Here’s the full image of the Saga Press cover by the amazing Larry Rostant:

This popped up on Twitter yesterday:

Cover art for The Red:First Light by @LindaNagata – delighted to be asked by @SagaSFF to do this trilogy #BookCover pic.twitter.com/PMKw7vdrBq

— Larry Rostant (@LarryRostant) January 12, 2015

CLICK THROUGH TWICE TO SEE IT IN FULL!

Artist is the awesome Larry Rostant.

As it turns out, the covers for both The Red and The Trials are up at Simon & Schuster’s website. The images are small, but you can find them here.

It’s awkward to have a post on an expired sale as the lead post on my blog, so I thought I’d write a brief update on where things stand with the ongoing project, just to have something fresh here.

Over the past months — and especially the last few weeks — I have been consumed with writing a first, very rough draft of the third book in The Red trilogy. I’d hoped to finish it last weekend, but alas, no. Then I was sure I would finish it by the end of the week. Nope!

I do have excuses, though. On Tuesday the copyedited manuscript for The Red: First Light arrived from Saga Press. (Read about what a copyeditor does here.) Yes, that book has been copyedited before, prior to its initial publication. So of course the copyeditor only found some stylistic elements to “fix,” right? For example, there was much debate about how to present the initials “L. T.” when soldiers are pronouncing them “ell-tee.” I settled on the solution in the previous sentence, following a reference in the Chicago Manual of Style. Others counseled me to just go with “LT” — and that’s what the copyeditor decided. I don’t have any huge objection to this. I just hope it gets pronounced the right way when people read it.

So, it was all just technical stuff like that, right? Uh, well, no. Let’s just say, “Mistakes were made.” Not many, not obvious, but given how many times the manuscript has already been looked at… ::sigh::

So I spent much of the week processing copyedits and entering the changes into a copy of the manuscript. I’m almost done, and plan to send the manuscript back to Saga Press on Monday, but the process has consumed a lot of time that would have normally gone to staring at a computer screen wondering how to end book three…

Which brings me to the next excuse for not having finished quite yet — a new idea introduced itself, a means to add another level of drama and tension to the last big scene… but I’m still working out the motivation behind one obscure character, and that’s holding everything up. It’s gotten frustrating. To say the least.

At this point, I think I need to write “an” ending and then get started on the revision so that I can ultimately write “the” ending because things do change between drafts. Wish me luck!

Saga Press — the new publisher of The Red: First Light — is a new imprint of Simon and Schuster. Their first books won’t be out until next spring, but today they made this announcement:

New York, New York, October 8—Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced today that all e-books from the forthcoming science fiction and fantasy line will be sold without DRM.

“The science fiction and fantasy community were early adopters of electronic formats, and have enthusiastically embraced DRM-free content while showing great respect for authors’ works under copyright. In launching our imprint, we are pleased to offer this convenience to our readers and test the waters of DRM-free publishing,” said Joe Monti, executive editor of Saga.

This is terrific news. My ebooks have always been DRM-free for the convenience of readers who might change devices, or need to make back-up copies. So I’m very pleased to know that my novels to be published by Saga Press will be DRM-free as well.

Here’s more on the topic, from Joe Monti, my editor at Saga Press.

And here’s another post in which Joe talks about the start-up process behind Saga Press.

Over the past few months, many of you have asked Whatever happened to The Red: Trials? This was the sequel to my 2013 self-published novel The Red: First Light and had been scheduled to publish last May. It has not been published (yet) and now I’m finally free to say why. So here’s the story:

Last spring I got to talking with my long-time agent. Naturally, we hadn’t had much business with each other since I started self-publishing, but one thing led to another, he read The Red: First Light, loved it, and asked if he could auction that book along with Trials, and an as-yet-unwritten final novel in the trilogy.

I thought about it. I talked the idea over with my husband. I added up what First Light had already earned, and I estimated what I might expect to earn in the next year or two. The finances convinced me: an auction was worth trying, so long as it was a walk-away deal. My agent agreed: if I didn’t get an offer I liked, I would continue on my own.

