I’m pleased to announce that the audiobook of All Men of Genius is out!  I haven’t gotten my author’s copy yet, so all I’ve been able to listen to is the sample, but Emily Gray, the narrator, sounds fantastic.  She does the sharpness of the humor excellently.

I know Ms. Gray best from her work on the audiobooks of Gail Carriger‘s delightful and hilarious Parasol Protectorate series.  I assume most of you have read Ms. Carriger’s books, but if you haven’t, you really should.  I don’t normally go in for anything with vampires, but her way of winding the supernatural into history is brilliantly insightful and clever.  The world of her books has real wit to it.  And of course, they’re funny steampunk, which I love to see.  Additionally, Ms. Carriger and I went to the same college, so I feel a certain Oberlin camaraderie with her.  We both endured 4 years in the Ohio, where everything was flat and grey.  That does things to a person.

But I’ve gotten very far off topic.  The point is, the audiobook is out!  And what I’ve heard of it is delightful.  It’s available at audible, on itunes.  If you’re the sort who loves audiobooks, please do give it a listen and let me know what you think!

(Well, except that I did just send off to my agent a final draft of a very underwater sort of noir, but that’s tangental)

Still with me?  Okay, well, further down, there may be photos of me shirtless.

Still with me?  Ah, the brave ones.  So, a few years ago my parents installed a pool at their place in Connecticut.  They said that this was all in an attempt to lure me and my brother to spend more time with them.  And it totally worked.  I love pools.  I like water in general, but knowing the water doesn’t have fish in it is so much better (fish are creepy. Don’t argue.  They are).  So we went down there the first weekend and splashed about in the pool, and then came back to NYC and I was thinking I needed a new camera anyway, and I thought “wouldn’t it fun if I got one I could use in the pool so we could take wacky underwater photos?”  I figured it would be hard to find an underwater camera, but actually it wasn’t.  I got a cheapish digital one, and the next time we went up there, we started playing.  I should say, when I say “we” I don’t just mean me and the future-husband, but also friends who we invited down with us.

Anyway, the point it, we all had fun and started, well, taking underwater photos.  And I discovered I loved taking underwater photos.  They started out pretty amateurish, of course.  I’ve never taken a photography class in my life, and we had no idea what we were doing, we were just having fun.  And none of us are models (though we totally could be.  We’re all very attractive).

And it was fun.  But going over them at home, I found myself thinking they could be more fun.  With costumes.

and props.

Okay, admittedly, props started out as “that red scarf I had lying around” and pretty much stayed there til this year.  See, this year, I’ve decided to go over the top.  Props, weird costumes, lots of stuff… and I got a new camera for my birthday, with all those ridiculous modes new camera have.

So I’m excited to show them off.  I have no idea why I enjoy these photos so much.  I think maybe it’s because I have a grace underwater I don’t have on land (as most of us do), or maybe it’s just that underwater you can fly!  But I love taking these, and posing for them.  I’ll be in a lot of them, cause, well, I’m always there (so is future-husband, but he’s vetoed almost all photos of him being put on the website).  I can’t credit who took all of these, as the camera gets passed around.  And my friends who are also in them have requested their names not be used.  But I’ll be showing off some of my favorites over the summer.  If you have any ideas or suggestions as to how we can become better photographers, let me know.  Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy these.  And of course, any body snarking will be shut down.

Let’s hope its a really sunny summer.

First off, it’s huge.  The American version is about the same dimensions, except in thickness, where the German version is about half an inch thicker.  This takes it from feeling compact to total doorstop weightiness.  It may also have thicker board in the hardcover, I’m not sure.  But in any case it feels very substantial.  I would imagine it’s hard to throw in your purse and read on the train, but it still feels very very cool.

here it is with a penny, for scale.

I think I’ve talked about how much I love the cover before, but I didn’t realize that the text was slightly raised, which is fun when you’re touching or caressing it (what, you don’t caress your books?).

