Stephanie Burgis - Magical Books for Ages Ten to Fifteen

Publication Day Party!

August 1, 2010, 2.15 pm

OK, so I know that Publication Day is just a day. Heck, it's a Sunday. A Most Improper Magick won't actually be on store shelves for at least a few more days (although at least my lovely local Waterstones already has big pictures of it all around the store, because they are AWESOME).

But officially? Today, my book is OUT: out there in the world, officially Published. That's something I've been dreaming of, quite literally, for twenty-six years now, ever since I was seven years old. And that is definitely worth a party!

So this morning, our whole family went out to celebrate...and of course A Most Improper Magick came with us. Here it is with my decadent "meal" at our local (and wonderfully child-friendly) Caffè Nero: 

Yes, that is whipped cream beside the (hot, melty chocolate) brownie. It was DELICIOUS! And sitting next to the plate is the compact mirror that Patrick got from the Jane Austen Centre giftshop as my Valentine's Day gift this year, in honor of the magical compact in A Most Improper Magick. Of course that had to come too! (Can you tell I'm a little bit giddy today?)

And here is Patrick, an hour later and in a different café (our local Coffee No. 1, which is not terribly child-friendly but a great place to write) showing off what can now be done in cafés around the country: 

Although the physical launch party (complete with party prizes!) isn't for another week and a half, today I wanted to do something online to celebrate, for everybody who can't come to my physical launch party.

So first of all, I've put up the second and third chapters of A Most Improper Magick - you can now read all of the first three chapters on my website! I really, really hope you guys enjoy them.

And secondly, if you want, you can enter to win a book-birthday party prize, no matter where in the world you are.

One person will win a signed copy of the UK edition of the book, along with a Kat postcard, Kat bookmarks, and an "Everything's Better With Highwaymen!" button. Two runners-up will get everything in that pack except the book.

This giveaway is only open for the next 36 hours, through Monday at 7pm UK time.

Here's how to enter:

1. You can get one point by just commenting on this entry to tell me that you want to enter the drawing. (I won't enter you unless you ask for it specifically, so feel free to comment on the entry even if you don't want to be a part of the giveaway! ;) I promise it won't happen by accident.)

2. You can get one more point by tweeting this:

A Most Improper Magick by @stephanieburgis is out in the UK today! Read the first 3 chapters here: http://bit.ly/Rmy1z

and then telling me you've done it, just in case I miss it. I should be able to figure it out through Twitter on my own, but I don't want to miss anyone by accident!

(And PS: if you already RT'd my earlier tweet about the chapters, that totally counts toward the giveaway. Just remind me in a comment here, okay?)

3. You can get two more points by giving that same information in a blog entry (and then telling me that you did it).

At 7pm tomorrow, I'll choose a random winner, and I'll put all three sets of prizes in the post on Tuesday!

***

OK. I know I've probably sounded fairly business-like and sensible in the last few paragraphs - or at least I was trying to...but you guys? MY BOOK HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN PUBLISHED. I am in shock...and very, very, very happy.

So I just want to share the last two lines of the printed acknowledgments in A Most Improper Magick:

And thank you to my community of friends on www.livejournal.com, who have cheered me on when I was nervous, comforted me when I was lost and joined with me in all my celebrations. You guys are the best!

I still remember when I very, very nervously went back to writing the first draft of A Most Improper Magick after my year off from it. I was convinced that I was being commercially crazy to work on it, but I just loved the book way too much to give it up...and one of the things that helped the most was the wonderful outpouring of supportive comments on this journal from people who told me to keep going - who had faith in me, and in Kat and her sisters.

You guys really are the best, and I know it. THANK YOU!

ETA: This giveaway is now closed.

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Full-on Crazy

July 28, 2010, 7.21 pm

Here's the thing about having a lot of author friends, people whose novels were published long before mine:

I have seen Publishing Crazy. To be specific, I have seen Publication Day Crazy. And I always, always shook my head over it. Of course, I didn't do it in front of them - I was their friend, and they were suffering! - but I shook my head to myself. I said to myself: if I ever get published, I will not succumb to Publication Day Crazy. I will be happy and zen and centered. I will remember that this is all good! I will not be crazy.

