Paksworld

Am I still excited on Launch Days?   You bet!   Excited and worried all at once.    I always worry.    Part of the game.

Here, the sun is shining, high clouds diluting its warmth, and spring is springing out of the ground thanks to the rain Friday night and Saturday.     I hope those of you who ordered the e-book are finding it on your readers this morning, and those of you who have it in transit by mail or waiting for you at the store have good weather for the pickup or delivery.   And time to read.

I’ve got stuff stacked up to do today (including stay by the phone so the people from the hotel can reach me…idiot writer left her traveling music in the hotel room)  and I will get to comments (answering them, that is) as other things allow.

I got back from San Antonio in good shape–the weather going down qualified as Interesting, and the weather coming back easily made the category Delightful.  The Toe is much better.    The FYE Conference was fascinating, and I met a lot of people from colleges and universities all over the country.  Random House sends a big team promoting its “common read” and “FYE read” books.    A small group of writers are given exposure to the faculty and staff who choose the books for freshmen to read, or the whole college to read.   Since The Speed of Dark has been used that way, I’m now on their radar.  I was the only fiction writer (of five) and the only woman.   Felt kind of odd, and very unlike an SF convention (where were the Klingons??   Well…there were Romulans on Star Trek on TV last night) but I had fun.

And tomorrow is the Big Day.  My Silver Book Anniversary (so to speak.)    Among the other writers were National Book Award winners  (wow!) but I had them outnumbered, if not surrounded.     Tired now, and waiting to hear back from the hotel if they found what I left in the room (and I haven’t left anything in a hotel room in…um…I can’t think when was the last time.)   Worst is that it was my favorite writing-on-a-trip collection of music–all classical.  Bach, Stanford, Mozart, Beethoven, Elgar, etc.

If you look at the US weather map, there’s a big red blot over North Texas (headed for Oklahoma I think) with a “tail” that extends across Central Texas and angles across Mexico.  The big red blot used to be on top of Central Texas.   It’s full of thunder and lightning and rain and little lumps of hail.   It thunder-bumped most of the night, and every time I relaxed into deep sleep because the noise was only rain (Yay rain!)  another embedded lump of noise and flashing lights woke me up.

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My UK editor wants an essay for their blogsite.  I’m working on it.  I’ve been working on it since it was assigned.   It should’ve been easy; I thought it would be easy.  It’s not.  And it’s even a topic I suggested.   In the weird way that Lifestuff and Writerstuff sometimes intertwine, it got tangled in a discussion here, a discussion elsewhere, and my original thoughts on the matter.

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Yes, you should get a post every day the week before the launch.   But there’s a couple of little glitches.  And here’s the big one.   Wednesday night I came home from choir practice with a very painful big toe on my left foot.  “Oh, it’s just that I got a fold in my sock,” I thought.   No.  It woke me up this morning before 5 am (it was quarter to five when I finally looked at my watch)  hurting like the dickens.   Swollen, exquisitely tender, throbbing.

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OK, this is the big one.  Since the book is out in the UK, you folks need a spoiler space in which to discuss, right?   A reminder of the Spoiler Space rules:

1) If you do not want to see spoilers, DO NOT ENTER OR READ ANY COMMENTS.

2) All discussion of Echoes must stay within a SpoilerSpace thread (if it gets too long, I’ll open another later.)   NO discussion of the book’s comments should be on any other thread; they will be deleted when brought to my attention.  If someone goofs, DO NOT add to the problem by commenting.  Email me and I’ll disappear stuff.

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UK sightings of Echoes of Betrayal are coming in…so it’s out there a week before it will be out here.

The book will be released in the US next Tuesday, February 21.   I will be at BookPeople in Austin on Friday, February 24 to read from it and sign copies.

I was reminded again this weekend of the way death comes seemingly out of nowhere to shatter relationships new and old.   A friend of mine in another state was participating in a serial transport of a rescued dog from the shelter where it was first found to its future home, some two thousand miles away.   The puppy stayed at her house overnight, and the next day she drove it to the next person in the chain.   The person set off…and she and the puppy were killed in a weather-related road accident.  You can read about it on my friend’s blog, which includes a beautiful tribute to the remarkable woman who was killed.  Please do, in fact.

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I can see the bubbles of desire to talk about the book.  I deeply sympathize (yes, in that way) so here is a spoiler space for that purpose.  HOWEVER…those of you who got the whole book early may NOT mention anything past the end of what’s posted online.  OK?  We don’t want uncivil wars around here.

Spoiler Space Rules:  If you don’t want any spoilers, DO NOT READ below the break, and DO NOT READ any comments to this thread.  You  have been warned.  Spoilers are roaming around loose and unconfined on the other side of the fence,  so if you venture beyond the break, you will find some.   Those of you who don’t mind a bit, having read the first 50 pages online, or not, are free to have encounters with loose spoilers.

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The history page on the Paksworld website has now been updated and expanded.   Ever wonder what they use for money in the different realms?   Want to know more about trade?   You folks were showing enough interest that when I went into the file to fix typos (and let’s hope I didn’t just create more typos)  I decided to add more information.