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strange foreign customs, part XIV.

Lyra will be in first grade in the fall, which reminded me of a German tradition I had forgotten about: the Schultüte.

Since about the beginning of the 19th century, German school kids get a Schultüte on the first day of first grade. It’s a big cone made out of heavy paper, decorations on the outside and tied shut at the top with a bow. They look like this:

286px Schultuete

The Schultüte is filled with candy and small items useful for school (like colored pencils or erasers). They’re usually purchased commercially, but some families make them from scratch. The Schultüte is an extremely common thing in Germany, but I don’t think any other culture has the same custom. I don’t know how it started, and even the German Wikipedia article is fuzzy about the origins of the Schultüte, but it’s been the thing to do for a first-grader’s first day going on two hundred years now.

(In Germany, Kindergarten is not part of the regular school system like in the U.S., so the start of “real” school is the first day of first grade.)

I’m thinking about making one for Lyra, but doing an Americanized version: candy, McDonald’s coupons, an iPod, a brick of .22 ammo…

family. parenting.

ham and cheese.

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The goober on the left has her last day of Kindergarten today. The goober on the right has his last day of second grade. Kids in Upper Cryogenica have to make up lots of snow days, which in some years can mean they won’t graduate until late July.

These kids? They’re freaks of nature. They love school, and both are bummed that the school year is ending. I expect that’s going to change by middle school at the latest.

(There’s this girl on their bus who always has the same hopelessly resigned expression on her face, like she’s being shipped off to the gulag every morning. I think I know now why the bus driver really seems to enjoy having my chipper and chatty kids board her bus.)

Next up: five weeks of SUMMER CAMP. Because they have to learn how to swim, the great outdoors never hurt anyone except when they drown or get eaten by bears, and being bug-bitten while baking in the summer sun builds character.

writing.

from the desk &etc.

Being a writer is an awful lot like having a lot of homework every single day of your life.

Yesterday I delivered the manuscript for Lines of Departure, the sequel to Terms of Enlistment, to my editor at 47North. It’s 28 chapters and 95,000 words, but I ‘m sure those numbers will change before publication as it goes through the editorial process. My dear wife, who is my first beta reader (and thanks to her M.A. in English also a capable critic) says that while the first one was good, the second one is quite a bit better, and I tend to agree. Not only did my writing improve over the last few years (Terms of Enlistment was completed in 2009 and had a significant edit in the Great Manuscript Massacre of 2010 when I ripped out 20,000 words), but I was able to pace Lines of Departure more briskly because I didn’t have to spend half the novel on boot camp and world-building.

Anyway, it’s done (until I get the first round of editorial notes), and now I’ll rinse my brain with video games and movies for a few days before I tackle the next projects. There’s a novella in the Terms of Enlistment universe (Measures of Absolution, which I will release on the Kindle and directly in the other ebook formats on August 8th), two novels that need to be finished (one contemporary YA, one urban fantasy mystery), and a brand new YA-leaning fantasy novel in the Ink and Blood universe. If I haul ass, I may be able to make 2013 a personal record year for novels completed. Three novels plus one novella is very much in the realm of the possible. But can our hero go for four? There are after all six and a half months left in the year.

I may not even have time for post-novel ennui this year.

bullets & links. writing.

random bullet points.

–I’m still hunkered down in my writing dungeon here at Castle Frostbite. I have to deliver the manuscript for Lines of Departure by the 31st, so I’m busy putting the final touches on it. If you’ve sent me email and I haven’t yet responded, I’m sorry. I’ll get to the essentials like email, showers, and the regular consumption of foodstuffs once this manuscript is in send-it-off shape.

–Because Lines of Departure isn’t due out until January, I’ll do my level best to put out some new material in late July/early August. It will be a novella called Measures of Absolution, and it will answer some questions I got from a lot of readers, namely “What the hell was going on in Detroit?” The story is told from the perspective of one of Andrew’s old squad mates, and it will go into the how and why of the Detroit riots, and why exactly the rioters had military-grade hardware and tactics.

–Six weeks until Readercon! I guess I should start stockpiling all that Basil Haydens I’ll need to ferry down to Burlington.

