Normally I wouldn't be blogging right now because I'd be at Eastercon, but I've decided - along with quite a large part of the Glasgow contingent, actually - to skip the 'con this year. Partly because of money issues - you'll recall I was scraping by on savings and occasional payments from Tor while my back healed - and partly because I just wasn't really up to it that much. Finding out my publishers weren't going to be down pretty much sealed the deal. Instead, I wound up in Uisgue Bheatha last night for the occasion of Chris's 30th, along with several others.
Hal and some of the others have talked up the British Fantasy Convention, as I think it's called, that takes place later in the year, and I might think about that. There's a smaller convention happening up this way in a couple of weeks time - its name escapes me at this moment - just a two day quickie, but maybe that'll fulfill my con-going mojo without necessarily going south of the border.
The finished, wraparound, glossy cover for the hardback publication of Stealing Light came through midweek from Tor , and I'll probably be showing it off tonight. I've found, however, something always seems to go a bit wrong during the process somewhere down the line: in the past, the taglines on my books have been written by my editor, but for once I decided to come up with my own: 'Some Secrets Are Best Left Buried'. The original Tor tagline had been 'Be Careful Where You Run To' ... and that's what's on the cover, apparently because a production note got waylaid somewhere down the line. Such things happen.
I got thinking about titles again, thinking maybe something a bit more 'thematic' might be the way to go. At first, I thought 'Stealing Light', followed by 'something else' Light, followed by 'something else again' Light. Get the picture? Then I was chatting with H/al and Bob - who's threatening to start up a writer's group in Dundee - and an alternative name for book two came to me: Stealing Fire.
So that would be Stealing Light, followed by Stealing Fire, followed by ... what? Ideas were bandied about in a darkened corner of the Uisgue Bheatha. Stealing Space ... Stealing Stars -... and H/al came up with one which may be my favourite, Stealing Time.
So there you have it: Stealing Light, Stealing Fire, and Stealing Time. I'll see if I still like the sound of them in another week or so.
4 comments:
Stealing Hope?
Steeling Jim? ha ha
Stealing Fire is a great Bruce Cockburn album
Stealing Fire seems a little dissapointing compared to Light and Time. Rather specific really. How about Stealing Gravity? ;)
It's maybe a bit obvious - Stealing Fire - from some points of view, but thematically it fits nicely, which is why I like it; and you get the linked names, of course. Plus, the whole book - or series, if it comes to that - is based around the whole stealing-fire-from-the-gods myth structure (admittedly initially more by accident than by direct intention), so that's another reason I think it works. For now, anyway.
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