It’s Out There (The Ruby Key is Live)

By Holly Lisle

I’ve been haunting the local bookstore, and THE RUBY KEY isn’t on the shelves yet, so it didn’t really dawn on me that people are already reading it.

But Tina already has a review up (and is giving a copy away), and I’m not ready.

I knit two pairs of Genna’s socks to give away, and they’re done, but not blocked, and I haven’t done certificates of authenticity for them or anything. At the moment, they’re just two teenager-sized pairs of woolly green socks.

If you spot the book, please let me know where you find it (in the store–YA, front of the store, in with the adult fantasy….I worry about where it’s going to land), and when it lands.

Meanwhile, I’ll get the sock stuff done for the giveaway.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


A Buddy’s Bookstore, and The Ruby Key

By Holly Lisle

A friend of mine from way back, Robbie Jordan (a.k.a. The Dread Pirate Robbie, when we were role-playing) is starting up a brick-and-mortar indie bookstore in Eden, North Carolina, and because he’s a pretty savvy fellow, as well as a damn fine DM, and one of the first members of our writers’ group, which eventually became Schrodinger’s Petshop, he’s taken it online first.

Let him know what you’re looking for from an indie bookstore. He’s already got a live writers’ group planned for the store, and is looking into the possibility of an online one, as well.

The store is Books And…, and it’s just getting started.

And speaking of books. And bookstores.

No, bookstores aren’t supposed to sell advance reader copies. Says so right on the top. But since a copy of The Ruby Key is out there, and the seller is a bookstore ignoring what it’s supposed to do, I figured maybe you guys would like a shot at the copy. Better it should go to friends, since nobody at that particular store read it.

The Ruby Key on eBay.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Ruby Key Cover Art

By Holly Lisle

Meant to post this Wednesday–my to-do list overran me, and I forgot. I’m sorry.

I’ve had a copy of my cover art for THE RUBY KEY for nearly two
months now. It is, in fact, my desktop wallpaper, and it is gorgeous
beyond words. I’ve been dying to show it to people, but I couldn’t,
because the artist owns rights to the image without cover copy, and
respecting those rights is important.

But I got an e-mail from Valerie C. yesterday that he’d put the cover
art up. Here’s the link.

http://joshuamiddleton.blogspot.com/2007/11/ruby-key.html

Go take a look. I am in awe of this guy.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


2/3rds done on copyedit

By Holly Lisle

On the downside, I didn’t get a chance to post a Friday Snippet yesterday. On the upside, I have 217 pages of the Ruby Key copyedit finished, and when I started yesterday, I had 108. Getting ready to charge in again. The possibility exists that I’ll finish the whole thing today, but I still have tomorrow to fall back on if I don’t quite make it. Then I’ll box it and overnight it and Lisa will have it by deadline with a day to spare.

I’ll have a snippet next week. Maybe part of the opener from the next Moon and Sun book.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


From the Winnowing post

By Holly Lisle

This is the last bit of the Winnowing post over in the publishing forum—the part I think might be of general interest. You are, of course, invited to go over and read and comment on the whole thing.


And that brings me to where I am on pursuing the publisher vs. writer route, which right now is at a Decision Point, capital D, capital P, and with maybe a TM thrown in for good measure.

What I want to do if I can do anything I want—first choice, no quibbles, no equivocation—is write novels set in one rich world, to work against one broad, complex canvas to which I can keep adding over the years. I’ve been trying to do this since I sold my first book back in 1991. The world was Arhel. And it was followed by the Devil’s Point universe, and the Cadence Drake universe, and the Matrin universe, and the World Gates universe, and the Korre universe (oh, GOD, the Korre universe—talk about heartbreak) and a couple of universes that I pitched to romance editors, who don’t seem too excited by universes, and now here I am with the Moon and Sun universe.

For each of these, and for some fantasy universes that never even made it to the published stage, I have thrown myself wholeheartedly into the process of creation—worldbuilding, mapping, creating religions and nations and philosophies and peoples and characters, flora and fauna, cracks in the ocean floors and schedules for the rising and setting of the moons and suns. I have invested myself deeply and willingly, each time hoping that this world would be the one that stuck, that these characters would be the ones that won the hearts of readers and that this time I would get to put down roots and stay a while, create a home for my characters and let them stretch out and test the limits of their world and themselves.