—Terms of Enlistment has clawed its way back up to #2 on the Military SF list on the Kindle, and it’s back into the Top 20 for all SF (print, Kindle, and audio.) When 47North released its own edition, the novel lost its rankings and had to start from zero again, and I’m happy to see that it has regained most of the steam it had as a Frostbite Publishing(tm)! product.

–I watched Snow White and the Huntsman with the wife the other night. It was a truly awful movie, and we had our very own impromptu Mystery Science Theater 3000 savaging, which was probably the most fun anyone’s ever had with that flick. It is getting to the point where just seeing Kristen Stewart on the screen makes me sleepy almost instantly. She’s the thespian equivalent of thorazine.

–Pilot has a new fountain pen out, the Metropolitan. It writes ridiculously well, and I have no idea how they can produce such a nice pen, package it in a decent box with a converter and an ink cartridge, and sell it for under $20 without losing their pants, but that’s what they’re doing. I usually recommend the Lamy Safari to fountain pen noobs as a great starter pen that won’t break the bank, but the Pilot Metropolitan has the potential to knock the Safari off the #1 spot when it comes to “Best Fountain Pen under $50”. It has a lacquered metal barrel and cap and looks and feels a lot more expensive than $18.

–We got a Roku 3 for the TV in the grown-ups’ den upstairs, and holy shit, why didn’t I get one earlier? It will truly come into its own once they hook us up to the fiber-optic cable that’s tantalizingly hanging off the poles in front of Castle Frostbite, but even with our poky 1.5Mbit DSL line, it’s perfectly usable. (I got the Roku instead of the Apple TV because it supports Amazon Instant Streaming, which the Apple TV doesn’t.) Now we can catch up on that British series everyone’s been raving about. Downtown Abby, or something? I’m guessing it’s about a hooker.

Well, it’s back to work for me. Have a great Friday, and when five o’clock rolls around, hit that liquor cabinet harder than #3 hit the wall at Daytona!

 

in the news.

free targa top, courtesy of the fire department.

And that’s one vintage Porsche 911 less in the world:

Man seriously injured after crashing Porsche.

That’s in New Hampshire (albeit wayyyy north of here, in Coos County near the border with Maine), and that is was a 1967-vintage Porsche 911.

One of my frivolous middle age pipe dreams is to own a restored Porsche 911 built in my birth year, 1971, but that desire has no basis in rationality. As the owner of that 1967 911 found out, cars of that vintage have pretty lousy safety equipment. A 911 of that vintage usually has an air-cooled 2.0l 128hp flat-six in it, which was a stout amount of power for a sports car of that time, but I could probably outrace one in a modern minivan, and with air conditioning, Bluetooth, a kick-ass stereo, and better handling characteristics. But those old babies aren’t about that.

Of couse, as this accident shows, you can hurt or kill yourself with just about any motorized conveyance if you don’t know or respect its (or your) limits.

castle frostbite. family. parenting.

lyra, age 6.

People of Earth!

Your tiny Empress turns six years old today.

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<insert obligatory kvetching about how time flies, something something diapers blah blah before you know it &etc.>

The tiny Empress has really made strides this year socially. She’s been in Kindergarten since July, and she loves it with a fierce, white-hot intensity. That kid right there? She will be the Queen Bee or the Chief Delinquent in high school, and possibly both.

Love ya, kiddo. But no, you can’t have “just pound cake” for dinner. We have to throw in some alibi vitamins somewhere.

castle frostbite. parenting. writing.

monday morning post-pinkie pie party action report.

It’s Monday, and the house is QUIET. The dogs are snoozing in front of the pellet stove, which we had to turn on again last night because the temperature was predicted to dip down to freezing overnight. That marks the first day of the year when we had to run the pellet stove and the window air conditioning unit ON THE SAME DAY.

We had a little shindig for Miss Lyra on Sunday. She turns six on Wednesday, so we pulled the party back just a bit to the one weekend this month where most of our friends were available. There was cake and presents and an inflatable 12-foot pool and ten kids in the 3-9 age bracket running around on the Castle grounds, so you may understand why I emphasized the QUIET in the first sentence of this post.

