So…all the plans are jelling for WFC. I leave on Friday. I don’t like planes and I’m not ultra-fond of travel, so it’s going to be (wait for it) an ADVENTURE. And we have pumpkin-carving to do before I go. Quel marvelous!

I prefer no adventures, as I have many adventures going on inside my head. But I’ve already committed to this and bought the plane tickies, and I know I’ll enjoy it once I’m there. I’m just nervous about travel. I am really a homeloving little soul. It is no help at all that I have no sense of direction at all and can’t navigate my way out of a wet paper bag. (To make up for this, the Sullen One has a fine sense of direction and is unflappable while navigating.)

So I guess we’ll see how it turns out…

All right, so there are a couple of questions I’ve gotten in the mail lately.

There seems to be some confusion with the timeline in The Devil’s Right Hand. What is the exact timeline?

Well, it goes like this. The original timeline was supposed to be:

Working For The Devil
(5 years)
Dead Man Rising
(2 years)
Devil’s Right Hand
Saint City Sinners
To Hell and Back

However, in reworking the drafts, my editor pointed out that Jace carrying a torch for Danny and Danny carrying a torch for Japh for five years was Just Too Much, and after much thought I agreed. (Thankfully Danny didn’t care.) So, here’s the timeline we ended up with:

WFTD
(10 months-1 year)
DMR
(3-5 yrs)
DRH
SCS
THB

You’ll notice it’s unclear between Dead Man Rising and Devil’s Right Hand because Dante loses track of time in a big way–partly because she doesn’t have a real good grasp on it to begin with, being a psion (you’ll notice how Trina the scheduler runs her life in the first two books) and partly because Japh deliberately removed all traces of time passing. Whether he did it to help her recover or for another reason is still an open question.

Unfortunately, some traces of the old timeline must remain despite the best in copyedits and continuity checks. If that’s the case, my apologies, but publishing is an imperfect business indeed.

When is the next Steelflower book coming out?

It’s in my head, I just haven’t written it yet. Getting three books out under a very, very tight deadline this year was difficult and I didn’t have room for the Incidental Novel at all. Hopefully this upcoming year will change all that.

I can tell you that the next book is tentatively titled Steelflower’s Song and deals with the troupe landing in Antai and discovering people looking for the Skaialan, Redfist. He has revenge to deal on Clan Connaight, and Kaia can do no less than help him. Hee. Hope that helps.

That’s pretty much all I have time for today. I have Halloween candy to buy and some other few items to pick up for the trip. Oh, and I need to get newspapers, because we’re carving pumpkins tonight.

I’m buying the New York Times. Somehow, for a grand punkin-carvin’, the local rag just doesn’t seem right.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 10:29 am and is filed under Real Life, Convention Mention, Reader Questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.