Seven short sleeps until Sophie sets sail…

(null)One short week! It’ll surprise none of you to hear that I am spending a lot of time right now doing interviews and writing guest blog posts as I gear up for the release of my fourth novel, A Daughter of No Nation.

There’s going to be a launch on December 5th at 3:00 p.m. at Bakka-Phoenix Books… let me know if you need more details. If you are in Toronto, or can get here, you’re most cordially invited.

Three other things of the book:

  • Tor.com, as you may recall, has an excerpt up for your free reading pleasure.
  • Kirkus Reviews praised both the main character, Sophie Hansa and the worldbuilding on Stormwrack. “Fans of Stormwrack will welcome another chance to set sail with Sophie.
  • Publisher’s Weekly liked it, saying “Dellamonica expands on promising worldbuilding and delivers a fantasy tale of messy family politics and social justice with plenty of action and suspense.

Child of a Hidden Sea $2.99 ebook and things you can win!

By way of a tasty appetizer for the release of ​A Daughter of No Nation, my marvelous publisher Tor Books has put the e-book edition of ​Child of a Hidden Sea on sale in all digital formats: Kindle, iBook, B&N Nook, Kobo and Google Play. Feel like spreading the word? Here’s a Tweet:

A second appetizer course will be coming your way shortly, in the form of an excerpt from the new book, which will be out December 1st.

Meanwhile, don’t forget that Goodreads giveaway. The odds are currently about one in a hundred for you to be one of five lucky winners who’ll get advance copies of the novel. And I’m running a contest for a copy of your choice of my first three novels. You can still get in on both draws- details are here!

My WFC Schedule

SONY DSCFor anyone looking to connect with me at the World Fantasy Convention, here’s my schedule as it stands now…

Thursday November 5th

Real World Nomenclature, Taboos, and Cultural Meaning 
The panel discusses the thorny issue of real world terms that often bear loaded meanings and concepts being transported wholesale into Fantasy worlds. Swearing, cursing, and racial epithets can cause controversy and out-cry. Commonly accepted terms change meaning over time and become taboo. As the politics of the real world change, is there a concurrent transposition into Fantasy worlds?
A.M. Dellamonica (mod.), Didi Chanoch, Steve Erikson, Don Pizarro, Mark van Name
When Magic Meets Science
Fantasy, and the Epic in particular, have a tendency to ignore the progress of the sciences, but there are some great stories out there which tackle the issue of technological advancement in a Fantasy world. Our panel will discuss the tension between science, technology and magic, and some of the narratives that play with our notions of technological progress in a Fantasy world, from the Discworld to Malazan and to Flintlock Fantasies.
Julie Czerneda (mod.), Donald Crankshaw, A.M. Dellamonica, Chris Gerwell
Friday November 6th
Politics, Economics and Power in Fantasy worlds 
Some fantasy authors give little thought to the underlying notions of power and politics that underpin the nations of their Fantasy realms, while others are only too aware of what they borrow from the world. The panel discusses the issues of politics and power dynamics in works of Fantasy that explore, explode, or subvert the norms.
Paul Park (mod.), A.M. Dellamonica, Mark van Name, Rick Wilber, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Saturday  November 7th
Noon Reading – probably from A Daughter of No Nation, certainly from something set on Stormwrack.

Slings and Shelfies

(null)A Daughter of No Nation is on the Shelfie Top 10 list for Most Anticipated SF and Fantasy books, in great company, with novels by Charlie Jane Anders, Kameron Hurley and Catherynne M. Valente. Review copies of the book are percolating out to the usual (and hopefully a few unusual) suspects. Soon we’ll be hearing what people think of the second installment of Sophie Hansa’s adventures.

I’m finding the prospect a little nerve-wracking. I don’t think there was anyone who absolutely hated ​Blue Magic. There were a few people whose response came down to “Holy gosh, this book sure do have a lotta queer people in it!” but there’s not much you can do about that except go, “Yep.”

Child of a Hidden Sea, on the other hand, and Sophie in particular got under a few readers’ skins, and not always in a way that led to true and enduring love. I decided to take this as a sign that I’d become better at characterization, especially since most of the reviews were, in fact, raves. Anyway, it might simply be the effect of a lingering head cold, or the fallout from a rather unusual week, but right now I’m thinking my only sane response is to go “La la la, can’t hear you!” and think of something else until my head clears.

