Laurie R. King

I started writing this post in London on Sunday morning, in a family kitchen, listening to the click of the heating system sending warmth towards the radiators.  This is a location achieved after one local French train, one high-speed French train, one highly entertaining Paris taxi ride (French/Algerian rap music and a warning about the gypsy pickpocket girls at the gare), one Eurostar chunnel ride (during most of which I slept, although I was awake enough to regret not getting a first class seat), a tube ride on the Piccadilly line (packed with teenagers—I’d forgotten it was the weekend), and a local London bus.  From pre-dawn in a village in France, listening to birdsong while the dark gave up its secrets, to evening in a garden in London, drinking tea and listening to the Polish neighbors at their barbecue, twelve hours and 500 miles.

And tonight, I am scheduled to be on a flight to New York.  About which, as we have just been strongly reminded, we take nothing for granted.

(UPDATE: Yes, the plane made it, I made it, and I am writing the rest of this in NY.)

However, if everything goes as planned, tomorrow I will be on another train, heading north out of New York towards Boston.  Tomorrow morning, people will open their computers and see a newsletter, reminding them that it is launch day for The God of the Hive. Tomorrow, bookstores will display that luscious cover in a prominent place, people will rush in and snatch it off the shelves (one hopes, paying for it before they leave) and dive inside.  And tomorrow night, I will stand up in Boston’s public library and celebrate the publication of the book.

I love this book.  I am happy with it, and proud of everything about it, from my own writing to the way the characters came to life, from the title we eventually settled on to the artwork on the cover.  It has a couple of the characters I’ve most enjoyed writing, both protagonist and antagonist, and it has what I think is perhaps my best-ever ending.

And lest the other new additions to the family feel slighted, this week’s drawing is of ALL THE RUSSELL PAPERBACKS.  That’s right, a copy of all nine trade-sized paperbacks, to go to someone who opens the e-newsletter we send out tomorrow.

This week, which is Eighteen of the Twenty Weeks of Buzz, we’ll announce the winner of the Illuminated MyStory contest (after some discussion—there was a question about the validity of some of the votes) and we’ll open voting on the Russellscape contest (one vote per person, please!)

Next week we’ll be posting a readers’ guide to The God of the Hive—although it’s rich in spoilers, so you might want to wait until you’ve read the book.

Thanks to everyone who has participated in these past eighteen weeks, and stick with us for the final two: prizes and surprises to come!