Lois McMaster Bujold's Blog, page 12
August 9, 2022
Bujold Reading-order Guide, 2022 update
A Bujold Reading-Order Guide
The Fantasy Novels
My fantasy novels are not hard to order. Easiest of all is The Spirit Ring, which is a stand-alone, or aquel, as some wag once dubbed books that for some obscure reason failed to spawn a subsequent series. Next easiest are the four volumes of The Sharing Knife—in order, Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon—which I broke down and actually numbered, as this was one continuous tale divided into non-wrist-breaking chunks. It has a stand-alone codicil novella, "Knife Children".
What were called the Chalion books after the setting of its first two volumes, but which now that the geographic scope has widened I’m dubbing the World of the Five Gods, were written to be stand-alones as part of a larger whole, and can in theory be read in any order. Some readers think the world-building is easier to assimilate when the books are read in publication order, and the second volume certainly contains spoilers for the first (but not the third.) In any case, the publication order is:
The Curse of Chalion
Paladin of Souls
The Hallowed Hunt
In terms of internal world chronology, The Hallowed Hunt would fall first, the Penric & Desdemona novellas perhaps a hundred and fifty years later, and The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls would follow a century or so after that.
The internal chronological order of the Penric tales is presently:
“Penric’s Demon”
"Penric and the Shaman"
"Penric's Fox"
"Masquerade in Lodi"
"Penric's Mission"
"Mira's Last Dance"
"The Prisoner of Limnos"
"The Orphans of Raspay"
"The Physicians of Vilnoc"
The Assassins of Thasalon
"Knot of Shadows"
The nine first-published of these have been collected in three Baen Books paper editions: Penric's Progress, containing Demon, Shaman, and Fox: Penric's Travels, containing Mission, Mira, and Limnos; and (upcoming November 2022) Penric's Labors, containing Masquerade, Orphans, and Physicians.
Other Original E-books
The short story collection Proto Zoa contains five very early tales—three (1980s) contemporary fantasy, two science fiction—all previously published but not in this handy format. The novelette “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma” may be of interest to Vorkosigan completists, as it is the first story in which that proto-universe began, mentioning Beta Colony but before Barrayar was even thought of.
Sidelines: Talks and Essays is just what it says on the tin—a collection of three decades of my nonfiction writings, including convention speeches, essays, travelogues, introductions, and some less formal pieces. I hope it will prove an interesting companion piece to my fiction.
The Gerould Family of New Hampshire in the Civil War: Two Diaries and a Memoir is a compilation of historical documents handed down from my mother’s father’s side of my family. A meeting of time, technology, and skillset has finally allowed me to put them into a sharable form.
The Vorkosigan Stories
Many pixels have been expended debating the ‘best’ order in which to read what have come to be known as the Vorkosigan Books (or Saga), the Vorkosiverse, the Miles books, and other names. The debate mainly revolves around publication order versus internal-chronological order. I favor internal chronological, with a few adjustments.
It was always my intention to write each book as a stand-alone, so that the reader could theoretically jump in anywhere. While still somewhat true, as the series developed it acquired a number of sub-arcs, closely related tales that were richer for each other. I will list the sub-arcs, and then the books, and then the duplication warnings. (My publishing history has been complex.) And then the publication order, for those who want it.
Shards of Honor and Barrayar. The first two books in the series proper, they detail the adventures of Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony and Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar. Shards was my very first novel ever; Barrayar was actually my eighth, but continues the tale the next day after the end of Shards. For readers who want to be sure of beginning at the beginning, or who are very spoiler-sensitive, start with these two.
The Warrior’s Apprentice and The Vor Game (with, perhaps, the novella “The Mountains of Mourning” tucked in between.) The Warrior’s Apprentice introduces the character who became the series’ linchpin, Miles Vorkosigan; the first book tells how he created a space mercenary fleet by accident; the second how he fixed his mistakes from the first round. Space opera and military-esque adventure (and a number of other things one can best discover for oneself), The Warrior’s Apprentice makes another good place to jump into the series for readers who prefer a young male protagonist.
After that: Brothers in Arms should be read before Mirror Dance, and both, ideally, before Memory.
