I’m just back from the mainland and much is going on. Here are two time sensitive happenings. (Act now! Deadlines are imminent!)

Tor.com is hosting a sweepstakes. They’re giving away five copies of The Red. Comment on the post to enter. Sweepstakes ends 12:00 PM ET on August 26th. Open to legal residents of 50 United States and D.C., and Canada (excluding Quebec).

The Women in Science Fiction Storybundle ends on August 27. This is a chance to buy a lot of ebooks for not much money, including my novel Memory. Follow the link for details.

And here are some links to posts of mine around the web:

At the Women In Science Fiction blog, run by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, I talk about my novel Memory. This is in relation to the Storybundle.

At John Scalzi’s blog Whatever I have a Big Idea post in which I talk about both The Red and its sequel The Trials.

At Tor.com, I have a post titled Wired Soldiers: The Technology Behind The Red.

At Charles Stross’s blog, Judith Tarr, Nicola Griffith, and I have each posted on women in science fiction, looking at things from different perspective. Here are links to all three posts.
• Where Have All the Women Gone? by Judith Tarr
• Data, books, and bias by Nicola Griffith
• Chilling Effects by Linda Nagata

And finally, one more review of The Red, this one at LitStack Review.

(For those of you who are writers, I’d thought I’d talk a little about the editorial process behind my newest books.)

The process I use to get a novel ready for publication is the same now as when I was traditionally published. I write the entire manuscript with no outside input. When I have a solid draft, I send it to one or more beta readers and then process their comments. This step can be repeated, though I usually don’t, in large part because experienced beta readers are always in short supply. So once I’ve worked through beta-reader comments, the manuscript is ready to be seen by a professional editor.

What does an editor do? It depends what you hire her for and how much detail work you’re after (or you need). The more experience you’ve had with writing, the less supervision you’re likely to need. I’ve written quite a few novels at this point, so I get an overall edit that looks mostly at structure and internal logic.

Judith Tarr served as editor for both The Red: First Light and The Red: Trials. What Judy provides is a letter giving a general assessment of the novel, covering both its strengths and its weaknesses, and then the nitty gritty of specific comments, using Word’s comment feature to annotate the manuscript from beginning to end.

For First Light there were over 700 editorial comments. Trials had only half that—either because Judy despaired or else she really did feel that Trials was initially better written. 😉
(more…)

I’m almost done.

As reported in my last post, I’ve been working through the comments provided by my editor, Judith Tarr. I haven’t instituted all of them, but I’ve carefully considered them all, and have addressed a large majority. I’ll write more on the editing process later — like after I do my taxes! In the US, taxes are due on April 15, so I really need to get on that!

But for The Red: Trials there are two more steps left in the revision process. Today I printed out a fresh copy of the manuscript. I’ll be doing a quick read-through of that, looking for any inconsistencies or awkward word choices that may have been introduced in the latest revision. Reading a printed manuscript is different from reading on a computer screen. It’s easy to get used to the words on the screen — the brain makes assumptions about what is there — so shifting the format by reading a printed version gives a fresher perspective, and problems that were invisible before are suddenly revealed. That’s the theory, anyway. Hopefully, this won’t take more than two to three days.

Whatever changes I make on the printed manuscript will need to be entered in the Word document. After that, comes the last step: the manuscript goes off to Chaz Brenchley for a copyedit. Chaz copyedited The Red: First Light, and I’m very happy that he’s agreed to do Trials as well. If you’re not familiar with Chaz, check out my “Book Rave” post on his novel Dispossession — and he has a lot more fiction to offer.

Once I get the copyedited manuscript back from Chaz, I’ll need to enter the corrections, and then The Red: Trials will be officially DONE. It’s taken a bit longer than I’d originally hoped, but if all goes well, it will launch on May 20.

If you haven’t already, please sign up for my very occasional newsletter. It’s the most reliable way to learn when I’ve got a new book or story out.

