MeiLin Miranda's Blog, page 7
November 2, 2013
Book 3 draft serialized for patrons, plus: I'm not @amandapalmer
I've started posting draft writing in book three of IHGK, something many if not most of you have been waiting for. It's only for patrons, though I'm going to give newsletter subscribers little tastes along the way. Remember this is "alpha" writing. You will note typos, editing artifacts and inconsistencies; I'm not going back and revising earlier bits if the plot changes or I foreshadow stuff. But it's an insight into the making of the sausage. 
Sad announcement: As it turns out, I'm not Amanda Palmer after all, which is okay because I suck at the ukulele, I look terrible in lingerie as outerwear, and as much as I like him, waking up next to Neil Gaiman doesn't appeal as much as waking up next to Velvet Ackbar. The free model isn't working for me any more and hasn't for some time. I can't keep up the pace and deliver quality that satisfies me, and even when I do the return on my time investment isn't there. With the advent of ereaders, the age of the reader-supported webserial, except for those serialists long-established, is past. Serials themselves can make it in ebook, but not free on the web, at least for me it seems.
I will not be serializing the third book, nor the next book in the Drifting Isle Chronicles. I was even going to pull book two of IHGK and book one of DIC, but on consideration I will leave those books currently up for all to read. As I find time to write more Scryer's Gulch that will also remain free.
This decision makes me extremely sad. It's been my business model since I started this site in 2008. It worked then--I made half our household income thanks to my wonderful readers. But now I make almost nothing off anything but advertising here. No one donates, I hear more and more that people don't want to pay when they don't have to--they devalue my work. So I've reluctantly made this decision. My books will always be Creative Commons and DRM-free, though. That will never change, nor will my love for those of you who've been with me since the beginning and those who've just joined us on this exploration of the Greater Kingdom and the Drifting Isle.
Ok I'm getting teary now...
October 31, 2013
Actual final new cover of Gratification Engine, really
I had to scrap the last two attempts on the Gratification Engine cover; the lady was just showing too much skin, and even though the painting was a freakin' Renoir, it wouldn't have passed Amazon or iTunes muster. There was a tiny bit of possibly-nipple showing. The shame! I am disappoint; she looked so much like Anda.
Anyway, here's what I finally came up with. It's a Boucher, which is about a hundred years earlier than the time period I based the History on, but it's a lovely painting--a favorite of mine, of a mistress of Louis XV of France. (I like Boucher a lot anyway.) The whole picture displays her very sweet bottom, so we only see her from the waist up. It also fits the cover better. Behold:
She doesn't look as much like Anda, but the general effect fits the story. And it goes nicely with the cover for Fairy Tales Vol 1.
Speaking of the Gratification Engine: its protagonist, Scholar Jep Burrman, appears in the opening segment of book three. He may possibly figure later. I'm still working that out.
Book three is far enough along that I'm going to start posting raw chunks in the patron area, starting tomorrow.
Allegories of the Tarot goes live today!
(Hey, you guys: We writers got this awesome page about the new book and I'm just gonna give it to you as-is--I can't improve upon it!--MLM)
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Get the Allegories of the Tarot Anthology in on Amazon (non-US: search on ASIN B00G6S9EYI), Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.
Add the Allegories of the Tarot Anthology to your Goodreads to-read shelf!
Swing by the Allegories of the Tarot Facebook page and enter the release-day giveaway of a custom Tarot box--complete with Tarot deck!
Who hasn't been fascinated by the mysterious Tarot, writer and reader alike? For centuries, fortune-telling by the Tarot has caught many an imagination, but nothing like what will be presented here.
22 cards... each an individual splinter of the human psyche.
22 writers... honing each splinter into a story of triumph and decay, arrogance and humility.
Stories of the brightest lights and the darkest corners of the weirdest minds.
22 cross-genre worlds.
22 portals into the Universal.
Only one way to get there.
Come with us. Cross the portals. The Universal awaits.
About the book
Once upon a time, there was an editor with a fascination for the Tarot.†She was struck one day by a crazy idea. "Hey," she said. "What if twenty-two writers each wrote a story about the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana of the Tarot and were fashioned into an anthology?"
The idea would not leave her alone.
And thus, the Allegories of the Tarot was born.