Komarr makes another alternate entry point for the series, picking up Miles’s second career at its start. It should be read before A Civil Campaign.
Borders of Infinity, a collection of three of the six currently extant novellas, makes a good Miles Vorkosigan early-adventure sampler platter, I always thought, for readers who don’t want to commit themselves to length. (But it may make more sense if read after The Warrior’s Apprentice.) Take care not to confuse the collection-as-a-whole with its title story, “The Borders of Infinity”.
Falling Free takes place 200 years earlier in the timeline and does not share settings or characters with the main body of the series. Most readers recommend picking up this story later. It should likely be read before Diplomatic Immunity, however, which revisits the “quaddies”, a bioengineered race of free-fall dwellers, in Miles’s time.
The novels in the internal-chronological list below appear in plain text; the novellas (officially defined as a story between 17,500 words and 40,000 words) in quote marks.
Falling Free
Shards of Honor
Barrayar
The Warrior’s Apprentice
“The Mountains of Mourning”
“Weatherman”
The Vor Game
Cetaganda
Ethan of Athos
Borders of Infinity
“Labyrinth”
“The Borders of Infinity”
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance
Memory
Komarr
A Civil Campaign
“Winterfair Gifts”
Diplomatic Immunity
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
"The Flowers of Vashnoi"
CryoBurn
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
Caveats:
The novella “Weatherman” is an out-take from the beginning of the novel The Vor Game. If you already have The Vor Game, you likely don’t need this.
The original ‘novel’ Borders of Infinity was a fix-up collection containing the three novellas “The Mountains of Mourning”, “Labyrinth”, and “The Borders of Infinity”, together with a frame to tie the pieces together. Again, beware duplication. The frame story does not stand alone.
Publication order:
This is also the order in which the works were written, apart from a couple of the novellas, but is not identical to the internal-chronological. It goes:
Shards of Honor (June 1986)
The Warrior’s Apprentice (August 1986)
Ethan of Athos (December 1986)
Falling Free (April 1988)
Brothers in Arms (January 1989)
Borders of Infinity (October 1989)
The Vor Game (September 1990)
Barrayar (October 1991)
Mirror Dance (March 1994)
Cetaganda (January 1996)
Memory (October 1996)
Komarr (June 1998)
A Civil Campaign (September 1999).
Diplomatic Immunity (May 2002)
“Winterfair Gifts” (February 2004)
CryoBurn (November 2010)
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance (November 2012)
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (February 2016)
"The Flowers of Vashnoi" (May 2018)
— Lois McMaster Bujold
The Fantasy Novels
My fantasy novels are not hard to order. Easiest of all is The Spirit Ring, which is a stand-alone, or aquel, as some wag once dubbed books that for some obscure reason failed to spawn a subsequent series. Next easiest are the four volumes of The Sharing Knife—in order, Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon—which I broke down and actually numbered, as this was one continuous tale divided into non-wrist-breaking chunks. It has a stand-alone codicil novella, "Knife Children".
What were called the Chalion books after the setting of its first two volumes, but which now that the geographic scope has widened I’m dubbing the World of the Five Gods, were written to be stand-alones as part of a larger whole, and can in theory be read in any order. Some readers think the world-building is easier to assimilate when the books are read in publication order, and the second volume certainly contains spoilers for the first (but not the third.) In any case, the publication order is:
The Curse of Chalion
Paladin of Souls
The Hallowed Hunt
In terms of internal world chronology, The Hallowed Hunt would fall first, the Penric & Desdemona novellas perhaps a hundred and fifty years later, and The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls would follow a century or so after that.
The internal chronological order of the Penric tales is presently:
“Penric’s Demon”
"Penric and the Shaman"
"Penric's Fox"
"Masquerade in Lodi"
"Penric's Mission"
"Mira's Last Dance"
"The Prisoner of Limnos"
"The Orphans of Raspay"
"The Physicians of Vilnoc"
The Assassins of Thasalon
"Knot of Shadows"
The nine first-published of these have been collected in three Baen Books paper editions: Penric's Progress, containing Demon, Shaman, and Fox: Penric's Travels, containing Mission, Mira, and Limnos; and (upcoming November 2022) Penric's Labors, containing Masquerade, Orphans, and Physicians.
