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Pre-Order Bonus–Chapters 2 & 3 of Ancillary Mercy

Maybe you noticed a little while ago that this website was unreachable? Yeah, that’s because Orbit sent out a newsletter email letting subscribers know that if they’d pre-ordered Ancillary Mercy, they could fill out this form and get Chapters 2 & 3.

And the website was promptly overwhelmed. Y’all are the best! No, seriously. But I put up the Clockpunk Studios signal and because they’re so super awesome, they fixed things up. I will probably be beefing up my hosting plan sometime in the near future, but for now things should work okay.

Anyhow. The important part of this is–if you’ve pre-ordered Ancillary Mercy, you can read Chapters 2 & 3 by filling out this form.

Get a jump on reading Ancillary Mercy

Regular readers already know about the “sign up for my newsletter, get Chapter One of Ancillary Mercy now” thing. But just in case, I’m going to post about it again. Lots of people at my reading Sunday, and at my signing, didn’t know about it. So.

Basically, if you sign up you’ll get emails maybe three or four times a year with information like upcoming releases, opportunities for pre-order goodies, or appearance dates.

And if you subscribe to it now, you’ll get access to all of Chapter 1 of Ancillary Mercy. Like, today.

So if that sounds good to you, enter your email below, and if everything works the way it should, that’ll end up with Chapter 1 being sent to the email you give.


BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

Sometime soon–maybe the next week or two–you’ll be able to present proof of your having pre-ordered Ancillary Mercy and get (within a day or so, I understand) access to Chapters Two and Three! As soon as that form goes live I will blog about it here, so watch this space!

In the meantime, a few people have already read those first three chapters. Four lucky people at my reading in Spokane went home with pages. I hope they enjoyed them!

Also, if you’ve been following me on Tumblr, you know I had some swag made up. I gave out lots of it at Sasquan, so much that I actually ran myself out of Translator Dlique pins. I have ordered another batch. I plan to give them out in person over the next two months, and after October I’ll go back to listing Awn Elming pins, along with the Translator pins, in my Etsy store. The temp tattoos–they’re silver, there are two, one says “Justice of Toren” and the other says “One Esk 19”–are small enough that they’ll fit in a SASE, and I have a lot of them. So if you want some (and/or maybe if you want an autographed bookplate) send me a SASE with a note telling me you want tattoos (or a bookplate, or whatever) and I’ll pop a few in your envelope and drop it in the mail for you. (Address at the link–scroll down beneath the contact form.)

A Brief Note About the Audio Versions of the Ancillary Books

So, because I get questions about this, in various forms.

The US audiobook of Ancillary Justice was made by a company called Recorded Books. They set up a phone call with me to go over pronunciations, so Celeste Ciulla pronounces everything the way that I would. Any tunes, however, are her own and not mine–I didn’t provide music! I haven’t listened to the whole audiobook, and so don’t know if she used the actual tune of “the person with weapons” (aka L’homme Arme) or made her own. I think Ms Ciulla has a lovely voice, though, and I was very pleased with what I heard. (Yes, I know, Breq doesn’t have a lovely voice, but do you really want to listen to a whole novel read in a not-lovely voice? It’s an interesting question, and might be fun to figure out how to pull off, but I was happy to have Ms Ciulla do the book.)

After the US audiobook of Justice had been out a while, Orbit UK decided to do an audiobook. They sent me links to a bunch of samples of prospective narrators, and when I heard Adjoa Andoh’s, I went, “Right, her!” I was really pleased they A)listened to my preference and B) got her to do it. I love her voice and what I’ve heard of her reading. Nobody consulted me about pronunciations, though, so they’re different from the US one. And once again, I didn’t provide any tunes (I don’t have any, really, except for the “real” songs), and am curious whether L’homme Arme actually got used.

When Sword came out, they decided to use Ms Andoh’s reading for both the US and the UK. Which pleased me because, like I said, I love her reading. I gather it’s kind of disconcerting for US listeners who’d gotten used to Ms Ciulla’s reading. And, once again, I did not provide any tunes! I was asked recently on Tumblr if I had a tune for the “Oh Tree” song, and I don’t, but Ms Andoh does!

I don’t know what’s up with Mercy, but I am really hoping Adjoa Andoh has agreed to do it.

Ancillary Justice Hardcover Art!

So! The other day I mentioned that I’d seen the art for Subterranean’s limited edition hardcover of Ancillary Justice. And that it was fabulous but I couldn’t share it.

