Stephanie Burgis

Journal move!

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Sat, 2 May 2009 19:01:00 GMT

Just a quick announcement, then - I've been mirroring content here and on livejournal for a few years now, and I think, all in all, that it's probably been long enough. (Also, to be honest, with a baby in my lap 99% of the time, it's hard enough right now to get my hands free to write one journal entry without taking the extra time to duplicate the entry over here!) So from now on, I hope you guys will read this journal over at my LJ:

http://stephanieburgis.livejournal.com.

See you over there! :)

Bookstores, Evil Ingredients, Cocktails, and Red Ribbons

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Sat, 2 May 2009 10:14:00 GMT

Sadly, I couldn't participate in yesterday's "Support your local indie bookstore" day (or whatever the official internet title was), because as far as I've been able to discover, Leeds has no local independent bookstores. Sigh. If I had been in East Lansing, I would have gone to Schuler Books, my favorite independent general bookstore, and if I had been in Toronto, I would have gone to Bakka-Phoenix Science Fiction Bookstore, my favorite specialist bookstore ever. Since I was in Leeds, though, and couldn't do either of those things, I did at least buy 4 novels in Borders this week, in place of my usual monthly Amazon order. So I felt I had at least done my bit for supporting physical bookstores, if nothing else. Plus, it was great to be able to spend a whole afternoon hanging out in the Borders cafe with MrD, browsing through a whole shopping basket full of books for me and him, and eating a bar of good dark chocolate.

(I also had an egg salad sandwich, but it was made much less exciting by the fact I had to scrape the filling out and just eat that with a spoon, since the bread turned out to have soy in it. Why is there soy in everything????? Sigh. Until MrD was diagnosed with his dairy AND soy allergies, I had no idea how hard it is for people with allergies to eat anything in cafes and restaurants. Did you know that even the pizza dough in Italian restaurants has soy in it? Never mind, I'll stop ranting now. But I will say that the one shining advantage of Starbucks, for all its Evil International Conglomerate status, is that they keep a book of ingredients listings for all their food, with tick boxes showing exactly which potential allergens are in each of them, and the Starbucks staff acts like it's perfectly normal and OK to ask to see that list. This makes such a difference to my whole experience, and it's a particularly strong contrast to the attitude at the one independent cafe in downtown Leeds, where the waitresses heave great sighs of irritation and impatience and roll their eyes at each other pointedly whenever I ask if they could please, if they wouldn't mind too much, take the trouble to find out whether their food has any ingredients that could cause internal bleeding in my son...yeah. So I am becoming an unashamed fan of Starbucks after all.)

And then yesterday I completed my round of decadent pleasure by going with a friend (and both our babies) to the Harvey Nicks cafe, drinking lovely nonalcoholic cocktails, eating luscious chips (french fries), and gossiping about all sorts of things. On the way home, MrD and I bought fun colored pens for Patrick and me to use in writing/revising, and apple-cinnamon hot cross buns for today's breakfast...and then I came home to the very cool news that my vampiresses-in-revolutionary-Paris story, "Red Ribbons", had sold to the British dark fantasy/horror magazine Black Static (formerly known as The Third Alternative). Woot! It's going to be published in the next issue, and I can't wait.

So it's been a week full of lovely things, and I loved it. :) Hope everyone has a great weekend!

New titles!

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:10:00 GMT

Woooot! I can finally announce the series title for my trilogy, and the new title for Book One (formerly known as Kat by Moonlight):

The Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson, Book One: A Most Improper Magick

Thanks soooo much to Jenn Reese, who came up with the series title! When you get here (in less than a month! yay!), I will take you out for excellent Yorkshire tea and take you to the abbey where Kat is set, and Maya will let you pet her for as long as you like! (Of course, she would have anyway...and I probably would have anyway, too...but all the same! THANK YOU!)

Today's entry...

