Aaaaand we’re done(ish)

Marie Brennan
1

We have officially sent the copy-edited manuscript of Labyrinth’s Heart back to our editor. We’re not done done with the book, because we still have to go through the page proofs — not to mention promotion and such once it comes out — but since the page proofs are the stage where the book has been typeset and therefore they don’t want you making changes other than corrections of outright errors . . . we’re basically done writing the Rook and Rose series.

Which is sad! And also happy! And also sad! There’s a kind of hangover when you finish a book draft, and a different kind that happens when you finish a series. After literal years of living with these characters in our heads, investing ourselves in their struggles and their hopes . . . it’s done. We think it’s a great ending — and we’re both of the mentality that would rather reach a good, solid conclusion than keep stringing the narrative out until we’re tired of it — but even so. There’s a mourning period, after a series is done.

Alas, you still have to wait until August to reach that point yourself. If you’d like a bit of a taster before then, though, we’re running a bit of a game on our Discord server right now (from January 31st to February 1st), with the prize being an excerpt from Labyrinth’s Heart, shared with our readers there. Come join us!

And stay tuned: in early March, we’ll have something special for you! Watch this space . . .

A new Rook and Rose short story!

Marie Brennan
2

Happy New Year! We are officially in 2023, which means that the publication of Labyrinth’s Heart suddenly seems so much closer than before: not next year but this year. About seven months from now! We anticipate getting our copy-edited manuscript in the next week or two, so the wheels of production have begun turning . . .

In the meanwhile, we have a new short story for you: “Constant Ivan and Clever Natalya,” written (or if you prefer audio, narrated) by yours truly. Those names may look familiar to those of you who have read the novels; the characters in question are figures out of Vraszenian folklore, a trickster heroine and her good-hearted hero. Having referenced them several times in the books, it seemed only natural to put their story properly into the world! So strap yourself in for a challenge set for a year and a day, horses of the dawn and the dusk and the mountains and the sea, and some prophetic turtles — it’s folklore time!

Annotations for The Liar’s Knot!

Marie Brennan
2

Happy anniversary of the release of The Liar’s Knot! In an ideal world, you all would be about to receive your copies of Labyrinth’s Heart; alas, you must wait some time longer. But we are doing second-round revisions right now, so you can trust it is on its way, just as fast as we can make it go.

To tide you over, and to celebrate the anniversary of the second book, we’ve posted our annotations! If you missed the ones for The Mask of Mirrors, these are a selection of the comments Alyc and I leave for each other in the margins of the Google doc as we write — not all of them, because many are boring things that say stuff like “check this” and “replace once we have something better,” but the ones you all might find entertaining. Spoiler warning, naturally: don’t go read the annotations if you haven’t yet read the book! (I mean, you can, if you don’t mind spoilers. But also the comments may not be as amusing without more context.)

And if you need more — and haven’t seen it already — check out the deleted scene we posted from The Liar’s Knot! There will be more of those to come . . .

An update

Marie Brennan
6

It’s been quite silent around here, for which we apologize! We do have some updates for you, albeit not quite as detailed as we would like.

As the last post indicated, the draft of the third and final Rook and Rose book is indeed done. After drafting comes revisions, though, and for various reasons outside our control, those got a little delayed. We are hard at work now, so never fear — the book is moving forward to the light of publication!

(. . . wow, you can tell I’m deep in book headspace because my subconscious just tried to gauge where we are along the path of the numina. It decided that finishing the draft is Tricat; revisions are probably Quinat, because this is the stage at which we’re refining it to be as excellent as possible. Sessat is clearly when we hand it off to the institutional machinery of book production to transform from a manuscript into an Actual Book; Noctat is when we paaaaartaaaaay because we’re done? Don’t ask me about the rest of the numina. Especially Ninat, which feels rather ominous for publication itself, even though Alyc and Tanaquis would both tell me that not all thresholds are bad. Admittedly, “authors iz ded” is often an apt summation of how we feel by the time that day rolls around.)

