Scott Westerfeld's Blog, page 30

Goliath Is Done!

Just in case you missed it on the Twitter machine, I finished the rewrites to Goliath, the final book in the Leviathan trilogy, last Tuesday.

This was a tricky series, requiring much more research and infinitely more art direction than anything I've ever done before. The fact is that each of these books took more than a year to write. They only came out a year apart because a) I started the first one a long time before it found a home at Simon & Schuster, b) and S&S have been kind enough to let me turn in this third one a bit late.

But it's done. w00t! Time off!

And now onto your imaginary questions. (I'm in a fake dialog-y mood these days.)

So these are the "rewrites". How much did you change?

Well, I turned in the first draft in October, the day before Cassandra Claire's wedding and three days before my giant tour started—so, um, kind of at the last possible minute. That first draft may have been a BIT rushed. In fact, it was 3,000 words shorter than the rewrites I just turned in, mostly because the ending now has three whole new chapters. (To point out the obvious: Endings are rushed when writers don't have enough time, because most folks write their books more or less in order.)

The first draft also had missing sections in other places, with labels like [MORE CRAZY STUFF HERE] and [FINISH DESCRIPTION AFTER KEITH DRAWS IT]. Those are all replaced with real writing now . . . I hope.

So "rewrite" means "just add more stuff"?

Well, no. That's the most noticeable aspect of this particular rewrite, but not the most important. The most critical thing I did was to look at the character arcs (particularly the relationship between Two Very Important Characters) and make sure they were consistent, dramatic, and had their own beginning, middle, and end.

Also, there were special concerns because this is a Last Book. Like, I made sure that all the characters who have appeared across the series have at least one more shout out each, so we know where they all are at the end. I also tried to hit each of the underlying themes of the series (loyalty, duty, destiny, friendship, uncomfortable allies, mixing of technologies, the importance of truth, the importance of lies, and the badness of war) in ways that felt conclusive.

Wait. Last book? But there's only been three! Don't you know the secret meaning of trilogy?

Um, right. What I meant was that the three Leviathan novels are done. There's still the Manual of Aeronautics to come. This book four, which may have a different title, will be a Spiderwick Field Guide-like large-format book of Keith's art.

It's going to be awesome, with big, full-color deck plans of the Leviathan, cutaways of the Stormwalker, and lovely portraits of many beasties, machines, and uniforms. Finally you will know what color everything is! There are also a few how-to diagrams, like Huxley Semaphore and sliding escapes.

It comes out in October 2012.

That's ages away. When does Goliath come out?"

Well, it was supposed to be released October 4, 2011. But that has been changed to . . .

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011! That's right, it's coming out three weeks earlier!

Cool! Um, but if you were late, why is it coming out earlier?

I don't know. I just work here.

So how long is Goliath?

It is 94,000 words, and I don't know how many pages yet. For comparison, Leviathan was 79,000 words and Behemoth was 85,000 words. Inflation!

That means you did more pictures, right?

Well, Leviathan had 50 images, Behemoth had 55, and Goliath has 56 confirmed so far, and it should be more.

(These counts includes the end papers, spot art, and full-page art.)

Will you be spoiling some of these pieces for us?

Yup. Probably March 1 for the first one, and every first of the month after. So that's (*counts on fingers*) seven pieces of pre-released art in all.

Plus we'll obviously spoil the cover, which should be fairly soon. (I have seen a rough version and you haven't. Neeners to all!)

What are you doing next?

That is the subject for another blog post. (Soon, baby, soon.)

Um, I'm out of questions.

Yeah, I'm sure you are, because you're not even real. But if the many fine commenters on this blog have more questions about Goliath, etc., they should ask them!

Note: I probably won't answer spoilery questions, except in cheating, non-useful ways that only drive you more insane! But feel free to ask them.

BitchFest

If you came to this blog for the Leviathan fan art, maybe you should skip this post. But if you have a few minutes to kill, you'll see what goes on inside the heads of writers when they deal with media kerfuffles about their books.

But first a little background . . .

