Scott Westerfeld's Blog, page 29
March 29, 2011
Leviathan Unshelved!
For the second time, the glorious library comic Unshelved has reviewed one of my novels! This time it is, of course, Leviathan. (Long-time readers of this blog may remember their review of Peeps back in 2006.) It is always an honor to be Unshelved, because all your librarian friends think you're a rockstar when it happens.
Here's one panel from the comic/review:
Click here to read the rest.
And this review has a bonus aspect, because the guest blogger who created it, Angela Melick, decided to do a SECOND cartoon!
Click here for the rest.
Double awesomeness! So thanks to both the Unshelved crew, Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes, and to Angela for their continuing support of my books and of libraries everywhere.
Three other things:
1) Don't forget that Friday, it'll be time for our monthly reveal of Goliath artwork, this month with added spoilerization.
2) Sydneysiders, don't forget the Zombies Versus Unicorns debate this Thursday at Kinokuniya bookstore.
3) The rest of you, come hang out at the Westerforum meet-up on April 9/10.
See you Friday!
March 24, 2011
Meet-Up in Two Weeks
THREE THINGS:
Thing One
So let's do another meet-up. Come to the WesterForum and ask me all the questions you want. Here's the temporal data:
For USians, it will be Saturday, April 9 at 8PM Eastern Time, 7PM Central, and 5PM Pacific.
For you here in Australia, it will be 10AM Sunday (April 10) on the east coast, 7AM on the west coast, and 9:30AM in Adelaide, because by halfsies how you SA folks roll.
In London . . . ? I don't even know anymore. Do you GMTers change your time soon? I think it'll be 10 or 11PM Saturday night, April 9. (The US has already changed time for spring, and Australia will change in the other direction for autumn on April 3. Confusion!)
Welcome to my life. All I do is sit around and try to figure out what time it is in other places, like when I had this conference call with a bunch of people in LA last week. But you can ask about that at the meet-up! (Bwah-hah-hah!)
Thing Two
Sydneysiders, don't forget about the great Zombies Versus Unicorns Debate next Thursday.
Thing Three
How about some fan art? Because it's FRIDAY almost everywhere!
First a Lego Stormwalker from GizzmoHammer!
And from the side:
Lots of details from the book in this model. In fact, the back has tiny steam pressure gauges!
I do like me some Lego. And it's great how builders have to improvise, because there's no official Leviathan(TM) Lego kit yet. (HINT!)
For a change of pace, check out McL-Jessie's Deviant Art gallery, which has lots of Leviathan fan art and general steampunkery. Here are a couple:
This one imagines Deryn and Alek in Japan:
And here's Dr. Barlow wearing a cool expression, plus Tazza and egg!
Now I realize that you a lot of you guys have sent me many other pieces of fan art lately. But, alas, it's all over my disorganized desktop. If you want to send it again, I WILL NOT LOSE IT THIS TIME, and we can do another Fan Art Friday soon.
Of course, next Friday is the first of the month, so it isn't Fan Art Friday, it's KEITH ART FRIDAY, with actual art from Goliath! And next art reveal is perhaps A BIT SPOILERY, but I think you'll enjoy it anyway.
So, yeah, there's that.
March 21, 2011
ZvU at Sydney Kinokuniya
The Zombies Versus Unicorns debates have spread around the world! Next Thursday, March 31, at 6PM we will be having one at Kinokuniya Bookstore here in Sydney, Australia.
Join us at Kinokuniya as Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld (Team Zombie) face off Margo Lanagan and Garth Nix (Team Unicorn) to determine who reigns supreme, the zombie or the unicorn? This is an event not to be missed!
Edited by Holly Black (Team Unicorn) and Justine Larbalestier (Team Zombie), Zombies Vs Unicorns is a unique short story feud that pits horned beasts against the shuffling undead.
Contributors to this unique collection include bestselling teen and YA authors Garth Nix, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson and Margo Lanagan.
Zombie Vs Unicorns challenges you to pick a team, and stick to it. But be warned, these are stellar story-tellers, and they can be very convincing…
The event is free to attend, but please register your interest at the Information Counter or on 9262-7996.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
6PM
Kinokuniya Bookstore
Level 2 The Galeries Victoria
500 George Street
Sydney 2000 NSW
T: (02)9262-7996
F: (02)9283-1055
See you there, Sydneysiders!
