Kim Harrison's Blog, page 35

The title of the next Kim Harrison book is . . .

We have a name! We have a name. I am absolutely thrilled to introduce to you the first of the Peri Reed Chronicles, THE DRAFTER. ��(I know I said I’ve seen the cover, but this isn’t it. It’s just a place holder.)

Peri Reed takes her name from Master Commandant��Perry who fought in the war of 1812 to hold Lake Erie from the British. He is the man who is credited with saying,��“We have met the enemy and they are ours,” and his victory there got him promoted to captain as well as allowing Detroit to be retaken by U.S. troops.

Why name my main character after an often frustrated military captain, you might ask? I spent several summers at Put-in-Bay, a small island in Lake Erie, where they have a tall monument to the battle. The climb to the top is claustrophobic and wearying, but when you gain the summit, and the wind lifts through you, and you can see farther than you’ve ever have before . . . you feel free. At least you do when you’re twelve. And that is Peri Reed’s story.

The Bourne Identity��meets��Minority Report��in this first highly anticipated installment in #1��New York Times��bestselling author Kim Harrison���s sexy new suspense trilogy, featuring a brilliant special task agent at the top of her field and set in a futuristic Detroit.

Click to preorder

Click to preorder

It was an “author” day

Every so often I get a day that I feel like an author, a day where the usual grind of sit-at-desk, bang-head-on-keyboard opens up and something in this sometimes agonizingly slow profession moves forward in a big way. Writing “The End” is one of those days. Publication day is another, but as odd as it sounds, publication day doesn’t have much to say for itself until a week later when you know how publication day went. Turning in a manuscript is a big relief, and then the editorial rewritten one. Hearing from the marketing people is always a big boost, with news of cities and such. (Slow down. Long time to go yet for that.)

But Friday, it was a double whammy with my day spent getting my new back cover photo taken, (sans the red hair, mind you) and then coming home, exhausted and ready to wash off the make-up to find a most precious email had been smoldering in my inbox most of the day.

I have seen the preliminary cover, and it is gorgeous! Absolutely wonderful. You’re going to look at it and go Huh? but trust me, it’s perfect in so many ways.

And if the cover is being prepped, then it’s high time to release the title, eh?

Come back tomorrow. I don’t want to jump any guns and feel the need to check with my publisher first, but hey, It’s time. :-) I can’t wait for you all to read it this late August/early September.

Early bird peek at a one paragraph blurb is at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Click for synopsis

 

Click for synopsis

The Cardinal Called It

This morning I heard the first cardinal singing from the top of a paper birch, calling for an end to winter. It’s hard to believe him right now with a foot of snow in the yard and piles as high as I’m tall, but the heat of the sun making icicles is hard to ignore, and he probably feels it pretty good up at the top of that birch. He’s a lone voice right now, but more will follow, chasing winter away for another spin of the wheel.

Is this really necessary?

It’s four today as I toddle off to work and crank up the space heater. Four, as in the number of fish I have in my office, the number of gargoyles tucked in secret places, and the number of sharpened pencils I have in my cup. I generally like the number four, but in this case, I don’t think four is a good number to be hanging about on my thermometer outside my window.

Oh, but now it’s five. The trend is good.

desk guardians

We all have them. Admit it. Pika is one of my oldest, but here is my newest. He arrived around the end of the year, and after a nice long trial run at my desk, I do believe he’s going to stay. He’s nice and heavy and keeps my bird book from falling over.

Weekends are for finishing projects

I did more than watch the Superbowl this last weekend, and I took some time out to finish out a couple of projects that had been sitting around waiting to be finished. I couldn’t tell you why I didn’t spend an hour to finish them when they were fresh. I think in the case of the Monarch it was that I just didn’t want to be done. But the Monarch is by far one of my favorite pieces. It’s my own pattern, and I’d post it, but it uses a lot of my own shorthand, and I don’t know how to really put it out there so someone else could duplicate it. In any case, it’s done and gracing my mantle next to the lead soldier we found tucked into the floorboards and marbles I’ve found on the grounds while gardening. I’ll probably make a second Monarch next fall when I start to see them–if I see them.

 

 

Happy Groundhog day!

If the Phil had his burrow in our town, he would see his shadow this morning, provided he could burrow his way out through the snow. Wow! I got my snow fix, in a really big way.

So we watched the game last night. My mom made up the squares for the pool, and after divvying them up equally, discovered we had a few squares left over. I suggested we give them to Alex and Xander because we’d brought the dogs over with us. Guess who won the final quarter? Yep.

Are you ready for some football!

Are you ready for commercials! Or, er, some football! Or tailgating, or ribs, or wings, or chips and dip, and little brownies shaped like footballs, or Jello in you team’s colors or office nickel pools . . . I could go on.

It’s still a few days away, but I’ve been planning Superbowl Sunday for a couple of weeks now. This will be the third time I think for making an event (read excuse) out of it, and this year, even the boys are getting involved with the snackage, and I’m so proud of them that they’re bringing more than a bag of chips and dip but really getting into it.��My avocados have ripened up over the week, and I’ll be making guacamole and soft pretzels, but the rest is up to everyone else. Pictures on Monday!

The trick is going to be to keep my dad from turning the volume down on the commercials.

My friends, perseverance and repetition

I’m hitting that easy button today, It won’t be until it gets dark, but I’m hitting it, and then tomorrow I clean my office. Do I know how to celebrate the end of a rewrite, or what?

I think I’ve had my easy button for about ten years now, almost as long as Pika there next to it. And as I listen to my son scraping ice off his windshield as I take my pot of tea into my office for a last push on Peri, I’m reminded of why I work so hard to be able to work at home. Oh, that’s a cold, cold sound.

My son doesn’t stop to think that I did my share of scraping, or standing at a cold bus stop in the black of a pre-dawn Monday, or fingers so cold they don’t move but creak, so he doesn’t find it amusing when I say something to try to make light of his unexpected morning joy of lateral reps. ��All he sees is Mom taking a pot of tea into her office.

Sigh. Sometimes I just want to give him a shake and say “How do you think I got here? An easy button?”

Cold enough yet?

I feel like Legolas when I go out with my dogs ��’cause I’m walking on top of the snow instead of through it. Seriously, there is some major crust going on in my yard right now, and I can’t wait for some new fluffy stuff to cover it up. The dogs are’t too happy with it because their paths are all broken up, and with it being in the teens (bleah!) it hurts their little feet when they try to walk on it.

As I understand it, we’ve got one more night of really cold stuff coming, and then a slight warm up. No one is complaining much around here because of the devastatingly cold winter we had last year to compare it to. The city deer have rebounded better than I would have thought, and I saw about six a few nights ago in my neighbor’s yard. They’ve been all over the place this winter, running through the city residential areas and hospital, and I think we’ve got a potential problem brewing. I skipped protecting my hosta from munching deer last summer due to the low numbers, but this coming spring, I’m going to have to put out the good stuff or lose my tender plants.

But that is not for months and months, even if the seed catalogs are filling my mailbox. Pika is ready for it, though. He’s been on my desk for almost twenty years,��and he reminds me every day that this writing stuff? It’s hard. Don’t expect it to be easy, because it isn’t.