first three books in the series. Which, you know, is absolutely true, and I don't deny it. What puzzles me is (a.) why anyone needs to be warned about it, and (b.) why the reviewer seemed to feel it was a defect.

This seems to me to be related to one of Ace's marketing decisions that still puzzles me, namely the absolute, vehement refusal to indicate anywhere on any of the books that they are part of a series. I actually asked about it, back when Mélusine was in production, because the series has a name and was never conceived of as anything but a series, and my editor told me that we couldn't put Book One of the Doctrine of Labyrinths on the cover or in the front matter. Marketing wouldn't let us.

She explained their reasoning to me: if a person buys a book and then discovers it's part of a series, they are more likely to buy the other books, whereas if a person picks up a book in a bookstore and sees it's Book Two, they won't buy it. (I think there's a self-defeating flaw in this reasoning, since it assumes that Book One will not be near Book Two on the bookstore shelves, but that's neither here nor there.) Never mind the fact that a person who buys a book only to discover it's Book Two is likely to be an unhappy person, and never mind that, since the damn thing ISN'T LABELED as Book Two, the person has no immediately obvious and easy way of figuring out either which series it's a part of, nor which books in the series come BEFORE it . . . Marketing said, Thou Shalt Not Label The Books Of Thy Series, and lo, the books were not labeled.

And reviewers and readers bitched up one side and down the other about how Mélusine ended and how they should have been told it was Book One of a series and so on and so forth.

But that's not actually my point either, although it's obvious I'm still more than a little bitter about it. My point is that both Ace's marketing department and the PW reviewer seem to think that fantasy series are a bad thing, that it's bad for a writer to build a story from one book to the next. And to that I honestly have nothing more intelligent or articulate to say than, What the fuck?

Two different reasons that this baffles me:

1. It's the fourth book in the series. Why should anyone want to read it without reading the first three? I'm sure this idea got ported over from mystery "series," in which every book is intended to stand alone, but IT DOESN'T APPLY HERE. Fantasy writers do not and have never pretended to write that kind of series. We write stories that are too big for one volume. Completely different.

2. Never mind fandom and what fandom thinks. I understand that "fandom" is not the audience PW is writing for and not the audience that Ace's marketing department is trying to reach. But the evidence is that people who read fantasy want series. They revel in series. Case in point--and I don't think we need to go any farther for examples, although George R. R. Martin can also stand up and testify here--Robert Jordan's overwhelmingly popular and infinitely expanding¹ Wheel of Time series, which have, from the publication of the very first doorstop of a volume, been labeled as part of the Wheel of Time. And publishers want series. They buy series. My four books were bought in two two-book deals, always on the understanding that the books went together. You see it every time you look at Locus. Readers want series. Publishers want series. But apparently, bookstores don't want series--because that, of course, is who Marketing has to sell to: buyers for chain bookstores and their computers.

Other authors, including most recently to my knowledge, Tobias Buckell, have blogged about this and the ugly Catch-22 in which chain bookstore computers can kill an author's career, and I don't want to rehash it now. What I want to say is that it's doing more than that, and worse than that: it's putting a No Man's Land, full of barbed wire and landmines, between the readers on one side and the writers and editors² on the other. In other words, much of the business of publishing is being driven by factors that have nothing to do with what people want to read.

And I wonder--I can't help but wonder--if the attempts to pander to the computers and their apparatchiks actually produce the phenomenon they're allegedly trying to avoid. That is, I wonder if my numbers would be better if my books had been labeled as a series, if people could look at one and TELL it belonged to something larger than itself.

And, yes, this is a very pointedly personal question for me. I haven't been blogging about it, but in fact Ace chose several months ago not to offer me another contract. My numbers aren't "good enough." This feels, in case you were wondering, like the moment in "Hansel and Gretel" when they turn around and realize that, not only have their parents ditched them, but also the birds have eaten their bread crumbs.

I'm hoping that the witch who shows up in my story is Glinda the Good Witch of the South.

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¹And it's spread to the next generation, too. (I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity. Brandon Sanderson, I adore you.) I move that this phenomenon now officially be known as Jordan's Curse.

²I have never met an editor who was not also a passionate reader. I have never met an editor who did not sincerely love the books he or she edited. It's all too possible for the relationship between an author and an editor to feel adversarial, but it shouldn't.

Another ARC recipient weighs in.

I don't think there are any concrete spoilers, although she does talk about how she feels about Corambis as the end of the series, so a person can gather certain things about how the book ends. Depending on the severity of your allergy to spoilers, you may or may not be bothered.

con_or_bust is an LJ community devoted to helping fans of color/non-white fans get to Wiscon. accessiblehouse is an LJ community devoted to helping jbru and his partner keep their house, which has been extensively renovated in order to accommodate his partner's disabilities. Both communities are running auctions with many nifty items available, and I have a question: if I were to put up for auction two complete signed sets--one in each auction--of the hardbacks of the Doctrine of Labyrinths (Mélusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, and Corambis), would people bid? (With the caveat that the sets won't be sent out until the publisher sends me my author's copies of Corambis: the one I got on Monday has to stay with me as my reference copy.)

Again, as with the ARC auctions I just did, I'm not asking for promises. I just want to know if there's enough interest to make it worthwhile.

--oh wotthehell, as mehitabel the cat says. I have posted auction items to both con_or_bust and accessiblehouse.

• The Doctrine of Labyrinths, signed hardback set, here and here.
  
• The Bone Key, signed trade paperback, here and here.

Given the rather startling value of a complete set of the Doctrine of Labyrinths (4 books at $24.95 each, and two of them out of print in hardback), I didn't feel right setting the starting bid lower than $50, but The Bone Key starts at $15.