Authors have very little, almost no, control over covers. Though anxiety provoking, this is probably this is a good thing. Covers are meant to inspire readers to consider the words, and most authors know much more about words than they ever will about cover art. I made peace with this early on and have placed my faith in my art directors. What I did not expect, and what has been a fascinating surprise, is the diversity of presentations publishers have chosen for Spellwright. Todd Lockwood’s US cover captures the book’s neoclassical high fantasy feel, while the UK cover demonstrates the close relationship between the magic system and the body. Most North American readers I’ve interacted with prefer the US art, while most commonwealth readers prefer the UK cover. To me, this is evidence that the art directors at both Tor and Voyager know their readerships and are doing right by them. Now we have two new covers, one from the Netherlands and one from Poland that present different takes on Spellwright.

Dutch publishing house Luitngh-Sijthoff commissioned the vivid  cover art for De Taal der Spreuken from Jesse van Dijk.

Van Dijk does a superb job illustrating the magical language Numinous and portraying the neoclassical high fantasy feel.

Polish publishing house Nowa Fantastyka recently released their cover for Czaropis.

Not a creature to be messed with. I found this book to be strikingly dark and gritty, which (if Google Translate tells me true) is striking a cord with the Polish readership online.

There are covers coming still for Russian, German, French, and Spanish. I’ve been told that the French and Spanish publishers may take the book in a YA-crossover direction, which might yield very different covers yet again.

• A female physician protagonist who might best be described as genetically engendered love child between House MD, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, and Locke Lamora.
• Airships made of massive magical manuscripts.
• A fleet action of said airships.
• The most believable neurosurgery scene ever written in epic fantasy.
• A sentient textual construct who has to solve his author’s murder.

In other news, I’ve spent the last week on a mini-East Coast book Tour. With a reading down in Manhattan, in which I teamed up with Saladin Ahmed, David Barr Kirtley, and Laura Anne Gillman. The reading was well attended and lots of fun. There after I had the pleasure of hanging out with The Mad Hatter, Rob Berg, NK Jemisin, and Peter V. Brett among others.  As fantasy writers and readers are likely to do, we high tailed it over to a bar named Valhalla. Things got a little wild, as Nora documented here. Here’s also a link to my Facebook photo album. But what happens in Valhalla, stays in Valhalla. Thereafter, I caught the Greyhound up to Boston and read at Pandemonium Books & Games—a really amazing specialty book store and gaming emporium (check out Your Move Games). The good-sized crowd was a lot of fun and asked great questions.

This Tuesday I’ll be flying back to Stanford to get back into the med student research assistant groove. Also will be giving a lecture entitled “Write What You Fear” at San Francisco/Peninsula Writers Club, in the Belmont Library, Saturday, August 21 at 11am.

Thursday, August 12th at 7pm

Reading of Spellwright and previews of Spellbound

Pandemonium Books & Games (Directions)

This weekend, I’ve decided to leave palm-tree infested Boston for the rugged boreal forest that is Greater New York. I hear the Queens wood elk can been seen this time of year, along with the Yonkers moose, the Lower East Side Woodrat, and the tight-pantsed Williamsburg hipster.

I also have heard that there’s a bumping SFF community in the NYC forest and that putting together a reading amid the evergreens could be fun. So tuck in your flannel, pull up your suspenders, hum the Monty Python’s Lumberjack Song and stop by.

Saturday, August 7th at 4pm

Participants : Laura Anne Gilman, David Barr Kirtley, Saladin Ahmed, & Yours Truly

Door Prizes: Copies of The Living Dead edited by JJ Adams, a copy of Flesh and Fire by LA Gilman, and a copy of Spellwright

Lurkers: Peter V. Brett

Borders Books Columbus Circle (in the 2^nd story of the mall)

It’ll be a casual event, featuring  local SFF authors reading, signing, or drinking a pint of beer afterwards.

But Blake, you say,  I am stuck in the taxi-choked metropoli of Northern Nevada, the Oklahoma panhandle, and/or Saskatchewan. For you, my city slicker friend, I offer a ray of entertainment from the Fantasy  Writing Bad Cop to my Good Cop, the indomitable Sam Sykes.

