Archive for July, 2009

• The weather

  Date: 2009.07.29 | Category: News | Response: 21

  The newspaper says that today will be over 100 degrees Farenheit.

  In Tacoma, Washington.

  It is supposed to be in the 70’s this time of year.  I am supposed to be able to walk around the block without feeling sick from the heat.

  Today I was looking at the weather map, carefully considering Alaska.  or Canada.  Someplace with sane weather.

  Robin

• Home Again, and Back to Work

  Date: 2009.07.22 | Category: News | Response: 14

  Book tours are wonderful. They are like six or seven days out of someone else’s life.  I wake up knowing exactly what I’m going to do that day, down to the minute, and I arrive on time and organized, and I do it.  It’s wonderful.  That is due to the efforts of people such as Alice Moss who kept me organized and Tony Connell, who has handled the driving on every UK book tour I’ve done, and the rest of the HC staff who set things up and make them go so smoothly.

  Then there are the book stores and the book store staffs. At every single store we visited, I felt very welcomed.  It is always a pleasure to talk to book store people.  They know what’s coming out and from who and give me tips about new writers to watch or the book that is hidden over in the YA section but is actually some of the best new fantasy they’ve seen.  I love the delightful mess of book store back rooms.  There are signed posters and teetering piles of books, notes warning you off of eating someone else’s sandwich in the frig, and the wonderful clutter of people who love books and stories.   It’s an intimate peek into the day to day lives of the place where it either does or doesn’t happen for a book and its author.  In the final accounting, if an author does not have book sellers ‘hand-selling’ the book because they themselves enjoyed it . . .   well, then, you just may not sell your next book at all!

  I never really know how to thank all the people involved. Without exception, they all put in a lot more than they are being paid to do.  The editorial folks do all the extras because at the end of the day, what they really want to do is put out a book they are really proud of.  The book store people are all about sharing whatever wonderful book they have just read. 

  So, for me, a book tour is a solid week of spending time with the sort of people I enjoy the most.

  A special thanks is due to fellow writer Terie Garrison.  Terie and I became friends first on the Internet, and then at conventions.  When I took an extra week in England after the book tour, Terie appeared to offer my family and me a jaunt to Stone Henge.  And then we went on to Avebury and the Long Barrow.   Words cannot describe the wonder of those places.  Stone remembers. 

  I am glad to be back home, at my desk, with my cats and dogs and various sorts of kids and neighbors wandering through.  But it’s a bit hard to put windswept hillsides and towering cathedrals out of my brain and settle down to my work again.   I think my best souvenirs are a handful of flints gathered from the fields around the Long Barrow, and half of a story about Goblins that came to my mind during a cab ride. If I can write that as well as I want to, it may possibly appear in the story collection I’m working on, though it’s much more Lindholm than Hobb.

  Well, as fellow writer Fiona McIntosh puts it, I need to apply the ‘bum glue’ and keep myself in my desk chair and my fingers on the keys for the next few months now.  It’s so much easier to write a journal entry or answer some email and pretend it’s writing work than it is to settle down and ask myself, ‘where is the next scene set, and how does it begin?’   This is my fourth run at writing the story of the Piebald Prince.  I think I’ve finally found the right narrator, the person who is in place to tell the story first hand. The trouble with that is that she knows too much, and as a result, the tale is already longer than I thought it would be.  It’s tempting to say, "It’s too long. Put it back on the shelf and write something else."  But I fear that if Ido that one more time, it will never be written at all.

  So, please, wish me well. If I stick to my resolve, you will not see much of me here for awhile.  Time for me to pin down to the paper the stories I’ve been chasing.

• UK Book Tour

  Date: 2009.07.01 | Category: News | Response: 18

  Here is an update to the schedule, as of July 1, 2009
   
  Monday, 6th July
  6:30 PM Borders Glasgow
  Reading and Signing
  98 Buchan St.
  Glasgow, G1 3HA

  Tuesday, 7th July
  1 PM Waterstone’s Nottingham
  Signing
  1/5 Bridlesmith Gate
  Nottingham NG1 2GR

  7:30 PM Waterstone’s Norwich
  11-17 Castle Street
  Norwich NR2 1PB

  Thursday 9th July
  1:30 PM Waterstone’s Bluewater
  Signing
  West Village, Greenhithe
  Bluewater DA9 9SE

  7:30 PM Waterstone’s Manchester Deansgate
  Talk and Signing
  91 Deansgate
  Manchester M3 2BW

  Friday 10th July
  1:30 PM Waterstone’s Basinstoke
  Signing and Talk with Book Group
  35 Wesley Walk
  Basingstoke RG21 7BE

  7:30 PM Waterstone’s Southampton
  Talk and Signing
  69 Above Bar
  Southampton SO14 7FE

  Saturday 11th July
  1:00 PM Forbidden Planet
  Signing

  And Forbidden Planet will be the last stop on the book tour! I’m very excited about this and looking forward to meeting lots of readers. See you soon!