Crowdfunded by a campaign on Indiegogo with the help and support of an amazing group of writers, twenty-two stories were crafted around the mysteries of the Tarot. The group includes a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Pulp Ark nominee, a former Bigfoot researcher, a journalist, an award-winning YA author, and a Rhysling Award winner. Professional writers, new talent, and a range of genres boggling the mind:†Horror, Speculative Fiction, Bizarro Fiction, Erotica, Mystery, Humor, Paranormal, Epic Fantasy, Literary, Romance, and Historical Fantasy.
What has emerged is an outstanding collection of fiction, unique and mysterious. Stories that will make you cry, make you laugh, and make you think. Stories that make you feel the touch of the Universe.
Dare to step through the portal to shadowy realms and emotional journeys.
Early readers have fallen in love with the†Allegories of the Tarot
"Allegories of the Tarot Anthology is a magical book. Magic that will keep you turning the pages. There are muses, demons, †psychics,†evil,and more! I shivered, I laughed and I even cried. Magic, I tell you. Magic." -Julie Affleck
"Reviewing an anthology is slightly more difficult than discussing a book or comic because the tone varies from author to author. However, Allegories somehow flowed together as a well-matched whole. The project ended up feeling like several beads strung together to form a beautiful necklace that were more amazing for being paired together." -Jodi Scaife
"All twenty-two stories in this volume are, in a word,†superb. I found myself scouring the Internet as I read it; every story made me want to go find more work by its author.†The ultimate compliment I can give†Allegories†is to say that when I finished it, I thought how I envy those who havenít read it yet." -Lisa Millraney
Get the book!
Allegories of the Tarot is available in e-book and paperback format on Amazon(non-US: search on ASIN B00G6S9EYI), Barnes & Noble, Kobo and in multiple formats on Smashwords..
Don't forget to add†Allegories of the Tarot†to your to-read shelf on Goodreads.
Connect with the†Allegories of the Tarot†Anthology on its†website,†Facebook, and†Twitter.
October 30, 2013
Chapter 11 Episode 3 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Adewole wondered what Councilwoman Lumburgher would think of such an apology. “Those people are dead now, but their descendants live. I would tell them if you tell me. I want to tell your story, Alleine. Telling your story would be the culmination—the most important thing I have ever done, or will do. Will you tell me, since you could not tell them?”
“I already told you what happened,” she said.
“But I need to know more. I need to know everything—what the city was like, what your life was like, what Vatterbroch did. You will be helping everyone immensely if you do. You mentioned someone named Birdie. Was she another Machine God like you?”
“I’m not a Machine God,” said Alleine, her voice angry; the red light within the cube flared and subsided. “I was just inside one. Birdie wasn’t in one like that. She was in a different kind of one.”
Adewole mopped his brow with a clean handkerchief. He was not prone to sweating, but now he grew clammy, damp and miserable even in the dry Ossuary air. “Was she another little girl like you?”
“No, she was a bird, that’s why I called her Birdie,” Alleine said patiently. “She said she’d been a pigeon before. Or, she didn’t know the word pigeon. She showed me a picture in my head of a bird like her.”
October 29, 2013
New cover for "Gratification Engine" (Updated)
I'm working on bringing some of the covers I've done myself up to snuff. I've already redone "Accounts," and now I'm doing "The Gratification Engine."
I really like the way the Fairy Tales cover turned out, so I decided to go that route. I found a Renoir nude that reminded me a lot of Anda--a LOT. She's a little prettier than Anda, but the general lines are there. No naughty bits are on it, but there's a great deal of skin, so I'm marking this as NSFW; if you're reading at LJ or Goodreads, click through:
Buy the paperback, get the ebook free on Amazon!
Starting today, if you buy my paperbacks at Amazon--Machine God, Lovers and Beloveds and Son in Sorrow--you get the ebook free via the Matchbook program. I'm planning on implementing that here as well--automatic download of the ebook with the paperback--but I don't have time right this minute. If you have already bought a paperback from me, drop me a line via the contact form and I'll get you the ebook.
October 28, 2013
Join my newsletter to get an exclusive preview of my upcoming short story, "Vista Bridge"
Hey, folks! I have a book dropping on Halloween! Well, part of a book. Annetta "the Eddita" Ribken, my longtime editor, has included me in a tarot-themed anthology called, naturally, Allegories of the Tarot--twenty-two stories by twenty-two writers, each on the theme of a tarot major arcana card.
My card is the Wheel of Fortune, and my story's called "Vista Bridge." It's never appeared before, anywhere (and won't appear anywhere else for at least a year). I'll be previewing it exclusively to the newsletter people this Thursday (and the patrons in about five minutes--they'll get a little longer preview), and I want you to have a chance to catch it. Sign up here. To sweeten the deal, you also get a free, exclusive mini-ebook when you sign up!
October 25, 2013
Chapter 11 Episode 2 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
“Listen now, Alleine,” he said in the same exasperated tone his sister often drew from him, “a thousand years is a very long time, longer, I think, than you can imagine. You have been asleep. To you, it seems as if only a few days have passed. Am I right?”
“But you say that’s not so,” she said.
“It is not so.”
He could almost see her inside the iron box, chewing on the end of a non-existent braid. “Cherholtz is gone?”
“Cherholtz floats in the sky, like a big island in the ocean. The people here have forgotten it was ever called Cherholtz. They call it Risenton. This may be hard to understand,” he added, in hopes she would tell him more.
“Why would it be hard to understand? It was all I could think of. What would you do different?” she said in a plaintive wail.
Heart aching for her, Adewole reached to comfort the child, drawing back as he realized there was no way to do so. “I am sure you did the best you could. Can you tell me what you did?”
“I thought you knew. I got the city away from the Black Spring.”
“What is that?”
“For someone who’s sposed to be so smart you don’t know much,” said Alleine. “That’s where ichor comes from.”
So that’s what Diederich Enterprises uncovered, thought Adewole. “What did you do?”
“Well...it was bad,” she said, drawing out the words. “I took the city into the air, and I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t think.”
“Did Vatterbroch tell you to do it?”
“He wanted to tell me to do a lot of stuff, but he couldn’t do the spells. He got the first ones right, so I couldn’t hurt him or not eat—if ichor was around I had to go eat it or it hurt like anything, oh, worse than being here in the heart. But he sang the last spell wrong, the one that was sposed to make me do anything he wanted. I think he killed that Chorister before she taught him how to do it right.” The words poured out, the offhand, excited rush of a child who needed to tell someone something so important it was hard to tell.
Adewole leaned forward on his perch of rubble, hands clasped and dangling between his knees, his disbelief in magic banished forever. “How did he do this? With the Bone Lyre?”
Alleine’s voice shuddered. “That’s the worst ever. That’s what hurts the most. It always hurts inside the Machine God, but when he uses the Lyre it’s like he’s...” She paused, her voice overcome. “It’s like he’s taking my bones out all over again.”
Adewole forced down a shudder of his own. “But he failed.”
“I figured if I got away from the Black Spring before he got it right, it’d be all right. At least I wouldn’t have to eat any more ichor because there wouldn’t be any ichor, and then maybe I’d die. Because being in the dark like this is awful, Ollie, but being inside the Machine God is worse. Oh, it’s so much worse, please tell me no one can put me back in it!” she sobbed.
October 20, 2013
In which I am interviewed
Jodi Scaife has an interview with me up on her site. An excerpt:
Jodi: I’m most familiar with your Tremontine series and know that it began with Emmae and Warin’s story. What were your influences for the world building in the books?
MeiLin: The main one is a dear friend named Manoki, who’s a sociologist. I wrote a very rough version of Warin and Emmae’s story as a simple naughty fairy tale, and she BOMBARDED me with questions about their world. To my amazement, I knew the answers. She’s one of my beta readers to this day and still bombards me with questions. (I dedicated The Machine God to her.) Tremont is part Victorian England and part Imperial Rome. When I’m world building, I start there.
Thanks, Jodi!
October 16, 2013
Chapter 11 Episode 1 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
The air clotted in Adewole’s throat; the room pulsed and swayed. When he recovered his voice, shaky and horrified, he said, “I did not mean to wake you, Alleine.”
“Then why’d you feed me?”
“How did I do that?”
“Don’t you know? The ichor. You fed me ichor. I wish you hadn’t.”
She must have absorbed the lantern’s black mercury, he thought. “I am sorry. It was accidental. I was not sure what I would find.”
“So you didn’t come for me,” said Alleine in a small voice.
Adewole wiped his face on the back of his hand. Dust from his glove smeared across his damp cheeks and eyes, and he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe away the angry grit. He sat down on a flat boulder in the rubble. “No one knew you were here, child, not for a very long time.”