You guys will have already guessed the ending to this story.

My book will be out in the UK in four days...and I have sooooo succumbed to Publication Day Crazy. Every time I think about the fact that A Most Improper Magick will officially be out on Sunday, my breath speeds up to hyperventilation levels. (Which is crazy! It might not even be in bookstores yet by that point. I won't have author copies by that point. Sunday is only a day, not a TERRIFYING EVENT. Right?)

Every time I look at the space on the bookshelf where my book will appear (and of course I do this, with pinpoint accuracy and unstoppable magnetism, every single time I visit my local library or Waterstones), I feel sick with panic. This is real. What if EVERYBODY HATES IT????? (It doesn't even matter that I've gotten some really nice reviews. What if they were ALL, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, FLUKES?)

Yesterday I realized that a period (full stop) had accidentally been replaced by a comma, incorrectly, at one point in the first chapter of my book...and I had a full-on meltdown. (EVERYONE WILL THINK I'M A GRAMMATICAL KNOW-NOTHING WITH NO SENSE OF STYLE! OTHER WRITERS WILL BURN MY BOOK!)

Back on Monday, I was planning to cut down on chocolate this week and start a new regime of healthy eating.

I am in full-on Publication Day Crazy mode...but even I, it turns out, am not quite that crazy.

Today I ate half of a large chocolate-chocolate-chip cookie and drank a strong dark hot chocolate. (Heat one small cup of milk on the stove. Melt in four squares of really excellent dark chocolate. Drink. Experience heaven.)

It helped. But I am still crazy.

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Cover reveal and ARC winner

June 17, 2010, 5.10 pm

Wooooooooooooooooooot!!!!! I just got the OK from my UK editor to share my British cover with you guys!

(Click here to see the larger image.)

The cover artist was Anne Yvonne Gilbert, and the cover was designed by Tom Sanderson.

All the gold bits will be foiled, and the white bits will be shiny!

I am so, so happy about this cover. Every time I look at it, I feel like crying in wonder all over again. So this is a great day to give something away. And according to the random number generator at random.org, the winner of the Marie Brennan ARC is: bookblather! Congratulations, and please email me your mailing address so I can send you your ARC!

It's been a really, really good day. :)

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Changes (some unexpected, some secret), an auction, and a good book

May 11, 2010, 3.51 pm

Ah, how quickly life changes. Last Sunday morning? This was me: OMG! I only got woken twice! I'm in Heaven!

This morning: OMG. I got woken TWICE. I can't believe it. I feel like I'm going to die...

Yup. This is the unexpected side-effect of having a child who's just started sleeping through the night most of the time. (Four out of the last six nights!) Funny how quickly my body adjusts...in completely the wrong direction! I keep trying to remind myself that a couple of weeks ago, being woken only twice a night would have felt like an impossible dream. Oops. ;p

In the meantime, I am bursting with fascinating stuff that can't yet be shared, and it's driving me crazy.

I have seen my British cover! It is awesome! It even shimmers (no, really)!...but I can't show it to you guys yet. :(

I have found out that Kat will have a different series title and a different Book One title in the US, and as of last night, I even know what they will be...but I can't share them yet, either. :(

Aaaahhhh!

Imagine me hopping with impatience. Or maybe not. Like I said, I'm a bit tired today... ;)

However, if anyone wants a signed copy of the UK edition, in particular - or just wants the chance to read the book months before it's published in America! - you can do a good thing for Nashville at the same time by bidding on the signed UK paperback edition here. It's part of the Do the Write Thing for Nashville auction to support flood relief, which is also offering up a ton of other fabulous items from authors, editors and agents.

I'll sign the paperback copy of A Most Improper Magick and send it to the winner as soon as I receive my author copies, which will be at least five months before the US edition comes out, and quite possibly more (since the US edition may not come out until later in the spring - the exact date is still in flux).

