Posts from 2005

Feb 21 '05

This is Mike (Patty's husband) filling in a few lines, Patty's been working her little fingers to nubs working on the new Mercy books, finishing the final proofs of Raven's Strike and generally being a wonderful wife and mother in her copious spare time.

Over the past couple of weeks, this site has been in various states of disarray. After a rather abrupt transition to a new host, we mucked about with the site design a wee bit, and finally settled on something fairly similar to the old site design. I am possessed of reasonably good technical skills, but my artistic talents are lamentable, so experimentation is fraught with peril for the innocent reader! So, for those whose retina's have been scarred by hideous color combinations and strangely-placed bits of imagry, I tender my apologies. I think the worst of the dust has settled, and new content should be appearing over the next couple of weeks. Don't get your hopes too far up -- neither of us is real good at updating web content, but we can hopefully update the FAQ, get some updated information in the books section, and maybe put up a few author's comments on Raven's Strike.

The Mercy books are coming along apace, and promise to be a lot of fun! We've seen the cover flats for Raven's Strike, and the page proofs are in the bedroom for late-night perusal. It's always exciting when a book starts coming together. Seeing a stack of manuscript pages undergo the amazing metamorphosis called editing, then show up neatly typeset accompanied by the maps and cover flats is a magic time -- hours of banging on the keyboard transmuted suddenly into a novel. The finished book should be out in late July.

Patty's currently excited about traveling back east. She was invited to Conbust, and will be visiting New York and Massachusetts. This is only slightly less wonderous than visiting the realms of faerie, as we've never been further east than Chicago, and most of our lives have been spent in Montana and Washington. She is assured that Northampton really does exit, and that air, water and food are available there, so she's boarding an airplane and taking the plunge! In addition to the wonderful folks sponsering the convention, she plans to meet her agent of some years for the first time. If you're near Smith College, swing by and say hello!

October 2005

I glanced at my website today and thought, July? I haven't updated since July? So many things going on, I just let this slide. Well, I'll try to do better. (Sheepish grin). Nothing like deadlines, asthmatic children and a new horse to keep me busy. So I cornered my husband (who's been after me to update for a while) and we made some changes.

WRITERLY STUFF: All of you who live up Massachusetts way, I'll be out for ConBust at Smith College in April again this year. I had a great time last year, and, apparently, they did, too, because they invited me again. The only other conventions that I'm sure I'll be at are RadCon, here in Washington State in February, and Miscon (Missoula MT), Memorial Day weekend. I've cut back on conventions now that the whole family is coming with me. We have a lot of fun, but they end up being pretty expensive -- and traveling is hard on my daughter's newly developed case of severe asthma.

I'm right in the middle of the second Mercy Thompson book, and having a great time. Vampires, demons, and ghosties, Oh My! I love my job. It's been really fun to play with the real world for a while. Looking at the gold and red leaves, Halloween costumes, and pumpkin patches helps to set the mood -- even though this book takes place in the middle of the hot summer.

I have the cover for Moon Called, the first Mercy book. You can check it out in the Books section along with a sample chapter. The artist is Daniel Dos Santos, a tremendous young artist who has been doing covers for Scholastic and Tor -- and now for Ace as well. I really, really like this cover. I talk to other writers about their covers, and I think I just have the Good Cover Fairy looking out for me. Although it doesn't come out very well on the computer image, the cover background is iridescent silver. Very cool. Remember that all chapter excerpts are unedited. Moon Called comes out February of 2006.