This Is One of Those Weeks
Apprentice Treecat With My Annotated Copy of SK1
This is one of those weeks… Nothing bad. Just lots of things. What’s really weird is that all these things actually mean projects are moving ahead, but I feel as if I’m getting nowhere because I’m not working on what I thought I’d be working on. Does that make any sense?
So here are a few of the new things. The covers for the new e-book versions of the three “Breaking the Wall” novels have been completed. Cover art and design was done by my long-time friend, Jane Noel, and takes a completely different approach from the covers done originally by Tor Books.
We’re working on the interior design right now…
I’m grounding myself once again in the universe of the Star Kingdom novels that I co-write with David Weber. (Another long-time friend. I’m seeing a trend here.) It’s been over seven years since I’ve written a new novel in that universe, and I’ve had to ground myself in characters and locations major and minor, even in those little tricks of language that make the collaborations have the “voice” of the Honorverse.
Such as, you ask? Well, for example, treecats are often described as “flowing” from place to place. Or that when writing treecats “talking” to each other, contractions are never used. Or that the treecats think of themselves as “The People” and humans as “two-legs.” And that’s just the treecat stuff. Unlike in most of the Honorverse novels where the characters are adults, and as such fairly set in their habits, our main characters are changing in ways big and small in every book while in some way remaining organically “themselves.”
What else? I’ve read/am reading some neat things that I’ll be providing blurbs for. If you want a hint as to what, take a look at my FF and guess! Unlike some authors who provide generic blurbs, I only blurb stories I’ve read, and then I try to provide blurbs that in some way reflect a the work.
In case you’re wondering, Wolf’s Soul is still with my copy editor. I talked with her earlier this week, and she’s hard at work.
On a personal front, Jim and I celebrated our twenty-third anniversary this past weekend. We went up to Santa Fe to try okonomiyaki, which it turns out we both really like. And then we wandered around, looking at all the pretty things.
While chatting with a friend about all of this, I had an insight as to how I deal with too much all at once. Triage. What must be done, or the project stalls completely, comes first. Next comes what moves a project along. The wild idea of the moment—like messing around with the lovely blank journal Jim gave me for our anniversary—that comes last.
So, off to check something off the triage list!
