i'll have three scoops of the one with bugs in it, please

Sorry to do this to you, but these things happen all the time.

Tor, the publisher of my short story, King of Marbury, has decided to publish the story on THE SAME DAY that Passenger comes out, which is October 2, pushing back the publication date by one week.

You can wait that long, right?

So, not only do Passenger and King of Marbury come out on the same day, it is also the release day for the paperback edition of The Marbury Lens.

Just think -- it's like walking into an ice cream shop and getting a triple scoop of the flavor with all the bugs in it!

I know this fills you with squee.

Or something. 

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three weeks

On Friday, I'll be heading to Park City, Utah to be a part of the League of Utah Writers' 2012 Roundup.

Over the weekend, I'll present two workshops: The first on content and limits in YA literature, and the second on character-driven fiction. I'm looking forward to it; it should be a lot of fun, and I'll post some summaries and photos of my presentations.

Two weeks from today, on September 25, Conner Kirk is going to find out exactly what -- and who -- Marbury really is, and he tells about it in a short story called King of Marbury which will be published on Tor.com. There's also some ominous connections to The Marbury Lens, and an ominous warning for Jack, too.

And exactly three weeks from today, on October 2, Jack's universe is going to break into pieces when Passenger comes out. We'll see if he can fix it, or if the fix only makes things worse.

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one. two. three.

in the arrivals lounge

In just over three weeks, Passenger will be arriving.

If you could measure time by all the stuff contained in its passage, then the journey from this book's beginning to October 2 has been monstrously long and eventful.

But that's also kind of what this book is all about: What journey does the passenger have to take to get him to his departure gate, and, once he arrives at his destination, where does he go from there?

That's a little hint. It's also the primary question that opens the not-so-short story called King of Marbury, which will be out later this month.

If you're a Marbury-head, here's what you might do to pass the slow drag of time between now and October 2: First, you should re-read The Marbury Lens.

Then, keep stalking the website Tor.com. There will be a story there. The story takes place right after the ending of The Marbury Lens and you will be able to get it for free.

That story, King of Marbury, will come out on September 25 -- exactly one week before Passenger, so mark your calendars and get ready to find out something new and unexpected about what -- and who -- Marbury really is.

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an ultrasound of my unborn children

This is pretty cool.

Two ARCs of books that are not out yet.

And they're going to be big babies.

Passenger has a delivery date of October 2 -- just over 4 weeks away -- coming from Feiwel and Friends and weighing in at 480 pages in length.

Winger has a delivery date of May 14, 2013. It's coming from Simon and Schuster and weighs in at 448 pages in length.

I've got a few zygotes on the hard drive, too.

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art that imitates life that imitates art

I told my editor at Simon and Schuster that it was a "ballsy" cover.

S&S had really put quite a bit of work into it. They actually started designing the artistic components of the book as soon as we started working on the editorial elements. I suppose that stands to reason, considering the fact the book contains so many graphics.

Way back at that time, my editor had sent me some Polaroids of a prospective model for the cover shoots. He ended up being that guy you see up there. I thought he was perfect for the book for a number of reasons, the most important of which was that he didn't look like a YA Cover Boy, which I definitely did not want. Also, he is wearing a shirt.

They had this guy do some pretty funny things for the photo shoot, but ended up choosing the photo you see above. It turns out to be one of those images that when people get to the part of the book that it's from, I know they'll be flipping back to the cover and saying to themselves, yeah... that's pretty much exactly the way it is in the book.

In the mean time, Sam Bosma was working on all the interior illustrations as well.

In the original manuscript, I had done the artwork.

I intended the artwork to actually be nothing more than placeholders to show what I wanted and where I wanted it. For example, one of the early illustrations is a kind of self-mocking school ID card that the narrator, Ryan Dean West, draws of himself.

My original drawing, which is admittedly pretty clunky, looked like this:

You've probably seen that guy before. I use him in some of the comic panels I draw on this blog.

A little clip from the ID card panel illustrated by Sam looks like this:

Early on in the process, I had been introduced to Sam and had looked at some of the work he'd done. I really liked his stuff, and thought he'd be perfect for Winger (and he definitely is the perfect choice). I'd even seen some early sketches he did of Ryan Dean and some of the other characters in Winger.

What ended up happening, though, is that Sam's drawings evolved to match the model who was used for the photo shoots on the cover. It's amazing stuff, and a great team effort -- something that Ryan Dean would say is "glorious."

Art that imitates life that was imitating art.

Glorious.

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winger cover and back cover reveal

And the back cover, by Sam Bosma:

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