The parents of one of my oldest friends have a house right on the water at Chautauqua Lake in western New York. They were kind enough to invite a group of us up to lollygag and shenanigize for the weekend. We started off in prime fashion: with a flat tire on the New York state border. I decided that the best use of my time, instead of helping with the tire, would be to take pictures.

Hard at work. Or hardly workin’! Amiright?? I’ll show myself out.

By “swim” I mean watch my friends mix water floaties, ropes, and alcohol.

Being Memorial Day weekend, there were some fireworks over the water. I found my camera phone has a firework mode. The pictures came out really well; timing was the most difficult part of the shot.

Independence Day had it wrong. When the aliens attack, it will be on  Fourth of July, not before.

The highlight of any weekend: the breakfast cake.

The face of a man who has eaten his whole breakfast cake and now regrets it.

About a week and a half ago I finished my first full edit working with my editor. I’ve done edits before, of course; on my own, or with wifey, or even with my agent. But this was the first time I’ve done a full edit of a book and been paid to do it.

I have to say, I like it this way better.

It feels a little surreal every time I realized I’m going to be published, like I’m floating in some dream world I’ll surely wake from.

Resigned to the recycling bin. Quilt by Debbie Felix.

I’ve always liked printing out my manuscript each time I do a major edit. It lets me jot notes and thoughts and run lines through sections of text far easier then I could do it digitally. Unfortunately, it also uses a lot of paper and ink and a few weeks after printing, I dump it all in the recycling. The frugal environmentalist in me says I should do this all on my computer. The writer in me says this is how I work the best, so get over it you cheap hippy.

Last week was full of non-writing writerly things. I swapped ideas for the book cover with Devi, my editor. I got in a set of author photos to my agent and editor, but they turned out pretty dark so I’ll be doing more this week. Devi reminded me that I still don’t have a series title… oops. I worked on maps, so that I can get them to my editor and then she can get them to my map guy. Looks like I’ll have two maps: One of Adro, the country where the events take place, and another of Adopest, the capital city of Adro. I made preliminary, detailed sketches, which Michele transcribed to something that looks quite a bit more like a map and less like a napkin a fourth grader’s pen exploded in. I also went out and got a printer/scanner/copier combo from Costco. I’ve known for a while I will need a decent printer, and that if I add up all the trips to kinkos over the next year it’s gonna cost me far more than the combo did.

Every industry blog I read reminds me constantly that getting published is no longer just writing and editing. It’s an old media in a world where technology and instant gratification is king, so money is tighter and a lot of jobs that used to be done mostly  by the publishing house are left more and more in the hands of the author. A writer now days has to know how to market themselves, speak publicly, manage finances, blog, interact with other human beings, and so on. Personally, I’m going to have the hardest time with the public side of things.

I’m going to leave you with this: 25 Reasons You Should Quit Writing by Chuck Wendig.

I’ve wanted to get a beehive for several years now and this was the first time all of the stars aligned to be able to do so. In early April I put in an order for my hive supers (the box the bees build their hive in), all my tools, and a 3 lb crate of bees with queen.

Crate of bees ready to be opened

Beehive with bees in their new home

Finished installation

The installation was textbook. I dumped the bees into their super, added the queen, and put an extra super on top with an inverted jug of sugar-water inside to feed the bees until they can forage for themselves.

The video above was taken just a few days after installation. You can see bees returning with forage (pollen on their legs, and nectar and water inside their second stomach) and you can see one bee dragging another dead one out of the hive and dumping her unceremoniously off the balcony. They are not sentimental creatures.

First inspection. Girls already hard at work

Week one. Royal Jelly and pollen in the cells

17 days. We already have capped brood

17 days. First signs of capped honey. Note the color difference between capped honey and capped brood

From everything I know, we have a very active, very healthy hive. We were able to add a third super onto the hive during our 4th week inspection. We also saw the queen for the first time, which is cool, because she can be very hard to spot. No good pictures of her though. I was also able to open up the entrance from that little opening you can see in one of the above pictures to a larger opening, allowing the hive more ventilation and the bees more space to get in and out.