As mentioned here before, almost two weeks ago I managed, with grace and style (not!), to fracture my jaw. The oral surgeon thought it minor enough that we could proceed with “no treatment” other than a liquid diet. But on a followup visit, he decided the teeth were not realigning on their own — so now I have a mouthful of metal. This isn’t quite a wired jaw. It’s called “elastics” because rubber bands are used to link the upper and lower teeth, instead of wire, and I get to take the elastics off a few times a day to eat drink and brush my teeth.

The whole incident is quite unpleasant as you can imagine. I’m not in pain right now, but the pressure on the jaw is uncomfortable, and talking while the rubber bands are in place is really hard. So far I’ve lost around six pounds, which in other circumstances might be a good thing, but I’m now under 120-pounds for the first time since some long-ago college finals week. I really don’t want to keep losing at that rate for another month, so I need to deal better with diet.

But on to the important part: How does this affect the release of The Red: Trials?

The manuscript was still with my editor, Judith Tarr, when this first happened. She sent her editorial letter and comments last Friday, and gave the novel a nice thumb’s up: “My biggest problem was finding myself reading breathlessly, in pure reader mode, racing from scene to scene, in classic ‘can’t put down’ fashion, when I needed to slow down and put on my editor hat.”

As with First Light, her editing is insightful and thorough, so there is work to be done, but mostly in clarifying and drawing out details — there won’t be any major remodeling. I’ve made a solid start on the revision and hope to get back to it today. The goal is for the novel to be released in late May, and I’m still hoping to accomplish that.

I should have cover art to share with you soon. In the meantime, once again, if you’ve read and enjoyed The Red: First Light, please consider writing a brief reader review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble. There’s no need to say much — a line or two is fine — but reader reviews really do help with visibility. Thank you!

For those who are curious, this is the book Paul selected to receive as a prize in Book View Café’s grand opening giveaway.

Judith Tarr is not just a writer. She also breeds, raises, and trains Lipizzan horses on her farm near Tucson, Arizona. How cool is that?

Writing Horses was written to help writers get horses right in their fiction:

How fast can a horse run? What happens when a foal is born? How have humans and horses evolved together over the millennia? And above all, what mistakes do writers most often make when writing about horses, and how can the educated writer avoid them?

Oh, and besides being a respected writer and mistress of horses, Judith Tarr is also a very skilled freelance editor, so if you’re ever in need of some professional feedback on a manuscript, look her up.

Update: Oh, I am so uncreative. To pick a winner I wrote names on slips of paper and had my husband pull one from the pile. Judy Tarr let her horse pick!

Lord of the Two Lands (fantasy)
by Judith Tarr
December 6, 2011 $4.99
ISBN: 978 1 61138 134 4
LCCN: 93-24635
Copyright: 1993, 2011

Description: In 336 B.C., Egypt lies under the yoke of Persia. But from the north a spirit of fire moves across the world. His name is Alexander, and he is the destined conqueror of the Persian Empire–and the king foretold of Egypt. Meriamon, daughter of the last Pharaoh, journeys out of Egypt to find him and bring him home. From the battlefield of Issus to the siege of Tyre, from the founding of Alexandria to the divine revelations of Siwah, Meriamon both leads and follows her divine charge, who becomes her friend and her chosen king.

Find it at Book View Café.

Judith Tarr is the author of numerous novels and short stories, including ALAMUT and THE DAGGER AND THE CROSS from Book View Cafe. LORD OF THE TWO LANDS was nominated for the World Fantasy Award.

Just out from Book View Café: the first digital edition of Judith Tarr’s classic historical fantasy, THE DAGGER AND THE CROSS: A Novel of the Crusades.

In this magical tale of love in a time of war, immortal Prince Aidan, whose tale was last told in ALAMUT, has finally won his beloved Assassin. But the world and the Church are determined to tear them apart. Bound by oaths and honor and sundered by their opposing faiths, they find themselves on opposite sides of a bitter war.

Available DRM-free in epub, mobi, and pdf formats.

Just $4.99 at Book View Café.

Read a free sample.