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:59:00 GMT

...is actually at SFNovelists.com: The Frivolous Side of Publishing. And yeah, it really does expose the most shallow and frivolous side of me. Please comment so I don't feel too lonely over there! :)

Random rambling

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:27:00 GMT

I'm snuggled up on the couch with Maya right now, for the first time in ages, and it feels wonderful. I'd almost forgotten how lovely it is to be cuddled up to a warm, soft border collie! Poor Maya. She's been a total angel about MrD (the only thing she tries to politely avoid is getting any petting from him, since baby petting mostly consists of grabbing big handfuls of fur and yanking)...but life has certainly been different for her, to say the least, ever since he arrived. We keep telling her that when he's older, he'll be really fun to play with. She just sighs and gives us big eyes (or plays with her huge new stuffed snake, whom she adores and snuggles up against at night).

Between signing my contracts and mailing them off (woooot!) and Patrick finishing up the rewrites on his awesome YA Regency steampunk adventure novel (set on Mars, with dragons) (think Indiana Jones written by Jane Austen!), it's been an exciting and hectic week. Even MrD had excitement! Thursday was St George's Day, which usually passes me (and, as far as I can tell, everyone in the UK except for Lord High Mayors, etc) by without any celebration whatsoever. At the Leeds Central Library, though, the coordinators of Baby Story Hour celebrated St George's Day with a castles theme. The older kids (i.e., the 1- and 2-year-olds) showed up in elaborate prince/princess costumes, and the babies were all given pretty paper crowns. It was probably a good thing that Patrick, a firm anti-royalist, was at home working on his novel and couldn't attend! ;)

(I should say: I, too, am a firm anti-royalist, but, not having grown up in England, I still can't quite make myself take the English royalty seriously enough to be as offended by them as I probably should be. On the other hand, I have stopped writing stories with "rightful" kings and queens in them now that I live in a country where that's not just an interesting fantasy to play with!) MrD was very cute in his crown, though, and of course one of my friends at story hour referred to him as "Prince Darcy" as he wore it. :)

Ever since MrD was born, Patrick and I have been feeling our way toward a good division of writing/parenting time on Patrick's days off from the day job. Lately, we've both had deadlines for our novels, so we've taken long, intense turns in the last few weeks - first I got ALL the writing time while I did my copyedits, and then Patrick got his turn while he finished up his final revision. Now, though, we're blissfully free of time pressure (I have a draft of Book 2 due on June 1st, but that should be a very easy deadline to meet, since I finished the first draft last August), and we're finally settling into our ideal routine, where each of us gets a couple hours of writing time every day. MrD will be 7 months old in a few days, and in a lot of ways, I feel like things are finally settling into a version of "normal" that really works for all of us. (Knock on wood!) In the last few days, I've been taking Maya and MrD to the local park and hanging out there in the sunshine with both of them for hours, basking in pure contentment.

Of course, I'm still utterly and completely exhausted (and will be for a long time to come, I expect), and of course there are days when nothing goes right. But I'm starting to really, really like what "normal" feels like, nowadays.

Why Agents Matter

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:26:00 GMT

There's been a whole bunch of debate going around the blogosphere lately about agents, with some people wondering whether it's even worth having one. Beth Bernobich suggested that, in response to some of the real vitriol that's been going around, those of us who've had wonderful experiences really ought to share them (she called it #agentlove).

When I first started writing, of course I wondered how important it really was to have an agent. It's enormously tempting to skip the publishing queue by going straight to the editors themselves (at least to those who allow non-agented submissions) rather than spending up to a year querying agents beforehand - especially because, yes, it's true, it is really hard to get an agent, just as hard as selling a book. (Agents will only take on books that they LOVE and also believe are commerically marketable, just like editors, so it's very much an equivalent process.) But my experience and my friends' experiences have all taught me that it would be a really bad idea to do that, for both commercial and artistic reasons.

First of all, once you have an agent, you make up in speed all the time you lost in the first place while spending months querying. Some publishers - even the ones that allow non-agented submissions - can take years to respond, and they generally expect non-agented authors to submit to only one publisher at once. Agents, on the other hand, tend to submit to multiple publishers at a time, and to get answered fairly quickly. Secondly, in what may be seen as crass commercial terms: agents will get you more money, far more than you lose in the 15% commission fee. I NEVER would have been offered the deal I got if my agent hadn't fought for me and lent the weight of his experience and knowledge of the field in submitting my book to eleven different editors with the message that it was a Big Deal. My deal was an unusually awesome one; but you don't have to have an unusually awesome advance to make the agent's fee worthwhile. I have one friend who sold his book and then got an agent to negotiate the contract. The publisher had originally offered him one deal, which, as a first-time author without an agent, he would have undoubtedly had to accept; after negotiations with the agent, the fee rose by FAR more than 15%, and he got a contract that gave him a lot of rights that would have been kept by the publisher if the agent hadn't been involved. (Having just read my own contracts, I am SO GRATEFUL to have an experienced and savvy agent doing my negotiations for me!)

And on an artistic level, I am just so grateful for my agent's smart, enthusiastic, and perceptive input on my novels. That's one of the reasons you need an agent who's genuinely passionate about your book, and that's why agents who turn you down, as heartbreaking as that feels (as I know from painful experience!), are actually doing the right thing for both of you - they don't love your book, and that means they won't represent it passionately and convincingly to publishers OR critique it from the perspective of someone who truly gets it. My agent totally got the core of what Kat was about, his critique rang completely true to me because of that, and the book is so much better for the rewrite I did, following his suggestions. That alone made it far more likely to sell, and to sell well, than if I had just sent a publisher the draft I'd thought was ready before Barry read it...but more than that, I'm just so happy to have an agent who motivates me to always stretch further and write better.

Plus, as much as I adore my editor and hope to work with her forever, the realities of the publishing industry mean that authors often work with multiple publishers across their lifetimes, and it helps so much to have a strong industry professional on your side through any changes, working for you and your career, not just your current book or series.

(And yes: of course that doesn't describe every author-agent relationship...but it should. If you're an agented writer who does not recognize their own agent-client relationship in this description, I would recommend finding another agent. Because publishing is a scary business, and you really deserve to have that positive, supportive relationship on your side.)

So. I'm guessing that this will all be old news to the agented writers who read my journal...but just in case there's anyone still wondering, the way I used to, whether it's really worth taking the time and effort to get an agent for their book - my answer will always be Yes.

Giddy - and some long-unspoken truth

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:46:00 GMT

So, this afternoon it took forever to get Mr Darcy to fall asleep for his nap. I finally managed it...and there was a loud knock on the front door. Cursing, I gathered up (the now-wide awake and crying) MrD, answered the door - and discovered that it was my book contracts being delivered.

OMG. OMG, OMG, OMG!

There are very few things that are worth waking Mr Darcy from a nap...but this was definitely one of them!

I thought I knew that this whole thing was real - I mean, the copyedits were pretty persuasive - but I just had no idea until now.

I'm so giddy, it's hard to think straight. But as I was dancing around the room with MrD and Maya, I suddenly started crying from sheer gratitude and relief.

This isn't just fulfilling my biggest dream ever since I was seven years old (almost 25 years ago). This is absolutely saving us.

I've talked before about how Kat by Moonlight (or whatever the official title will actually be!) was always the book of my heart, the book I wrote because I had to, because the characters were calling to me, even though I thought it was the commercially crazy choice of projects, and even though I truly believed that I could only ever sell dark, angsty adult books. I wrote it anyway, just for fun, just for myself.

But I haven't talked so much - at least, never in any public posts - about why. About what was going on in my life when I gave in and wrote Kat for love, against all my commercial instincts.