And in the meantime, I wanted to recommend one of my new very favorite books, Jaclyn Moriarty's Feeling Sorry for Celia. I first discovered Jaclyn Moriarty as a writer by reading a guest blog she wrote on Justine Larbalestier's blog. That entry was beautiful and made me want to read more, so I went to check out her own blog, which is wonderful, and I got completely addicted. Finally, I decided to try her first book, hoping to enjoy it since I liked her blog writing so much...

...and oh. Oh. I loved it so, so much. Feeling Sorry for Celia is a story about a girl whose best friend (Celia) is out of control, and it's about friendship and family and change. It's told in letters and notes to and from the teenage heroine. Some of them are real (her mum's fabulous notes, left on the fridge, are among my favorite); some of them are imaginary, from groups like The Association of Teenagers (or, Young Detectives), berating the heroine for her inadequacies; they're all equally wonderful. I love the characters, I love the story, and I love that it was one of the funniest books I've read and yet also included some parts that made me want to cry.

It's the first in her Ashbury High series, and now I can't wait to read all the rest. I already know I'll be re-reading Feeling Sorry for Celia many, many times.

What about you guys? What books have you loved recently?

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The Scary Stuff

April 26, 2010, 2.09 pm

Here's the weird truth about fulfilling my dream for the past 25 years and selling my first books - oh, and finishing the trilogy, too, and being about to see the first book come out in bookstores where I live. (97 more days till the UK pub date, according to my daily Waterstones.com update!)

Last week I went into my local Waterstones (and no, I haven't yet gotten up the courage to introduce myself to the manager as a local author) and looked at the space on the shelf where my book will be. It's a good space. It'll be eye-catching. It's what I always dreamed of.

I felt sick to my stomach with panic.

I finished the first draft of Kat3 in early February. I planned to start revising it in March. I didn't, because sitting down to revise it made it feel much, much too real that I was turning in the final book in my trilogy.

I started writing another book, my dragon novel, which made me laugh and feel giddy with happiness every time I thought about it. I wrote the first 11,000 words. Then someone asked me a fair, well-meaning question about whether one particular aspect of the novel was going to be commercially sensible at this point in my career...

...and I stopped. I haven't written a word of it for about a month now. Because right now, as I wait for my first book to come out, to find out whether anyone will buy it, whether anyone will love it the way I love it, whether my publishers will be thrilled or horrified to have paid me for it?

I am TERRIFIED about the concept of what is commercial and what isn't. And every time over the past month that I even thought about going back to the dragon novel, which had been making me so happy before, all I could feel was sick panic about my career as an author...which is distinctly different from my work as a writer.

I feel weird and insecure about posting this entry, because I feel like I should be staying positive and upbeat on my blog, as a general rule. But I read a wonderful entry a few days ago by one of my favorite authors in the world, talking about her own insecurity issues, and it made me feel like a ray of light was shining down into the dark, panicky corners of my own brain...so I decided I should go ahead and post about the scary stuff, too.

I just got my first two crits for Kat3, and they were both incredibly useful AND incredibly positive and enthusiastic, which was a huge relief. Patrick's reading it for critique right now. As soon as his crit is ready, I'm going to sit down and force myself to dive into the revision, even though that means admitting that yes, for better AND worse, I really am almost finished with this series I have loved so much.

In the meantime, my goal this week is to brainstorm and make a collage for my dragon novel, diving back into everything I loved about it and focusing on those aspects and those alone to figure out how I can have the most fun possible with this novel. After it's finished, I can let myself (or better yet my agent! hi, Barry! :) ) worry about whether it's commercial or not. Right now, that kind of speculation is the kiss of death for my creativity, and I can't let it take charge.

Whew.

Hitting the "post" button now, before I can give in to insecurity one more time and press "delete".

What are your goals this week? Or: what are you scared about?

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Moving daze, publishing news

April 9, 2010, 2.18 pm

Whew. It's been two days since the movers arrived to move all our stuff from one house to another (five blocks away), and it's all felt pretty crazy. One of the weirdest moments came on Wednesday morning when I was on the phone with our rental insurance company, changing our address, and they started asking me questions about the new house. I had to answer every question with, "Um...let me ask my husband!" because the truth was? I had still never seen even the outside of our new house!