In my hometown there was a genre bookseller named Future Fantasy. Small store, off the beaten path, beside a coin collector and a funky, old taquería. When I finally learned how to read at thirteen, I used watch their author signing schedule and bike my fantasy paperbacks over to get signed by the likes of Robert Jordan, Ray Feist, Tad Williams, and Robin Hobb. The booksellers, noticing what I read, would point me toward other books. Recently I had cause to think back to who was attending those signings. Certainly there were “adults” (anyone over eighteen), but there were also a fair number of people my age, specifically a fair number of boys my age.

I’ve been thinking about this because at the past few reading events I’ve given I haven’t noticed _any_ young men. True, I have read at schools and visited an 8^th grade boys’ book club (organized by a mom and resulted in playing stickball in the backyard with the author, which, I have to say, was rad).  However, in my experience if I don’t go out of my way to find younger male readers, I will not see them. That might be a function of what I write (but I hope not), or function of being yet a smaller fish in the SFF pond. But when I recently began asking around about young men reading I was struck by a wave of pessimism.

Let’s embed a watchable example of what I perceive to be the prevailing attitude. The video below is an illustrated lecture of Phil Zimbardo, famous psych guru who ran the “Stanford Prison Experiment” back in the day. Much of the lecture focuses on the label’s Zimbardo applies to psychological orientation within time. The slice pertinent to this blog starts around 5:40 and continues to about 7:11.

I’m not a fan of Zimbardo’s reasoning. Casting whole cultures into time-centered labels based on metrics such as “speed walked in a cafeteria” or “what people complain about” seems arbitrary and anecdotal, without proof of causation. I have the same complaint of Zimbardo’s fear of video games as the destruction of boys. He has data (kinda) illustrating that boys play a lot of it, but he has no proof that it is related to the dropout rates. Many generations have declared that the next generation of men is growing up spoiled by the luxuries of the day: before the internet, it was TV; before TV, it was comic books; before comics it was pool halls or jazz music or dance halls or whatever. There always has been and will be hedonistic temptations to have fun. It hasn’t ended civilization yet.

What has struck me is the perceived division in how boys and girls want to be entertained. Namely that henceforth boys will play video games and girls will read. I don’t know if this is true; however, I am quite sure that we have allowed for the establishment of a marketing system that _tries_ to make it true.

Witness the overwhelming male orientation of the video game industry. Blizzard’s recent “Real ID Snafu” is a good example. Witness also “booth babes.” And here’s a bit of evidence that you can find by yourself. Google the phrase “video games girls.” The first hit I got took me to a website entitled “GameGirl” the leading post of which read “Game Over” and explained how the site had gone defunct. The second hit lead to a website entitled “Hottest Girls in Games” with the sub-heading “These girls are some of the hottest digital vixens we’ve ever seen.” Not. So. Classy.

What about the other side of the pool: boys and books? Things are better, I think. Google  “books for boys” and there are plenty of admirable websites like booksforboys.com and guysread.com and guyslitwire.com (this last pointed out to me by the witty Steven Berman).  And yet these sites also express pessimism about the publishing industry’s stance toward boys.  To quote Colleen Mondor on guyslitwire.com:

“There seems to be a perception that boys don’t read as much as girls, especially teenage boys. As the YA Columnist for Bookslut it has been especially clear to me that whether or not boys want to read more, finding books for boys is not so easy. There are so many more books targeted toward female readers than male that it is really quite amazing – and also very disturbing.”

When I asked a group of friends in the publishing industry about young men reading, I got an interesting response: boys are willing to spend money on games, girls on books. This is one of the  modern explanations for why the world is as it is: the market made it so. And I have no doubt that it is true that boys spend more cash on games, girls on paperbacks.  But should we let this be so? We’ve created an entire industry, the marketing industry, that sets about creating markets. And boys certainly will read: witness Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Ender’s Game, etc. Though the Twilight books might be at the current apex of the books-in-the-public-consciousness world, there’s no reason why the next set of books couldn’t appeal to boys or to both genders.

