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Three rejections and one full MS request for Skywatch, plus two more NRMN (no response means no) rejections.  I need to spend an afternoon sending out new queries, but I've been focused on some editing for others that I promised and on polishing the outline for Flying Machines (finished through Act Two, just need to get Act Three done).

I also read two awesome books, one YA and one grownup urban fantasy.

The YA is White Cat, by Holly Black.  This book is a few years old, but I avoided it because I barely got through Tithe.  It wasn't bad, just . . . meh.  But I really enjoyed White Cat and the questions about rights and agency and safety that are raised throughout the book, and also of identity--we find out as the book goes on that Cassel, the POV character, is beyond the definition of an unreliable narrator--he's unreliable even unto himself.  How that effects who he is and how he reacts to things is fascinating.  I started the sequel today, and I'm interested in seeing where the series goes.

The urban fantasy is, of course, Seanan McGuire's latest, Midnight Blue-Light Special!  McGuire is pretty much my favorite author for adults, and MBLS lives up to her standard.  It has all the cryptids we know and love from Discount Armageddon and a plot that moves like anything.  Plus the Aeslin Mice, perennial fan favorites, play a big role--I think they were sort of fun background in Discount Armageddon, but they have plot purposes and are integrated into Verity's life in MBLS, which I really appreciated.  HAIL THE SEQUEL!

Likely as close as I'm going to get to an actual review, because frankly I suck at those.  They require a lot of thought that I'm not as good at articulating as I was when I graduated.

What I REALLY wish I could've done was write a running-reactions post as I read the book, because that would've been a lot more entertaining, if not a lot more coherent.  Thing is, I could not tear myself away from the book long enough to turn the laptop on.  We're lucky I made the drive home from the bookstore without crashing.

( Needless to say, saying it anyway: DEADLINE SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT. LOTS OF THEM. SERIOUSLY, READ THE BOOK AND GET BACK TO ME. )

So that's Deadline.  A lot of fun, some zombies, a virus-related twist or three, and in the grand tradition of Feed, snark, blogging, and conspiracies.

I had great fun.  I'm rec'ing it.  Start with Feed, come along on Deadline, and then wait with the rest of us poor souls for Blackout to release next year.  It'll be a long wait, but at least this year I'll have two Newsflesh books to re-read instead of just one.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest.  Rise up while you can.

One: for FEED fans, Alpha-RC007 encounters Marburg Amberlee in Countdown!  When will you Rise?

Two: Working on Skywatch again, for it has been returned to me with many useful edits, and the werewolf book is stubborn.  I'm not actually having trouble writing it in the sit-and-stare-at-the-screen-for-hours sense, which is what happened with Skywatch, I just can't seem to get a hold of my main character's voice (as this is the only novel I've ever attempted to write in first person, that is kind of important).  So I'm going to leave my wolves alone a little longer and refocus on the City in the Sky.

Wish me luck!  It appears I have new scenes to write and new-ish scenes to delete, along with the constant destruction of typos.

So, came down with a crazy mutant cold that won't go away and makes me fuzzy-brained.  I am completely unable to edit while sick--it requires too much brainpower.  You have to keep track of plot and character and what you're supposed to be fixing and . . . nope, too much.

After my last entry, I poked around my older posts and found an almost identical post about how hard it was to start writing Skywatch.  Now, I guess I'll only be able to test this theory when I start writing Sanctuary, but I wonder if the issue is Skywatch itself?  For a book that I thought was going to be easy, it's been a bear.  Not bad, just difficult.  It requires a lot more of my energy per word than The Novel ever did (okay, not ever, but on average it's the same amount of work and Skywatch is half as long.  Do the math).

Also, in between getting sick and editing middlegrade steampunk, I have been reading every Miles Vorkosigan book my library has.  I'm about to head out to other branches, because these books are awesome.  Mind you, most of the ones I've read have been with an older Miles--late twenties and early thirties.  The Baen Free Library has Warrior's Apprentice, one of the early Miles books, and I suspect that while I'll like the book I might not like Miles the character as much.  I like my heroes a more practical and less impulsive, which from Miles's internal monologue in Komarr is not at all how he behaved.  Still, I'm excited to read it, and I really enjoy the combination of genres Bujold handles seemingly effortlessly--adventure, sci-fi, mystery, romance--I sound like a 60s movie preview with less exclamation points.  Nevertheless, I like this lady's work and am going to head out to other libraries and track more down.

The best part for library-dependent me is that you don't have to read them in order!

