pameladean

But good news just the same. Patricia C. Wrede and I have sold a collection of all our Liavek stories plus a new one by Pat and a new one by Pat and me, to Diversion Books. I just got the signed contract back in the mail this week, so now they have 270 days to do their thing. The collection is presently called Granny and the Benedictis, though I think we are hoping for a better title to present itself.

We did this because when we were writing the Liavek stories originally, our stories kept intertwining and our characters kept running into one another. When Pat first proposed the collection, I did not plan to write anything new, being in a bad slump as far as writing went and struggling mightily with far too many stalled-out projects of my own. So Pat wrote the new story, a kind of overview (a kind of one, it's gorgeously strange) and gave it to her critique group. Then she came to me and told me that most of the questions they had were about my characters, and she could not answer them. She said she would write the necessary additional scenes if I would consult with her. The story is such that scenes can be written in a variety of times and places. They need to connect to one another, but not in the way of a usual narrative. So I told her I'd try to write a few, and went home and suddenly hammered out several in the course of a few days. Then I did some more, and then Pat did some more. Then I gave the story to my critique group, who had a number of pointed comments about muddy parts, which we have tried to clear up, at least to the extent that we did not want them to be muddy. It was all far more entertaining and pleasant than I'd expected. The scenes that I wrote were also germane to the Liavek novel I'm still plodding through, so they served as a kind of research into my own imagination.

Pat did most of the work of assembly, including becoming impatient with my slow pace and retyping one of the two stories whose files had gotten corrupted. I did the other, "The Green Cat." The form of corruption was weird and fascinating. Parts of the story were there, but parts had been replaced by sections of several of my novels. I have a very vague recollection that this happened because I had failed to remember the difference between double- and single-density disks while doing backups, but it's all a long time ago now.

The stories held up amazingly well. I did find a couple of instances of problematic language. In some cases I tweaked them a little. In others, the language was part of the relationship between two characters and is explicitly addressed by one of them in the novel, so I let it alone.

Our timing was not completely fortunate. Will Shetterly and Emma Bull had decided that they wanted to reissue the Liavek anthologies, but by the time they told us so and asked for permission to reprint our stories, we had already signed the contract with Diversion Books. Still, there are new stories, and I had a lovely time working with Pat again; so I can't at all regret the project.

I'll let you know when the book's available, and also when the other Liavek reissues are available, so you can have a complete set if you like -- or at least as complete a set as the vagaries of time and chance allow.

Pamela