This post is adapted and personalized (with permission), from Gail Carriger’s blog. See the original here.

Did you know you can get your local library or school or university library to get my books?

Like Gail, I grew up in my little local library and read just about all the science fiction books they ever had on the shelves. It was always a great day when my mom would drive us to the next town over, and we could visit their larger library. But I never did learn to request books in those days. I was too shy for that. But you don’t have to be!

You can request my books — most of them — in print versions, and some in ebook editions. By requesting them, you’re helping me by increasing my sales, and I like to think you’re helping other readers to discover my work — and who knows, they might enjoy it!

I am told that an actual request from a library card-carrying patron has an immense impact on library stock. This is especially important with my independent novels — that is, everything other than the Red trilogy. In theory, Simon & Schuster has a sales department tasked with getting books into libraries, but my Mythic Island Press books have only me.

Donating books is not the answer. If you visit Gail’s original post and check the comments, librarians explain that donated books incur much higher labor costs than those ordered through library vendors, so they often end up in the “for sale” bin instead of on the shelves.

How to request your library carry my books…
On your library’s website (or in person) there is usually a form where you can request a book be purchased.

The link could be called anything from “suggest a title” to “ask us to purchase.”

Here’s Gail’s explanation of how to request the digital version:

Hopefully your library is connected to OverDrive…

1. Log in to your library’s OverDrive site. Use your library card number and pin.
2. Search for the book by title.
3. Add titles you can recommend.
4. Hover over the cover, Recommend
5. You can choose either to be notified or to be placed on hold & enter your email addy.
6. Recommend this title.

It’s pretty self explanatory but a librarian can guide you through it.

You can do this for my books and for books from other authors you enjoy.

Thank you!

At the end of December I posted an assessment of my annual writing goals. I didn’t do very well with my goals in 2018, but happily, I now get to post an addendum.

Goal #5 was to write a hard SF short story, 7,000 words or less. In my assessment, I noted that I’d spent two or three weeks trying to write this story, before giving up on it in early December. In early January, I went back to work on it. Honestly, I spent way too much time on it, but by mid-January I finally had a complete draft. 7,300 words — so it’s a little longer than planned, but close enough.

I wrote the story for an anthology, and it’s been accepted by the editor. So hooray! That’s successfully done.

I expect the anthology will be formally announced in the next month or two; I’ll let you know. It should see publication in 2019.

Now I’m back to work on the sequel to Edges, and so far it’s going well.

When I heard Jeff Vandermeer’s novel Annihilation was being made into a movie, my reaction was, “No way! Impossible!”

I’d listened to the audio editions of all three books in the Southern Reach trilogy, and there was so much that was internal, philosophical, reflective, that I couldn’t see how a movie could be made out of it.

I think I was right.

I finally had a chance to see the film last night and I thought it was good. I liked the setting, the script, and the women characters on the expedition who were portrayed as realistic individuals and not just victims-in-waiting as women so often are.

I think the film succeeded because it wasn’t trying too hard to replicate the book. I would describe it as being based on elements of the book, rather than on the book as a whole. And that’s fine. Books and movies are different mediums, they tell stories in different ways, and so they can’t always tell the same stories.

Annihilation-the-film succeeded in respecting the feeling and the environment of Annihilation-the-novel, while telling a much simpler story, and that’s probably the best an author can hope for.

Kudos to both Jeff Vandermeer and to director/screenwriter Alex Garland.

For anyone interested in screenwriting, the conversion of book to movie would make an interesting study.

A couple of years ago, I was one of several writers invited to contribute a short fictional vignette, meant to be included in a strategy paper on envisioning future risks and ways government might change. I was asked specifically to write a piece involving the National Security Council and set in the story world of The Red.

As it happens, that project never reached publication. Since rights recently returned to me, I decided I might as well post the piece here, for your amusement. 🙂

* * ALERT! * *
This piece contains minor spoilers for those who haven’t yet read book 1 of the Red trilogy.
 
 

National Security Council

Introducing

Edges

Inverted Frontier, book 1

Edges cover for Linda Nagata’s Inverted Frontier Book 1 by artist Sarah Anne Langton

Here’s the cover copy:

From the Edge of Apocalypse:
Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization—those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties—have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars.

No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well.

With a ship’s company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.

Edges is a new entry point into the classic story world of Linda Nagata’s The Nanotech Succession.

Click here to read the opening chapters on my website.

Release date: April 2, 2019.

The ebook is now available for preorder at:
Amazon US — Amazon UK — Amazon AU — Amazon DE

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Print preorders to follow, probably sometime in midMarch.