Last bit of news is that I've collected an astonishing number of rejection letters for the two new short stories I started submitting in 2011.  Three each so far and the month isn't even half over yet.  I think that's kind of impressive.  At least it means I'm submitting again!

It's been a bit; I've been coming down from the awesomeness of WisCon and then I didn't get two jobs I really wanted, one right after the other . . . let's just say that forthcoming publication credit has been a bright light and leave it there.

Another bright light happened today--I picked up the first in a STACK of books loaned by my friend, Elena, while I was staying with her for WisCon (link to her site is off to the right).  I picked the book basically at random, and because it was so thick that I didn't think even I could finish it in a day--the plan was to read a hundred pages or so, and then write for the rest of the day.

Yeah, that happened.

Feed's a new book--came out May 1, by Mira Grant, who also writes as Seanan McGuire.

Also, it's deeply ironic that I'm blogging about this book, which stars a pair of sibling bloggers.

I got hooked by the action and the main character's voice right away.  George (Georgia properly, after George Romero, but her brother only calls her Georgia when they're in imminent danger of getting chomped by the living dead) has a great, solemn sarcasm and talent for comebacks that I envy.  Her brother (the Amazon description says "twin" which works, but isn't strictly accurate) is cheery and a great foil for her without ever being overbearing.

Feed is a post-zombie-apocalypse book, and I'm rec'ing it even though I don't, as a rule, like zombies.  They're sloppy, they're gross, they tend to be handled with a heavy hand and an eye to the grotesque that makes my stomach churn (I don't watch many horror movies, either).  Grant handles them extremely well, with an eye to the disease that makes the dead rise and the society that would arise when your loved ones can become infected with one bite--quarantine, blood testing, hazard zones, and the terrible emotional reality of having to shoot people you knew who aren't people any more.  Like "World War Z", the only other zombie book I can rec to date, Grant handles the realities of zombies and treads that all-important line between humor and horror.

That said, don't ever expect her to pull a punch.  This book took off from page one (er, well, there's an actual takeoff on page 14, but metaphorically) and didn't let go--I read all nearly-600-pages this afternoon and evening, unable to put it down.  There's plot out the wazoo: conspiracy theories, politics and zombie disease control, and characters who are real people from the moment they're introduced, every one of them.

One of the most important points about this book is that the zombies aren't the point.  It's the world the zombies have made, and what people do in that world: love, corruption, patriotism, betrayal, loyalty, determination.  It's a blogger-style journalistic exercise.  To borrow a phrase from the book, it's the watershed moment for George: her life and everything she works for.

Mira Grant handles the extensive and often complicated exposition extremely well.  Information is given when it becomes necessary for the story, and even though there are whole sections of the book that serve as a history of the world post-zombies, I never once got bored.  And I bore really easily.

My recommendation aside, this is NOT a book for the faint of heart.  I have a feeling that I'll be examining doors and windows for possible zombie-entrances for a while.  It is in no way a gore-fest, but it's a book with a zombie apocalypse, and as I said, Grant doesn't pull punches.  I think the bruises are worth it, but it's still going to take a while (and maybe a happy book or two) to scrub Feed out of my head.

Of course, I can't wait for the sequel, which is too bad for me since this one just came out!

I haven't dived in yet, but the water looks fine.

My Skywatch outline has been returned to me, and I have been tweaking it for several days, mostly fixing the beginning and the end (I've noticed a trend).  I'm not entirely sure about either of the scenes I added, so I'm going to set the outline aside for a few days and then come back, see if time lends perspective.  Actually writing the book might be the best way to tell at this point.  I'm (still) almost there.

( Writing that isn't steampunk )
Wandering back around to the subject of steampunk (I think this is my longest just-about-me post--some of the WindyCon posts might be longer, but I'm not sure), I've been reading and watching whatever I can get my hands on via libraries and netflix.  Cherie Priest's book Boneshaker was very good, though it took me a week and a half to get through the first two hundred pages, I read the second in about two hours.  Definitely a book worth sticking with.  The Otomo anime Steamboy was also rollicking fun, and the background art is gorgeous.    Reading the subtitles, watching the movie and oogling the background was kinda difficult at one in the morning, but worth the trouble.

I also found the '60s tv show The Wild, Wild West, which is black and white and ridiculous but pretty fun, too.  I also had a geek-out moment in the very first episode, because I'd seen Sherlock Holmes (which is kinda steampunk-y) that day and there's a shot in the movie that's identical to a shot in the pilot, down to the design of the sleeve-gun.