I got sick in 2005. Really sick. Sick for months, and no one knew why, although there were lots of different theories raised. Months passed. My day job gave me the option of either being cut down to half-time or being fired for being too sick for too long. I chose Option A, and our finances suffered. Eventually, though, in spring 2006, I got better. I thought I was over my Mystery Illness, and lo, there was much rejoicing. Then everything went wrong, in one smooth streak. Two relatives died. Our beloved dog Nika died of a long, horrific, painful illness that summer. I went into shock. And then, in November 2006, I got sick with the Mystery Illness again. And I just didn't get any better. In fact, I got worse, to the point where I couldn't even walk to the end of the block without shaking with muscle tremors, pinned to the couch and barely able to move for hours afterward.

Months went by. I finally found out - by accident, when the receptionist told me! - that my doctor had a new theory of what was wrong. And she was right. In February of 2007, my company paid to send me to an occupational therapist, who gave me the same diagnosis I got officially about a month later, from specialists in that illness: Myalgic Encephalomyalitis (ME), known in the US as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).

I quit my job just before they could fire me. And I went into a really black hole of unhappiness.

A person who can't work in our society - who can't bring in an income - is a useless person, by unspoken definition. No, I take that back - it is spoken all the time, by every person and politician who complains about the "slackers" who live off benefits and "pretend" to be too sick to work.

I couldn't work. I couldn't bring in any income. Our finances got scarier and scarier. I felt like a completely worthless person, despite all of Patrick's love and support.

Writing Kat was what got me through it. I abandoned the serious, angsty adult novel I'd been trying to write. I wrote Kat for myself, despite all my panic - we were desperate for money, how could I write something I knew was too quirky and individual and personal to sell????? - because writing Kat kept me sane. Kat and her sisters made me laugh instead of cry, and in Kat's reckless courage and self-belief, I could let out all my frustrated desire to run and jump on horses and have adventures, even though I was physically trapped by my illness, forever lying on a couch. There were some days that I couldn't even stand up without Patrick's help. But I could write Kat's adventures, and I did, and they kept me going. I finished Kat, I started sending it around to agents, and as 2007 turned into 2008 and the sickness didn't get any better, I wrote the sequel against all common sense, because it was the only thing that could keep me going and keep me from despair about my illness, about our finances, about my value in society.

And now here's something else I've never publicly said before, because talking about money somehow feels just as shameful, in a different way, as talking about illness.

My wonderful, fabulous agent got the Kat trilogy a 6-figure advance.

When I first found out, on the phone last summer, first I screamed with joy and shock, and then, after I hung up, I cried. And today, looking at the contract, looking at the money that's going to come in and save us, and looking at my beautiful baby, who brought with him a near-total remission of the CFS after years of illness, I cried again, with amazement, with relief, with gratitude, and with the after-shocks of all those years of illness and financial and emotional terror.

We're going to be all right. I can go on walks with Patrick and Maya and MrDarcy now. I can be a real mother. I can visit schools and give talks to promote my books. And we can pay off my student loans, move into a bigger and healthier house, maybe even buy a house, which I never thought would be possible. I can contribute to my family, not just financially but in every way.

And it all comes down to Kat, the girl who wanted to save her sisters, and ended up saving me.

I am so grateful.

Whew

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:46:00 GMT

The weather and Patrick both came to my rescue yesterday. It was a hot, sunny day, for once, and instead of staying in the house for me to spend the afternoon slumped in my chair thinking about how tired I was, etc, etc, all four of us jumped in the car and drove out to Fairburn Ings, an RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) wildlife reserve that we'd heard of but never visited. And oh, it was perfect. It was only half an hour's drive from our house, but it felt like a different world out there, walking along the boardwalks and trails between the river and the lake and various marshy areas full of beautiful and unusual birds. The sun shone on us, Mr Darcy observed Maya-sized swans with a careful and serious attention, Maya wagged nonstop, and I felt the tension just melt out of my shoulders.

We spent about two hours there, and only left at 5pm because the parking lot was about to close. Next time, we'll go much earlier and bring along a packed lunch so we can sit by the lake, watch the birds, and relax for a lot longer.