March 10, 2011
Goliath Cover
Behold!
This image will no doubt rekindle the fractious old covers/new covers debate, but I will say that this is totally my favorite of the new ones. I think the two leads look awesome together. (Though note that in reality Deryn is taller than Alek, so clearly he's standing on a box. That's barking princes for you!)
Enjoy the slightly-spoilery manta-ship in the upper right!
March 3, 2011
Landslide!
Well, as those of you who've looked at the comments of my previous post know, it wasn't a fair contest between our three piece of Goliath art. But I am a firm believer that all votes must be counted, more or less accurately, so I did.
Here are the results:
Chapter 1 . . . 27 votes!
Chapter 2 . . . 165 votes!
Chapter 3 . . . 47 votes!
So, yeah. We have a winner. Thanks to everyone who participated. Remember, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how amusing your comments are.
So here is the uncensored image from Chapter 2, which you can click on to make it rather bigger.
[image error]
Click here for a larger and totally zoomable version of this image, which may reward careful scrutiny!
Hope none of you are disappointed by your choice. As I read your comments, I was, like, "Uh-oh, most of the secrets in that scene are things Alek and Deryn are saying, so they kind of don't show up in the image." Heh, heh.
Anyway, I should have a cover to show you within the month. And of course I will reveal another piece of art on or around April 1.
March 1, 2011
Vote for Goliath Reveal
Okay, it's time to reveal the first piece of art from Goliath, book three of the Leviathan trilogy. But I can't choose which one is best to show, so I've thought of something more fun than deciding on my own.
YOU, dear readers, shall decide for me.
Below are three partially revealed images. Vote in the comments for the one you want me to show in its entirety. (To make vote counting easy, please use the chapter number to identify your favorite.) Feel free to explain your vote, thus persuading others to your cause! After all, a lively debate is the beating heart of democracy.
FROM CHAPTER ONE
"Two-Headed Messenger"
[image error]
FROM CHAPTER TWO
"Secrets in the Rookery"
[image error]
FROM CHAPTER THREE
"Hooking the Package"
[image error]
There you go. Let the vote-carnage begin!
February 23, 2011
Goliath for Shelterbox
So after my lengthy post about the process between first draft and publication, many of you took the opportunity of my mentioning advanced reader's copies of Goliath to beg for said ARCS. Well, I don't do my own publicity, thus staying above the fray of people asking for free books, but for once I'll make an exception . . .
Go donate to @maureenjohnson's #lastlittleshelterbox campaign on Twitter, or via her blog post here, and you'll be in the running win a Goliath ARC.
Plus, you'll be helping get shelter to people who, thanks to mudslides and earthquakes, are sleeping under rainy skies tonight. This is a good thing.
More cool stuff soon.
February 12, 2011
German Behemoth
I'm liking this German cover of Behemoth, which follows the original flavor Leviathan cover rather faithfully:
According to Google Translate, Im Labyrinth der Macht means "In the labyrinth of power." Pretty good tag line for the book.
Comes out from CBJ in Germany on April 24, 2011.
Note that this isn't what the US cover would have looked like if the redux hadn't happened. This is:
Leave all complaints and compliments in the comment thread below.
February 7, 2011
From Draft to Hardback
In my last post, I answered questions about my recently finished Goliath rewrites. But one answer got rather long and has become its own blog post.
Which would be this blog post here. So, take it away, Gaia:
Now that you've turned in the [second draft], what sort of sausage-maker does Goliath get churned through between now and September? What are the steps that take it from "writer submits finished product" to "ravenous fans purchase and devour"?
This is a process with a lot of steps, which is why it takes from now till September, and oftentimes more than a year to complete. Here's a rough guide to everything that's going on. (Note that I know more about authorly stuff than the rest. Publishing industry folks, feel free to correct me—though every house differs in the details.)
Copyedits
My editor reads this new draft, casting aside the fact that she read the first draft many times already, and is unlikely to be surprised by the plot twists or find the jokes terribly funny anymore. This is an editor superpower that I do not have.
