Kim Harrison's Blog, page 110

Busy, busy . . .

Sorry for posting so late this morning.  I got caught up in updating the website, and . . . you know. . .  -grin-  I've got some touring news for you which is kind of cool.  Friday I mentioned going to Comic Con NY, but they added a few spots in MI to round it out, so if you are near Lansing or Ann Arbor, our paths might have a chance on crossing.  (Whoo-hoo!)  Details are at the Events page.

I also updated the Hollows Insider page, but I think you've seen everything, there, and the front page is new too.  Busy, busy!

 

NY Comic Con Oct 14-16

Yep!  I'm going!  Surprised?  Yep, me too.  -grin-  But I am a publicity whor- ah, hog, and when my publicist whispered in my ear, I turned like a flower to the sun.  Seriously, I had no plans, but when someone said something about possibly having a ticketed, pre-sale of THE HOLLOWS INSIDER at the Harper booth, it was a no-brainer.  Yes.  Yes I will come.  (Just a guess, but I think they might have some more posters, too.)

For those of you New Yorkers, Comic Con runs October 14th-16th.  They still have tickets when I checked.  I'm on a couple of panels, and as soon as I know when the ticketed event is, I'll post again:

DEMONIC HOTSPOTS, INFERNAL PIT STOPS AND THE BADLANDS: THE GREAT AMERICAN ROAD TRIP TO HELL

Friday, October 14 :   Room #:1A15  :   8:45PM – 9:45PM  :  Kim Harrison, Patricia Briggs,  Anton Strout and Edward Lazellari,  Rachel Caine , Christina Henry, Duane Swierczynski.

WE'RE NO ANGELS: The Leading Ladies of SF/F

Sunday, October 16  :  2:30pm-3:30pm  :  Room 1A23  : Patricia Briggs; Alison Goodman, Kim Harrison; Jeaniene Frost; Marjorie M. Liu, Sabrina Benulis and Kristen Painter.

Hope to see some of you there!  I can't wait to see THE HOLLOWS INSIDER in someone's hands.

As for me?  I think we're going to see some sun today.  I hope so.  I need to get out on my bike bad so I can get a solid, exhaustive night's sleep.  And then there's that rock wall that needs rebuilding.  And two plants that didn't get in the ground before the rains started.  And the website needs updating.  And a meet this weekend.  Good thing I made chili.  :-)  I do believe my weekend just filled up, but I'm ready for it.  I've got some thinking I need to do on the next couple of chapters I have to switch over.

Best thing this morning?  I heard the sandhill cranes croaking.  THAT is a sound that can pull you back to your instincts.  They were all but extinct from this area when I was growing up, and knowing the balance is better now than it was thirty years ago is a very, very good feeling.  Mmmm, Guy knows where they are gathering for their migration.  Maybe if I smile pretty he'll take me out there. . . .

Have a great weekend!

steady progress

I've got about a week before I have to break from my current rewrite to do a page proof on A PERFECT BLOOD.  The timing is good.  I should have a large chunk of the next one tweaked with the changes I want, which will let me use running through the page proofs to refresh myself on where I left off, and then tweak the new one again for a final time to get the emotion flow as perfect as I can before I ah . . . have to rip it apart for my editor after tour.  -laugh-

But eventually they do get on the shelf, obviously, and I can't touch them ever again, so I want to make sure I've got it the way I want it.  And trust me, I use every chance I can to tweak.  I've got such a tweak in mind when I get to the page proof of A PERFECT BLOOD, and I'm anxious to see if I can do it with minimal disruption.  If it takes more than the change of a word or two, then I'll have to stick with what I've got.  We'll see.

Lots of soft rain here.  Kind of gloomy.  It's a hint of winter in the beginnings of fall.  Must drink more tea . . .  :-)

Let me tell you . . .

Today's post is going to be shameless self promotion.  -grin-  I'm chunking along on my personal rewrite for book eleven, waiting for the page proofs for book ten, and dreaming . . . dreaming of seeing an ARC of THE HOLLOWS INSIDER.  It can't be long now I'm more excited about this one than perhaps the last handful of regular Hollows novels. Why, you might ask?  It's just a world book.  Let me tell you . . .

Much of my time as a writer is inventing things to make my story more believable, more relatable to the reader so that they connect more fully, in short, believe in the magic so that the human condition I'm really writing about shines through.  The power fantasy has over us–the ability to give ourselves permission to see and understand the human condition–is for another post, and I truly think seeing the miracle of this over and over is one of the reasons I write.

