Kim Harrison's Blog, page 104

Snow

We got snow again!  Just an icing, crusty and not very nice to walk in, but pleasing to look at.  I'm thinking it's going to last until about three, and then be gone.

Work was slow yesterday, but I did get a chapter finished.  I'm about halfway through, and I had to reassess how the magic worked.  It wasn't anything I wasn't expecting.  I'll probably have to take a day off when I've got 100 pages left to do the same with the relationships.  Evolving, evolving . . . this one feels pretty good, and it's starting to firm up nicely.  This is going to be one ugly rewrite when I get to it.

Not much more going on at the Harrison household . . .  Next week is the big push.

PS  winners of the Goodreads best read of 2011 are up at their website.  We didn't get it this time, guys, but it was fun to be a part of this.

Monday, Monday . . .

I think I did four day's work this weekend, and I'm ready to sit at my desk for a couple of days and do nothing but move my fingers and the folds of my brain.  Lots of organization, cleaning, tidying, and moving things around, topped off by some time with my family, so I can not complain–even if I did sleep an hour too long this morning.  I will be glad when we reach the end of the solstice swing and start back the other way.  I'm afraid I'm tuned into the sun more than I am the alarm clock.

Oh, speaking of things to come, I apologize for not having the tour times and places up last week like I promised.  The tour has gotten (gulp) longer, so I'm waiting to update until I know for sure.

A Perfect Blood excerpt

I've been fielding a lot of questions about the expected A Perfect Blood excerpt that we get about this time of year. My publisher usually makes available several chapters, but that likely won't happen until the last two weeks before publication.  If you're looking for something sooner, the first chapter is available at the back of the mass market of Pale Demon, which just came out this Tuesday, so you can easily find it now on the shelf.  Yes, I'd rather you buy it, but if you are out shopping, you can always stand in the aisle and read it.  Shhhh, you didn't hear that from me!

If you partake in e-books, you can get the same sneak peek in the specially reduced price version of Every Which Way but Dead, which isn't available yet, but you can pre-order it on Amazon or the B and N store.  If you're looking to round out your e-book library, this is a fiscally responsible way to do it as well.

I will also be putting up the first chapter on my website, but it likely won't happen until my publisher starts releasing chapters.

Now . . .  no guaranties because I can only go by what's happened in the past, but if you are like me and tend to forget things that are going to happen in the near future and like reminders, you can sign up for Harper Voyager's author tracker program, and you might get email notice when the chapters are released.  I can not get the widget to sign up for this imbedded in the code here, so just go to the front page of my website www.kimharrison.net and there's a box on the left panel.  If it were me, I'd sign up for both, simply because you never know which division at Harper will be in charge of promotion.

Happy Friday!  There is snow on the ground, which means there will be flour in my kitchen.  And maybe a little slush on my boots . . .

PS.  Signed glow-in-the-dark posters are in the mail, so you should get them soon.  Any copy of the Hollows Insider you can snag for holiday gift giving for  your Hollows reader at home should still have that same glow-in-the-dark cover.  Happy Hunting!

settling in for some serious stuff

The snow stuck through yesterday despite the above-freezing temperatures.  It's still on some of the trees, and with the gold sun rising, it makes for a singularly white/gold/blue morning, very much like a greeting card.  My dogs are content with their snow-free area, and the bird feeders are clear.  But the one thing I'm happiest about is the fish in the pond.  They are up at the surface of the water, meaning they are happy.  I worried about them last year with my makeshift heater, and now that I've got something that's actually made for the job . . .  Well, I feel better about it.  It can snow now all it wants.  Though I do probably need to get the last of Thanksgiving off my front porch.

NaNo is over, and I truly enjoyed the exercise.  Congratulations everyone who took part, and a big high-five for those who reached the goal of 50,000 words.  It is not easy, but now that you've done it, it will be easier to do it again.

I find it interesting that I had another plotting issue fall into place yesterday, there at the final hour.  I'm at page 190, which is usually just shy of my halfway point, and only now did a few things fall into place, encouraging me that yes, I am doing this right.  Two characters, one in particular, are now firm enough in my mind that they are showing me ways they can round the story out.  I found the humor yesterday, and the foils upon which Peri's character growth will fall upon.  I've always said that if I can't laugh while I'm writing, then what's the point?  So a huge happy sigh of relief for me as I start forward again on this first draft.  It's ugly.  It's rough.  It's so not right yet. But it's coming . . .

