madwriter, posts by tag: city beyond play - LiveJournal

Two pieces of big news side by side:

The City Beyond Play, the book I co-wrote with Phil Farmer, is back in "print" as an e-book! I just got the heads up from friend and fellow Farmerian fan and author Christopher Paul Carey, who among other things co-authored the Farmerian novel The Song of Kwasin, upcoming in the omnibus Gods of Opar. Huzzah! I need to get cracking on learning the ins, outs, and wily ways of marketing e-books.

In other news, I've been asked to contribute bonus material to a forthcoming reprint of the Phil Farmer classic The Wind Whales of Ishmael, the science fiction far-future adventure sequel to Moby Dick. This was through the efforts of another friend and fellow Farmerian fan and author Win Scott Eckert, who among other things co-authored PJF's The Evil in Pemberly House. This piece is due by October; I'll post more when I know it.

My Friday the 13th good luck streak continues: I found out on Friday that The City Beyond Play has been nominated in the Best Novella category for the British Fantasy Awards. Woot! Some heavy hitting authors there (including one story I would've voted for had my own not been in the list), but I'm just happy to be there.

In the meantime, don't forget to look at the moon this evening. And who needs a calculator when you have crop circles?

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 6/14 AND 6/17/08

New Words: 4550 (3100/1450).

Total Words: 27200.

Reasons For Stopping: Stuff. 6/14 because I was helping get the house ready for mauzybroadway and yesterday because I was going somewhere.

Mammalian Assistance: Not too much now that the animals have realized they won't get much attention while my mind is buried in the early 18th century.

Exercise: Not much to speak of.

Stimulants: None / Dr. Pepper on the rocks.

Today's Opening Passage(s): Saturday: The horse had been Natty Burwell’s idea. Andrew himself never took to the creatures well, and though he wasn’t a poor rider he preferred his feet and a solid pair of boots. He might still have insisted on walking the entire way until Natty asked if Andrew was willing to carry one or two hundred pounds’ worth of furs on his back all the two hundred miles from the Shenandoah to Williamsburg. Andrew took the horse, and a polished English saddle too.

Yesterday: Schenk shook Andrew awake before dawn and for a moment the Scotsman groggily thought he was back on the Spotswood expedition about to be told that Natty Burwell had gone missing. “Get up, MacEvan,” the ranger captain said. “We should leave before the Indians start coming through the pass and asking for their gifts. Be certain you’ve got enough for a week’s travel, plus some trade goods maybe.”

Darling(s) Du Jour: Just a couple of bits I'm fond of...

The man tapped his chest. “Tsalagi,” he said, then, “Cherokee. You, English?”

“Scot!” Andrew corrected angrily. The Cherokee seemed to consider the name while chewing his turkey, then shrugged as if the difference meant nothing.

and

“Lost Wind says your name must be Red Buffalo,” White Fox continued, “because you fight like a buffalo. He said they have to be elsewhere today but someday wants you to come to his town and teach them how to fight like that. He says you can keep your gun.”

“I’ve never seen a red buffalo,” Andrew admitted.

“Neither had he, until today.”


Books In Progress: The Winter King.

There are two copies of The City Beyond Play on eBay. Heh.

They're selling the $20 edition for $45, though.

...has arrived!

(The bad news is that I got fewer contributor's copies than the contract promised, which means I received fewer copies than the number I'd promised to autograph and send to certain folks. But I'll work that out one way or another.)

Reading over the book again today for the first time in two years, including Chris Roberson's introduction and Tracy Knight's afterword, I was suddenly blindsided with a happy realization: I knew why this year had been such a bad one for me writing-wise.

Because I'd forgotten (or maybe misplaced) my sense of adventure.

I suddenly realized that all of my favorite of my own stories has that sense of adventure, one way or another. City has it overtly. The Camelot Book had it, my one completed YA fantasy novel, The Dark Horse, had it. The same is true for my favorite short stories.

The Navy Book doesn't have it. The Neo-Arthurian Book has it only in fragments, but is wide open waiting for me to include it. I can't think of a single short story I wrote this year that has it, and the lack is telling.

No adventure, and writing is no fun. I don't mean that I expect writing to be fun every day, but it is for me overall. Except that it wasn't this year.

I can speculate about why this is, but it's not really important to this entry. This should have been glaring obvious to me but I suppose I lost that truth amid, well, the glare.

I feel like I've gotten a new lease on life.

Oh, and I made one re-discovery too: I've been pretty sluggish about submitting my work in 2007, and (aside from the agent search for the Camelot book, as well as sending the novel to an editor last week) my novel submissions this year have been practically zero. But reading City reminded me of how addictive publishing can be, and I caught myself thinking So when am I going to sell my next book?

I'll let you know when I do.

In the meantime, Happy Halloween!

Some folks commenting on my last entry reminded me that I forgot to include some kinda' pertinent information with the cover photo, so...

The City Beyond Play is scheduled to come out this month! And--

You can order it (or pre-order it if you like) from various places online, including PS Publishing itself.