Now that the book’s out in the wild, I want to talk about how very clever and stupid I am.
Join me in dissecting The Traitor Baru Cormorant, chapter by chapter! I’ll talk about my prose decisions, characterization, and behind-the-scenes secrets, like which chapters I wrote in a drunken panic and who I want you to write fanfiction about.
Spoilers for the WHOLE BOOK abound!
My book is out! The reviews are shining! Baru Cormorant is loosed upon the world. God help us all, in particular our account-books.
Let’s check out some of the reviews, interviews, and columns that’ve covered the book.
I’ve got a big batch of fiction coming out with Destiny: The Taken King, Bungie’s next release. I had the good fortune to work on a lot of the Grimoire, Destiny’s fiction companion! I hope everyone enjoys it.
I have a column out on Tor.com today, ‘How Baru Cormorant would Overthrow Emperor Palpatine, Kill Voldemort, and Stop Sauron.’ (They didn’t go with the original title, ‘Your Heroes Are Morons.’) Baru is full of good and not-so-good advice for your favorite heroes.
And reviews for my debut novel are filing in! I’m very excited to share them, but let’s wait until we’re closer to the book. In another milestone, The Traitor Baru Cormorant has popped up on Google Books, which means we can look at the book’s word cloud!
Here are the machine’s favorite words from the novel.
“Viciously original, beautifully written, and just heart-rending over and over again.”
There’s a monster coming. An empire with the answers to everything. It wants to conquer your home, your parents, and you.
You are seven years old. You are armed with your wits. No other weapon can be trusted.
Here is your solution: conquer the empire from the inside. Rule the world. Fix the course of history.
Begin.
Tor.com has posted Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of The Traitor Baru Cormorant.
I’m doing page proofs on THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT, my September debut. It’s a novel about sex, money, imperial power, colonial resistance, accounting, logistics, psychology, and the price of civilization. It’s a story about a young woman fighting to save her home and change the world. It’s made out of sentences.
I like quite a bit of it. Like any writer, I hate some of it. We can talk about the good stuff when the book comes out! Let’s talk about the sentences I’ve discovered I hate, the specific kind of sentence I loathe the most. Let’s figure out why they’re broken.
In the name of awards season, here’s a quick breakdown of all the stories I had in print in 2014. I don’t think I’ll have much short fiction out in 2015, since I’ve a couple books due, so this might’ve been my big year!
Very grateful to everyone who helped make these stories happen.
I’m overjoyed to report that Tor Books will publish my first three novels. Look for my debut, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, in Fall 2015.
I’m enormously grateful to my agent, Jennifer Jackson; to Marco Palmieri at Tor; to Sarah Brand, who was sitting in the room at Alpha 2011 when Baru came into my head and who I’m convinced talked me into writing it; to Rachel Sobel and all my other wonderful first readers; and to Jenny and Stefan, for helping get me out of one place and into this one.
I’m overjoyed to report that I’ve signed with Jennifer Jackson at the Donald Maass Literary Agency to represent The Traitor Baru Cormorant and my future long-form work.
I’ll have some big news on The Traitor Baru Cormorant in the next couple weeks – not the last hurdle, but certainly not the smallest.
On the full-time front, I’ve accepted an offer from Bungie Studios in Seattle to work as a writer. I’ve been a fan of Bungie’s storytelling since I discovered Marathon Infinity, and I’m really excited to tackle this new challenge.
I’m trying to write this damn story for an opportunity I don’t want to miss and it’s killing me. I think I’ve cut at least ten words for every word I’ve kept. I’m literally dying here. I’ve died. I’m dead.
While I rot into my keyboard you might be interested in the following: