Category Archives: Iron Night
Blog-versary!
Cute picture, right? Well that orca EATS the porpoise!
So I just got the notification that this is the one year anniversary of my blog! Whoa! Bit of a milestone, and probably one that deserves a long and thoughtful post….
…but since I’m up to my eyeballs in the Book 3 manuscript (tentatively titled, “Woods And Bears And A Few Poop Jokes Concerning The Two” — it’s a work in progress), I’ll have to be brief — a year ago, I’d just sold my book and two unwritten sequels to Roc, and my agent told me that I needed to set up a website. I had really no idea what to expect.
A year later — yes, there are things that I might complain or grumble about, but I’m always very aware that my problems now are very much first-world-writer problems. Generation V is in print. Iron Night will be published in January. I’m writing a book now with the knowledge that it goes to my editor rather than having to be shopped around in hopes of a sale.
Life is good. Very stressful, but good. I’m looking forward to seeing what things are like a year from now.
The State of Monday – July 1
Welcome to July (also known as, “shit, how is it July already?”)! Last week was pretty good for the writing. I had a very useful phone conversation with my editor (the great and powerful Anne Sowards) in the middle of the week.
Maybe it’s a little bit of a power move that she insists on using this thing whenever she talks with me, but, hey, whatever works.
We talked about where I’m planning on taking Book 3. This was a pretty important phone call, since when Roc bought the three books, the purchases on #2 and #3 were based on a set of proposals, plus an over-series arc document. Iron Night is similar in most major points to its proposal, but the problem is that there are a few really BIG events that were in the Book 3 proposal that I just didn’t feel should happen yet. They needed more prep before I could get to them.
How big are these events? Well, about as big as the giant balloon that Anne Sowards does all of her business travel in. It’s slow, but she gets great mileage.
Anne agreed with me, and I had a really productive week of outlining. I’ve cleared up one of the thornier areas of the main plot, and now I’m just figuring out how some of the ongoing plots will fit in around it. The timing is going really well on this, since on Saturday I’ll be heading down to one of my favorite places in the world for a six-day solo vacation – can you guess the place?
Newport, RI. My family starting going down for a week every summer when I was about 4, and I actually lived there for a full year on my own. Newport is both one of my favorite settings in the Fortitude Scott books and a really important place in its creation. I finished the first draft of Generation V in Newport in the summer of 2011. In the summer of 2012, I’d just sold the series to Roc, and I thrashed out the full outline of Iron Night during my time there. This summer I’m hoping to get a chunk of writing done on Book 3.
Here are two pictures from last summer. Isn’t it great?
My schedule in Newport is pretty basic – I get up in the morning, eat breakfast and read on the porch. Then I come inside and write for a few hours, breaking for lunch. In the early afternoon I take a break and head down to the town – I walk all over, looking in shops, checking out what has changed, until I’m exhausted and sweaty. Early dinner at the Newport Creamery (greasy spoon diner and decent eating for a writer on a budget – plus, Awful Awfuls!), then back to the keyboard. Time out on the porch to enjoy the sunset. Work until I’m tired, then to bed. Repeat until vacation is over.
It’s wonderful – though my brother usually calls me a few times to make sure I haven’t gone all The Shining on my own.
This year I’ll be leaving Newport on a Friday – the same Friday as my first convention! I’m really excited to be attending ConnectiCon – I’m on two panels, plus I’m going to get a chance to sign copies of Generation V! Plus I also get to attend a convention – yay! If you’re planning on attending ConnectiCon, drop me a note so that we can meet up!
So that’s what’s going on with me (and why there won’t be a State of Monday next week), on to the important stuff – what’s going on with the books! Firstly, Generation V is up to 22 reviews over at Amazon. Amazon also has a new format which I’m not especially thrilled about – I find it really visually annoying, and it kind of pisses me off to have to click on something to see basic book info like where something was published. But, hey, I guess when I’m a global conglomerate with billions in assets, I can complain then, right?
Two really great reviews of Generation V – one from Kristin over at My Bookish Ways, and the other that I found over at bookistry. Also, Candace from Candace’s Book Blog is having a guest post and giveaway extravaganza, and she was nice enough to ask me to add a post. I had a lot of fun doing it, so check out My Top Ten Favorite Books So Far This Year — because, really, I’ve never been able to do a Top Ten list of favorite books of all time. I remember getting really frustrated over that once back in 8th grade, and let me tell you, I’ve read a *shit-ton* of books since then. It’s not getting any easier. But favorite books read in a six month period? That I could get a fun handle on. Oh, and you should also check out my list because Candace is running a giveaway of a signed copy of Generation V. So, free stuff!
