Category: Publishing

Happy Birthday, little book!  You’re one year old today.

You’ve aged so quickly.  How is it possible?  It seems like only yesterday you were nothing but a vague, faintly naive idea.

I remember how thrilled I was when I took you home from the hospital first saw you in a bookstore.   I thought you were the cutest book ever.  I still do.  But not  everybody agrees, and that’s why your mommy and daddy your publisher and author are working hard to make new clothing devise new cover art for you

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this post for a couple of weeks. 

There are two reasons for the difficulty.  First and foremost, this topic makes me feel helpless, and furious, and very very depressed.  Second, I’ve been dithering over how much of this I can talk about in public.  The very last thing I’d ever want to do is sound like a disgruntled troublemaker.

But a few days ago I unwisely let something slip in the comment thread to a recent blog post, where I thought very few people would see it.  Instead, it ended up on Twitter.  (I really wish I’d taken a more moderate tone in my off-the-cuff comments there.)

So I’ll cut to the chase: My publisher has delayed—yet again—the publication dates for the mass market paperback of Bitter Seeds, as well as for the hardcover of Milkweed #2, The Coldest War.  This means that contrary to my last announcement (which came on the heels of a face-to-face meeting with my editor), Coldest War will NOT debut in October 2011.

This post isn’t intended as a woe-is-me story.  But lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the publication date for Coldest War, and I’ve decided that if I have to announce yet another delay, I’m going to lay out the situation in as much detail as I can.  My intent is to give a clear and complete accounting of the history of the Milkweed books’ publication process.  Because it seems that every so often I’m forced to come up here to eat my words and rescind a previously announced publication schedule.  Which makes me look, and feel, like a lying bastard.  Which, you know?  Not fun.

But anybody kind enough to care about my books deserves to know why I keep changing my tune.  Please believe me, brothers and sisters: it ain’t by choice.

Below the cut, I’ll try to explain how and why this is happening.  (I say “try” because, frankly, I don’t fully understand it myself.)   But I want to be very clear that I’ve never, ever announced a publication date that didn’t come straight from my publisher.  And in the meantime, my agent and I have done everything in our power to try to push this series forward, including most especially meeting my contractual obligations and even finishing each manuscript ahead of schedule.  (Which is pretty much the only thing an author has power over.)

Sigh.

OK.  So what happened?  And why will more than 2 years pass between the publication of Bitter Seeds and its sequel, The Coldest War?

Okay, so, I’ve been gone a while.

No surprises there, since I’m generally pretty awful at keeping my blog up to date.  This time, at least, I have an excuse for the long silence— I was fortunate enough to get to spend all of September down in Australia.  And generally having the time of my life.  (Tasmanian Devils are TEH KYOOT.)

Worldcon made a good excuse for my first trip to the Southern Hemisphere.  And I figured that if I was going to travel across the International Date Line for maybe the only time in my life, I ought to make the most of it.  Hence the month-long vacation.

Also, the timing worked out very well, because I turned in the manuscript for the third and final Milkweed novel, Necessary Evil, a couple of weeks before I left for Melbourne on August 30 (it was due on my editor’s desk September 1).  Which meant that the trip coincided with the first time in over four years when I could enjoy down time—actual, honest-to-goodness down time with no obligations or deadlines pressing on me—and relax and veg out without being stricken with the crippling guilt that I wasn’t working on Milkweed stuff right now.  Which is sorta how I’ve spent all of my free time since I started planning the Milkweed Triptych, way back when.

So I spent the month traveling around Australia while not thinking about Marsh, Will, Gretel, Klaus, Eidolons, Enochian, and all the rest.  And it was awesome.

I’ll try to say more about my antipodean adventure in upcoming posts.  (No promises.  Because as we all know, I suck at keeping the blog up to date.)  But, while at Worldcon, I did get to sit down with my editor at Tor.  So, speaking of Milkweed, some updates below the cut…

Hurrah!  The audiobook version of Bitter Seeds is now available from Audible.com!  The narrator, Kevin Pariseau, did a terrific job.  And I have to admit he surprised me with how closely he had read the novel, when it came to the details of how various characters spoke.  We had an email conversation about Marsh and Will, and Kevin actually reminded me of a detail I’d forgotten.  Yowsers!

And, unlike me, Kevin can actually do accents and different voices.  So if you’re curious about how the novel is supposed to sound, check it out.

A quick update on production schedules for the audio production of Bitter Seeds.  Nothing is carved in stone, of course, but the contracts have been signed and so things are already moving forward.  I’m told that narrator selection should happen in the next couple of weeks, with production to begin soon after that.  The recording/production work is expected to take about 3 months.

So, if things go according to plan, the Audible.com production of Bitter Seeds should be available by Labor Day, and quite possibly before that.