The Top Ten Misconceptions About Anointed

One of the things I enjoy most about Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO, which we launched last night at Wordsmiths, is hearing all the crazy misconceived ideas people have about the book. As one small part of all the silliness that went on there, I presented our Top Ten Misconceptions About Anointed list, which I thought I'd share with you here. (Mostly because I don't have a recording of the AWESOME debate event, "I'm Right. You're Stupid." presented by Russ Marshalek, publicist extraordinaire, and Joe Davich, Assistant Director for the Georgia Center for the Book (Hey, Joe, you've got to look at a blog now!!)--and moderated by the Impartial and Supremely Talented Zach Steele.)

1. Anointed has not been banned in Boston—but we’re working on it.
2. Zach did not pay me to publish it.
3. In fact, as you may have read in Baby Got Books, he thinks I’m going to pay *him*.
4. The character of Kelly is not based on Zach’s wife. To my knowledge Alice has never had roundtable discussions with the voices in her head. Her voices are much more interesting than Kelly’s anyway.
5. Zach is not an atheist. He just thinks God is funnier than Morgan Freeman.
6. Jesus did not pose for the cover art, but we do have a release to use his likeness.
7. Zach was not stoned when he wrote Billy Christ, but Billy has refused to comment on his state of mind during those scenes.
8. Reading this book will not send you straight to hell, but it may make you think.
9. My husband did not try to have me committed when I picked up this book--but he did take over Mercury Retrograde's finances.
10. We have not been sued by any church organizations, but we did receive a letter of support from the Church of Scientology.

Feelin' the Love

This week the lit blog Baby Got Books is, as BGB host Tim Frederick puts it, "throwing objectivity to the wind and having a love fest" in honor of Zachary Steele's Anointed, which we're launching this weekend at Wordsmiths in Decatur. He graciously invited me to write today's post, so I wrote a little love letter to small press publishing.

Scroll right down after you finish reading my post for Russ Marshalek's hilarious interview with Zach, which is the post following mine. Tim says it best: those two should have their own reality show.

The funniest thing I've read all day

Russ Marshalek interviews Zachary Steele about Anointed on Baby Got Books.

There is no point in my trying to describe. Go read.

This might be a manifesto

Yeah, I might have to nail this one to the cathedral door when it's done.

Today is the official release date of Shorn by Larissa N. Niec: the first book published by my brainchild, Mercury Retrograde Press. I'm immeasurably proud of the work we've done on this one--and it *has* been a "we", because in addition to the writer, any book must also have an editor, a proofreader, a typesetter/book designer, a cover designer, one or more artists, and people whose task it is to get the word out so people can fall in love with the creation and make its story part of their personal myth set. Shorn has had--still has--a whole team behind it. Because we're a new press, and we can't afford to hire full-time employees yet, I've done the majority of the work on this project, and for the most part I find the work fulfilling; but in the race to do this book justice, I have mostly set aside my own writing life. This is a thing I've viewed as a temporary necessity; in my mind, once we crossed the finish line on Shorn, things would calm down and I could get back to the study with a clear conscience.

I now understand that was unrealistic. There is still work to be done for Shorn, and the work will continue for a couple months yet: getting the word out, setting up relationships with new sales channels (a task for which I'm hugely grateful, btw), propagating the ebook versions and beginning to figure out the logistics of audio book production. Meanwhile Anointed, the next book on Mercury Retrograde's menu, is already waiting for me to start doing my share of what it needs; by the time that's done, I'll be behind on the next one. (And, oh, you're going to LOVE the next one, but there are still nagging legal entanglements that must be resolved, so for now I must leave you to fantasize. Two words to start with: Urban Fantasy.)