And finishing the day off to perfection, we decided to try out another new-to-us experience by going to Prashad for dinner. It's a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Bradford that had been recommended by Shana Worthen, and OMG...by the time we left, I was practically floating from pleasure. The food was SO GOOD. They've supplied some recipes (and instructional videos for them) on their website, and if you can't visit Bradford to eat their own version, it would definitely be worth trying out the recipes! It's just a tiny family restaurant, with only 24 seats, but the chef has won the UK's Top South Asian Chef of the Year award, and with so much great Indian food in the UK, that's saying a lot! Mr Darcy loved it too, because we were seated right next to a full-length mirror, which meant that he got to spend almost the entire meal playing with the gorgeous and intelligent baby in the mirror next to him. :)

The sun is still shining today, and I am in such a better mood. Whew!

Thank God for funny books...

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:21:00 GMT

Aaagh. The last 24 hours have been bad, bad, bad, starting with even-worse-than-usual nighttime sleep sessions on both Friday and Saturday nights (poor teething baby!) and moving seamlessly through financial and technological bad news/disasters...sigh. The culmination came yesterday when I spent over an hour trying to make a single, five-minute video of myself reading from & talking about my story "Blue Joe" for the Shimmer website, finally, finally came up with a version I liked...and then I managed to screw up iMovie on Patrick's shiny new laptop so badly that it will no longer even open up my poor video and in fact is just generally sulking and refusing to cooperate with either of us.

Sigh.

It wasn't a good day, and today is starting off with the feeling of more of the same.

Luckily, there has been one thing keeping me sane: Gil McNeil's novel The Only Boy for Me, which I just won in a Bloomsbury competition. It's the kind of book I would never have picked up in a bookstore, because the new cover, while cute, just looks like chick lit with kids in it, and to be honest, apart from the Bridget Jones novels, I'm not a big fan of British chick lit. (Caution: major generalizations lie ahead!) The Brit chick lit novels I've read in the past have tended to have really shallow and not-very-intelligent heroines who don't care about anything except for their appearances and their love lives, which means that I don't tend to care about them, which has made the whole experience less than fun.*

But! If I hadn't picked up this novel, I would have been really, really missing out. The heroine of this novel, Annie, is a single mum who's raising a six-year-old while working a demanding job, and she's smart, competent, passionate about her (wonderfully-written and completely believable) son even as he also drives her crazy with his irrational six-year-old mood swings and demands; she's witty about the wackiness of both of her different kinds of workplaces; and she's constantly overwhelmed & harried not because she's ditzy but because she has genuinely TOO MUCH to do, like every working parent! But most of all, the voice and writing style are just hilarious throughout, with situations and conversations that are funny in the most piercingly real way. I picked the book up yesterday in a really, really foul and terrible mood, but by the end of the first two pages I was laughing out loud, by four pages in I was completely hooked, and I spent the rest of the day, off and on between disasters, reading it like medicine for my mood and sanity. I honestly don't know if the book would be so funny if I weren't a parent myself, but I want to shove it at every other parent I know with the command: READ THIS! NOW! Because, so far (I'm about 100 pages in right now), it really is that good.

Now, please knock on wood for me that the rest of the weekend will be an improvement and I won't need the book's help quite so much...

--
*And yes, I'm sure that I did probably read bad examples of the genre, so if anyone else has read really good ones, please do recommend them and change my mind about it!

Yummy discoveries and author photos

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:47:00 GMT

Hooray for good company! On Tuesday afternoon, before I could get too sad about Eastercon being over, one of my wonderful sisters-in-law came to stay with us. Unfortunately, it was only a flying visit - she left again this morning - but all of us absolutely loved having her here. Mr Darcy and Maya both got cuddles and attention, Patrick and I got to have great company AND help with MrD, and yesterday my SIL and I discovered the honest-to-God wonders of the Harvey Nichols Food Hall in downtown Leeds, which turns out to be full of exotic imported Italian chocolates, a delicious-smelling (and surprisingly cheap!) sushi restaurant, and, best of all, a really wonderful cafe with a huge range of non-alcoholic cocktails. After a totally girly and wonderful shopping afternoon (buying makeup for my author photos, mostly!), MrD, my SIL and I all had a great time hanging out in the cafe. I looooved my Ginger Nut cocktail (made up of ginger beer, pear, lime, and apples - ohhhh so yummy)! Look out, all my future American guests - you too will be dragged to the Harvey Nicks cafe with me! But you will enjoy it, you really will. :)

