Here we go, the second in a series. August was a seriously mixed bag; a fair amount happened but I also didn’t feel nearly as productive as I would have liked. Let’s face it, August just kind of sucked anyway. Hopefully September will suck less for everyone overall.
As usual, fandom RP/Darrow stuff is under the cut.
- Ravenfall g
ot released. Slightly later than anticipated, but it’s out there and you can pay money for it, which is always appreciated. What’s appreciated even more are reviews if you do pay money for it. You can also read chapter 1 for free here. - Labyrinthian promo started. Technically this started on July 31st, but whatever. Cover art got revealed here, and I posted the first chapter here. Be watching for a lot more about that in the next few
months: freebies, giveaways, etc. I’m so excited about this book. - I had a story in Strange Horizons. “Cold as the Moon”. It’s weird and sad, which seems to be a lot of what I do these days. It’s my third story in that market, which is awesome.
- I sold a story to Shimmer. “Come My Love and I’ll Tell You a Tale”. Elise tells me they’re full up on bleak at the moment so it’ll probably come out sometime later in 2015, but yaaaaay. That will also be my third story in that mag.
- I kept working on novels. I’m behind on Rookwar (Casting the Bones book 3), mostly because it keeps getting longer. I think it’s going to be by far the strongest book in the trilogy, which is good because it’s also the last, but it’s becoming a monster. There is a lot going on in it. I still hope to be ready to send it off to my editor in the next few days. I also continued work on Untitled Book About How Kae d’Bideshi Met His Wife and They Had Adventures and Saved Everyone and Dealt With Relationship Stuff in an Awkward Fashion ( UBAHKBMHWaTHAaSEaDWRSiaAF), though that’s going a good bit slower because it’s not first priority at the moment.
- I wrote a short story. Just one, but it’s the first one I’ve written in a while, and it was comforting as evidence that it’s something I can still do. Novels have been taking up almost all of my energy lately.
- I submitted a couple of other short stories. Got a no on one of them, haven’t heard back yet about the other.
- I wrote a fic for a friend’s birthday. It’s set in Darrow-verse and is actually a crossover with another RP verse, so it will make sense to probably almost no one, but it’s a thing I wrote and I’m proud of it so I’m linking it anyway: “Gravitation”.
- Coming up in September: I have a story coming out in Nightmare next week – “Singing With All My Skin and Bone” – and I’ll be at the Baltimore Book Festival toward the end of the month. I’ll be on a couple of SFWA panels, I’ll have books for purchase at the SFWA vendor’s table, I’ll be at the SFWA reception, and I may be doing a reading. If you’re in the area, stop by. The programming looks awesome. I also will hopefully have finished Rookwar and I’m potentially slated to start work on a new book that I can’t talk about yet.
Okay, RP SOTP. If you’re one of the Darrow crowd, come in under the shadow of the cut.
No images because I’m trying to get this done quick.
Me
This month blew but I think I’m doing better. A lot has been very difficult, mentally and emotionally. My relationship with my PhD program continues to be intensely problematic, and I still have no job. But I’m trying to be optimistic. The severe uncertainty I’ve got going on right now means that tagging speed is majorly spotty. I think that once things settle down for me personally, I’ll get back into the swing of things.
Mike Pinocchip
Continues to be pretty much fine. Grand Fisher was hard on him and made some things a lot clearer about his relationship to his past and what he can and can’t do right now, but on the whole I think that was good for him. He’s about to discover that he’s going to be a (semi) father again; Spike will naturally be officially the father, but of course being someone’s biological parent is still a pretty serious deal. With everything else… Yeah, things are pretty much fine, with Neil and the girls, who are six now, Jesus Christ. No immediate plans for him aside from that. No plots on the horizon. I’m sure things will happen. I never worry about running out of stuff to do with him.
Subject Delta
God, I have no idea what to do about Delta. Lily is getting dropped, and I’m not sure what that means for him. I’ve been struggling with him a bit, in part because of how rough things have been on the personal front, but I’ve had him the longest, unless you count Mike, and I so don’t want to let him go. But it may just be time. I’m really not decided on that point yet, but I think I’ll have to make a decision soon.
Spartacus
Is another one I’m not sure what to do with. He’s always been quiet, but now he’s also in a bit of a holding pattern, and I feel like I have no real direction with him. Plots aren’t something that actually comes all that naturally to me, so yeah. I dunno. Like Delta, I really don’t want to drop him, so I just need to come up with something to do with him, As is true with any of mine, if anyone wants to do anything with them, please just let me know. I’m usually up for whatever.
Daryl Dixon
Daryl is awesome. He now has a Michonne, which is so great, but my understanding is that this means Carl is moving out, which will leave him and Beth alone in the place together again, which will be interesting. He remains clueless. I’m still interested in exploring my interpretation of him as not entirely straight and extremely repressed about it – I don’t think he even really knows, at least not consciously – and while I haven’t really done anything with that, I’d like to. He’s another one I don’t worry about finding something to do with.
Nathan Drake
Naaaaaaaate. I love him so much, though I’m still settling into his voice. I’m still not totally sure what his trajectory is; he needs a job, and he obviously can’t hunt treasure. He has a lot of stuff to work through. I want him to have friends, to the extent that he can connect with people on more than a superficial level, which is actually pretty difficult for him.
Will Graham
I’m still planning on bringing him in soon, assuming the app goes through. As I said last month, he’s going to be pretty messed up when he appears, and that’s going to be interesting to deal with. Not entirely sure how it’ll go, especially when he runs into Hannibal, which would happen almost immediately. Among other things, he’s coming in from later in the canon, so he knows things that neither Hannibal or Alana know. Which should translate to some pretty dynamic… dynamics.
So yeah. A lot of maybes. We’ll see what happens with September.
A Trick of Light 
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