The bottom line: I am never going to be *caught up* on Mercury Retrograde business, at least not until Mercury Retrograde can afford staff. That's normal for a start-up business, and I've done the whole start-up thing before, so while I'm not uncomfortable with the headlong dash and all the other stuff that goes along with it, now that we're in a Mercury Retrograde period, my muse is crying for time in the study...and suddenly I remember that I founded Mercury Retrograde because the house I wanted to publish my own fiction didn't exist yet. It exists now, and I love it; but if I publish six, nine, or twelve books per year that win the hearts of critics and fans alike, earn out and go on to make money for their authors, and yet I am not writing fiction, I will not have done what I set out to do.

It is never going to be a convenient time for me to go back to writing; so long as I am writing, things will move more slowly in the office than they otherwise might. But it occurs to me that, while I refuse to hold other Mercury Retrograde authors to hard deadlines when meeting those deadlines would require them to compromise their art, I'm giving my own work no such respect. That has to stop.

So, while Mercury Retrograde Press authors and fans may wish I could move a little faster in the office, I trust they will understand that I must go back to carving out regular time in the study. No book will go unedited, un-typeset, or unpromoted; it's just that schedules will be a bit more fluid than they've been. In the long run, I suspect, all of Mercury Retrograde's books will benefit.

In the mean time, I have to go back to the study.

You don't need celestial charts; you've got me

It's uncanny. I have no explanation for it that fits within the paradigm occupied by those who deny the possibility of any sort of validity to astrological theory. All I know is that as soon as Mercury turns retrograde, I am summoned as by some invisible force to the study, where I must work on my own fiction for hours each day.

I'm not telling you I'm an astrological believer. But I think I'd better start putting Mercury's retrograde periods on my calendar, so I can plan for these slowdowns in the office.

Ah, things are lovely in the study. I am deep in the early-development stages of the final draft of The Shadow of the Sun, the novel I was afraid to bring to press first but secretly wished I could--which, I realized earlier this year, really does need to be the first out the door. I think I'll be writing the whole thing in first, with only one PoV: because if I allow myself to explore the journeys of other important characters in the way I wish I could, there's no way I'll bring this in at a length I can afford to produce. In fact I realized this morning that I'm going to have to be very disciplined about what goes in and what goes back into the hopper for later, even with the single PoV, if I am to keep it to a manageable length.

But that single PoV is my favorite character, bar none, so I don't mind too too much.

Meanwhile back in the office, I'm waiting for printer's proofs of the FINAL version of the Shorn trade paperback and (with Wynette's help, of course) developing the e-book version. Gotta get Shorn off the front burner so I can dig into Anointed: Zach delivered revisions to that beauty a few days ago, and now he, Brett, and I will zip through final reads and final tweaks...and then plunge into pre-production.

During the parts of the day when I can tear myself away from the study, of course. :)

Paging Alex...

Argh! This morning somebody named Alex called on the Be Mused line and left a voicemail--which the voicemail system, in a fit of insanity, destroyed before I could write down the phone number. To complicate matters, the mysterious Alex called from an unregistered number. I am assured by those in charge of such things that Turing himself could not recover that voicemail, no matter whose fault it is.

This is making me crazy. I will admit that I don't always return calls as quickly as I'd like--but, dammit, I always do return them. Is Mercury retrograde again?

(I just checked: he's getting ready. Full metrograde is scheduled for next Wednesday. Just in time for final file uploads for SHORN. Oh, shoot me now.)

Ahem. Alex, if you're reading this, please call me again. The rest of you: please don't choose the Destroy Message Immediately option on voicemail, no matter how security-conscious you are. I promise your personal information is safe with me.

Love from Library Journal!

Color me thrilled! SHORN is in this month's print version of Library Journal, and they liked it, they really liked it!

"Niec's debut novel... creates a fascinating world of rival clans and sacred rituals, tainted by a dark, shameful past and subject to predation from its enemies."

And the money shot...

This is also a coming-of-age story and belongs in most fantasy collections.

Woohoo! I think I failed to mention earlier that Midwest Book Review liked it too:

" 'Shorn' is a unique fantasy, sure to please those on the look out for a new obsession to read."

