Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 82

Everything But The Book!

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Look what came in the mail yesterday! It's the cover of The Iron Dragon's Mother, scheduled to be published in 39 days.
The Dragonstairs office rug is delighted.

And today's taste of the Image Book . . .



Two pages today: To the left, a first glimpse of Caitlin's brother Fingolfinrhod, a.k.a. Lord Sans Merci, San Merci of Sans Merci presumptive, Rod, Roddie, Fin-fin,Finn, etc. He plays a significant part in the plot.

Believe it or not, That horrible scrawl he's avoiding looking at is a working-out of part of the plot.

On the facing page, the word SCAPEGOAT does not apply to him. It is, however, also a major part of the plot.

I may have already started writing at this point.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 39 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.
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Duchamp's Unicycle

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The text says Plato's Cave and Unicycle.

Yes, that's Marcel Duchamp's readymade, Bicycle Wheel turned upside-down. One of the major concerns of The Iron Dragon's Mother  (and, indeed, the trilogy as a whole) is the relationship between Faerie and Earth--or, as they call it, Aerth.

So this picture was a reminder to myself that assumptions and expectations would have to be upturned or reversed if the novel was to work as planned.


And today's obligatory advertisement . . .

As mentioned before,  the good people at Tor.com are promoting my forthcoming novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother,  with an ongoing sale of the ebook of Chasing the Phoenix. For the entirety of the month of May, it's on sale for $2.99.

You can find a more riveting sales pitch and buttons leading to the sale item on various platforms here.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 40 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.
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After the Cleansing

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Charlotte/AliasAfter the Cleansing
At this point, I was still considering using Charlotte as the protagonist's name. I wasn't really happy with it, but I hadn't yet decided on Caitlin as her proper name or on Cat as her alias.

You may well recognize the image as being one of Andrew Wyeth's paintings. It's a postcard I bought at the Brandywine Museum specifically for the Image Book. A bit more sexualized than I'd prefer for the character. But, like the goddess Inanna, she makes a voyage to the depths, surrendering a piece of her armor at every stage.

I should emphasize that this is not literally what Caitlin looks like. The skin color is all wrong, for one thing and the model a little young. Think of it more as a psychic impression.

The text reads:

She turned her back on the grave and began the long but necessary processs of forgetting everything that came  before.

These words will not appear in The Iron Dragon's Mother. But an important scene near its very end is beginning to form.

Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 41 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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A Mask from the Image Book

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Continuing the theme of masks. A very simple collage.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 42 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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Anna Kashina in Books-a-Million

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On Saturday, Marianne and I jaunted to Books-a-Million in Springfield, PA for Anna Kashina's book signing there. There she is, up above, autographing a copy of Shadowblade, newly published by Angry Robot. I bought a copy  and you should consider doing likewise.

And immediately below is the cover of her book. It looks terrific.




You'll note that the blurb mentions her ability to describe sword fights.That's because she belongs to a group called Modern Gladiatorial Arts, dedicated to the practice of mock-combat which sword, singlestick, and related weapons. They were present for the event and giving free demonstrations and lessons during the event.

So quite a festive time was had by all.


And today's page from the Image Book . . .




I like this one, the mask in particular. A lot of the characters in my novel are wearing masks. They just happen to be their real faces is all.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 43 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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A Self-Referential Page from the Image Book

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I was wondering why I hadn't posted a page from the Image Book yesterday until I looked at what the page would have been. Not exactly appropriate for Mother's Day.

So this is my Mother's Day gift to you... that you didn't have to look at this yesterday.
Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 44 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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A Minor Conjuring

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"A minor conjuring."



And today's obligatory advertisement . . .

As mentioned before,  the good people at Tor.com are promoting my forthcoming novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother,  with an ongoing sale of the ebook of Chasing the Phoenix. For the entirety of the month of May, it's on sale for 2$.99.

You can find a more riveting sales pitch and buttons leading to the sale item on various platforms here.

Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 45 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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How to Read "Eighteen Songs by Debussy"

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A few months ago, I went to a recital of songs by Debussy by Lyric Feast at The Academy of Vocal Arts. As I listened, I wrote a story for each song, starting from the libretto for each song and adding a science fiction element. The stories were all set in the same world and, as they progressed, united to tell one overarching story. The next day, I did a clean-up draft and popped the resulting story, "Eighteen Songs by Debussy" in the mail.

