The tiny personal hell of author's notes, cheap ebooks, and but also, a FOLDED SKY publication date!
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First things first:
ANCESTRAL NIGHT is $1.99 in the US in ebook for a limited time!
This is a great time to get on board this sweeping space opera series, as I just handed in book 3. Which is the major topic of this particular newsletter, as well as the explanation for why things have been a bit quiet around here recently.
To wit, I have been under a large rock marked “Editing,” trying to get the spin and balance and arc and all the other moving parts of the 137,000-word tome that is FOLDED SKY all whirring along so it carries the reader through.
I’m pretty excited about this book! We have pirates, Big Smart Objects, first contact, true love, parental obligations, enemies to even-worse enemies, first contact, second contact, aaaaand a trademark Elizabeth Bear snarky alien.
We also have a publication date! May 2025, in the US and UK.
I am VERY EXCITED, y’all.
But that means I had to write an author’s note thanking everybody and apologizing for the fact that between cancer, plague, and the four fucking horsemen of the fucking apocalypse, it’ll be five years between MACHINE and FOLDED SKY. Which just made my brain go fzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt, because apparently the past few years have been a lot?
The editing was a lot, too, and I’m still waiting to hear back from my editors if I made the thing go. The next book is going to have a simple plot, I swear it.
(With any luck, assuming I can get it written, there should only be one year between FOLDED SKY and SHIPWRECK STAR, however.)
Anyway, I have accomplished very little this past week other than reading Kelly Link’s brilliant THE BOOK OF LOVE, watching some FOR ALL MANKIND with the spouse (yes, we totally slept on it and so far it’s absolutely wonderful) and failing to practice guitar or yoga. Handing in a book really takes it out of you: big projects are exhausting it turns out!
So on that note I leave you with a little sketch my beloved spouse did of everybody’s favorite Mantis Cop, with some good advice for primates that can’t stop sticking their soft little fingers in things.
Talk to you soon,
Bear