So, Dearly Beloved YOU GUYS, what do you think about all this? Am I getting my boxers in a bunch for no good reason? Are video games really the undoing of boys? Should we be trying harder to get books in boy’s hands?

Anyway, this was my first Readercon, and it was a wonderful experience. As the name suggests, the culture of the con focused on literature. The programming (panel discussions, readings, etc) were very well planned and attended. The was a ‘book room’ rather than a ‘dealer’s room,’ and the all-star participant list (which I don’t really know how I got on to) was fantastic, headlining for us were Nalo Hopkinson (who’s book The New Moon’s Arms, I loved) and the celebrated Charles Stross. The hotel was wonderful with a wide and comfortable lobby. The Con’s only weakness was the bar, which closed at 12:30. And, sadly, there were few room parties to spill out into. Though…we did come up with an impromptu solution…there’s photographic evidence in fact..but let’s do the name-dropping, link-out report on the way to get there.

• Showed up Friday and made straight for the pool with roommate and Fantasy author David Forbes. There we met up with a few of the lovely ladies from Tor.com, my old drinking buddy Paolo Bacigalupi, and the guest of honor Charlie Stross. We were splashing around and talking speculative fiction when Charlie realized that he was 10 minutes late for a panel…that was about him.
• Had dinner with the blogosphere’s rising star Andrew Liptak, Art Generalissima Irene Gallo, Tor.com Grand Puba Megan Messinger, and the lovely and talented Nina Lourie, who has some lovely locks of hair that everyone insisted I put on.
• The event that night was the “Meet the Prose” party in which the authors submitted the first line of their next novel to the programming folks, who printed the lines up on labels. There was general milling around in, the authors sticking their prose on anyone who they could get to talk to them. Mostly I tried to stick mine on the head of my one time editor and good friend John Joseph Adams and Realms of Fantasy Chieftain Douglas Cohen.
  • And, yes, I did let fly the first sentence of SPELLBOUND. Here it is “Francesca did not realize she had used an indefinite pronoun until it killed her patient.”
• On Saturday, I woke up at the crack of noon.
• We were joined by the Bard of SFF, John Anealio. Andrew and I are currently campaigning for a lyrical version of Paolo’s Wind Up Girl (Death Metal perhaps?).
• After making sure there was enough blood in my caffeine system, I sat on a panel entitled “The Body and Physicality in Spec Fic.” On it were an array of co-speakers: the amazing Elizabeth Bear captained the event and along with Anin Menon and Kestrell Verlager lent short story SF writerly wisdom. Athena Andreadis (who, btw, medical types, was the first researcher who sequenced the FRAKKEN TAU PROTEIN; yes, as in all the tauopathies) provided razor sharp witty remarks and the perspective a bench scientist. I chimed in once or twice from a medical perspective.
• Afterward I had a lovely autographing session and got to give a signed copy of Spellwright to my dyslexic SFF author hero Samuel Delany.
• I somehow sweet talked my way into a locus dinner with the Master and Commander of the magazine, Liza Trombi. Along for the ride were the newly debuted Amelia Beamer (The Loving Dead), yon drinking buddy Paolo, and the world’s most captivating performance reader Mary Robinette Kowal.
• The parties that night limped along until sometime after 2PM. Isn’t that always the way? That’s when things got interesting. Into our room party, the remains of the con suite cake were brought. Probably Eugene Myers deserves the credit (or blame) for what happened next. He began gesticulating with the frosting, which was a deep aqua marine blue. Nina and Megan look from the frosting to my head and…well…they decided to stage an impromptu lampoon of the fact that M. Night Shyamalan whitewashed the Asian characters in “Avatar: the Last Airbender” by making me just as silly as Shyamalan’s creation: The Last Cakebender. He was found frozen in the ice…cream.
• So, falling asleep at 4:30AM was not rad. Nor was getting up the next morning. But my Kaffeeklatch with the king of snark Steve Berman made up for the fact.
• Thereafter I caught the uber cool N.K. Jemisin at her autograph session and got her to sign my copy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
• Ended official con business with a reading, which despite being late on a Sunday drew in a few folks. We had a lovely discussion afterwards.