And each time, I’ve had to roll up my maps, tuck away my notebooks, and say goodbye to my characters. I’ve had to adopt a stiff upper lip, and I’ve had to move on. Start over. Be fresh and upbeat, give my heart—my whole heart—to yet more characters, to fall in love all over again without reservation or wariness, never conceding the possibility that I could have my heart broken all over again, because if I tried to guard myself against heartbreak, my writing would be guarded, it would become cynical, and it would lose its soul.

I’m tired of starting over. I’m tired of having my heart broken again and again. I’m tired.

And yet…

Moon and Sun is the best shot I’ve ever had at getting to write for the rest of my career in a world I love passionately, to paint on a broad canvas, to spend years letting myself love a broad cast of characters and to take them everywhere and push their limits and test them and challenge them and set them free to become whole and real.

The first book in the series, The Ruby Key, is done. It will be on shelves in hardcover as a lead title from Scholastic’s Orchard Press next July (2008). It’ll have more of a chance of catching on than anything I’ve written before. There’s no guarantee, of course, and it, too, could fall prey to the ‘three books and gone’ series curse.

The odds are never in the individual author’s favor, and I know this. If it dies in three, I want to have something different to break my heart over for a while. Other people’s characters, stories, worlds. Something that I can fight for, but that I can watch from one remove. I won’t stop writing my own work, I won’t give up on fantasy, but I’ve built enough worlds already to keep a dozen writers in books for their lifetimes, and I can’t keep tucking them back in the corner. Back there in the shadows, some days I can hear them screaming.

Hence, publishing.

If Moon and Sun goes, though…

Well, it depends on how well it goes, doesn’t it? There might be money to fund the publishing house, at least if I keep it small and pretty simple. But there might be an opportunity to bring back Arhel, or The World Gates, or Cadence Drake, or Korre, and write more books in those worlds as well. I might have the chance to take my nonfiction to a pro-publishing house. If it goes, if I get to do the whole series, maybe I’d be happy working in just the Moon and Sun world. God knows its big enough, and the stories are there. Not just stories with Genna and Dan and the cat, either.

Am I, then, fully committed to becoming a publisher?

No.

I’m exploring possibilities, knowing that this is something that I could do and love, though it would be a different kind of love, believing that if I did it, I could bring wonderful books to people, could treat authors well, could do something good.

I’m operating on the assumption that I have some time, and I’m trying to figure out options for how best to use my time and my passion. And talking with you about this is tremendously helpful. It’s focusing me, letting me discover that in the long run, fiction is more important to me than nonfiction, which I have always written simply because it’s a lot of fun, and a good way to pay forward.

And it’s letting me see that there’s an unfilled niche in fantasy I could create, a niche I could love.

The rest, for now, hangs on Fate.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


RUBY KEY copyedits arrived

By Holly Lisle

Will be busy for the next few days getting the Ruby Key copyedit finished. Copyeditor also loved the book—this is an encouraging thing.

Over the last few days (excluding yesterday, which was a family birthday) I’ve been working on the story arc for the rest of the Moon & Sun series. The story, which starts with two kids fighting to save their mother’s life, has by mid-series expanded to include the whole of the world they live in, and a series of other worlds besides. I identified eight massive tasks the kids have to succeed at and complete in order to win back their world, and have been indexing wildly, setting up stories in which they first figure out the problems they face, and then seek solutions. It would be wonderful to get to finish the series as I envision it, and not have it fall prey to the three-book ordering-to-the-net death spiral.

Insanely, I have hope. After being kicked in the head by the dark side of publishing so many times, I might be an idiot, but I do still have hope.

So once again, I’ve deeply invested myself in the story. I’ll probably never get to write Redbird, which was to have been the third Korre novel. But this… maybe this could happen and I’ll be able to get all the way to The Sunrider, the last book in the Moon & Sun series. After the copyedits are done, I want to sit down and make some maps. The weren’t necessary for the first book. But the world starts opening up in the second one, and they could become critical. Mapping the moonroads is going to be a challenge, and not just for Genna.

Anyway. Work, and lots of it, awaits. Will be back as soon as I can.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Friday Snippet: from THE RUBY KEY

By Holly Lisle

The cat has led our heroes to a cave mouth and instructed them to go inside, telling them they’ll know when they’ve gone far enough. And then, he’s gone off hunting. Genna picks up the story from there.

NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, uncopyedited late draft, probably buggy. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks.