Anyway, what we don’t have for you yet is a pub date. As some of you may have guessed, it will not, alas, be in 2022; the little delays along the way have added up to put that out of reach. But you can expect to see the book on the shelves in 2023 — we’ll let you know as soon as we have a more precise answer than that!

In the meanwhile, do keep an eye on this space, because we have things to post to tide you over. I’ve got some Rook and Rose short fiction in the pipeline, and we do intend to post things like the annotations for The Liar’s Knot, plus maybe some deleted scenes (of which the second book had more than the first). Those, however, will have to take a back seat to the revisions themselves, so we can get the finale to you as soon as possible!

SFWA Silent Auction is underway!

Marie Brennan
0

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association is running a silent auction, and I’m in it! Prizes on offer are a package deal of a signed copy of The Mask of Mirrors and five Rook and Rose-themed tea samples, and a virtual kaffeeklatsch for which the seats are being auctioned separately: one, two, three, four. Bid on one of those + the first package, and you could potentially sip delicious book-themed tea while we chat! Or if those aren’t your cuppa (sorry not sorry), there are oodles of other great things on offer at the auction site. But you only have a few days, so bid fast!

If you’re wondering what the money will be used for, SFWA does a great deal to assist people in the field, from the Emergency Medical Fund to the Legal Fund to scholarships for marginalized creators to attend events like the Nebulas Conference. Over the course of my career, SFWA has managed to reinvent itself as a much stronger advocate within SF/F publishing — the closest thing we have to a union, and very much needed, as things like #DisneyMustPay continue to show.

Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 27 et alia — DONE

Marie Brennan
17

Despite Alyc’s encouragement, I don’t think I have it in me to make three progress posts today, one for Chapter 27, and one apiece for the prologue and the epilogue. 😛 Yes, the prologue to this book was one of the last things we wrote: third from the end, to be precise, followed by the last scene of Chapter 27 and the epilogue. That last being, of course, a thing the previous two books didn’t have, but here it helps a lot to show some longer-term effects that would feel very shoehorned into the final chapter.

Alyc and I each have a traditional quote associated with having finished a book. Mine comes from The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel by Edward Gorey: “The next day Mr. Earbrass is conscious, but very little more.” Alyc’s comes from a Gilbert & Sullivan musical (Patience, I think): “Finished! At last, finished! The book is finished, and my soul has gone out into it. That was all. It was nothing worth mentioning. It occurs three times a day.”

We may not do this three times a day, but yeah. Soul gone out. Conscious. Very little more. Ima go flop now.

Word count: 198,360 — we undershot in our zeal to not go over, and will be fleshing out things we short-changed during revisions.
Authorial sadism: Alyc is right that a certain departure needed to happen . . . but it still hurts. Us as well as the characters.
Authorial amusement: The introduction Ren gets in the epilogue.
BLR quotient: Love is healing the wounds, and the turbulent waters of rhetoric are calming. It won’t be smooth sailing from here into eternity, but the storm has passed.

Happy Birthday Ren!

Alyc Helms
1

An important magical and plot element in our story has to do with when people were born (or, with Ren, the many ways she lies about when she was born), so we designed a whole branch of numinatria around the numerical calendrical significance of people’s birth dates. What you might call ‘astrology’, though a friend commented recently that it’s not actually astrology. While the planetary objects in our setting have associations with these calendrical numbers, it’s the numbers that matter. And now I hear Tanaquis sputtering, “Obviously! Planets don’t influence our lives. Numbers do! Far more rational!”

So, what’s up with these numbers? Well, numinatria is an esoteric magic system of numerology and sacred geometry. The numbers 0 through 10 and their corresponding shapes/planets/colors/etc. have magical associations and divine power through the Seterin godhead, the Lumen. Numinatrian ‘astrology’ is based on the Seterin calendar, which divides the 365 day year into ten months of 36 days each, and five intercalary days around the summer solstice (the Seterin New Year). These intercalary days split the month of Colbrilun, representing the division of Illi as both 0 and 10 and the break in the cycle that is death, the return to the Lumen, and rebirth.