Preorders at Kobo should be available around midMarch. Email me at linda at mythicisland dot com if you’d like me to email you when Kobo preorders are ready.

~~~

Sarah Anne Langton is the artist who created this beautiful cover. The cover was ready long before the book. The framed print of it I have on my desk served as an important source of inspiration during the long rewrite. Thank you, Sarah!

I also have to mention that Sarah has the COOLEST domain name. 🙂

This is a behind-the-scenes look at why it took me so long to finish my newest novel:

Some of you are familiar with my fourth novel, Vast, a far-future, slower-than-light, space-based story that is probably not like most other novels you’ve read. At the time, I felt it was the best thing I’d ever written–basically the fulfillment of the reason I’d started writing science fiction. It took everything I had and then some to write it, and when it was done, I remember thinking Never again! I had no intention of ever writing anything else in that story world. It was just too exhausting, and the market for it wasn’t there.

For years, when people asked about a follow-up to Vast, the easy answer was some version of Nope! But as time passed, I started to think “Well, maybe…”

Oh, the folly of forgetting!

A few years ago, I realized — should I ever want to write a follow-up novel — I knew how to start it and what the basic plot would be.

With that in mind, I suddenly had this great idea, an actual publishing SCHEME…

I decided that before beginning another near-future, high-tech novel along the lines of the Red trilogy or The Last Good Man, I would go “back to the (far)future” and write that novel I said I’d never write.

The structure I had in mind meant this book could become the first of an open-ended series. So with that in mind, I resolved I was going to write two novels, but I would write them fast. After all, I didn’t have to spend time inventing a new story world, and I was planning to keep them short. I wanted both to be around 75,000 words, which is close to the length of my Puzzleland novel Hepen the Watcher. In this business, it’s critical to get new work out, and this scheme would give me a chance to get two books out in 2018.

This was a really good plan, at least on paper. But there was one major drawback — for a long time, my heart just wasn’t in it. In recent years I’ve been far more interested in exploring this world we actually live in, rather than far-future space opera. As a result, book 1 took me ages to write. Hours at the computer often produced only a few hundred words. But I kept at it, and by last March I finally had a first draft and it was close to the 75,000-word length I’d been aiming for! Hooray!

I started on book 2 right away, hoping to get a draft of that done before sending the first volume to my freelance editor. Progress was better on book 2, but I was still only partly done when I sent book 1 out for editing in late May. I wanted to publish the first volume in September 2018, with book 2 following a month or two later, so I contracted for cover art.

The cover art came in on time. Due to a series of truly unfortunate circumstances the editing took longer than expected and when I did get my editorial letter and in-line comments, well… “Harsh, but true” was the phrase I used at the time.

I knew the novel had issues, but this edit forced me to acknowledge how deep those issues ran. My heart hadn’t been in it, and that was quite obvious to my editor.

So I put the partial draft of book 2 aside and went back to work on book 1. I outlined the major changes I wanted to make, and understood that even though the basic plot would stay the same, I needed to do a complete rewrite. The cool part is that the more I wrote, the more my heart was into it. I was eager to get up at five in the morning and get to work, which is a terrific feeling. And I think all that work paid off.

Yes, my plan had failed. Neither novel was published in 2018 and book 1 grew far beyond the 75,000 words I’d planned. In the end, it turned out to be 120,000 words. Oh well! It’s done. The first beta reader to get back to me opened his comments with “Now this is science fiction! …an amazing book.” 🙂

If you’ve never read Vast, hey, now’s a good time! 🙂

That said, it isn’t necessary. The new book is meant as a new entry point into the Nanotech Succession story world.

I’ll be posting title, book description, and cover art later this weekend…

And I’m already back to work on book 2!

For the past few years I’ve made it a habit to post, on January 1, my writing goals for the year. I decided not to do that this year…and then immediately changed my mind. 🙂 This list serves as a great reminder for me of what I had in mind to do, and lets me assess what I did with my time. But I’ll keep it short!

1. PUBLISH THE NEWLY FINISHED NOVEL. I’m looking at a publication date of April 2, which gives me time to try to arrange some pre-publicity. I’m presently in the process of setting up preorders. Once those are ready to go, I’ll introduce the new book here. So check back!

2. FINISH THE SEQUEL to the novel in #1. I’ve got around 70,000 words, which is more than halfway. Hopefully I’ll have a draft by the time book 1 publishes. (Hopefully this isn’t me being overly optimistic again.)

3. PUBLISH THE SEQUEL as soon as it’s ready. Right now I don’t see any reason to do another three-month publicity blitz.

