elfs | Sterlings in dead tree format, coming soon.

Sterlings, the Dead Tree Edition.

There's something about seeing my work in print, in an actual damned book, that gives it an odd weight and heft. I was up way too late last night reading my own stuff in this entirely new format (it's very pretty, too) and discovered that I kinda liked seeing it this way.

I also discovered quite a few flaws, places where I'm too wordy, or flubbed rewriting a sentence and left a word in, or used "then" when I meant "than," and so on. I also discovered why sometimes my writing is difficult: I write dialogue (Firefox's spell checker insists that's not right; Longman's Dictionary insists that it is) as if from a comic book, with the characters emoting in words because pictures are static in comics, but eschewing descriptive writing of their expressions or gestures. Instead, I save the descriptives for the beats, for the gutter (to use another comic book term). It makes dialogue somewhat interesting to read.

Anyway, those of you who've been reading Sterlings now have a choice: you can read it at the pace at which I post it (in which case you'll be reading the last episode somewhere around June 2008), or in about two weeks you'll be able to buy the whole thing in dead tree format for $15 (plus shipping and handling, sorry) and read it in one sitting.

I'll probably be going back through older works and prepping them for dead tree editions soon, so you'll be able to order copies of, oh, Travellogue and Aimee in the same formats.

If only I had some nicer cover art.