Ursula Vernon's Blog, page 12

Sentimentality

I make a big deal about the ruthlessness of gardening and all, how I am a mighty slayer of weeds and bane of invasives, but the truth is that I just transplanted a plant that wasn’t doing well, and when I lifted it out, an earthworm was left behind in the hole.

So then I had to go back and get the plant’s worm for it because I was afraid that they might be friends.

Everything will be broken for a bit!

We are overhauling the website and migrating most of the prints to a third party vendor. If you are having a major art emergency, drop a line through the contact form! Otherwise…well, it’ll be pretty again soon, I promise!

The Raven & The Reindeer

…I cannot believe I did not update this here. By the way, I have a new book out!

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Amazon | Smashwords | iBooks | Kobo | Nook

Book tour!

Book Tour Public Events:

Monday 3/14:

7:30 pm

Takoma Park Library

101 Philadelphia Ave, Takoma Park, MD 20912

Thursday 3/16:

6:30 pm

An Unlikely Story Bookstore

111 South St, Plainville, MA 02762

Wednesday 3/23:

6:30 pm

The Red Balloon Bookshop.

891 Grand Ave, St Paul, MN 55105

(ZOMG I used to live down the road from there!)

If you’re local, please come out! I love to see people who know me as not-a-children’s-author. It reminds me of my real life, where I am weird and not entirely respectable and eat regrettable food and plant bulbs and have a pen name.

Cover Reveal!

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(I have good luck with skull covers, what can I say?)

Release date in early February, about to go out to my faithful proofreaders!

Razorback

A new short story–or, anyway, new if you’re not a subscriber–now available for free on Apex Magazine!

Razorback

It’s based on an old Southern folktale with a talking hog, and you know I couldn’t pass that up.

Book of the Wombat 2015

Okay! So people have been asking for a book of all these little journal entries, and I have put one together over on Blurb. (There’s also some photos and a little blathering and whatnot.)

Here’s the thing…it’s POD, it’s a photobook, full color, the print quality is extremely high, and also it is ridiculously expensive.

It’s 72 pages and it costs 36.99. I make a whopping $2 off it.

It is okay not to buy this! You are totally not a failure as a fan! I literally made this so I could order ONE copy for myself because I do these pages digitally and I wanted something I could look at later!

There is also a PDF version available through them. It is 5.99, and I feel that’s absurdly high as well (I make $1 off it!) but if you really want a digital copy with all the journal pages in one place, you can get one! (Looks good on iPad mini, I can testify.)

I am very sorry that I can’t get the price down any farther on those, but literally the only way to do it is to do an actual print run and have actual stock and that involves a zillion books and me having to mail them and I cannot cope with that. So this is what we’ve got. It is possible that someday we will have a better option available! This may not be your only chance forever! And I really don’t expect anyone to buy it, and I really just wanted my copy. And one for my Mom. But people kept saying they totally wanted one, so…here’s what we got.

If you would like to check it out–there’s a preview, so you can see what it looks like–it’s here.

(Yes, the plan is to have a Book of the Wombat 2016 and so forth as well. I just want ‘em all for my shelf, since I don’t keep physical sketchbooks anymore.)

Journal Pages Dump!

So many…so many…

 

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Click the thumbnails for full-size pages

 

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And that gets us caught up through December!

Happy New Year!

[image error]One of my first serious experiments with the Procreate iPad app. In some ways, it handles very complex images better than dashing off quick doodles. But anyway, festive cabbages and a happy new year! Thank you all for being who you are, since it allows me to be who I am, and that’s pretty cool.

(I am shamefully behind in uploading Journal Pages. Next year!)

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New Hound, of course, wishes everyone a New Year filled with treats and ear rubs.

Year! In! Review!

Well, 2015 draws to a close, and I think I speak for most of us when I say “Wait, how is it not still October?” I think I lost the last quarter of the year somewhere.

It was a year. Yep. Twelve months, apparently.

Let’s see. Professionally, it was quite a year. In 2015, I published four books and re-released another–Castle Hangnail, Hamster Princess 1, and Dragonbreath 10, as Ursula Vernon and Bryony & Roses and Seventh Bride as T. Kingfisher. Three short stories–“Pocosin,” “Wooden Feathers,” and “Telling the Bees.” Sold 3 more hamster books and a standalone middle-grade novel, wrote and sold two short stories and a novelette that will be out next year. And got my first movie option, to Disney, for Castle Hangnail.

In prep for next year, I finished off art for Hamster 2, did all the art for Hamster 3, and the art for Dragonbreath 11. (That’s around 350 drawings, all told.) I also wrote Dragonbreath 11, Hamster 3, and am about halfway through both Hamster 4 & another standalone, Illuminations. Finished The Raven & The Reindeer as T. Kingfisher. (Books often span multiple years for me, so I’m never sure how to record them. Here–“Worked on other future books.” There, that should cover it.)

Also, I won a Nebula and a WSFA Small Press award and got an Alfie and got nominated for a World Fantasy Award, which basically went down and ticked off a bunch of boxes on the ‘ol life goal front.

I am still a little boggled by all that. It would be hard to top 2015 in terms of professional goals accomplished. I’m on track for almost the same number of publications next year, lord willing and the creek don’t rise, but I’m really quite okay if things take a bit of a breather in 2016.

Creatively, I did fairly few paintings last year that weren’t for a book, but I did at least four I’m quite proud of. And I started doing these weird little journal pages, which is probably the greatest accomplishment of the year, and they clicked somehow, because I didn’t get bored with them after doing three, which is my usual M.O. Recorded a bunch of podcasts–like 150 Hidden Almanacs, if my math isn’t wrong, and a couple dozen KUECs.

In the garden, I laid a couple thousand pounds of stone, finished off one of the paths, got the front Under Control (at least for a few years.) Grew a lot of beans, one perfect squash, a bunch of cherry tomatoes and ground cherries, and All The Peppers, including the terrifying Carolina Reaper. I also cracked 500 species recorded in the garden! (Mostly moths.)

When I look over all these things, it seems like the story of whales eaten one bite at a time–huge projects completed just by plugging away, day in and day out. Which is basically what I’m good at.

In travel, went to Botswana. Which was amazing. The big thing. This will be the year I remember as “the year I went to Botswana.” It was huge and wild and mind-boggling. Did a few local trips in the US as well, did some birding, did a book tour, met a lot of people.

Personally is where the year got hard. We lost both Brandon the dog and Angus the cat at the beginning of the year. Brandon was expected, somewhat, as much as you ever expect these things, but Angus was out of the blue. Our eventual quest to get another dog was much more fraught and stressful than expected, but near the end of the year, we wound up with Lacey, aka New Hound, aka Houndoom, who is a lovely, loving, cheerful dog. (She thinks her name is “Sweetie-bear” but as she does not come when called, this is not a problem.) We also got two new kittens, Tiny Orange & Tiny Tortie, who have real names which no one uses, except occasionally Kevin.

And this was the year I finally went down for the anxiety count, and had to go back to meds. Which was a damn good thing, ultimately. Too many whales to eat, I think, and too much stress on top of it. I hope that next year will run a little more smoothly as a result.

But, y’know, Kevin and I continue to enjoy each other’s company and have each other’s backs. I have hobbies I like (and when the garden gets away from me, as it always does sometime in the summer, I have video games.) I have projects that I still like poking at, and people keep paying me to make weird podcasts and write weird books.

So–mixed bag of a year, all around. Great stuff, terrible stuff, a lot of stuff in between. Which is life, after all.

Happy upcoming 2016 to all!