Making things up creates a cushion of connectivity.  This is what I'm excited about with the release of THE HOLLOWS INSIDER.  I was able to make layer upon layer of it, going far beyond what my publisher originally intended.  I was given a task of creating a world book, but the framework was too small.  I wanted color.  I wanted illustrations.  I wanted a beautiful hardcover.  In short, I wanted everything, but I knew that it was far too large a project for my publisher to get excited about.  Unless . . .

I love the word unless, especially when it ties in with initiative and dreaming.  I gots both, and with fear in my heart that I was going to spend a year creating something that was going to get a pat on the head and a savage editorial knife, I secretly began writing something that I knew was not going to fly in the NY offices.  I learned how to work with forms and tables, the only tools I had to arrange things on the page.  I contacted an artist friend who had impressed me with his own initiative and dreaming years ago and had original artwork created of the characters.  I got a better photo-shopping program and played with it. Once I knew I could put it together, I hesitantly ran an idea past my editor of "What about having a newspaper article with pictures?"

I was terrified.  If she said no, it was over already, but like having one dwarf stop by, then another, then another until the house is full and the quest is fully begun with a hapless hobbit lulled into dreaming of dragons and adventure, I got the okay for that.  And if a newspaper was okay, then an arrest warrant for Trent couldn't be bad, either?  Right?  Right?

I worked, I fussed, I sweated, I went through cartridges of color ink.  I lived in terror the month that I turned it in, knowing my editor could see the potential of what I gave her and not knowing if she could sell my big vision to the rest of the group.  I felt guilty for not including her in it more, but I'd been afraid of hearing no.  I had done what I could to show my dream.  There was nothing, nothing I could do to show it better.  If it failed now, it was not to be.

I waited.

And then I got word that it would be a hardcover.  I smiled and imagined it.  Then found out it would probably be two color, and I quietly, with no demands whatsoever, sent new pages of full color goodness of how cool it would be if it had full four-color wonderfulness. The cover of Witch Weekly had to be color.  I'd never seen a magazine in black and white–layers of connectivity–I wanted them bad.  I rejoiced when I got the news that they agreed.  Four-color.  I had the beginnings of what I wanted, and so I wanted more.

I got the go ahead to run a contest for real photos from you the readers to be included into the newspapers.  I didn't know if you would do it.  I didn't know if you would be as excited about seeing the Hollows come alive and be as real as velveteen rabbits are to me.  For a month, you guys wowed me with the extent that yes, you believed, even standing outside your capital buildings with "down with tomatoes" signs and concocting elaborate sets.  I will always be amazed and thankful.

Now it's done, in production waiting for its release the Tuesday before Halloween.  (Oct 25)  I can do no more to bring the Hollows closer to you than this.  But if you go out and find it, know that what you hold is a remarkable event because it began as a softly kept dream fraught with both terror and the joy of self-expression.  Enjoy it.  If you find any mistakes, which I'm sure you will, I'm blaming Devin.  He's an unreliable narrator.

You can see sample pages of the Hollows Insider here at i09

You can pre-order it at Amazon, B & N  (It's also going to be released as an e-book)

Not much going on . . .

Not much going on at the Harrison household this morning as I bring in the house plants summering on my side porch–the ones I had meant to bring in last night.  I'm sure they are fine, but since the lows for the next 10 days are to be in the 50s, I might as well call it.  Ah, Michigan, the only place I know where I can make macaroni salad to beat the heat on Saturday, and then make chili on Sunday to warm the house up.  Seriously, I had my fireplace on last night through a couple of logs to take the chill off.  From 94 to 69 in one day.  Sounds about right.

Guy and I and Thing Two worked out butts off Sunday reclaiming a bit of turf that had gone seriously ugly in the name of contractors.  Moved a couple of bushes to shift a gate, which meant I had to unexpectedly replant another bush that was really to big to move.  I think it's got maybe a 30% chance of making it.  We'll see.  I also took some time to move another chunk of hosta from my front bed.  I swear, the entire three front beds were nothing but hosta and daylily's when we moved in, two plants with completely different sunlight needs.  The lily's have been out for over a year, but it wasn't until now that I could move the hostas I wasn't so fond of to a new place.  (Until now, I wasn't sure what I wanted there.)  Astilbes now add a much needed texture against the hosta that I did want to keep.

Oooh, and I got some asters for a buck fifty each to put in place of the Impatiens that I ripped out a few weeks ago.  They were overgrown, I swear, the ones in the back were up to my hip.  The asters are pretty much down to green now since they were promise plants, but they are perennial, and with some judicious pinching of flower buds until July next year, they should be pretty next fall.  You can do the same with the bargain mums they are giving away.  Just put them somewhere sunny and pinch the flower buds off until the 4th of July next year.

