This past week at the day job was utterly crazytown bananapants. Yikes.
So, just a quick update to mention that copyedits on Milkweed #3, Necessary Evil, are finished. As with the first two Milkweed books, I was lucky to land a really superb copyeditor who went to great lengths to make me appear (somewhat) literate.
That’s another milestone on the way to publication. And a pretty major one. Next stop, galleys! And before I know it, the calendar will say “April” and the book will be out. Hooray!
In other news, I upgraded two machines to OS X 10.8 today. Not sure what I think about Mountain Lion yet; everything I like is a holdover from Lion. Not crazy about this notification stuff. As if I need even MORE distractions.
“crazytown bananapants” is good name for a rock band.
Found “Coldest War” in the Barnes & Noble store in Country Club Plaza, KC MO. Some bookstores will put anything on their shelves.
(Thank goodness for low standards!)
And congratulations again, Terry, on the release of Tyranny of Heroes. I’ve always been fond of that book.
Since I took printing in high school, I know the origin of the term. But I’ve always been amused that the proof part of the printing cycle is called the “galley”.
It calls up an image of authors chained to hard benches, their backs bent, their callused and gnarled fingers barely able to peck out the words, half-mad from privation and exposure, as relentless editors lash them in time with the nagging and inescapable beat of a drum. “Dead-line”, “dead-line”, goes the drum.
And here to me the word conjures the image of a carnival midway shooting galle(r)y.
Perhaps your vision is closer to the etymology? My understanding is that the original printer’s galley was printed on long strips of paper, not paginated or cut into sheets. A long narrow thing not unlike a seagoing galley?
Folk etymology ftw.
Finished THE COLDEST WAR last night. I was in NYC for an APS Board meeting, with the greatest city in the world at my fingertips, but I’m monastically reading away in my room. Damn you, Magnetic Moment! What is this, Ian, pay back for that Quantum Physics class?
I just can not get over what a good writer you are! I love the Milkweed series, and while I like the idea of a set story with an ending (that will come in NECESSARY EVIL), part of me would like 20 books about Marsh and Will.
Of course, if I had an advance copy of NE, I could blurb it. Just sayin’.
Right. Win, and you come back for the Champion’s Round.
The form of the “galley proof” comes from the compositor’s galley, a shallow long trough used to set type for a single column. (A smaller, handheld form is called a “stick.”) The galley form is faster and easier to set and proofread than a full-width page; too, many old fiction books were set in two-column rather than full-width format. The narrow form also makes it easy to take a “pull print” with basic tools, rather than running up a full production — just right for works needing an edit pass.
So authors used to get an end-bound bundle of long narrow pages, sort of like a collection of comic panels or some of those ancient documents you see being carefully handled by museum conservators on the History Channel.
Here’s an image of the compositor’s galley, that shows the similarity to a slave-propelled vessel. Just pen in some oars on either side.
http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/63100/63152/63152_print_galley.htm
The Wikipedia page has a picture of a pull print being produced from a galley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_proof
I enjoyed my printing class. Offset printing is all fine and good, and printing from a computer is near-miraculous in ease. But there is something about the smell of the ink and the hypnotic kershuck-shink! of the platen press… It’s a wonder I never lost any fingers.
Hi, Jim! Thanks so much!
You know, around these parts, people are much more impressed with the fact I used to take classes from the guy who devised the Decay Rate Algorithm for The Amazing Spider-Man than they are than any of my efforts. Everybody and his brother has written alt-history, but how many people were science advisors to Watchmen?
(If I pose that question as a Fermi problem, by the way, my back-of-the-envelope estimate puts the number at less than 10^3. Still got it!)
Seriously, though, thanks so much for the kind words. I’m delighted that you enjoyed The Coldest War. And if the book could diminish your trip to NYC, then I consider that a job well done.
Events have been piled a bit deep around here of late. (I’d borrow “crazytown bananapants” save that it actually sounds fun in a frantic kind of way.) Nonetheless, The Coldest War pulled me through to the end, though I started it rather later than I’d planned.
I am struck speechless by the plot hinging as it does on the scene that causes the book to pass the Bechdel test. (I typed “henging” there at first–which I think Will would like, incorrect though it be.) The ending didn’t surprise me, but that scene in the hospital waiting room wacked my head sideways way past outfield. Well done. Very well done.
The older I get, the more I think that the evils of adulthood mostly spring from an overweaning need to view oneself in a positive light, whatever the cost to one’s worldview or one’s estimation of others. So I’d give the second volume in a trilogy by Ian Tregillis full marks for thematic content, as well.
Congratulations on the restraint you showed in not titling the third volume “Do-Overs.”
Hi Susan–
I borrowed “crazytown bananapants” from elsewhere, so I can’t claim ownership. What’s that saying about how lazy writers steal? I think that’s how it goes. Anyway, I stole it.
Thank you very much indeed for the encouraging words and the vote of confidence! I’m delighted that you enjoyed the book.
You’re the first person to point out to me that the scene in question functions as a Bechdel test scene — I hadn’t thought about that at all when I was writing the book, or revising it, or anything, until right now. I knew from early on in the project that the scene would be important, and even who the principals would be. But for some obtuse reason I never came at it from the angle of the Bechdel test.
As opposed to my latest novel, which I’ve looked at quite a bit (and continue to do so) through the Bechdel lens.
Don’t congratulate me on my restraint just yet. I gave in to my darker urges in the third book; it’s 500 pages of Marsh and Gretel fighting in home-built power-loader armor like Ripley in Aliens.
Cool!
Hi Ian,
This website and your continued success make me smile. Congratulations. The family raided Barnes and Noble the day The Coldest War was released.
All my best,
Maggie
Thanks so much, Maggie! I deeply appreciate the kind wishes.
And here’s to hoping we cross paths again before too many years pass. All best to you and yours.