Have a question about Shades of Milk and Honey? Or puppets? Goodreads is hosting a Q&A with me for the next month.   Swing by and ask anything you like.

I have a 39,000 word SF novella that I could use some hasty feedback on. I’m looking for ways to make it shorter and things that are confusing, unbelievable, or dull. If you can get feedback to me by Monday that would be awesome.

Edited to add: I’ve got enough folks to look at this draft. If you are up for being a round 2 reader let me know. I’ll likely have a revision ready to go on Tuesday.

Since it’s a monster, if you’re up for reading it let me know and I’ll email you the manuscript.  Here’s the sampler.

Kiss Me Twice
by Mary Robinette Kowal

By the time Scott Huang took his second step into the precinct, the department AI had taken four hundred and fifty-seven images of him. The flesh and blood officers on the night shift were coming back to the station to log out, but the other F&B members of the homicide department wouldn’t turn up for work till eight. As Huang reached his desk, the cameras on Metta’s desktop interface swiveled in his direction.

“Well, hello sailor.” Mae West’s voice purred from his desk. Over the interface, Mae West’s head appeared and looked him up and down.

“Diamond Lil!” Huang had a weakness for starlets from the days of mono-vision, black & white in particular and Metta customized her interface for him regularly.

But this, this was special.

Clearly being gone for two weeks brought out the nesting impulse because I came home made a casserole, soup and cookies within the first four hours of being back. I’m moving on to laundry and am considering mopping the kitchen.

Rob is off at the vineyard and left his cell phone at home so I haven’t actually spoken to him yet. I’ll see him this evening.

It is really, really, really good to be home.

I’ll catch you up on what the readings were like but for the moment I just want to settle in an be quiet at home.

From March 25-27 I’ll be attending MidSouthCon 29 as the Author Guest of Honor.  This will be my first time as a GoH and I couldn’t be more pleased for it to be at a convention that focuses on literacy and education. This Memphis based convention has been running for almost thirty years.

Besides the usual programming with writers, gamers, editors, artists and scientists, they also hold a seminar for educators and librarians, a writers’ conference with workshops by award winning authors and editors, and annual student art and writing contests. They are doing a lot of wonderful outreach which can only strengthen the field.

The other Guests of Honor are: Artist Guest of Honor, Nene Thomas; Gaming Guest of Honor, Monte Cook; Comics Guest of Honor, Kurt Busiek; Costuming Guest of Honor, Kelldar; Editor Guest of Honor, Jackie Gamber; and Toastmaster, The great Luke Ski.

I’m very much looking forward to attending and hope to see some of you there.

The Eugene Weekly has a nice review of Shades of Milk and Honey that manages to talk about the book without being spoilery.

Kowal has a good time with the tropes and tweaks of this sort of story, making both sisters sympathetic and tossing a few obstacles into the way, but Shades sparkles to particular life when its characters are working, thinking about or discussing glamour — the way it works, the relevance of passion, the power of a muse.

You can read the full review at the Eugene Weekly.

I mentioned that at the reading tonight, there would be a specialty cocktail.  Rina Weisman, the power behind SF in SF, has given me the recipe to share with you

As the inventor, I graciously share the recipe for all: 1 shot Velvet Falernum over ice, fill with a nice champagne, add a dash of Rose’s Lime Juice, and topped with a maraschino cherry. DELISH! And for those of you who don’t know Falernum…it’s divine.

“This famous Bajan ‘Gold Medal’ beverage and mixer with a uniquely refreshing flavour was developed by John D. Taylor of Bridgetown, Barbados in 1890. This sugar cane based liqueur born and bred in Barbados is a staple of every Bajan’s bar. Its uniquely refreshing flavor comes from a refined infusion of lime laced with fine cane syrup and ‘botanicals’ including almonds and cloves.”

I hope to see some of you there tonight!

The Powell’s Books blog has a glowing review of Shades of Milk and Honey.

This is what a book crush is all about, this finding of a volume that is your perfect fit, the book you’ve been waiting for without ever knowing that you were waiting for it. This is one of those books that, upon finishing the last page, I closed the book, breathed a deep dreamy sigh, and floated off to bed on clouds of joy and wonder. And I’m afraid there is no way that I can explain to you why I’m so overjoyed to have found this book and why I occasionally have to clasp it to my bosom and twirl about the room in happiness. But I’ll try.

You can read the entire review at PowellsBooks.Blog

I’ve just arrived in San Francisco where I will be reading at SF in SF with Cecilla Holland this Saturday, August 21st. Doors and cash bar open at 6:00PM and the readings begin at 7:00PM. Yes, I will be performing “The Broken Bridge” in addition to reading from Shades of Milk and Honey. A Q & A moderated by author Terry Bisson follows.

But the really cool part? From the actual press release.

Join us for a celebratory cocktail before the show!  We are featuring a concotion known hereafter as a “Shade of Milk & Honey” and it’s DELICIOUS!  All bar proceeds benefit Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California.

They’ve named a drink after my book.

A drink.

I feel like I’ve arrived.  Please come out to listen and imbibe.

Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor – entrance between Quiznos & Citibank
582 Market Street at 2nd, San Francisco

www.sfinsf.org / sfinsfevents@gmail.com

DON’T DRIVE – Parking sucks in San Francisco.  MUNI & BART Montgomery Street Station is right outside the front door.

Making a trailer is a multi-part process and I thought it might be interesting if I described what went into making the Shades of Milk and Honey trailer.

Stage One: Defining the parameters

Budget: Before anything else happened, Rob and I sat down to talk about how much we could afford to spend. Money, sadly, defines pretty much everything that follows. In our case, we wanted to keep the budget under $500, which is unreasonably small for a commercially produced trailer but about as much as we thought we could throw into the pot.  For a trailer with commercially produced new footage, you can expect to spend a minimum of $1000 per minute.  In our case we had several things going for us, mostly that we work in film and theater so had a number of favors we could call in. Most of the budget would go to materials and hiring the talent.

Venue/Audience: These often linked, but not always. In our case, knowing that we wanted this trailer to be online does affect several things. It means that we know it will be mostly viewed very small. We know that it will be watched by people who are in the midst of doing other things.

Length: The next question was defining the length. Both of us thought that shorter was probably better and were leaning to something in the two minute range. Any shorter and it would be hard to have content. Longer and people would click away.

Style: Only now do we start talking about what it looks like. (You’ll note that we still aren’t discussing content.)  We sat down and tossed around several ideas. Since I’m a professional puppeteer, it made sense to take advantage of that. Among other things, visually this would make the trailer stand out from other ones.

But what style of puppetry. I narrowed it down to period appropriate puppetry styles which meant either hand puppets, shadow puppets, marionettes or  possibly toy theater, though stretching the definition of “period.”

Marionettes I discarded immediately because they are too expensive to build. Hand puppets have a Punch and Judy connotation which is wrong for the feel of Shades of Milk and Honey. Toy Theater has a similar look to animation but without the fluidity.

Shadow theater… There were two main reasons we settled on shadow theater. One: I actually have a shadow play in the novel. Two: At this point in England, silhouettes were very popular and they were called “shades.”  It seemed too perfect to resist

We did update to a modern form of shadow theater, called shadow mask, because it allowed us to have a stylized form with the fluidity of actors.

The stark black and white also meant that we could make the glamour look really spectacular. We asked our friend Remo Bacall, the BAFTA award winning special effects supervisor from Lazytown, if he would be willing to create the glamour fx.  He was, which gave us the ability to add fully rendered color to our shadows scenes.

Content: Only now do we start talking about content.  The reason we wait so late for this is that content is frequently dictated by what you can afford and what looks good in the style you are using.  I should clarify that “content” is not the same as subject matter. The subject matter is the novel. The content is what we use to talk about the subject mater. Make sense?

In the next post, I’ll talk about how we defined the content.

Hey! A reminder that I’m reading tomorrow night (Wednesday, August 18th) at the KGB Fantastic Fiction series with the wonderful Laura Anne Gilman.

