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happy thanksgiving, war is over
I pulled the trigger yesterday on the e-book version of the novel. It's out there in the world. Contributor copies have been sent. The thing is done and done forever.
A little bit I'm excited. Mostly I'm having an inexplicable anxiety attack.
I don't know what I hope for it, really. I'm aware that independent novelists tend not to sell until they hit a point where they have a back catalog of 3-4 books and start looking real to people. Christ, I don't know that I ever expected people to *buy* this thing at all. That's somehow just a little too far outside of my current sense of reality.
I don't know what I hope for it. I just know that I love it very much. I started some Jurassic version of it in 2002 -- I still have notes I wrote while on a plane to Europe that summer. Some of the characters' names are the same. Almost nothing else about it is. There was a Captain Michael Bruce and a Queen Semele. There was a Lorenzo and an Estrella and a Georgiana, and a Jem Jobs, and an Anne Gordon, although she was a grown-up at the time. I think she was a professor. Who fucking knows what I was doing back then, or why.
I started it, and started it over, and started it again. I don't know how many times. It crystallized for me at the end of 2011. I was intently following the Occupy movement -- the romance of revolution, the utter exhaustion of cynicism. Trying to figure out what to do with far too much understanding of the ways that power props up power, the way that the very mythology of our culture, including and especially my beloved SF fan culture, glorifies force when it punches down and panics at the thought of force that punches up. I'm not a revolutionary; not really. I'm just a girl who grew up wanting to write fantasy novels, and someone once told me that the underlying question in every fantasy novel is "Who is the rightful king?"
That person may have been right. (I don't remember who he was. Some editor on some con panel once upon a time.) But the thing is, I love fantasy as a genre so much because I suspect that the underlying question in everything, in everyone's life story, is "Who is the rightful king?" Who has the power, and who deserves it, and how do you gain it, and is gaining it the same as having the right to it?
When I went back to writing at that point, I knew why I was doing it, beyond the sheer stubbornness of having already invested so much time in these people. And I'd always loved this world and these characters, but from that point on, I loved *this story.* The story about a great queen, and a good soldier, and a bad wolf. The story that I always summed up to myself, after the fall of 2011, when I found myself wandering off the path, as, "Who is the rightful heir of Semele?"
I feel like it's a question I'll spend the rest of my life trying to answer. Hopefully it's a story that won't take me *quite* that long to tell. We'll see.
I don't know what I hope for it. But it's a thing that exists now and it didn't before, and that's as much as most of us get out of life.
You can buy it pretty cheap.
A little bit I'm excited. Mostly I'm having an inexplicable anxiety attack.
I don't know what I hope for it, really. I'm aware that independent novelists tend not to sell until they hit a point where they have a back catalog of 3-4 books and start looking real to people. Christ, I don't know that I ever expected people to *buy* this thing at all. That's somehow just a little too far outside of my current sense of reality.
I don't know what I hope for it. I just know that I love it very much. I started some Jurassic version of it in 2002 -- I still have notes I wrote while on a plane to Europe that summer. Some of the characters' names are the same. Almost nothing else about it is. There was a Captain Michael Bruce and a Queen Semele. There was a Lorenzo and an Estrella and a Georgiana, and a Jem Jobs, and an Anne Gordon, although she was a grown-up at the time. I think she was a professor. Who fucking knows what I was doing back then, or why.
I started it, and started it over, and started it again. I don't know how many times. It crystallized for me at the end of 2011. I was intently following the Occupy movement -- the romance of revolution, the utter exhaustion of cynicism. Trying to figure out what to do with far too much understanding of the ways that power props up power, the way that the very mythology of our culture, including and especially my beloved SF fan culture, glorifies force when it punches down and panics at the thought of force that punches up. I'm not a revolutionary; not really. I'm just a girl who grew up wanting to write fantasy novels, and someone once told me that the underlying question in every fantasy novel is "Who is the rightful king?"
That person may have been right. (I don't remember who he was. Some editor on some con panel once upon a time.) But the thing is, I love fantasy as a genre so much because I suspect that the underlying question in everything, in everyone's life story, is "Who is the rightful king?" Who has the power, and who deserves it, and how do you gain it, and is gaining it the same as having the right to it?
When I went back to writing at that point, I knew why I was doing it, beyond the sheer stubbornness of having already invested so much time in these people. And I'd always loved this world and these characters, but from that point on, I loved *this story.* The story about a great queen, and a good soldier, and a bad wolf. The story that I always summed up to myself, after the fall of 2011, when I found myself wandering off the path, as, "Who is the rightful heir of Semele?"
I feel like it's a question I'll spend the rest of my life trying to answer. Hopefully it's a story that won't take me *quite* that long to tell. We'll see.
I don't know what I hope for it. But it's a thing that exists now and it didn't before, and that's as much as most of us get out of life.
You can buy it pretty cheap.
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*Clicks link*
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(And yay for clicking :)
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dumb question: are there versions besides the kindle version?
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There is an epub version available from Lulu, but for some reason dealing with Lulu has been the mouth of madness. The same file that looks fine in their preview window has no paragraph indents on Mary's old Nook, and on my newer Nook the paragraph breaks are all fine, but random chunks of the last two chapters are italicized for no discernible reason. I'm going to keep working on this issue, because as you can see, we're not really Kindle people ourselves, so I understand that fully. I don't know if the epub can be fixed, but I'll probably go ahead and add a PDF version at Lulu, too, which may work better.
There will be a hard copy version, but that takes a bit longer! Keep an eye out for it, though.
Should you dare, you can find the Lulu version here. If there isn't a version that works for you available right now, that should hopefully change soon!
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thank you!
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I'm very excited to read it!
Kezia
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I just sent you a PM! I bought Fortunate Son and really loved it. ♥