The look of the cave mouth gave me no comfort. A narrow vertical cleft jagged upward through sandstone to about to the height of a man, with the base wide enough for us, but the top of the opening nothing but a crack that ran upward as far as I could see. Inside was darkness, and nothing but darkness, and it was all I could do to crouch and move inside.

Dan and Yarri squeezed in after me. We could see nothing.

“Do you suppose there are bats in here?” I asked. I’m terrified of bats.

“Bats,” Yarri said, “and lizards, blind snakes, various toads and frogs, worms, all sorts of insects. Maybe rats. Fish, but again, probably blind ones. And cliffs and ledges and dead ends and drop-offs. Probably some larger predator who has found this a convenient den—”

“Yarri,” I said. “Still your tongue, please. And turn on your light.”

Yarri didn’t say or do anything for a moment. Then she said, “Oh! You didn’t want to know what was in the cave, did you?”

“I wanted you to say, ‘No, Genna. I’m sure nothing is in here but us.’”

She tapped the little light she wore as a chain around her neck once we got to the first sharp turn, and we and the inside of the cave were illuminated in cool, blue-white light. We couldn’t see far. The low, narrow passageway turned sharply to the right just ahead of us.

“I don’t see any bat guano,” Yarri said after a moment. “So there probably aren’t any bats.”

I didn’t believe her. In my mind, they were all just waiting around the next corner. And I did see spider-webs, so my skin started crawling anyway. Outside, I don’t mind spiders much. But in low places, where I’m sure they’ll drop into my hair and I won’t know, just the thought of them makes me want to shiver. Or scream.

“Genna, you have to go,” Dan said. “We can’t spend the night here.”

We could. We wouldn’t be comfortable. But we could.

Still, I had to believe the cat had brought us to this place for a reason, and I had to trust that it was a good one. So I started forward. I could hear Dan and Yarri shuffling forward, and I could hear Yarri whispering to Dan.

But worse than that, I could hear whispers from ahead of us. I reached behind me to wave them to silence, and hit my brother in the head.

“OW!” he yelped. Ahead of me, a thousand voices shouted, “OW!”

I tried to turn, and discovered I could not—the passage was too narrow. “If anything in there didn’t know we were coming, it knows now,” I whispered. My angry whisper scuttled forward to add its rustling-paper sounds to the diminishing chorus of shouts. It also skittered back to my brother and Yarri, and they fell silent.

[blenza_autolink 42]

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Friday Snippet: from THE RUBY KEY

By Holly Lisle

This is more of the new material from the revision. Genna, Dan, and Yarri have fled Arrienda in search of help. On the road, they run into trouble.

NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, uncopyedited late draft, probably buggy. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks.

Suddenly Yarri stopped, her hand raised, her body tensed. “Listen.”

Dan and I stopped as well. I heard the wind in the trees brushing bare branches and whispering through new leaves. And then something else.

Faint, distant, but coming closer. A howling, almost as if from a pack of wolves. But … not. I heard something wrong in those long, quavering wails, something exaggerated, mystical, unearthly. Something that did not belong in forests or on roads where people walked.

Yarri grabbed both our arms. “We have to get off the road, but unless you do exactly as I say, even that won’t help.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Death,” Yarri muttered. “If it’s what I think it is, fast, ugly death. Come on.”

She bolted off the dirt road and beneath the trees, and Dan and I raced after her. She didn’t go far into the woods, though—just deep enough in that I lost sight of the road. “That gets us away from her view,” Yarri said, opening her pouch and pawing through it. “Now to get us away from their noses.”

The howling got a little louder, and a lot more eerie.

She found what she was looking for, and with a soft cry of, “Ha!” pulled it out. She said, “Stand downwind of me. Quickly.”

I tested the breeze and did as she said, as did Dan. She had a bottle in her hands, and when she squeezed the little bulb attached to it, it misted us lightly. I smelled nothing. She sprayed each of us all over, quickly, and herself last, getting even the soles of our feet, then sprayed back just a ways along the track by which we’d entered the forest. Then she pulled a small knife from her kit and sliced two long strips from the bottom of her tunic. She tied one strip around my wrist and one around Dan’s, and then had each of us tie the other ends around each of her wrists. “Crouch, keep close to the trunk of this tree, and don’t move at all,” she said. They’re blind, but they can find your by the faintest scent or sound.”

“What are blind?” I whispered.

But she put a finger to her lips and crouched down; she closed her eyes tightly and pressed her forehead against the rough bark of the tree trunk. Dan took a place at her left, I at her right, and we did as she did.