Today I saw it on Twitter! So I will now share it with you. Bask in the awesomeness that is Lauren Saint-Onge’s cover art for the hardcover of AJ:

ancillary-justice-by-ann-leckie

I know the “lettered” edition is sold out. I don’t see the link to pre-order the regular “limited” edition, so I’m not sure what’s up with that just now.

In any event. Isn’t that a lovely picture? I bought a print of the entire John Harris painting that’s the three Ancillary covers. (The original painting was beyond my means, but I am told it went to a loving home.) I am sorely tempted to see if I can get this one as a print, too. I just am so very happy with this!

Ancillary Sword Pre Order Update

You remember last week, I told you that if you pre-ordered Ancillary Sword and filled in this form with a copy and paste or an image file of your receipt, you could get a signed bookplate? Well. Starting today, if you do those things, you can also access the first three chapters of the book.

That’s right. Pre-order Ancillary Sword, fill in that form and you’ll be able to read not just the first chapter, which is already up on Orbit’s website, but the next two chapters.

I’m given to understand that if you’ve already filled in that form, you’ll be getting (perhaps already have gotten) an email giving you access to those chapters. Enjoy!

Editing to add: Currently the form is still geographically restricted. I’ve asked Orbit if it’s possible to let anyone who pre-orders, anywhere, to access the chapters. I’m told they’ll try to put up a form, and they’ll tell me when it’s up, and I’ll blog about it as soon as I get the word. So watch this space!

Wiscon

So, I’m not going to Wiscon next year.

There are lots of things I could say, but mostly they’ve already been said. I’m glad the concom appears to be rethinking their decision, but the fact that it had to be rethought at all is, well, I’ll settle for disheartening, though a stronger word would probably do better.

I wrote a much longer post, but really, everything in it has been said by others. But to me, it all boils down to Wiscon very clearly not having a functional harassment policy. There appear to be quite a few reasons this is the case, and none of them say anything good about how Wiscon is being run.

And the fact is, I love Wiscon. I go nearly every year. Hell, my whole family loves going. I was hoping, up until I saw the committee’s announcement last week, that they’d handle this. And then, desperately, that they’d handle the reaction–clarify somehow, or (way better, because even with the ambiguity about one or four years removed, it was still a bad call, and why do we care when or whether a serial harasser can apologize or not, exactly?) issue a new decision, because better late than never, right? But the comments and blog posts that I’ve seen over the last few days have removed all doubt on that score. The dysfunction on display has been such that even if the committee issued a new ruling tomorrow, I would have no faith they’d understood what had happened and why, and no faith that any future cases would be handled any better.

(And frankly, the stuff coming out just now about how Frenkel apparently lied about the nature of any NDA he might have had with Tor? Only makes things worse. First of all, like I said above, we care about him making an apology why exactly? This keeps Wiscon attendees safe how? And second of all, the guy’s a known serial harasser, and you take his word for this? And you’re shocked when it turns out he lied? Hello?)

Anyway. The end result of all this is, I’m not going to Wiscon next year. And won’t until I see a functioning harassment policy and very possibly a new set of names on the concom.

Wiscon

I have just sent an email to chair@wiscon.info regarding Wiscon’s failure to address multiple incidences of harassment. I won’t say anything more about that, unless it becomes clear that only public outcry will have an effect. This is not to say that I at all disapprove of anyone else engaging in said public outcry right now–quite the contrary. If everyone involved had refused to say anything publicly up till now, no one would know there was a problem. And that’s exactly how harassment keeps on happening.

So, except for that part of things, I had a great time at Wiscon, hanging with friends old and new. I was on some panels, all of which were a lot of fun, including the “SFWA, is it Relevant?” panel, which for some reason the Deities of Panel Assignments had decided I ought to moderate. But all the panelists, and the panel audiences, were awesome and smart and fun. I am well aware that I lucked out.

I don’t generally attend as many panels as I used to, certainly not as many as I intend to when I first look at the schedule. One of the few that I did was about gods as characters, and there was one small moment of “hrmph?” that, later, I wished I’d thought of raising my hand and saying a particular thing in response to.

So, one of the panelists had grown up Muslim and was now, ISTR, Episcopalian. They remarked that Ishmael had been a major and central figure to them, growing up, and that it sometimes startled them how little emphasis he got in Christian traditions, sometimes it seemed (I am paraphrasing here) as though he barely existed for Christians.

Another panelist replied that, no, actually, Christians knew about Ishmael!