Check it out:

Library Journal
Midwest Book Review

Must get back to dancing around the office...

Having something to say

The Fabulous Russ Marshalek (yes, that is his official title) took his turn on a group blog today:

A Good Blog is Hard To Find: I think I may have something to say

and like most of the things Russ tosses off as if they are effortless, this latest installment of Russ-thought made me think. Real Thoughts. I'm up to my eyeballs in pre-release, and so I can't give this set of thoughts the time to percolate they deserve. "I apologize for the length of this letter; I had not time to write a short one." So it goes.

Russ and I have never discussed his Southern Identity. I'm a Yankee, after all: an exile on this side of the Mason-Dixon. But to my Yankee eye he seems less a Southerner than a sophisticated, literary person. Like so many educated southerners, he speaks and writes in much the same idiom as his northern friends. Likewise his tastes in music and literature don't have the effect of an "I'm from the South" t-shirt. He's passionate about southern lit, of course, and evidently about southern culture in general. But when we first met I took him for a fellow Yankee exile. Which of course just means I thought he was a lot like me & the people I usually hang out with. You know, he's an interstitial kind of guy.

I was forcibly struck, on reading Russ's blog post, by the universality of the angst experienced by interstitial artists. Russ stands between Southern and something bigger (American, perhaps? I can't say for sure) and feels uncomfortable about his perceived lack of Southern cred, just as the interstitial writers whose work Mercury Retrograde publishes struggle with the discomfort of our collective "one foot in *literary*, one foot in SFF" stance. In the company of the New Yorker set, we feel inadequately literary. At SFF cons we feel *too* literary, not sufficiently geared towards Entertainment. Who the hell are we, really? Where do we get off, trying to pass ourselves off as either serious writers or SFF geeks? Is the world ready for or even interested in what we feel compelled to share?

Actually, the world is hungry for it. Because there are an awful lot of us interstitial folk out there, and we are dying for stories and memoirs and art of all flavors that connects us to one another, that allows us to share and extrapolate upon the experience of being neither this nor truly that. So many of us are interstitial in far more than one way, and works like the memoir of a southerner who wants to love his southern roots and still connect with a larger community remind us that even in our interstitiality, our not-quite-belongingness, we are part of a community. I stand between art and science, between fantasy and literature, between past and future, between female and male, between maturity and eternal adolescence, between Real Publishing and the fringe. Sometimes--perilously often--I feel suspended between humanity and something Other. It has been astonishing and validating for me to discover so many others who live with each of these flavors of interstitiality, and to connect with them via our shared understanding of its mystery.

I can't wait to see Russ's memoir. The chapter with dragons in it, especially, of course, but--even more than that--the part in which Russ reminds all of us who stand between worlds that it is our common alienness that makes us human together, and that it is in the unique and bizarre parts of our histories, our lives, and ourselves, that we have the most in common.

On Writing--Or Not

I am not writing right now. I cannot express how much this pains me; the writers among you will understand. It's not that I'm *blocked* or that I don't know what to write--it's that I can't find the time. I'm in a crunch period that began about two weeks ago and is likely to run two more, and I don't even have time to make dinner consistently or return phone calls not related to work (and I'm really sorry about that, btw. You know who you are.)

It's work, of course. The beautiful business of publishing. I am still the person responsible for most everything Mercury Retrograde does, and I don't want to complain about that: this is my brainchild, and I love the work. Well, except the filing and bookkeeping. In case you haven't heard, we have a book scheduled for official release on October 1st, and we are busily finalizing final things, scheduling Larissa's book tour, and doing truckloads of publicity. All very important and enjoyable stuff, and in many cases the first time I've done the things in question--which means there have been false starts and mid-course corrections, and just generally that things have taken longer than they will for the next book and the one after that. I understand all this, and it's not so hard to be philosophical about it, because I love the work.