As you might have guessed, I didn't get to the ren faire.  Saturday was too hot, Sunday and Monday had the threat of rain  I've got all month.  Maybe next weekend.  :-)

I'll be honest, Friday was agony getting into work when the weekend was just sitting there, begging for me to slip into it early, but I was a good girl, (darn it) and I got a chapter switched over, leaving me to think about a big shift of character all weekend.  (psyche myself up, more likely)  It's going to impact about a third of the book in a large way, but I think that it's going to give me exactly what I want in terms of character and large story movement.  Fortunately it will join the original story in about ten chapters, and then I just have to tweak the emotional stuff . . . so there it is, my next two to three weeks of work all set out for me.  I left myself a month to play with this, and I think I'll be using it all, if not more.  No pressure though.  It's not officially due until the end of the year.  And then . . . rough draft!  I might be able to unofficially take part of NaNoWriMo this year, which would be very cool.  Get your outlines sketched out!  It's far easier to write when you know someone else is suffering right along with you.  :-)

Labor Day

I'll be taking Monday off from the drama box due to labor day.  For those of you not in the US, it is a holiday decreed simply for the enjoyment of hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, and hopefully, somemores.  A time to get to the beach, lake, golf course, or just your back yard or neighborhood park and enjoy one last fling of summer.  My macaroni salad is already made.  I've been tweaking the recipe for a few years, and now it's more of a sweet cherry, cranberry salad made with yogurt instead of mayo.  Yummy.  I'm going to try to get to the ren faire, but we'll see.  I like puttsing around my yard a lot.  Always something to do there.

It's going to be hard to keep sitting at my desk this afternoon . . .   I do so like my time off.  :-)

Keep it safe this weekend.  Seriously.  Take the extra time to keep them safe.

Winner of Ivy's Boots

About a month and a half back we celebrated the release of Blood Work with a contest for a pair of  those Penelope boots that Ivy wore on the cover of Blood Work.  I'm happy to say that they were won by Regina M.  Congratulations again, Regina!  You wear them well.  :-)

And thank you everyone who entered.  It was a lot of fun.  I do believe that Blood Work is still lurking about on the NY Times list.  -grin-  Thank you all again for that.  It's been a lot of fun, and the next graphic novel is almost ready to go.  :-)

But she who rests on her laurels gets funny marks on her back, and I'm busy with my rewrite of book 11, working a bit more Trent in there and removing the traces of the guy I took out in book ten.  I always say that I like the part of the writing process that I'm in the best, but I really think that I like this stage the most, where I have a product but my editor hasn't seen it yet, and I'm re-assessing the changes that happened in the previous book and thinking heavily about where I want to go in the book yet to be written, sitting pretty in the middle with the time and inclination to blow it all to hell and put it back together again in a way that works better than my first ugly scratchings.  (Dude, I think that was the longest sentence I've ever written.)  Having the time to play with options makes it a lot more fun.

Monday I read over the first half, which is where most of the freedom is to change things without breaking the original story, seeing what I could easily change to get the result I wanted.  Found out it won't be easy at all and might involve some shifting of characters. (which would be very cool in about three different ways!)  Made a few notes.  Thought about it all night.

Tuesday, deleted most of my notes and wrote new ones when I said good-bye to a few things I really wanted to do but were not feasible.   Started making new notes on the chapter pages of what to change and what the effect would be to see if it would hold up better down the line.  It's a bad case of eating my cake and wanting it too.  If I can simplify things, that would be great, too.  Thought about it all night and ran a few things by Guy for plausibility.

Wednesday I did a quick run through of proposed changes in my mind and talked to Guy, more to get things settled in my mind than really asking his opinion.  Broke into chapter one and started the shift.  I'm not settled in everything, but I can get a few things going before I have to make a big, final decision.

Today I plan on going lightly over chapter one again to make it sensory-tight and grounded, and probably get through chapter two and maybe three.  Three is where the decisions I'm making are going to get sticky and impact everything else.

Music in my office has shifted, as well.  More energy, darker, more variety of sounds, lyrics.  It won't last, but while it does, I'm going to enjoy it.  It probably has something to do with the stage of writing I'm at, but it also could be that I'm getting itchy for the house to become still and mine again.  There's a stillness that only comes when school is back in session, an aloneness inside the house and out in the yard that frees the imagination another degree.  Making it wide open.

Timing is everything.

Bittersweet

I've got a bittersweet post for you today.  I've steered clear lately of the depressing state of Borders closing their doors, but I had the opportunity to take part in Babel Clash's last guest post.  (Border's SF/Fantasy blog) I was the first guest way back on spring 09, and I was honored when they asked me to be their last.  I also did a Start Wars Sunday post for them which you can see at the same link.  Babel Clash–Kim's thoughts on StarWars and the evolving book industry

And along those same lines, if you are an author concerned with pirated works and the daunting task of trying to protect your rights, go check out my agent's post today.  If I'm understanding it correctly, Curtis's clients are already enjoying this new protection as the agent puts on yet another hat, but it looks like you can buy into the service as well.  Too cool. Pass it on . . .

