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Iron Night Fanart Contest + Book 3 Title Reveal!
Coming soon to a bookstore near you! Or a bookstore on the Internet — I’m really not that picky. But NOT to an illegal download near you! Those should be far, FAR away from you!
26 more days until Iron Night is published! Exciting, right?
Want something even more exciting? I just got the okay to tell you the title for Book 3 – Tainted Blood. (pretty cool, right? I offer no hints at the current time about the contents of the book, lest I give away anything about Iron Night. okay, fine, you wore me down. ONE hint: there will be Star Wars references. this will make sense once you’ve read Iron Night) The team over at Roc is working on the cover right now. I haven’t seen anything yet, but I’ve gotten to be involved in some of the conversations about possibilities, and they even asked if I had any ideas.
A slight bummer – it doesn’t look like we’re going to get to see Suzume on the cover with Fort. The reasoning is actually really interesting, and was a neat insight into the industry of marketing a book. A cover that had Fort and Suze on it together would suggest to readers that the book was a paranormal romance. Now I’m not saying anything about where Fort and Suze are going (you’ll have to read Iron Night to find out more! mwah ha!), but that’s not my genre.
What I was really hoping for, of course, was to have Suze on the cover in her fox form. Because let’s face it – foxes make everything better. Unfortunately, it was pointed out to me that foxes are kind of tiny. In the setup they’re thinking of, the only way to really see Suze would be if Fort was holding her – which would suggest to readers that this was some kind of sexy veterinarian book. Which… is also not exactly what I’m going for. (let’s face it, Fort would *never* make the kind of money a veterinarian makes, or have that kind of job security)
So no foxy cover. *sigh*
However, I do have you, my dozen faithful readers! (and probably some very nice spammers, and a few bots) And if there’s one thing the Internet is missing, it’s sufficient pictures of foxes! (the Internet *is* however, full up on cat pictures)
Moi?
Time for a contest! Make your best fanart picture of Suzume (human or fox!) and email me a picture of it! Just to let you know, there’s already some stiff competition, since my 7-year-old nephew has been tasked with drawing a picture of Suze attacking Luca. (and in full disclosure – my nephew is an extremely average artist for his age)
The contest will run from now until January 1st. All photos will be posted on this website. The winner and two runner-ups will be mailed galley copies of Iron Night.
That’s right, *this* galley copy. Or possibly the one under it. I’m sorry, I really can’t tell them apart.
Don’t think you’re much of an artist? That’s okay, neither is my nephew. (sorry, Caleb – but I do enjoy your stick-figures) Extra points will be given for effort, and do not underestimate the possibility that I will have three or fewer entries! You could win just by entering! (wait, should I be underselling the contest this much?)
So draw Suzume for me! (just to head up potential awkwardness – draw a *family friendly* Suzume for me!) You can have a galley copy of Iron Night in your hands before the official publication day on January 7th! (see how smoothly I stuck that in? oh, yeah, I’m totally getting the hang of this publicity thing. wait, I’m not supposed to type that? darn it!)
Not being on the cover would bother baby fox more if she wasn’t so busy yawning and looking adorable.
Annie
For the last two months our oldest cat, Annie, has been having a lot of vomiting and diarrhea, to the point where we had separated her from our other two cats. We’d taken her to the vet several times, and tried several different courses of medication. We’d switched her to some special moist cat food, which she enjoyed very much (she liked licking the gravy), but over the last few weeks her appetite had diminished severely, and during the last month she lost 15% of her body weight. With every new medication that failed to make an impact on the problem, it was becoming more likely that she had cancer.
This morning, she was having spasms on the right side of her body, and was unable to control her right front paw. We took her into the vet, and we made the decision to put her to sleep. We were with her the whole time, and it was a very gentle process. At my request, the vet did an autopsy, and confirmed that Annie had advanced lymphoma, and that her intestines had been badly effected. The vet said that the lymph nodes in her intestines were the largest that she had ever seen. Annie had probably been in a lot of discomfort, if not outright pain, for a long time.
While Annie was only 14, she had a very happy life, and we loved her very much. She was usually a somewhat reserved cat, but during the last month, which must have been extremely difficult for her, she showed us a great deal of affection. She wanted to sit in our laps more, and enjoyed snuggling against us and being petted. While we were in the vet’s office this morning making the very hard decision to put her to sleep, she was sitting on my husband’s lap, but then shifted until she was stretched across both of our laps. The vet gave her a simple overdose of sedative, so Annie slipped away very peacefully. We then stayed with her for another half hour, stroking her fur and saying our goodbyes.
We miss Annie so much right now, but we’re both grateful that we were able to give her a gentle, dignified death, and that we were able to spend fourteen years with our little gray girl.
rejection
Really great post by Carrie Vaughn that shows her pile of rejection letters. I had a giant file like this as well, until eventually I was running low on file cabinet space and made a purge. Now I just have a huge file folder that has my rejection letters that had ink on them.
But I think this is great, because it isn’t about how big the pile is. It’s that you keep writing, keep getting better, and keep working, and eventually you can get the “yes.” And all you really need is one yes.
I’ve talked about doing this, so here it finally is. My folder of rejection slips:
(With handy dinosaur ruler for scale. That’s over three inches of paper there.)
These aren’t all the rejections I’ve gotten. This doesn’t include all the e-mail rejections, which are quite legion. Or any of the rejections I got before 1995, which are hidden away in some folder I haven’t rediscovered yet. (I started sending stories out in about 1989). The most recent rejection in this pile? Spring 2012. Yup, I still get rejections. People sometimes ask me how many rejections I’ve gotten, and I’ve never counted. I have no intention of counting them now. Just estimating, based on how frequently I was sending stuff out during my busiest submission period (roughly 1995-2006), I have upward of 600. I know this stack is taller than a ream of paper, which is 500 pages. But you know…
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10 Concrete Ways To Help After A Disaster
It’s hard to know what to do with yourself or how to feel after a disaster like this, which is why I think blog entries like this are so important. The Belle Jar has presented it beautifully, so just go ahead and read:
I was sipping an overpriced americano in a small, aggressively hip coffee shop today when the news broke about the bombing at the Boston Marathon. I’d only meant to sit down for a few minutes, but ended spending over two hours there nursing my cold coffee and obsessively refreshing my Twitter feed.
Sitting there, I had the surreal experience of watching a disaster unfold in real time on social media. What made it even more strange was the fact that I was surrounded by people who had no idea what was happening. Two girls across from me discussed their upcoming Vipassana retreat and had a passive aggressive competition about their current meditation practices. A girl next to me was reading The Feminist Porn Book and occasionally making furious notes in her Moleskine. A young boy and his grandmother seated on my other side tried to figure out his math homework.
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M. L. Brennan 