Other Original E-books
The short story collection Proto Zoa contains five very early tales—three (1980s) contemporary fantasy, two science fiction—all previously published but not in this handy format. The novelette “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma” may be of interest to Vorkosigan completists, as it is the first story in which that proto-universe began, mentioning Beta Colony but before Barrayar was even thought of.
Sidelines: Talks and Essays is just what it says on the tin—a collection of three decades of my nonfiction writings, including convention speeches, essays, travelogues, introductions, and some less formal pieces. I hope it will prove an interesting companion piece to my fiction.
The Gerould Family of New Hampshire in the Civil War: Two Diaries and a Memoir is a compilation of historical documents handed down from my mother’s father’s side of my family. A meeting of time, technology, and skillset has finally allowed me to put them into a sharable form.
The Vorkosigan Stories
Many pixels have been expended debating the ‘best’ order in which to read what have come to be known as the Vorkosigan Books (or Saga), the Vorkosiverse, the Miles books, and other names. The debate mainly revolves around publication order versus internal-chronological order. I favor internal chronological, with a few adjustments.
It was always my intention to write each book as a stand-alone, so that the reader could theoretically jump in anywhere. While still somewhat true, as the series developed it acquired a number of sub-arcs, closely related tales that were richer for each other. I will list the sub-arcs, and then the books, and then the duplication warnings. (My publishing history has been complex.) And then the publication order, for those who want it.
Shards of Honor and Barrayar. The first two books in the series proper, they detail the adventures of Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony and Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar. Shards was my very first novel ever; Barrayar was actually my eighth, but continues the tale the next day after the end of Shards. For readers who want to be sure of beginning at the beginning, or who are very spoiler-sensitive, start with these two.
The Warrior’s Apprentice and The Vor Game (with, perhaps, the novella “The Mountains of Mourning” tucked in between.) The Warrior’s Apprentice introduces the character who became the series’ linchpin, Miles Vorkosigan; the first book tells how he created a space mercenary fleet by accident; the second how he fixed his mistakes from the first round. Space opera and military-esque adventure (and a number of other things one can best discover for oneself), The Warrior’s Apprentice makes another good place to jump into the series for readers who prefer a young male protagonist.
After that: Brothers in Arms should be read before Mirror Dance, and both, ideally, before Memory.
Komarr makes another alternate entry point for the series, picking up Miles’s second career at its start. It should be read before A Civil Campaign.
Borders of Infinity, a collection of three of the six currently extant novellas, makes a good Miles Vorkosigan early-adventure sampler platter, I always thought, for readers who don’t want to commit themselves to length. (But it may make more sense if read after The Warrior’s Apprentice.) Take care not to confuse the collection-as-a-whole with its title story, “The Borders of Infinity”.
Falling Free takes place 200 years earlier in the timeline and does not share settings or characters with the main body of the series. Most readers recommend picking up this story later. It should likely be read before Diplomatic Immunity, however, which revisits the “quaddies”, a bioengineered race of free-fall dwellers, in Miles’s time.
The novels in the internal-chronological list below appear in plain text; the novellas (officially defined as a story between 17,500 words and 40,000 words) in quote marks.
Falling Free
Shards of Honor
Barrayar
The Warrior’s Apprentice
“The Mountains of Mourning”
“Weatherman”
The Vor Game
Cetaganda
Ethan of Athos
Borders of Infinity
“Labyrinth”
“The Borders of Infinity”
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance
Memory
Komarr
A Civil Campaign
“Winterfair Gifts”
Diplomatic Immunity
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
"The Flowers of Vashnoi"
CryoBurn
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
Caveats:
The novella “Weatherman” is an out-take from the beginning of the novel The Vor Game. If you already have The Vor Game, you likely don’t need this.
The original ‘novel’ Borders of Infinity was a fix-up collection containing the three novellas “The Mountains of Mourning”, “Labyrinth”, and “The Borders of Infinity”, together with a frame to tie the pieces together. Again, beware duplication. The frame story does not stand alone.