Having been to Stratford for the first time this past weekend, and having seen three shows – Carousel, The Alchemist, and She Stoops to Conquer, Kelly and I are finally embarking on watching Slings and Arrows. We’ve had so many chances to do so over the years–I think people have lent us the DVDs on three separate occasions, and we never quite managed to pop one into the gadget before sheepishly returning the disks.  It’s been one of those gaps that was almost embarrassing to admit to, what with me being such a raging Paul Gross fan. But it never happened, until now, and it’s almost–but not quite–too dated. It’ll be good prep for seeing His Almighty Grossness and Martha Burns in Domesticated next month.

Monday Random

We squint because we love.

If you happened to be outside my front window right now, this is what you would see. (Please don’t step on my flowers while you are there, you mad stalker! I actually got some bulbs going that the squirrels have so far neglected to eat.)

My birch trees are busting out fine new leaves, perfect little chlorophyll-laden shapes, with edges like serrated knives, and I have been writing Novel Writing III critiques about a meter from the bird feeder, which is exceedingly popular with the local sparrows.

Yesterday tasted of summer. It was bright and sunny and the house got a little bit stuffy. You could walk outside in a dress. No tights, no coat required. Kelly and I strolled out through a cherry blossom-infested U of T campus to Bloor Street, and a matinee of the film adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd. This was a speed version of Thomas Hardy. Look, a girl! Look, a boy! Another boy! A third boy! Unhappiness! Misery! Woe! Boom! Conveniently, we’re now back to one available party representing each of the sexes. Someone read the damned banns already.

To sum up my emotional reaction to this particular costume drama: the horses were pretty and nobody got hanged.

We came home, waited for it to cloud over, and climbed into the hot tub. This enabled me, later, to phone Vancouver, say “Thank you for giving me life!” and proceed to brag about how awesome a day it had been.

Today it is cooler and foggy.

I have a schtick on Facebook whereby I’ll often give the cats (whom we adopted 358 days ago, I’ll have you know) super-sekrit spy names for the day. Moose and Squirrel. Joe Dick and Billy Talent. Laundry Chicken and What’s Going On? Today it was Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap, which has spawned a small conversation about whether anyone could successfully reboot WKRP In Cincinnati and, if so, how? My position is that it would have to start exactly like the Battlestar Galactica reboot: Earth gets nuked, but Cincinatti survives. For obscure reasons (one friend claims this would be Johnny’s paranoia in action) the radio station was shielded against EMP.

Red Wigglers the size of Cadillacs would be roaming the Midwest, which makes it all seem like a mash-up with Dune.

Continuing on with the random, I am pondering a few fine linguistic details within the Stormwrack universe. A few of these came up when I was reviewing the copy-edit of A Daughter of No Nation. I got a query about when I use “in Fleet” as opposed to when I use “the Fleet.” (Answer: ‘in Fleet’ when they mean the city, and the words ‘in Tacoma’ could be used just as correctly. ‘The Fleet’ when we’re talking about the subsection that is a navy: “We’ll be sending the Fleet around to see if you’re in compliance with the Treaty.”) I had been doing this correctly but without conscious thought.

And here’s something that doesn’t happen to literary writers all that often: I had already known that the portions of the Hidden Sea Tales that take place on Stormwrack (as opposed to in San Francisco) were playing out, linguistically, in Fleetspeak. This means that those scenes played out in Fleet and were translated, by me, into present-day English.  This is something that’s essentially invisible to everyone but my wacky imagination, but it became something of an entertaining conceit through the copy-edit process.

See, I’m no Tolkien. (I know, you’re shocked.) I don’t actually speak Fleetspeak. And the poor copy-editor really doesn’t speak Fleetspeak. So there was a bit of them going “Here’s a foreign word,” and me going, “No, that’s actually a real English science word. I had to look it up, too.” And them going “Here’s another foreign word ,” and me going, “It’s not foreign in Fleetspeak.”

Them: “Here’s another another foreign word.

Me: “Yes, that one’s Erinthian. Obvs. We can italicize that.”

None of which actually happened face to face, you understand. I’m describing a process of me talking to pencil marks on a 600-page manuscript that is now, blessedly, wrapped, taped, bar-coded and in the hands of Canada Post.

The c/e did a meticulous, thoughtful job and I’m so fucking grateful you can’t even imagine.

Finally, I am groping for a verb  I can noun (or a noun I can verb) to describe a particular element of the magical inscription process, whereby a spellscribe takes an existing spell and creates a variation on it. I played with embroidering, but it’s long and unwieldy and not quite right. The embroidered spell? A broidery?

The closest equivalent to the variation/embroidery process would be someone taking a fiddly gourmet recipe and creating an undeniably different–but recognizably similar–food. Going from curried plantains in coconut milk to… maybe something with green mangos?

Why am I not currying plantains tonight? Why am I not currying plantains right now?