Good and Bad

Good News:  It snowed!  Seriously, it snowed?  I took this at about ten last night when it was just beginning to stick.  Fortunately Guy and I are pretty well set for the season.  Most of the holiday lights are up.  We have a puppy shelter erected for Alex and Xander, the tender plants covered, and a new, industrial grade de-icer in the pond for the fish/birds.  The fish seem to really appreciate it.  You can see my tiny birdbath/fishpond in this picture if you look close.

Good News! Today is the last day to vote in the Goodreads contest, so if you haven't picked your faves from each of the categories, you've still got some time..  Goodreads best read of 2011

Good News: Every year, Harper Voyager has a special ebook release of one of the back titles for a specially reduced price.  This year, they slid an excerpt of A Perfect Blood in there as an bonus. This year's title is Every Which Way But Dead, so if you have been looking to add to your e-book shelf, and get a sneak peek at A Perfect Blood, here's your chance.

Bad news?  It's not out yet.  But it did pop up on B&N as a pre-order, if you can believe it!  Pre-Order special edition of EWWBD  I'm sure that a Kindle and Sony version will be available closer to the release date, so please don't panic!

Good News: The invoices for Manic Monday's glow-in-the-dark posters are out, which means I will soon have my kitchen table back as they are shoved into the mail.  Tour T-s will start to go out after that, so please be patient with Guy.  He's a little overwhelmed right now.  Want a tour-t or freebie?

Bad News:  It snowed!  The predicted 3-5 inches actually turned out to be 3-5 inches.  Go figure.  Everything is going to be a slippery mess, even if it is the most gorgous morning I've seen in almost a year.  Temps are probably going to melt the pretty off and leave the icky.  I'm trying to convince Guy to shovel the walk so it will dry instead of ice.  But seeing as he's the one that's going to do the work, I will probably have to include cookies in the bribe, ah, negotiations.

Really bad news: I devoted my night last night to helping Guy with getting the first batch of Perfect Blood freebies SASEs out the door, which meant fast food for dinner.  I truly love my fast food, mostly because I don't get it that often, but this?  This don't look nothing like the picture on TV . . .  ??!  It is so pathetic, I had to show you.

Yumm, yumm!

NaNo-ing

I broke the 50,000 word ceiling yesterday on my NaNo book.  Whoo-hoo!  I was thrilled to see that there was a nicely large slice of my writing buddies that had beaten me there.  It reminded me of the friendly competition that my writer's group had when we were going full throttle, four or five of us driven to get that golden ring of publication–and all of us having the talent to reach it.  It was an amazing circle led by a gifted writer, Faith Hunter, and I bow to her generosity of spirit and willingness to help others on this road.  She will always be in my mind, the better writer, if for no reason other than that.

It never ceases to amaze me that the act of writing is so simple when you break it down, and yet publication is elusive.  It hinges on time, spousal support, luck, perseverance, luck, perseverance, and some luck.  Oh, and perseverance.  The best part, is that the more you write, the better you get at it.  You can't help but improve if you put the time in.

So I'll be putting more time in.  I've got two more months of work on this current project before I can go back and start to fix it, and already I feel refreshed.  It's different from the Hollows in pacing and structure, and I'm seeing that I need to use different techniques to maintain interest and excitement. I have to think about what I'm doing, balancing things by intent, not rote.  It feels really good.  Yep, it feels good.

Hungry

Yep, I'm hungry to get back to my keyboard after a forced separation of . . . four days?  I have a laundry list of things for you today that built up over the Thanksgiving day break.  Of which, mine was wonderful, thank you.

Voting to get into the finals is still going on over at Goodreads.  Thank you, everyone who has voted for it.  It is rubbing shoulders with some excellent books, and it is a thrill to have gotten this far.   Voting ends on the 30th, and the final round begins. I believe that the current level will choose the best Paranormal Fantasy of 2011, and if Pale Demon wins it, it will move on to the finals for the best read of 2011.  Vote for your favorites in all the categories!

I took some time to tweak the website and the tour cities are up at the events page.  I will have the stores later this week. Events page

The Perfect Blood tour t-s are in, and they are now available to purchase.    How to get yours is at the website at the Mailbox page.  We have only about 200 of these pre-printed for shipment before Christmas.  We will have more later since our last print run will be February 6th, but if you want them for gift giving, get your order in soon.  Tour T's.

Posters are gone!  Thank you, everyone who sent us your email request.  Guy is properly inundated with email, so give him a bit of time to get back to you to confirm it, but if you got your request in before two, you probably got one.  :-)

Big news today is the manic Monday of Glow-In-The-Dark Hollows Insider posters to help celebrate the mass market release of Pale Demon tomorrow!  It's a manic Monday of a rather large size, (Thank you, Guy!!!)  and I took some time out this long weekend to sign and stuff 100 posters into tubes to give out for shipping and handling.