Each inspection consists of going through all 10 frames in each super and making sure the queen is laying new eggs in a tight, consistent pattern; the bees are drawing out comb on each frame; removing comb the bees have built outside of the frame parameters (burr comb); and seeing that the hive looks healthy.

Empty brood. Our first batch of new bees hatched!

About 1 cup worth of burr comb

We’ll do another inspection Thursday. So far, so good. We’re having a lot of fun with this and, time and money permitting, I already plan on getting more hives next spring.

Baby bees on a playflight: where they learn to use their wings and discover their surroundings.

With the rash of crazy weather we’ve been having lately (it hit the low eighties at the end of February), I’ve been working like crazy on our little yard.

I replaced the landlord’s garden with four raised beds that will include blackberries, rhubarb, and tomatoes, and I’ve cleaned up the preexisting raspberry beds in the front to the point at which they should produce quite well this summer.

Before:

After:

I transplanted about 32 blackberry bushes from my brother’s house to one of my boxes and will hopefully have blackberries within a year or two:

I’ve done a whole lot of other generalized cleanup on the yard but that means I might be slightly behind on my editing. I do have the edits on the first book back from my editor and have been going through them. They have required some sweeping (i.e., minor, yet frequent) changes to my writing style and internal POV as well as plenty of smoothing out. Nothing at all I disagree with. So there’s that.

I will admit I have struggled with the beginning of book two. It presents a number of challenges I have never faced before as I have never written a book two. I need to introduce old characters and new without boring my old readers with too much detail or alienating new ones with too little. It also has the distinct feeling of beginning in medias res. You know. Because it does.

A couple weeks ago I announced the sale of Promise of Blood and two untitled sequels to Orbit Books. The Publisher’s Marketplace announcement is thus:

Brian McClellan’s PROMISE OF BLOOD, a debut trilogy set in a world inspired by the revolutionary turmoil of 18th-century Europe complete with guillotines, starving peasants, fanatical royalists and a hero whose survival depends on a small group of honorable mages, including his own estranged son, to Devi Pillai at Orbit , in a good deal, in a three-book deal, for publication in Summer 2013, by Caitlin Blasdell at Liza Dawson Associates (World English).

Here’s a little more about the book:

Field Marshal Tamas has staged a coup against the king of Adro. His powder mages have slaughtered the king’s Privileged cabal of sorcerers and the nobility has been rounded up to face the guillotine with their king. Tamas has brought revolution to his country in one bloody night to save his people and right the wrongs caused by the old regime. Yet his actions have far-reaching consequences of which no reasonable man could have conceived, and the king will prove the easiest obstacle to overcome in his quest to free Adro.

Captain Taniel Two-shot is a powder mage of considerable skill. Gunpowder makes him stronger and faster than other men. He can manipulate its properties to shoot out a man’s eye at twice the length of a battlefield. It makes him perfect for killing the old Privileged sorcerers with their destructive magic. One of those Privileged has escaped Tamas’ cull. The problem is, she’s stronger than any sorcerer Taniel has ever seen, and the mercenaries sent to help him track her are of dubious reliability.

When Adamat is summoned to the palace in the middle of the night, the last thing the veteran investigator expects is to arrive during a regime change. His new employer is none other than the man responsible for overthrowing the current government and he has some unfinished business with the king’s sorcerers. The dying Privileged cabal has left the Field Marshal with a riddle. It could be nothing, but Tamas does not like loose ends. Adamat knows from long experience that one doesn’t ask questions unless one is willing to learn–and believe–the answers. To add to his problems, the Field Marshal isn’t the only one interested in the answer to the dying sorcerers’ riddle. As enemies emerge from the shadows and the investigation takes a disturbing turn, Adamat must decide where his loyalties lie.

