A really nice review of The Invisible Library from Megan Leigh!

http://pop-verse.com/2014/12/05/the-invisible-library-saving-books-in-a-place-out-of-time-and-space/

… Yes, The Invisible Library has its faults, but at its core it is a great romp of a story that races along at high velocity.

The front cover for The Invisible Library is now up! You can see it at:

http://torbooks.co.uk/2014/11/13/invisible-library-cover-reveal/

Tor have done a fantastic job. I’m several miles over the moon. Or even over a comet, to be up-to-date in my references.

Two months to go!

WorldCon (or LonCon) was totally awesome.

I’m still in the state of buzzed can’t-quite-believe-it-ness, and it’s (counts on fingers) two days later. Everyone was just so nice. And there were the Tor and Gollancz/Bragelonne parties, and the Seanan McGuire concert, and meeting so many cool people, and interesting panels, and…

(wanders off into distance waving hands around head and trying to explain how cool it was)

(realises that she has work tomorrow at 9am)

(sighs)

So, about to go down south to visit my parents, and while I’m there, I’ll be going to WorldCon. Awesome!

On a side note, I should be getting the proofs of Book One on Monday for final corrections. Must find a red pen and sweat blood, though preferably not at the same time. Everything’s happening at once! Like buses!

And since my trip down to see parents goes through Birmingham while the Quilts UK show just happens to be on at the Birmingham NEC, here’s to some happy fabric shopping tomorrow. Yay, retail therapy! Yay, future quilts! Yay, spending too much!

I’ve just sent back the notes on the copy-edit of book 1. I will now sit in the corner and twitch.

Or perhaps I’ll have a glass of something alcoholic. That sounds like a better idea.

Back to writing on book 3 tomorrow.

(And maybe I’ll reward myself with a little copy-edit complete present. There’s this haori I saw on ebay…)

All I can say is, if it’s true that we borrow from our own real life to write, then Irene is shortly going to be suffering a backed-up drain in her kitchen and rather dubious water backflowing from her washing machine into the sink (though fortunately not getting any further).

Just saying.

Plumber is due tomorrow. Feh.

I’ve had multiple friends recommend the Monument Valley game to me (for iPad, iPhone, etc) and I now have it. Well, technically I’ve now finished it. It isn’t long.

But it is absolutely gorgeous. Escher art, incredibly simple play, barely visible but implied story, told by gentle implication and a few fragments of dialogue, and an epilogue which had me in tears, even though it was happy.

A beautiful, beautiful piece of work.

I do not tend to post about my day job here. For one thing, parts of it come under confidentiality. I work in the NHS. Patient data. You get the idea.

But for the other thing, I don’t think it would interest most people who might look at this. Yes, it’s relevant to me about how we’re removing limited status square bracket concepts which were created previously in order to provide one-to-one maps for all possible ICD-10 and OPCS-4 codes, but I am not sure it would be relevant, let alone interesting, to everyone else.

On the positive side, at least it means I can spell my medical terms, even if I have to remember the difference between American and English spellings. (For the record, English has oedema, anaemia, and paediatric, while American has edema, anemia, and pediatric. And so on.)

But anyhow. My job is not so fascinating to others that I post at length about it, and this is why.

Dragons and libraries and Fae are much more interesting.

So this entry is belated, and I am ashamed of it.

Last week on Wednesday I was lucky enough to meet my agent, the fantastic and excellent Lucienne Diver. She was in London for a book industry event (the London Book Fair), and I was able to get down from Oop North to hang out with her. We went shopping in various London bead shops and in Liberty’s, plus strolled through Covent Garden and chunks of Soho, and had supper at this very classy and excellent Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, the Plum Garden. Unfortunately I had to make a run for my train and wasn’t able to stay hanging out as long as I would have liked to, but it was a totally splendid day.

(Please pardon the overuse of superlatives. Some days are worth it.)

I have now sent in the manuscript for book 2 (current title The Masked City) to my editor. Next step is to wait for edits.

And to start work on book 3.

(And panic that nobody’s going to like it, etc, waah, waah. You know the tune.)

And perhaps have a bit of retail therapy by purchasing the Phoenix Wright/Professor Layton crossover game which is out tomorrow. I can swap between that (for mental puzzles and storyline) and the also-just-out Diablo 3 Expansion: Reaper of Souls (kill kill kill, loot loot loot). Perfect.