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Forwarding Address

If you're looking for me over on Dreamwidth, I'm TKingfisher over there, or you can always find me at www.redwombatstudio.com

I'm on Twitter as @ursulav and Tumblr as tkingfisher, my Amazon author pages are here and here and I guess that's pretty much everything. If you need me, you can't throw a rock without hitting me online these days.

I've loved my time here and I'll be grateful forever for what it used to be. It kept me alive a few times. I love you all.
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(no subject)

The problem with not posting constantly is that then I feel the urge to start every post with an apology for not posting, which makes me not post because guilt is only a motivator up to a point. So let's not do that. If you follow me on Twitter (ursulav) or listen to one of the three podcasts, you know I'm not dead! And if you don't, uh...Hi! I'm not dead!

Nothing much is going on here--I wish I had a new book to drop on you or something, but while there's a lot in the works, nothing ready right this minute. Also it's hot and obscenely muggy and the garden looks like Jurassic Park, only with chickens instead of velociraptors, but I'm told that velociraptors were only the size of turkeys anyway. The dew point is one degree below the ambient temperature and we are 99% humidity, so the windows are perpetually covered in condensation. In theory, fall is coming, but so is the heat death of the universe, and I will believe it when I see it. 

Wherever you're hailing from, I hope you're doing well! I just felt like saying hi.

Also, in case you missed it, one of Kevin's baby chicks has grown up to be a rooster, because sexing chicks is hard. Dottie is now Dotson, and he is a large, imperious, very handsome bird who still runs in terror from Strong Independent Chicken despite being significantly larger than she is.
 

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Clockwork Boys pre-order!

Clockwork Boys is available for pre-order!

We got ebook AND hardcover!

Amazon

Nook
iBooks
Kobo

For those following along at home, this is the Thing With The Paladin And The Ninja Accountant. And it is Book One! It is not a standalone! Book Two will be out, hopefully February-ish! (It is, however, a duology, not a trilogy or whatever.)

Hardcover is currently on Amazon, but will hopefully be available elsewhere for those avoiding the River.
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One Book Two Book, Long Book New Book

So I have been working on this doorstop of a novel for...well, I started it in 2006. It gets abandoned, rediscovered, re-poked, re-jiggered every so often. In the last couple years, it's finally turning into a coherent readable mass of words and now I'm just cruising through trying to finish the damn thing. (For those following along at home, it's the one with the possessed paladin and the ninja accountant.)

The problem was that it was 130K and I still had a good chunk left to go.

Now, I write fairly short books, as you guys know. 65K is about my perfect length. This thing was monstrous. I plan to self-pub the ebook but the idea of a print version was...well, you guys remember how I threw my back out lugging copies of Digger?

My buddy Mur, queen of podcasting, listened to my woes at coffee and said "Make it two books."

I gaped at her. "I can DO that?"

"Do we have to have the economics talk? Have you on Ditch Diggers (that's her podcast, go listen to it) so we can yell at you?" 

This blew my mind.

It also solved a lot of problems for an author who prefers to keep their ebooks cheap and their books not requiring death cement to keep the bindings together. 

So! Clockwork Boys, Book One of the Clocktaur War, has been sent to my editor and will be out hopefully this year. (Patrons, you get the ebook for free, of course!)

None of this is the point. The point is that, having split it into two books, suddenly I am working on Book Two (tentatively titled The Wonder Engine) and I am having to do all the stuff that you do at the beginning of a second book, where you re-describe all the characters and do very brief info dumps about how your heroine got that tattoo and why she's still pissed at the paladin after rescuing his armored ass from a bunch of murderous deer people. And re-foreshadow stuff and re-establish that your thief sneezes constantly and the assassin smokes cigarettes and the paladin takes hot baths at every opportunity and all the stuff that you do when you're writing a second book. 

Which honestly, is sort of useful for the writer as well as the reader, gives me a chance to re-center myself in the story, but it adds even more words.

The second book is already longer than the first one, and there's still so much more to get through. How do epic fantasy people DO this!?

Anyway. Clockwork Boys, hopefully this year, Wonder Engine hopefully early next year. My brain hurts.

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Rain, Rain, And Also More Rain

Five inches in forty-eight hours, by the home weather station in the garden. (I love this thing SO MUCH. I cannot even tell you how much I love it.)



The rivers are all flooding, of course, but I'm on high ground, so it's just soggy. The thing of interest to me is how my growbag + water reservoir systems are holding up. All of them are as saturated as it is possible to be now and the tubs of water are overflowing. So far, they've done fine staying consistently moist during sunny days--now we see if they drown in the rain!

So far, most of them are holding up apparently fine. One bag, which is too shallow for the tub it's in, is definitely waterlogged (but that's one out of over a dozen, so not too shabby!) The two big chiapas-inspired growbag + barrel tubs are hard to tell, because the rain also pummeled a bunch of stuff flat, so I can't tell if the tomato starts are dying from drowning or just hammered down by hard rain. The peppers in the same tubs are okay. I guess we'll know in a day or two.

We close on Dogskull Patch next week. I am trying not to think about it for fear of jinxing everything and becoming a whimpering wreck.