All in all I give Readercon an enthusiastic endorsement for anyone passionate about speculative fiction. It’s a serious convention but one that still can throw a glass back and have a great time. See you there next year?

Once upon a time, summer meant long days at the pool and evenings biking around the neighborhood until the streetlights came on. They were incandescent lights then, a white glow that lit the undersides of sycamores and made the twilight sky between the branches seem more luminous.

Alas that those days are gone. Summer is now full of furious work projects and travel. Not that those are bad things. Much is afoot. Let’s go over the headline news:

Pub Dates

After speaking to my editor at Tor, I have learned that we have *tentative* pub dates for next year. Remember that in publishing, no date is fixed until it’s past. However, barring a major crisis in the revision process or Amazon invading a small country, the SPELLWRIGHT paperback is penciled in for June 2011 and SPELLBOUND hardback for July 2011—which, if my medical schedule holds, will be smack in the middle of my OB-GYN rotation. I’m dubbing it National Catching Babies and Publishing Books Month in Charltonia. We’re a small country populated by two types of stressed out bald people: newborns and Blake.

Readercon Schedule!

In 24 hours I will hop on an airship and fly out to palm-tree infested Boston. Once I’ve taken in the surf and had a few mai tais, I will be partaking in the wonderful Readercon, which has a truly impressive guest list. If you’re all in the area, you should check it out. Check below for my official Readercon Schedule.

The Bar (whenever I’m not somewhere else). IMNSHO, hanging out at the bar and chatting it up is the best part of a con. Please stop by and come say hi. I’ll usually be chatting with friends or typing away at my laptop—I always seem to find writing inspiration at a cons. Either way, come distract me. The whole point of getting there is to hang out with people there.

The Meat and the Motion: The Body and Physicality in Spec Fic. (Saturday 1:00 PM, Salon F: Panel) Athena Andreadis, Elizabeth Bear (L), Blake Charlton, Anil Menon, Kestrell Verlager.

Hard sf often treats the body as a meat machine: interchangeable, expandable with parts of other bodies or gadgetry, even disposable. Paranormal romance and urban fantasy stories, however, are highly physical and personal: people gasp, bleed, wrestle, have sex, throw up, pass out. What makes some types of speculative fiction more conducive to discussion of sensation and movement? And what leads some writers to embrace the physical while others ignore, amend, or even deny it?

Autographing (Saturday 2:00 PM): Me chilling with one or two other people and chatting up the fans of bigger fish authors. Come keep me company!

Kaffeeklatsch (Sunday 11:00 AM, Vinyard): If the bar is not your scene, the Kaffeeklatsch is a relaxed way to hang out with an author. I strongly recommend them! Historically, mine have been low key. I’ve been known to bring a deck of cards and turn the whole thing into a quick game, but really anything goes.

Reading (Sunday 2:00 PM, VT): My dog and pony show in which I read about 15 min of SPELLWRIGHT and answer questions. If a bunch of people have already read the first book, or if there’s enough demand, I’ll read a sneak peak from SPELLBOUND.

Cheer it or fear it, epublishing in particular and the internet in general have the potential to bring the world’s literature onto your screen. Recently I was the beneficiary of the world-via-the-internets when I crossed paths with Mary Victoria (LiveJournal, Facebook, GoodReads), a new voice in fantasy fiction with an interesting background that ranges as far afield as Serria Leone to a cloistered as an animator’s desk on the Lord of the Rings movies.

Mary’s first novel Tymon’s Flight will be published this August in New Zealand and Australia by Voyager of HarperCollins-Australia. Given than Spellwright is also carried by HC, I managed to talk my way into an advance reading copy. Tymon’s Flight is a charming fantasy of the neoclassical persuasion. If you appreciated that persuasion (and I count myself as an author of such, so I hope so) you should check out Tymon’s Flight as a summer read to be pored over under a maple tree or on a lawn after a dip in the pool. Well, that is if you’re in the northern hemisphere.

Welcome, Mary, it’s wonderful to have you over. Because you’ve worked on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies, I have to ask: Did you ever rub elbows with the Jackson himself, and isn’t it true that he has hair growing on the tops of his feet and lives in a very comfortable and well furnished hole in New Zealand?

