![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jo_graham's journalCreate a LiveJournal Account Learn more
|
You are viewing jo_graham's journal Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more | Explore LJ: Life Entertainment Music Culture News & Politics Technology |
Black Ships and Hand of IsisAcross a Wide Dark Ocean |
 |
| Nov. 19th, 2009 @ 02:06 pm The Update | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Today I turned in the final page proof for Stealing Fire. It's completely, totally done! Hopefully after the holidays I'll have some early copies to give away, so watch this space! It seems so long since I finished it, nearly a year. It was almost strange to read it over cover to cover at once, and join Lydias once again in the last days of Alexander's empire and the first days of the world to come. By the end of the month I'll be turning in the first draft on Death Game, the first of my Stargate Atlantis novels, which is due out in July. Needless to say, it's mostly done. I'm just polishing a few things and cleaning up a little. I'm very pleased with the way it came out -- though surprised that it reads as such a lighthearted romp in many ways. My Numinous World books are not lighthearted, and it was fun to write some banter and humor for a change. Anybody have any questions about either of these projects? I'm happy to take questions on Stealing Fire or Death Game. (Or Black Ships and Hand of Isis if you'd rather!) | |||
| Nov. 7th, 2009 @ 05:38 pm Stealing Fire Chapters | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| I'm working through the page proofs on Stealing Fire, and it occurred to me that I always put a lot of thought into the chapter titles. I thought, as a preview, I'd list the first half of the chapter titles for Stealing Fire, and answer questions about why I chose any that seem particularly interesting. Here they are! Prologue -- The King Lies in Babylon The Carian Boy Ashes Khemet Dreams and Nightmares Under the Moon Companion The Heart of the Black Land A Clever Plan Wings of Fire Lady of the Desert Hot Embers | |||
| Nov. 5th, 2009 @ 09:08 am Works in Progress | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| A reader asks what I'm working on now. Well, yesterday I got the page proofs back for Stealing Fire, one last run through the typeset pages to catch any last errors before the book goes to print. It's strange reading straight through again, and I have to say that I'm very pleased with how it came out! There is a lot more action in Stealing Fire than there was in Black Ships and Hand of Isis, and it's a pleasure to me to finally get to write some of the great battles of the ancient world. I was just reviewing the Battle of Gaugamela as experienced by Lydias, and I'm very pleased with the results. One of the advantages of a tight first person narrator is being able to make it very immediate. I'm also wrapping up Death Game, the first of my Stargate Atlantis books. I'm working on a scene to insert, a tense scene between Rodney McKay and Major Lorne as they have different opinions over how to find the missing members of the team. Rodney is a real challenge to write, but I'm enjoying him. Hopefully later today I'll move on to some backstory for Lorne, a character who never got as much screen time as I wished he would. And I'm starting work on a new project with Melissa Scott, which I'll talk more about later. I'm also resisting putting my head into The Chariot, the second of my (as yet unsold) historical fantasies set in the Napoleonic Wars, because I have too much else on my plate right now. And yet August of 1805 is beckoning with seductive gestures.... No no no! Rodney! Lorne! | |||
| Nov. 3rd, 2009 @ 09:05 am Stealing Fire | |||
|---|---|---|---|
I'm delighted to be able to post the cover for Stealing Fire! Stealing Fire will be out in the US and UK in May, and I'm so happy with this beautiful cover art by John Jude Palencar.  You can click on it to make it bigger.This is definitely my Lydias -- I especially love his hands, which look exactly as I've described. This is from a scene near the beginning of the book, when Lydias is leaving Babylon in the wake of Alexander's death -- Palencar has included the lovely detail of "Ishtar's horned moon" watching over his journey. Here's the description that accompanies it: This is the tale of Alexander’s soldier, Lydias of Miletus, who having survived the final campaigns of the king’s life now has to deal with the chaos surrounding his death. Still mourning his Indian wife, Sati, and their infant son, who were killed in Gedrosia, Lydias throws his lot in with Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s generals who has grabbed Egypt as his personal territory. As the generals fight and plot and murder, it seems as though Alexander’s dreams will slip away entirely. But the gods of Egypt have other ideas, and they are through with neither Ptolemy nor Lydias. Lydias has served them before, when