Rosemary Kirstein

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!

Just before leaving for Readercon, as I was waiting for Sabine to show up at my DayJob so we could drive to Burlington MA, I was killing some time browsing the Readercon website.   More or less just because it was there, I clicked on my bio on the Guests page.

This is what I saw:

Rosemary Kirstein‘s eponymous first volume in The Steerswoman series from Del Rey (1989) was recently selected by Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo for Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010 and was a Compton Crook finalist . It and its sequel, The Outskirter’s Secret (1992), are available together as The Steerswoman’s Road (2003). Volumes 3 and 4, The Lost Steersman and The Language of Power, appeared in 2003 and 2004, and she is working on the untitled Volume 5 after having done much work on the concluding City in the Crags. Kirstein’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s and in Aboriginal SF. You can follow her blog at www.rosemarykirstein.com, or on Facebook. She tweets random non sequiturs on Twitter as @rkirstein.

Wait, what?  I say to myself, The 101 best whats of which?    (Well, actually, the first thing that I say to myself is: That’s not what “eponymous” means.  But after that.)

Well, apparently it is the case.   I am, as the Brits say, chuffed.

Click. You know you want to.

The link will take you Amazon (and so will this one), where you can read the entry for yourself (and buy the book, because these guys obviously must be encouraged as much as possible!).

Many wonderful things are said about me by these two gentlemen, who obviously have outstanding taste and discernment. Seriously. Their analyses are spot-on. I have clearly been read, and read well.

Plus: Even though it’s The Steerswoman that’s selected to be among the 101 best, they don’t stop there. They go on to recommend the entire series, book-by-book, in detail, which is astoundingly generous of them.

(They also quote the wonderful, Jo Walton, another reviewer who got it right.)

My favorite line: “What Kirstein is doing is portraying how humanity’s innate desire to unriddle the phenomenological universe will persist through all sorts of dark-ages setbacks. Rowan’s adherence to the tenets of her guild make her a kind of proto-scientist, and thus a perfect exemplar of the science-fictional mindset.”

Okay, as a favorite line, that sounds kind of dry… How about: “Kirstein’s compassion for even minor characters is evident on every page, and her prose is measured and alluring without being overworked.”

Ah. My prose is “alluring”. I do like that.

Well, I suppose I could keep gloating. But I’ve just used up most of today’s writing time writing this blog post!

But I must take a moment to say that I believe that what an author most wants in the world is to be understood. Broderick and di Fillipo clearly do understand my work — as did Walton, and any number of you reading this — and what I most feel, really, is gratitude.

Sabine: Hey, don’t you have some copies of the Brit edition of The Steerswoman? I bet people would want that, too.

Me: Um, pretty sure I only have a few copies left.

Sabine: I thought you had a bunch.

Me: Don’t think so… Wait a minute. (Goes into basement, looks at every box. Grumbles. Comes back.) No, I only have the handful of copies on my shelf.

Sabine: Oh, well. That’s too bad.

Me: Yeah.

Pal Brian in in comment queue: You might want to mention that you have a near infinite supply of the English edition “The Steerswoman”. There may be people out there who would like to have a copy.

Me, to self: But I don’t, I just checked! (Goes back into basement. Looks at every visible box again. Looks at very large standing fan. Thinks about very large standing fan. Moves very large standing fan. Finds box previously hidden behind fan.)

Me: Well… heck!

So, I seem to have on hand about a dozen copies of the British mass-market edition of the stand-alone version of The Steerswoman. (That’s the start of the series, which is otherwise only available as the first half of the very-expensive The Steerswoman’s Road.)

Seriously, I would have told you before, if I realized I had them. I thought I didn’t!

I blame Nyquil, Dayquil, and my DayJob, all working together in concert to Keep Rosemary Stupid Just Before Xmas.

But the copies are here, if anyone is interested.

I’ll charge $15, which will include Priority Shipping (two to three business days, meaning if I mail tomorrow, they arrive Tuesday or Wednesday because of the weekend) within the US and Canada — foreign shipping, or Express would cost more.

If you’re interested, drop me an email at: rosemary.kirstein@gmail.com