Not only is my SIL great company, but she's also a fantastic photographer, and this morning I finally, finally got my author photos taken for my book! I'd honestly been dreading it, because I hate having my photo taken, I always find it impossible to relax, etc., etc...and since my earlier plan of getting them done with my friend Justina had turned out not to be feasible (too many scheduling issues that month), I'd been dreading them even more. But having them done by my SIL was perfect, because not only did I know the photos would be great, but I was laughing throughout most of the shoot, just having a fabulous time with her.

Patrick and I narrowed the selection down to 17 possible photos, any of which could work (and that fact alone just blew my mind, btw - I've NEVER had 17 photos of myself that I actually liked!). These three are my personal favorites, though, so now I'm trying to decide among them. What do you think? Which of them would work best at the back of my books?

Post-Eastercon

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:21:00 GMT

Sigh. It's always sad to come home on the last day of a con. Life suddenly shifts from being this intense, fabulous round of socializing with cool people who love all the same stuff I do to being...well, being still pretty good, actually, but on a much smaller scale. (It also helps that my husband and I share many of the same obsessions, and I live only on the other side of the village from one of my closest writer friends, so I'm not returning to total writing isolation. But still, normal life is a lot quieter and involves a lot more boring cooking, cleaning, and trying to wrap my head around tax and baby-nutrition questions.)

Eastercon was so much fun. I'd been secretly dreading it in some ways this year - it was going to be our first experience of bringing a baby to a con, and I really didn't know whether that would work. It's not Wiscon, which is famously child-friendly; I'd never noticed any little kids at previous Eastercons. I wondered privately whether it would make the whole con feel exhausting and difficult.

I was so wrong. Not only was Mr Darcy a true gentleman throughout, but he was also a hub of sociability. He started at least 65% of our conversations, especially with writers and readers we hadn't met before, as people came up to admire him, and he was friendly and gracious to everybody. He also had a great time interacting with the many (!) other babies and kids who attended the con this year, much to our pleasure. It turned out that he is a natural Con Baby, and we were enormously pleased and proud of him. :) The only thing we wished we'd done differently was to actually stay at the hotel. Since we live only 20 minutes away, we'd never even considered it, but actually, I think it would have made the whole weekend a lot easier, especially when we needed to withdraw for half an hour to help MrD fall asleep.

But since, on top of all the fun socializing, my panel and the Future Bristol launch party/reading both went really well, AND I managed to score two great used books in the Dealer's Room (Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which of course I'd read before, and Patricia Wrede's Magician's Ward, which I hadn't) for only Â£1 and Â£2, respectively, the whole con definitely counted as an unqualified success. ;)

Here's the only downside of going to cons. Last night I went to bed early, as was entirely sensible. I turned off the light. I knew it was my big chance for some uninterrupted sleep, while Patrick looked after MrD. I told myself to take full advantage of it.

Fifteen minutes later, the light was back on, and I was at my desk, scribbling madly. I couldn't stop myself from doing all the writing that wanted to explode out of me.

That's what happens after cons. And as exhausted as I am today, I love it.

13 Little Blue Envelopes

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:06:00 GMT

Well, as anyone who reads my Twitter account may already know - I loved, loved, LOVED Maureen Johnson's book 13 Little Blue Envelopes, which I finished reading a couple of days ago. It's such a perfect novel for any American - especially, I think, any American girl or woman - who loves or has a yen for European travel. The heroine races all around Europe meeting amazing (and sometimes crazy) people, it's all vividly and perfectly described, it's very, very funny, and it all felt completely real to me. (Which is astonishingly rare for me, ever since I moved to England and realized how inaccurate most American literary versions of contemporary England really are...so reading this one and feeling a joyous inner leap of recognition was like getting a wonderful gift.) It also gave me waves and waves of nostalgia for my own days of jumping on a train for yet another European city, back when I was around the same age as the heroine. (And it made me think again how ridiculous it is that I've been living in England for 6-1/2 years and still haven't spent more than 3 days in London in total!)

