Kim Harrison's Blog, page 93

So I wrote a little fan fic this morning . . .

“Ivy, have you seen Jenks this morning?”

Ivy looked up from her katana, carefully balanced on her knees as she sharpened the blade and watched her latest reality TV show as we sat in the sanctuary and had a little dinner.  “Who?”

Pausing in my bowl of Captin Krunch, I hesitated.  “Jenks,” I said.  “Glenn wants me to come down to the FIB and look at something, and I could use his help.”

Shaking her head, she returned to her work, the slow, snick snick of the stone and blade comforting almost.  “No, is he some new client you’ve been helping out?”

The sweet milk and cereal went tasteless, and I set down the bowl.  “Jenks!  Four inches tall, wings, silver sparkles, attitude, able to give you a lobotomy and skates around on an ice cube?  Where are his kids, anyway?  God, it’s quiet in here.”

Ivy looked at me like I had slugs for eyebrows, moving with her vampiric speed as she stood.  I jerked back into my chair, startled, but she was only going to the door.

“How’s my girls!” Kisten exclaimed as the heavy oak door slammed into the wall.   “Ivy, take this, will you?  I’ve got your orange juice and butterscotch pudding.”

“Bout time you got back,” the tall, svelt vampire said, giving Kisten a little nip on the neck as she took the bag.  “Curse my coffin.  You got the wrong brand.”

I stood up.  Something was wrong.  “Jenks,” I insisted.  “Where the Turn is he?  We’ve been working together for three years!”

“A pixy?” Ivy said, and Kisten eased close, smelling of magic and mayhem.  He’d been dabbling in charms again.

“Honestly Rachel.  You have got to stay away from those demons.”  He said.  “Leave them to me.”

Ivy gave Kisten a worried look, her hand trailing reluctantly off him as she went down the long hall to the kitchen, grocery bags in arm.  It was about then that I noticed the suitcase.  Moving in or moving out? I wondered, horribly disturbed.

“He’s got 54 kids and he owns the damned church!” I said, and Ivy turned, a black, scary silhouette in the darker hall.

But then the front door burst open again.

“Rachel!”

I spun, shocked.  “Trent?”  At least I thought it was Trent.  And he had a gun.

“If I can’t have you, no one can!” he screamed, and I stood, shocked as he pulled the rifle to his shoulder and then . . . shot at me!

It was as if everything cycled down to that one moment, the entire three years of my existence, of leaving the I.S. to go out on my own, and the world I’d built, scratching everything out from nothing.  The bullet was too close.  I wasn’t going to make it!

“Look out, Rache!” a high pitched voice shouted, and I stumbled, silver sparkles blinding my eyes as I fell, tripping on the rug and hitting my head on the church’s old oak floor.  The bullet pinged into a different direction, burring itself into the solid oak framework, inches from Ivy.

Flat on the floor, I coughed, waving my hand in front of my face as Jenks hovered inches over it.

“Tink’s little pink dildo, Rache, what the hell are you doing?  Laying on the floor like a troll at a construction site drunk on cement.”

“Jenks!” I sat up, confused.  Ivy was coming in from the back kitchen, her latest vamp vixen in her had open to “fifty ways to eat your lover.”  Where’ve you been?”

“Right here.”  Looking like a cross between an inner city gang member and a theater guy, he landed on my knee, his dust shifting to a warming gold.

“Where’s Kisten?  He was just here.”

Ivy’s expression fell.  “Rachel, Kisten is dead.”

“I know!”  Slowly I stood.  Kisten was here, and he smelled like magic.  Jenks was not.  And Trent?  I looked at the church’s door, closed tight against the soft rain.  It was raining, and somehow that felt good.

Ivy set her hand on my shoulder, and my eyes jerked to her.  “You sure you’re okay?  You hit your head pretty hard.”

“Yeah.”  I looked at where the suitcases had been, but it was just my old oak desk.  There were pixy kids playing in it.  I’d told them not to, but somehow, I didn’t care right now.

“Yes.  Everything is okay.”