Last week (decades ago in internet time) an organization called BitchMedia made a list of 100 YA Novels for the Feminist Reader. There was great celebration on the YA interweebz, because the list included many fine novels. Moreover, certain writers of a certain vintage always liked Bitch Magazine when it was an edgy west coast zine in the late 1990s, and being listed by it provided validation to our aging souls.

But then bad things happened. A handful of commenters on the blog questioned three of the titles: Jackson Pearce's Sisters Red, Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, and Elizabeth Scott's Living Dead Girl. A weekend later, BitchMedia decided to yank them. A few hours after that some of us authors on the list (Maureen Johnson, Justine Larbalestier, Diana Peterfreund, E. Lockhart, Ellen Klages, and possibly more) commented to express our disappointment and request that our own books be removed from the list.

If you go to that post now, you'll find several hundred comments of varying degrees of relevance, vitriol, and snark. I have waded in a few places, but it's a red hot mess over there. So to better address all the questions directed at me (or not to me) in one place, allow me to share with you this dialog, in which I mercilessly decimate a straw man.

In other words, here's all the stuff that goes through us writers' heads while we are reacting to examples of not-quite-censorship:

Q: Why are you so crazy angry about this?

A: I'm more disappointed than angry. Particularly saddening was these words from the staffers at BitchMedia about one of the challenged titles: "This book came as a recommendation to us from a few feminists, and while we knew that some of the content was difficult, we weren't tuned into what you've just brought up. A couple of us at the office have decided to spend the rest of our weekend re-considering this choice by reading the book."

Hmm, by "reading the book." A good place to start, and yet . . .

Just put your mind in this staffer's place. You go out into the YA world and ask for recommendations for a 100-long list of books. You don't read them all, of course, because you are an un- or little-paid staffer at a blog, not the frickin' Printz Committee. When your list is posted, suddenly someone is accusing three of these books of being morally bankrupt and evil. So you hunker down and read 1000 pages over two days, with these comments lingering uppermost in your mind. You may not have a firm grip on why your original sources recommended the book, because you haven't asked them specifically to respond to the disparaging comments. And you don't have time to think about the issues raised here in comparison to those raised in the other books on the list, because you also haven't read all of those either. So you cave into the tiny group of protesters, because that seems easier, especially having just read the books with those commenters' objections in mind.

In other words, this whole process unfolded in much the same way that school library challenges do. A small group of people complain, and then people who haven't really read these books before hearing awful things about them (and who, more important, haven't immersed themselves in the entire set of books involved, challenged and unchallenged) have to make a snap decision.

This is what has disappointed me and many others, because we'd thought better of BitchMedia.

Q: But this isn't like a library challenge, because the books aren't being physically removed from anywhere!

A: True, my analogy here (Maureen's originally) compares these events to a library challenge. But in analogies, some things are the same and some are different. If every point of comparison were the same, it wouldn't be an analogy, it would just be the same thing—a library challenge. That's what "analogy" means.

And yet despite its differences to actual library challenges, we believe this is still an important case, because we felt this list was important. It provided visibility for books we thought were great to a potentially new readership outside the normal YA world. Erasing books from this list was a way of making them invisible to that audience. And the people who work ceaselessly to make the books they don't like disappear should be fought, whether they're physically removing the books, removing them from databases or awards, or simply making them harder to find. Letting those voices win pisses us authors off.

Q: But it's BitchMedia's list. Don't they have the right to change it?

A: They do. And I have the right to point out how pathetically they did so. This is about holding them to a higher editorial standard than they displayed, not claiming any legal or constitutional right.

Q: So you aren't fighting censorship?

A: The answer to that question is long and boring and semantic. But without a doubt we are calling out wishy-washy editorial practices that mimic many of the same processes as censorship. (By using analogies. We love them!)

Q: But you didn't just point out BitchMedia's editorial shortcomings, you demanded your book be taken off the list.

A: I didn't demand, I asked, using the word "please" and everything.

Asking to be removed from the list is a communication strategy. To point out the obvious, everything going on here—the list, the comments, this post—is communication. Asking to be removed was a way of displaying my strong feeling that the list was made less legitimate by their editorial practices.

