Right now I’m working on the copy edits for ATTACK THE GEEK, the Ree Reyes Side-Quest (coming April 7th of next year!). It’s a shorter story, weighing in at about 1/2 the size of a normal Ree Reyes novel, so it’s making the revision steps go quite a bit faster.

When working through copy edits, the copy editor, usually a freelancer, will suggest changes to the manuscript based on house style, the series’ style sheet, and continuity. Copy editors are awesome. They do the kind of editing that I’m weakest at, the super-granular nitty-gritty stuff, and for that, they have my eternal thanks.

But since the series is so pop-culture-tastic, sometimes the copy editor doesn’t know what I’m up to, and they make changes based on Normal World grammar and style as opposed to Geek Word style (TM). Which means that when I go through the copy edits, I end up using STET (a typography term for ‘leave it be,’ and rolling back their changes.

Here are some of the funnier STETs from ATTACK THE GEEK:

• “STET capitalization of X-Man’s name” (Gambit)
• “STET use of gaming terminology” (Willpower check)
• “STET capitalization of Dungeons & Dragons spell name” (Explosive Runes)
• “STET omission of ‘friendly’ in 2^nd sentence to match the military saying, ‘Friendly fire isn’t.'”
• “STET capitalization of World of Warcraft Race/Class combination.” (Troll Hunter)
• “STET for the comparison to the band.” (Violently-inclined Femmes)

My friend Jack Norris is running a Kickstarter for a wuxia RPG called Tianxia: Blood, Silk, and Jade. Jack and I go way back in gaming, and I had the fortune of testing an early early version of what would become Tianxia, and even then it was awesome. The game is 99% done and printer-ready, and the Kickstarter has hit its initial goal and several stretch goals.

But there’s one more stretch goal, and this one is particularly important to me: If we get a total of 1000 backers (48 more at the time of this writing) or hit $35,000 ($2,692 more at this time), then Vigilance Press will produce a fiction anthology called Tianxia: Year of the Snake. I’ve committed to writing for the anthology if it happens, and I’d be in the company of gaming luminaries such as Robin D. Laws, Gareth Skarka, Allen Turner,  T.S. Luikar, and John “Leverage” Rogers, a personal writing idol of mine.

So if you’re a gamer or you like wuxia stories, kung fu action, or cool fiction anthologies, please go take a look at the Kickstarter page and consider pledging to help us reach this last goal.

Tianxia: Blood, Silk, and Jade

This exciting news hit my Twitter feed today, courtesy of Publishers’ Weekly.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/59674-simon-schuster-to-launch-science-fiction-fantasy-imprint.html

I’d been wondering why S&S didn’t have a dedicated SF&F imprint, since it’s a genre that’s adapted well to digital distribution, and is continuing to garner a ton of buzz and an avid fanbase in the reading world.

Congrats and good luck to all involved. I’ll be watching this news with great interest.

Today I have a special bit of funny for you all. Mary Robinette Kowal, who narrated CELEBROMANCY, snuck out of the recording studio with a blooper reel from the sessions, and has provided that reel for me to share with you all.

Ze Bloopers!

My favorite bit? “Patently paternal…that’s just mean.” And it was. Not intentionally mean, but funny nonetheless. Despite my failings in producing (just a few) audio clunkers like that line, Mary did a fantastic job on the audiobook, and I recommend it as a great way of engaging with the story.

What these bloopers remind me of is how important it is to bring in your ear when doing revisions. Since I can now ambitiously assume that I’ll either sell audio rights or want to exploit them myself on all of my major works, I think it’s especially important to consider the aurality when doing revision. Sometimes, I don’t do enough, as we can hear from the bloopers, but I’ve tried to incorporate a read-aloud stage to my revisions whenever possible.

On the one hand, having bloopers is funny, but on the other hand, I’d rather have narrators who love performing my work extra because I manage to avoid such aurally preposterous phrases.

Sometimes, a line that plays really well in text will cause a headache for an audio narrator, and you have to choose which audience you’re primarily serving, or figure out if there’s a way to re-phrase or re-approach that works both ways. It’s a balance I’m still working on, and will beg forgiveness from my audio narrators in the meantime while I try to figure things out.

#SFWApro

I’m leaving now for New York Comic-Con, and I’ll be there all weekend, discovering new comics creators, findingout about everything new and awesome in geekdom, chatting with my amazing publishing teams at Simon & Schuster and 47North, as well as catching up with writer-friends who have come in from all across the country for a weekend of awesomeness.

As a reminder, you can find me at the “Ode to Nerds” panel on Saturday at 1:30 PM, where I and other fabulous nerdy authors will be talking with one another in what I imagine will be an all-out geekfest. Bring your questions for us and/or your books to be signed, since we’ll proceed from the panel to the signing area.

Info about the panel: http://nycc13.mapyourshow.com/5_0/sessions/sessiondetails.cfm?ScheduledSessionID=10ADCC.

See you there!

One of my absolute favorite memories of WorldCon 2013 is that during the convention, I joined the Skiffy & Fanty team to record a very special Torture Cinema podcast episode about SHARKNADO.

This is the episode in which I declared SHARKNADO to be “the apotheosis of the bad SyFy channel Sci-Fi movie.”

Notice: the recording is filled with total ridiculousness, profanity, and a drunkenly-acted skit.

Listen, if you dare…

A while back, I made some noise about a new 3-book deal with Pocket Star – 2 of the books being in a new series titled YOUNGER GODS, and the other being a novella in the Ree Reyes universe, set after CELEBROMANCY.

Now that I have edits back on the novella, we’ve settled on a title for the novella: ATTACK THE GEEK. This book will be about half the size of a Ree Reyes novel, and focuses on one Incredibly Bad Night (TM) at Grognard’s, featuring Geekomancers new and old, magic curses, whacky monsters, more romantic tension between Ree and Drake, and the on-screen return of everyone’s favorite Grizzled Geekomantic Mentor, Eastwood!

ATTACK THE GEEK will be available on April 7th, 2014. Set your calendars now!

You can see it even now on Goodreads, and pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes. Other links to come. (N.B. the final price will be lower than $5.99, since it’s a shorter work).

w00t!