For a moment or two, nothing changed but that the howling grew louder.

Then, though, a hard wind rattled the branches over our heads and tossed damp leaves up from the forest floor into the air, and slapped them against us. A cold fog rolled over us, wet as the fogs that plague the highland, but thicker, and laden with the sweet-rotten stench of spoiled meat.

The reek of death.

Such a smell terrifies. It knots the belly; it tenses the muscles; it sends a shudder through the brain. It screams, “Run! Or die!” I felt that urge. Everything in the forest felt it. The beasts that inhabited the ancient forest fled as if before a fire, and every bone and muscle in my body fought to bolt, to run, to flee mindlessly, to mark myself as prey. But to get away, away, away.

I took Yarri’s, thin, fine-boned hand and held onto it for life and sanity. I prayed she was holding on to Dan on the other side.

Then the howling was right on top of us, and I wondered how I had ever mistaken the noise for wolves. Surely only from demons could such hideous sounds erupt.

The fog, lit by the moon, buried everything. I could not see the bark of the tree upon which my forehead rested.

The howling stopped, replaced by wet snuffling, and what sounded like hundreds of shuffling feet pushed past us on all sides—close enough that if any of us had reached out, I was sure we could have touched them. Or perhaps it was the fog that made them sound so close. I hoped it was that, and not the first thing, but I feared at any instant sharp teeth would sink into my neck and shake me the way a dog shakes a rabbit.

[blenza_autolink 42]

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Friday comes early: Friday Snippet from THE RUBY KEY

By Holly Lisle

I still feel like absolute death on moldy toast. This is more flu than cold, I think, and it’s clobbering me hard.

But I’m up for the moment, and decided to go ahead and do the Friday Snippet early, then take the rest of the week off (or until such time as I actually feel like sitting up again).

So. This is from the revised version of THE RUBY KEY that went out to Lisa on Tuesday. A newly added bit, and something I really had fun with. It’s not any sort of action scene—it’s just a bit of description, but it’s where Genna sees the nightling “barrow” for the first time.

NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, uncopyedited late draft, probably buggy. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks.

We reached a grand cavern after long walking; in our progress downward, we had passed dozens of passageways that led off from the spiral we traversed. I thought many nightlings might live in this one barrow—and then I got a good look at the cavern, and realized our little village had to sit within reach of one of the greatest and most powerful cities in all the world. And it was with the master of this city that vile Banris had made his bargain. I could only wonder where he had found the courage to bargain with such a creature. Or the courage to cheat him.

We continued to follow the nightling who had led us into this place, but we followed wordlessly. Creatures winged and taloned that had never flown in daylight flitted and soared through the tall arched corridors, chasing fishes of the air and other creatures that I could have only thought at home in water. Squat, wide-mouthed monsters in every imaginable color—and dressed in velvets and brocades of the most beautiful workmanship—spoke in bell voices to men and women tall as willows and twice as graceful who furled and unfurled huge, delicate butterfly wings behind them. Nightlings with skin green or gold, pale lilac, vivid orange, snow white, ebony black, yellow or pink or richest royal blue moved through those same corridors, talking and laughing, followed always, always by black-cloaked, black-hooded silent attendants.

Nor were the exotic creatures and the even more fantastic nightlings the only wonders. Gardens grew along the way, trees curving and swaying, their leaves of gold and copper and ruby red; sweet-scented bushes brushed us as we passed; and flowers in every imaginable color glowed from beds planted by a master gardener with a genius for beauty.

Some faint music called us forward, almost impossible to hear, yet enchanting nonetheless.

I know the quiet beauty of apple blossoms in spring. I love the sweet awkwardness of newborn kids and lambs, the comfort of a cushioned rocking chair, the serenity of a shake roof on a rainy night, and of sturdy stone walls and a fire on the hearth come winter. These are good things, but simple.

The beauty and magic of Arrienda were extravagant, shocking, breathtaking … exhausting. My mind could not take everything in, and I wished I could sneak away for a short while and hide my eyes.

I wondered if humans had ever even imagined the possibilities I saw as finished works. I thought that if I stayed in this place for one lifetime—or a dozen—I would never cease to wonder at the miracles that spread out before me.

But I could not let myself be seduced by beauty.

[blenza_autolink 42]

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Ruby Key: Done!

By Holly Lisle

I love it. It’s done. And I’m done in. Going to be offline for the next two days, getting over this flu-y thing and catching up on my sleep.

DONE!

And on time, too.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved