I did a short interview with SciFi Wire a month or so ago, which is finally up.
Here's a link: http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=5&id=39028
The reporter caught me in a moment of PR fatigue, but it came out reasonably well despite that, I think. Alas we didn't get the link for the sample chapters in, but it's a very good place for the book to be mentioned nonetheless, even though the site is mainly aimed at media fans.
Ta, L.
Subject: (News) First sale to Hungary
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006
Hi all --
I have made my first book sale in the Hungarian language; I just sent off the contract for Shards of Honor and Barrayar, to a publisher called Lazi Konyvkaido Kft. (some diacritical marks left out in this transcription) in (the town of ?) Gogol, Hungary. As is not uncommon, I know nothing about the publisher, except that they made an offer my agent's sub-agent thought credible. But anyway, I can now officially add Hungarian to my collection of languages.
Ta, L.
Subject: (News) Next book update
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006
Hi all --
I am pleased to report I have concluded a deal with HarperCollins/Eos for the two sequels to The Sharing Knife duology, possibly not to be called The Wide Green World as my purchasing editor was dubious about that title. The decision on the final title/s will not be made for a while, however, so I'm going to continue calling them WGW1 and WGW2 till then.
The first book of the new pair is completed in first draft. 24 chapters at present. The second is not yet started.
From this halfway point, it looks as though the new duology will feel more like a book and its sequel and less like one book cut in half than its predecessor The Sharing Knife, probably because I'm doing duology on purpose instead of by accident this time. (But I've been wrong about such guesses before.) Nevertheless, the two new volumes will be very closely connected, in a sort of braided way. In other words, some story-arc-concerns will be concluded before the natural break-point that falls at the end of the first volume, and some intertwined arcs will span the whole pair. It does have more backfill embedded during early chapters (smoothly, I hope), as the concerns of WGW1 flow pretty directly out of TSK2. At least one reader who hadn't yet read TSK on whom I tested the first four chapters said she experienced no undue disorientation or difficulty following the story, so the interesting balance problem between "valuable orientation/reminder" and "clogging with recap" seems to be on target for at least one part of the book's future audience.
I was trying to avoid committing trilogy with the double-duology structure, but I'm not at all sure I've succeeded. Squinting, it may just turn out to be three books of very uneven lengths. I have no idea yet how long WGW2 will top out at, besides "long enough to reach the end".
And that's about all I can say about it without getting into major spoilers for TSK2: Legacy, due out next July. But I would expect WGW1 to see hardcover publication sometime in 2008 (before the Denver Worldcon, I hope, which is in fact why I submitted the books now instead of waiting till both were complete in first draft, my original plan). WGW2 will presumably follow sometime in 2009.
Ta, Lois.
Subject: (chat) Amazon UK musing
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006
I note Amazon UK seems to be moving TSK:B even more briskly than the US Amazon, where sales are trailing off after the intial pop of last month. Upon reflection, that makes some sense, since it seems that Amazon UK is the only generally available source for the book in Britain apart from a few speciality F&SF import shops, and since it had and will have no British publication at all.
Jim Baen once described Amazon as "the global answer to local shortages". That certainly seems to be the case here...
Ta, L.
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