And the interior design is amazing.  Little gear flowers everywhere which I love. If someone could make one of these tiny gear flowers as a small, tasteful brooch, I would be ever so appreciative and wear it on my jacket constantly.

Click on it to zoom in. For some reason I can’t get it to post at a size between this and “bigger than most computer monitors.”

But I’ve seen all that before.  The cover, the interior design.  True, I thought it was paperback til a few days ago, and the heft of it surprised me, but generally, I knew what it looked like.  EXCEPT I DIDN’T.  Because those Germans have outdone themselves.  How, you ask?  Well, out of curiosity, I lifted up the dust jacket to see what was underneath.  This is what I found:

That’s right.  The machinery behind Violet on the cover, but without Violet.  I like to think it’s the inside of Pallas.  I was surprised and delighted by this.  Seriously.  How cool is that?  Look at all the machinery!

So, yeah, German version is pretty cool.  The other countries in the midst of translating and publishing have a lot to live up to.  And I’m excited to see those, too.

Anyway, what do you guys think?  Love it?  How do you think it compares to the American Version?

It was created by my friend the amazing Desiree, who hired a photographer and then did the whole thing through photoshop.  Alas, she does not have a professional webpage, but if you’re interested in hiring her, feel free to comment and I’ll make sure she sees it.

We really aren’t a schmaltzy couple.  We wanted something fun and different.  So we decided on pulp.  I think it came out great.  What do you think?

(and if you have issues with my marrying a dude, don’t even bother commenting, it won’t show up)

Our panel of judges has decided, and the winner is… Lisa!  Because the judges have a soft spot for Good Vibrations.  Lisa, Ill be emailing you for your info and I’ll get that out to you soon!  Congrats!

Also exciting news is that I did a really fun interview with Jeremy LC Jones over at Clarkesworld.  I recommend you check it out.  It may allude to a sequel…

Thank you, everyone for entering the contest.  The holidays are long over, but I hope they were good ones!

Tonight is also the cutoff for entering the holiday giveaway contest.  After tonight I won’t be accepting any more entries and then this week I’ll look them over and put them to a panel of judges to announce a winner.  Which I’ll do later in the week.

Hope to see you all at the reading tonight!

So I’ve decided to extend the deadline for entering the Holiday Giveaway Contest until January 30th, to coincide with my reading at the New York Public Library.  And I’ve also decided to loosen up the rules.

So, yes, you can comment here, or on the original post to say what you’d get as a holiday present for any of the characters in All Men of Genius, or you can tell me what super-steampunked holiday present you’d most like to give to any historical figure.  Either way, the best entry will get a signed copy of the book.

Hope to see you all at the reading!

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a lovely New Years Eve.  I know I did.  There was a prominently featured swimming pool filled with champagne and lavender petals.  But even more exciting, I made a dozen best of the year lists!  I want to thank you all for being so amazing.  This was my first novel, and I really could not have expected such a warm, wonderful reaction, and so many amazing fans.  So thank you.

January is going to be an exciting month.  For starters, that contest for a signed copy of the book is still happening (although it occurs to me that perhaps I should make the rules less requiring of having read the book – more on that later).  I start teaching at Gotham Writers, I’ll be having an interview with the fabulous Paula Yoo, and perhaps most exciting of all, I have a reading at the New York Public Library on January 30th.

I hope all of you in the NYC area will come.

It’s going to be quite the month.  And I’ve been told it’s also award nomination season – so if any of you were inclined to nominate All Men of Genius for anything in the novel or debut author categories, I would be ever so appreciative.  It would make 2012 start off perfectly.

So that’s whats happening in January.  There will also be some new reviews coming out, including one in Locus (which is already out, I believe), and there’s more to come in February, including more interviews and such.  I really hope it’ll be a brilliant year for all of us.  Thank you guys again for making the last one so amazing.

Hello!

