Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 186

Edit Boot Camp

Well, I have used the last day and a half pretty productively. I edited 16 scenes yesterday and 23 today – rather more than my seven-a-day quota! Of course it pretty much includes all the short ones, which may come back to bite me later in the month. Still, at the end of my first week of the edit-or-die month my tally is 63 scenes out of 180.

(tomorrow is technically the last day of the first week but I'm planning to take it off so I can tidy up the house before the other half of the...

Blackout, by Connie Willis

This is, quite simply, the Connie Willis novel that her fans have been waiting for. With novels such as To Say Nothing of the Dog and The Doomsday Book, with stories such as "Fire Watch," her interest in World War II history and in particular the Blitz has been evident – but it has taken until now to produce her Great Blitz Novel.

The bad news for fans is, this is only half of said novel. The second half is being released as All Clear at the end of 2010. Little concession is made to the...

Seven Scenes

1. I have a guest post up at Justine Larbalestier's blog, talking about how reading has become a luxury rather than a necessity. I may be trying to do more about that shortly, but my priority right now should not be reading, it is EDITING.

2. The hardest thing about revising this manuscript (Book 2 of the Creature Court, Cabaret of Monsters, for those of you who have lost track) has been that although I knew generally that there was lots to be done, there was no real way of marking my...

More Locus Recommended Reading List

In all this excitement about being on it for the first time ever, I forgot to add, I used to play a game with the Locus Recommended Reading List. In the early noughties, I would make my own copy of the list and then go through, highlighting and counting how many I had read. (it would usually be a small number, low teens including short fic) Then, over the next year, I would work my way through, trying to read as many items off the list as possible. The delay helped accessibility, as...

Locus Recommended Reading List

is here.

I am on it, under Novelette, for Siren Beat. This makes me happy. One of those major career goals ticked off the list, then.

Other people I like are on there too. I am happy for them. Especially for Alisa of Twelfth Planet Press (aka  girliejones who has worked so hard to bring Australian authors to an international audience.

I have been a tragic Locus Recommended Reading List fangirl for many years. Among other authors, it is responsible for me discovering the works of Kage...

Suburban Sprawl

I've been seeing the table of contents for upcoming Twelfth Planet Press anthology Sprawl pop up on various author blogs. I feel particularly invested in this anthology, not just because I'm in it (with the only short story I've written since Jem was born!) but because GJ was staying with us as she sifted through the stories, finding the ones that would fit together to form the anthology (or something like it) that she had in her head. And yes, I managed to peek at some of the other...

Twelfth Planet Press Freebies

In honour of it being awards season, Twelfth Planet Press is offering free e-copies of Horn, A Book of Endings and SIREN BEAT through the month of February.

If you're eligible to nominate in the Hugos or the Ditmars, obviously we'd love it if you thought any of the above works were worthy of your nomination. (not sure when the Ditmars are opening for nominations but it's sure to happen eventually)

Even better, if you enjoy reading your free e-copies, consider buying a hard copy of your...

More on Macmillan v. Amazon

This is a really long post by Tobias Buckell, and it's completely worth reading – he explains the Macmillan v. Amazon situation really well but also talks about the pricing of e-books, and why it is the way it is right now, and why it has the potential to change in the future (and as part of that, why publishers would really prefer to have flexibility of pricing.

Charlie Stross provides an outsiders guide to the fight.

Amazon present a letter to their customers. The most interesting aspect is ...

Amazon vs. Macmillan

Cory Doctorow published the story yesterday, about how Amazon had dropped all Macmillan titles (including Tor, etc) from its site in retaliation for Macmillan wanting to charge more than the Amazon standard of $9.99 for e-books.

Macmillan themselves have put their side of the story at Publisher's Lunch, making it clear that what they wanted to do was to have a sliding scale of e-book sales, starting at 14.99 when the dead tree books are published in hardcover, and coming down eventually to...

Crunch and Crumble

January's over! Yikes. The end of the school holidays is fast approaching, which is good. I'm not nearly as far along with my rewrites as I wanted to be by this stage, but we can just call that another case of imaginary productivity.

There had better be nothing imaginary about my February productivity. I'm setting myself up for success the best way I can. When I haven't been able to work, I've been building up anti-guilt points, playing with Raeli and setting up activities for her so I...