Publication order:
This is also the order in which the works were written, apart from a couple of the novellas, but is not identical to the internal-chronological. It goes:
Shards of Honor (June 1986)
The Warrior’s Apprentice (August 1986)
Ethan of Athos (December 1986)
Falling Free (April 1988)
Brothers in Arms (January 1989)
Borders of Infinity (October 1989)
The Vor Game (September 1990)
Barrayar (October 1991)
Mirror Dance (March 1994)
Cetaganda (January 1996)
Memory (October 1996)
Komarr (June 1998)
A Civil Campaign (September 1999).
Diplomatic Immunity (May 2002)
“Winterfair Gifts” (February 2004)
CryoBurn (November 2010)
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance (November 2012)
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (February 2016)
"The Flowers of Vashnoi" (May 2018)
— Lois McMaster Bujold
Bujold reading-order guide to be relocated
As most Goodreads denizens may know by now, GR is deleting the "creative writing" section of their users' blogs on Sept. 1st.
I had been using it as, I thought, a good place to keep a permanent link to my reading-order guide, and had distributed the link far and wide. Wherever it has been shared, it is now going to click on frustration, sadly.
For the moment, I will repost the guide here on my blog periodically, till I find it a better home. Apologies to future net surfers who will follow the old URL to a dead link.
The other two items on it were a recent interview not published elsewhere, and the first draft of my Gerould family history chapbook. I'd figured the latter would serve readers who don't do the Kindle ecosystem, but alas. The interview I have backed up on my computer, and I'll have to figure out where else it might be permalinked. Note that any comments on the entries will presumably also be erased.
The reading-order guide may also be found in the back of every single one of my indie-published ebooks, but it's surprising how many people don't seem to find it there.
This is getting longish, so I'll put the first repost in a separate post to follow.
Ta, Lois.
I had been using it as, I thought, a good place to keep a permanent link to my reading-order guide, and had distributed the link far and wide. Wherever it has been shared, it is now going to click on frustration, sadly.
For the moment, I will repost the guide here on my blog periodically, till I find it a better home. Apologies to future net surfers who will follow the old URL to a dead link.
The other two items on it were a recent interview not published elsewhere, and the first draft of my Gerould family history chapbook. I'd figured the latter would serve readers who don't do the Kindle ecosystem, but alas. The interview I have backed up on my computer, and I'll have to figure out where else it might be permalinked. Note that any comments on the entries will presumably also be erased.
The reading-order guide may also be found in the back of every single one of my indie-published ebooks, but it's surprising how many people don't seem to find it there.
This is getting longish, so I'll put the first repost in a separate post to follow.
Ta, Lois.
dinged Assassins on sale at Sub Press
A few copies of The Assassins of Thasaon that got slightly dinged in production are still on sale at Subterranean Press, at half price for you bargain hunters:
https://subterraneanpress.com/assassi...
(The regular copies are sold out, which means the used prices will be rising in due course.)
Ta, L.
https://subterraneanpress.com/assassi...
(The regular copies are sold out, which means the used prices will be rising in due course.)
Ta, L.
July 15, 2022
Penric's Labors 3-novella collection on paper due November
Baen Books will be bringing out the next 3-novella Penric & Desdemona collection in hardcover, pub date scheduled for November 1. Contents are "Masquerade in Lodi", "The Orphans of Raspay", and "The Physicians of Vilnoc".
Paperback edition to follow at the usual time lag. Along with the 3 stories, there's an Introduction at the beginning and Outroduction at the end by me -- the former to new readers with what they need to know (mostly "Yes, you can read this book by itself!") the latter for a little spoiler discussion of how each of the tales got written.
It should be generally available in bookstores, but it won't hurt to pre-order it from your favorite bookseller rather than just hoping it will show up. (There's always a lot of competition for physical bookshelf space.) Uncle Hugo's and Dreamhaven here in Minneapolis will be able to get their copies signed, and personalized for you by arrangement.
https://www.baen.com/penric-s-labors....
Baen will as usual have an e-edition of the collection available exclusively on the Baen E-Bookstore.
https://www.amazon.com/Penrics-Labors... and so on.
*
In other news this morning, I see the Subterranean Press website lists their signed limited edition of The Assassins of Thasalon as out-of-stock. This means all the copies they printed have shipped, not that you still can't get one -- Dreamhaven and Uncle Hugo's still have them, I know, and there may be other paper book sellers around who have some.
(SubPress will also be bringing out their signed limited hardcover edition of the novella "Knot of Shadows" sometime this winter. It's not yet listed on their site, but I've previewed the very fine cover art by Lauren Saint-Onge, another Penric treat upcoming from her.)
Ta, L.
Paperback edition to follow at the usual time lag. Along with the 3 stories, there's an Introduction at the beginning and Outroduction at the end by me -- the former to new readers with what they need to know (mostly "Yes, you can read this book by itself!") the latter for a little spoiler discussion of how each of the tales got written.
It should be generally available in bookstores, but it won't hurt to pre-order it from your favorite bookseller rather than just hoping it will show up. (There's always a lot of competition for physical bookshelf space.) Uncle Hugo's and Dreamhaven here in Minneapolis will be able to get their copies signed, and personalized for you by arrangement.
https://www.baen.com/penric-s-labors....
Baen will as usual have an e-edition of the collection available exclusively on the Baen E-Bookstore.
https://www.amazon.com/Penrics-Labors... and so on.
*
In other news this morning, I see the Subterranean Press website lists their signed limited edition of The Assassins of Thasalon as out-of-stock. This means all the copies they printed have shipped, not that you still can't get one -- Dreamhaven and Uncle Hugo's still have them, I know, and there may be other paper book sellers around who have some.
(SubPress will also be bringing out their signed limited hardcover edition of the novella "Knot of Shadows" sometime this winter. It's not yet listed on their site, but I've previewed the very fine cover art by Lauren Saint-Onge, another Penric treat upcoming from her.)
Ta, L.
June 29, 2022
The Gerould Family of New Hampshire in the Civil War
And now for something completely different.
So…
A while ago, I was invited to be a guest subject on a website called WikiTree, which is an online association of dedicated genealogy enthusiasts. https://www.wikitree.com/ They run a group effort called WikiTree Challenge, in which they turn their skills loose upon the guest’s family tree for one week, and compete to see who can find out the most previously unknown information about the guest’s ancestors; sort of a cross between Roots and Time Team, crowdsourcing genealogy research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmYzt...
They begin by asking their subject to supply what they already know, which in the case of some quadrants of my family tree is quite a lot, in other a frustrating blank. The most documentation I have is on my mother’s father’s side, the Geroulds, New England Protestants who ran heavily to literacy and record keeping. An earlier family genealogist even produced a book, which he had published in 1885. I have a memory of it passing through my hands at one point, a slim vol. with a maroon cover. To my delight, when I began poking around to try to answer my WikiTree starter questions, I found someone had put up a scan with the Library of Congress, which got us all abruptly forwarder.
This also prodded me to find and pull off my shelves the typed transcripts my mother had made in the early 1970s of two pocket diaries she had from her family from the 19th Century, from a mother and a son in the key year of 1864. I remember her laboring over them, but paid little attention at the time. She (fortunately) had copies made to distribute around the family. When her condo was cleared out after her death in 2003, I remembered this, and secured the small tin box containing the original diaries and others of the period, thinking they should be photocopied into some sort of enhanced and enlarged PDF for later perusal, and then proceeded not to get to it (life was full) though I did get as far as getting a friend to make a pdf file of the transcripts. I eventually took the tin box back to my brother James, who has been stuck warehousing most of the other family memorabilia, so at least everything would be together.
In emailing my brother about all this, he also came up with his scan of a transcript of another Gerould brother of that generation, a memoir of his Civil War experiences, which I don’t remember seeing before but must also have been among the papers from my mother. With all three elements in my hands, I realized I had enough to Do Something with. The Something turned out to be this:
Now up on Kindle at:
https://www.amazon.com/Gerould-Family...
Cover design again by Ron Miller, who did a bang-up job, I think, with the family memorabilia and other elements we found.