For various reasons, I wasn't able to come along with Patrick when he viewed it originally, but at that point we were coming up hard against our deadline to either find a new place or commit to our current house for another 6 months...and I really, really hated our first house in Wales. (Mold everywhere! Aagh!) So I trusted Patrick's judgement, we applied for the new house (sight-unseen, on my part)...and I finally saw it for the first time Wednesday afternoon, about an hour after the movers had piled our boxes into it!

Patrick was more nervous than I was, actually. He warned me that the house itself was pretty ugly from the outside - typical 1970s grayness. He kept trying to second-guess what my reaction would be, and worrying that I would hate it. I was honestly pretty zen about the whole thing - as long as we were safely out of our last house, I didn't care where we were! - but because of that, I had low expectations. Then I actually stepped inside...

...and oh. Outside, yeah, it's nothing special. But inside? It is full of light.

We've been living in dark houses for years now - townhouses and duplexes with never enough windows. This house? Not only is it the biggest house we've ever rented - and the first one with a (big!) back yard we can actually use - but there are just so many windows! When you sit in the living room, you can look out one huge window to the pretty front garden and then turn in your chair to look at the big glass doors on the other side of the house, leading out to our back yard.

I don't know if I can express just how giddy all this light and space has been making me. Better yet, we've had bizarrely beautiful, sunny, warm weather. We moved in Wednesday night, and I've pretty much spent every daylight hour since then hanging out in our back yard. (It even has a cute stone pig in the garden! We've named him Pippin.)

So it was the right week to get some news that was necessary and unavoidable but still a little sad for me personally. The US publishing date for A Most Improper Magick has definitely been shifted to Spring 2011. (The date you see on Amazon may or may not be the right one - I'm going to hold off a little while on announcing the exact date here or on my website, until I'm 100% certain that I'm giving you guys the right info.) The main reason for that is that the publishing team is working on a brand-new cover for the book. I still have no idea what that cover will look like, but I can't wait to find out.

(And the UK publishing date, as far as I know, is still remaining the same - August 1, 2010. I did just see a draft of that cover yesterday, and it's fabulous! I can't wait until it's ready to share.)

My professional self knows that the date change was necessary and important, and it's always worth waiting to have the best, most commercial cover possible. My whiny, impatient inner self is sad to have to wait longer to hold the book in my hands. But luckily, when I'm lying on the grass in the rare, beautiful Welsh sunshine, it's hard to feel bad about anything.

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My big news - and ARC giveaway!

March 1, 2010, 4.17 pm

I am unbelievably excited to finally announce:

The Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson have sold in the UK!!!!!!

Better yet, even though the sale only happened a month ago, A Most Improper Magick will be published in the UK in August 2010 - only 5 months from now!

I am just incredibly happy about this. My UK publisher is Templar Books, a fabulous independent publisher that has focused on creating award-winning illustrated books for the last 30 years (UK readers have probably seen their fun "Ology" books - Dragonology, Piratology, etc.), but is now starting a brand-new fiction line, with AMIM as one of their very first novels.

!!!!!!

OK, just give me a moment to breathe deeply and stop hyperventilating with excitement. It has been SO HARD not to share this news until now!

The London Literary Party (TM) that we attended last week was Templar's grand unveiling of their new fiction list at the Covent Garden Hotel, with champagne and canapés - and shiny new British ARCs of A Most Improper Magick as one of the items in all their guests' goodie-bags! I got to meet my wonderful British editor, Emma Goldhawk, as well as a whole bunch of other Templar editors, all of whom were smart and fun to hang out with and - best of all - really excited about Kat's adventures. And I came away absolutely floating with excitement and happiness to be working with a second group of fabulous people, all of whom really get Kat and her family and are making such a perfect British home for them.

(And btw, Templar is planning an author tour, so I'm hoping to meet a lot of British readers in this coming year, too!)

