My new home town is situated in a river gorge, and both the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal pass right through it. So we were fortunate that the Draken Harald Hårfagre made it one of their stops in the their Canadian and US tour. The name translates as “Dragon Harald Fairhair.” The Draken Harald Hårfagre is the largest Viking ship built in the current age. Named in honor of King Harald Fairhair (sometimes also translated as “Prettyhair”, the dude clearly had some major locks), the first King of Norway and modeled after the Gokstad Ship. On Saturday and Sunday the ship itself was open for tours, and who with a modicum of interest in history is going to pass up the chance to stand aboard a real viking ship? It’s not like that happens every day. So we braved the crowds and headed down to the marina. Continue reading
Category Archives: legends
And Now We are Four
Now that I’ve got them all together and out–or soon, in the case of the print edition of The Emperor in Shadow, I thought it might be sensible to list the entire Yamada Tetralogy, with links. Because I’m all about convenience.
Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter
Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate
Yamada Monogatari: The War God’s Son
Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow Ebook Live
We interrupt whatever this normally is for a strictly commercial announcement: Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow is now live on Kindle, Apple/iTunes, and Nook. It’s a little unusual for the ebook edition to be available before the print edition goes live, but this time those preferring their reading on the screen will get a headstart. Enjoy!
Fireworks and Final Edits
Happy 4th to all those stateside. Our across the street neighbors apparently chose to celebrate by re-enacting the Battle of Bunker Hill. Our cats disappeared for a while but came out unscathed when the coast was finally clear. Not that I should complain. I went through my own phase of being enamored with firecrackers, but that was mostly because I was a kid in a small southern town and often there was literally nothing better to do. Read all the books/comics I had multiple times (no internet). Run out of scrap wood for tinkering. Night too cloudy for stargazing. I know! Let’s set off low-scale ordinance! What I have trouble understanding is why alleged grownups want to do it now. I grew out of it before I’d left my teens, and count myself fortunate I still have all my fingers.
Good thing, too, as I needed them to make final corrections on the typeset manuscript for The Emperor in Shadow, which from the link you can see now has its own Amazon page, and an official release date of September 6th. Which means it’ll more than likely be available in August, because that’s how these things usually work. Since it’s July now (What gave it away? Oh, right, fireworks…), that’s not very long, but why wait? You can pre-order it now and have it as soon as it’s available.
On that subject, I want to give a shout-out to my editor, Paula Guran, who turned the manuscript around in a short time under extremely trying circumstances, only one of which was me cutting it so close to the deadline. It’s a much better book for her efforts. Anything you don’t like falls squarely on me.
What’s He On About Now?
One drawback of working on a longer project like a novel is you don’t have a lot left in you for anything else. Say, blogging, for example. Normally I try to post these every Monday like clockwork, but here it is Wednesday (thank you, Captain Obvious) and I am late. I don’t like being late. Normally I show up for appointments fifteen minutes early or more and everyone ELSE is late. Usually doctors and dentists, whose time as they will willingly tell you is much more valuable than yours.
Well, to them or anyone else this is literally true, since all any of us has is time. Everything else—money, cars, clothes, your ipod–is a temporary construct relating to how we live in the world, but time is what matters and no one as a general rule knows how much they have. There is much unnecessary fretting over this. I’m prone to it myself, especially when I’m under a deadline, either contractual or self-imposed, makes no difference. It reminds me of a scene from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novel series where his sister Death has just collected the soul of a baby who passes in SIDS, and the baby is not happy about it, to paraphrase, “That was it? That was all I got?” To which the reply was, again paraphrasing, “You had a life. That is all anyone has.”
So all we have is time, but the only time we really have is now. So what we decide to do with it? Yeah. It kind of matters. I don’t always make the best choices about that, but then I don’t know anyone who always does. We act like we have forever even when we know it is not true. Sometimes that illusion is all that gets you through a day, but best not to forget that it is an illusion. If there is anything at all which is not an illusion, it is now, the only point in time where action is possible. Like writing a late blog post, because there were things I believed to be more important at the time.
For instance, finishing the first draft of The Emperor in Shadow, complete at 94k words. It’ll probably be close to that after the rewrite. I usually put in as much as I take out. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but usually within close tolerances. I won’t call the book done, since that doesn’t happen until it has gone through rewrite then editing and come back from the printers. Then, for better or worse, it is done, and likely on time for a September release.
Then it is time to move on to something else because, you know, that whole “now” thing keeps happening. Until it doesn’t.