The official press release is below. One thing that it doesn’t mention is that I’ll be performing The Broken Bridge, which is the shadow play that occurs in Chapter 10 of Shades of Milk and Honey

Do come!

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present:

Laura Anne Gilman is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the Nebula-nominated FLESH AND FIRE and HARD MAGIC, part of the best-selling “Cosa Nostradamus” urban fantasy series. She has also sold more than twenty-five short stories, published in magazines and anthologies such as POLYPHONY and REALMS OF FANTASY. Her forthcoming novels include WEIGHT OF STONE: Book 2 of The Vineart War, and PACK OF LIES.

&

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of SHADES OF MILK AND HONEY (Tor 2010), the fantasy novel that Jane Austen might have written. In 2008 she received the Campbell Award for Best New Writer and in 2009 her story “Evil Robot Monkey” was nominated for the Hugo Award. Her stories have appeared in STRANGE HORIZONS, ASIMOV’S, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Subterranean Press released her short story collection, SCENTING THE DARK AND OTHER STORIES, in 2009. Mary is also a professional puppeteer.

Wednesday August 18th, 7pm at
KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org

Books will be available for purchase thanks to Bluestockings Bookstore

I spent much of today tromping around Manhattan and heading into bookstores to sign copies of Shades of Milk and Honey. Interesting thing about selling a book: your job doesn’t stop there.

The reason I trekked over the city is that signing books at a store does a number of things:

1. It makes it easy to meet the staff
2. Autographed books are placed face out
3. They tend to sell better
4. There are typically fewer bookstore returns of signed books
5. Let me repeat the bit about meeting the staff. They are the ones who can handsell your book to a customer.

Blake Charlton and Paolo Bacigalupi took me on a ride-along when they dropped in to sign stock in Boston.  Watching them was interesting especially since I’d no clue how to go about it.

Here are the steps as I understand them for a drop-in signing, as opposed to a pre-arranged visit.

1. Find your book on the shelf
2. Carry the books to the nearest information desk
3. Introduce yourself, ask if they want you to sign them.
4. They will say yes.
5. Have your own pen. Be charming while signing (Blake is very good at this) and thank them.

Today I employed those steps and hit the Barnes and Nobles in town. All of the ones in Manhattan have signed copies now, except for the 86th street store which was already sold out of Shades of Milk and Honey.  (Yay!) Tomorrow, in between meetings, I’ll hit the independent stores. Or rather, I and my phone will find out which stores carry it.

Any other useful tricks?

I’ve arrived in NYC where I will be until Thursday morning.  I’m reading from Shades of Milk and Honey at the KGB Fantastic Fiction series on Wednesday night with Laura Anne Gilman. You should come.

For those who have been following my travel adventures,  you will be pleased and baffled to know that I had no transit problems on this trip, at all. Bear in mind that I was travelling on Friday the 13th.

It confuses me too.

Upon my arrival, I went straight to the Puppet Kitchen where I got pulled into helping build a duplicate of one of the dog puppets we built when I lived here before.  It was fun and felt like I’d come home. I do miss building puppets and working there.

Afterwards, I went out for drinks and a light dinner with friends. My current plan for the evening is to go to bed and sleep.

In Which Mary Learns Not to Schedule Contests for Weeks When She is Travelling

Sorry for the delay in posting the poll for the Shades of Milk and Honey giveaway. In the future I will make a note not to schedule posting a poll on a day when I am scheduled to travel to a convention.

We had 58 entries attempting to caption the picture below. I’ve narrowed the selection to my top 10 favorites.

Australian short story writer Angela Slatter, has interviewed me for part of her Drive-by Interview series.  She’s a seriously talented writer and has two short story collections coming out this year, Sourdough & Other Stories with Tartarus Press (UK) and The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales (Ticonderoga Publications)

Here are the questions she asked me.

1. Who is/are your main writing buddy/ies?
2. How did you make the shift from puppetry to writing? What was the attraction?
3. What are your writing fetishes? i.e. what can’t you write without?
4. What inspired Shades of Milk and Honey?
5. Donuts (or doughnuts) or danishes?

Read my answers on her website in her Scenting the Drive-by interview.