Now back to work. I have this thing called a “contract” that specifies I have to deliver this here novel by the end of the month, and it still needs a little work, so I should probably get to it. But understand that this is not a Monday gripe. Drinking coffee in a quiet house and making up stories beats the hell out of digging ditches or changing diapers when it comes to ways to make a living.

books. capitalism. writing.

it’s back.

Behold: the product page for Terms of Enlistment is already back on Amazon.

You’ll notice a few minor changes: the publisher, some details in the book description, and the digital list price. It’s listed as “pre-order for May 14, 2013”, but I have it on good authority that it will be available for purchase again shortly.

capitalism. writing.

“terms of enlistment” availability.

To abide by the terms of my publishing contract, I can no longer offer Terms of Enlistment directly as of today.

If you want to purchase a copy, you’ll have to wait until May 14th, when 47North releases Terms of Enlistment again on Amazon. The good news is that this time, there will also be a dead tree version available, and an audio version as well. But because I can’t compete with my new publisher when it comes to selling copies, I can’t sell them from the blog or other sources anymore.

To all you people who purchased the first, self-published edition: thank you. The success of the little Space Kablooie novel has exceeded my most optimistic expectations. There aren’t very many novels that sell as many copies as quickly as this one did, especially not in the self-publishing arena. I’m still utterly dazed by what has happened in the last eight weeks.

writing.

achievement unlocked: book deal.

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been more quiet than usual on the blog and the TwitFaceSpaces lately. There’s a reason for that, of course, and I’m free to share it at this point.

My awesome agent Evan Gregory of the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency has sold the publication rights to Terms of Enlistment and its sequel, Lines of Departure, to 47North.

<insert Kermit flail>

What does that mean for the near future of the book series?

I have pulled all my self-published copies of Terms of Enlistment from the online sources where they were available. It is no longer on Kobo, B&N, or iTunes, and I won’t be able to offer any copies directly anymore. It will be available on Amazon’s Kindle store, but temporarily as a pre-order.

On May 14th, Terms of Enlistment will be re-released by 47North in Kindle edition, and at that point it will be available on Amazon.com again; a print and audio version will be produced soon thereafter. Those of you who were kind enough to leave reviews will be happy to hear that the 47North edition will keep all the reviews and star ratings of my self-published version. I will work with the team at 47North to make any changes and edits they find necessary (no matter how hard you think you’ve looked, there are always still typos somehow), but overall it shouldn’t be drastically different from the version that’s currently available.

As a result of the deal, 47North will also publish the sequel, Lines of Departure, this time simultaneously in print, Kindle, and audio formats. I am delivering the final manuscript of Lines of Departure by the end of next month, and I’ve been told they are aiming for a release in early 2014, possibly January.

I realize that some of you may be irritated at the fact that Book #2 will be delayed when I had already announced that I’d bring it out in May. It will, however, be a better book because the team at 47North will provide the editorial guidance, along with the production, marketing, cover design, publicity, and other support that will allow me to fully concentrate on my writing schedule and make sure it’s the best version of the novel it can be. As much as I know my stuff, I’m still just a one-man team, and for Terms of Enlistment, I’ve had to do not only the writing, but also all the editing (and there were many editing passes), cover design, marketing, ebook formatting, direct sales, support, accounting, and everything else that comes with putting out a novel. All the time spent on those things was time that had to be subtracted from my ability to actually write the books! With the novel and its sequel going to 47North, I can now concentrate on the sequel and the next two books in the series, as well as future projects.

To make sure that there’s stuff for you to read while you wait for Lines of Departure, I intend to bridge the gap between releases with short stories and a novella in the Terms of Enlistment universe, which will appear alongside Lucky Thirteen on the Kindle store in (hopefully) regular intervals.

So there’s the big news item of the day. The Terms of Enlistment books finally have a publisher, and I have both the time and the financial security to spend my days writing instead of being my own publishing house. I was getting sick of answering all these different phones and doing different voices for the sales, tech support, marketing, and editing departments.