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Calendar
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Work In Progress
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This page always needs updating--probably because the work in progress gets in
the way of making the updates...
This page has been up since 1995--truly amazing to me how long it has already been. This
page seems to be evolving into a sort of diary of my working life.
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2006 |
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Writing
Patternmaker (my fifth novel, or fourth novel, depending on how you are
counting) is nearing completion.
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2005 |
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Writing
The softcover edition of The Wanderer came out in December from Tor. Very
nice timing with a release to bookstore shelves in November for the Christmas season.
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2004 |
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Writing
The Wanderer came out in hardcover from Tor in May. Very satisfying to see
this work, completed during my second pregnancy, arrive on bookstore shelves the same
month my child was born. I've been working on Patternmaker, but progress
has been slow.
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Artwork
The beautiful map that I did for The Wanderer ended up on the wrong disk
and did not appear in its finalized form in the hardcover edition of the book. The lesson
here: quite obviously, I allow myself to get too excited by intermediate iterations. One
should NEVER give the production people anything other than the final copy of work you
intend to appear in a book. Labeling along the lines of "Draft only--final to come" will
inevitably become separated from the work, with predictable results.
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2002 |
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Writing
Prince of Fire & Ashes is in the copyeditor's hands. The publication
date is set for July 2002, though books should be available in local bookstores in June.
The German edition of A Tremor in the Bitter Earth will make its appearance on bookstore
shelves in Spring of 2001. Retitled Im Herzen des Feindes--"In the heart of
the enemy", which I take to be a reference to Gaultry's venturing into enemy territory.
I'll confess, I mildly mourn the loss of the elemental aspect in the titles of the German
editions (Air, Earth, Fire...), but despite this am of course very pleased to see my books come to press in the language of my
paternal forefathers.
I finished my short story "Codex Rex". This story is set in London in the year
1684. It describes the events following a buccaneer crewman's efforts to sell off some weird loot
that he was assigned as his share of "purchase" in a raid against Spanish and Indian
settlements on the Darian peninsula of Mexico. I am very
excited about this story (the muse was moving through me
on this one!) and look forward to its appearance in print.
"Honeysuckle Flowers" came out in Realms of Fantasy's
April issue. 2002 is
shaping up already to be a busy year.
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Artwork
Still going slow here, but I did a nice map for the new novel. Tor will probably have it
redrawn so it's a stylistic match to the maps that appeared in Books 1 & 2.
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2001
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Writing
Prince of Fire & Ashes is in my editor's hands. A publication date will
soon be set at Tor Books, most probably some time in Spring of 2002.
The German edition of Wind from a Foreign Sky made its appearance on bookstore
shelves in Spring of 2001. Retitled Die Göttlichen Schwestern, it has a new
cover and looks great. I am very pleased to see it have come to press.
I recently completed an introduction for the University of Nebraska Press's Buffalo Books
line of Classic Science Fiction Novels. Mine was for the upcoming Fall 2001 edition of
Arthur Conan Doyle's minor classic, The Poison Belt, the sequel to his better known
Lost World.
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Artwork
I did a piece for Minicon's 2001 convention handbook
(Some Destinations are more Picturesque than Others)
including three watercolor illustrations to go along with the article's text. The half-tone
reproductions turned out well--thanks to great, and now almost blithely regarded as
standard, printing technology.
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2000 |
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Writing
A chance meeting at Wiscon in May spurred me to write a short story set in the world of
The Chronicles of Tielmark. The story, "Honeysuckle Flowers" concerns a pivotal
episode in the life of Tamsanne of Arleon Forest.
Work continues on Prince of Fire & Ashes.
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1999 |
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Writing
This year so far has been consumed by work on Prince of Fire & Ashes. This has
proved to be a major challenge--how to write a stand-alone book that also successfully
completes a trilogy. I'm wavering between feeling ecstatic and forlorn as I'm working.
Being pregnant with twins has failed to enhance my writing productivity (hah!), though it
has certainly given me a different perspective on how casually writers and artists
have used twinship as a structural device in their texts! I have a different
perspective on what Gaultry and Mervion's mother must have undergone (massive understatement
of the year!).
With Wind From a Foreign Sky and A Tremor in the Bitter Earth both
out in paperback (formal reissue and issue date March, 1999), I'm doing more signings at
bookstores. It's been good getting the feedback, and the readings that I have done from
the new book are going well.
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Artwork
I've been continuing to assist my father on his new project, at
Heritage Sculpture. My own painting, however,
has continued to languish.