I’ll be guest blogging tomorrow at That’s What I’m Talking About for their Urban Fantasy Summer Reading Celebration ) — they have a pretty great lineup of books to raffle off, and they’ll also be talking about some of my favorite authors.
Speaking of summer fun – check out the Blogger Summer Circus Giveaway Hop. There are a lot of great blogs involved, but start off at one I like very much – Danielle at Coffee and Characters is the ringmaster, and she also has a lineup of cover reveals, and I’m *very* flattered that she included Iron Night as one that she’s really looking forward to! Believe me, I’m *dying* to find out what people think of it, and January feels like forever and a day, but it’s with the copyeditor now, who will no doubt point out about fifty problems that I was completely unaware of. (last time favorites included the fact that the gun Fort was using held about four more bullets than I thought it did – so the final version ended up with four more shots to explain how he emptied his gun)
Speaking of the Iron Night cover….
…my own… my precious…
…it was included in the All Things Urban Fantasy Cover Art Coverage! They had 36 covers to get through (whoa!) but were nice enough to include Iron Night. The entry is worth checking out on its own (I love reading their cover art posts), but here’s what was said about Iron Night:
Chris says:
The covers for this series suck. A lot. They’re boring as all get out. That’s especially sad since this is a tremendous series.
Did you hear that? Chris says that this is a “tremendous series”! Woo!
Kristina says:
While I will always applaud sensible clothes and just plain clothes on a model this is kind of boring. He looks like he’s just taking a stroll with his gun.
“Taking a stroll with his gun” would be the best kickoff to an animated Disney song EVER! (wait, didn’t that already happen in Pocahontas?) But, yes, I am continually relieved at Fort’s state of dress on these covers – ie, his commitment to wearing shirts. Actually, this cover got even safer, since he now has a tee *and* a long-sleeve shirt! That’s smart layering, Fort!
Jennifer says:
The V in the background is why I’m giving this cover the middle. My interest is peaked by it alone.
I’m a huge fan of that background V. Yes, it has flummoxed a few people, since the official series name is American Vampire, not Generation V, but I was seriously worried around title time that my series didn’t have themed titles, and I think that the artist did a fantastic job of using that V to tie them together. Bravo!
Fun side story – I was on the phone with my brother last night, and I asked what he thought of the new cover. Typical brother, he didn’t even know I *had* a website (right on the book! Argh!), but it turned out to be a win, since then I got to listen in realtime to his cover reaction! (once he scrolled past last week’s fluffy dog – not my cover, btw). It was hysterically funny, and I wrote it down to share with all of you:
My Brother says:
WHAT? He went from film theory geek to Die Hard! And why is he carrying a sawed-off shotgun?!
I’m going to call that a thumbs up.
That’s about it – but remember that tomorrow is the debut of Django Wexler’s The Thousand Names (#5 on my list of books I read this year, btw). According to SF Signal:
I would wholeheartedly recommend The Thousand Names, not only to fans of fantasy but also to fans of military fiction of all types. Fans of Steven Erikson, David Drake, Glen Cook, Naomi Novik, Tom Kratman, Jack Campbell, David Weber, and John Ringo take note – there’s a new military fiction cowboy in town and his name is Django.
Django Wexler. The new military fiction cowboy in town.
And if you’re buying The Thousand Names, why not take the opportunity to pick up Generation V as well?
After all, mine has more cats than Django’s does.
The State of Monday – June 24
The Iron Night edits are done! Now the manuscript is in the hands of the copyeditor. I don’t know whether it will be the same copyeditor who handled Generation V (Dan Larsen), but I’ll probably see it back in maybe 1-3 months. The good thing is that all of the major plot events are now basically locked in, so I can move forward to work on Book 3 and not worry about anything from Iron Night suddenly changing.
It was a mostly quiet week – one great interview was posted at Fantasy Book Critic – this is a great interview to check out. Mihir read and enjoyed Generation V, and he put together some absolutely fantastic questions, several of which I’d never been asked before! Lots of fun. Danielle over at Coffee and Characters did a great cover reveal for Iron Night. It’s very exciting and gratifying to know that people are looking forward to the Generation V sequel!
I also set up a Goodreads giveaway for one signed copy of Generation V — the hope there is that some people will learn about it from the Goodreads giveaway page and be interested enough to want to buy it if they don’t win the copy (or, even better, be so interested that they can’t even wait for the contest to end, and must get a hold of it immediately).
