But Enough About Me!

As it has now been officially announced, I can officially announce it here as well.

Orbit US/UK has acquired KATE ELLIOT in a new three-book deal. She’s doing a totally new series for us and the first book is titled COLD MAGIC. A Victorian fantasy novel set in an alternate world of trolls, dragons, and darker magic, this is a combination of steampunk and adventure fantasy at its most fast—and furious.


I also call this book my Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy with Bonus! airship, Phoenician spies, and the intelligent descendants of troodons.*


Book one is complete and turned in. For the first time, I'm writing a series in first person. I would never have guessed, back before, that I would ever write a novel much less a trilogy in first person, but you know how it is: as soon as you say you'll never do something, you end up doing it.

Some beta readers have already read this version, being kind souls willing to undertake the task, and given me great feedback.

Additionally, in a move quite unusual for me as a writer, I am at the moment writing an extended preliminary synopsis of books 2 and 3. Normally I just make choppy notes in some manner of disorganized chronological narrative order, but because the Cold Magic trilogy has an extremely linear plot (see: first person narrator) with a very dense and complex background to be brought to the surface with the right balance and in the correct layers, I have to try to line up my cookies before I eat them. Mixed metaphors and all.



* I totally stole the "Bonus!" from Cherie Priest, author of the soon to hit your bookshelves BONESHAKER, an utterly fabulous steampunk novel whose main character is a MOTHER. Love it!

First, thanks to all of you for your congratulations and good wishes upon completion of Traitors' Gate, the third Crossroads book and the final in the "Gate" trilogy, which I have decided to call it for lack of a better idea.

I spent today dealing with email. Of the answering of email there is no end. If you sent me something days weeks or months ago and you don't get a reply from me by Monday, email me again. I might have lost it. I apologize in advance. Just in general.

Next week I start (actually, continue) work on my icepunk novel (icepunk: steampunk and/or noir fantasy in an Ice Age). I'm not alone in writing in this exciting new sub-genre (which sub-genre aberwyn made up when I was telling her about my project.) Mark Charan Newton is a fellow icepunk writer: his Nights of Villjamur is due out in the UK in early 2009. I know there are others.

As for Crossroads: Traitors' Gate, as I have said already and which I will say again, wraps a trilogy. It has a solid ending. Really.

But--because you knew there was a 'but'--I will be writing more books in the Crossroads universe. As I have said elsewhere, the sequence was originally envisioned as a trilogy, a standalone bridge novel, and a trilogy (this second trilogy is the original story I was going to write).

Due to how to certain things fell out quite differently at the end of book #3 than I had intended, however, the standalone novel I had originally envisioned must now be tossed out the window. So I'm going to have to spend a month or two trying to figure out the plot of the book which will take its place. The second trilogy will remain pretty much as planned.

Tomorrow: an upcoming short story anthology!