another armada threatened to overrun Egypt in the distant past, and now they will aid Ptolemy in his most audacious plan — stealing Alexander’s body and bringing it to Egypt to be an eternal bulwark against invasion, and the cornerstone of the city that would exemplify his dreams. Aided by the eunuch Bagoas, the Persian archer Artashir, and the Athenian courtesan Thais, Ptolemy and Lydias must take on all the contenders in a desperate adventure whose prize is the fate of a white city by the sea, and Alexander’s legacy. I'd love to hear what you guys think! I think this book is the best one yet! (And yes, I plan to do a giveaway of advance copies again, but I think it will probably be after the first of the year before I have them.) -- Jo | |||
| Oct. 24th, 2009 @ 08:12 am Yuletide | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Thank you, everyone who nominated Black Ships and Hand of Isis for Yuletide this year! I've been a participant in Yuletide since its first year, and I can't tell you how pleased I am to see that Black Ships and Hand of Isis will both be active fandoms this year! Thank you so much! | |||
| Oct. 5th, 2009 @ 07:39 am What Could Be Cooler? | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| I know I've said several times before, including in the interview section at the end of Black Ships, that Melissa Scott was one of my favorite authors, and has been for twenty years since I first encountered her books when I was in college. Last fall I was stunned when she blurbed Hand of Isis. What could be cooler than being compared to Mary Renault by Melissa Scott? Writing a book with Melissa Scott! That's right! Melissa and I are collaborating on a project together! Hopefully I'll be able to announce the specifics very soon, but the first part of it should be out late next year. In the meantime, links to some of my favorite books of hers. If you like the worldbuilding in Black Ships, try her The Kindly Ones, the book that taught me to worldbuild. If you like the relationship between Charmian/Emrys/Dion in Hand of Isis, try her Five Twelfths of Heaven with our protagonists in a three way marriage. And lastly, if you think you'll like my Alexander the Great, Hephaistion and Ptolemy in Stealing Fire, try her take on these historical figures in A Choice of Destinies. And no, no Napoleonic marshals this time, but we may get there! | |||
| Sep. 8th, 2009 @ 11:30 am Exciting Announcement | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Hi folks! Now that summer is over and fall is upon us, I thought it was a good time to announce a new and exciting project. In addition to Stealing Fire, the next book in the Numinous World which is due out from Orbit in May, I will have a second book out next year. Death Game will be my first book in a shared universe, a licensed Stargate Atlantis novel that will be released in the US and UK in July! As a fan, I'm delighted to write the iconic characters and to delve a little more deeply into this universe. I hope it will appeal both to people who like my books, and to Stargate Atlantis fans! Unsurprisingly, the story is centering around Teyla Emmagen and John Sheppard, though if you've read my Dion you won't be surprised that Radek Zelenka seems to be doing his best to steal the show! I'll post more about it as we get closer to time -- and I hope you enjoy it as much as I am enjoying writing it! | |||
| Aug. 12th, 2009 @ 08:44 am Which Historical Period? | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| A reader asks, "How do you decide which historical period to write in?" It's a complicated question. Years before I started Hand of Isis or Stealing Fire I knew I would write something in their respective periods! For example, I read Arrian and Plutarch and Curtius, the original sources for Stealing Fire, twenty years ago or more and did some thinking then about what a story might look like. I ran a gaming campaign set in the campaigns of Alexander the Great, and that really helped me pull out some things that are at the heart of Stealing Fire. The character of Artashir, for example, first emerged in that campaign, as did the approach I've taken to Ptolemy and Thais. When I get interested in a period like this, I tend to read all the other historical novels and historical fantasies set in it. Mary Renault completely dominates, of course, and her novel, The Persian Boy, is to my mind still the finest historical novel I've ever read. Which made me less likely to write in this period myself, and I shelved a bunch of ideas for years because the idea of writing the same historical figures as Mary Renault was simply completely intimidating! ( Deciding to Write ) | |||