Vendor page copy goes like this:
When family history meets history…
This chapbook is a collection of eyewitness historical documents from the American Civil War handed down through descendants of the Gerould family. Two transcribed pocket diaries for the year 1864 describe the day-by-day tribulations of young Union navy surgeon Dr. Martin Gerould, assigned to the ill-fated ironclad Eastport in the Red River Campaign; and his aging mother Cynthia Locke Gerould, the wife of a clergyman, back home in New Hampshire. The increasingly gripping cross-illumination of the paired accounts is further rounded out by the later-written memoir of Martin’s eldest brother Reverend (soon to be Private) Samuel L. Gerould, detailing his experiences in the Fourteenth New Hampshire Volunteers: three voices from the past speaking directly, in their own words.
***
Editor Lois McMaster Bujold is a well-known science fiction and fantasy writer, and the great-granddaughter of Samuel L. Gerould.
With my added introductions and other material, it ended up running about 42k words, about the size of a long novella. Really, it was a lucky intersection of stimulus, time, technology, and ebook skillset, most of which I’d not had until recently.
Be it noted, my primary purpose in assembling this e-chapbook was to preserve historical documents, not to write a history as such. My mother had the same idea, exactly reproducing all original wording, errata, spelling, and punctuation or lack of it from the faded handwritten originals, as well as she could make out with a magnifying glass and a good light. To that end, I have reproduced her typescripts in turn as accurately as I could (including, probably, any errors she’d made), with the extra challenge of my OCR scanner choking on oddities and frequently turning sentences into word-salad. Correcting these did force me to pay extremely close attention to every word, to the great benefit of my previously spotty understanding of the material, rewarding my effort in unexpected ways.
Ta, L.
So…
A while ago, I was invited to be a guest subject on a website called WikiTree, which is an online association of dedicated genealogy enthusiasts. https://www.wikitree.com/ They run a group effort called WikiTree Challenge, in which they turn their skills loose upon the guest’s family tree for one week, and compete to see who can find out the most previously unknown information about the guest’s ancestors; sort of a cross between Roots and Time Team, crowdsourcing genealogy research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmYzt...
They begin by asking their subject to supply what they already know, which in the case of some quadrants of my family tree is quite a lot, in other a frustrating blank. The most documentation I have is on my mother’s father’s side, the Geroulds, New England Protestants who ran heavily to literacy and record keeping. An earlier family genealogist even produced a book, which he had published in 1885. I have a memory of it passing through my hands at one point, a slim vol. with a maroon cover. To my delight, when I began poking around to try to answer my WikiTree starter questions, I found someone had put up a scan with the Library of Congress, which got us all abruptly forwarder.
This also prodded me to find and pull off my shelves the typed transcripts my mother had made in the early 1970s of two pocket diaries she had from her family from the 19th Century, from a mother and a son in the key year of 1864. I remember her laboring over them, but paid little attention at the time. She (fortunately) had copies made to distribute around the family. When her condo was cleared out after her death in 2003, I remembered this, and secured the small tin box containing the original diaries and others of the period, thinking they should be photocopied into some sort of enhanced and enlarged PDF for later perusal, and then proceeded not to get to it (life was full) though I did get as far as getting a friend to make a pdf file of the transcripts. I eventually took the tin box back to my brother James, who has been stuck warehousing most of the other family memorabilia, so at least everything would be together.
In emailing my brother about all this, he also came up with his scan of a transcript of another Gerould brother of that generation, a memoir of his Civil War experiences, which I don’t remember seeing before but must also have been among the papers from my mother. With all three elements in my hands, I realized I had enough to Do Something with. The Something turned out to be this:
Now up on Kindle at:
https://www.amazon.com/Gerould-Family...
Cover design again by Ron Miller, who did a bang-up job, I think, with the family memorabilia and other elements we found.
Vendor page copy goes like this:
When family history meets history…
This chapbook is a collection of eyewitness historical documents from the American Civil War handed down through descendants of the Gerould family. Two transcribed pocket diaries for the year 1864 describe the day-by-day tribulations of young Union navy surgeon Dr. Martin Gerould, assigned to the ill-fated ironclad Eastport in the Red River Campaign; and his aging mother Cynthia Locke Gerould, the wife of a clergyman, back home in New Hampshire. The increasingly gripping cross-illumination of the paired accounts is further rounded out by the later-written memoir of Martin’s eldest brother Reverend (soon to be Private) Samuel L. Gerould, detailing his experiences in the Fourteenth New Hampshire Volunteers: three voices from the past speaking directly, in their own words.
