After yesterday’s overnight trip on the Amtrak from Portland down to San Francisco, I awoke surprisingly refreshed.  I don’t usually sleep well on the train (with the jerking and lurching it’s like someone constantly shaking you awake).  Brian and I each had cramped sleeper compartments (I think they're called "cozy") with a little table and a bench seat, and a private coffin-sized bathroom cubicle about half the size of an airplane toilet.  But the train took us where we needed to go.  We were pulling into Sacramento when I woke up, with rain sheeting the window.  Two hours to our...
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Even in the midst of the Hellhole tour, the other projects keep going. A few months ago I started work on an ambitious proposal for a new standalone trilogy set in the Seven Suns universe, developed and expanded it to the point where I felt comfortable submitting it to publishers.  “The Saga of Shadows” is set twenty years after the end of the previous series, with a new cast of characters as well as some returning familiar ones.  After the Terra Incognita trilogy, and Hellhole, and The Sisterhood of Dune, my imagination was ready to go back to the Seven Suns universe.  (The...
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Day 3 of the Hellhole book-signing tour, Brian and I left Seattle by train in the morning for the ride south to Portland. On the way, we had a relaxing time to work on our computers, Brian editing Sisterhood of Dune, me writing some notes, and then together we brainstormed some of the plotlines for Hellhole Inferno, the second novel in the trilogy.  We arrived in Portland at 3:30, where our author escort, Kevin, met us and drove us to the hotel. I reclaimed a package waiting for us at the desk, a shipment of 75 Hellhole books to sign,...
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I got up at 4:45 AM to head to the airport.  Fortunately, over the past couple of days I had packed everything, a suitcase (clothes, granola bars and nuts, hand sanitizer), a duffel filled with (very heavy) bookmarks and newsletters, my compter case, laptop loaded with all the files I’m working on, and Kindle loaded with the books I’m reading. Rebecca went with me to the airport, flying out for a four-day conference of her own in San Francisco.  (She often goes along on all or part of the tour, but this time the schedule is just too rough.)  On...
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