From Clockwork Storybook With Love

If you're in Austin Texas tomorrow, or can get to Austin Texas tomorrow, you should make plans to go to Austin Books, which is just about the best funnybook store that a funnybook store can be. And from 4 to 6 pm tomorrow you can have our own Chris Roberson sign your just-released first issue of Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love.

Unless you've been living under the densest of rocks, then you know Cinderella is the spy to beat all spies, keeping Fabletown safe from destruction and discovery for longer than any other spy has been alive. Bond could learn a lot from this blonde. Matt Helm would be a babe adrift in her realm. She could stagger the Sandbaggers. Now see Cindy in her greatest adventure to date.

Go. Do. See. Get.

My but she's been in bed a long time.

I'm off to the World Fantasy Convention in sunny San Jose (yes, I know the way), along with about half of the Clockworkers. While we're gone there are finally enough other Tick Tock types to keep the conversation going here in our absence. Basically I see this as one long cool convention panel, on a variety of subjects, with some really interesting panelists. Sure, we're mostly speaking to each other, which is the point of this site, but in public and on the record, and you get to follow along and ask questions as they occur to you.

And another thing you can do while some of us are gone is to take a look at this far too cool Joao Ruas cover for the upcoming 94th issue of Fables.

94 issues! Wow. I'm beginning to think this series might have legs. And this is by far my favorite of Joao's covers so far. It's Rose Red of course, for the first issue of the five issue story arc titled Rose Red. I suspect you can figure out from the cover and from the title which Fables character this arc centers around.

In other news, this is my last convention commitment of the year, before taking an entire year off from travel and appearances to concentrate on getting more writing done. Following this, I have one store signing, in Boulder Colorado, in early November, and then nada until 2011. Don't get me wrong. I love traveling and meeting the readers of my various stories. I basically do what I do in a room all by myself, so it's good to be reminded from time to time that these things are reaching an audience. But I'm too far behind right now on every deadline, and have not one but two novels in the works that need tending. So, one year of reclusion.

And if I really dig my heels in and stick to my guns, I may be able to keep my year of reclusion down to two or three trips.

Trees and Bolts

Orson Scott Card once wrestled (as a teaching exercise I seem to recall) with the entire definition of what constitutes Fantasy and what is Science Fiction, raising many of the arguments Matt mentions in his essay. Finally, almost in frustration it seemed to me, he pared it down to its most basic structure: Fantasy has elves and trees, while Science Fiction has bolts and metal.

That's it. Everything else is fodder for academic debate, which has nothing to do with actual writers telling stories.

And yes, I agree that the Dune books are a lovely mix of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Such fine books. Too bad they're being spoiled by those wretched pre-Dune novels, which now outnumber the originals, if I recall correctly.

I can't say that the Dune books inspired me to write. More they inspired me to give up all such hopes. How could I ever hope to compete in a field that had these treasures in them? The trick though, at least for me, was in not trying to write like Frank Herbert. I can see his influence all over in Matt's writing though -- at least when he's really on his game.

Above and to the left you can see that my new Fables prose novel, Peter and Max, is getting some nice, front-of-store, placement. This pic was taken by Chris Ryall (he who wields mucho power at IDW publishers) while on a trip to Seattle.

Peter and Max

Since everyone else is posting snippets of their work, but I had to go and promise not to, for fear of jinxing the current novel by bragging too much about it before it's finished, I feel like I have to do something else to try to keep up.

     So here's Steve Leialoha's terrific cover design for Peter and Max, the Fables novel that will be coming out this year, in time for Christmas. This isn't the final version of the cover, but it's sort of like a color computer-aided sketch of what the cover will end up looking like (with a few tweaks and such along the way).

     Steve is also illustrating the interior of the novel, and the stuff he's handing in is glorious.

     Now, if only that hideous Fables logo they forced on me long ago ("These things have to be done by real graphic designers, doncha know. We can't let the writer do the logo.") would finally wither and die, I'd be a truly happy man. James Jean did a lot to help the logo by introducing the circles, but that was just a bandage on an arterial bleed. Such fixes don't last long.