***
Editor Lois McMaster Bujold is a well-known science fiction and fantasy writer, and the great-granddaughter of Samuel L. Gerould.
With my added introductions and other material, it ended up running about 42k words, about the size of a long novella. Really, it was a lucky intersection of stimulus, time, technology, and ebook skillset, most of which I’d not had until recently.
Be it noted, my primary purpose in assembling this e-chapbook was to preserve historical documents, not to write a history as such. My mother had the same idea, exactly reproducing all original wording, errata, spelling, and punctuation or lack of it from the faded handwritten originals, as well as she could make out with a magnifying glass and a good light. To that end, I have reproduced her typescripts in turn as accurately as I could (including, probably, any errors she’d made), with the extra challenge of my OCR scanner choking on oddities and frequently turning sentences into word-salad. Correcting these did force me to pay extremely close attention to every word, to the great benefit of my previously spotty understanding of the material, rewarding my effort in unexpected ways.
Ta, L.
June 28, 2022
Assassins of Thasalon "in print" at SubPress
I see Subterranean Press is now listing The Assassins of Thasalon as In Print on their website:
https://subterraneanpress.com/assassi...
Although my carton of author's copies, always the ultimate proof of a book's existence, has not yet turned up on my front porch. Soon, I trust. Uncle Hugo's and Dreamhaven should be getting their copies in shortly after that, if prior experience holds.
The cover is now my second-favorite of artist Lauren Saint-Onge's:
(First favorite rendition ever of Penric remains her SubPress cover for "The Physicians of Vilnoc":
Ta, L.
Addendum 7/1 -- My author's copies just arrived! SubPress should be shipping to customers shortly.
L.
https://subterraneanpress.com/assassi...
Although my carton of author's copies, always the ultimate proof of a book's existence, has not yet turned up on my front porch. Soon, I trust. Uncle Hugo's and Dreamhaven should be getting their copies in shortly after that, if prior experience holds.
The cover is now my second-favorite of artist Lauren Saint-Onge's:
(First favorite rendition ever of Penric remains her SubPress cover for "The Physicians of Vilnoc":
Ta, L.
Addendum 7/1 -- My author's copies just arrived! SubPress should be shipping to customers shortly.
L.
June 16, 2022
Lois is guest subject on WikiTree Challenge this week
So...
I was recently asked to be their guest subject for a week on WikiTree Challenge, to which I said, Sure! What is it? (Prior guests include C.J. Cherryh, so I suspect more than one SF fan among the organizers.)
WikiTree Challenge turns out to be a sort of cross between Roots and Time Team, where the volunteer participants get together for one week to crowdsource genealogy research, and compete to see how much they can learn. They start with a basis of information supplied by their subject, of which I had quite a bit in some quadrants of my family tree, and almost none in others.
https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1424626/...
Anyone can play, just sign up and learn. International participants are especially welcome. (I have known roots in France, Germany, and the British Isles; who knows what else.)
Well, and the Neanderthal thing, which of course I had checked when it became available, but that goes back a bit farther than documented sources can reach. I'm not far from European average for those genes, it turns out to little surprise, 2% or less. My maternal haplogroup is H6a1b. I don't know the paternal because I haven't been able to persuade either of my brothers to get tested, drattit. (23 & Me data.)
This invitation had a knock-on effect as I scrounged back through what family documents I had on hand, and was reminded of a project I meant to get to Someday. "Someday" turned out to be the last month or so, and has resulted in an e-chapbook of historical accounts that I will be putting up on Kindle in a week or two. Title will be The Gerould Family of New Hampshire in the Civil War: Two Diaries and a Memoir, which is just what it says on the tin. More on that soon.
Ta, L.
I was recently asked to be their guest subject for a week on WikiTree Challenge, to which I said, Sure! What is it? (Prior guests include C.J. Cherryh, so I suspect more than one SF fan among the organizers.)