In fact, I planned to continue as before, publishing The Red: Trials according to the original schedule, but during the auction period I was asked to hold off on releasing it. On reflection that seemed a reasonable request, so I agreed. It was a gamble though, because I was giving up a wonderful publicity opportunity. Fortunately, the gamble proved worthwhile.

The big news: Now that the contract has been signed, I am very pleased to announce that The Red series has been acquired by Joe Monti, Executive Editor at Saga Press, which is an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Joe has been very enthusiastic, and I am all approving of the marketing direction he has in mind. I see this deal as a fantastic opportunity to get my name out in the world and more widely known, which should help push sales of my backlist, which might lead to me earning a reasonable income from writing for, essentially, the first time ever. My husband has always been the primary breadwinner around here, so the opportunity to give back to him means a lot to me.

For now, The Red: First Light has been withdrawn from sale pending the release of the forthcoming Saga Press edition.

I’m not turning my back on self-publishing, but after almost five years at this game, it felt like the time had come to try something different. I think that’s the key, to keep trying new things, and this is the right thing for me, and for my family, at this time.

I do have one regret: I know I’m disappointing several of you who’ve let me know that you’re eagerly awaiting Trials. Be assured that it will be published, just a little later than initially planned and under the slightly modified title The Trials. I hope you’ll stick with me until then. And I do want to thank all the readers and reviewers who supported the original edition, and made this step forward possible for me.

I’ll be sending out my newsletter at rare intervals, as always, so if you’d like a notification of the publication date of the Saga Press edition of the series—or occasional news on my other books and writing—please sign up using the form in the right column of this page.

And in the meantime, I have a lot of other novels! If you haven’t read them yet, check out Memory or The Bohr Maker. Both are good places to start if you’d like to get to know my work.

So this is kind of cool…

As I mentioned last month, The Red: First Light was included as one of fifteen nominees for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, a juried award presented for the best science-fiction novel of the year. It didn’t win the award — that enviable honor went to Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux — but as it turns out, it placed third, behind Paul McAuley’s Evening’s Empires. I’m happy with that.

The link above will fall out of date as time passes, so here’s a link to a PDF announcement detailing both the John W. Campbell Memorial Award results, and the associated Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction.

More good news for The Red: First Light! The novel has been honored as a finalist for The John W. Campbell Memorial Award. This must have been a good year for science fiction, because there are fifteen finalists — more than in any other recent year.

The Campbell Memorial Award is a juried award presented for the best science-fiction novel of the year. It’s considered one of the three major annual awards for science fiction, and is generally limited to science fiction — in other words, it does not consider fantasy novels. The award is administered by Christopher McKitterick, Director of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas.

The winner has not been announced yet, though no doubt it will be soon. Again, I have no expectation of winning, but as with the Nebulas, it truly is an honor just to be nominated.

This is actually my second Campbell nomination. My novel Memory was nominated back in 2004 — something I never knew at the time. It was only in the last year or so that I discovered it on the list of nominees — a rather ironic surprise.

The full list of finalists can be found here.

And more information on the award itself can be found here.

My newest Lightspeed Magazine story, “Codename Delphi,” is now available to read online. Find it here. And if you feel inclined, please help spread the word!

“Codename Delphi” is illustrated by Hugo-award winning artist Galen Dara. And for those of you who enjoy podcasts, there is also an audio version.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, “Codename Delphi” is set in the story world of my novel, The Red: First Light — though it takes a look at things from a different perspective — that of the handler, instead of the soldier in the field.

Please check it out, and let me know what you think.

(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…)

Just out in the April edition of Lightspeed is my newest story “Codename: Delphi.”

This one is set in the story world of my novel, The Red: First Light — though it takes a look at things from a different perspective — that of the handler, instead of the soldier in the field.

As a novelist who is constantly battling to keep word counts reasonable, this story is a triumph for me because it really is a SHORT story — it’s only 4,100 words — even though there is a lot going on.

Right now, if you’re not a subscriber to Lightspeed Magazine, you’ll need to purchase a copy of the April issue to read “Codename: Delphi.” I hope you’ll consider doing so. It really helps to support a lively short fiction market.

The story will be published online later this month.

Please let me know what you think!