Great news from Amazon! Generation V is now up to 21 reviews! That’s really great, since it puts it past that 20 marker that I was told was really important. Thanks so much to everyone who posted a review!
Speaking of Amazon – an interesting article here is making the rounds on Twitter today. I’m certainly a fan of brick & mortars bookstores, and I actually worked for two years in a really lovely independent bookstore, so I do understand how important it is to support places other than Amazon. But at the same time I’m also very aware of how important Amazon is for my books. It’s an interesting conundrum. However, I can quite certainly do better in posting book links that aren’t solely to Amazon – so here is where you can buy Generation V from IndieBound and I’ve added that to the main book info page as well!
That’s just about all the news I’ve got, so back to work!
This is one of my reference photos from when I was writing Iron Night. Look at that adorable little Bichon Frise – it wants you to buy a copy of Generation V
Iron Night
Thanks to @AllThings_Uf, I now have a big copy of the Iron Night cover to share!
Check this out!
Fort leveled up!
The State of Monday – June 17
Somewhat quick update today – firstly, some extremely exciting news! Iron Night now has listings on Amazon.com and Goodreads! So this means that I can finally do the reveal here (in a tiny picture because I don’t have a larger one yet, sorry):
Young, broke, and lethal.
Underemployed by day. Undead by night.
Underachieving film theory graduate and vampire Fortitude Scott may be waiting tables at a snooty restaurant run by a tyrannical chef who hates him, but the other parts of his life finally seem to be stabilizing. He’s learning how to help rule the Scott family territory, hanging out more with his shapeshifting friend Suzume Hollis, and has actually found a decent roommate for once.
Until he finds his roommate’s dead body.
The Scott family cover-up machine swings into gear, but Fort is the only person trying to figure out who (or what) actually killed his friend. His hunt for a murderer leads to a creature that scares even his sociopathic family, and puts them all in deadly peril.
Keeping secrets, killing monsters, and still having to make it to work on time? Sometimes being a vampire really sucks.
Coming January 7, 2014! Very cool, right? When I saw the cover my first thought was that Fort had leveled up in attractiveness! (he went from Fortitude the Grey to Fortitude the White!) But I do love the cover – particularly the way that the artist used the background V to tie the two books together. And the architectural interest behind the model. Oh, and the gun – that’s exactly how I was picturing it. Okay, I just love the cover.
I’m finishing up the primary edits on Iron Night this week, and after that it will be turned over to the copyeditor (which will be, you know, delightful). But I’m really excited about where the book goes, and I can’t wait until it gets released.
But, returning to the book currently making its way (hopefully) onto shelves and into hearts – some new stuff for Generation V as well! Reviews this past week went up at Coffee and Characters and Ladybug Literature, and I did an interview with the Little Red Reviewer. That last one has a giveaway attached to it as well, for anyone interested.
So if you haven’t read Generation V yet, the countdown is now on!
Remember to get one for each of the kids!
The State of Monday
Things are going pretty well right now. I finished making adjustments to Iron Night based on the edits that my editor sent me, and sent it to her on Friday. These were mostly big-picture elements – character motivations, pacing, building up some elements and toning down others. What happens now (based on my experience with Generation V) is that she’ll take the manuscript and start working on it line-by-line – does this wording sound right? Is there too much repetition in one paragraph? Is a particular idea or piece of information established thoroughly enough?
That’s where Iron Night is right now. I’m really excited about this book – for one thing, I got to take Fort deeper into the supernatural world that he’d been fighting to avoid. I got to revisit and expand some tertiary characters from Book One, as well as introduce some new ones. The world gets more complicated – and also longer! Generation V went to publication at around 85,000 words, but right now Iron Night is beating that by 23K. Given that my word-count goal going in was just to hit 90K, that was kind of surprising, but fun at the same time.
I’ve also gotten a peek at the Iron Night cover – and it is amazing! I’m under strict orders not to share it yet, but as soon as that gets lifted I’m going to put it up. Stylistically it’s similar to the Generation V cover, but I think it’s more dynamic and atmospheric. Can’t wait to hear everyone’s reaction to it!
This week I’m working on Book Three stuff – solidifying plans, doing some background research, that kind of thing. My hope is that at the end of the week I’ll have a working outline of the book. Right now I have a broad idea of major events and where I want a lot of the characters to be at the end of the book, but I’m still working on finer details.