It was cool timing, too, since tomorrow will be the 7-year anniversary of my final move to Europe (after various shorter stays beforehand). Seven years ago from tomorrow, my dog Nika and I each got onto a plane heading from Detroit to Vienna, where we were going to meet Patrick (ending the long-distance aspect of our relationship for good, thank goodness!) and stay for 6 months before moving to Leeds to start my PhD. Patrick and I hadn't yet found an apartment to stay in, or any jobs to work while there. I only found out as my own plane was taking off that Nika had been put into a different plane, transferring in a different city - and when I tried to ask about her at my transfer airport of Frankfurt, the USAir employee just looked at me blankly and said, "Dog? What dog? I don't have any record of a dog on that flight!"

AAAGH. I was very, very, very unhappy about this.

Luckily, when I arrived in Vienna, she was waiting for me in her crate, surrounded by a gaggle of cooing Austrian stewardesses, all absolutely adoring her...and being Austria, I was able to take her out of the crate immediately and console her with a meal of excellent Viennese sausages, served chopped up in a very classy dog bowl at the airport cafe while we waited for Patrick to arrive.

So anyway...it all felt like a big leap into mid-air (exhilarating AND terrifying) as I was doing it, but it's all worked out far more wonderfully than I could have imagined in so many ways (if Nika were still here with us, I would say in ALL ways), and my own upcoming European anniversary made me enjoy the novel even more. Thanks so much for the recommendation, Eugene!

Eastercon 'n more

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Tue, 7 Apr 2009 10:57:00 GMT

So, I finished up the copyedits yesterday, I spent a horrific chunk of money on photocopying the whole manuscript at Staples (because I am paranoid about international mail), and I've arranged for UPS to pick it up this afternoon.

Whew.

So, that was the long weekend that wasn't...since it was completely eaten up by copyedits, in the best possible way. By the end, late Monday afternoon, I was tingling with ideas for the rewrite of Book 2 (and more cool concepts to stuff into Book 3), because that kind of total absorption in Kat's world was exactly what I'd been needing for a very long time. It was intense and really, really good for me to have that weekend of nothing-but-Kat.

This coming weekend, though, is Eastercon. Woot! Totally the opposite of my introverted writing weekend. How many of you guys will be at Eastercon this year? If anyone who reads this is at Eastercon, please do come up and say hi! You can find me at a panel on Friday evening at 6pm ("Re-Creating History", with Chaz Brenchley, John Clute, and Shana Worthen), or at the Future Bristol launch party & reading on Sunday afternoon, from 2-3:30, where I'll be reading from my short story "After the Change". (Superheroes in Bristol - this one was really fun to write!)

You can read a really awesome review of the whole anthology, including my story, at The Fix, and read short excerpts from each of the stories on the Future Bristol website. This is going to be my first reading in about 3 years, so I'm both excited and nervous, especially because one of the other readers will be Liz Williams, one of my very favorite science fiction writers. (I really can't wait to read her story in the anthology!) There's going to be a raffle for people to win books by various contributors to the anthology, there will - of course - be copies of the anthology available to be signed, and there will also be free tea & muffins (which you may see me watching longingly...ohhh, I've missed muffins since my no-dairy diet began)! Any friendly faces in the audience would be ohhhh so very much appreciated.

Or you can just grab me as I'm walking around the hotel. :) We won't be staying at the con hotel this year because we live only about 20 minutes' drive away, but I'm hoping to be there for significant chunks of the con, and knowing me, I'll probably be in the Dealers' Room, ogling books, for a lot of my free time...and of course, you'll be able to ID me by the gorgeousness of the baby I'll be holding, since Mr Darcy will also be in attendance. ;)

I have many, many emails to catch up on, and several intellectually important things to do...but I have to admit that my biggest plan for today is to watch Jurassic Park. I think my brain needs it!