She may request more rewrites (hopefully much less extensive), but if the draft seems to be basically sound she sends it to a copyeditor.
(Let's get something straight: editor and copyeditor are VERY different positions. My editor is the person I've worked with at S&S for many years. She commissioned the series ages ago, and has been part of its creation from even before I wrote a word. Bu the copyeditor is someone who I might never meet in person, and who's probably a freelancer. So the copyeditor is taking a fresh look at the work, unencumbered by previous knowledge and expectations and unbedazzled by my personal charms.)
The copyeditor reads the whole book and does these things:
1) Corrects grammar, punctuation, and spelling, of course.
2) Verifies spelling consistency with the first two books. For example, in 1914 "Zeppelin" was capitalized, but these days it's not. We decided to go with modern usage. It's the CE's job to make sure I didn't forget any of these series-level decisions.
3) Makes a timeline for the events of the book, which assures that characters don't go to bed on Monday night and wake up on Thursday morning. (Or whatever.) I already have a timeline of my own (because I am a good author!), but the CE is making their timeline only using the evidence in the book. So this should reveal if I've made any mistakes.
4) Checks historical facts and stuff.
5) Does other things I've forgotten, because I am an ungrateful author.
My editor looks at these copyedits first, to shield my delicate eyes from umbrage. (For example, the copyeditor of Leviathan tried to change the spelling of "aeroplane" to "airplane," which I would not have survived.) Then the copyedited manuscript is sent to me, and I go through them for about two weeks. In each case, I either accept the changes, defy them completely, or make a different change, solving the CE's problem a different way. Defying a CE is called "stetting," because you write "STET" next to it. "Stet" is Latin for "let it stand," because we publishing types are a CLASSY PEOPLE.
Proofs
This heavily marked up masterpiece goes to Production at S&S, where they lay out pages along with the art. (Note that Keith is still working on the art as I type. He should be done by the end of this month.) This creates "page proofs," a version of the book that looks like it will when it's done, with the same font and such, but is not bound. However, wrongness and typos will exist, so it goes to a "proofreader."
The proofreader does these things:
1) Also corrects grammar, punctuation, spelling.
2) Gets rid of "widows" and "orphans."
3) Makes sure that non-standard characters (like Alek's mom's family, the House of Croÿ) have made it from the manuscript to this stage intact.
4) Makes sure there aren't weird-looking typographical artifacts, like the same word piled on top of itself for three lines in a row. In any novel, this stuff happens randomly, and if left unfixed it breaks the reader out of the story. The proofreader just breaks a line somewhere above the pile-up, by adding a premature hard return, and the problem usually goes away like magic.
5) Other magic stuff that I've forgotten.
I get a copy of these proofread proofs (as does my editor, who as you can tell is there beside me at every stage). I go through them to make sure nothing has gone wrong with the corrections, still wielding the magic power of STET. I also check the art at this point. Usually one or two pieces of art is missing, and about a dozen pieces need to be moved. This last part is ANNOYING.
Let's say there's a full-page piece of art, and I want the reader to see it while reading the text on page 100. But the designer put the art on page 99, so the art spoils the surprise in the text. Argh.
Okay, so I move the art to page 100. Problem solved!
But that means that page 99 is now empty, so the text in question slides forward onto page 99 to fill that space. Note that odd-numbered pages are always on the right-hand side of an open book, so the reader won't see the art on page 100 until AFTER they've finished page 99 and turned the page. Now the art is TOO LATE!
AND THERE IS NO SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM.
Well, I could rewrite the book somewhere else to slide stuff around, but that would just mess up something somewhere else. So I make do. (Keith and I have partially solved this problem by avoiding art that is entirely text dependant, that is, which has to be seen by the reader at an EXACT point in the story.)
This mass of scribblings all goes back to Production, who change stuff graciously and without complaint.
Then the "second-pass page proofs" come to me, and I realize that the ONE WORD that I deleted on page 187 has shifted things so that a piece of art on page 345 is now on page 344, which is the WRONG PLACE!
So I fiddle and move and shift, trying to get it all to work, like a prisoner solving a Rubrik's Cube by passing hand-written notes to the dude in the next cell who actually has the frickin' cube, but is slightly color blind. Well, sort of.