There have been a few changes on the website since the last time I posted an entry – I now have a full character list page. Don’t look through that unless you’ve finished Generation V – it’s spoiler-heavy. I made it to help me with Iron Night (making sure I didn’t use the same names for background characters, being sure that I was consistent on birth years for my vampire characters, that kind of thing), so it establishes where everyone is at the end of the first book. (including, for several characters, deaths and who killed them). When writing Iron Night I found myself constantly flipping open a copy of Generation V to fact-check, and somehow I think that that will just be getting worse when I start Book Three, so I figured that it was definitely time to establish a separate series bible to avoid continuity flubs.
I also have the Reviews & Interviews page – links to all the reviews, interviews, guest posts, or media mentions that I know of. In the last two weeks what has been very exciting is seeing the occasional review pop up that I had no prior knowledge of – a blog review by someone who hadn’t been sent the book by either me or Roc. That’s been very neat, and I’m happy to say that the reviews have overall been really positive.
A few recent ones include:
Fang-tastic Fiction, That’s What I’m Talking About, Urban Fantasy Investigations, Owlcat Mountain, and Fangs For The Fantasy: The Latest In Urban Fantasy From A Social Justice Perspective. There’s a wide variety of responses and writing in here – I love seeing how every reader responds differently to various elements.
My most recent interview was over at Book Lovers Inc.. I also had the wonderful opportunity to write for SF Signal about deeper meaning in speculative fiction writing, which gave me the chance to write about two of my favorite books: Neuromancer by William Gibson and Singer From The Sea by Sheri S. Tepper. Check it out: The Veneer of Escapism.
So that’s where things are. I’m hoping to do that parasite post sometime this week, but I have a few things on my To-Do list, plus a job interview on Wednesday, and Tuesday is the publication for the latest Nalini Singh *and* Cassie Alexander’s latest Edie Spence book, so there will be some rather significant distractions. I’m also trying to introduce my three cats to the CatGenie (litter pan whose cleaning is controlled by TECHNOLOGY!), and it is Not Going Well.
Oh, last thing! Shiloh Walker wrote a great article here about how important Amazon and B&N reviews are for the success of a book. Generation V has twelve reviews at Amazon, and one review at Barnes & Noble. So if you read the book and enjoyed it, please post a review on either website, or both!
And if you haven’t read Generation V… well, wouldn’t you like to give it a try?
Choosy bat mothers choose Generation V for their adorable clinging bat babies!
Generation V out in the world
Ever since Generation V was bought by Roc last year, most of my time (when not focused on work, or during the time when I was writing and polishing the initial draft of Iron Night) and focus was on how to best work on promoting the book before it was published. And now… the book is out. I can visit it any time in the bookstore, and now when I talk to people about it, they can actually order copies on their phones, and have e-copies pretty much immediately.
Which is incredible and amazing… but now I can’t help but wonder, now what?
Oh, don’t get me wrong – I know what I need to be doing. The classes I’m teaching are just going into finals, so there’s a lot of hand-holding and correcting going on there. Plus I received edits back from Anne for Iron Night, and those need to be worked on and finished before June 1. Plus I have the third Fortitude Scott book to plan and write. And I really should mop the floors of my house, because that totally got pushed to the back-burner for a few months when I was crazy busy.
But in a larger sense, regarding Generation V, now what? Worrying about how well it’s selling, or doing research and sending emails to try to get more people to talk about it – that has occupied the majority of my days this week. And I know that with my to-do list of actual writing, that’s going to have to change really soon. Maybe I’ll be able to spend a few hours a week thinking about and working on publicity stuff, but that’s probably it.
I’ve made a deal with myself – I’ll keep focusing on Generation V until the end of the week, but then the shift to Iron Night has to happen. So this is an interesting transition time.
So until the rest of the week to keep obsessing about how awesome Generation V looks on a bookshelf at Barnes & Noble.
It’s like a baby picture that I can’t stop flashing!
Stuff To Check Out!
One of my favorite interviews ever at Yummy Men & Kick Ass Chicks – fantastic and thoughtful questions!
Another great Interview at The Qwillery.
I’m guest posting at Guest post at Michael J. Martinez’s blog & at Smexy Books.
The Supernatural Smackdown is still going on at Dark Faerie Tales, and Fort gets a speed date over at the Book Swarm.
Finally, another really strong review of Generation V by Tori over at Smexy Books. Very thoughtful and great stuff.
And in closing, my usual appeal – wouldn’t you love to own your very own copy of Generation V?
Three out of four baby otters approve of you buying Generation V. The fourth would have approved it, but was too busy snoozing adorably.
M. L. Brennan 