New website, counting down...
One week until the official pub date! I have shared this information with virtually everyone who has exchanged two words with me over the last few days (possibly more than once, I can't be sure); and I have already failed to resist the temptation to start poking about in bookstores looking for an early copy.
The full-scale revamp of the Temeraire website is finally done, cue much rejoicing and eating of minstrels. The lovely design and equally lovely CSS/HTML is courtesy of the wonderful Tisha Turk, and the cgi script that dynamically generates all the pages from simple text files so that all actual content only exists in one location and updating is trivially easy (she said, with unbearable smugness) is mine.
There is still a bit of work to be done; I have only begun the reorganization of the photo galleries -- on much excellent advice, I am trying to link them more closely to locations and events in the books, which may make them a bit spoilery, but I think more fun for readers of the books. And, oh, the caption editing I will have to do. *winces* But I really like the open-source software I've found for it, gallery 2.1; it hasn't been hard at all to customize it to fit into the site. It is a bit slow loading album pages, but the slideshows work very nicely, so I suspect what I will end up doing is creating direct links to the slideshows from each book's page.
It has been a busy few weeks; working on this, traveling last week and then before I had entirely recovered from jet-lag, a busy and fun day at Lunacon on Saturday, ending with dinner with the SF Book Club's Ellen Asher and Andrew Wheeler -- the SFBC will be putting out a hardcover omnibus edition of all three books together in June of this year, as a featured selection, which makes me very happy.
And then yesterday a lovely lunch at Otto Pizzeria, which somehow I had never heard of before, in the excellent company of Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld, who introduced me not only to the wonders of olive oil gelato (no, really!) but the fun of eating at the bar. It was crowned by coming out and finding the magical HSBC courtesy cab sitting right out front -- the extremely friendly driver (wearing a cap) drove us all over for free in an old-fashioned checker-style cab, refusing even a tip and regaling us with stories in the meantime. I heartily recommend this marketing strategy to any other companies in NYC.
I am hoping to carve out a bit of time now over the next few months to get back to writing book four, before the whirl of summer catches me up again. I still owe some e-mail interviews and signed bookplates that must go out. Speaking of which -- I have no idea what the demand for these would be, but at least for now, if you'd like a signed bookplate for your copy, drop me an e-mail at naominovik at livejournal with your address and I will happily send you one (though it will likely take a few weeks, knowing me). Sadly, I must limit this offer to people in the US to keep the postage under control, but if you are a bookseller or just a group of people abroad with one central place where I can send a bunch all at once, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do. In Perth, Australia, Fantastic Planet (planetfantastic) will be getting a big batch from me, so if you are in that area, you can check them out.
But having gotten up the site, I think my plan for today is to curl up with my stack of unread books, a long sequence of cups of tea, and indulge in an orgy of reading.
The full-scale revamp of the Temeraire website is finally done, cue much rejoicing and eating of minstrels. The lovely design and equally lovely CSS/HTML is courtesy of the wonderful Tisha Turk, and the cgi script that dynamically generates all the pages from simple text files so that all actual content only exists in one location and updating is trivially easy (she said, with unbearable smugness) is mine.
There is still a bit of work to be done; I have only begun the reorganization of the photo galleries -- on much excellent advice, I am trying to link them more closely to locations and events in the books, which may make them a bit spoilery, but I think more fun for readers of the books. And, oh, the caption editing I will have to do. *winces* But I really like the open-source software I've found for it, gallery 2.1; it hasn't been hard at all to customize it to fit into the site. It is a bit slow loading album pages, but the slideshows work very nicely, so I suspect what I will end up doing is creating direct links to the slideshows from each book's page.
It has been a busy few weeks; working on this, traveling last week and then before I had entirely recovered from jet-lag, a busy and fun day at Lunacon on Saturday, ending with dinner with the SF Book Club's Ellen Asher and Andrew Wheeler -- the SFBC will be putting out a hardcover omnibus edition of all three books together in June of this year, as a featured selection, which makes me very happy.
And then yesterday a lovely lunch at Otto Pizzeria, which somehow I had never heard of before, in the excellent company of Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld, who introduced me not only to the wonders of olive oil gelato (no, really!) but the fun of eating at the bar. It was crowned by coming out and finding the magical HSBC courtesy cab sitting right out front -- the extremely friendly driver (wearing a cap) drove us all over for free in an old-fashioned checker-style cab, refusing even a tip and regaling us with stories in the meantime. I heartily recommend this marketing strategy to any other companies in NYC.
I am hoping to carve out a bit of time now over the next few months to get back to writing book four, before the whirl of summer catches me up again. I still owe some e-mail interviews and signed bookplates that must go out. Speaking of which -- I have no idea what the demand for these would be, but at least for now, if you'd like a signed bookplate for your copy, drop me an e-mail at naominovik at livejournal with your address and I will happily send you one (though it will likely take a few weeks, knowing me). Sadly, I must limit this offer to people in the US to keep the postage under control, but if you are a bookseller or just a group of people abroad with one central place where I can send a bunch all at once, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do. In Perth, Australia, Fantastic Planet (planetfantastic) will be getting a big batch from me, so if you are in that area, you can check them out.
But having gotten up the site, I think my plan for today is to curl up with my stack of unread books, a long sequence of cups of tea, and indulge in an orgy of reading.