Taking a short break

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Hi guys! I'm sorry to disappoint you today, but I've just come off a very busy holiday season, I'm working on three different books, and I just haven't had a chance to devote time and grey matter to a blog article for today.

We have family scattered over three states, and everybody does stuff at different times, beginning at Thanksgiving. See, there's my in-laws, who do lunch. My family, who does dinner. Oh, and my sister's birthday is Thanksgiving weekend, so we have to celebrate her birthday while everyone's in one spot. And traditionally we all decorate my parents' Christmas tree too, because again, all in one spot. All that makes for one very long, very eventful, very fun day.

Plus my husband, graphic artist and award-winning magician Darrell Osborn, scheduled several really cool shows for us to attend -- such as the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at the Opryhouse in Nashville TN. And the Mythbusters Behind the Myths Tour.

So we did a lot -- a LOT -- of traveling. Pretty much all day trips, but still. It was a good holiday season.

Meanwhile, I'm working on, like I said, three different books. Four really, if you count the one I'm editing. Okay, there's five I really need to work on. Six, if you count the one that's at the publisher's editor right now. (Yeah, I am a busy little -- LOOK! SQUIRREL!)

I'm working on the Cresperian Saga book #4, which will be titled Heritage. I've kind of decided that, well, I'm already the THIRD author to have worked on the series, maybe it should be one of those "shared universes" things, like the 1632 Series (into which I've been invited to venture, by the by, just as soon as I can dig out from under). So I've invited another author to come in and co-author with me, and he's agreed. More about that at a later date, but it'll be fun, and it'll help provide my co-author with some good experience and training, and most importantly we will get the current Cresperian War story arc tied up. I don't plan on closing off the book with a hard series ending, because I think this might be a fun series, like I said, to be a shared universe, and just maybe my co-author and others might want to kick up their heels in it.

The book at the publisher's editor is the fifth Displaced Detective book, entitled A Case of Spontaneous Combustion. I swear to you that the story is contained in one volume this time! I'm currently waiting for edits to come back from the publisher, then I'll have to review them and incorporate them. The core of the mystery involves a tiny village in England, on the Salisbury Plain, which is wiped out in an apparent mass spontaneous combustion. Holmes is, naturally, brought in to investigate, and hijinks ensue.

I'm writing book 6 in the same series, and it's going to be called Fear in the French Quarter. I'd had an idea for a story in the series, but I was going to set it in a castle in Europe someplace, much later on in the series sequence. But back in October I was a special guest at a science fiction convention in greater New Orleans, called CONtraflow. It was HUGE fun, made more so by getting to play tourist while we were there. I got to try alligator (I love it!) and visit Cafe du Monde, and prowl the French Quarter with friends (one of which had been a Tulane student, so knew the area well), and generally enjoy myself. (I already knew I liked crawdads, gumbo, jumbalaya, and beignets.) So I'm walking through the French Quarter at night and suddenly in my head I start hearing Holmes and Skye talking, making comments about the place, and I realize they're having their own adventure -- someplace out there in the multiverse where they exist and are real!

I started writing that story the next day.

It's already completely plotted out; I just need to get it into the computer in readable form. It's basically a ghost story -- since NOLA is rumored to be the most haunted city in the world, it seemed an even more natural setting than an ancient castle, for that sort of thing.

Book 7 in that same series was originally going to be book 6, until the plot bunny of Fear in the French Quarter hit. So I just slid it on back -- it works even better that way, I think -- and so I've started A Little Matter of Earthquakes. Actually had started it early in 2013, but I'm still working on the science to make the central concept doable, aided by my friend and grad school mate, physicist Dr. James K. Woosley. (He makes a great partner to brainstorm scientific concepts, being a huge SF fan himself.) So sliding it back a bit, like I said, works well, not only in terms of my work load, but in terms of the flow from book to book of the series. What's it about? Eh, just what it sounds like: seismic activity is ramping up in the Pacific Northwest. The problem is that it's even occurring in places that, geologically speaking, it shouldn't. When an old friend of Skye's from their graduate school days is killed in a phreatic eruption, the Holmeses attend the funeral, and discover the unusual nature of the seismic activity.

And Book 8 is that book I told you I was editing on, but haven't submitted yet. The Adventure of Shining Mountain Lodge was written before I even finished Book 5, but it requires some building of history among the characters. It's finished, I just have to tweak it periodically to account for things that get included in 5, 6, and 7. A wetback is found in the middle of a snowdrift in January in Rocky Mountain National Park, half-starved, barely dressed, filthy and battered...and dies almost before they can get him to the hospital. Of radiation exposure.

The book that I need to be working on is the sequel to Burnout: The mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281. It's in work...slowly. It's called Escape Velocity. And it picks up pretty much where Burnout left off.

