Rachel Hartman's Blog, page 13

2015, I’m coming for you

Happy New Year, friends! It has dawned sunny here in Vancouver, which should absolutely not be taken as a portent for things (especially weather) to come, but is welcome nonetheless.

For the last several years, I’ve been playing my friend Arwen’s New Year Naming Game (I don’t think that’s what she actually calls it, but that’s how I think of it). It involves looking at where you are and where you’re going and coming up with a single word that you hope will sum up – or at least be a recurring t...

The SERAPHINA paperback has landed

Y’know, just in case you still need a present for someone. Not that any of you are procrastinators, to be sure, but it’s possible some unforeseen accident has taken all your presents away. Perhaps they were hit by a meteor, or they ate some bad oysters. These things happen.

(This post is brought to you by my darling husband, who last night casually asked, “Hey, doesn’t your paperback come out tomorrow?” It is really just as well that all the marketing is not dependent on me.)

Io Saturnalia, my darlings

IO, darlings! IO!

It’s that time of year again, when we don our red caps and pretend we know Latin!

So we kicked things off last night with our feast. Atypically, we ate at a nice restaurant instead of sweating all day over rock-hard barley rolls. It’s not that we’re getting too old and soft to eat rock-hard barley rolls, it’s just that ever since the Great Flood hit our apartment, our classical cookbooks have been packed away. [Note to self: future Jethro Tull filk, “Too Old for Barley Rolls,...

More covers

Foreign editions trickle back to me in their own time, with little rhyme or reason as far as I can tell. Yesterday I received one that looked like this:

Isn’t that pretty? I think this is one of my favourites.

I assumed, based on the alphabet, that this must be the Russian edition, but my husband (who is some kind of language-bot, or possibly a dragon) said, “Not so fast! It might be Bulgarian!”

It turns out he was right, this is the Bulgarian edition, but that begged the question: what does the...

And now, a medieval drinking song…

We’re singing this in Madrigalians, and it’s totally stuck in my head:

Our version has juicier harmonies, but I’m kinda digging the crumhorn and pipes here. I’m not entirely sure why this version comes from a Christmas album, though, as this is a straight-up paean to beer, nothing Christmas-y about it.

But the best (or possibly worst) thing about this song is that you could keep on inventing new verses for it until the end of time. You just follow the pattern, “Don’t bring us X, because Y, but...

Shadow Scale, German cover

Seraphinahas done well in Germany, so it’s no surprise that my German publishers are quick off the mark with their Shadow Scale cover.

Dragon fight! Stand back!

Titles often get changed in other languages, of course, and I’m sure Shadow Scale will see this a lot. Those two words won’t always make sense, shoved together like that. The German title translates as “Seraphina: the Shadow Dragons Rise.”

Ooh! That kind of gives me shivers, right there.

The stars align

Or two of them do, anyway. Some of you may have already seen that Shadow Scale has gotten a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. Well, it has also received a star from Booklist.

Cue Count Von Count: “Two beautiful stars, Ah-ah-ah!”

Those are stars, not bats. Yes, I’m sure. AH-AH-AH!

Seraphina got eight stars, an unbelievable number, a rare convergence of the literary heavens. It took some work for me to stop feeling, neurotically, that the second book had failed before it was even written, becaus...

Morris season is here again!

That’s right, folks. YALSA has just announced the 2015 Morris Award nominees, and they look like a lovely bunch of writers (and books). As is our ancient and venerable tradition, we previous Morris winners will be interviewing this new crop of fresh-faced youngsters in the weeks leading up to ALA Midwinter. Watch this space, darlings! I will be announcing the schedule as soon as I know it.

Congratulations to all the finalists!

Welcome December

Made it through November unscathed!

Well, no, not entirely. But it was a better November than some I’ve had, despite the fact that our apartment suffered a major flood from above. Flooding sucks, although I’m sure it’s better than fire. It may even be better than famine, but it’s still a giant pain in the rear. I’m tempted to say, “It’s just stuff,” which is an attitude I try to have about my belongings in general, but in this case it’s not just stuff — or not primarily stuff. It’s time and sp...

The Seraphina paperback, coming soon

So I finally got a few copies of the soon-to-be-releasedSeraphina paperback, which is very exciting. Here it is sitting demurely on my windowsill:

With the sun right on it, it was too shiny from some angles. SHINY…

Notice that little yellow stripe along the right-hand edge of the cover? That’s what’s called a “step-back” (oh these fancy publishing terms!). You’ve seen such things before, even if you didn’t know it had a name. It means, essentially, that the book has a double cover, which is sup...