The Flowers of Vashnoi bloom in May

I am pleased and somewhat surprised to report that a new Vorkosiverse novella is upcoming, probably in late May.

Title is “The Flowers of Vashnoi”, cover label is going to be “an Ekaterin Vorkosigan novella”, and the length is about 22,400 words, roughly the same as “Winterfair Gifts”.

As usual, no pre-order will be set up; you can just buy it when it goes live, at our usual three online vendors Kindle, iTunes, and Nook. I will certainly post the news when that occurs.

Final revisions are almost complete – it’s down to the stage where I spend all morning adding two sentences and all afternoon taking them back out, which is generally a sign to stop. The other part to be nailed down is the e-cover, still in development, so no sneak peek yet.

Possibly my shortest novella, this one has, oddly, taken the longest of anything to complete. My computer files claim I started the first draft back in November, 2011. (I could not even remember.) It ran along well for a while, then hit a brick wall and died on impact, I thought. I believed it was buried forever, but apparently it was just cryofrozen, because it came back to life a couple of months ago when I was trying and failing to boot up a new adventure for Penric and Desdemona. When my backbrain hands me a gift like that, I’ve found it’s better not to refuse it.

Like starting any car that’s been in storage too long, there were snags. At first I thought it needed a new viewpoint added, but I tried a scene that way and it just didn’t fit in. There were some other issues, including confusion as to length. I’d thought it was supposed to be much longer; it turned out the key was to let it be shorter. Then, at last, it began to move. I knew I was getting somewhere when the real title finally fell into place. Ah. Aha. So there.

Figuring out the best time to announce an e-publication is an on-going experiment. Too early, and people will have forgotten it by pub date; too late, and there isn’t time for word to get around. One week’s notice, last time, seemed too tight. I shall try 3 – 4 weeks this outing and compare. (I’m sure someone with a much larger data set than mine has an algorithm for this.)

Ta, L.