The Linen Butterfly- PREVIEW!

The bad news is, DAW didn't want my work.
The good news is, because my usual publisher is much more accommodating, I can share this with you!

Here is my Christmas gift to everyone who has put up with my nonsense over the last year!

This preview contains the first three chapters of the novel, which should give you some idea of what to expect without spoiling anything.

I have yet to nail down a release date for this book and the final draft may differ *somewhat* from the text presented here, but this is about as revised and refined as I could get it on my own.

From the cover copy:

Meet Arthur Carrick, Duke of Upcaster. He and his retainer, Sir Balthasar, are fighting to save his dukedom from a scheming courtier, except...

...they're not. The real Arthur and Balthasar are in suspended animation in a cutting-edge immersive virtual reality lab in Seattle, Washington in the year 2036. 

Now it's sink or swim as they navigate the treacherous waters of courtly intrigue amid traitors, schemers, and the Beziards, a heretical sect winning converts among the nobility. They believe their world was created by an evil or insane god. 

One thing's for sure: The lab's owner, Ted Ducasse, is no saint. He's created a World War I simulator that has bled into the other sims. Now the lab's lead tech, Isa Chetal, fights to keep control of the project she started before someone gets killed for real. 

It's happened before.

Lies, greed, quantum computing, and medieval heresy collide under the ominous shadow of World War One in The Linen Butterfly.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jcag2cnctq30-qO_GP5aOo_7NjDDrtxj/view?usp=sharing

Linen Butterfly Update!

Current goal: finish "The Linen Butterfly" by late August. Three years late from my original goal but I promise it'll be the be worth it!

I'll have the first draft done by my mid-June at this rate, and revisions will be relatively fast. The biggest operation will be merging the two halves which were written with slightly different continuities.

I expect to shed about 10-20% of the total volume of the text because there are some redundant passages and some scenes that no longer work. I'm also going to trim the ending a bit, it runs long. My total word count should still be about 110k.

It will be the longest and most involved story I've ever written in part because it takes place in two different worlds. I hope you all will enjoy a medieval swashbuckler with a hefty dose of cyberpunk!

"The Vimana Incident" Now Available From Fusselschwarm!

My readers in the EU will be happy to know that "The Vimana Incident" is now available from Fusselschwarm!

I missed the announcement, as it has apparently been available for a little while now, but I thought I'd go ahead and mention it.

You can purchase your copy here:

http://www.maennerschwarm.de/Laden/htdocs/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=67&Itemid=121#Novels

Or you can stop by the Fusselschwarm table at any of the conventions or book fairs they attend.  Also, be sure to check out @fusselschwarm on Twitter.

Where I Am As An Author

As you probably know if you've read the posts in this blog so far, I am a small press author and I don't make a whole lot off my writing.  It started out as something of a hobby, writing from within the furry community where making a living off of any sort of work is unlikely; it's a small, mostly Interned-based community that enjoys stories, art, and other media involving anthropomorphic animal stories and although sexual material is definitely out there, non-sexual stories and art still sell decently well.

The first book I published (also the first manuscript of any sort I actually sold copies of) was a dieselpunk action romance called "Basecraft Cirrostratus," and yes, it did play somewhat to the sexual aspect of things.  I've been told by a few non-furry readers, though, that aside from the sex it's actually a decent early attempt at a story, kind of in the vein of "The Rocketeer" and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" in a dystopian setting inspired by the neoliberal crony capitalism and dominionist politics of the 2000s.  As such, it was hardly "porn" so much as an adventure story with erotic scenes.

It got decent reviews, and was greeted enthusiastically enough that I began to think that maybe I would eventually have what it took to support myself as an author.  I was called out on being too brief and breezy in my pacing, sort of the opposite of what you hear about amateur authors most of the time.  There were also minor issues with forced dialog and a plot just a little too fraught with convenient coincidences (though I did lampshade it somewhat in the sequel by having all the loose ends from the first book come back to haunt the protagonists).  But after a while, sales slowed and I decided to put something else out.

