June is shaping up to be a very busy month, which is good, except I haven’t quite recovered from May yet. If you weren’t aware Austin had severe rains and flooding, which didn’t affect us directly, mostly because I was in Houston for Comicpalooza when it was happening. But that meant when I was done with Comicpalooza and ready to go home, there were serious storms between me and home, and they were heading toward Houston.
I was riding back with Stina Leicht, and she has already detailed our trip back rather well, so there isn’t much I have to add to that. But navigating our way through the storm and washed out roads was not unlike navigating through the process of querying and submitting to reach publication. So our mindset was locked in: be patient, be careful, find a new route when one is blocked. Keep moving forward because that’s the only way to get to the goal. (In this case the goal was Austin and our respective homes and spouses, which we both made it to safely.)
So now what’s ahead? A Murder of Mages is out in one month, and I’m rather excited about that. I’m hopeful that people enjoy Satrine and Minox as much as they’ve enjoyed Veranix. This book has a different tone but much the same spirit. A big thing I’ve been diving into, thematically, with all the Maradaine books (including the ones that are written but not yet slated for publication) is the nature of heroism, looked at from different perspectives. Satrine and Minox are very much heroes, but very different in style from Veranix.
One thing of note, if you are one of the reviewers who received Murder through Netgalley: apparently the Kindle version of the Netgalley eARC was damaged in PDF conversion, including de-capitalizing letters in a lot of places. I’m given to understand that it’s being fixed, but if you are reading a Kindle eARC and are seeing that, please note that it’s not some strange stylistic choice on my part. Other e-versions do not have this problem.
But now, it’s back into the word mines. I need to finalize The Alchemy of Chaos and finish the draft of An Import of Intrigue, as well as kick preparation for the ArmadilloCon Writers Workshop into high gear. See you all down there.