| Jul. 31st, 2009 @ 12:00 pm Sothis Rising | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| In several of my books a main character sees Sothis, Sirius the Dog Star, at its dawn rising and it has tremendous significance. In Black Ships, Gull sees Sothis rising up the sky the morning that her lady wakes her and tells her to go to the curve in the road where at dawn she sees nine black ships making toward Pylos. A year later it is this same rising that she and Xandros celebrate together. And of course it is also her birthday -- Gull tells Hry that she was born on the night of Sothis' first rising. For Gull, this was July 10th. But because of the procession of the equinoxes, it's not the same date for the others who are seeing it! When Charmian sees Sothis rising, for her it's July 19th. When Lydias, in my forthcoming book Stealing Fire, sees Sothis climbing up the sky before dawn in the morning before a critical battle, for him it's July 17th. And when Elza, in my yet unsold book The Chariot, sees Sothis rising at dawn over the English Channel, it's the morning of August 4, 1805. For readers who live in the Northern Hemisphere, this year Sothis will rise just before dawn next Wednesday, August 5. It's interesting also to note that while it's not visible in the Southern Hemisphere now, before about 10,500 BC Sothis was only visible in the Southern Hemisphere! That was the point at which it first became visible in places just north of the equator, like Egypt. In Hand of Isis when Dion tells Charmian that he remembers sitting on a beach with Sothis rising but that the stars were strange, he's remembering a place south of the equator and prior to 10,500 BC. I'm sure there is a story there for another day! | |||
| Jul. 22nd, 2009 @ 08:25 am New Cover! | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Hi folks, I wanted to share the new cover for the mass market paperback of Hand of Isis, which will come out in January. It features the work of John Jude Palencar. You can click on it to make it bigger!  | |||
| Jul. 10th, 2009 @ 02:27 pm Real People? | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| A reader asks, "Do you ever use real people in your books, people you know rather than historical figures?" I suppose it's inevitable that sometimes things creep in, but I don't do so intentionally. When my sister read Black Ships she commented that Pythia, old Pythia who raised Gull, looked and sounded like my favorite teacher in high school right down to the red hair. I really had not realized that, that Gull's surrogate mother was so much like the teacher I credit with encouraging my writing. But of course my sister, who also knew her, recogized her immediately. I can only think that Janet Frederick Rhodes, big fan of historical novels that she was and history teacher, would be immensely pleased to show up as Pythia! Sadly, she passed away a few years ago, and I suppose this was my unintentional tribute. More often it's that people look like people I know but aren't them in any meaningful way. For example, I realized that in my next book, Stealing Fire, the little girl Chloe looks a lot like my own seven year old daughter. But Chloe is very much not my daughter in personality. Sometimes I do consciously think of someone while writing, with sometimes interesting results. For example, in one of my books that I wrote several years ago but haven't sold yet I could not help but think of the French Revolutionary figure Paul Barras as reminding me of John Edwards. This was before any scandal about Edwards broke, and I thought it was an unfair comparison, as Barras does not at all appear in a flattering light in my book. But then the scandal broke, and the comparison suddenly seemed apt after all! | |||
| Jun. 24th, 2009 @ 07:44 am Stealing Fire | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| A reader asks, "What's your next book and when is it due out?" My next book is called Stealing Fire, and it's due out from Orbit next spring. It's about the death of Alexander the Great and the beginnings of Ptolemaic Egypt, as seen through the eyes of Gull/Charmian's incarnation in that time, a soldier named Lydias of Miletus. Alexander is dead in Babylon and his empire is crumbling. Can anything be saved? Or is this a descent into another dark age? Will Lydias and his friends (including that time's Cleopatra and Emrys) be able to preserve their world? Or will everything they have fought for be lost? When we get closer to the publication date I'll put up an excerpt. For now you can find the first chapter in the back of Hand of Isis! I can't wait to hear what you guys think! | |||
