The writer of this is Quaker (I used to be) and a visiting scholar at Yale Divinity School. My personal take on any religion is “no, thanks,” but I am a firm supporter of freedom of religion. And of tolerance, defined as follows: I will tolerate you, your quirks, and your beliefs, if you will tolerate me, my quirks, and my beliefs, and if nothing you do imposes on the rights of others to life, liberty, and the pursuit of lawful happiness. I, in my part, will not impose on your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of lawful happiness.
I will not pretend to be someone I’m not in order to have you like me under false pretenses. I ask that you return the favor.
And I don’t tolerate child molesters, rapists, murderers, or factions of religions whose only happiness can be achieved if I am subsumed into their religion, or killed for not joining.
This is, I think, a reasonable definition of tolerance. It may not be perfect, but neither am I.
And with that thought, I give you Sarah Ruden writing for the Wall Street Journal on Yale’s Christian/Muslim Reconciliation Conference.
Some of what she had to say made me think of Talyn. Some of it made me think of Hawkspar.
Thanks to Jim for the link.
This is the first of my own books I’ve ever received a notification about. I thought it was kind of cool.
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Dear Amazon.com Customer,
As someone who has purchased or rated books by Holly Lisle, you might like to know that Hawkspar: A Novel of Korre will be released on June 24, 2008.
You can pre-order yours at a savings of $9.50 by following the link below.
Review
“Anyone will likely be captivated by this stern and stirring treatise on the dangers of enforced peace and the virtues of paranoid preparation for the worst.”
–Publishers Weekly on Talyn
“Fierce loyalties, foul magics and fresh plot twists abound in Holly Lisle’s tale of love, war and possession.”
–Jacqueline Carey, bestselling author of Kushiel’s Dart on Talyn
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Done, done, and done the way I meant the book to be. My editor should have that massive stack of pages in her hands tomorrow. I’m relieved, exhausted, and just a little bit jubilant.
The whole book is there. In June of next year, it’ll be on shelves. Probably for about fifteen minutes, as was Talyn. But it will, by God, be mine, and not some butchered disaster.
I’m doing the copyedit of HAWKSPAR right now. This time, everything is still there. It’s a much more pleasant experience than going through your manuscript and discovering your editor removed your second protagonist, lemme tell you.
Have to have the manuscript back by November 1st, and it’s a big, big book, so I’m going to be scarce for a while.
I heard from my Tor editor today that HAWKSPAR will be coming out at full length in one volume. The odds of Tor wanting REDBIRD, the third stand-alone in the world, are somewhere between slim and none, but at least the second book will be right, not ruined.
I’m very, very happy about this news.
Basically, the news is, there is no news. The book’s been moved back in the schedule to June, 2008, but what we do from there is still up in the air.
I’m exhausted. I can’t stand even thinking about the book anymore. It is, I think, the best story I’ve ever told, and I can’t bear to look at it.
I sat down and figured out my options. They are:
- It comes out at full length in one volume, prohibitively priced. It barely sells. I lose.
- It comes fifty-five thousand words shorter, not the story I wanted to tell at all, gutted, either by me or by someone else. Whether it sells or not at that length, it isn’t the book I wrote, nor does it resemble the book I wanted it to be. I lose.
- It comes out in two volumes, causing readers to pay twice to read one story. The books sells poorly, because the two-book gimmick is a death knell. EVERYBODY–readers, publisher, AND me–loses.
- There is, as far as I can see, no fourth option.
My editors are all on vacation through the weekend, so I’m going to take a few days off to knit, spend time with my youngest, and breathe.
Air Force Kid got a date on shipping out. September. Not sure whether it will be Iraq or Afghanistan. He’ll be gone for nine months, and in harm’s way. This is a far bigger deal than the book. So my objective is to just deal with the fucking book, and keep my priorities straight.
Time flies when someone is wrecking your book. I can’t believe it’s Friday again.
Here’s Aaran (that unnecessary male) when he makes his first appearance in HAWKSPAR. Second scene–the entire second scene, not just a snippet, so it’s really long. (Hence the more note two paragraphs down so that I don’t kill the important shipping notice for international Book Giveaway folks.) This was one of about fifty scenes ripped out “in your and the book’s best interest.”
Yeah, I’m still pissed off. This scene should be restored in the version that goes to press, but I still haven’t heard anything.
| NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, uncopyedited late draft, probably buggy, and possibly not even going to be in the final draft. THOUGH IT HAD BETTER BE. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks |
Aaran av Savissha, tracker for the Haakvaryn pack of Tonk wolf-ships, sat on the higharm, legs wrapped around the foremast, hands clutching ratlines. With his eyes closed, he tracked the fleeing slaver. “Two degrees north-west,” he bellowed over the scream of the storm.
