Blog – Page 44 – Ian Tregillis

Followup to the Milkweed Update Post

Posted on March 15, 2011January 8, 2025 by eidolon

[Hi there. If you’ve stopped by to read my infamous blog post regarding the bizzaro publishing history of my trilogy, it’s here.]

Wow.

You guys. I mean… wow. Just, wow.

I cannot believe how much attention my previous blog post has received. When I posted that entry on Sunday, I did it to clear the air, and so that I’d have a long and detailed explanation available for when people asked about the books. I honestly never thought it would be seen immediately by anybody other than my usual readers (hello, all 5 of you!). When I asked for folks to spread the word, I had no idea just how far you’d spread it.

I’m blown away by all the blog comments and many private messages of support. I know I’ve already said this dozens of times, but the support and affirmation means the world to me. Everybody has been incredibly kind. Thank you.

MILKWEED UPDATE (or, What the Hell is Going on With The Coldest War?)

Posted on March 13, 2011January 8, 2025 by eidolon

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?

Number Stations

Posted on March 11, 2011January 8, 2025 by eidolon

My previous post about the Voynich Manuscript came about partly because recently I’ve been feeling a lack of wonderment and mystery in my life. Let’s call it a paucity of oddments.

At times like this, my daydreams tend to drift in well-traveled directions, to follow the well-trodden paths of my dilettantism. Like iron filings before a superconducting magnet, my thoughts are drawn to pleasant memories of other introductions to the strange. Because I like to remind myself—I need to remind myself—that we do live in a strange and interesting world.

Which is probably why I’ve always been fascinated by number stations.

The Voynich Manuscript

Posted on March 9, 2011January 8, 2025 by eidolon

Fourteen years ago this June, I moved to Minneapolis after two particularly unpleasant years spent in upstate New York. I found a great apartment, got a part-time job in a lab down at the university, and spent most of the summer reading.

One of the first books I picked up that summer was Grammatical Man by Jeremy Campbell. Though it’s a little dated (and was when I first read it) this is a really wonderful book, as suggested by the subtltle: “Information, Entropy, Language, and Life.” It’s about all sorts of cool things like error-correcting codes used in spacecraft telemetry and viral DNA and the entropy of language.

It’s also where I first heard about the Voynich Manuscript.

The Mountain is High But the Reading Is Great

Posted on March 7, 2011January 8, 2025 by eidolon

In the past 3 weeks, I’ve read over 1300 manuscript pages for the purpose of critiquing or blurbing. That’s not excessive by the standards of some writers, critiquers and/or editors, but it’s a hell of a lot for me. I read slowly, and I don’t like to read entire books on screen—I much prefer paper. (But given the choice I’ll read on screen rather than print out an entire book!)

Or, more accurately, I should say I don’t gravitate toward reading novels on my laptop. But I don’t mind at all when I’m so engaged in what I’m reading. As was the case these past few weeks!