Book Launches!

Destiny's Fall is on the way!  I'm really excited about this book, and had fun returning to the world of Layela, Ardin, Avienne and The Destiny.  

I have confirmation on a bunch of launches.  I might have a few more later, but here are some details:

Toronto

Ad Astra

Saturday, April 14, 8:30 pm

Con Suite

Launching jointly with Dragon Moon Press author Leah Peterson, and her debut novel Fighting Gravity

Ottawa

Thursday, April 19, 5 pm - 9 pm

Lieutenant's Pump

(361 Elgin Street)

Winnipeg

Thursday, May 17, 7:30 pm

McNally Robinson Booksellers

We'll do something at Keycon, too. Details TBA.

ABOUT DESTINY'S FALL

Cover not final. But ain't it pretty?

A broken tradition. A hunted child. A rebellion that threatens to topple the very fabric of the universe. 

When Layela Delamores gives birth to her first child, the ether immediately rejects what should be its only heir. A wave of destruction sweeps the ether races and sparks Solaria’s ire and rebellion on Mirial. A new heir rises to take the throne of Mirial, one who wields tainted ether.

Unable to access the flow of ether, Layela is left with little choice but to flee Mirial, seeking answers that may no longer exist, prepared to pay whatever the cost to free herself and her daughter from the clutches of the First Star.

Why

New Story: The Buried Moon

Tyche Books, a new Canadian publisher, launched its inaugural anthology yesterday, Ride the Moon.  I'm happy to say that I have a story in it, The Buried Moon.

The inspiration for this story comes from an old English fairy tale I heard at a storytelling show.  It's a pretty awesome story with monsters, live burials and a desperate rescue - look for The Buried Moon or The Dead Moon and you'll find a bunch of versions of it.

My story takes place long after the original fairy tale, when descendants of the moon are still being hunted by the bog creatures.  One reviewer said: "Marie Bilodeau has a chilling and exciting tale Buried Moon, bringing out the darkness in rural communities."  There you go.  Right from someone else's mouth.

It's a lovely anthology with great cover art, and has stories in it by a bunch of fine writers, including Claude Lalumière and Edward Willett. Pick up your electronic or print copy.

5 Cs

Cover

The cover of Destiny’s Fall is now underway, which is exciting. I consider myself lucky. You hear lots of horror stories from other authors on how the cover doesn’t match their book at all.  The cover artist for both Destiny’s Fall and Destiny’s Blood, Kari-Ann Anderson, actually takes the time to read each book and come up with a concept that matches the feel and tone of the book.

Kari-Ann just sent notes and a quick sketch, and it’s going to be awesome. As she mentioned, it’ll match the book’s epic destruction. It’s, um, a bit apocalyptic. I’m very much looking forward to sharing the final art with you all.  No to mention the story! We’re still on target for a launch date in Toronto at Ad Astra and Ottawa the following week.  Not sure if we’ll hit anywhere else yet, but feel free to send ideas!  I love ideas.

Cons

Kari-Ann and I were chatting recently and we realized that we both met the publisher of Dragon Moon Press, Gwen Gades, at World Fantasy Con.  It’s there that I sold Destiny’s Blood, and it’s there that Gwen hired Kari-Ann to do cover art for her.  I love it when life forms little bows that match the tidiness of fiction.

That was World Fantasy Con in Calgary, in 2008. It was my first con, and it’s a pro con.   This is one of those traveling cons, like WorldCon. If it comes near you and you want to meet folk in the industry, it’s a great place to be. I’m going again this year, since it’ll be in Toronto.  Practically next door!

I’ve also updated my appearances section. I’m doing fewer cons this year since I’m concentrating on writing.  A few more cons will be added to the roster, but funds are tight, so I have to be a bit picky.  Time, however, is not that tight.  Heck, I don’t even have a show scheduled until June!  I’m up for house concerts, if you’re interested. I do miss storytelling.  I haven’t been on stage since my December Voices of Venus set, and I’m feeling it.  But the writing is going really well, and my brain isn’t torn between rehearsing for upcoming shows and writing, which is a bit nice, for a change. I’m sure my thoughts will get cabin fever if they don’t get to play with other stories, so this is not a long-term set-up.