The Holidays are upon us (first night of Hanukkah tonight!), and I’m determined to spread some holiday cheer.  So, I’m doing a little holiday contest.  I’ll be giving away a signed copy of All Men of Genius to whomever tells me the best Holiday gift they’d give to a character in the book.  And not one that is actually given to a character in the book.  An original gift.  Any character you’d like.  Just post the name of the character and what you’d give them in the comments below.  I’ll close the contest on January 20th and announce the winner shortly thereafter. I’ll personalize the book however you’d like, and will send it the winners way.  Spread the word – the more entires, the merrier, I say.  Plus, it’ll make a great late gift for someone you’ve forgotten.

Also in my quest to spread holiday cheer, I’ve posted a gift giving guide over at the Book Smugglers.

And finally, my favorite holiday music video (possibly NSFW due to language at the end): Happy Holidays!

The first would be the use of third-person omniscient voice.  This was the most common point of view used in writing until about 1900, when it started to change.  These days, you hardly ever see it.  Most work today is written in third person close, or “over the shoulder” or first person.  The difference between “over the shoulder” and omniscient is that “over the shoulder”, while third person, only stays in one persons mind.  Yes, it can change which person’s mind that is, from chapter to chapter, or after a scene break, but omniscient is when the voice freely bobs in and out of everyone’s head in a scene.  It’s extremely Victorian.  And today, most readers would complain about it, and refer to it as “head hopping.”  It’s one of the aspects of the book my editor was most concerned about, and we worked hard to trim the omniscience so it didn’t feel too jumpy.  But I did want to keep it – I think it helps to give the book a more authentic tone.

Then there’s the aspect of showing and telling.  Today any good writer or writing school will tell you to show, don’t tell.  The Victorians felt differently.  Many of their novels were long, flowery internal monologues – particularly the romances.  The shift in modern novels to a more cinematic approach, where it’s all about the action, gestures fit in for thought and there’s more distance from the characters, is one I appreciate.  I love it when a character can’t express how they feel, but the Victorians felt the best way to really show character was to explain how they thought.  I tried to strike a balance.  While Violet’s emotional state and thought process is always plainly on the page, I wanted to make it clear that there were parts of herself she didn’t fully understand, and I tried to show those, more than tell them.  But again, I wanted to stay true to the Victorian Tone, and so there’s a good deal of narration about characters feelings and goals.

And finally, there’s the focus on more minor characters.   This goes back to third-person omniscience, because in a third-person omniscient world, you can hop into anybody’s head, no matter how minor a character they are, for a brief moment.  And that was often done.  Sometimes you’d even get the ‘mass mentality’ of the crowd – something I tried to emulate in the scene where Violet and Ashton are leaving for the city and the servants all see them off.  I confess, this was a little harder for me at first, but once I got into the idea of giving voice to the more minor characters (the professors, in particular), I may have gone too far.  In Victorian novels, such characters are given mere sentences.  But I felt that if I was going to do this, I should give my characters not sentences, but lives.  Or at least paragraphs.  So, the professors all got tiny plots of their own – which, I’ve pointed out in a previous post, had some links between them.

These are all stylistic details you see very rarely today and I know for some readers the style is so foreign that they were actually turned off by it.  Which is fine – everyone goes into a book with different expectations, and everyone has personal taste.  I tried to really pay homage to the Victorian tone in All Men of Genius.  And I think that adjusting the style of the book was key to that.  If you’re interested in the Victorian Style, you should go and read some of the classics.  I’d start with Austen (technically Regency, not Victorian, but still key to understanding the Victorian tone), then go onto Jane Eyre and Mrs. Audley’s Secret.  Read some Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone and The Woman in White being the classics), make sure to read Dorian Grey and Frankenstein, of course, as well as some Hardy and Dickens.  Those are just the basics, in my opinion.  I hope to post an extensive Victorian reading list at some point, though.  I think reading Victorian literature, and understanding it, is one of those things you need to do to really call yourself an educated person.  So much was happening in the arts then, and so much of the work that came out of then is so brilliant.  So for the holidays, ask for a copy of a Victorian novel and read it over the break.  You won’t regret it.