Whew

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Fri, 3 Apr 2009 18:14:00 GMT

So, I just finished my first pass through the copyedited manuscript. (Two more passes to go - one to make a decision on all the points I wasn't sure about in my first pass, and one more to try to read through it like a real book - of all the weird concepts! - and check for any other line edits/inconsistencies that might be hiding in it.) I am kind of like a mass of limp jello at the moment, but it's all good. And can I say how grateful I am for my awesome editor and copyeditor, both of whom have sharp eyes for mistakes that would have made me look dumb, and one of whom (Awesome Editor) also saved my sanity by marking in all the places where she laughed in pleasure as she read? It was just enormously reassuring, especially since I started both of my sessions over the last two days by freezing up for a half hour of panic before I managed to get started.

"Don't be ridiculous!" I lectured myself, both days. "They're only line edits! It's not a big deal! You can do this!" But I froze up anyway, because...because...because, well, it's all so real. This is going to be a real book! It's got a disclaimer at the front of the manuscript about how the characters are all fictional, just like a real book! It's got the publisher's name and cities listed in it, and a projected print run for the hardcover version! It's even got - coolest and scariest of all - a publication date on the front page of the manuscript (which I won't repeat here because I don't know if it's real yet, or - if it is - whether I'm allowed to announce it)! So...the changes I make on this manuscript aren't just for fun, y'know? They're real, and they're going to change what's printed on all those thousands of real, live copies. (Okay, I know that books aren't technically alive. But as a life-long reader, I have to admit that they do feel "live" to me, kinda. And yeah, I know that sounds crazy, but...)

This is exactly the position I've spent the last twenty-five years of my life fantasizing about being in. And I'm totally loving it, honestly I am. But it's also unexpectedly terrifying.

So those little scribbled "ha!"'s that my Awesome Editor put in the sidelines of the manuscript near lines of dialogue that she particularly liked?

Pure gold. 100 Karat, at the very least.

Woot!

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com (Steph) — Thu, 2 Apr 2009 08:56:00 GMT

Go congratulate Merrie Haskell, who's just signed on with the excellent agent Caitlin Blasdell! Merrie is a fabulous writer, and I can't wait for her fantasy novel to sell.

Here's the funny thing about growing up in Michigan. The cities of East Lansing and Ann Arbor are HUGE rivals - huge, huge, huge - because they're the homes to the two biggest state universities, Michigan State and the University of Michigan. Insane levels of competition over quality of sports, intelligence, and everything else you can imagine, are perpetrated, along with obnoxious jokes, etc...to the point where, when I was going through a rebellious phase at the age of 8, the way I expressed it in public was to be a supporter of U of M's football team, the Wolverines, instead of my local team, MSU's Spartans. (Although I changed my mind later, when I realized that the Spartans were the underdog. Yeah. Anyway...)

So, as a kid in Michigan, you know that you must, must, must align yourself with one or the other city/team...and then you grow up. And you move into a wonderful and exciting wider world. And guess what? You meet people who are from the other city and you think: HOORAY! Another Michigander! And not just any Michigander, but someone much closer in culture, outlook, etc. than even most other Michiganders, because let's face it, like every traditional group of deadly rivals, East Lansing and Ann Arbor are a whole lot more similar than they are different. (That's exactly how people become rivals, isn't it?)

So, Merrie and I had been writing back and forth to each other about how much we loved each other's short stories for quite a while before I figured out that she was from Ann Arbor (and, I guess, she figured out that I was from East Lansing). But it was an irrationally cool realization to make. Two fantasy writers of about the same age, with a common outlook on life, both from the twin Michigan cities! And, irrational or not, it's felt like a kind of bond ever since (not hurt by her great sense of humor, sweet kitty photos, and, oh yeah, consistently smart & fabulous short stories).

I cannot wait until her novel is published!