Hi Blake, it’s a great pleasure to be here!

Regarding PJ, I can indeed confirm that he never wears shoes, lives in New Zealand and smokes a very strange brand of tobacco that he has specially imported from somewhere named Longbottom. I’ve seen the barrels myself. (Alright, so only one of those statements was true, take your pick.)

You probably want better gossip than that, don’t you? To be fair, I was an animator stuck behind a computer screen most of the day and only got to see Peter Jackson when he came by to check my work. When he liked it, he said: “Yip!” That’s about all I know about the great and wonderful PJ! One of my best memories of that time at Weta was visiting some of the shooting sets. I saw the room in Moria where they battle the cave troll in ‘Fellowship’, some of Rivendell, and a gorgeous set of Minas Tirith. It was a treat for a geek like me to be able to wander through the fantasy world I had loved since childhood. There’s something very touching about a film set: it’s only painted boards, sure, but the artistry that goes into productions like Lord of the Rings is breathtaking. There’s nothing better than actually being ‘on stage’, smelling that smell of dust on the lighting equipment. You get to see each and every beautiful detail that went into the design. Even the finished film itself is second to that experience in my mind. Nothing virtual comes close. Maybe I should have been a gaffer.

When I first got my mind around your world, I laughed out loud with pleasure and then wondered why no one else had thought of it first. First up, can you give us an intro in your own words to the world of TF?

Certainly (glad to give you the giggles, Blake.) ‘Tymon’s Flight’ is essentially a coming-of-age fantasy tale set in a giant tree, though there are some underlying sf-nal or steampunk themes to the story. When visualizing the World Tree, don’t think “great big oak or elm”, think mind-bogglingly immense baobab the size of a continent: a massive spreading agglomeration of trunk and branches that might cover an area equivalent to the Himalayan mountain range. About that high, too, at its topmost point. It’s messy, it’s wide, and who knows—it might not even be one tree, but many all grown together. Although that sort of statement might get you tried for heresy in Argos city, the place where Tymon, the lead character of my story comes from. The priests there tend to be a bit fussy about definitions.

One delightful aspect of reading about your world tree and its inhabitant’s understanding of science is making connections to the many images of trees and knowledge in many different religions and folklores: the ‘tree of knowledge’ in the Old Testament, the cross as a transformed-tree in the New Testament, and the ‘world tree’ of the ancient Nordic traditions. To what extent, if at all, did you intend to invoke these comparisons? Are there other references in religion and folklore you wish to invoke?

Yes yes yes. I admit everything, you’re onto me. I have borrowed ideas and images from the sacred myths and scriptures of several religions to create my world. A scriptural odyssey, if you will. I was of course inspired by the Yggdrasil of Norse myth, the World Tree, which is a relatively well-known story. There’s also a world-tree in Siberian stories whose crown is connected to heaven and whose roots descend into hell. The Bible and Koran gave me the trees of Knowledge and Life – there are two sorts of mythical trees in Eden, and that’s important for the second book of my trilogy, so I won’t spoil. Otherwise the Christian cross/Sacred Rood and the Bo-tree under which the Buddha sat also influenced me in different ways. The Baha’i scripture I was brought up on is full of references to the Tree of Life, again drawing on the Biblical and Koranic traditions. Samaya Buddhism organizes its teachings into systems of roots and branches, which I find delightful. Another great source of inspiration is the Tree of Life in the Jewish Kabbalah. I was fascinated by iconic trees and worlds within trees, whether physical or spiritual.

I set out specifically to ring that gong, so I’m glad you picked up on the references!

Well, I do like being right, and that is a wonderful elaboration. I’m positive that discovering those resonances will delight your readers. As a Unitarian, I’ve heard many admiring descriptions of the Baha’i faith, which emphasizes the spiritual unity of humanity. I find it interesting that you’ve created a mythological world that brings together so many different spiritual traditions. Do you see your upbringing having fostered this world?”