Hollows Audio

Didn’t sleep much last night, and I am dra-a-a-a-aging this morning.  Oh, man.  Lots of thoughts racing around, and for once, they were not about the story. No, the story is going great, and I’m eager to get to it, and the reason I didn’t get to sleep till about one in the morning was not a bad one.  Wasn’t a good one, either, it just . . . was.  I’m not worried about it, or anything else.  I do this about every other week for no reason, and it only means I’m going to sleep great tonight.  -laugh-  But this morning . . . typing errors, shaky fingers, that empty pit feeling in your middle until at least the second cup.  And boy does it taste good.

I do, however, have some cool news for you listeners of audio books.  If you remember last month, Sirius XM Radio aired the entire Dead Witch Walking twice every day until they got through it all.  They also aired an interview that Jocelynn Drake, Vicki Pettersson, and I did where we talked about ending our current series and beginning something new.  Tantor audio, who did the first five Hollows books in audio and found us the talented Ms. Gavin, has agreed to host this interview on their site, and you can listen in to it here: Sirius XM Radio Book Radio.

Tantor is also running a 50% off sale for the first five books right now, which I think is very cool.  I’ve got the link to get you started here: Hollows at Tantor.  I checked it out yesterday, and once you follow it to my books, just click on the one you want and the reduced price comes up.

I’ll be spending today finishing up chapter six and moving on to seven.  Whoo-hoo!  It’s getting interesting!

Little old, little new

I’m working steady on rough draft, hitting a milestone of sorts by finishing Rachel’s first day.  Most of the books take up a week or less of real-time, generally hitting five or six days.  I’m also just about at the 100 page mark, which is very cool.  My chapters are really long on this one, but I’ll be trimming on the next run through, and it will shrink.  Chapter six starts with a brand new day which should be refreshing, but she actually never got to bed, so she’s a bit cranky.  Someone died unexpectedly, but it was a vampire, so she’ll be okay.  -laugh-  Who killed her brought out an interesting aspect I hadn’t thought to touch on, adding to the issues at hand.  That’s one of the things I like so much about rough draft.  That, and it doesn’t have to be good yet.  And believe me, it’s UGLY!  :-)

Something kind of fun this morning for you if you’re a member of FB.  William Morrow, who is part of Harper, is giving away prize packs for the next two weeks.  I’ve no idea what’s in there, but it might be worth a look.  Here’s the link to enter.  14-days of prizes

I also got my ARCs of INTO THE WOODS, which I’ll be giving away come September.  They are beautiful!!  And seriously I think they are the longest page-count book I’ll have on the shelf.  More than 500 pages, split about equally between old/new Hollows, and new non-Hollows stories.

Indibooks

Barnes and Noble

Books-A-Million

Harper Collins

Amazon

Bit of news-and a bat adventure!

Last Friday, I implied that I’d have some news for you, nothing big, but fun, and then I forgot about it in a haze of Monday morning madness until a reader prompted me.   So for all of you who have been dying to know, I heard back from my editor on INTO THE WOODS, the compilation of Hollows and new stories that I wrote last summer, and they’re going to do a special promotion in early September, releasing one of the new stories in an e-book format for a minimal cost.  (There is so much new stuff in the collection that they can do this and not compromise the value–I am tickled.) It’s kind of like buying one track to an entire album, and I’m seriously curious as to what happens.  The story they plan on releasing is very different from anything I’ve ever written.  If I can say one thing, it’s that I had a fabulous time last summer putting together a collection to show that Ms. Kim is not a one-voice writer, and that whatever comes after the Hollows will stand on its own.

But it doesn’t happen until September, which is why I was kind of downplaying it.  The real story today, which almost bumped the INTO THE WOODS news into Wednesday, is that I had a bat in the house last night.