But somewhere around the third-pass page proofs the book has finally been made perfect, or we all politely pretend that it is, and it goes to the printer to become . . .
Advanced Reader's Copies
Advanced Reader's Copies are a special, cheap-paper print run for publicity purposes. They are sent to buyers at major chains, indie bookstore owners, well-connected librarians, book clubs, reviewers, my agent, bloggers who beg really well, and me, roughly in that order. (This is mid-May, because Book Expo America is in late May, and cannot be missed.)
I usually crack open one of the ARCs that I've been given, using it as a set of fourth-pass pageproofs. Changes can still be made. (But I don't read the text at this point, because I can't seriously stand it by now.)
Orders
Then comes a great ordering process, where a mighty sales force goes out to talk to bookstores and chains. The buyers there listen to the pitch, read the book and judge its cover, then look at how many Leviathans and Behemoths sold (and how quickly, and where), and finally and pick a nice round number for how many they want on their shelves on week one, and how many in reserve (printed and held, but not shipped to them right away). Organizations like the Junior Library Guild (a book club for libraries, basically) order en masse for their members, while big library systems order for themselves, as do many individual libraries. (Scholastic Book Club also gets into the action, but a little later.)
All these numbers are crunched and mangled on a really vast and glorious spreadsheet that S&S actually sent me once (see "personal charms" above), and this combination of math and BookScanomancy determines the size of the first print run. (This is in the low six figures for the likes of me.) This number is then multiplied by three and announced to a credulous and trusting world as the Official First Printing of Goliath.
Places like the Science Fiction Book Club take a different route, and prepare to print their own copies, so they can offer their members cheaper prices. (Scholastic Book Club often does this, but they love the Leviathan series' fancy-doodle paper, and so use S&S copies. Much appreciated.)
Around this time I also get page proofs from Australia, because Penguin Oz likes to Australianise the text, turning "flavor" to "flavour" and "Dr." to "Dr". But they print at the same time as S&S US because of the fancy-doodle paper thing. (I appreciate youse all!)
(Note that S&S UK doesn't send me page proofs, because they keep my American spellings. So that's one less thing to do. And none of the foreign editions are part of this process, because other languages have their own entirely separate publishing schedules. They have to translate the whole thing, after all.)
Printing
We are swiftly leaving my areas of expertise, but at some point in, like, August or whatever, giant presses in some state with lots of vowels in its name roll and make a bunch of books. Then they print covers and stick them on, and then there are boxes and palettes and stuff. They go to an S&S warehouse or to various distributors' warehouses, or something, but I pay no attention because . . .
My good friends in S&S Publicity have started calling magazines and other media outlets asking if anyone wants to interview me, and then they start arranging the Goliath tour!
We have meetings about marketing strategies and blog tours and whatever, and it starts to get exciting again. For one thing, no one is making me look at PAGE PROOFS. And for another, I know that soon I will be basking in the warm glowing warmth of your fannish adulations. I buy a few tweedy philosophy professor jackets for events, and start trimming down to prepare for my two-month diet of hotel room-service cheese!
And all this time, usually, I'm writing my next book, which I finish the first draft of in the nick of time. But in this case, I won't be doing that. Instead, I will be working on a bunch of Secret Projects, each one more secret than the last, which I hope that you will be enjoying in 2012.
If you want to know what those secret projects are, come to Comic Con in San Diego. And if you can't do that, maybe the nice people at Comic Con will allow those who do make it to use the internet.
Or just stay tuned here in late July.
February 5, 2011
More Goliath Answers
In my last post, I announced that I just finished my second draft of Goliath, and invited questions in the comments. Here are my answers:
How long does it generally take you to write a first draft?
I started Goliath in early January, so nine months in this case. The rewrites took about five weeks. (I also do two months of touring a year, and usually take a month off after that. Plus there's all the other editorial stages to come. It all adds up to more than a year per book. Yes, I used to write much faster, but I got old.)
I know Extras had a complete rehaul upon rewriting––was there anything in the Leviathan series (any of the books) that has changed majorly from draft to publication?
For those of you who didn't know, about 16,000 words of the first draft of Extras had to be changed from Hiro's to Aya's POV, when I realized that Aya was doing all the cool stuff. That was a pain.