Neat, you’re a Unitarian? Yay for ecumenists of all stripes! We need more of you guys in this crazy world. Yes, absolutely, my upbringing fostered a pluralistic view of religion and therefore a tendency to look for what is similar in belief systems, instead of focusing on the things that keep us apart. That has certainly influenced my writing. ‘Tymon’s Flight’ is in part a story about a society in the grip of exclusive, intolerant beliefs that lead people to hold onto modes of thought contrary to good sense, scientific truth and even self-preservation in the end. At the same time, it’s ultimately a story about having faith – you can read that as having faith in yourself, if you’re of an atheistic bent.

Basically, religion is an expression of humanity at its best and worst, and creating a fantasy religion is a great way of exploring that problem.

I loved how into the mythological and religious connections you placed Science Fictionally and Steampunk-ish notes. Could you give us a quick view of the state of technology in the world tree and remark on if you intentionally blended technology and mythology so?

I modeled the Argosians, the dominant culture in the Tree at the time of this tale, on a various different peoples and nations, including Persian (Iranian), European, Arab and Indian cultures. Argosians are at a fifteenth-century level of technology if we compare them to Europeans and perhaps a tenth or twelfth-century level compared to the Muslim world of Rumi or Al-Khawarizmi. (It’s scholars in Baghdad and other places who came up with the algebra and medicine and translated the ancient Greek texts that were so influential in kick-starting the European Renaissance.) There is wind power and Tree-ether to float dirigibles, but steam power has only been dreamed up so far by a few isolated thinkers… as an aside, did you know the Romans had steam power, but never made anything of it? I find that fascinating. Imagine SPQR on steam.

Of course what’s happening now in the Tree is not the whole story. There are glimpses in book one of a far older and stranger civilization than any currently flourishing in the world. The ‘Old Ones,’ or simply ‘the Ancients’ have acquired the status of myth by Tymon’s era. They are credited with amazing powers and a quasi-magical technology which is now lost. Accounts of the demise of their civilization have been mixed together with all sorts of cautionary tales and moralizing on the part of the Argosian priests. Also, as tends to happen, several episodes of ancient history have been scrambled together to make one improbable fable. The truth lies between the lines…

Though I was struck by how charming your world is, I became engrossed in the book because of the characters. Tymon in particular is a fellow I’d like to hang out with. On the strength of his role alone I can recommend Tymon’s Flight to anyone who enjoyed Spellwright. Could you briefly introduce Tymon and tell us what inspired his character, maybe how you found his voice?

You’re very kind to say so. Actually, I feel the same way about Nicodemus!

It’s one of those annoying truisms to say a writer uses himself or herself as a template for characters, but I’m afraid in this case that’s the bottom line. Tymon is me. I am a fifteen year old boy… No, wait, that came out wrong. Tymon has all the characteristics I would have had at his age, had I been a boy growing up in a restrictive religious institution. To wit: he is rebellious, curious, and a dreamer. He has an idealistic streak that comes out as naivety and a chip on his shoulder a mile wide about being less worthy than everyone else. Basically he’s a good person in a tough situation. He needs to loosen up a bit and acquire a sense of humour. He has to figure out who he is: he is not his upbringing, his ethnic background, his talent or occupation. I find it interesting that coming-of-age stories so often include a trip to the other side of the world, to another planet or undiscovered country. (Huzzah Joseph Campbell!) This story is no exception. Tymon finds himself by experiencing a culture vastly different to his own. In that sense I’d say the closest fantasy inspiration for this tale is ‘Dune’ by Frank Herbert. There are many other inspirations of course… the myth of Theseus provides some of the main story points, and I’ve always loved Mary Renault’s rendering of that tale in ‘The King Must Die.’

So let’s change gears a bit and talk about you. A little bird once told me that you didn’t learn to drive until you were 35. How’d that come about?
Good grief, I was flying high in some kind of rarified space and now I’ve tumbled right back down to earth. Thank you, I probably needed that. Well, I didn’t learn to drive till then because I suck, as they say, at real life. You have no idea how much. Or maybe you do: you’re a writer of fantasy, too. Do you find the ‘real world’ baffling? I know I do. It’s all taxes this, groceries that, misplace that form and boom, you’re fired. Meh. Who says that’s real? I like to look at things and people and wonder what they’d be like if they were freed of all that so-called reality. Imagine if people actually resembled what was going on in their heads. You’d have doormat people, shiny escalator people, chewy styrofoam coffee-cup people… There would be such a howling whirlwind of dragonish power around the Pentagon that I think the whole DC area would turn into a singularity. OK, your eyes are glazing over, I’ll stop now.

