Ann Leckie

I know I haven’t blogged really at all for quite some time. I’m doing my darndest to complete a draft of Ancillary Mercy, and probably most of you would prefer that I work on that, rather than blog posts. Maybe? I hope so, because that’s what I’m doing.

Anyway. Happy winter holidays! And if, perchance, your preferred winter holiday includes gift giving and you received an e-reader or a new tablet (or if you already have those things and just want something more to read) you might want to check out Amazon’s daily deals today.

Yep, Ancillary Justice is $2.99 today. Of course, chances are if you follow my blog you’ve already read it. In which case, cast your eyes down that list because there’s some excellent reading there. Give it a look!

And now it’s back to the word mines. Being a writer has a lot of awesome bits to it–I said in an interview it’s like having the fun parts of homework for the rest of your life, and that’s absolutely true. (Also–“Yes I am sitting on the couch reading. It is actually Important Work. No matter what I’m reading.”) But today I am experiencing one of the minor drawbacks of the writing life, which is that I actually don’t get to laze around in my jammies today. Or, I’m not changing out of my jammies, don’t get me wrong, but I need to power up Scrivener and dig this chapter out of my head today.

In my jammies. Yeah. Happy Dies Natalis Solis Invicti everybody!

The first part of “She Commands Me And I Obey” is now live!

I’m going to briefly say that this story is sort-of dedicated to my mother. In the last eight or so years of her life, she became an enormous Blues fan. The hockey team, not the music. She regularly bought season tickets and took various grandkids with her to the games. And this was, of course, during the first several years I was working on Ancillary Justice.

But it’s only sort-of dedicated, because my mother would not have particularly appreciated or enjoyed some aspects of the story, and I suspect she’d have been unamused at a dedication to her being put at the top of it. So I haven’t. But I’ll say here that I partly wrote it for her, and I also thank her for bringing me to the hockey game so often.

If you can, and haven’t already, please consider donating to Strange Horizons so part two can be unlocked ASAP. If you can’t, or already have, or have decided against it for whatever reason, do please tweet or blog–about She Commands, or about some other SH story you love, or just about SH.

And never fear being left hanging. Now the first part is up, I am determined the second will be, eventually. For now, let’s see how the fund drive goes.

So, several times in the past few months I’ve been asked if there was any chance of Ancillary Justice making it to the movies–or TV. And mostly I’ve replied that, wow, that would be awesome!

Which, actually, was mostly a kind of evasive answer, because stuff was maybe brewing behind the scenes but you don’t talk about that kind of stuff until it’s real. But now it’s real. Ish. And I am told that I can now blog about it!

Basically, Ancillary Justice has been optioned for TV. Now, “optioned” doesn’t necessarily mean that anything is going to actually happen–things get optioned and then never made, quite frequently.

So who has this option, you ask? It’s production company Fabrik and Fox Television Studios. They have previously worked together on THE KILLNG for four seasons on AMC and Netflix, and they started their relationship with BURN NOTICE, which ran for seven Seasons on USA.

Fabrik is currently in production on BOSCH, Amazon’s first ever hour-long drama pilot based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling Harry Bosch book series

Fox TV Studios is the studio behind THE AMERICANS for FX, and WHITE COLLAR, GRACELAND, and COMPLICATIONS at USA, among others.

Now. Like I said, this doesn’t mean there’ll ever actually be any Ancillary Justice on television. But it does mean there could be, and lately it seems like there’s been quite a lot of science fictional television turning up. So, who can say?

I am also aware, of course, that bringing AJ to any sort of screen (not counting your eReader screen, of course!) would be…an interestingly difficult project. I made sure to have a conversation with the folks at Fabrik about my specific concerns–namely, the approach to gender, and the issue of whitewashing (as in, I do not want to see the book whitewashed, I would like to namedrop LeGuin and mention her Earthsea experience here, thank you). I was very pleased with their response. And in fact, if I had been the least bit unhappy with how that conversation came out, I would not be writing this blog post now.

The fact remains that even with all the best intentions in the world, there’s a lot of leeway to really misstep badly in trying to bring AJ to any kind of visual medium. On the other hand, there is quite a lot of potential for a really good team to do something really cool, that may or may not be what I was trying to do with the book, but that is still something new and marvelous. And actually, I think the best adaptations work that way. It’s an exciting thought.

So, um, that’s my news! Remember–option. Option doesn’t mean anything’s actually happening. But the potential is there, and that’s tremendously cool!

So, every now and then someone emails me, or pops up in comments, to ask if there’ll be a hardcover edition of Ancillary Justice. And until very, very recently the answer has been, “Nope. It would be awesome, I agree, but there are no such plans at the moment.”

Well, that is no longer true. Y’all know Subterranean Press, right? If you don’t, you should. My very first genre sale was actually to issue number four of Subterranean Magazine, an issue guest-edited by John Scalzi. Sadly, Subterranean Magazine is no more, but Subterranean Press puts out lovely limited-edition hardcovers.

And yes, some time next year they’re going to be doing a signed, limited-edition hardcover of Ancillary Justice. So, those of you who have desired such a thing, watch this space!