Chilling

This year, it’s been a very mild winter. We haven’t received gobs of snow, and it’s been much warmer than usual. I haven’t lost feeling in my limbs or ears once this year and, let’s face it, in Canada we usually enjoy that experience at least once a year.  Hypothermia, our old friend.

Regardless of that boon, I’m finding the winter a bit hard.  I’ve been referring to my own survival list, and I’ll be adding to it next year.  I’ve given myself permission to hide during this month, which I believe is the first time I’ve ever done this. I’m quite enjoying it!  Roomy and I have a little cooking/cleaning/chilling routine that’s working out nicely. I’m about to ruin it in March since travels will begin anew, but still, it’s just what I needed this February.

Now that the sun is peaking on the horizon when I leave the house in the mornings, my energy is also spiking back up. Good!  I've got lots to get done!  Maybe I won't need to drink as much coffee now? Nah...

Chicken

I forgot to put my leftover in the fridge last week and, despite nuking, the chicken totally tried to kill me. Last Thursday night is a bit of blur. I remember having to change the channel multiple times trying to avoid food shows while trying to ignore my stomach before settling on one of those wedding dress shows. Then they took out champagne and cake and I had to run to the bathroom. Roomy had a migraine, so she was staring at me squinty-eyed.

The cats didn’t care at first, but by 2 a.m. they thought it was a fun game, following me around.  Roomy’s cat stayed cuddled with her, but I had my three fuzzballs meowing at me and dancing around me. Not very useful.

But all better now!  I’ll chalk it up to a good experience to be able to write about (okay, nobody wants to read about food poisoning). Or maybe I’ll just chalk it up to a life lesson and pay more attention.  Not likely, but it’s nice to dream.

**Roomy informs me it was ground turkey, not ground chicken, but I had a "C" theme going on and I'm sticking with it.

Colour

Red and blue, to be specific.

Roomy now has two beta fish.  She had some years ago, but the recent acquisition of kittens (well, recent meaning almost three years ago) made her too worried to get some more. She finally broke down a couple of weeks ago and acquired a red and a blue beta. Their names are Kami and Kaze.

So far, the kittens have been quite good. They look at them, which is cool. It’s good cat TV.

How’s your February going? Are you hiding out? Playing? How are the pets? Any new acquisitions?

Delight me with your stories!

Aurora Awards - A Request

The nomination period for the Aurora Awards is now open. I have one eligible short story: The Legend of Gluck, from Dragon Moon Press' When the Hero Comes Home anthology.  Check out a list of eligible works.

Again, all Canadians can vote for Canadian works of SF/F.  Simple enough.

Important note: They changed the nominating/voting rules this year.  It used to be that you could nominate for free, and then you had to pay a nominal fee (last year 5.50) to vote.  This year, you have to join to nominate, at the cost of $10.

If you're a big sci-fi fan and really want to show your support for a bunch of people, then do so here.  Any nomination is of course welcome.  Last year, I was a finalist in the novel category, and it was definitely a highlight of my career.

My request: I know a lot of my readers are not in the sci-fi community. Obviously, I appreciate the desire to support authors we love. I try to do it myself!  But I honestly can't help but think that $10 is a lot of money if you're not a part of the community.  So if you'd like to show your support but are strapped for money, and I suggest this for any of the Aurora categories or anyone whose works resonate with you, then support them by helping spread the word.  Tell a friend.  Write a review on Amazon.  Tell your blog readers about said author/convention/filker/etc.

That's showing support, too, and is greatly appreciated.  Again, last year's nomination was a highlight of my career, and I can't thank you all enough for that. Your support, in any shape or form, is always appreciated.

Let this in no way be interpreted as criticism towards the Aurora committee.  They are an awesome, hard-working bunch and they need the financial backing to do what they do, which means a lot to the community.

But my priority is, of course, my readers, and it's up to them to show their support however they feel best. And I certainly love giving options.

Either way, I give an ever eternal thank you to all of you.  You = awesome, and I wouldn't be where I am today without you.

Love,

Marie

The Odyssey: Heading off to War

Check out my last post on The Odyssey (Finding my Inner Klingon).

This weekend was a wild, wild ride.  Both Saturday and Sunday were slotted to find the shores of Ithaca in an Odyssey rehearsal.

