Well, its first Cybil review is out - here. Thank you, Tasha Saecker of Caestecker Public Library of the City of Green Lake and the Town of Brooklyn,and the Kids Lit Blog!

Blogcritics weighs in on "Gift of the Unmage"... and in other news, the book has garnered a Nebula and an Andre Norton Award nomination! I'm hoping that this will at least put it on the genre radar - perhaps some other SFWAns out there might be moved to take a look at the thing...

Not a bad day all around.

Tomorrow morning the third book in the Worldweavers trilogy will be winging its way into New York.

I feel the usual mix of exhilaration and apprehension. There goes another novel, done and written and dreamed up and brought up to behave properly in civilised society and now it's time to let it go out into the world.

To become my tenth published book, in its turn. Congratulate me, I've just stepped into double digits. Excuse me while I take a moment to look at that fact with a sense of bemused wonder.

In the next three weeks or so, I'll catch up with the reviews that I'm due to write for a couple of places, do a reading and a writing camp workshop, and gather stuff together for Worldcon. Japan, here I come.

Well, I finished what I thought was going to be the last chapter of the third Worldweavers book.

Except that it isn't the last chapter. not QUITE.

But the things that remain to be said are, while necessary, not long-winded. I may add an epilogueish kind of coda to the thing. And THEN I'm done.

Current word count: a smidge under 93 000 words. With this epilogue-thingy still to be added, I'm anticipating maybe 2500, 3000 more - which brings it in squarely to somewhere between 95 and 96K. Respectable. More than respectable.

I am exhausted, exhilarated, excited and pleased.

I may finish this novel tomorrow. Wish me luck.

At work on the penultimate chapter of Worldweavers 3. I am currently at 82 000 words, and change. I think it'll finally weigh in in the mid-90K range. That's respectable.

Back to work. See y'all later.

Wrestled with a (really good) chapter today, which I had the opportunity to read out loud to the writing group this afternoon. And realised something about this (otherwise very good) chapter.

It was FULL OF MOMENTS.

Things happened "after a long moment". Repeatedly. People paused "for a moment". Also repeatedly. "A moment later", other things happened, or lasted for just that wretched "moment".

Ye gods and little fishes. I was reading out out loud and these moments jumped out at me and walloped me with tiny sledgehammers.

I dealt with it. i DEALT with it, okay? I'm not momentless, but there are certainly considerably fewer of them than there were, and we're all the better for it. I don't know what happened, don't ask. I'm just glad I read this puppy out loud; I probably WOULD have noticed the problem later, in edits, but I'm just as glad it's been fixed now.

For those keeping track of such things, I am now four chapters away from the end of Book 3 of Worldweavers. The first draft of it, that is. Oh, I'll probably have to go back and perform another momentectomy or two - but I can smell the end now, it's just around the corner.

With overseas houseguests arriving at our place on Wednesday night, and various other chores requiring attention between now and then, it doesn't look likely that I'll get to the next chapter before next Thursday at the earliest - but if I can put pedal to the metal and actually sit down and WORK at this, I can probably commit to doing one decent chapter per two or three days. Which means that I can get this book finished in about two weeks and change. Wish me luck.

Oh, and in other news... you're looking at the new Secretary for the Board of Directors of SFWA.

Life happens...

...you might be glad to know that I've been writing like a fury, and have achieved two and half chapters in less than a week, really. (The half, that was the tweakery that needed to be done to one [already sort of finished] chapter before I could go on with those other two I mentioned...)

It looks like the next chapter is slated to happen before the end of this week, which, ladies and gentlemen, gets me to the 3/4 mark of this novel. It's downhill all the way from there. I'm thinking it's going to clock in at a respectable 90 000 words or so - which, once again, is LONG for a YA, but rdeck always helps me to eschew excess verbiage on those occasions when I really egregiously commit it, and my Harper editor has proved to be pretty good with whittling words where necessary - between the three of us, myself, hubby and the pro, we managed to scrape just over 10 000 words off the 108 000-word behemoth that was "Spellspam" in first draft. I feel good about this third book - it's been the hardest one to write, what with keeping in mind its identity as book the third and the final in a trilogy and the necessity for it to wrap the storyline up in a neat and satisfying story arc - some day I might blog in more detail about the dramas and joys of trilogies.

One other thing - for one brief shining moment, "Gift of the Unmage" actually held a four-figure sales rank at Amazon. Whoever bought the books that helped push it there - blessings on you, my friends. (now do it again.)

Thank you SFRevu

The inestimable chrisdolley has been channelling me at his Astraldome - you can read the interview right here.

Enjoy!

I want to know what that strange beast in the corner is, but hey, it just makes life interesting...