In celebration, it's the perfect day to share another ARC giveaway! This one is being held on the blog of Kim Harrington, a member of The Elevensies whose own first book, Clarity, is going to be published next year.

You can win an ARC of A Most Improper Magick no matter what country you live in - just go to Kim's blog to find out how!

Now I'm going to go fan myself for a while. :)

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Book News

February 16, 2010, 10.50 pm

So, some of you may have noticed this already, but I can now officially announce that the publication date for A Most Improper Magick has changed. It's now going to be published on June 15th instead of April 20th. Of course I hate having to wait any longer - I want my author copies in my hands and on my bookshelf, now, now, now! - but I love that my publisher really cares about its success and is determined to bring it out at just the right time. Apparently, June is a really good month for my kind of book, so...despite the fact that it's forcing me to (finally) learn the art of patience, this still counts as genuinely good news.

The only downside is that it does mean our American travel plans are going to have to change. I'd planned to arrive in April and stay through May, and had made some commitments which I'm now going to have to cancel or rearrange. I am so sorry to have made anyone's schedule difficult. And of course I'm sorriest of all that it now looks like we may not be coming to WisCon after all. Wahhh! We haven't finalized the decision yet, so there's still some hope...but it's not looking very practical at the moment.

Of course, if you want to read A Most Improper Magick before June 15th, you still have three more days to enter the ARC giveaway at The Story Siren. If you're in the UK, you can find me at both Eastercon and Bristolcon this year, and if you're in the US, I will be there sometime this year - I just don't know yet exactly when that will be. Hoping to post more announcements soon!

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Tea, Werewolves, and Social Whirls

January 27, 2010, 7.12 pm

I am LOVING all the food requests at <a href="http://lisamantchev.livejournal.com/340771.html">the online ARC tea party</a>. OK, it's become obvious that I have TOTALLY different taste in desserts than many people - but that's fun, too! And mostly, I just love that so many people are playing along. :)

(And FWIW, I personally believe that traditional cream teas are the most blissful culinary experience EVER. I grew up reading Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels novels where American heroines go to England and get teased by the hero for going SO INSANE over the cream teas...and guess what? They were totally right.) (In both respects, actually. Unlike me, Patrick is not a cream tea fan, possibly because cream is not vegan.)

In other news, remember the urban werewolf anthology I talked about, the one that's going to publish my story "Locked Doors"? The editor, Ekaterina Sedia, has just posted the Table of Contents, and it looks awesome. Now I'm even more excited about it!

And this week we are being astonishingly social, since some wonderful friends have come into town. No, this doesn't mingle well with my plan to finish Kat Book 3 by this Sunday...but it has been really wonderful and fun, especially after our last month of being hermits in our writing cave. I did have one moment where I wondered whether I should stay home and write instead of hanging out...and then I thought, Are you CRAZY, woman?! Because our friends are only here for four days, and this is, after all, a self-imposed deadline. All the same, I'm sneaking in 500 words here and there every day, so the end is getting closer...and closer...

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Happy Thursday

January 7, 2010, 4.58 pm

It's been a bad last few days for many reasons, foremost among them that MrD has been sick. Nothing dangerous or unusual - just a normal combination of winter illnesses for toddlers - but as I'm rapidly learning, any time my baby is sick, life pretty much grinds to a halt until it's over. I didn't quite give up writing in the past few days, but my wordcount shrank very, very low, and for once, I couldn't make myself regret it. When my baby's sick, looking after him - and decompressing while he sleeps - really does cancel out all my other priorities.

But! Today the whole world is shiny and happy because he's feeling better. Yayyyyy! Everything feels happier and lighter now, and all my goals suddenly sound so much more do-able. So I thought I'd list some of the things that are making me particularly happy today:

1. For the first time since I moved to the UK 8-1/2 years ago, we have what I would call a real winter snowfall. We've got 4 inches in our little Welsh town, and Maya goes mad with joy every time we let her out. She does high bunny-hops through the drifts, bites off snowballs and even throws them for herself! Watching her makes me laugh and laugh and feel pure happiness. (Plus, snow just inherently makes me happy, even here in the UK where it also makes things deeply inconvenient, since there's no real set-up for dealing with it, and therefore the trains stop running, many of the roads don't get salted, etc., etc. I don't care! It's snow, and it feels like magic every single time I step outside.)

