The elbow is not completely healed, but it is much better. I’m still not allowed to lift anything heavier than a coffee cup, but typing isn’t about lifting, so that’s all right. However, I’m planning to ease back into things – I’m going to be posting once a week, on Wednesdays, until at least the end of June. After that, we’ll see how it goes.
In other news, the four Enchanted Forest books are being reissued in September with 25th Anniversary introductions…and they will also FINALLY be available as e-books! I just finished proofreading all four of the new editions, and I will blame any remaining errors on the oxycodone they gave me for my broken elbow and the surgery.
On top of that, Pamela Dean and I have a collection of short stories coming out as an e-book – it contains the Liavek stories that we wrote for the five Liavek shared-world anthologies back in the 1980s, plus two new ones (one that didn’t make the cut the first time due to space considerations, and one that we wrote to fill a hole in the joint storyline for this anthology). It is supposed to be out in May, from Diversion Books, and will have a print-on-demand option for people who want paper copies instead of or in addition to the e-book one.
Putting together this collection was a lot more work than I think either of us quite bargained for – after all, the stories were already written; it should have been just a matter of putting them in order and sending the manuscript to the publisher to format…we thought.
Unfortunately, the 1980s were long enough ago that there were a number of problems with this scenario. Some of the stories were not in electronic format (or at least, not in any that we could find. Possibly they dropped out somewhere during the migration from one computer to another over the past thirty years. Or the floppy discs got lost…remember floppy discs?). Other stories were in electronic formats that were unreadable by a modern Windows 8 machine, and neither of us still has a DOS one, let alone the programs we were using back then. Still others had been converted to rich text or some other format that we could read, but the conversion had problems and had to be proofread carefully.
The older “new” story, the one that I wrote for the second Liavek book that was far too long, needed some significant revisions – I basically rewrote the last half so it would make more sense. The new story, which was a joint project, has a deliberately confusing non-linear format that was hard to make work as well as it does (and that will probably not work for everyone, but that’s life). And when we finally got everything in one file, there turned out to be consistency problems with things like capitalization or italicization of certain terms that were unnoticeable when the stories were in different volumes, but had to be dealt with when they were all together in a row. So the whole thing had to be carefully proofread again.
When we finally got it to a publisher, they did a copy-edit, which we had to review, and then sent electronic page proofs. All of which took just as much time as writing a brand-new-original book would have. But they gave us a lovely Liavekan cover – the city skyline silhouetted against a hot desert sky and reflected in the waters of the Sea of Luck. Did I mention that it’s supposed to be out in May? I will post the exact date it goes live when I have it.
That should bring things up to date; next week, I plan to get back to that discussion about creating plots from non-plotty ideas that we were having ages ago when my elbows were both still whole. Unless someone has something they’d rather talk about – it has been a while, and perhaps you’ve all moved on.
How exciting! I was already looking forward to May (I’m publishing a second book then) but now I’m looking forward to it even more 🙂 I always thoroughly enjoy your books, and I’m on a short story kick at the moment. Also, the idea of non-linear timelines makes me very happy 🙂
Yay for a healing elbow! I’m glad you can be on the computer again. Still, take it easy! I’m super excited for the ebooks of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Will they be available in mobi format (for Kindle)?
Welcome back! And with all sorts of lovely news. 🙂 Hope you’re feeling all the way better soon.
Welcome back. Make sure to pick up the cats with your *other* arm.
Welcome back!
Or the floppy discs got lost…remember floppy discs?
Hey, I still use floppy discs! (Well, 3.5″ discs, i.e., The Floppy Discs That Do Not Flop.) I’ll spare everyone the dissertation on why, but short version, they’re still a viable storage medium if you like that sort of thing.
Regardless, looking forward to seeing the shiny new books when they make their public debuts!
Also looking forward to “that discussion about creating plots from non-plotty ideas,” which is pretty much every idea I’ve ever gotten.
It’s so great to see a post with so much good news! I look forward to the short story antho.
I don’t use the 3.5″ disks any more, but sometimes I miss my neat color-coded system for short stories, nonfiction, etc. I have to admit that the current system is more durable, though.
Liavek!! I just finished rereading Mike’s anthology of his Liavek stories, and was thinking about trying to find the 5 – my ex had them, and kept them (sigh).
Hello Ms. Wrede!
Glad you’re feeling better, and I hope you heal completely and quickly. I haven’t commented here before, but I really like your books and the blog. There is just something about e.g. the Enchanted Forest books where people don’t feel they need to be rude just because a lion is attacking them. But perhaps the ones I like the most are the Frontier Magic books, the world and the magic are so interesting.
I’m from Finland, so I’m not a native English speaker, but these days I read mostly in English. Partly because many speculative fiction books have not been translated to Finnish (including your books), but more because I like to read in the original language.
This has made me wonder if you could have a blog entry about foreign languages in writing. For example, what is the author’s role when work gets translated? Do you get copies of your translated books? Do the translators work with the author often, or does the author just sell the foreign rights? Although from your previous blog entries, I assume the selling process isn’t trivial either.
Another thing I’m interested in is writing in other than your native language, if you have things to say about it. E.g. if you know some authors who do it. I think the only one I know off the top of my head is Hannu Rajaniemi, a Finnish sci-fi writer who writes in English. If you like Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, you might like his work.
By the way, I’m not a writer, but your blog entries about motivation and getting stuff done did make me stop waiting for the mythical combination of time and inspiration and start making some videogames I’ve had planned for a long time. They’re just a hobby, but it’s nice to finally have actually done something about it instead of just thinking about doing it “one of these days”. So thanks for the motivating blog! =)
The Dutch diplomat Robert van Gulik wrote murder mysteries, in English, set in the seventh century CE in Tang dynasty China, featuring the adventures of Judge Dee, who as magistrate had the duty of solving crimes as well as maintaining the law. His English is just about perfect, and I assume he wrote in English rather than in Chinese or Dutch because there was a better market for whodunits in English. These mysteries follow the Chinese model: the magistrate has to follow several cases at once; torture is part of his standard investigatory repertoire; and there’s almost always a strong supernatural element.
