October 27, 2009

Publication day

IMG_0008 crop 

. . . is tomorrow.   

            I know I should now go all gung ho* and rah-rah and . . . 

            And I do think it’s a good book.  And I do think Peter and I have written some pretty nifty stories for it (five, to be precise).  I even think the jacket art is pretty cool.**  But we’re having a few little technical difficulties.  Like that I’ve been begging, beseeching, imploring, supplicating for a second copy of FIRE so that Peter and I can send them off to FIRE’s two individual dedicatees, before their amazon preorders arrive.  First single author copy arrived several weeks ago.  Two more arrived . . . yesterday.  All right.  At least they arrived.

            However.   There is also the matter of the reissue of WATER.  It’s coming out with a new jacket, so that it looks like the first of a series*** of which FIRE is the second.  And in honour of producing a new edition Peter and I have written a new tiny half-story as introduction.  But this new edition only exists because of FIRE, right?  . . .  And if you go on amazon and look up WATER ELEMENTALS, what you will find is the old edition.  With the old artwork.  And no new half-story.  And which obviously has nothing to do with FIRE.  And have I mentioned that FIRE’s publication day is tomorrow? 

            Life in publishing.  Neverending bliss.

            But FIRE does look nice, doesn’t it?

            And Blog/Sitemom has been busy too.  You can read all about FIRE and see what the new WATER looks like here:  http://robinmckinley.com/ 

             Usually the business with the reflection of the camera flash is a complete pain in the aptitude, but for a book of FIRE stories it becomes an artistic effect: IMG_0002 crop 

* * *

 * BUY MY BOOK!  BUY MY BOOK!  BUUUUUUUUUY MY^ BOOK!

 ^ Our book.  But Peter is far too polite and British to do any gung hoing.  

** I know a lot of you miss Trina Schart Hyman very badly too.  She did the cover art for the original WATER, which was the first volume of what was supposed to be . . . of what still is supposed to be . . . a four^ volume series of stories about elemental spirits:  water, fire, air, earth^^, and we were hoping to have her do the jacket art for the other three too.   And then it took me seven years to produce my second half of a slim volume of short stories. . . . And I hope whatever afterlife or betweenlife she’s in she’s painting up a storm.

            I’m also not sure how she’d feel about Dave Barry’s revelation that the four building blocks of the universe are water, fire, gravel and vinyl.  I’m not sure how I feel about it.  The possibilities for stories about kitchen floor spirits and driveway and courtyard spirits seem rather limited, but I’m probably just exposing the inadequacy of my imagination.^^^  I’ll see what the Story Council has to say.   

^ Or possibly five 

^^ The fifth would be time.  But not only would trying to wrestle five or six stories out of time as an element be a ratbag with extra knobs on, but there’s a great shining superhighway of a Moebius strip of the irony of trying to get any short stories out of me about anything in a, uh, time frame.  Need I remind you that SUNSHINE, DRAGONHAVEN and CHALICE all started life as FIRE stories.  CHALICE almost succeeded.  First Flight—which is the last story in FIRE—almost escaped. 

^^^ Which I acknowledge is sorely tapped out by the strain of talking to pegasi.  The Story Council just drops you in it, like Cary Grant in North by Northwest. 

            And I’ve told you that PEGASUS, which is now two books, started life as an AIR story, yes?  I’m getting worse. 

*** Yes!  Series!

October 27, 2009 | Filed Under my books, perversity of life, photos, real world 

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