Guess I’d better get busy and write the second book…

If you review books and you’d like a copy, send me an email or just leave a comment on this post.

The art work is by Allen Douglas, and I like it a lot.

Here’s the blurb from the Amazon.ca page (where you can already pre-order the book…and where, obviously, some people have, because it has a remarkably high rating for not actually being in print yet):

Before the Lady called her, Ariane’s life was a mess. Two years ago, her mother disappeared. She bounced around different foster homes until her aunt finally took her in. The meanest clique at her new high school has decided to make Ariane their prime target. And to top it all off, she is having frightening premonitions, and they are becoming more intense. The moment water touches her skin, she sees visions of a lake, a lady, and a sword. When a staircase opens up in the middle of Wascana Lake and the water begins singing to her, she has no choice but to answer the call.

Ariane learns that she descends from the Lady of the Lake, and soon the stories she thought were legend become a real life nightmare. She and her unexpected companion, Wally Knight, are charged with finding the scattered shards of Excalibur before Merlin can get his hands on them. The infamous magician, known in this world as software tycoon Rex Major, is trying to recover the pieces of Arthur’s sword so he can reforge it and restore his limitless power. Suddenly, Ariane’s life seems to have a purpose and a clear direction – but how can a troubled teen and her brainy sidekick outwit the ancient, ruthless sorcerer?

I’m excited about the upcoming release of Song of the Sword and can’t wait to write the rest of the series. It’s going to be a blast!

I expect to be signing lots of copies of the book tomorrow, and I’m also very pleased that a copy has gone out to every high school library in the province. You can check out the first chapter online here.

But wait, that’s not the only writing news from me this week! My other big task over the past while has been editorial revisions for my new YA fantasy novel, Song of the Sword, Book 1 in The Shards of Excalibur, coming out this fall from Lobster Press. It’s been an interesting process–much more of a line-by-line edit than what I do with Sheila Gilbert at DAW. I finished the final section today and it’s already going into layout. I expect to see cover art soon and ARCs. I’m very pleased with the book and looking forward to continuing the story I’ve sketched out for the remaining four books in the series.

Oh, and I’m very pleased that the cover artist is going to be Allen Douglas; check out his work here and you’ll see why!

Now I’ll be returning to Blue Fire, my other YA novel, which isn’t sold but at least has an editor interested in looking at it once it’s completed. And you know what that means: starting next week, the return of The First Sentence I Wrote Today!

I can’t wait!

Finally, an update arrived this week on Magebane, the first Lee Arthur Chane fantasy novel. It looks like I won’t be getting editorial comments on that on until I see Sheila at KeyCon in Winnipeg in May (where she’s editor Guest of Honour). Currently it’s not slated for publication until August of 2011, though it could move up a bit.

The Singing Water is scheduled to kick things off next fall; which means my first couple of months of 2010 will be spent on revising it.

I’m very excited to be returning to YA fantasy and looking forward to working with Lobster Press.

With this sale, I’ll have at least five books coming out next year: my history of Saskatchewan surveyors, my biographies of Johnny Cash and Andy Warhol for Enslow Publishers, Magebane, my first adult fantasy under my Lee Arthur Chane nom de plume, for DAW, and The Singing Water.

Whew! Hope my typing fingers hold out.

He came in alone, leaving the guards in the hallway outside, and closed the door gently behind him.

Words today: 2,138

Total thus far: 46,788

And, yes, I worked on Magebane, too. Didn’t take any new photos today, but here’s a nice sunset photo from the other day! (All of these photos I’ve been posting on my “first sentence I wrote today” posts were taken with my BlackBerry Storm, by the way…not sure if I’ve mentioned that or not.)

And then the gate to the inner city opened, and what he saw drove all other thoughts from his head.

Words today: 1,998

Total thus far: 44,650

I’m officially past the 200th page of the manuscript, if it were printed in standard manuscript format, which of course it has not been and may never be, everything being done by email these days. Anyway, it’s steaming along pretty nicely.

This afternoon I wrote in a new location, the Hotel Saskatchewan Radisson Plaza, both in the Monarch Lounge (from which I had a view of the work being done on the federal government building on the corner of Victoria Avenue and Scarth Street-Photo 1) and upstairs on the deserted convention floor (Photo 2), which  had the benefit of being very quiet. That was all Magebane rewriting work.

Tomorrow…much of the same!

The much-diminished caravan of Freefolk Clan Diannan had only been on the road for an hour the next morning when the attack came.

Words today: 2,277

Words thus far: 42,652

A good morning’s work. I’m getting close to 200 manuscript pages on this story. I think it’s going to need considerable pruning when I get to rewriting, but the plot is advancing well.

I spent the mid-day wearing my editor-of-Fine-Lifestyles-Regina hat, then turned into Lee Arthur Chane in the afternoon and worked on Magebane. I’m still (again) rewriting more than writing, but I really think I’ve got my plot demons licked this time. (Sounds like a fantasy-novel curse, actually. “Oh, go lick a demon!”) So good progress there, too.

Tonight I watched The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl (or is it the other way around?) with my daughter, then we played Barbies before bed. (Major Daddy brownie points! Score!) The movie, by the way, wasn’t half bad. I’d have adored it as a 10-year-old. My daughter liked it.

Science column tomorrow, otherwise it’ll be a rinse-and-repeat of today.

Today’s photo: a decorative lamp. Because it was there, that’s why.

Imlinn stood on the Freefolk trail leading north toward City Duodecim and studied the tracks he had found there by the light of the stars.

Words today: 2,068

Total thus far: 40,381

Good writing this morning, as a scene I hadn’t even realized I needed came to life and both told me something about a major character and helped explain a few things that needed explaining. I enjoyed it! Plus I was sitting outside on a beautifully warm morning with a cup of coffee. What’s not to love?

This afternoon I worked on Magebane, going back through it from the beginning (again) to see what I can salvage and what needs complete rewriting in view of what I really hope is the necessary plot corrections I dreamed up yesterday.

Concentration was somewhat hampered by the fact that Saskatchewan Roughrider football players, both present and past (from the 1989 Grey Cup championship team) were exchanging war stories just around the corner. Half the time I found what they were saying more interesting than what I was attempting to do. But I got some stuff done.

Today’s photo was taken with the built-in Webcam in the Samsung NC10, so that’s sort of what I looked like while I was writing, although I wasn’t always smiling like that…

In the stunned silence that followed, Amlinn stood stock-still for a long moment, then suddenly ran after her grandfather.

Words today: 1,514

Total thus far: 38,313

That was first thing this morning; in the afternoon, I did good work on Magebane, but it was, once again, of the rethinking variety. I went back into the outline and figured out some more things that have been causing me fits. Now I really think the plot is sound, instead of scatterbrained, which is how I’ve felt it be as I’ve tried to write. That’s the good thing. Bad thing: I think I’m going to have to go back to the beginning yet again and rewrite from there to make it all come together. So, no new word count today, and the word count thus far is essentially meaningless.

Sigh.

Hey, but I’ve still got 2 1/2 months to deadline…

Best thing about today: they put in much more comfy chairs outside on the deck at the Wascana Country Club, which meant I could sit outside in the shad with my netbook and write and enjoy the great outdoors at the same time. A very nice writerly thing to do. Sometimes I really like my “job.”