Rosemary Kirstein

Way back in the misty depths of time, when I sold The Steerswoman to Del Rey Books, a conversation more or less like this took place one day:

Me: And I think there should be a map, too.

Them: That’s a great idea.  There should definitely be a map!

Me:  Great!  Let’s have a map.

Them: Right.

(silence)

Me: So… I guess we should get this book to whoever is doing the map —

Them: — and that would be you.

Me:  Me?

Them: You.

I had never made a map. I loved maps.  I’d read atlases for fun, and dream of far-off lands… but I’d never done one.

But now I had to do it — and it seemed I had to do it really soon. I grabbed every fantasy-style book with a map that I could find, got to the art store, figured out what I needed…

Hey, this was before the Internet, okay? Well, not completely before, but well before the Internet was a useful tool for the average tech-savvy person to use for research.  All my research was in person with physical books in libraries.

In the end, I managed to produce a map that did the job.

So… if you purchased a first edition of The Steerswoman, this is what you saw:

Ouch.

Sad. Very sad.  But the best I could do at that point.

And I discovered something: I liked doing it. It was fun.  And if you like something, you tend to get better at it.

Here’s the map that goes along with the The Steerswoman now:

Click for full size, then CTL+ and CTL- to zoom in and out.

If you read the ebook on an iPad, or a Kindle Fire, this map is zoomable right in the book.  And you can zoom a lot. If you’re on a Kindle Paperwhite, or other non-color Kindle, it’s not zoomable — but still clear, and rather pretty (I also provide a URL to see the map online).

I’ve always had the idea that each book’s map will expand on the previous, so that your view of Rowan’s world will expand as her knowledge grows. When Del Rey did the omnibus of the first two books combined (as The Steerswoman’s Road) I had to combine the map for The Outskirter’s Secret with the map for The Steerswoman, and I feel we lost that sense of the world expanding. But now that they’re separate again as ebooks, I can have a different map for the second book again:

As ever, bigger is but a click away.

And by the time The Lost Steersman comes around:

Eastward expansion…

Each map shows Rowan’s understanding of her world as of the beginning of the book (more or less).

The latest map, of course, is for The Language of Power —

Wait, do you really want to see that one? Because it contains MAJOR SPOILERS for The Lost Steersman!  If you haven’t read that yet, you might not want to go there…

Well, if you must, then click this link.

And what’s coming up?

More.

Also, more detail.  As well as widening the view, the next books will include some closer views of important locations. Of course, I’m really looking forward to The Crags map, because of the extremely interesting way that city is laid out.

And in other news: Going to Worldcon!  I might not be able to post much for the next, although I should manage a tweet or two (I am @rkirstein).

Maybe I’ll see you there…

For secret marketing reasons, I needed to find out how quickly Amazon’s Kindle store and the other ebook outlets respond when a book’s price is changed.

So, I did a test, and changed the price on The Lost Steersman and The Language of Power.

Answer: Amazon posted the new price immediately, as did Smashword’s own site.  The iBooks store and Kobo both had the change within 14 hours later.  Barnes and Noble took about 48 hours.

Good to know.

But hey, happy side effect:  those two books now cost a dollar less than they did before!

This one

Also this one

So, for anyone who was on the fence about buying the third and fourth books in the series —

Well.  Just thought I’d mention it…

The Language of Power is now onsale at Smashwords!

Go ahead and click. You know you want to.

As ever, it will take a while to promulgate out to the other sellers (iBooks, Kobo, etc) — Smashwords has to get it to them, and they each have their own schedule as to when they go live with newly-arrived ebooks.    I wanted to get this done today, so I’m glad all the factors came together nicely.

So, for your Kindle, Amazon is the place to go; and for everything else, it’s all at Smashwords now, and other ebook-sellers soon.

Well, must go; busy day tomorrow.

Well, on Amazon in the US, that is.   Slight delay for Amazon sites in other countries, as we’ve seen.

But, yep. There it is.

That’s right.

Next project: getting all four ebooks out on other platforms.

Sorry about being offline for — heck, almost two weeks!  That final dose of Taxol hit me a lot harder than I expected, the steroid crash was worse than usual, and I was useless for much longer than from previous chemo sessions.  And as soon as I was able to do much of anything, I spent whatever energy I had on getting this ebook out.

Which it now is.  So happy.

More later; I’ve spent the last 3 days in a white-hot copy-editing heat, so I’m kinda beat now.

I think I’ll turn in… g’night!

I finished my offering for the Con or Bust auction, and it’s up for bidding right now!

Here’s what you get:

all the books. A map. A mysterious jewel-like object

These are the trade paperbacks, published by Del Rey.  The first book, The Steerswoman’s Road combines The Steerswoman and The Outskirter’s Secret in combination, so with these three books  you get all four volumes of the series.

The map is Rowan’s world as of the beginning of Book 4, so it includes the Dolphin Stair from The Lost Steersman.   The map is framed in a shadowbox, and I’ve included an example of the so-called jewel that started the whole story back in Book 1.

If you win the auction, I’ll ship these to you anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere.  (South of the equator, shipping costs get crazy.  I’m looking at you, Australia and New Zealand.  If you really want these, have me ship to a pal of yours in the Northern Hemisphere, and you and he or she can work it out from there.)

Secret fact not mentioned on Con or Bust, known only to you: the paper on which the map is printed was hand-made by me, back in my paper-making days.  I think it came out pretty nice.  And I’ll include a blank sheet of that same paper for your own use.

And naturally, I’ll autograph the books at your  request.  You can choose just the autograph and date, or I’ll personalize it (“To YourNameHere, SomeNiceComment, etc.”)  Sometimes people don’t want autographs  to be personalized, since it affects the book’s resale value — and these books are now out of print, and very hard to find.

So, if you want these, head over to the Con or Bust auction, and put in a bid.   Bidding ends on February 23 at 5PM Eastern Time.

And while you’re over there, browse through the other items up for auction.   There are some lovely, interesting, and exciting items and services donated by all sorts of people.   If you look at the tags list in the right-hand column on the Con or Bust page, you can browse by categories — or you can just continue to click through page after page of random cool stuff (my preferred method of exploration).

And don’t forget Delia Sherman’s auction offering: a critique of your novel, via Skype!