First off, I have to admit, I’ve been pullllled into my Kindle and I’m having a hard time emerging. Not by the SHIVER trilogy — I am amazed that is by Maggie Stiefvater: really? I guess this YA paranormal romance trilogy is her debut effort, like, the one that got published before she learned to do it right? No offense to anybody who is in love with that trilogy; I don’t think I was in the mood for Obsessive Teen Romance. But the worldbuilding and stuff doesn’t make sense. I can hardly believe I’m complaining about the worldbuilding in a Stiefvater story, but there you go.
No, it’s not SHIVER. The series I’ve been pulled into is the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy by Martha Wells. Love it! More about it later, when I have finished the third book. I’m about 20% of the way through the second book now. I am SO glad I discovered Wells. Fabulous author.
Obviously my own work is on hold. I don’t feel bad about that, April is going to be crazy-busy with gardening stuff, so don’t want to get too sucked in to writing just at the moment. I did write 36 pp over spring break, bringing the total up to 98 pp, or 31,000 words. That would mean I was about a quarter to a third done if I weren’t likely to overwrite by 100 pages, which I’ve done twice, so it could certainly happen. On the other hand, I didn’t have that problem with BLACK DOG, so maybe that’s a good sign for its sequel.
I’m halfway through Chapter Four, and I actually do know what’s going to happen in the second half of the chapter, so it will be pretty easy to pick up again when I get to it. I rather think that may not be till early June, though you never know. I’ll be aiming to get it finished and through a first revision and off to my agent by the time classes start in mid-August.
Aaand — I can hardly stop without the most important update!
I turned the whelping box upside down yesterday! Now it is a den. The baby does spend a lot of time tucked away in her nice warm dark den, but as you see, she also comes out to see the wider world — and collapses into a restorative sleep after toddling around for about ten minutes. She is making definite play gestures toward her mom and her toys. Next week she will be hitting the UltraCute stage and starting to play with the other dogs. My Adora, who has had puppies of her own, can be trusted to play gently with a puppy — the teenagers will take more supervision!
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I don’t know what happened between the SHIVER trilogy and THE SCORPIO RACES, but it must have been magic.
Puppy looks adorable!
Sooo glad that you’re enjoying the Fall of ILe-Rien books. Isn’t Tremaine a wonderfully prickly character? I just cannot understand how Martha’s books fell out of favour with the major publishers!
She does, doesn’t she? The adorableness quotient will really go through the roof in another week or so!
Tremaine is my favorite character EVER and I want to steal her whole and use her in one of my books! But I guess that might be wrong? : )
I have to assume Wells’ sales were not that strong . . . which says a lot about marketing and discoverability and all those things, because she is an amazing writer and I can’t believe she wouldn’t be a strong seller if people knew about her. I’m amazed I never heard of her till a year or so ago.
Yeah, Well’s writing IS good, and her lack of publishing success makes me wonder about Maas’ article that you pointed to a few days ago. Sometimes it is the publishers – or at least, not that the writer isn’t good.
I agree! I think that agents see SO MANY people whose writing skills are really not up to par, and so I’m not surprised that Maass would write an article aimed at that segment of writers. And I thought the article was interesting, and possibly useful, and true as far as it goes . . . but it really does not explain the excellent writers that struggle to get the recognition they deserve.
I understand that Lois McMaster Bujold had trouble selling SHARDS OF HONOR. What more proof does one need that sometimes publishers just don’t recognize a book that has both quality and mass appeal when they see it?
I’ve tried reading Wells’ books two or three times and never got that into them. Maybe The Element of Fire or The Wizard Hunters or The Ships of Air? The library only had a couple by her and they always seemed quite dry to me. Unfortunately I don’t keep good records of books I don’t read; if I tried to start on the second book of the series, that could be why I failed to care. (Looking at her site, I may have even finished The Element of Fire. I am sure I tried one of the other two and didn’t finish.)
About Stiefvater, I don’t know what order she wrote them in, but Lament came out before Shiver. I never read Shiver, and about all I remember about Lament is ice cream and music.
Ice cream and music sound appealing, but not if that’s all that stuck in your head after reading the books. If she wrote LAMENT before SHIVER, I think I’ll just give it a miss and read the ones she’s writing now rather than her backlist.
Martha Wells has a lot of description; it’s very good description, but it does often give a slower-paced feel to them. I can see that that might not be for everybody. Plus, in THE WIZARD HUNTERS, it took me a couple of chapters to get into it because of the split pov. If you haven’t tried the Raksura trilogy, then if you happen across a copy you might try that — the first book is THE CLOUD ROADS. Moon is an instantly appealing protagonist, imo more so than the protagonists in The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, and the close pov focus on Moon is also perhaps more immediately engaging than a split focus.