No. No. That look is me remembering a blind date I had with a chew Styrofoam coffee-cup woman. Bad, non-biodegradable, times. Anyway, you were born in Turners Falls, Mass., but have since lived most of your life around the world: Canada, France, England, Cyprus, and Sierra Leone being just some of the places you called home. What kept you on the move and what made you finally decide to set down roots (forgive the pun) in New Zealand.

My family are incurable globetrotters. We can’t stay put if we try, and haven’t done so for generations. I blame it on all the incompatible genetics pulling us in different directions: Iranian, Azeri, Jewish, English, all the major monotheistic religions and a few minor ones battling it out in our DNA. Everyone probably clamouring for a different God-given homeland. Well, they won’t get it. They’ll just have to make do with New Zealand. I ask forgiveness of whatever long-suffering spirits were here in this country before me, because I’ve dragged along a lot of my own gods in the family suitcase.

Why put down roots in NZ? To quote the late great Angela Carter: “The earth is so rich. And the air is so sweet.” (‘Miss Z, the dark young lady’)

So let’s go, circle like, back to the books. What are you working on now, and what can we look forward to from Mary Victoria?

‘Tymon’s Flight’ is the first installment of a trilogy. It’s available from August 1st in Australia and will be in stores in NZ around the 13th, I believe. I’ve completed the second book, due out in February 2011, and am working on the third title now for publication in August 2011. After book three is finished, who knows… the sky’s the limit.

For those out there in or outside of Australia/New Zealand wanted to get their hands on a copy of Tymon’s Flight. How could they do so?

The book will be available at good independent bookshops, as well as stores like Borders and Dymocks:

…and Angus Robertson, though I haven’t got a direct link yet (hey Aussies, check out these guys closer to the release date, they’re a great bookseller):

HarperCollins also has a direct buy link.

The book should be available with Whitcoolls and other high street retailers in NZ a little later and of course… if you happen to be in Wellington on August 14th, don’t forget to drop by the WETA CAVE to buy your signed copy of ‘Tymon’s Flight’… at the launch party! (I’ll be posting details on my blog.)

In addition, people in the USA and Europe will be able to get their hands on an e-book from Amazon and other ebook retailers from August 1st.

Mary, it’s been wonderful chatting. Here’s to a wonderful book launch in August.

Thanks so much, Blake!

But, Blake, you ask, which Portland?

The one on the left.

But, Blake, you ask, which Powell’s?

The one at Cedar Hills Crossing, in Beaverton. (Click the link for location etc.)

But what if I don’t really want to go to your reading; just, you know, catch up?

Buy a bottle of Mr. Clean, put it on your kitchen table, drink a beer, and talk to the guy on the label. Did you know he’s named Senor Limpio in Latin America and Don Limpio on Spain? How impressive does that sound? I mean Don—

Okay, feel free to not talk about that anymore. So what if I just want to hang out with you in person.

Oh, come hang out before the reading at the nearby McMenamins (click for location) for dinner or a beer. Please drop me a line if you’re coming. I’ll get there around 5pm. It’s easy to spot me I’m the guy who looks like Don Lim—

We’re not going to call you Don Limpio.

Please?

Only if you wear a gold hoop earring.

Hey now, would a Don wear a hoop earring? That doesn’t sound very “regio” does it?

No, amigo, no es regio to wear a gold hoop earring unless you’re Don Quixote. Por lo tanto NO ONE IS CALLING YOU DON LIMPIO.

Woah! Way to bring the emphatic Spañglish. Hablas español?

No, man, no hablo español por que YOU no hablas español y you are frakking writing me so how am I supposed to speak Spanish?

This is a trick question. Una pregunta con truco?