It was published a little over a month ago in the March/April issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.  I was pleased how it came out.

If you want to understand the story properly, however, you should take the following steps:

1. Read the story through.

2. One by one, Google "Debussy" "English translation" and the name of each section. That will give you the poems the songs were based on. (Those fortunate enough to read French can go straight to the originals.)

3. Locate the songs on whatever music source you use, and listen to them.

4. Reread the story.

And that's all.  Enjoy!


And speaking of ebook sales . . .

As mentioned before,  the good people at Tor.com are promoting my forthcoming novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, with an ongoing sale of the ebook of Chasing the Phoenix. For the entirety of the month of May, it's on sale for 2$.99.

You can find a more riveting sales pitch and buttons leading to the sale item on various platforms here.


And today's page from the Image Book . . .

Above, you'll see what looks like it might be one of my collages. Actually, it's a fashion photo. But it gave me a character. This is Lieutenant Anthea, Caitlin's judge advocate. (I scrawled "Charlotte's lawyer" beside the picture because I was still trying out names for the protagonist of The Iron Dragon's Mother and because I hadn't yet checked on the terminology for military lawyers.) The glare, the hair, the panther face... all those went straight into the novel unchanged. She's wearing a uniform in all her encounters with Caitlin, of course. But that's how she might be dressed for a night on the town.

Lieutenant Anthea was a good character. And I doubt I would have found her if without the  Image Book.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 46 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.


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A Folded Face from the Image Book

Since I can't draw, I make collages. And since most faces ripped out of magazines are far too pretty for my purposes (see most of the earlier images in this series), I started folding and then pasting images of faces.

Came out not so bad, eh?

The notes have nothing to do with her, but with the image on the facing page. You'll meet that personage tomorrow.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 47 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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Maybe You Should Begin That Biography Today

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I read a review the other day of a sorta-kinda-biography of Lorraine Hansberry (don't know her? neither do I, but she wrote A Raisin in the Sun , so maybe we should) wherein the reviewer lamented the bio's lack of new, fresh, and vivid biographical information.

Which kinda hit home for me. Because some while ago, I wrote a slim book titled: Hope-in-the-Mist: The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees. It was, I am proud to say, the first biography of Ms Mirrlees ever, and it taught me a great deal about the difficulties of the genre.

At one point, Mirrlees's nephew, Count Robin Ian Evelyn Milne Stewart de la Lanne-Mirrlees, wrote to me applauding an anecdote recorded in my first draft of the book and suggested the whole would benefit from several more of these.

Well, yes. But the anecdote was one of very few such (that I could find) recorded by Hope's peers. Who surely had many such on tap had anybody asked them. But nobody did. While they were alive.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

If you're thinking that Someday you'd like to write a biography of somebody still living whom you admire but are putting it off until you're a much better writer than you are today...

Cut bait or get off the pot!

Seriously, there's no reason to wait and every reason to act. The first part of any biography is interviewing the subject, if alive. The second is interviewing as many people as possible who know or knew him or her. And the third part, the actual writing? Well...

That can take as many years as it takes. The history of biography is also the history of procrastination.

But when you finally get around to the hard work of biography, the information will be there, long after the people who provided it are gone. And if you turn out to be as talentless as you think you are (people who think this rarely are), well, then the information will exist or someone else to find and use the way you originally wanted to.

End of sermon.  Take a day, think it over. Then, if you're the person this post is aimed at, get started.

People yet unborn will be glad you did.


And yet another page from the Image Book . . .






Again, we are reminded how limited my drawing skills are. At the top, it says, "Half-Man Half..." And below it are possible things the fellow might be from the waist down.

Strangely enough, this character did make it into the novel. At any rate, he looks a lot like a triton named Pelagius who puts in a brief but memorable appearance at the Bay of Dreams. So the Image Book is beginning to work.

Still a long way away from starting the novel, though.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 48 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

Top: My slim book about Hope Mirrlees. The physical book is now pretty much unobtainable. But publisher Henry Wessells has made an affordable ebook available at Weightless Books. That was important to me because there's so little written about Mirrlees that if you're a scholar writing about her, you really do have to have read it. A page discussing the book and giving the link for purchase is  to be found at: http://www.avramdavidson.org/hope-in-....


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