January 13, 2010 / Uncategorized

Wednesday Updatezzz…

Last night did not go quite as planned, in that I didn’t plan to bring my wife to the emergency room at 11:30, or to stay there waiting for doctors and lab results until 5:30 in the morning. She’s fine (aside from bruises after five attempts to draw blood) — this was a scare that thankfully started to pass after the third hour of sitting and waiting in the E.R. But neither one of us are what I’d call fully functional this morning.

So today we do random updates, ’cause it’s what my brain can handle.

Snow Queen is on schedule. I’m still planning to have the first draft finished by the end of the month. And I had a happy-dance moment last night where more pieces of the ending fell into place. I love it when that happens!

Conventions — I’ll be at ConFusion later this month (1/22 – 1/24), doing what looks like seven panels and an autographing session all on Saturday. (Including a fairy tale panel with Cat Valente and Peter Beagle — eep!) I’ve also committed to doing Millennicon in March.

Diana Pharaoh Francis is planning to kill me, and it’s AWESOME! Click over and read the excerpt from her work in progress, Crimson Wind.

And … um … yeah. That’s what I’ve got. Sleep now?

12 Comments

Steve Buchheit
January 13, 2010 @ 12:40 pm

Glad she’s okay. That’s never a fun time, even after the spouses start to get better, the caretaker spouse tends to have the jitters the whole way through.

See ya at Confusion. I’ll wave as you go running down the corridor.
RKCharron
January 13, 2010 @ 2:48 pm

Hi Jim
I’m so glad your wife’s okay. I’ve been there. There’s nothing worse than that helpless feeling.
Jim C. Hines
January 13, 2010 @ 3:09 pm

Just catch me on Friday or Sunday. Looking at the schedule, those days should be nice and relaxing.
Jim C. Hines
January 13, 2010 @ 3:09 pm

Thanks. I’m hoping this means we’ve had our medical crisis for 2010, and can relax and enjoy the rest of the year without any further hospital visits.
Miriam Forster
January 13, 2010 @ 7:16 pm

Wow, I’ve been lurking around here for a while now and I finally got a comment to work! (Livejournal despises my blogger id.)

Anyway, just dropped into say I’m glad your wife is all right. All night ER visits are never fun. Hopefully you can both get some sleep.
Jim C. Hines
January 13, 2010 @ 7:20 pm

Thanks, Miriam.

My wife it far tougher than I am. She actually went in to work today. Me, I stayed home and wandered around like a zombie. But I suspect we’ll both be crashing just as soon as we can get the kids down tonight 🙂
Max
January 13, 2010 @ 11:03 pm

Since random is sorta the topic, why does Drei Engel für Armand have a different artist? I mean, you have cover art already, so why a substitution? I can imagine that there are contractual obligations involved, but I’m curious as to the specifics.
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Jim C. Hines
January 14, 2010 @ 8:51 am

Max,

The artist who did the cover for the DAW edition had a contract to produce that artwork for DAW, my U.S. publisher. As I understand it, that does not carry over to any other editions produced by other publishers. So Lubbe (the German publisher) would have to pay the artist to use that image.

Some publishers do exactly that, of course. It’s sometimes cheapter to pay to reuse artwork than to commission something original. On the other hand, the audiences often look for different things — a cover that does well in the U.S. might not be as popular in another country.

Because the author has little to no involvement in the cover art process, that’s about all I can tell you. I don’t know the specifics either. It’s curious, though.

Did you see the variety we ended up with on the goblin books in other countries? I loved seeing the different styles.
Max
January 14, 2010 @ 11:44 am

I’d just barely noticed the “extra” Goblin cover in your banner a minute before you mentioned them. Now that I think about it, new artists make sense, particularly where a culture might view something –like goblins– a little differently. ‘Course, they can’t change your hero from blue to green or red, but there’s subtleties that would still make a “goblin” more immediately recognizable.
Martin
January 14, 2010 @ 1:05 pm

Hi, I would like to ask if you plan to write more wonderful Goblin. Although it is clear that the whole trilogy has concluded, but perhaps a Goblin stories in one book or with any other Goblin Jig or what he did before it visited adventurers? Please, please, write a sequel. You’re my favorite writer and leader Goblin is my favorite book (I read it three times and another book I never read more than twice). Please, please …
Jim C. Hines
January 14, 2010 @ 3:56 pm

Hi Martin,

I actually talked about this a little while back in this blog post: http://www.jimchines.com/2009/12/4th-goblin-book/

I’m afraid that right now, I have no plans for another goblin book. I’ve got the princess series to finish up, and a new series I’ll be pitching to my publisher after that.

I’m so glad you like the book — that’s great to hear, and this sort of comment makes my whole day. But please check that other post for my reasons for not going back to the goblins right now.

Thanks,
Jim