Okay, so Guy and I sitting in our kitchen, (which has a couch in it and a TV instead of an eating nook.  Lovely set up.)  and we’re watching A Bugs Life.  This is the one where Flick the ant makes a bird, and at the end it’s swooping around, scaring the grasshoppers.  Got the picture?  Swooping thing on a string, scaring grasshoppers at night?  Just at that part, something about the size of a robin darts over us at the TV, and back again. Not really believing it, we both turn, and yeah, it’s coming back at us.  Now, I’ve seen bats before.  I even pulled one out of my hair once when it landed on me in the middle of the night when I was sleeping in my own little bed.  It was the size of a mouse, the way a bat should be.  But this thing darting through my kitchen last night was huge!  It really had to be the size of a robin, and I had a good ninety seconds to watch it.

Thing Two was with us, and I was really proud of how the both of them reacted, working with me to slowly got the bat pined into a smaller and smaller area, turning off lights and closing doors and opening others, forcing this HUGE bat back outside.  We recently had some vents put into the attic, and I think that’s how it got in.  Someone is coming out to check and plug the hole.  It was kind of fun working together to get him back outside, but I’d rather not do it again.

Oh, by the way, my so-called alpha dog is a complete chicken.  She went and hid under the bed, leaving the beta to jump at it to try and catch the bat until we got her safely out of the kitchen.

Thank you, we’re all good here

Or perhaps, I could title this, Leave My Programing Alone, WP.  Sheesh!  Nothing like coming in bright and early and finding that powers that be who maintain your blog program have decided to add a feature which changed the background, and now it’s the same as the color of your print.  Seriously?   It took me fifteen minutes to figure out who was at issue, and then FIX it.  I’m very curious to see if they change it back and I have to fix it again before the day is out.  (Isn’t there a law that says you can’t make me think this hard so early on a Monday morning?)

But if I’m crabbing about my WP account, then you know nothing is going on here.  Had a great weekend out in the yard.  Thing Two wanted to plant a tree, so we headed out to a big, five-generation nursery that I get out to maybe two to three times a year to get a tree to fit the only place left on the property that needed one.  I thank my lucky stars it was his idea to get a flowering tree, because that’s what I wanted there.  After the tree was picked out, I went SHOPPING!!! and got a couple of hanging baskets and a black iris that I’d not seen before.  The best part was having some time with Thing Two. He’s got a busy life and snagging him for dinner is not always a sure thing anymore.  Happy, melancholy sigh.

So I’ll be chunking on chapter four this morning.  It’s sort of a transitional chapter, but it leads to fun things, so this week should be interesting.

Early Sneak Peak of THE TAKEN

Harper has this wonderful marketing tool of releasing early chapters of some of their books, and when I saw this pop up yesterday, I knew I had to share it with you.  This is the series that Vicki Pettersson talked about on the Sirius book radio interview where she, Jocelynn Drake, and I discussed some of the challenges and joys of ending a series and starting another.  (You can listen to the rebroadcast here, whether you subscribe to Sirius or not.)

Tantor-Book Radio rebroadcast

THE TAKEN is scheduled to come out June 12th, almost a month from now, so I have a feeling they might be releasing more chapters as we go along.  I’m going to gloat for about a sentence in that I’ve already read the entire thing.  If you follow the link, you can see what Kelly Armstrong said, and some critical reviews as well, but my short version is that you’re going to love it, and with the sneak peek, you can really get a flavor for it without risking anything.

Harper Voyager Sneak Peek of The Taken

Happy Friday!  I’m hoping to have some nice news on Monday about the upcoming release of INTO THE WOODS and a very cool promotion Harper has planned for later in the year.

Chapter Two

Chapter one is in the cabinet of awesomeness, and I’m staring down chapter two today of book 12.  The dialog I got sketched out yesterday, and after thinking about it all night, it feels skimpy to me.  I do two things, and three would be more solid.  So this morning, I’m looking it over and trying to decide if I’m being lazy (or anxious to get to other stuff)  by skimming over a possible chance to add more action, or if I would be adding action just for action’s sake.  Maybe it’s not a skimpy chapter, but a clean, concise one that has only what I need and no more?  (laughing at myself now.  I can justify with the best of them.)

But it feels like I’m skimping.  If I can find a way to wedge some action in that makes Rachel think about one of the issues she’s going to be dealing with, or use a magic that she’ll need later, then it’s no longer gratuitous.  Decisions, decisions.