Astrological charts, sometimes called trines, are composed of three parts: the Prime (based on the birth month and time of day), which represents the personality of the individual or state of the situation in question, the Alter (based on the birth date and placement in the month), which represents the life path or trajectory of the person or situation in question, and the Trisect (based on the birth year), which represents how the person or situation fits in the larger world context. Remnants of an old Vraszenian tradition similar to the “Monday’s Child” poem associates personality with the day of the week someone was born on. It has nothing to do with Seterin astrology, but many Nadežrans still put some faith in this system.

This all means that we’ve settled on birthdates for many of our main characters — there’s a scene in The Mask of Mirrors where they even share these dates (or, in the case of several characters, lie about them). For example, Ren’s (true!) birthday in the Seterin calendar is 29s Equilun 964. In our Gregorian calendar, that transposes to 31 December 1999.

That was not deliberate, but it seems… very fitting, doesn’t it?

Anyways, here’s Ren’s full birth chart and reading for the last day of the year, a fitting celebration for finishing the draft of the third (and final) book in the Rook & Rose trilogy!

Ren

  • Date
    • Gregorian Calendar: Dec. 31, 1999. For Realz.
    • Nadežran Calendar: 29s Equilun 964 (191)
  • Calculations
    • Prime: Quinat, influenced by Quarat
    • Alter: 2nd day, 4th iteration, Tuat (Quarat)
    • Trisect: Ninat, Sessat, Quarat
    • Moon Phases: Corillis, First Quarter (fading); Paumillis, Waxing Crescent (fading)
    • Charting Notes: Quad 3 sunwise spiral. Quinat on inner ew side, Quarat on outer sw side. Quarat inside Tuat in Quad 4. Ninat, Sessat, Quarat on outside.
  • Reading:
    • Ruled by Quinat – The Hand that Holds the World
      • Associations: Power, Healing, Excellence
      • Metal: iron
      • Gem: ruby
      • Color: red
      • Animal: horse
    • The individual
      • Quinat: This person is committed to excellence. They strive for it in all things and can become frustrated when their goals exceed their grasp. They have the capacity to heal the ills they see in the world, if they can look beyond their own ambitions.
      • Quarat (influence): This person appreciates the wealth that life has granted them, yet also knows that fate gives with one hand and takes with the other. Nothing in this life is permanent or guaranteed.
    • The path
      • Tuat: The path is an ever-looping one that leads us back to where we started, only to find that we are the ones who changed.
      • Quarat (influence):  The path leads to wealth and luck — both good and ill. It is best to share good fortune and let bad fortune pass quickly.
    • The world:
      • Year – Quarat: The world turns with the seasons; bounty is followed by privation, but eventually even bad luck will flip to good.
      • Decade – Sessat: The great events and great people that shatter and shape the world might be the chisel, but the small choices, insignificant individuals, and invisible social structures are the hammer that gives it strength.
      • Century – Ninat: This is the final truth of the world: People die, regimes fall, empires crumble. From the ashes springs new life.
    • Interesting Tidbits: Although Ren is ruled by Quinat, there is a lot of Quarat threaded through every aspect of her chart, indicating that she is someone who seeks wealth and bounty – though she won’t always keep it – and is very in tune with the movements and patterns of luck and fate.
    • Weekday: Andusny (Ižranyi/dreamweaver bird) – enlightened dreamer, deluded flake

Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 26

Marie Brennan
3

The climactic chapter!

Unlike the previous two books, we did not write this one in a single day. Which was for the best; neither Alyc nor I have the kind of physical or mental energy for that at the moment, not when what we had to comb through for the final scene was so complex. We finally hit the right notes, and with those in hand, we now know what kinds of hints we need to seed earlier to set that up properly.

. . . everything else I want to say about this would be a spoiler, so I’ll stop there.

Word count: ~188,000
Authorial sadism: We were going to give something back. But then we wrote how this actually plays out, and nope, that character just has to live without it.
Authorial amusement: We damn near sprained something trying to avoid echoing The Princess Bride in a very inappropriate way.
BLR quotient: Look, we’ve said many times this series is anti-grimdark. What do you think wins out, here at the end?