As for me, I've set aside my anthology offerings to start my rewrite of the next Hollows novel.  It won't be the last, since my editor won't see it until December, but I think it will be the most extensive as I have totally ripped it open in my thoughts and am now rearranging the insides.  The outside, oddly enough, is going to remain largely untouched, though very much simplified.  I may actually start adjusting the text today, and I can't wait!

Trent . . . on my mind.

I got a very late start today, mostly because I didn't fall asleep until last night became this morning, but the way I see it, if you have to be awake staring at your ceiling, you may as well be thinking about Trent, eh?  I'll be honest.  The man has been on my mind a lot lately.  The Jenks/Trent short (which I've decided to call MILLION DOLLAR BABY) has shifted a few thing in my thoughts, and I need to make a few decisions.  That I'm about ready to start a new rough draft in a few months adds into it, too.

My morning is rapidly drifting away, so I'm going to leave you with a song I found a few years ago by the Foo Fighters.  It's always spoken to me of the hidden nature of Trent, and . . . Damn.  It just keeps getting better.

The "right" stuff

One of the best things about having accidentally moved last year has been living in the "city" again.  It's a rare day that I don't see at least a dozen dogs being walked by my window, their owners getting as much exercise at the dog. Skateboarders, runners, and lots of bikers.  Ann Arbor is known for its bikes, and that spills out into the smaller towns so they can get their 20-100 mile ride in.  It's not unusual to see people in specialized uniforms and bike helmets, even right outside my window as they get to the hilly paved roads we're known for.  Weekends bring so many bikes on the road you'd think it was a road race.  Seeing all these slim (or slimming) people out working on their health is a great goad to getting yourself out, working on your cardio or muscle strength.

Pulled into the sport last year, Guy has been biking himself into better shape, me reaping the benefit of those tight biker shorts, but it wasn't until Thing Two got involved that I became jealous of them having something to do together that was mildly competitive.  I miss the time I used to spend with my boys, and I look for ways to keep involved, not just at the side line, but actively involved.  (We used to do martial arts together until I damaged my lower back, and then we moved and just didn't find a school we liked.)

For almost a year now, I've been tripping over specialized shoes with toe clips, washing water bottles, and finding wrappers to tiny candy bars and salt blocks.  Strange sets of biker clothes, jerseys, special socks, head bands, and gloves keep showing up in the laundry with specialized washing instructions.  I can't do much more than hang them up and hope the right person takes them to their closet because both Guy and Thing Two keep coming home with new clothes and knowing whom gets what is becoming a challenge.  (Honestly, it's like living with two teenage girls.)  There is stuff everywhere!  In the back room, my kitchen, the mail as they get more stuff . . .   But then I see them both whizzing by my window looking good in different ways, and I don't care.  Except that I saw something I wanted and wasn't sure I could have without sacrificing something equally important.

It takes me a long time to decide if I want to take on a new "hobby" mostly because I know if it doesn't fit into my demanding work schedule, I won't do it.  I've been exercising for almost a year to strengthen my back, fitting my 20 minutes easily into my day and not needing anything but an elastic band and some floor space.  (I don't like needing a lot of stuff to get things done.)  It works, and I don't see myself quitting.  Biking, though, is a commitment by the looks of all the stuff that has taken over my mud room, and I wasn't sure if I could handle not only the time it needed, but the things that go along with it.  These boys have a lot of stuff.

So . . . after a lot of soul searching, I gave it a whirl.  Got myself a cracker-jack bike with tires that can handle dirt roads as well as paved, a helmet, and one set of riding clothes, and went out for a quick 7 miles.  The verdict?  Not that bad.  Oh, I was bad at it, but I could do it, and I didn't need a lot of stuff.  I've been at it for almost a month now, not going at it as hard as Guy, (who gets cranky if he doesn't get a ride in every day) but enough that progress is being made.  I now have a nicer pair of shoes to bike in, though they are not the toe-clip kind and never will be.  I also bought a second jersey with long sleeves so I can bike a bit longer into the season.  I have a time/speed/average readout on my bike because I'm competitive, and I want to know if I'm getting better right NOW!  I have never eaten a salt block, and never will.  Guy and Thing Two are in it for a different reason than I am, but it came together for me this weekend when the three of us went for an early morning ride, my skills finally getting to the point where I'm not such a pansy and might be fun to ride with once in a while.  We came back tired together, having done something we could all relate to.  I might not have a lot of "stuff", but I'm getting out of it exactly what I wanted, and that works for me.