Codex Born

Today is the official release date for the U.S. mass market paperback of Codex Born, book two in the Magic ex Libris series. Which is a bit strange to me. The third book is done and turned in, and I’m finishing up another (unrelated) book, so it’s weird thinking of Codex as the “new” book.

But new it is, and as such, I MUST BLOG ABOUT IT AND ADD LOTS OF LINKS AND SUBTLY (AND NOT-SO-SUBTLY) ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO RUN OUT AND BUY ALL THE BOOKS!

Libriomancer

• PAPERBACK: Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy | Schuler Books | Indiebound
• HARDCOVER: Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy | Schuler Books | Indiebound
• EBOOK: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | iBooks
• AUDIO: Audible.com

Codex Born

• PAPERBACK: Amazon | B&N | BAMM | Mysterious Galaxy | Schuler Books | Indiebound
• HARDCOVER: Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy | Schuler Books | Indiebound
• EBOOK: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | iBooks
• AUDIO: Audible.com

What can I say. After nine books, I’m taking the direct route. Here, have a guilt tripping kitten!

THIS KITTEN IS SAD BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T BOUGHT THE BOOK YET! Either that, or it’s thinking about that one scene from Guardians of the Galaxy.

Okay, seriously, it’s new book day, so if you haven’t guessed, I’m doing the traditional author freak-out. I’m excited to see this one out in paperback, both because I like my books being available in the cheaper mass market format, and because this means the ebook price is dropping as well.

Thanks for putting up with me through another release day. Now let’s give away a book! To enter, just leave a comment with a made-up book blurb by a fictional character. For example:

“I find your lack of Goblin Quest disturbing.”
-Darth Vader

“I am Groot.”
-Groot

I’ll send an autographed copy of one of my mass-market titles (your choice) to a random winner. There are no regional restrictions on who can enter, but only one entry per person, please.

Have fun, and in all seriousness, thank you so much for all of your support and encouragement over the years.

My theme for 2014 seems to be a year-long scramble to keep up on everything. As evidenced by the fact that I HAVE A BOOK COMING OUT IN SIX DAYS!

Okay, it’s not a brand new book, but it is the mass market release of Codex Born, coming on August 5. And with that release, the ebook price should also be dropping very soon.

If you’ve been waiting for this, here’s a convenient set of links:

Amazon | B&N | BAMM | Mysterious Galaxy | Schuler Books | Indiebound

The paperback also includes the first few pages of Unbound, which comes out in January of next year.

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Other stuff I’ve been meaning to talk about, or at least link to:

• Graphic Audio is releasing some of my goblin short stories, starting with “Goblin Hunter.”
• Lynne & Michael Thomas are Kickstarting a new SF/F Literary Zine called Uncanny. One day in, and they’re already more than halfway to their goal!
• The Wiscon/Frenkel Harassment situation keeps getting worse. Elise Matthesen has come forward to talk about what did — and what didn’t — happen after she reported. From her post:
  • “This is the safety chairs who didn’t investigate further. This is the con-chairs who didn’t follow up and didn’t ever interview me and Lauren. This is the subcommittee members who didn’t push further and contact me and Lauren and Mikki. This is lots of people, some unwitting, some just preferring not to look at the ugly stuff, not to learn something that would require that they confront someone — or confront their principles.

    This is a system. And it is fucking powerful and it is fucking broken.”

The mass market paperback edition of Codex Born [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] comes out on August 5, 2014. I’m going through the page proofs now, which means I have the chance to fix any errors that might have slipped through in the hardcover release.

If you are one of those wonderful people who have already picked up a copy of the book (thank you!), and if you’ve stumbled across a typo or mistake, could you please let me know? As a way to say thank you, everyone who emails me about a typo they’ve found will be entered to win an autographed copy of Heroes in Training, the anthology I edited for DAW a while back.

DAW adjusted the cover a little bit for the paperback. And looking at the page proofs, if you add in the excerpt from Unbound in the back, the book comes to almost 400 pages.

And that reminds me, I need to email my editor about cover art ideas for Unbound. I’m thinking Isaac and Smudge riding a cyborg T. Rex over the Mackinac Bridge to battle an axe-wielding kaiju rising out of Lake Michigan. What do you think?

This is the official discussion post for Codex Born [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] for anyone who wants to chat about the book or ask questions. I may or may not answer all questions, depending on whether or not it would spoil things for future books (or, you know, if I just don’t know the answer yet).

Obviously, there will probably be spoilers in the comments.

My thanks once again to everyone who picked up the book, and especially to those of you who’ve posted reviews or shared the series with others.

Three days until Codex Born [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]. I thought today I’d share the first page or two of the very first draft of the book from January of 2012. There are no spoilers here, because things changed an awful lot between this and the final version. I’ve got nine different drafts of this sucker, though not all of them are complete and some required more major revisions than others.

Originally, I intended to tell this story from Lena’s point of view. To my tremendous frustration, it wasn’t working. There are elements of these opening pages I really like, and Lena absolutely deserves her own books, but as I progressed, it simply didn’t feel right. The tone, the voice … so eventually I flipped back to Isaac’s PoV, but inserted snippets of flashback and backstory from Lena’s at the start of each chapter.

Also, my first drafts tend to be very rough indeed, so please be gentle.

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With five days left until Codex Born [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] comes out, this is the time when I’m supposed to be doing frantic self-promotion. The trick is to do it without looking like I’m self-promoting. Which is harder than it sounds. So I asked for advice on Twitter.

Kate K. F. suggested pictures of Michigan looking pretty, which sounded like a good way to go. Especially if those pictures tied into the Magic ex Libris series, which is primarily set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula 🙂  (Spoiler: Not all of the pics connect to the series…)

Larger versions of the pics are posted on Flickr, for anyone who’s interested.

Luna Moth. Because they’re cool-looking, and they hang out up north. Also, I believe there’s a reference to Smudge the fire-spider trying to eat one at some point. (If that reference isn’t in the books, it’s only because it got edited out in revisions. Which just means I’ll have to put it back in a future book!)

The Mackinac Bridge. Isaac hates driving over this thing. He’s uncomfortable with heights, and the center lanes are metal grating instead of pavement, meaning the air comes up through the center, and the feel of the tires on the road is very different. When I was driving home last week, it kept feeling like the car was trying to pull off to one side or the other.

Also, there used to be a colony of lake trolls living at the base of the bridge, but the Porters relocated them back in 1971.

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