Ursula Vernon's Blog

…but I figured out how to do this from my tablet now, yay!

I’ve missed doing journal pages like I used to, but I also haven’t had the patience to sit at my desk for hours making them. So I keep fiddling with things I can do on the tablet while laying around watching Midsomer Murders. The problem is that I can draw in Procreate but it’s got no text support, and there’s plenty of little programs that put text on photos, but very few where I can do layouts and whatnot. In theory Photoshop comes out next year as an app, but until then…

Anyway, this is done using Adobe Spark Post. Not at all like what I would like to do, but still kinda fun to fool with.

Hey all! We’re in the last few days of the Kickstarter for the Ironclaw Book of Monsters, which includes some neat plant monsters that I did the art for! Check it out!

The problem with not posting constantly is that then I feel the urge to start every post with an apology for not posting, which makes me not post because guilt is only a motivator up to a point. So let’s not do that. If you follow me on Twitter (ursulav) or listen to one of the three podcasts, you know I’m not dead! And if you don’t, uh…Hi! I’m not dead!

Nothing much is going on here–I wish I had a new book to drop on you or something, but while there’s a lot in the works, nothing ready right this minute. Also it’s hot and obscenely muggy and the garden looks like Jurassic Park, only with chickens instead of velociraptors, but I’m told that velociraptors were only the size of turkeys anyway. The dew point is one degree below the ambient temperature and we are 99% humidity, so the windows are perpetually covered in condensation. In theory, fall is coming, but so is the heat death of the universe, and I will believe it when I see it.

Wherever you’re hailing from, I hope you’re doing well! I just felt like saying hi.

Also, in case you missed it, one of Kevin’s baby chicks has grown up to be a rooster, because sexing chicks is hard. Dottie is now Dotson, and he is a large, imperious, very handsome bird who still runs in terror from Strong Independent Chicken despite being significantly larger than she is.

That’s an Amazon link but there are also many other places it’s available, although if you get the iBooks or Kobo version, for another day or two, you will get The Notorious Stoat version, where, owing to stuff NOT UPDATING, the uncopyedited work that was a placeholder didn’t get pushed out in time, and there is a really spectacular typo right at the climax where Slate is suddenly a large group of weasels. (Also some other typos, but the Stoat one is the most impressive.)

And there was even fan-art, and people, I just cannot even. Go check out Heymurada’s work!

I have updated the Short Stories page! There’s a bunch of new stuff you can read on-line for free!

Also, in case you missed it, the text of my Hugo Acceptance Speech–yes, the one about dead whales–went up over on Barnes & Noble’s SF website!

An Unexpected Honor

(Go just for the illustration, if nothing else! That artist kicked butt!)

Psssst. Wanna buy a book? *opens coat*

Pre-Order The Wonder Engine now!

Other formats are also becoming available but take longer to percolate–check your Kobo/Nook/iBooks as needed.

(Remember! If you are a Patreon sponsor, you get the ebook free! No purchase required!)

There will be a print version at some point, but not quite simultaneously on this one.

Okay! As is the custom of my people, it is now time for the Stuff I Did In 2017 That You Can Nominate For Stuff if you’re part of the ecosystem that nominates stuff for stuff. (Mostly writing stuff.)

Novels:

Clockwork Boys (as T. Kingfisher.) – self-published in association with Argyll Publications

Novelettes:

The Dark Birds – Apex Magazine

Short Stories:



Packing (as T. Kingfisher) – Uncanny Magazine

Sun, Moon, Dust – Uncanny Magazine

Origin Story – Apex Magazine (will be available online later this month, but was originally published in the Jackalope Wives anthology last year.)

Podcasts:

The Hidden Almanac

Also, while I have no idea what awards are out there for this, Truffke/Luvelex who did the art for the illustrated Summer in Orcus that came out this year (yes, you will be able to buy print copies once the Kickstarter rewards are all mailed out) did an unbelievable job and I just want the universe to acknowledge the heck outta that.

Clockwork Boys is available for pre-order!

We got ebook AND hardcover!



Amazon

Nook

iBooks

Kobo

For those following along at home, this is the Thing With The Paladin And The Ninja Accountant. And it is Book One! It is not a standalone! Book Two will be out, hopefully February-ish! (It is, however, a duology, not a trilogy or whatever.)

