So, as usual, I discovered my book was out in the UK through other people telling me through twitter :-p

aka the book of Aztec imperial intrigues/serial killer in the palace. More Teomitl and Mihmatini for those who liked those characters, and generally expanded worldbuilding–featuring Texcoco, Teotihuacan and a lovely, albeit hurried trip through the Anahuac Valley. Also, various political intrigues, the election of a new Emperor, and divers alarum and chases of supernatural creatures.

Oh, and star-demons, of course.

More info here, including the real blurb; the first spotted review here at Val’s random comments, courtesy of Rob Weber.

Book seems to be shipping through some of the usual places in the: amazon.co.uk, the Book Depository, Waterstones and WHsmith.

Meanwhile, I have a %%% cold and was up for much of the night–so right now I’m feeling a bit zombified. But consider this my celebration post, while I go on contaminating my colleagues at work with my germs

Want to read the first three chapters?

You can see them here.

This is part 2 on a post chronicling my trailer-making experiments. For part 1 see here.

Here’s the Harbinger trailer again, so you can see what I’m talking about:

Step 4: Get Music
This has always been the trickiest part for me. Basically, you need a soundtrack you can cut up and modify (I’ll come back to syncing the music and the images later), and I had a lot of trouble finding those. A quick survey of people doing their own books trailers showed them either using public domain stuff (like old interpretations of classical music), or having musician friends/acquaintances who could provide them with slightly cheaper alternatives to mainstream music (I don’t even want to know how much the majors charge for using bits of song, given how bad they are at authorising authors to quote lyrics for a reasonable sum of money).
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Those posts have been in the queue for a while, but I’ve never had the leisure to properly edit them before putting them online.

Basically, I thought I’d share my experience in making book trailers. It’s limited: I made my first book trailer in 2009 in the leadup to the release of Servant of the Underworld, and reiterated the process a year later when I made the trailer for Harbinger of the Storm. To my surprise, the HoU trailer was highlighted on a number of websites as being attractive, which proves that at least I got something right.

As usual, I’m not saying this is the way to go: just pointing out what worked for me, and what I learnt in the process. I’d be delighted to hear other people’s experience on the subject.

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I’ve read somewhere that all good epic fantasy should have maps of the known world–well, I’m not exactly writing epic fantasy, but I’ve just added a special map page for Obsidian and Blood onto the website.
Of course, we all know I suck at drawing, so they’re just rough schematics, but if you’ve always wondered where exactly Acatl’s temple was in relation to the Great Temple or the Serpent Wall–this is the place to go.
(there might be minor inconsistencies with those in SoU and HoS, because I wasn’t smart enough to draw the maps beforehand)

Aka what happens when I have too much time on my hands and am procrastinating on the writing of book 3.

Want to know more? There’s the first chapter up here.

Wanna preorder? Random house | Amazon US | UK | B&N | Book Depository

(brought to you by the department of shameless self-promotion)

Mainly for the UK people, or anyone who’s already read SoU (it’s got minor spoilers for SoU, so read at your peril): you can read chapter 1 of book 2, Harbinger of the Storm, here.

The wonderful M.G. Ellington has been kind enough to lend me some space on the Apex blog, where I ramble on what I should have done when writing Obsidian and Blood:

When I settled down to write my novel, the Aztec noir fantasy Servant of the Underworld, I had only the vaguest idea it might turn into a series. My first thought was to finish the darn thing, and not really to map out what might be happening to my characters after the plot was over.

That was 2007; now we’re in 2010. I’ve sold Servant and two more books in the Obsidian and Blood trilogy to Angry Robot; I’ve turned the sequel, Harbinger of the Storm, to my publisher; and I’ve just completed a tentative synopsis for the as-yet-untitled book 3. Looking back to how I wrote the series, there are a few things I did right, and a few things I should have paid more attention to.

Read more.

Go check it out!

In other linkage news, Mike Johnstone reviews the February 2010 issue of Asimov’s, which contains my alt-hist “The Wind-Blown Man”:

Her prose deftly taps into the atmosphere, rhythm, and thoughtfulness of Chinese tales (Buddhist, Taoist myths): it is measured, unhurried, soothing; it suggests a depth just tantalizingly out of reach.

That’s all for now. I’ll go back to RL stuff and programming (and %% implicit conversions).

Ok, this is the bit where I jump up and down (and possibly throw some squeeing, too). This was the news I was sitting on last week, which was killing me (I’ve known for a while, but the signed contracts arrived last week, which made it even harder to wait).

My awesome agents at Zeno Agency have sold French rights to all three Obsidian and Blood books to Mathieu Saintout of Bibliothèque Interdite (the aptly named “Forbidden Library”). Bibliothèque Interdite is currently publishing Games Workshop books, but is planning to launch their new imprint at the end of the year.

I’m going to be translated in French. For French bookshops. This is going to be so weird. But so great.

This clearly calls for leaping Bubble Bobble dinosaurs:

And here’s the cover to go with the blurb! Isn’t it so pretty? (note that I have different bloodstains on my covers–you can now collect them all *g*).

Coming January 2011 in the UK/Australia and February 2011 in the US/RoW. With star demons, conniving high priests and generalised political plotting. Oh, and more ahuizotls, because fingernail-eating monsters always make everything better.

Pre-order on Amazon.co.uk|Amazon.com|Barnes and Noble|Book Depository|Amazon.fr

And while I’m at it, another (very nice) review of Servant of the Underworld at Cold Iron and Rowan-Wood.