Guy will begin taking orders at noon today, EST.  (Don't email him now.  Wait for noon.)  One poster per person, please.  The cost covers the shipping and handling (cost of tube, etc.)  USA shipments will take about a week, international will be a bit longer as there are forms to fill out and longer shipping times.

Shipping and handling is $2.52 in the US, $3.14 to Canada, and $4.97 everywhere else.  If you are in Germany, please allow up to two months for shipping as everything gets hung up in customs.  To make this as painless as possible for Guy, we are taking Pay Pal only.  Unfortunately we can't combine any other merchandise in with this, even the regular freebies.  Everything will go out First Class US mail.

If you are interested, at noon, EST today, (no earlier) send an email to Guy at vampcharms@comporium.net with the words Poster in the subject line.  If you are among the first 100, he will send you an invoice, so please include your shipping address in your initial email. If you do not include your shipping address in the initial email, he can not ship you your poster, and your order will not be acted on.  PayPal doesn't always put the address in, and it's frustrating.  We don't do anything with your address but ship you your poster.  We don't have the time to do anything wicked, and I hate it when people sell mine, so . . .

As usual, I'll update this post when they are gone to help avoid confusion.  If you miss out, I'll be having more shipping and handling give aways, and the Perfect Blood Freebies  are always available for the price of a stamp.

I'll be working on my NaNoWriMo book today, trying to hit that 50000 word mark by the end of the month.  The story is evolving, and that's kind of cool. . .

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!  Eat pie.

And keep it safe!

Not what I had intended this morning . . .

I must have been, oh . . . ten or so?  And if I was careful, I could stretch my allowance into two books down at the Little Professor bookstore.  I distinctly remember sitting on the floor between the aisles trying to choose between a Ben Bova trilogy and a Heinlein.  If I went with the Heinlein, I could get two, you see, but the trilogy was huge, and that made me feel important.  Three stores down past the pet shop was a branch of a the public library where they would let me take six more books home with me.  Sometimes, I'd have one read before we got home.

It was at that library that I found a small slim book with a girl surrounded by dragons on it.  I liked spaceships, but I liked dragons and wizards, too, and I can remember to this day the feeling of excitement as I stood in my ugly brown pants and striped shirt at the edge of a seating arrangement, my fingers crackling on the brittle plastic the book was incased in, and read the inside blurb where the brave girl ran and was rescued by a dragon telling her in a no-nonsense voice to "Stand up, you fool!"

I had it wrong, of course.  It wasn't the dragon who was talking, but his rider.  I can still feel my disappointment when I got done with the read that it wasn't the dragon speaking, but it was an emotion easily set aside. I was enthralled, and I ate the rest of the series up, enjoying them for the complexity and growth of each book, relishing it.

Even so, I don't believe it was an accident that the first time I put pen to paper twenty years later that I wrote about intelligent dragons who could talk in no-nonsense voices.  I think Anne would be pleased that her work held the idea of a story that launched another writer, and I'm sure I'm not the only one whose imagination was kindled by her own.

Thanks, Anne.  You will be missed.  You will be remembered.  You will never know how far your touch went.

A Perfect Blood Freebies

Every year I try to have something to give to you, the reader, at signings and such as a thank you for coming out to see me, and because I know that not everyone can get to the few places that I go, I like to make them available for a short time to everyone for the price of a SASE.  It's a challenge to find something that is small enough to slip into a pocket, light enough to mail for the price of a stamp, and cheap enough to give away–and still actually relate to the book.  This year it was a no-brainer, and I'm delighted to make available Rachel's pack tattoo.

If you purchase A Perfect Blood Tour T shirt, (ordering will open up on those soon) you get one of these in the package, but to get one without all the fuss, send me a SASE (self addressed stamped envelope) A standard business-size envelope will do, (6X9) One stamp is sufficient, but if you want the freebie for Pale Demon, put two on your return envelope since the cord makes it oversize on the width.

Mail your SASE to me at:

Cold Toast Writings

PO Box 498

Dexter, MI, 48130

I can't tell you how much fun Guy and I had creating these for you. These will also be available at signings until we run out.

Oh, and yes.  The tour cities are listed there, but I would not be surprised if there are changes, which is why I've not yet "officially" released them.

PS.  Pale Demon has made the official ballot and is in the finals for the Goodreads choice awards for best read of 2011!  You can still vote for one book in every category.  Go support your favorites!