Hardcover is currently on Amazon, but will hopefully be available elsewhere for those avoiding the River.

So yesterday I was flying over Greenland.

Yeah, that Greenland. With the snow and the mountains and the…more snow…and I stared out the window at it going “Greenland? Really? That’s a place that I’ve seen on maps, that I learned about in school with the Mercator Projection stuff, and now I’m looking at it? Me? Really?”

And then a couple plane changes later I got home to Raleigh, where the dogs farted at me and the garden is overgrown and there’s too many boxes in the garage that I need to do something with and Tiny Tortie took several hours to forgive me for leaving. And during one of those plane changes, Trump gave a speech that was more than usually mind-boggling and I had to decipher the gist from Twitter while increasingly jetlagged.

And it was all still the same day that I looked out the plane window at Greenland.

I am able to cope reasonably well with marvels, but generally I need at least a good night’s sleep between them and home or else the inside of my head gets rather slow and disassociated and I can hear myself thinking from a long ways off.

Anyway! I was looking at Greenland because I went to WorldCon in Helsinki, by way of Iceland. Iceland, speaking of marvels, is profoundly absurd and ridiculously beautiful and the population all seems to have a sense of humor as dry as glacial dust. I cannot possibly do justice to it, so here is a Storify of all of my livetweeted travelogue of Iceland, with friends Tina and Cousin Amy and Kevin.

https://storify.com/RebelsHeart/ursul...

I tried to take notes and looking back at them, all I have written down is that puffins are the little brother of the Arctic, that they are the souls of the dead gathering in the ocean in winter above their sunken homeland, that the first person buried in the cemetery is the Lightbringer, a couple of notes about Necro Pants, and then I think I gave up because Iceland was just too much.

From Iceland, we went to Helsinki, Finland, where FinnAir lost my luggage and my friend Heli took me shopping and helped us navigate the bus system. Helsinki was beautiful and clean and modern and had huge walking areas and was full of cheerful people and the subway was so clean that I could eat off the floor and basically I went away thinking My entire country is positively squalid! but they were all very nice about it. As someone whose primary understanding of these areas comes from the comic Scandinavia and the World, I could not figure out why people thought the Finns were silent, taciturn, and communicate by stabbing. (Heli said that we were seeing summer Finns. Winter is different.)

We experienced sauna. Apparently one takes sauna or does sauna. Anyway, whichever of those it was, we did it, thanks to a very kind couple who let us take over their place briefly while Heli cooked us traditional Finnish dishes. It was hot and Nordic and lovely.

Also, cheese. Like, so much cheese. Cheese with cloudberry jam, which was AMAZING. Cream cheese spread with deviled reindeer, which was basically the greatest thing I have ever put in my mouth.

So we were at Worldcon, hence our presence in Helsinki. I was nominated the Hugo for Best Novelette, for “The Tomato Thief.” (Fortunately my luggage arrived an hour before the ceremony, so I was able to wear a suit and not jeans and T-shirt to the ceremony.) I kinda won the thing, which was unexpected, and then I gave a speech about whalefall because lots of people had already given very meaningful speeches and I had nothing good to say on that front, but I figured everybody needed to know what happens to a whale corpse that falls into the deep ocean, and that is how I wound up being the Dead Whale Lady for the rest of the weekend. People complimented me on the speech a lot, which was weird because I was no longer wearing a suit AND I had put on a hat, so I don’t know how they recognized me, except possibly I have this aura that says WILL TALK ABOUT DEAD WHALES AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE.

I went to the Hugo Loser’s Party where, as a winner, GRRM decreed I should wear a chicken hat and Groucho Marx glasses and let me tell you, if George RR Martin tells you to do a thing, you do it, particularly if he’s paying for the open bar on his dime. There are photos somewhere. And then we hung around Helsinki for a few days, ate food, went to the zoo, visited a gorgeous fortress, and saw barnacle geese.

Now I’m back home and not entirely sure that the last ten days really happened, except that there’s a bunch of photos and tweets and me trying to explain to my editor why there is a photo of me next to GRRM with a chicken hat on my head. I do not know how this is my life, but I am very glad that you all seem to be in here with me.