2. My friend Aliette's first book is being published in the UK and Australia TODAY, and I can't wait to read it. (I pre-ordered my copy from Amazon, and it still hasn't been dispatched. GRR. But still: book birthday!)

Aliette is a fabulous writer (she was nominated for the Campbell award for best new SF/F writer last year!), and this book sounds absolutely awesome - a smart, dark, historical fantasy/mystery for adults set in the Aztec empire. It won't be published in the US until September, but you can order it from Amazon.co.uk - it's a paperback, so not too expensive to buy internationally. (You can also order it from The Book Depository for free, world-wide shipping as soon as it's back in stock - it seems to have sold out there at the moment.)

You can go congratulate Aliette here, and you can also read the first three chapters of Servant of the Underworld on the blog My Favourite Books. (I probably would have bought the book even without this, because I have faith in Aliette's writing in any genre - but then I read Chapter One and pre-ordered immediately afterwards! :) Yay Aliette! Congratulations!

3. I just made a new short story sale! The story is called "Speaking English", and it's a YA ghost story about Croatian immigrants to America. It sold to an Australian anthology, Belong (an anthology of spec-fic stories about immigration), which is due to come out in April. So now I have even more reasons to look forward to that month!

4. And finally, reading the comments on the interview Ivana Mariç posted with me yesterday made me really, really happy. I can't even begin to express how amazing it feels to hear people I don't even know saying that they're looking forward to my book. That really is magic - there's no other word for it.

What about you guys? What's making you happy this week?

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Excellent Distractions and ARC Panic

September 9, 2009, 9.01 pm

First of all: I blame Karen Healey COMPLETELY for the fact that I can't get this chorus out of my head: "Omigod You Guys!", from the musical of Legally Blonde. I've never even seen the movie because the previews turned me off so much, but Karen raved about this song & video on her blog, and I thought, oh, well, why not give it a try...

Sigh. Those must be some of the most dangerous words in human history, repeated in SO MANY dubious situations! ;p

For the past several hours, voices in the back of my head have been singing the refrain of "Omigod, omigod you guys!" over and over AND OVER again....! BE WARNED.

Of course, after watching that first video I had to watch a couple other videos from the musical...then I started wishing there was a full performance online of the entire show...and now I'm wondering whether or not to put the movie on my rental list, after all these years of resisting it. Darn you, Karen!!!!

In other news, on Sunday I finally summoned up the nerve to actually start reading through an ARC of A Most Improper Magick, which I'd spent two days feeling way too scared to attempt. How come some of the most exciting parts of publishing are also so terrifying? I think part of the issue with ARCs is that these advance copies are the ones that are going to be sent to reviewers...so I am PETRIFIED by the fear of finding something TERRIBLY WRONG and knowing that it's too late to keep any reviewers from seeing it. Eek. Luckily, I'm about halfway through the book now, and while I've come across a couple small inconsistencies and several line edits, there's been nothing that makes me swoon with horror. At least, NOT YET...

Here's the thing that makes it all so scary. The embarrassing truth is: I really, really love this book. It feels terrifying just to admit that, even to myself. The thing is, if it were a book I didn't care so much about - if I'd just tossed it off, or if I'd written it like an assignment without any passion, I could pretty much shrug off any bad reviews. But that isn't how it happened. I wrote this book with so much joy and care, and I am so in love with Kat and all her siblings, and all of that makes me feel more and more horribly vulnerable as publication day approaches. Because as much as I've longed for it to be published, I also know that not everybody will like this book. Even the books I love most in the world are hated by many people. That's the way the world works.

But I'm petting my ARCs a lot right now, even as I hunt through them for typos and still-fixable flaws. And the occasional bout of distraction therapy - like the one I got sucked into this afternoon, thanks to Karen's blog entry - is priceless.

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