For example, if a list had a few books on it that were paid endorsements, and my books were placed on it as a way to make that list look more "real," I would make a similar request. The manner in which a list is compiled (or edited) matters, and it matters rather more to me when my name is used on it.

Q: But no one PAID to have these books removed!

A: Please look up "analogy" in the dictionary.

Q: Whatever. If someone's book was removed from a library's shelves, you would ask for your books to be removed too?

A: No, that would be silly. Again, the library analogy is only useful in regards to how this happened, and to some of its effects. Not in every particular.

Q: But isn't it ironic that your response to a book being removed from a list is to try to have your own book removed from that list?

A: Not really. The strategy is explained above.

Q: But isn't it ironic that your enemies in this affair wanted to change this list by commenting on a blog, and you also tried to CHANGE THIS LIST BY COMMENTING ON THAT SAME BLOG!

A: No, that's just how discourse works sometimes. But you and Alanis Morissette should totally get a room.

Q: So you think you're so great that if Uglies was taken off the list, no one would take the list seriously?

A: Most people wouldn't notice the absence of any one book, but the demand itself is a useful rhetorical strategy. In particular, I pointed out that the Uglies series has many of the same issues that Jackson Pearce's Sisters Red was delisted for. But the BitchMedia staffers didn't apply those criteria to Uglies, because they only applied those criteria to books mentioned in the first twenty or so comments to their original blog post. In other words, I was pointing out the craptasticness of their editorial process, in which the fastest and most vitriolic commenters are granted special powers over the books they dislike. (Just like in, you know, libraries.)

Q: So your request to delist Uglies is merely a symbolic gesture?

A: The list is itself symbolic. It wasn't an award that came with money or superpowers, and it's made of symbols (letters and punctuation marks). As I said, this is a set of communications, and asking to be taken off the list was a communication strategy. Symbolic is not a bad thing, it's just what it is.

Q: But you haven't been taken off the list. So your strategy failed!

A: Not if more people have been drawn to the discussion thanks to the rhetorical forcefulness of my (and others') requests to be taken off the list. That was the actual point of the request, and it seems to have worked.

Q: But wait, you said that the folks at BitchMedia hadn't read all the books in the list. So it wasn't that illegitimate anyway, right?

A: They got recommendations from people who they believed to be experts in some way, and the results seemed pretty awesome to me and to many others. The folks who zipped through the challenged books over the weekend were staffers, who didn't bother to get back to the people who recommended the books in the first place. In other words, a small ad hoc committee was convened and rushed a decision out in response to a tiny minority of complainers. This is the dynamic of small-town library challenges, and we expected better of BitchMedia.

Q: But didn't asking to be taken off this list make you look over dramatic?

A: "Overdramatic" is one word, so I win this entire argument.

Look, this stuff happens all the time in YA lit. People come in and comment with varying degrees of expertise, odd and snarky assumptions about what it is to be a teen, and randomly assigned power (like politicians commenting on texts for teenagers written forty years after they were teens), and that annoys us.

Q: What I really meant was, you're just stirring this up for money, right?

If you think that this controversy will materially increase my sales (or the sales of any of the other authors involved), you are confused about the relative scales of those things.

Q: You really think you're awesome, don't you, Scott?

A: I've had librarians scream when they see me. So yeah. Also I've read one of the books in question, unlike most people in the conversation.

But more important, I've had decades of experience as a teacher, textbook editor, and YA writer, in which I've seen various flavors of control over teen books exercised by parents, teachers, politicians, other teens, and concern trolls. I've corresponded with and met thousands of teenagers and talked about what and how they read, and have worked for twenty years in an industry in which lists of books are compiled, argued about, and in which they make a big difference. In other words, the authors in this fight are acting from long and deep sets of experiences, and we will be fighting this fight as part of our day jobs while many others moved on to the next Internet fisticuffs. Trivializing artists involved in a these kinds of fights as self-aggrandizing is one of the oldest tricks in the book, like saying "Oh, you'll just sell more copies, so you must be LOVING THIS." It is a way of avoiding the much more gnarly and unpleasant issues involved.

In other words, the possibility that I'm being a pompous git for asking that my books be removed from the list doesn't make BitchMedia's behavior any better, or the parallels between this event and library challenges any less unsettling.

Q: But if they put the challenged books back on the list, wouldn't they just be caving again? This time to a bigger (and better connected) group of bullies?

A: I think they should go back to their original recommenders of these challenged books and have a real discussion, not one that takes place over a weekend with "a couple of us at the office." And if they've added new criteria based on a few commenters who simply got there first, why not take down the whole list and look at everything from the beginning in light of the many, many comments and concerns up there now?

Q: Um, because they're not the Printz Committee and don't have time?

A: Well, then maybe they could simply ask the members of the Printz Committee why one of the books they delisted, Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, was a Printz honoree. (SNAP!)

Q: But BitchMedia isn't saying these are bad books, just that they are inappropriate for this list!

A: It's not the exact adjective that matters here, but the process. Again, these books were singled out and subjected to an ad hoc first reading because of a few plaintive commenters. This is not the way to do things.

Seriously, even if those two office staffers had read everything in the list again that weekend, wouldn't it still have the appearance of impropriety?

Q: This whole kerfuffle is really not that important. Why are you making such a big deal out of it?

A: If it's not that important, why did you read this far? Why aren't you off on some other blog fixing Egypt?

Q: But what if BitchMedia doesn't want to ever do anything about YA lit again because you were mean to them?

A: If they cut and run because that seems too hard, they will not be missed.

But I suspect that they'll think long and hard about how they approach YA in the future, and will do a better job. They've done countless cool things for the last fifteen years, and that's why we authors got so riled up. We remonstrate because we love.

Also, check out Margo Lanagan's excellent post on this matter.

Meet-Up + Tazza

A few things:

THING ONE

Over the last couple of weeks, Holly Black and I have been blogging over at Babel Clash, discussing Zombies Versus Unicorns, mostly. Here are the last four posts we did:

"The Meaning of Versus," by me.

"Passing Between Worlds," by Holly.

"Ten Reasons Why Robots Are Better than Monkeys," by Holly.

And of course "Ten Reasons Why Monkeys Are Better than Robots," by me.

THING TWO

I didn't attend many of the Forum meet-ups last year, but I want to do better this year. So this Saturday, January 22 at 7PM, Eastern Time (in the US), I shall be at the Forum! That's 11AM Sunday in Australian Eastern Time, and midnight between the two days in London. (Sorry.) Come and ask questions and hang out!

THING THREE

Via BoingBoing.net, some cool footage of an actual thylacine, like Tazza in the Leviathan series.

As you know from the Afterword of Leviathan, Tasmanian tigers are real creatures, or were until they went extinct in 1936 or so. So when writing Tazza, I had to use old footage like this to figure out how they would act and move. It's kind of wondrous and sad, watching a movie of an extinct animal.

Home Survival

Over on the Babel Clash blog, Holly Black and I are debating Zombies Versus Unicorns. You should go check it out. We slay us.

Holly on why unicorns are better than zombies.

Me on why zombies are better than unicorns.

Holly about why we love teams. Jacob vs. Edward, cake vs. pie. You know. And then holly tells us what teams she's on.

Me on how just adding zombies makes everything fun.

Holly on why hope is a good thing.

But my latest post at Babel Clash is a bit more serious, because it's about apocalypse survival. You'll see at the bottom why it's so important at the moment, so I repost it here:

______________________

In my last post we discussed the zombie-survival-suitability of various architectural masterpieces, in particular Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin. But what happens if the zombie apocalypse goes down while you're reading Zombies Versus Unicorns at home? ARE YOU PREPARED?

Take a moment to look through your abode, and rate it for zombie-survival characteristics. Do you have food? Water? Weapons? Strong doors? Better to find out now what you're lacking, rather than waiting for the zombie apocalypse or the (relatively unlikely) natural disaster/terror attack/meteorite strike.

I've done a quick survey of my Sydney flat, to help you get started:

WATER

Remember the old saying: humans last three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without oxygen. How much water do you have around?

I've got two liters of water in the fridge, and 17 bottles of wine. (Um, good for disinfectant.) But the bathtub can be filled before city water dribbles to a halt, and the average bathtub holds about 200 liters (when full to the brim).