And I sat there, and I went, “hrmf.” And it was only this afternoon in the shower (as often happens) that something sort-of-parallel occurred to me.

A friend of mine, who is Roman Catholic, married a lovely man who had grown up Southern Baptist, and who had decided to convert to Roman Catholicism. So they attended the sort of classes that you do, when you’re converting. In one of these, the instructor was trying to explain to the students just how incredibly central the Eucharist is to Roman Catholics.

One student said, “Oh, but it’s central to the church I grew up in, too! We have Communion at least once a month!”

Reader, did you just laugh? I’ll lay money you have been, at some time in your life, Roman Catholic. In case you didn’t laugh, to a Catholic, that statement sounds a lot like, “Bathing is very important to me! I take a bath every month, whether I need it or not!”

The thing is, I’m quite certain that student was utterly and completely sincere–no doubt the Eucharist was very important to them, and no doubt they felt quite sincerely that their devotion was equal to anyone else’s–but, not (yet) having been Catholic, they had no freaking idea just how central and important it is to Catholicism. Catholics don’t have Communion monthly, or quarterly. Weekly is a bare minimum and I’ve known quite a few people who attend Mass daily. Even if you don’t go to Mass every Sunday, it can be kind of weird to visit some other Christian denominations and find so many things missing, things that point to that very centrality of the Eucharist. It’s not that denominations that have Communion monthly or quarterly don’t care about or understand or value it–but until you’ve been a Catholic, or spent a lot of time with Catholics and/or Catholicism, or attended Mass on a regular, long-time basis, it can be hard to appreciate the differences in scale and intensity, between the way Catholics do and quite a few other denominations do.

I wished I’d remembered this story, to tell it. I’m sure the panelist meant well, but I’m equally sure they don’t actually have any idea what the first panelist meant, or how big that difference the first panelist was describing probably is.

Con or Bust Auction

Still head-down, mostly hiding from the internet. However!

Con or Bust is an organization that helps fans of color attend SFF conventions. You can read about Con or Bust and its history and goals here.

They hold an auction every year. There are lots of cool things you can bid on: a signed ARC of Genevieve Valentine’s upcoming novel; three months of the Wyrding Studios Earring Club; signed copies of three of Martha Wells’ books of the Raksura; a custom handspun, hand woven scarf… and that’s just scrolling down the first few pages. Go scroll through and see all the fabulous things on offer!

It just so happens, though, that one of those things is a signed copy of Ancillary Justice. Or, two actually. The two top bidders will each receive a copy, if I understand correctly.

Go on over and check it out! It’s a good cause, and I’m really pleased to be able to contribute something this year.

Misc Notes

Various things I’ve considered tweeting, or that are too small for their own blog posts:

1)There was a time when I felt strongly the responsibility to finish any book I started. In some cases, I’ve been the better for doing that, but in others the impulse to lay a book aside might have been better obeyed.

Personally, I think that if you’re really, really finding a book a slog, and you really want to stop reading it, actually putting it down for good is definitely an option. Yes, even if it’s my book. Thank you for trying it, sorry it wasn’t your kind of thing, no hard feelings on my part. It happens. You are under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to spend your time finishing a book you’re not enjoying.

2)I am still amazed in the best possible way by the reception Ancillary Justice has had so far.

3)This recipe for sesame noodles is delicious, though next time I make them I will cut down on the (non-sesame) oil. (Like a good allrecipes user, I actually altered it from the get-go–I used mirin instead of rice vinegar, I halved the sriracha, and I only used half the sugar. I might use even less sugar next time. And possibly a touch more sriracha.) It looks like a useful basic recipe to have with other stuff–tofu, leftover chicken, whatever vegetables you have on hand, that sort of thing.

4) While I was writing Ancillary Justice there were quite a few times that I read something that made me want to cry, because it was so good and there was no way in a million years my own work would ever come close to what I had just read. It was hopeless for me to even attempt it.

I kept writing anyway. Because, damn it. Just because.

My honest advice to any writer who has such a moment when reading some book that impresses them–and I suspect quite a lot of us have had such a moment, or will have at least one or two of them–is to feel those feelings, and then make yourself a nice relaxing cup of hot chocolate or tea (I recommend a lavender tea, but you have whatever is warm and comforting and relaxing). And/or do whatever self-comforting things you do. Bath, or music, or a silly movie, or whatever. Then, go to bed and get yourself a good night’s rest.

The next day, get up, sit down at the keyboard, and keep writing.