But, through sheer ill-timing on the universe’s part, it was also the weekend of G-Anime.  I simply loved this con last year and had confirmed that I’d be attending in 2012 right after the 2011 con ended. The organizers, bless their flexible hearts, agreed to slot my panels only in the evenings.  All of my writing panels were to be once again with the awesome Jay Odjick, and the two of us were joined by one of my writing group members, Derek Künsken. The three of us had a ball, if I do say so myself.

The evenings were fun, but the days are what sucked up most of my focus. Jan Andrews and Jennifer Cayley, the artistic directors of this journey, worked with each of us in turn, but we all had to contribute and help with visualization. They worked with us to become more aware of our bodies as tellers, to be mindful of our voice and, I believe most importantly, to really connect with Odysseus. To live his story, with all of its horror, heartbreak and hope.  They pushed us to understand the depths of both the character, in his heroic qualities and dreadful flaws, and the setting, the long journey that took him home.

For this weekend, I worked on the end of book 14.  In this part, Odysseus is back on the shores of Ithaca, posing as a beggar in his swineherd’s hut. He has no cloak, and a cold night sets in. He begins to tell them all a story about being at Troy (as Odysseus’ third-in-command), and of a cold night falling in as they crouched and slept by the frowning walls of Troy. In his telling of this story, Odysseus tricked someone into giving him a cloak, essentially saving him from certain, bitter death. 

The story is not lost on the swineherd, who lends Odysseus a cloak for the cold night. 

There’s always a certain amount of role-playing in any storytelling piece. To tell a piece convincingly, the teller must really put themselves in the story and live, breath and see what their characters go through. I had done this, to a certain extent.  As I told this part, I imagined being Odysseus by the fire, in the hut, recalling his days of glory.  I took on the mantle on an old man thinking back, not of a warrior freezing on the battlefield.

I had missed a step. I was not to become the teller telling of past deeds. I had to skip that middleman, once my scene was set and, instead of staying with Odysseus in the hut, I had to leap further back and join him on the battlefield.

Once I did that, the story came to life. I had reached the battlefield of Troy, and suddenly the horror, the cold and the fear pounded my words into shape.

It drove home a couple of points.  One is that I’d now like to read The Iliad again, for background material.  I haven’t read it in about a decade, so the text is a bit fuzzy around its bloody edges.

The second and perhaps most important realization was that you can never know a text too well. Although The Odyssey is an old tale and a well-known one, with themes that resonate through the ages, it still has layers of depth that deserve discovery and contemplation.  Through each teller’s piece, we began to glimpse at those deeper layers, at motivations and emotions that are not necessarily outright stated by Homer, but that are hinted at, or can at least be interpreted to reach out to a modern audience.

And so to the battlefields of Troy I headed Sunday morning, and honestly, I didn’t like it.  It was bitter cold, frightening, and the rosy fingers of dawn promised to grip the morning with bloodshed.

I didn’t like it one bit. But I can’t imagine those who were there did, either. And so I found Odysseus, and will work at finding him there, again and again.

The Odyssey, an artistic collaboration between 2 Women Productions and the Ottawa Storytellers, will be told at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre on June 16.  Seventeen tellers will work together to weave the story of Odysseus, during a 14-hour show; the longest show ever given at the National Arts Centre.  Plan on joining us for this unique experience. 

G-Anime Schedule

This weekend is G-Anime and I'm very much looking forward to it. It's unfortunately also a huge rehearsal weekend for June's Odyssey show, so I can only attend the con during the evenings.  If you're around, you can find me here:

Friday
Writing 101: Tight Plotting (7 pm)
Writing 201: Characters (9pm)
Cutting Edge Sci-Fi (10 pm)

Saturday
Writing 301: Tips of the Trade (Saturday at 10pm)

I'll be accompanied on my panels by two of my writing buddies - Jay Odjick and Derek Künsken. They're both awesome fun and have great wisdom and wit to impart. 

In an effort to spare my back, I won't be carrying much stock with me to sell.  If you're interested in picking up a title, feel free to e-mail me first, to make sure I have the title you want.  You can reach me at marie.s.bilodeau@gmail.com.

Can't wait to see you all!