Minimum survival requirement are 3 liters per day per person, but I'll say 4 for cooking that pasta (times two of us), so we have about 25 days after the apocalypse before we are forced to go outside, plus whatever rain we collect. With a bit of scrimping, we can JUST make the 28 Days Later scenario.

HOWEVER: In summer, Sydney can get up to 35C (95F), a temperature at which daily water requirements double. Pray for a winter apocalypse!

[image error] Facty chart ganked from here.

FOOD

Ten cans of beans and tomatoes, and cans last FOREVER. (Save them for currency!)

Several kilos of polenta, pulses, and pasta. Well done, me.

Lots of cheese and vegetables to eat before the pasta and polenta diet begins.

An astonishing amount of herbs and spices, and some mango chutney. Don't laugh. For 300 years in the Ottoman Empire, the price of pepper was fixed at its weight in gold. In the post-apocalypse, Tabasco will be liquid platinum!

A "vanilla butter luxury cake" made last night.

Cinchona bark for making home-made tonic water. Full of quinine! No malaria here, dudes.

Overall, our food will run out more or less when the water does. But we'll probably want to make a run for it in three weeks or so, while we still have the strength to clobber.

[image error]

WEAPONS

Um, not so good here.

A set of Furi knives that are great for chopping, not so much for braining.

Two CO2 canisters for carbonating home-made tonic. Can swiftly be converted into short-range rockets, unless Mythbusters has lied.

PHYSICAL DEFENSES

Excellent news here:

Top floor of eight-story building.

Security gate on apartment door.

Stairwell door well locked.

Elevator needs electronic fob to activate.

Only one other tenant on floor. Easily subdued. (He listens to Elton John. I can take him, especially if he's already dead.)

OTHER

Short-wave radio, for listening to those last transmissions from Julia Gillard's bunker or the Center for Disease Control.

Lots of remotes with half-used batteries in them. (WELL DONE, SIR!)

Meade 8″ Telescope, for street recon from the balcony. (And for calculating the equinox after the calendar notebook gets lost.)

A garage full of cars to steal for our eventual getaway to zombie-free Tasmania!

SUMMARY

In all, I think we have a chance. So what apocalypse provisions and defenses do you have at your humble abode? ARE YOU PREPARED?

REALNESS

As I write this, it so happens, people up in Queensland, Australia are experiencing a real apocalypse, flooding that has killed eight people, displaced tens of thousands, and had dire economic consequences. So yes, this survival stuff can be real. To help them out, go here and donate.

Fan Art Friday

Here's a special XmE* edition of Fan Art Friday. Yes, it's already Friday here in the eastern hemisphere, and summer down here in the southern! (I double win at life.)

It's been awhile since I did a Fan Art Friday, and I know there are many of your efforts waiting in the queue. But I'm about to start working on the second draft of Goliath, so for this FAF I'm drawing my inspiration from all the fabulous Leviathan fan art out there, in particular the Deviant Art group known as the Leviathaneers!

So check these out.

Warning: If you haven't finished Behemoth, the last piece is spoilery!

First up is the regal "Boffin and Count," from KoniraThax:

[image error]

Next is the dynamic and gritty "Hostage Situation," by ComickerGirl.

[image error]

The handy blog-badge: "Clanker Have Hearts Too," by bnt800.

[image error]

The mangalicious and shipper-tastic "Fly," by WeasleyTwin.

[image error]

And finally from Deviant, the quietly romantic "Sketching" by Irrel:

[image error]

This is only a TINY FRACTION of the cool stuff at Leviathaneers. Go check out the rest!

And we'll end with one last piece, not from Deviant but still fabulous. It's the spoilery one, so if you haven't read Behemoth . . .

turn

away

your

eyes . . .

"Just Curious," Allison B. Thomas.

[image error]

Heh. So that's it for me. I'm going back to being lazy now, and then working on the second draft of Goliath. Thanks to everyone for a great year of fannishness!

Happy holidays, and see you in 2011.

____________________

*Christmas Eve, duh.

Back in Sydney

The postings have been slim here. Justine and I have done our bisummeral relocation to Sydney, where the weather is rather better than it is in New York.