The runner slid down the ratlines, careened across the deck to Captain Haakvar, and repeated Aaran’s direction. Within moments, he was back on the ratlines, and Aaran felt the Windsteed aligning itself with the slaver. “Dead on,” he yelled to the boy, a child who was one of the captain’s multitude of nephews, and the boy gave him an excited smile. Then the child clambered back into the riggings and settled below Aaran on the lines, waiting the next message to the captain. [click to continue…]
The GREEN MAGIC I proposal left at the beginning of the week, unmentioned and unlauded, but done at last to my satisfaction. HAWKSPAR is unresolved–I won’t know anything more about it until I hear back from my agent, Robin.
And I am in the midst of happier–much happier–things. THE RUBY KEY, you see, felt short to my Scholastic editor, and since the thing I wanted most when I sent it in was more room to write it, and since all the things she asked if I could expand were things I had kept very tight for length reasons originally, I’m now coming up with cool, exciting ways to get all the stuff in there that I had to leave out initially.
BOOK GIVEAWAY UPDATE
Along with that, I got the last two US book boxes out the door this morning. My one paid-for foreign box will go tomorrow. The plastic things came in, finally. Turns out I had to have them, but because I do the postage online, I didn’t need the freakin’ forms.
ANYway.
FOREIGN SHIPPING
Deedlit
WritingAngel
lacysavage
shay
You can now use the PayPay button at the top left to pay the shipping on your box of books. Postage to England, Australia, and all other UK addresses is 36.15, which includes one dollar toward PayPal fees and tape and packing peanuts. Shipping to Canada is $22.85, also including one extra dollar.
THE REST OF THE BOOKS
I have boxes. But now I’m waiting for packing tape and a big bag of packing peanuts in order to get everything else out the door, so it will probably be next week before I get any additional boxes packed.
HOW MANY BOOKS ARE LEFT?
Maybe enough to finish off the first list, but probably not. Barring some loaves-and-fishes miracle, not enough to get anyone who isn’t on the first list.
It ain’t all over yet, but here’s what happened with HAWKSPAR, and where I am now:
Back in November-ish of last year, the editor working with me on HAWKSPAR (we’ll leave names out of this) told me about 55,000 words needed to come out of the 190,000-word story if I wanted to have it printed as one book instead of broken up into two (breaking it up into two dooms the book in question). I didn’t know where I could make those cuts and still leave the story intact, and said as much, and asked her to help me figure out where I could do the slicing. She agreed to help me, and I went on to write another book for another editor in the meantime. I got a couple of e-mails from her telling me it was taking longer than she’d thought, but she’d have the request for revisions to me by X date or Y date.
And then she quit her job to go elsewhere, and I still hadn’t gotten my edit requests. I got an e-mail from the new editor—again, no names—saying “Hi, I’m your new editor, I’ll be taking over HAWKSPAR.”
And then I got an e-mail forwarded through my agent asking how many galleys I wanted.
Now, a warier and more cynical person than I would have smelled a rat, but I just figured the publisher had decided to go ahead with the book at full length, and I got all happy.
Then one day a few weeks later, the copyedits showed up on my doorstep, and the other shoe dropped. Hard.
My ex-editor had not passed the book on intact. Neither had she made sensible cuts in it (which she wasn’t supposed to do anyway, but for now never mind that). She had not in any way, shape, or form edited the book. What she had done was absofuckinglutely unbelievable. She had simply removed every scene from the hero’s POV, with no regard to continuity, missing information, missing storylines, missing characters, or anything else. This brought the book down to the length the publisher wanted, but left the manuscript an incomprehensible, reeking mess in the process. The hero, after all, carried half the story, half the love interest, and about 90% of one central, especially critical, storyline, as well as large parts in almost all of the rest of them.
This editor sneaked what she did past me, never letting me know she had cut the book, never letting me see what she had done, never sending me a copy of the manuscript, or an email, or anything. Instead, she sent the gutted HAWKSPAR on to a copyeditor and to galleys simultaneously as if it were finished work approved by me, before scooting out the door to her new life. And, when I hit the ceiling over what had been done to my book, she had the nerve to defend what she did in a way that had the new editor e-mailing me and telling me “I know that the book was cut with your and its best interest in mind.”
I don’t get angry all that often, but over this, I was livid. And I’ve been fighting for the integrity of the book since then. As of today, we’re asking for an extension so that I can cut the 55,000 words in a sane fashion (won’t be asking for the help of an editor again, though). If the publisher won’t see its own editor’s responsibility in this and give me the time I’ve asked for, then the book will go out at full length, but in two volumes, where it will sell like crap (a fact the new editor admits), and sink into oblivion without further notice.
For all of you folks who think you want to make a living doing this, realize that although nothing like this little cautionary tale had happened to any of my previous long, long list of books, it happened to this one, and there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to fix the thing.
And for those of you who are considering buying the book, check back. I’ll let you know whether I’ll be able to recommend it or not.
Some significant editing problems surfaced during my revision of the copyedit of HAWKSPAR. I’m on hold on the revision while we sort them out. So this week I’ll be finishing the type-in of the GREEN MAGIC proposal, and getting back to the revision concepts for RUBY KEY.