WikiTree Challenge turns out to be a sort of cross between Roots and Time Team, where the volunteer participants get together for one week to crowdsource genealogy research, and compete to see how much they can learn. They start with a basis of information supplied by their subject, of which I had quite a bit in some quadrants of my family tree, and almost none in others.
https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1424626/...
Anyone can play, just sign up and learn. International participants are especially welcome. (I have known roots in France, Germany, and the British Isles; who knows what else.)
Well, and the Neanderthal thing, which of course I had checked when it became available, but that goes back a bit farther than documented sources can reach. I'm not far from European average for those genes, it turns out to little surprise, 2% or less. My maternal haplogroup is H6a1b. I don't know the paternal because I haven't been able to persuade either of my brothers to get tested, drattit. (23 & Me data.)
This invitation had a knock-on effect as I scrounged back through what family documents I had on hand, and was reminded of a project I meant to get to Someday. "Someday" turned out to be the last month or so, and has resulted in an e-chapbook of historical accounts that I will be putting up on Kindle in a week or two. Title will be The Gerould Family of New Hampshire in the Civil War: Two Diaries and a Memoir, which is just what it says on the tin. More on that soon.
Ta, L.
June 13, 2022
Kobo addendum
I see the project of getting my indie ebooks up on Kobo is moving right along -- 12 titles now. My Spectrum e-wrangler is doing a great job. Interior design looks very nice.
While old titles, they are new to this vendor platform, and thus have no reviews or ratings yet. Any of my Kobo readers who might be moved to toss in a few to get things started would be most welcome to do so.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?acp...
Ta, Lois.
While old titles, they are new to this vendor platform, and thus have no reviews or ratings yet. Any of my Kobo readers who might be moved to toss in a few to get things started would be most welcome to do so.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?acp...
Ta, Lois.
May 23, 2022
Bujold ebooks now on Kobo
Every time I put out a new ebook, someone asks about whether they can have it on Kobo. (Groundswell, or the same person over and over, not sure. Sales, or lack of them, will tell.) I am pleased to report we will be posting my indie ebooks on that platform now. It will take a while to get them all up (tricky formatting issues), but we have five titles there already.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?que...
The five titles already up are:
Shards of Honor
The Warrior's Apprentice
Falling Free
The Spirit Ring
Penric's Demon
(My HarperCollins fantasies and a couple of later Baen titles, and my audiobooks from Blackstone, have been there all along.)
Ta, L.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?que...
The five titles already up are:
Shards of Honor
The Warrior's Apprentice
Falling Free
The Spirit Ring
Penric's Demon
(My HarperCollins fantasies and a couple of later Baen titles, and my audiobooks from Blackstone, have been there all along.)
Ta, L.
May 16, 2022
Assassins of Thasalon may sell out at SubPress
As per their news squib:
https://subterraneanpress.com/news/lo...
Copies may be pre-ordered from Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven Books & Comics here in Minneapolis, or directly from SubPress's website.
* * *
I just today finished signing all the 1250 tip sheets to be bound into "Knot of Shadows", due out mid-winter. The stack looks the same (except for the illustration) as the one I did a while back for The Assassins of Thasalon, so I took a timely snapshot...
Ta, L.
(Later: found the folding desk discussed below here: https://www.amazon.com/FlexiSpot-Lapt... I see they've changed the design slightly -- mine has slot for one's hand for carrying, now eliminated to give a smooth plain top I'd guess.)
https://subterraneanpress.com/news/lo...
Copies may be pre-ordered from Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven Books & Comics here in Minneapolis, or directly from SubPress's website.
* * *
I just today finished signing all the 1250 tip sheets to be bound into "Knot of Shadows", due out mid-winter. The stack looks the same (except for the illustration) as the one I did a while back for The Assassins of Thasalon, so I took a timely snapshot...
Ta, L.
(Later: found the folding desk discussed below here: https://www.amazon.com/FlexiSpot-Lapt... I see they've changed the design slightly -- mine has slot for one's hand for carrying, now eliminated to give a smooth plain top I'd guess.)