Also, I took a look at the projected temps from here till June 1st, and decided to put my annuals and veggie garden in.  It’s a bit early, but we’ve apparently shifted planting zones.  It is amazingly hard to trust that, even when I believe it down to the souls of my dirt-soiled feet.  I sort of understand Stonehenge better, or at least the human need to harness what we can of the seasons.  Gardening is hard enough without having to guess when the last frost is.  And to have someone tell you that it’s shifted, even when you believe it, is hard.

Ready, set, go!

I spent the last week since turning in the editorial rewrite for EVER-AFTER with the tail end of a page proof for INTO THE WOODS, and then my first run through of something special I’m making available at the end of the year.  Yesterday, though, I went over the chapter outline of book twelve that I worked up a few weeks ago, and I found it still solid and with enough surprises that I am excited to work on it.  I’ve always said the series was 12-13, but until I had an idea that sparked, wasn’t going to commit to the 13th.  And yeah, it sparked.  I can’t wait to get into rough draft mode.

Writing rough draft is like no other part of the process, both mind numbing and exhilarating as first ideas are acted on and you get to see how well  you did your plotting and anticipating problems.  There are always surprises, but what gets me is the pace.  If writing is a cross-country race, (another lonely proposition of solo performance with the hoopla of competition at the end) the plotting is the flats where you stretch out and go, the page proofs would be the sprint, and the copy edit is the one to three people you find out in the lonely spots and test your strength.  But the rough draft is the hills, killer hills with long slogs upward that evolve into exhausting, fast spurts where your pace is off and your balance iffy and you almost twist your ankle.  That’s where I’ll be for the next couple of months, working on hills and improving my endurance.  It’s a long fight upward, but oh, the view is nice.

 

I am my own IT person. (And it kinda sucks)

I lost twenty minutes this morning figuring out why all my early evening email wasn’t delivered yesterday.  Turns out it was me, as I thought, and it was a quick fix once I realized what was going on, but a week ago, I got an email from an old server telling me they were changing things, and that I had to go in and tweak the system.  I didn’t, seeing as it was an old server we left three years ago, but in the no-coffee-I-was-in-bed-twenty-minutes-ago haze, I spent 19 minutes looking for it.

However, I do have something very cool for you today!  Way back in February, I, Jocelynn Drake (of the Dark Day’s persuasion) and Vicki Petterson (of Signs of the Zodiac) got together over the phone and talked to Sirius radio about our series ending and new ones beginning.  Jocelynn’s ANGELS INC will be out October 16th,  and Vicki’s TAKEN will be out June 12 –as in less than a month.   But you can catch a spoiler or three if you listen in to the archived conversation.  You get a bare sliver of what I’ve got going on after the Hollows, but it’s bones, just bones.  :-)

Sirius Radio BookRadio Kim Harrison

Thank God it’s Monday

Thank God it’s Monday and I can sit on my butt for the entire day.  I am TIRED of moving mulch, digging holes, leveling pavers, and putting in annuals that I will probably have to cover at least once before the frost lets go for good this year.  (Trying to get a jump on the summer color)  This weekend was a work-in-the-garden extravaganza, but it’s finally starting to look good, and I’m seriously wondering how Guy and I have gotten this much done since March.

The big thing this weekend was putting in the pavers under the gate so the grass doesn’t look sad with all the foot traffic.  I did one with rock on raw dirt, but the other set I dug out and put sand under them like I’m supposed to.  Also moved 30 bags of mulch, put in a small annual bed, set out lines for the vegie garden and planted my squash plants, went to the local garden club plant sale and bought some iris and put those in the ground, cleaned my outside furniture and set that up, and . . . ah . . .  I think that’s it, actually.  Pretty much.  I’m tired.

So today, despite all the little things I now wish I had included in the editorial rewrite for EVER-AFTER, I’m turning my eyes to the next Hollows book and see if I can’t put them there instead.  :-)  I tell you, it’s going to be interesting from here on out.  Can’t wait to see how it unfolds. . . .  And it will feel good to sit on my butt and do nothing but move my fingers today.  Ahhhhh.