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1998 |
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I had a big move in 1998--from the East Coast to the Mid-West--and the disruption had a
larger impact on my work than I had anticipated. Looking back, however, some encouraging
things did get completed.
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Writing
This year was consumed by work on Prince of Fire & Ashes. I became something
of a hermit, pecking away at my keyboard, and didn't get out to as many conventions and
signings as would have been good for me.
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Artwork
With the big commission at East Boston's
Piers Park completed, it
was time to move on. I continued to assist my father on his new project, at
Heritage Sculpture.
I had a lot of fun in the spring working with Melissa Meier, a Brazilian-Swiss sculptor
with a wild imagination and the capacity for hard work necessary to transform her wild
ideas into completed sculptures. She was great to work with and the grunt work of the
metal surfacing that I helped her with was been a great release from many days
spent sitting in front of a computer screen.
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1997 |
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Writing
This year was consumed by work on A Tremor in the Bitter Earth.
I did another draft of a short story that I've been fussing over for four years now
(What We See). This time round, one person out of four in my writing group
got it, which was a triumph of a sort. The central premise of this story won't let me
abandon it, but it needs more time and work. That's ok. I have a hard time coming up
with ideas that are good enough and intense enough that they will fit the form of a
short story well.
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Artwork
I spent the first three quarters of 1997 researching and assisting the design of a large
commissioned sculpture for the East Boston Piers Park, which is owned and managed by
MASSPORT (the Massachusetts Port Authority). This piece now has its own web page
Piers Park--& see
under "Visual" for more details.
I also assisted in the installation of the snapping turtle fountain on the Framingham
Service Plaza on the Massachusetts Turnpike. This involved several stages, including
fun with a large crane and an 8' diameter granite monolith basin; pulling several hundred
feet of greased electrical cable through a small pipe, and kibitzing. That installation
is not quite complete owing to electrical malfunction in two of the four pumps that power
the fountain's jets.
These projects have slowed work on a collaborative Tarot Deck and other personal projects.
I sketched the map for A Tremor in the Bitter Earth. Fun, as always, to be
working on visual things for the books.
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Ongoing Writing Projects |
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My ideas usually come novel sized. This is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it is a
very good thing. When I wrote my first novel, I did not really understand what it meant
to be a writer--or, rather, I did not understand some of the more crucial elements of
being a writer. I still had (and, admittedly, still have) the cherished view that I
could write one novel, or one series of novels--and then I would be a writer. But life
outlasts (where one is lucky) the publication of one's books. So in another way, being
a writer means finding it in oneself to write the fourth book, or the fifth, or the
eleventh. The necessity of producing new books means that it is very much a relief to
know that there are more ideas that might blossom into full-length completed books,
lurking in one's mind.
On the other hand, having numerous ideas for books means that some of them have to wait.
When the ideas are vaguely formed, this isn't so bad. When the idea and the characters
have taken possession of one's imagination, it can be more than a little frustrating.
I get ideas about Maria Daemon (the protagonist of Pocketclock). Unresolved
elements of the story start coming together. I don't tend to write them down--it feels
like I remember the important changes, the ones that will really *work* (though another
part of myself warns me that I am both flattering my own memory and being idle, and hopes
that I will get more professional about keeping notes as time goes by). Friends ask me,
"So what about X project?" and I can only answer them with a guilty shrug.
So--these are the projects that are hanging fire. I hope to complete them someday.
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Tullier's Story
Tullirius (Tullier) Caviedo is a character I introduced to my readers in A Tremor in
the Bitter Earth. Tullier's story is larger than can be comfortably contained
in The Chronicles of Tielmark--though he has a major role to play in that
story's resolution. His fate is closely tied to the god-driven destiny of the Bissanty
Empire. I am looking forward to writing his--and Bissanty's--story. It brings into play
many of the themes I have been starting to address in the first trilogy.
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Pocketclock
This is a brutal, hard-edged science fiction novel that I have been working on since sometime in
1986. It is a personal novel that I tend to work on in periods of furious energy and
then abandon for months when I run into a wall. I don't want to write this one quickly--if
I do it may evolve into a sort of space opera, and that's not what I want for this book.
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Up the River
This story is a young adult fantasy that I am working on in collaboration with a friend,
Jenny Cowen. Here's a watercolor of one of the main characters, Nicholas.
This book is a lot of fun, and benefits from Jenny's great touch at humorous detail.
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