…Even the inevitable march through time that is the aging process.

I turned 26 yesterday. Wifey made me a four layer strawberry cake with strawberry-rhubarb jam between the layers; covered in butter-cream frosting; and topped with chocolate chips.

I was finally able to announce this week that I sold Promise of Blood and two untitled sequels at auction to Orbit Books.

The tentative release date for Promise is spring of 2013.

I will be posting more this weekend. I’m still at my day job until next Wednesday, at which point I will be going FULL THROTTLE writer. This means that until then, I have limited time for blogging and the rest–and I still need to wear pants to work.

As I get back in the swing of following blogs and such, I realize that everyone’s making New Year Resolutions(tm). Sigh. Ok, here it goes:

I resolve to lose weight
I resolve to write consistently
I resolve to use both my blog and Twitter on a regular basis
I resolve to have a real actual website functioning before the end of the year
I resolve to not dump another 100 hours into Skyrim

Now that we have that out of the way, I can say that I will be going to ConFusion in Michigan. It’s being held Jan 20-22 this year.

Oh, yes… I resolve to go to more events.

I enjoy Cons. I really do. I’ve only been to three, though, so it’s not like I’m a pro. I’ve been to WorldCon twice and World Fantasy once. Never to any of the small ones, though I’ve heard they are a lot of fun.

The first two times I went with a large group of authors/fans/friends from BYU and so had people there to show me the ropes and hang out with. When I went to World Fantasy I certainly knew a couple people, but I was really flying solo for the first time ever. And, for the first time ever, I was peddling a book and let me tell you: I was terrified. I spent a lot of time wandering around trying to look like I knew where I was going, and a lot of time sitting in the corner reading or people-watching. I spent the whole weekend on about four hours of sleep and that did NOT go well.

This con, I hope to be able to relax a little more. I won’t be trying to get someone to read my book and that will take a huge load off my shoulders. I’ll be going with the express desire of making friends and getting books signed. It will be nice.

I’ve been reading Daniel Abraham’s The Long Price Quartet over the last few weeks. I’ve through three books and have not yet gotten the fourth. However, I did just pick up Leviathan Wakes. It looks like it’s still on sale for $2.99 at the Kindle store. I’m looking forward to reading it but it might have to wait till after ConFusion. I’m doing some catch up reading on authors that will be there so I don’t feel like a total ass when I meet them.

“I’m so-and-so.”
“Nice, I’m Brian, I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Thanks! What of my stuff have you read?”
“…nothing…”

I pulled that on Patrick Rothfuss back at the Denver Worldcon. I did have a good excuse, though–we only had one copy of Name of the Wind at the time and Wifey had been reading it.

The first trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has hit a trailer website near you. When the music starts and you get shots of Ian Holm as Bilbo, you’ll think, “crap, another one of those crummy teasers with footage from the first film and large gold letters demanding that we look forward to the next movie.” But no, it’s the real deal and I’m glad of it. Unfortunately, we won’t be watching the movie itself until December 2012. A bit of a gap to be already tantalizing us movie trailers, hmm?

I’m already hooked, I’ll be honest. When the dwarves start to sing I got chills. As many of my friends have pointed out over the years I’m a bit of a dwarf myself and they’ve always been my favorites anyway, so seeing Thorin and the rest got me downright giddy.

Wifey and I saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in the theater last weekend. As with the first, it was a mix of genuine Doyle and modern film making that I think really worked. Guy Richie was a perfect choice for the director both times, and I think a lot of other modern directors, even good ones, could have completely flopped it. I had my complaints, primary of which was Rachel McAdams’ marginalized role. I liked her a lot as a foil for RDJ.

Speaking of RDJ, I finally got around to watching Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. It’s been on my list of movies to watch for a very long time but it just never came to Netflix streaming, so I finally broke down and ordered the DVD. It had a very dark humor, an odd storytelling method, and made me wish that Val Kilmer did more stuff.