But just the same there is a certain defrocked wizard on the verge of getting sucked into things it will take him years to fully understand, waiting for me in the study...and I know exactly what the next hundred pages should be. It's hard to be patient.

Must dig in and make the final push, down here in the office. Soon there will be things to read and see: a book, details of an author tour, a new Mercury Retrograde website, Mercury Retrograde's close-to-finalized catalog for next year. Right now it's insanity on the inside and pretty boring from outside. I'll be back in the study soon.

Mercury Retrograde and Wordsmiths had a party...

And tons of people came! We had a blast, thanks in large part to the exuberant hospitality and warm professionalism of the crew at Wordsmiths. Larissa read from Shorn; Ari Warner exhibited a few of his wonderful works; Todd shared a delightful tasting menu.

It was also a historic event: the first time all the Mercury Retrograde authors were ever in one place. Here we are:

In back, from right: Zach Steele, whose novel Anointed will be coming out in March; Brett Shanley, whose novel is nearing completion and who will be editing Anointed; Geoff McVey, who is at work on a novel I can't wait to share with everyone. In center, from right: Ari Warner, the artist who drew the map for Shorn; Larissa Niec, author of Shorn; and yours truly. In front is Russ Marshalek, Zach Steele's creative partner, who is responsible for the "new media" aspects of the Anointed project.

So far I cannot find a single picture in which it is possible to see Brett's entire face. This is the best of a bad lot in that regard.

But you can go see for yourself, on our flickr set from the launch weekend. And you can also see (some eerily similar) photos taken by the crew at Wordsmiths, also on flickr.

It was a huge thrill to see so many friends at the launch! Tim Frederick of Baby Got Books stopped by and was a delight as usual. What a pleasure to get re-acquainted, and how sweet of him to make a fuss over us on the blog! Ron Savarese of Home Planet and his delightful wife Mary stopped by to share the love; and Sonja Benjamin, to whom goes a very high percentage of the credit for this whole crazy thing being possible, was a radiant presence. And did I mention that Dr. Jenn Angerami drove all the way down from Woodstock?

Speaking of the people who make it possible, Mark and Rachael and the whole unsung crew at Wordsmiths were instrumental. A million thanks would only be a start.

Shorn launch weekend!

Already they are arriving. Soon my house will be full. Tonight: the open house. If you're local, stop by. Tomorrow: brunch for our out-of-towners, hanging around watching Todd cook (drool!), and THE LAUNCH at Wordsmiths.

Larissa will give a reading; Ari will exhibit some of his works that are *not* in the book and sign repros of the one that is (oh, yeah, Larissa will be signing books, too); Todd will feed us wonderful foods; and we will all drink champagne.

Oh, yeah, and did I mention that there will be an exciting Announcement?

Cause there will.

See you there.

Excitement on MercuryRetrogradePress.com--signed copies of Shorn available!

Last night, we got the last few bugs out of the new-and-improved MercuryRetrogradePress.com. There are now links on the home page from which you can click straight through to our constantly-updated news feeds at MySpace and Facebook. But the real excitement is on the Shorn page, where we now have a Sample Chapter of Shorn posted, as well as a gorgeous PDF of the Map of Avelos from the book--and most exciting of all, a button you can click to order Signed Copies of the pre-release edition.

I am so excited! Wynette made everything gorgeous, as usual.

We're up on Amazon!!!

OMG, I am squealy excited! Shorn is available on Amazon for pre-order! There's no image yet (must add getting that taken care of to my to-do list) but there's a button one can click to pre-order the book.

Unspeakably excited.

FWIW, you will be able to order a pre-release version from the Mercury Retrograde website in a few days. Genre collectible to be? Maybe...

I'll post the link for the pre-release version when we've got all the kinks out. Meanwhile, BEHOLD! We are on Amazon!!!

Shorn on Amazon

The Shorn Launch

Look what I found on the Wordsmiths Books site!

The advance write-up for the launch of Shorn

I am over the moon with excitement. Russ said it best:

Free Drinks!