But you're going to have to be very very patient with me for this one. It took me over a decade just to write Burnout, because it hit so close to home. I spent over two decades working console for space missions of one sort or another, much of it for Shuttle and Station, and my main focus was getting the science while protecting the astronauts. When I lost a friend aboard the Columbia disaster, it devastated me. It was all I could do to keep working on Burnout. It was written, but it needed polishing, see. And I find that Escape Velocity is just as hard to write, and for the same reasons. So it comes in fits and spurts. I plan to try to get it completed in 2014 though. Because I've also developed a concept that my partners and I believe will ensure that no one else has to die like KC did.

I'll tell you about SPEARED next week, if y'all are interested.


-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

General news

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com


Well, Dr. Woosley has been on travel and hasn't been able to follow up on his Higgs boson guest posts, so I thought you might enjoy hearing about how the writing world is going for me lately.

It's been going pretty darn good, actually.

I mentioned in a post here that Eric Flint's wife and many of the 1632 authors were very "into" my books, and continue to be! That in itself is quite exciting. (I hope Mr. Flint likes them too!)

Travis S. Taylor (aka "Doc" Taylor, aka Ringleader of the Rocket City Rednecks) and I have a new nonfiction book being released through Baen in just a couple of days! That book is A New American Space Plan, and it's a look at the space programs of the world, where they've been, where they are, where they're going, and where our national space program ought to be aimed but ain't. It's written from the point of view of people who have worked the program (Travis and myself), in language the non-rocket-scientist can easily comprehend. That doesn't mean we don't get technical, it just means you can understand it because we didn't use a lotta technical jargon in it, we used regular words. Preliminary copies are already finding their way into some rather distinguished hands, and we have hopes that the words we wrote will be taken to heart.

Book 4 of the Displaced Detective series, The Case of the Cosmological Killer: Endings and Beginnings, should be released in ebook form through Twilight Times Books sometime in the next week also. Print versions should come out in December - JUST in time for Christmas gifts!

Recent releases through Chromosphere Press include the SF ebook, The More Things Change, and the children's fantasy, StarSong. The first is a fun little romp that will hopefully stretch your reality a little bit. The second is rather exciting for me; I've never written a book specifically for children before. It's also a first for Chromosphere Press, which heretofore has only released ebooks, because StarSong is available in print as well as ebook! The publishers and editors were pleased enough with the way it turned out that they thought it was time to strike out into print. I've already been asked about sequelae, but I think we'll wait and see.

And last but by NO MEANS least, The Fetish (a short story from the Burnout universe) has become an EPIC Award Finalist! What's that? EPIC is the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition, and the EPIC Awards are their marks of achievement for ebooks! It's quite possibly the most prestigious international award of its kind, so much so that just becoming a Finalist is a considerable honor. The Fetish is one of only four finalists in the Short Story category. And I'm fortunate enough to have been a Finalist twice, because The Y Factor with Darrell Bain was an EPIC Award Finalist for SF Novel in 2010! (It was also an ebook best-seller when it was released!)

Sometime in the next month or two, I should be releasing another ebook short or two through Chromosphere Press, and yes, folks, I'm working as hard as I can on the 4th book in the Cresperian Saga (tentatively titled Heritage), and the sequel to Burnout (tentatively called Escape Velocity). You'll have to be patient with me on that last, though, because in the last year I've had some experiences that have sort of ripped open the emotional wound from the Columbia tragedy, and it's proving harder than I anticipated to write Escape Velocity. This past week a musician I met at this year's Con*Stellation contacted me to let me hear some songs she had written at the times of the Columbia disaster and Neil Armstrong's death. I was very deeply touched, and asked and was given permission to place a link on Burnout's webpage to the Columbia song. I hope to have this up soon; Catherine Faber, the musician, is setting up a hosting site that I can link to from my page. I cried like a baby when I heard them; I think you'll appreciate it too.

And that's more or less the state of things in my world. I'll be attending the Memphis Comic and Fantasy Con at the Hilton "soda can" (LOL!) this coming weekend, and then I believe I'm off for the holidays (except for writing, of course!), only to return at ChattaCon next January! Oh, friends, look for me at a specfic convention near you next year; the schedule looks to be hot and heavy!

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

A Tidbit of Wonderful News!

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Last weekend (12-14 Oct) I was the Mistress of Ceremonies for Huntsville's Con*Stellation SF convention. That in itself was a great honor, for it was the second year in a row that I had been asked to fill that slot.

But there were more honors to come.

After the opening ceremonies, famed SF writer Eric Flint came up to me...and informed me that his wife, Lucille, positively loved my books! She has read all three of the Displaced Detective novels currently out, and is eagerly awaiting book 4 next month! THEN he followed me to the dealer's room and bought a copy of Burnout and a copy of Extraction Point - insisting I autograph both! And as if that weren't enough, it turns out that Lucille (Lu as Mr. Flint calls her) was gifted the Displaced Detective books by Walt Boyes, who is, to quote Eric, "one of the inner circle (so to speak) of the [NYT-best-selling] 1632 series authors," and who "recommended them highly"!

My mind is blown. I have been flying high ever since. It doesn't get much better than that!

 

 

 

-Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com