In the five-year span from 2008 to 2012, inclusive, I managed to stumble through severe depression and anxiety attacks to turn in just two actual professional paying gigs, both short stories. It was a generally miserable time I’ve gone on about elsewhere, and that’s all the literary good that came out of it finished. Two short stories.

In the first four months of 2013, I’ve handed in four professional paying gigs, and I’m not done yet.

The first new thing coming to market is my short story “The Effigy Engine,” which will be in the anthology FEARSOME JOURNEYS, edited by the awesome Jonathan Strahan. His own blog post about the book can be read here. It includes a table of contents; this will be the first time I’m appearing jointly in print with my beloved partner, Elizabeth Bear, and with   my friend Saladin Ahmed. Not to mention an amazing lineup including Ellen Kushner, Ellen Klages, Daniel Abraham, KJ Parker, Kate Elliot, and more.

“The Effigy Engine” is the first in what I hope will be a long series of tales of the Red Hats, a very small band of specialist mercenaries in a black powder/sorcery world chock full of imperial ambitions. The Red Hats, a tight-knit pack of lunatics, misfits, and idealists, somehow always manage to find themselves in the service of the smaller, weaker party in any given disagreement. I suppose they’re in no small way inspired by Glen Cook’s Black Company, though they are decidedly not a structural or thematic copy, nor any sort of artistic response to Cook’s work. I like the Black Company just fine as the Black Company.

For my literary presumption, I was rather startled to learn that Cook himself would be appearing in FEARSOME JOURNEYS, with a Black Company story, no less. Thus the brash young upstart soon finds himself taken to school.

I hope you like “The Effigy Engine” anyway. Here’s an excerpt:

*****

As I peered into the mess, the forward portion of the legionary column exploded in white smoke. Sparks and chips flew from nearby rocks, and I felt a burning pressure between my eyes, a sharp tug on the strands of my own magic. The practical range of sorcery is about that of musketry, and a fresh reminder of the fact hung dead in the air a yard from my face. I plucked the ball down and slipped it into my pocket.

Somewhere safe and cultured? Well, there was nowhere safer for Rumstandel than three feet to my left. I was doing for him what the troublemaker on the ground was doing for the legionaries. Close protection, subtle and otherwise, my military and theoretical specialty.

Wizards working offensively in battle have a bad tendency to get caught up in their glory-hounding and part their already tenuous ties to prudence. Distracted and excited, they pile flourish on flourish, spell on spell until some stray musket ball happens along and elects to take up residence.

Our little company’s answer is to work in teams, one sorcerer working harm and the second diligently protecting them both. Rumstandel didn’t have the temperament to be that second sorcerer, but I’ve been at it so long now everyone calls me Watchdog. Even my mother.

I heard a rattling sound just behind us, and turned in time to see Tariel hop down into our rocky niche, musket held before her like an acrobat’s pole. Red-gray dust was caked in sweaty spirals along her bare ebony arms, and the dozens of wooden powder flasks dangling from her bandolier knocked together like a musical instrument.

“Mind if I crouch in your shadow, Watchdog? They’re keeping up those volleys in good order.” She knelt between me and Rumstandel, laid her musket carefully in the crook of her left arm, and whispered, “Touch.” The piece went off with the customary flash and bang, which my speech-sorcery dampened to a more tolerable pop.

Hers was a salamandrine musket. Where the flintlock or wheel mechanism might ordinarily be was instead a miniature metal sculpture of a manor house, jutting from the weapon’s side as though perched atop a cliff. I could see the tiny fire elemental that lived in there peering out one of the windows. It was always curious to see how a job was going. Tariel could force a spark from it by pulling the trigger, but she claimed polite requests led to smoother firing.

“Damn. I seem to be getting no value for money today, gents.” She began the laborious process of recharging and loading.

“We’re working on it,” I said. Another line of white smoke erupted below, followed by another cacophony of ricochets and rock chips. An Elaran soldier screamed. “Aren’t we working on it, Rumstandel? And by ‘we’ I do in fact mean—“

“Yes, yes, bullet-catcher, do let an artist stretch his own canvas.” Rumstandel clenched his fists and something like a hot breeze blew past me, thick with power. This would be a vulgar display.

*****

FEARSOME JOURNEYS launches in multiple formats on May 28, 2013.

Yep, that’s who’s scruffy-lookin’.

I am at Minicon 48 this weekend, along with my girlfriend, the lovely and talented Elizabeth Bear. We’re reading on Sunday, Bear at 12:00 PM and Lynch at 1:00 PM, in Veranda 1/2.

The Republic of Thieves continues to speed on its way toward its destiny; my editors on both sides of the Atlantic are pretty pleased, and with just a few adjustments, the book will be going to copyedit. I do not have any news at this time about a timetable for audio versions or releases in other countries, but as soon as I get any scraps of concrete info over the next few months I’ll shout ‘em.

There is more news coming soon, but for now I can at least say that the official launch-day signing event (and party) for The Republic of Thieves will be held at Pandemonium Books in Boston, from 7-9 PM on Tuesday, October 8th. Bear and I will both be there!

So, as promised, here are a few scanned maps from Ye Olden Days (2002-03) when what would eventually become The Lies of Locke Lamora was in what you might call active gestation… but damn, there was so very far to go. These are the sorts of things I would doodle night after night in a 24-hour family restaurant in St. Paul, MN, nursing my Diet Coke and trying desperately to feel competent.

At this point, I was still trying to launch the story via the plot elements that are set to emerge in The Thorn of Emberlain, the Vadran civil war in the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows. Strangely enough “March of Shite” and “Confederation of Fucking Unnamed City-States” did not catch on in later drafts of the background material.

This is closer to what eventually stabilized as Locke’s reality, though it’s vertical where the final version is horizontal and it’s on the wrong continental coast. Camorr, believe it or not, was originally called “Lorem,” which I thought of as just a nice elegant made-up word. I had not yet been introduced to the concept of “lorem ipsum” placeholder text.

This poor, torn-up, soda-stained map represents the oldest surviving recognizable version of Camorr, back when it was still Lorem, and back when I thought I had to have chintzy names for every last brothel on the waterfront. Some of the final elements have begun to gel… the lagoons and the generally nautical/hydrological nature of the city, as well as the vast towers linked by cables. Aspects of Venice were eventually incorporated into Camorr to flesh it out logically; it was not originally conceived as a straightforward analog of any sort. I honestly wish I could remember when my intent finally shifted for good from the epic wars in the north to the more intimate problems of Locke and Camorr… but it’s one of those things that is lost to the warm Jell-O salad of memory.

Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you now know that the semi-mythical beast known as The Republic of Thieves has at last been captured in the wild and given official release dates: October 8th in the US and October 10th in the UK. You can read the Gollancz announcement here and the Del Rey Spectra announcement here!

So what’s the deal with all the wacky release dates we’ve seen over the years?

They were more or less artifacts of bookseller databases. Basically, if a book is going to be available for pre-order, it needs to have a release date attached, any release date, even a ludicrous or fictional one. That release date kept shifting as the book kept failing to appear. Eventually, my publishers stopped even consulting tea leaves and the projected dates became still-more loosely tethered to reality. Add inertia and hearsay to the mix (some sites continued to post long-outdated fictional dates, others falsely reported that the book had been published) and you have the ingredients for a gigantic confusion pie.

And how do we know this release date is the real one?

I have Tweeted several times that I would vouch for no release date until I formally shouted it, myself, from the ramparts of my own blog and other social media. This is me shouting from the ramparts. October, 2013 is not a random guess from some poor sod behind a database. My publishers in New York and London hold a revised version of the complete manuscript that pleases them both; with that in hand to work from they have set forth a release date that is not a mere prayer of hope muttered over an empty cocktail glass. In short, to prevent the release of this book, you must now obliterate the planet Earth. Good luck with that.

What about release dates in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, etc.?

I do not have that information at my fingertips, but as I acquire it I’m going to try to set up some sort of central repository of known availability dates.

Now, the next few items are mild spoilers, so if you’re the sort of person who wants to preserve as much of the surprise as you can, skip the rest of this entry until mid-October.

When does The Republic of Thieves pick up chronologically?

The “present day” thread resumes the story a few weeks after the end of Red Seas Under Red Skies. The flashback thread shows several episodes from Locke’s early years, and then a long adventure from when Locke, Jean, and Sabetha were about sixteen.

So Sabetha is actually in this thing?

Yes, Sabetha Belacoros is finally revealed in person for the first time and is a major character in The Republic of Thieves.

Do we find out more about the Bondsmagi?

The Bondsmagi are fairly integral to the plot. We meet several more of them and explore their home city of Karthain.

What else would you say to tempt us without spoiling?

Well, you’ll get to spend more time with Calo and Galdo Sanza, as well as Father Chains, and there are cameo appearances by a few other familiar faces from The Lies of Locke Lamora. You’ll find out how Locke and Sabetha met (you can read it right now, in fact). You’ll witness the very awkward teenage years of the Gentlemen Bastards. You’ll find out more about the customs of the hidden religion of the Crooked Warden. You’ll see Locke and Sabetha deploying the full panoply of their skills, against one another and against the world. You’ll discover who brought proper coffee-making to Therin society, and you’ll learn vital elements of crossbow safety!

Now that TRoT is in the bag, what are you doing?

My immediate project is to refinish a novella (another long overdue project) called The Mad Baron’s Mechanical Attic, which will be published by Subterranean Press.