| Jun. 22nd, 2009 @ 07:57 am Casting Hand of Isis | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Several people have also asked if I mentally cast Hand of Isis as if it were a movie. Yes and no. I have very distinct pictures in my head of all the characters, and for some of them I can think of an ideal actor to play them, and for some not. My best Charmian would be Reese Witherspoon. The thing that reminds me particularly of Charmian about her is that she always seems so soft, but she's got the steel behind it in the performance. Which is of course one thing about Charmian -- she seems soft, and it's easy to underestimate her. She doesn't look like a Companion right off! She doesn't look like she'd be much to reckon with, just a pretty girl. My Emrys is Jack Davenport, and he's the one I supposed I imagined most strongly. Jack Davenport is very tall, and he has the lovely green eyes and the tight mouth. I can definitely see him as my Emrys. I don't have a perfect Dion. Any suggestions? My Marcus Agrippa is Sean Astin. He looks so much like the real Agrippa! A friend of mine was fortunate enough to see Patrick Stewart as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, but to me Patrick Stewart is absolutely and completely Caesar! He's the only one I can imagine in the role. So what do you guys think? Any casting you'd like? | |||
| Jun. 9th, 2009 @ 07:40 am Imaginary Casting | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| A couple of people have asked me how I'd cast Black Ships if it were a movie. That's not really how I think about things while I'm writing -- I know exactly what the characters look like, but they don't look like particular people I know or like particular actors. That said, I've been thinking about how I would cast it if I could, and if by some magic possibility I could get everyone the right ages at the same time! My Gull would probably be Olivia Hussey back in the day when she played Juliet in the Franco Zefferelli version of Romeo and Juliet in 1968. Gull is only seventeen when she begins her journey, and young Olivia Hussey manages to convey both innocence and strength, as well as having a certain otherworldly quality. My best Xandros might be Duncan Regehr, once again age regressed to the early 80s! It's not a great picture, but the best one I could find of him at that age, as most of them are from his later run as Zorro. Again, Xandros is very young, 21-23 during their journey. Oddly enough, Duncan Regehr and Olivia Hussey were once in the same movie, the dreadful Last Days of Pompeii, which I saw as a teen, screamed about the historicity loudly, and veged on the Temple of Isis. Neas is the hardest. I need some help with this one! I know exactly what he looks like, but I can't think who would play him. Do you guys have ideas, for Neas or anyone else? | |||
| May. 26th, 2009 @ 08:58 am New Cover! | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Black Ships will be coming out in Mass Market paperback in December, and it will have a gorgeous new cover when it does. John Jude Palencar is doing new covers for Black Ships, Hand of Isis, and the new book, Stealing Fire! He's done covers for some of my favorite authors in the past, including Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jacqueline Carey and Octavia Butler, so it's a thrill to get a look at his concept of Gull! You can click on it to make it bigger. She looks exactly as I had imagined her, and this is such an elegant and beautiful cover! | |||
| Apr. 28th, 2009 @ 10:59 am Locus Awards! | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| I am absolutely stunned to find out that Black Ships is a 2009 Locus Award nominee for Best First Novel! See? http://www.locusmag.com/News/2009/04/20 The winner will be announced in late June, so I have my fingers crossed! Go, little book! | |||
| Apr. 24th, 2009 @ 08:39 am Book Group Discussions? | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| I have a question for you guys -- in both Black Ships and Hand of Isis we've had book group questions. I've never been in a book group myself, so I kind of flailed writing the questions. Has anybody here read Black Ships or Hand of Isis in a book group? Were the questions helpful? What did you actually talk about? What was interesting to discuss? I ask because it's time for me to write the questions for Stealing Fire, the next book, and it would be helpful to know what was useful. Thanks! | |||
| Apr. 11th, 2009 @ 11:02 am Charmian's Future? | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| A reader asked me about the scene in Hand of Isis during the coronation at Abydos, when Charmian and Iras have accompanied Cleopatra into the Tomb of Osiris. There, Charmian has a vision that culminates with calling Caesar. The reader asked about the first part of that scene, and what it meant. ( Charmian's Future ) | |||
| Apr. 8th, 2009 @ 06:40 am A New Story With Dion | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Many people have asked me what happened to Dion after the end of Hand of Isis. I wrote this short story right after I finished writing the book because I needed to leave my head in a better place. So come see -- in which Dion runs into another Great Story! Warning: Spoilers for the end of Hand of Isis! ( Dion ex Machina ) | |||
| Apr. 2nd, 2009 @ 05:56 pm Let's Talk About Dion | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Several readers have told me that Dion was their surprise favorite in Hand of Isis -- that they had expected to like Charmian, but Dion stole the show for them. ( So Let's Chat About Dion ) | |||