How do you say “Bitch please,” in Spanish?

Perra, por favor.

You sure? That doesn’t sound like it has the same zing to it.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure those are the right words.

But does it translate?

Does what translate?

Bitch, please.

There’s no need to get fussy!

No, I just wonder if you can translate it literally.

Bitch, please?

Now YOU are getting fussy.

I was just asking.

Asking about what?

Bitch, please.

It hurts my soul that you are so obnoxious.

Perra, por favor!

Still isn’t working for you. How did we get on this subject anyway?

The Powell’s reading? That you don’t speak Spanish?

Ohhh yeah. I was pointing out that I could only speak Spanish if you spoke it, but you don’t and you’re just trying to practice your Spanish so you can talk to more of your patients so you ended up creating a metablog in Spagñlish.

Well, now it’s getting to be more like Spañguish.

Everyone hates you when you pun.

Perra, por—

Stop; I’ll vomit.

In other news, my good friend and New York Times Best Selling author Brent Weeks—El Ninja con Capucha—will be in the audience. So maybe people will want to get him to sign books, or tell them about his much anticipated new book The Black Prism.

Did you just introduce your friend right after I brought up vomit? What’s the free association there?

Umm, and THE LOVELY AND PATIENT MRS. WEEKS, who made a much loved appearance on this blog, may also be there.

Hold the phone, did you just call Brent “The Ninja with Hood” in Spanish?

Wouldn’t “The Hooded Ninja” be a better translation?

You’re still bitter everyone compares your UK cover to those on his Night Angel books.

Well…not bitter.

Does Brent know how few people show up to your readings?

Shhh…he might read this.

Oh, yeah homes, good idea: if you don’t mention it on the internet he might not notice that the book store is EMPTY BUT FOR YOU, HIM, THE BOOKSELLER, Y UNO PLATO DE GALLINAS?

And a plate of chickens?

Isn’t that “los pollos?”

Yeah, but isn’t “gallina” a hen?

Oh…then what’s the word for “cookie?”

“Las galletas?” Wait, wait. How should I know?

I don’t know what you mean?

Mentiroso! If you don’t know, then I can’t know either, can I? You were just getting all snotty about that. I’m about this close to ending this blog post.

Slow down there, Borges. No need to get angry meta on me. I wasn’t being snotty.

And, yeah, “gallina” does mean hen. You knew it’s related to one of the words for chicken in Latin.

I did not.

Two years ago in anatomy lab, we found that ridge on the ethmoid bone in the anterior compartment of the skull. And we looked up that its name was “crista galli” which means the “Cock’s crest” in Latin.

Jesucristo! You were such a pendejo in anatomy lab, when you had to look up the Latin or Greek root of every damned thing. No one cares about etymology!

That’s it. This blog post is over.

Yeah, is it? Why am I still talking?

I’m serious. I’m ending this now. You’ll be lucky if you get one more word off.

Perra…

And unto GOD did Humanity say: “Thou meaneth like the wars and the injustice and poverty and the oil spill and the…other stuff?”

“Verily!” saith the Alpha to the Omega. “So to smite thou in an Ironic Way—and I liketh Irony; witness Babel—I shall allow thee to invent an Infernal Bobble to which thy whole lives shall be beholden. It shall be a Trinket of Anguish that shall allow thee to power the smallest and most precious of thy riches, but that for the lack of this Small Thingy of DOOM thou shall be without contact with thy brothers and sisters of folly, and which thou shall mistakenly leave at Home when thou are in the greatest need, and which thou shall always forget in thy Hotel Room until thou are far enough away from Yon Hotel to make turning back sour and unprofitable. And in the constant loss of this Fiendish Cord, thou shall be reminded of the Humble State of thy True Nature.”

And hearing this did the Children of GOD tremble and weep for they knew that a small fraction of What They Deserved was about to fall upon them the way a hard and Uncomfortably Cold rain falls on the Back of a Dyspeptic Cow. “But what is it?” they cried. “What righteous Plague shall we now invent and so Condemn ourselves to Annoyance?”

“Thou shall now invent,” saith the Ancient of Days, “The Cell Phone Charger!”