I haz proof:

[image error]

Yes, this is the view from where I work. Neener-neener.

Check this out. It is TOTALLY FAKE, but cool.

JarredSpekter of Deviant Art.

And it comes with this awesome FAKE poster, also by Jarred:

[image error]

I quite like the fake movie trailer/poster art form.

But yes, this is me just being lazy, posting random stuff. I GET TO BE LAZY. I've been traveling all over the world the last few months, after all. And I've spent the last week working on a s3krit project, which I can't even tell you about. (Yes, so why tell you that I can't tell you? I dunno. Just to sound cool, I guess.)

Oh, also! Those of you who are e-book readers (or who know one) here's a cool new thing:

[image error]

It's the Uglies Quartet all together in e-book form! Check it out here. And here's a list of the many reading devices supported.

Anyway, I will get back to more regular postings in the new year. In the meantime, happy holidays to everyone.

Writing Excuses

Hey, sorry it's been so long since I've blogged. I plead tour exhaustion. But here are things for you to listen to and look upon!

For the listening, while on tour I did two long interviews with Writing Excuses, a weekly podcast on the craft of writing.

The first interview is appropriate to the Leviathan series, because it's all about the visual components of writing. Maps, diagrams, character sketches, floor plans, and full-blown illustrations—all those things writers create to help them visualize the world of their books. (And for those of you who are visual learners, or who hate the sound of my voice, here's the transcript.)

The second interview is more generally about steampunk, the subgenre of which I am now the resident expert/bore (but not high priestess, waah). Listen here or check out the transcript.

And now for things to look at. As I've toured, I've talked a lot about the books that inspired me to make Leviathan series illustrated: the 1910s-30s teen novels that had cool pictures in them. But I didn't make a point of showing examples to my audiences, and I haven't put any here on my blog. This seems like an oversight.

So here from my research bookshelf, recorded by my iPhone with craptastic lighting, are a couple of these inspirations.

First is A Trip to Mars, both the cover and an interior illustration:

[image error]

[image error]

And here's the cover and illustration from the glorious "boy's own adventure," A Trip to Mars.

[image error]

[image error]

Note the similarities and differences from Keith's work. Some of the stiffness of Edwardian illustration is visible in these, and the caption on A Trip to Mars could totally go in Leviathan. The spilling off the frame isn't present here, and these are in color, which is interesting. But the spirit of them is, I think, the same.

Also, you can see that Keith is much better than these old-fashioned dudes. Seriously.

But I will admit that, whether they're pen names or not, Captain F.S. Brereton and Fenton Ash are the most awesome author names in history. Evar.

Okay, I'm about to transit hemispheres, so there may be another long pause in my blogging. But thanks for dropping by, and thanks again to all of you who made my tour so much fun.

Ciao for now.

French Steampunkery

Okay, before my report on cool stuff in France, please note that there is only ONE more event in my 2010 Behemoth tour, coming up this week:

Vancouver, Canada

Wednesday, November 24

7:00 PM

West Point Grey United Church Sanctuary

4595 West 8th Ave

Vancouver BC

Come dressed in a Victorian/Steampunk costume to be eligible to win a signed framed print from Leviathan by illustrator Keith Thompson!

Tickets: $5.00 (can be used towards the purchase of a book at the event)

Click here for tickets.

If you know any Westerfans in Vancouver, please ping them. As my final event this year, I'd like it to be a big one.

And now onto France!

From November 10-14 I was in attendance at the Utopiales Festival in Nantes, France. As usual for a conference, I was on a lot of panels, discussing subjects like alternative history (uchronie, as the French say) and the ethics of plastic surgery (with a real surgeon as my co-panelist). As I have about zero French, so all of this was done with headphones on, a simultaneous translator slaving away in my (and my audience's) ears. That in itself was kind of science fictional.

But the coolest (and certainly the most photogenic) thing happened outside the festival, when a cohort of sf writers and I visisted les Machines de l'Île à Nantes.

Nantes was the birthplace of Jules Verne. As such, the city has a historical connection to science fiction in general, and steampunk-y type stuff more specifically. The city leaders are cognizant of this, and about five years ago handed over a disused dock area to a totally Clanker-tastic workshop of street theater mad scientists, who created the Machines of the Isle of Nantes.