He began by translating _Dee Goong An_, “Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee,” and went on to compose about fifteen other volumes of novels and short stories. They’re good, once one gets used to the cultural differences.
Sounds otherwise interesting, but it may be too much to follow a protagonist who often uses torture. Although many books and shows have protagonists who kill a lot of people, somehow torture sounds even worse.
Of course it probably depends a lot on the presentation by the author.
Looks like my HTML is rather rusty. The missing text is “Deliberate Values Dissonance” (name of the linked trope), and I also didn’t close the link tag… I guess it’s not possible to edit comments afterwards?
I would check my e-mail to see if there’s e.g. editing link there, but it seems the e-mail provider’s page is down. Guess it’s just one of those days…
Hope you’re feeling better & that your recovery is going well!
Welcome elbow, uh, back, Patricia!
LizV, I just gave up on 3 1/2″ diskettes. My XP system died on Saturday, and I was force-marched to Windows 7. (I have a number of very useful 16-bit programs that do not work now or are considerably slower. Grr!) I considered having the 3 1/2″ drive pulled from the old system, but then I realised that I had not used it in years (and not missed it).
*grin*
Gene, I’ll just have to carry the standard alone, then. 😉 (I even have a 3.5″ drive that connects via USB, for the work/travel/internet laptop. Now if I could get my ancient word processor’s conversion program to work on this machine. I’ve never been able to figure out if the failure is an XP limitation, or a this laptop is kind of a POS limitation.)
Cool! A book!
Is the title decided yet?
Pamela Dean has referred to it as Points of Departure.
Graydon! How cool to see you show up!
(I read your book. It’s neat. It took me two readings to figure it out. You are in fine form.)
Hello Dorothy!
(Thank you! your mention of my book is how I found this blog. Glad you felt it was worthwhile to persevere!)
Glad to hear you’re doing better!
I look forward to reading the anniversary introductions to the Enchanted Forest books! They’ve always had a special place in my heart, being the first books of yours that I discovered, and hearing more about the background will be interesting. I take it all four are coming out this year, instead of each one being released for its own 25th anniversary?
I adored Book of Enchantments and have been longing for more of your short stories ever since. So I’m thrilled to hear about the anthology coming out in May.
I found the “discussion about creating plots from non-plotty ideas” fascinating and would love to hear more of your insight on the topic.
(-: Lots of good news! Very glad to hear it, and I hope things continue to be pleasantly busy, and healing apace.
As for the blog posts, yes, please, when you are ready. I enjoyed the discussion very much.
Glad to hear that you’re recovering. Sorry to hear that it isn’t happening more quickly.
And I do remember floppy disks. On the one hand, I have stuff that originated on a Commodore-64 and that’s been transferred from computer to computer over the years. On the other hand, some of my material has been lost, and some of it is still around, somewhere, in dead-tree format that never got put in electronic form.
I’m very glad to hear that you are recovering so well. And good to hear about the books!
This is great! So glad to hear you’re recovered, back to posting–and, on a selfish note, that you will be continuing on the plots from non-plotty ideas, since that’s a major problem of mine.
I’m also very pleased about the new edition of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles! I had a lovely omnibus hardcover, once upon a time … well, I still have it. But at one point (quite a number of years ago now) I lent it to my younger sister, as I felt she was of an age to appreciate and love them as much as I did (do). I was on the mark with my book recommendation–she loved the books so much she literally tore my copy to pieces! It is now all held together with packing tape, has no cover, and is generally in a much-loved but difficult-to-read state. I have three of the four in paperback versions, but …
My sister did the same thing with my hardcover omnibus Lord of the Rings, too. I think the collected Kipling was probably my fault–though I’m going to blame the ripped corners on a puppy. 🙂
It’s great you’re so much better, Pat!
Thank you very much for sharing the upcoming book news; I look forward to further posts as you’re able to craft them.
25 years… Wow. Hard to believe the series is that old. But despite its age, “The Enchanted Forest Chronicles” is still just as entertaining as it was when I first read it back in the ’90s, and well worth the money I spent to buy my own copies some years ago (the 2003 box set, to be exact, at some point in the 2005-2009 time range). Which, incidentally, I’m currently re-reading. (And wishing I had a copy of “Book of Enchantments” to go with them.)
By the way… aside from the new introductions and covers, are there any other modifications to the text in the new editions?
Until next time…
Anon e Mouse Jr.
Slight addendum to the above – I bought the 2003 box set in approximately May or June of 2007. And as mentioned before, it was worth it. (Also, a quick question – I’ve read and re-read the first few chapters of “Calling On Dragons”, and as far as I can tell, we were never told the exact color of Morwen’s cat Murgatroyd, other than “not black”, though all the others were identified. What color IS he?)
Until next time…
Anon e Mouse Jr.
Hurray! A new Patricia Wrede book! I somehow missed the Liavek stories — maybe because I don’t generally do anthologies? But I’m looking forward to reading them now.
And Enchanted Forest ebooks! I finally got my 8 year old to read them. I had to start him with “Talking to Dragons” (the first one I read back in the mid-80s, actually) since he wasn’t interested in a “princess story” when I tried him with “Dealing with Dragons”. And now he’s read through the whole series, and pointed out all the pages that are falling out…. Time for new copies!
I too am glad to hear you are feeling better, Pat! Take care of yourself!