Here's an excerpt of the first version.
No rewrites of that magnitude happened in the Leviathan series, though the endings to both books 1 and 3 were changed a lot. As I said yesterday, Goliath's ending was expanded by several chapters to cover all the stuff I wanted closure on. With Leviathan, I had to do a more structural refit. Here's what happened:
In the first draft, the eggs hatched at the end of Book 1, and Bovril's first word ("Constantinople") was the last word of Leviathan. But Bovril was so cute that it made the end a bit too light-hearted, so the hatching got moved 16 chapters into Book 2, where I used it to interrupt Alek's escape. (This was my editor's idea, and she was totally right.)
How long before the inevitable ARC giveaway, so that we can plan our stalking of your blog accordingly, in hopes of reading the book as soon as possible?
I don't do ARC giveaways here, because I am quite bad at MAILING THINGS. But ARCS will appear at Book Expo America in late May, and will probably start bouncing around on blogs shortly thereafter.
During the forum meet up you mentioned more Croy. Care to explain more?
This question thread is about Goliath! (But there's a hint somewhere below.)
So does this mean that Jaspert will make a reappearance in Goliath?
Not everyone appears again, but we do at least know where they are. Like, all the key people are mentioned in one way or another. But we will also see some old faces. (Vague much?)
So um, I have a probably really annoying question but—when does the uglies movie come out? Or is it still in production?
It is not in production. Believe it or not, it's still in the script phase. (I mean, it was only optioned SIX YEARS ago. Patience!)
Now that you've turned in the final product, what sort of sausage-maker does Goliath get churned through between now and September? What are the steps that take it from "writer submits finished product" to "ravenous fans purchase and devour"?
This answer turned into a whole post, which will appear tomorrow or the next day!
Does Volger know that Deryn has feelings for Alek? I feel as if it was alluded to, but I am not quite sure.
You mean in Behemoth? Well, he did guess she was a girl partly because she got "a bit screechy" when talking about Alek, like worrying about him too much. So I think he knows that she has a crush. (Volger would at least be concerned that she does, given that he's already been through this fall-in-love-with-a-commoner-thing with Alek's father.)
What are you going to do now? I don't mean like writing a new book but you know, what are you going to do while Goliath goes through publishing?
See tomorrow's post for my Goliath-related duties. But personal time-wise, I'm hanging out in Sydney doing the usual: getting into internet slapfights (ahem), watching cricket, designing a card game (a weird hobby of mine), cooking Turkish food, and working on a S3Krit PRojEct that will be announced at Comic Con. (This is what I meant by "I probably won't answer spoilery questions, except in cheating, non-useful ways that only drive you more insane!" Bwah-hah-hah!)
I'll also be going to LeakyCon, because this year their YA thread is being curated by the esteemed and undiagnosable Maureen Johnson!
Is there already a date for the third of my beloved audio books?
Certain nameless online retailers list September 11, 2011. Two days before the print edition? Odd but possibly true. Usually S&S Audio tries to get it out the same day. For Behemoth that was impossible, due to Alan Cumming's movie star schedule, but hopefully this time it will work more easily.
Will the release date also be September 13 in Great Britain?
Not sure. Release dates in the UK tends to be less "hard" (for my books, anyway). That is, they come out over a couple of weeks, drifting onto shelves rather than all slamming down on the same day.
When Dr.Barlow finds out that Alek named his perspicacious loris Bovril she seamed really upset but I'm wondering if that really disturbes her or if she's just not used to beasts having their own names. (The second confuses me because Dr.Barlow did name both of her message parrots in the first book.)
Nice continuity catch. The parrots were experimental, and wound up with names, true. But it's one thing for Dr. Barlow and her lab cronies to name their beasts, quiet another for a common soldier to do so. (You didn't think Dr. Barlow had to follow her own rules, did you?)
So when will you be optioning these stories to Hollywood?
Conversations are being had. Watch this blog.
If the book's done they what happens to it in between the release date and now?
As I said, see my next post.
Do you mind us calling you Scott? my mom thinks we should call you Mr. Westerfeld and I was just wondering!
Scott is just fine, though Scott-la is also acceptable.