Although TMBMA and its companion, The Choir of Knives, were conceived as prequels to The Lies of Locke Lamora, I have decided after lengthy reflection that I’m not willing to contribute another inessential prequel to our society’s towering heap of the damn things. Although I think TMBMA is a fun story with a great cast and setting, it ultimately revealed nothing surprising about Locke and Jean’s history and it stretched the boundaries of what I consider acceptable retconning. I have come to believe that prequels should cast some accepted facts of their universes in a new light, and I just didn’t have anything up my sleeve in that department.

What I am deeply interested in, however, is the further adventures of Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen now that I’ve recovered something of my ability to push them forward. Thus, I am retooling these novellas as a bridge story between the events of The Republic of Thieves and The Thorn of Emberlain, one that is entirely optional but hopefully enriching.

After that, I will resume work on The Thorn of Emberlain, already in progress.

Our tour of my embarrassing juvenilia, promised as a “reward” for your assistance (oh, you poor goddamn people) in Operation Steve and Emma, continues! This week… just what was the Terrible Secret of SPACE… er, THE MUTT?

You’ve already met the Chensakau, the Space Velociraptors who were one-half of the story. The MUTT was the other half. Seven unfortunate human souls, crammed into one artificial body and given a week to avert interstellar war by hunting down conspirators in the year 2296. That’s right, when I was 17 I thought it would be really cool to recycle the central conceit of HERMAN’S HEAD as my narrative framing device. Facepalm. ALL THE FACEPALMS, ALL AT ONCE.

Here’s the largest image (click the little link above) in this particular collection, a “splash page” sketch emphasizing the epic lameness of the whole shootin’ match. The idea was: In 2296, the Chensakau Imperium coxesisted uneasily with the Terran Republic, each species controlling a handful of star systems in an old and long-settled galaxy. The Functionary Corps, professional bureaucrats sworn to the service of the Chensakau empress, hatched a plot to drag the two powers into a full-scale war. I cannot remember their reasons, if they had any. Let’s assume the usual: A lifetime supply of free cupcakes and beer if they somehow pulled it off.

TSS Wallenberg, a Terran patrol vessel with a crew of seven, was ambushed and destroyed by a Chensakau vessel lurking in the Oort Cloud. I was really, really confused about the nature of the Oort Cloud, envisioning it as something like the asteroid field in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. There was no Wikipedia back then, kids. We had to go check actual books out of the library, like the beasts of the field.

Anyhow, that would have been it for the intrepid crew of the Wallenberg, if not for the intervention of a vastly more ancient species based, as you can see, on the eerie anal-probing little guys from Whitley Streiber’s COMMUNION. These guys wanted to prevent the war, but like all Cheapskate Magical Omnipotent Fantasy Assholes, they didn’t want to use any of their vast actual cosmic powers. Or do anything sensible and logical. So they, uh, collected the souls of the seven dead crewmembers, put them into an artificial body, and sent this brain-chorus of the damned back to earth with a mandate to hunt down the human traitors who were helping the Functionary Corps spring their scheme.

Big Shyamalan Surprise: One of the MUTT souls turned out to be one of the major conspirators. Gasp! Tweeeeeeeeeeest!

So, uh, yeah. An ancient alien race so powerful they could capture and re-use souls at will, but so stupid they’d use that power on a cockamamie plan like this one. Above you can see my equally dimwitted initial conception of the Mutt; a patchwork of body parts (and mullet parts) salvaged from corpses found floating in deep space. Because when you want your secret agent to be inconspicuous… that’s what you make ‘em look like.  Fortunately, I soon wised up and settled on this final design:

A synthetic male body with African/Pacific features. I’m almost 100% certain this guy was influenced by King Mob, as I was an INVISIBLES reader at the time. I do dig the face, I think it was one of the few things that worked, but damn… that left shoulder is apparently dislocated so far out of its socket, the Mutt in the tie ought to be begging for death. “To be an artist means never averting one’s eyes,” they say, and to that I would add: Especially in anatomy class.

I’ll be on three panels, as well as attending the Hugo Awards ceremony. This will be my first Worldcon. My panels are:

Friday, August 31

VIOLENCE IN FANTASY

10:30 AM, Wright: Silver West

The use and misuse of violence in SF and fantasy. How much is too much?

Saturday, September 1

WHY FANTASY DOMINATES SCIENCE FICTION

10:30 AM, Grand Suite 3: Gold East

How and why did fantasy emerge as the dominant commercial and literary force in the genre? Where did science fiction lose its way, in terms of attracting and keeping its share of the fans? What can written SF learn from motion pictures and television, and vice versa? What can SF learn from the more successful fantasy works?

DISASTER RESPONSE IN SF

7:30 PM, Gold Coast: Bronze West

Apocalyptic natural disasters, hungry zombies, devastating plagues. These are all mainstays of SF&F stories. The federal government has real National Incident Management System (NIMS) for dealing with them. How would NIMS react to some science fictional scenarios? What would the response look like?