Imaginal Casements

Work is over for the moment. I've done my cross-mapping and I won't be at the day job for the next fortnight, I've handed in my draft of Book Seven (yes, it has a title, no, I can't tell you what yet) to the editor, and now I have Christmas with my family to look forward to.

Oh, and plotting book eight. (Well, it'll give me something to do during the dull bits . . .)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. Thank you for your friendship and your support, and here's hoping for a better new year for all of us.

And as a little Christmas extra, here's a Library mini-story (also posted on my blog at http://www.grcogman.com/2019/12/a-library-christmas-carol/) which owes a certain debt to Charles Dickens . . .

( Read more... )

(and extra thanks to mjj for Lord Silver's injury)

“Surely you’re exaggerating,” Silver said.

“I’m not,” Irene said. “Really, I’m not. You haven’t seen the witness statements, have you? Well, trust me, the concept of ‘work ethic’ seems rather lacking round here. ‘Sponsored holiday’ would be more appropriate. A dozen of the lower-ranking people from both hotels were sneaking out on the night of the murder to hit the theatres and cabarets. At least two of the dragons have been spending their spare time art shopping for their private collections. Green and Purple, or Thompson and Thomson, or whatever they call themselves from the Fae delegation apparently want to sign up with the Paris police or the Foreign Legion or anywhere that will send them on interesting jobs. God help anyone who does sign them up. Even the Cardinal admits to hanging out at rare book shops. A dozen of the witness statements confess to being in someone else’s rooms. Three of them contradict each other. And pretty much every single servant from both sides is refusing to contradict anything their master or mistress says! If we want to find out who killed Ren Shun, we’re going to need something more definite than, ‘if my lord says he was in his room then of course he was in his room’.”

I, um. The Invisible Library is in Barnes & Noble's top 25 SF&F books for 2016.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/best-science-fiction-fantasy-books-2016/

Wow. This really is just ... fantastic. (Okay, repetitive choice of adjective, but you know what I mean.)

On the down-to-earth-with-additional-water front, it's apparently going to rain tomorrow, and may be turning frosty. Joy. Time to find the winter hats and scarves. At least I have plenty of scarves.

Okay. I've finished the current edit of Library book 4, and have sent it out to my beta-readers. (If you're in my private Library reading group and missed the earlier request for beta-readers, ping me...)

I think I will now go and fall over.

Had an appointment at the GP this afternoon, and apparently I may (not certain, but may) have high-ish blood pressure. Wonder why. Roll on holiday.

Goodreads giveaway of book 2 (The Masked City) up at https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/200051-the-masked-city - I'm afraid it's American readers only, sorry. It closes the 4th September.

Trying not to get too nervous about upcoming US release of book 2...

At least I have the heat here to distract me (if that's quite the right use of "at least"), not to mention the number of people at work who are on annual leave, or ill, or on various missions elsewhere. Yes, I know, I can't talk, I'm just off leave myself. But the place is rather thin on the ground at the moment. Nice and quiet, though...

Today's fantastic thing: The Invisible Library got a starred review on Publishers Weekly.

http://publishersweekly.com/978-1-101-98864-0

Seriously improved my Monday, which was otherwise a Monday sort of Monday. Not bad, just... Monday.

Okay. Liu Quan (book 4) is getting a name change to Hu, after some flipping through Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. (Due to his name being too close to Liu Xiang, which I'd already stated as Irene's father's.)

One coworker off ill today after complaining of an oncoming cold on Tuesday. I'm feeling a bit dodgy myself, and am trying to work out if it's general illness, oncoming hayfever, or the sort of symptoms that one subconsciously feels are even worse after watching other coworkers come down with diseases. What fun.

The cover for book three, The Burning Page, is now up!



http://www.torbooks.co.uk/blog/2016/2/19/hot-off-the-press-the-burning-page-cover-reveal

(This really is being a week for announcements, isn't it? Next week will be so dull in comparison.)

---

“But why are you pointing a gun at us?” Irene hoped that sounded like an innocent question, rather than just a completely stupid one. All right, perhaps it could be both totally stupid and innocent. Pointing guns at people frequently resulted in stupid comments. She’d both pointed them and made the comments, so she should know.

Meeting went rapidly, work got done, and Secret Santa went off satisfactorily. And I got a rather cute mug, with a bag of chocolate truffles tucked into it, so I can't possibly object.

New Library piece up on Charles Stross' blog, by the way. Why it can be a bad idea for Librarians to give Christmas presents...

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/12/the-invisible-library-and-its-.html

And here's a little Library-related something that went up today.

http://www.torbooks.co.uk/blog/2015/12/3/a-librarian-spy-christmas-list

(for the record, I did the text, someone else put in the graphics...)