"The Vimana Incident" E-Book Now Available!

I got a number of requests from friends who wanted to be notified when this book was out as an e-book, and now I'm pleased to announce that it has been released from Bad Dog Books!

http://baddogbooks.com/?product=the-vimana-incident

Review of "The Vimana Incident"

A review of "The Vimana Incident" has been posted, and it's quite a glowing review!

Has LaCroix succeeded in her ambition for the novel? From a reader’s point of view, she has created a satisfying and intriguing story. I looked forward to the next chapter while I was reading it, and I’ll certainly be reading it again. Whether she has produced a work of the quality she herself wanted, well, only the author can say, but I’m reminded of that annoyingly ubiquitous quote about shooting for the moon and missing to land among the stars. The sphere of furry writing can only benefit from this breed of originality and its lofty aims.

Read the full review here!

http://clawandquill.net/2015/03/the-vimana-incident/

Also, "The Vimana Incident" has been named the Furry Writers' Guild Book of the Month for March!

http://furrywritersguild.com/2015/03/05/book-of-the-month-the-vimana-incident-by-rose-lacroix/

"The Vimana Incident" Available Now!

It's finally here! "The Vimana Incident" is available online!  Just click the title and you'll find the online order page in a new window.

For those who have just stumbled upon this blog, I should probably explain what's so special about this story.

For a long time, I wrote "safe" stories that were reasonably well-conceived, but hedged my bets.  The first novel I wrote, "The Goldenlea," was a medieval low-fantasy story that was OK for a first attempt, but the style was extremely naive.  

My second novel was a little more adventurous.  "Basecraft Cirrostratus" was my first foray into the fringes of science fiction.  It was a dieselpunk action romance about gay characters in a dystopian world based loosely on 1930s Europe.

My third novel was a still-unpublished biographical fiction story called "One Could Do Better," inspired by my time in London in the early 2000s.  It was almost picked up by a small press but a dispute arose and it was dropped.  

My fourth novel was a sequel to Basecraft Cirrostratus called "Escape from St. Arned."  That one goes kind of sci-fi at the end too, but more as a device to prove a point about the characters and their relationship.  

My fifth novel, "The Linen Butterfly," was finished early last year but is currently pending for a major rewrite.  It's a sequel to "The Goldenlea" that expands on the sci-fi themes of the first book.

Then we come to number six, "The Vimana Incident."  For this one, I decided to throw caution to the wind and do an honest-to-God Philip K. Dick tribute.  I had previously spoken to Phil's last wife, Tessa Dick, and to Johnathan Lethem (one of the editors of the Exegesis) on another matter but their insights proved valuable when I set out to write this novel last spring.  "The Vimana Incident" draws heavily on "Ubik," "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," and "A Maze of Death" thematically, but stylistically it is entirely my own.

The story begins in England in an alternate 1939 in which the Second World War has been averted by a space race.  It transports the reader to an off-world colony around the year 2606, Laon France in 1153, Post-WW2 England in 1946, and finally to Humboldt County, CA in 2039, with the US coping with the effects of climate change and civil war.  A strong theme of reincarnation runs through the story, but this is ain't Cloud Atlas!  Psychedelics, neurochemistry, the Bardo Thodol, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and a dominant thread of Gnosticism make this book the sort of thing very few writers are doing any more.  The addition of anthropomorphic animal characters also turns the book into something of a postmodern Reynard story.

This is more adventurous than anything I've ever done by leaps and bounds.  I sincerely hope it wins the hearts of readers.

Sent

I sent my final draft just a few moments ago.

Unless there are any more issues, "The Vimana Incident" should be go for launch next weekend. My publisher, Furplanet, will make an announcement if it will be ready and I will link to the preorder page.

This might be the fastest I have ever taken a book from the first page of the first draft to publication. A year ago, this book existed only as a few random plot sketches going back to 2012 but no draft had ever been produced.