4. START A NEW NOVEL.

That’s it! Anything else will be bonus points.

In the non-writing (publishing) end of things, I’d like to “refresh” all three of my fantasy novels. The Puzzleland novels sell notoriously poorly. I really like these crazy books and would love to see them do better, so I may try to get new covers, or re-publish them together as a two-novel omnibus. My other fantasy novel, The Wild is presently unpublished. It used to be available only through my website store (now closed). I want to take the time to give it a complete read-through and then publish it at all ebook vendors.

Those are my plans. What do you have in mind?

For the past several years I’ve put up a blog post in January listing my writing goals for the coming year. At the end of the year, I check back to see how I did — and that’s the subject of this post.

So how did I do in 2018? TERRIBLE! I didn’t complete any of my goals. Here’s what I didn’t do, with the goals I set for myself in January in boldface. 😉

1. Finish the NOVEL IN PROGRESS and get it published…

I DID finally finish this novel. I finished it yesterday. Actually, I revised it a bit more this morning. I’ll have a lot more to say about why this one was so long in coming, but that can wait until after New Year’s.

2. WRITE THE SEQUEL to the novel in #1. Bonus: Publish it by the end of the year.

Hey, at least I was ambitious. I did make a good start at writing the sequel. I’ve got about 70,000 words on the first draft, which is a very nice chunk. So while I didn’t finish the sequel, the situation is not hopeless.

3. RETURN TO MILITARY FICTION by getting started on a novella or novel. I don’t expect to have this one finished at year’s end, just well started.

I did not even make a start on this. It’s not going to happen until novels 1 & 2 above are done.

4. Finish a NOVELETTE I’ve already started. I’m 9,000 words into this one, so I ought to be able to finish it. If it wants to grow into a novella, that’s fine.

I have not even looked at that novelette since I put it aside. You may be getting the impression that I am a slow and inefficient writer. I would not argue with such a conclusion.

5. Write a hard SF short story, 7,000 words or less.

I spent two or three weeks trying to write this story, and finally gave up on it in early December. Maybe the magical writing fairy will come sprinkle pixie dust over my head this weekend and I’ll suddenly be able to finish it in great style. Or not.

6. Write another short story, science fiction or fantasy, in an existing story world or not.

Ha ha. Nope. I’m done with short stories.

******

Okay, so what happened? Well, it wasn’t a lack of time, or of time spent in front of the computer. In large part I think it was a lack of belief.

I’ve written a lot of novels, many of which have garnered praise, but none that have done well in the market. I’ve never gotten a royalty check on the Red trilogy. The Last Good Man did pretty well by my standards, but not by the standards of actually successful writers. I was proud of these novels, and felt they had all the elements to be commercially successful, and yet they weren’t, and I don’t why.

So, not for the first time, I found myself at a point of reflection, wondering: Why am I knocking myself out to create the best novels I can, when the market clearly isn’t interested? My answer to that, which I only came up with late in the year, was “screw the market.” From now on, I’m writing for myself.

Honestly, that’s what I’ve always done, but simply changing my outlook, accepting the fact that I will never be a popular writer, has made a real difference for me. As an analogous situation, I can work very hard in my gardens, enjoy the work, and create something beautiful that means a lot to me, and do it all just for the pleasure of creating something. When I started thinking about writing in those terms, and stopped worrying about the marketplace, I became far more productive.

I think this is why I had such a hard time with that short story that I never quite wrote. I didn’t want to write it, and I knew that writing it would earn me only a few hundred dollars and wouldn’t help my career at all. So on a subconscious level, I began to think, “Why bother?” I just don’t have the necessary enthusiasm for that sort of challenge anymore.

I don’t mean to imply by all this that money doesn’t matter. I’ll be heavily marketing the new novel. Like anyone else, I do need an income. I just need to learn to separate the “Why bother?” bit from the creative process.

Anyway, I’m pleased to have finally finished book 1, above, and am looking forward to completing an initial draft of book 2.

Onward.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and wishing all of you a joyful day!

Xena Rose is looking forward to Christmas dinner…

Thank you to everyone who put their name in for last week’s book giveaway! And thank you so much for all the kind comments.

Here on the blog I had a very gratifying FIFTEEN participants. This blog gets automatically re-posted at Goodreads, and over there I had five more names. So twenty altogether. You guys rock!

I plugged the numbers into Google’s random number generator, and it picked John Hattan as the winner of a signed copy of Light and Shadow. Congratulations, John! I’ve sent you an email; I’ll need your mailing address.

And THANK YOU again to everyone else!