One thing, my friendly German audience, though. One of the websites touting the book says something along the lines of," Alma Alexander brings back the nushu language that inspired Lisa See's 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan' ". (emphasis mine)

Growl.

I wrote "Jin Shei", and it was published in English, a year before "Snow flower" came on the scene. I'm not bringing anything "back", thank you very much. I was there first.

Just thought I'd point that out.

At any rate, it's a handsome book, and I just thought I'd share that cover. And now I'm officially out of room for my foreign editions in the space originally allotted to them. A rethink on shelving matters is required...

"Hot off the presses", it says on a little card clipped to the dustjacket.

The first copy of the new book. "Gift of the Unmage" is ALIVE, and about to step out into the world.

Yes, book 2 is in editing right now (and man, there's nothing that makes a book feel more real than getting a MS full of scribbles and post-its and editorial edicts to go forth and FIX...) and book 3 is in the process of being created - the entire trilogy is in a dynamic mode right now, and the whole thing is a living breathing go-getting entity... but so far the actual BOOK, the volume that will grace bookshelves, that has not yet been a reality. Now it is. I am holding it in my hands.

Man,this just never gets old. NEVER. The wonderful shape and texture and smell of that new book. A story born of your own mind and heart and hand and spirit.

It just never gets old.

Look for it in bookstores soon, now. REAL soon. It will be there any moment.

I know.

I've seen it.

...hey, it's Worldcon Eve, practically, and one needs to make sure that one is on the radar, as it were.

So.

Keeping up with the editions.

It's been a busy few months, and it will continue to be busy into fall.

Already in: The Italian paperback edition, the Spanish and Catalan editions, we're still waiting for word from the Czechs who were also supposed to be publishing in the summer.

Coming Very Shortly: The UK paperback edition of "Embers of Heaven" (September 4), and the Portuguese edition of "Jin Shei" (September).

Coming Soon: the Dutch edition of "Embers of Heaven" (November 2006), the German edition of "Jin Shei" (fall 2006)

Coming Next Year - Firm Dates: "Worldweavers 1: The Gift of the Unmage" (late February 2007)

Coming Next Year - We Think (Unconfirmed Dates): the Lithuanian, Turkish and Brazilian editions of "Jin Shei", possibly the Czechs if they're running late, and sometime within the later half of that period, Worldweavers 2.

Watch this space for further updates - and if something's coming up in your language or your area, preorder! Numbers rule, in this industry....

Am still tinkering with it, so the FINAL final wordcount might be a smidge up or down, but as of last night, 28 July 2006, I am officially DONE with book 2 of the Worldweavers trilogy.

105,560 / 105,560 (100.0%)

It is in final-first-draft-revision now. It goes to the agent next week.

*falls over in a heap*

Wrote and fixed another chapter:

59,876 / 95,000 (63.0%)

I'm now in respectable territory.

I am very much hoping to have another chapter under my belt by the end of the week - but this week's bitsy, as it were, what with a dentist appointment today, a car service appointment tomorrow, a doctor's appointment for rdeck the day after that, and the galleys for Book #1 of the trlogy having been announced as imminent and (as usual) with a request for a quick turnover - which means that they will therefore hog my attention when they do get here to the exclusion of everything else before I'm done with them. The good news on that front, of course, is that at this stage I AM done with them, and the rest of the book's journey to its grand unveiling is not in my hands at all...

I'll show y'all the cover, here. SOON. I promise. [grin] SOme of you who were at Wiscon have already seen the prototype laminated version - but it will be online Very Shortly...

I can reveal it now.

In fact if you go to this website, and take a look at the Fantasy section, you will find a familiar name listed.

Cool stuff. Very.

The copyedit is finally done - I have a couple of things I need to do tweakery on tomorrow and then it's going back to the publisher. I suppose I'll have proofs on my plate before the end of April...

In any event, it's back to writing #2 next week, unless something ELSE pops up out of the woodwork to distract me. I absolutely HAVE to have most if not all of this book done by WIscon, which isn't TOO far away now. That's a kind of looming internal deadline, here. After that, I've got some research reading to do for the next book. And in the meantime I have two more books I have to review, I am on the committee for a juried literary award (more reading), and I've just been informed that my SPanish publisher wants to do an interview with me before they launch the Spanish edition of "Jin Shei" - in May, I believe - and I told them I'd be happy to do it (but I do hope they remember that I don't actually SPEAK Spanish [grin])

Oh, and congrats to larbalestier and naominovik for their various work-related good news this week - many happy returns, as it were!

But right now, I'm going upstairs to veg out and watch TV. Hopefully part II of "Dark Kingdom" has now been taped, and there a few other things dangling on the TiVo that need attention before they get erased to make space. Tomorrow is another day, and I have work to do to finish things off and clear my desk (and BOY does it need clearing) and then it's onwards and upwards, as always.