if it's clockwork it must be Phoenix . . .

[realthog]

Editor Mike Allen (time_shark) and publisher Vera Nazarian/Norilana Books (norilanabooks) have already posted the ARC cover for this forthcoming anthology, but it's a pretty splendid piece of a/w so let's see it here as well! 


 


Meanwhile, apologies for the lack of much by way of posting on this blog this week: the to-be-read-urgently PDF proofs of my book The Dragons of Manhattan arrived on Sunday night from publisher Screaming Dreams at roughly the same time that Pam and I were at the emergency vet's watching one of our cats, Strider, breathe his last. It has been a busy but not very happy few days. Normal service will be resumed soon, honest.

 

Comments

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Please accept my condolences on the loss of your friend, Paul and Pam. I'm so sorry.

Love, C.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks, C!

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

My condolences regarding Strider. It was good of you and Pam to be there with him.

Clockwork looks to be a great one!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for the condolences. I know you've been through this same sort of thing recently, so know precisely what it's like. Not fun.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

It's painful having to put a pet down. Every time I go through it I think the grief is going to kill me. It feels as if a part of me dies each time with a loved one, and I think that perhaps a part of us does indeed accompany our babies when they cross over.

[imago1.livejournal.com]

My condolences, Paul.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks, Laird!

[plattcave.livejournal.com]

Oh, so sorry to hear about your cat. We've been through it, and it's a very sad time. My condolences.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks, John! Whenever a cat dies you tell yourself it's going to be easier the next time, and it never is.

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

I'm so very sorry about Strider. It is so hard and sad to see a faithful friend breathe their last. We went through that a couple of years ago and it was difficult.

On a lighter note, the a/w for the book really is stunning, and quite intriguing! Congrats!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for the condolences, K!

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

So sorry to hear about your cat. Sad when good friends move along without us.

Gorgeous artwork on the new anthology! Congratulations! Quite the line-up, also. *jots ISBN*

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for the sympathies, Selkie!

"*jots ISBN*"

And make sure you pass it along to LStC, too.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

I will. She's a giant Tanith Lee fan.

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

That's one of my dirty little secrets--my bookshelf of Tanith Lee, tucked away in my bedroom. *hangs head*

My sympathies for your loss, Thog. It's always wrenching when a loved one--furred or feathered or not--goes on the Great Journey.

*hugs*

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Er, I quite like Tanith's fiction, too.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

"Er, I quite like Tanith's fiction, too."

Me too.

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

She's my absolute favorite writer. I collect everything I can find by her, including short stories in anthologies. And I buy second and third copies of stuff I particularly like, for example, The Birthgrave, and give them out to people.

I just feel like it's a dirty little secret because I have a whole bookshelf dedicated to her in my room where nobody can touch it without my permission. Growing up in a house where books were considered suspect, I now have a little frisson of delicious feeling when I see my house stuffed full of them. *grin* Plus, her fiction is so good I feel transgressive when I read it.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Growing up in a house where books were considered suspect"

That must have been ghastly for you. I'm glad you're able to balance that out now!

I've always thanked the fates that my own childhood was exactly the opposite -- probably because my mother grew up in a house where there was some tension over books: my grandfather was a bibliophile and my grandmother considered them "suspect", as you so rightly term it. Whatever, even though the family never had any money when I was a kid -- especially after my father died -- there were always plenty of books in the house, both bought and library-borrowed.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

I am also grateful that books were never suspect in my house while I was growing up -- one aspect of my childhood I can applaud.

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

It WAS ghastly, in more ways than one. I remember being nine or so and my stepfather ripping a book in half (the spine, he wasn't Superman) because I was taking too long to take my bath. *sigh*

But now I can put a book anywhere in my house I want to. Sometimes I leave a book on the kitchen counter just because I CAN. It is unexpectedly sweet.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"my stepfather ripping a book in half (the spine"

Ouch! That hurts even just to read about!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Just noticed . . .

As a Tanith fan, you ought to rush and see http://time-shark.livejournal.com/145856.html.

(A confession: I have a story in that antho, too.)

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

I think the Selkie is going to order a copy for me. Because, yanno, I'm a completist.

I look forward to reading your story too! :)

[charlesatan.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear that your cat died.

Good luck with the editing!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

It's actually proofreading I'm doing, not editing . . . although sometimes, because in inferiority-complex mode I always fiddle with my own text at proof stage, it does seem a bit like editing. Ho hum.

Would you like a copy of the PDF proof, Charles?

I'll do a link to your Take No Prisoners review when things have settled down a bit. Probably tomorrow, when I'll (probably) be quasi-reviwing a Canadian-published Finnish novel you've never heard of . . . but which is actually pretty goddam marvelous.

[charlesatan.livejournal.com]

It's been my experience that when you're proofing, there's always an "error" in the proof that you'll edit to correct. =)

Sure, no problem although I'll be out of town over the weekend.

Go do your own commitments first before plugging me. =P

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Sure, no problem although I'll be out of town over the weekend."

I'll get the PDF to you Real Soon Now, honest. There were enough corrections (embarrassingly, all but two of them being My Fault) that the publisher, Steve Upham of Screaming Dreams, decided it'd be worth having a revised proof. This came in yesterday; I'll try to give it a quick check before the end of the week . . .

[charlesatan.livejournal.com]

No problem. It happens all the time. No rush lest you miss some errors.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

I already posted to Pam my sadness about Strider, but please allow me to do it again here. I wondered why you'd both been so quiet. Big hugs from both of us.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for the sympathy, ol' buddy!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

And did you have a whale of a time at Eastercon?

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

We had a whole pod of whales. I got to sell some books and buy rather more; Bogna got to schmooze with Geoff and Chris. Only disappointment was that Colin Greenland and Ken McLeod and Clute and you weren't there, otherwise Bogna's Angels would have been complete.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Only disappointment was that Colin Greenland and Ken McLeod and Clute and you weren't there, otherwise Bogna's Angels would have been complete."

Sigh. Why, I wonder, does she bother with Greenland, McLeod and Clute?

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Well, they're usually there...

[jmward14.livejournal.com]

So sorry about Strider. When I think about anything happening to Duzie I get physically ill. They are family, in every sense of the word. Much love to you and Pam, Jean Marie

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks, JM! As you say, they're family.

xox

[norilana.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I am so sorry about your loss of Strider! Just saw this belatedly!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the sympathy, V! We're getting over it, although there's still a sort of cat-sized gap in the world, somehow.

Just about to e-mail you . . .

[time-shark.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to here about your cat. They are precious things.

Serendipitously, my family once owned a dog named Strider. It's a good name.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Serendipitously, my family once owned a dog named Strider. It's a good name."

Yep. Which was why my feisty black female space-pilot character Leonie Strider (star of a couple of space operas I wrote 'way back) gave her name to a wimpy white male cat: as soon as Pam and I saw him it just seemed the natural name for him (not the "Leonie" part, of course). Maybe we'd had a couple of beers or something . . .