Here are two shots of the island's most famous inhabitant, a mechanical elephant that was an inspiration for the Ottoman walkers in Behemoth.

[image error]

It's made of wood, not metal, which is quite trippy. You can actually ride this thing around, though it had a broken leg when we visited. (Sad face. Feel better, elephant.)

[image error]

Click on this one for a closer look.

But there's much more on the island than just the elephant. The Machines group is currently working on a huge carousel of sea creatures, including this awesome steampunk grouper!

[image error]

This one also needs a closer look. Click!

All this stuff moves, of course. Behold the steamgrouper in action:

Go to Youtube to watch this bigger.

And, of course, no self-respecting steamgrouper would be caught dead without its own personal steamsquid!

[image error]

Again, click for the largeness. You know you want to

Needless to say, seeing these creations in the flesh (um, the metal?) was amazing. It impressed on me how alive machines can seem, even when their movements are strange and otherworldly, or aggressive and disturbing. You can see how people from Jules Verne all the way to Mark Pauline have falled in love with things mechanical, and how a whole clanker culture might have come into being.

It was a total education. Vive les Machines de l'Île à Nantes!

[image error]

If you know any French and want to read about my visit there, check out this link.

And one last thing! There's an auction on right now to support SpecFaction NSW, a sf and fantasy group in New South Wales, Australia. Check out all the stuff for sale, including many cool signed books and an otherwise unavailable print from Leviathan signed by both me and Keith. This is a one-of-a-kind in the world thing.

Note that the auction is in Australian dollars, which are a bit smallr than US ones. Also, the shipping is listed as being from Australia, but the work is currently in the US, so it won't cost as much as you'd think if bought by a USian.

Portuguese Uglies Trailer Rocks

Just got back from France last night, and have TONS of cool photos and videos to share. But I must get them organized first! Give me a day or two.

In the meantime, there are exactly TWO more events in the not-quite-endless Behemoth tour:

Miami Book Festival

w/Darren Shan and Ellen Hopkins

November 20 1:30PM

Prometeo Theatre

(Building 1, 1st Floor, Room 1101)

Vancouver, Canada

November 24 7:00 PM

West Point Grey United Church Sanctuary

4595 West 8th Ave

Come dressed in a Victorian/Steampunk costume to be eligible to win a signed framed print from Leviathan by illustrator Keith Thompson!

Tickets: $5.00 (goes towards the purchase of a book at the event)

Click here for tickets.

Alas, Justine won't be at either of these events. But she says hi.

And check out this awesome trailer from the Portuguese publisher of Uglies, Vogais & Companhia:

Also, I like this photo from an interview in the French press. (Mmm . . . French press. Must get coffee now.)

UPDATE

This interview with Suvudu at New York Comic Con is also cool, in that I talk for 17 minutes without saying anything stupid:

NYCC Video Interview: Scott Westerfeld from Suvudu on Vimeo.

France Is Next

I'll be in France the next couple of weeks, so here's my schedule there:

Utopiales Festival

Nantes, France

Jeudi 11 Novembre

13 h 00 pm : conférence : Littérature adulte et Littérature jeunesse : Quelles frontières

14 h 00 pm: dédicace

Vendredi 12 Novembre

10 h 00 am : conférence avec les jeunes lecteurs

11 h 15 am : interview en anglais par des adolescents

16 h 30-18 h 00 pm : Conférence

18 h 00 pm : Dédicace

Dimanche 14 Novembre

11 h 30 am: conférence : L'Uchronie : un genre européen ?

13 h 30 pm : Rencontre

après-midi : dédicaces

Apparition Publique à Paris, France

Mardi le 16 Novembre

16 h-18 h

Virgin Megastore

Centre commercial des Quatre Temps

92 La Défense

Métro: Grande Arche de la Défense

Also, So Yesterday is out in Italian now, under the awesome title Fashion Killers.

[image error]

That's the busiest cover for SY in a while, but it's kind of cool.

And here's a video review in Italian:

Ganked from here

Can anyone translate this? To do so would make me happy.