Aelliana and Daav need your help

[rolanni]

As reported elsewhere in this journal, Mouse and Dragon (forthcoming from Baen Books in September 2010) is the sequel to Scout's Progress.

Unless A Miracle Occurs(tm), Mouse and Dragon will appear without backup -- which is to say that the prequel book will be available, yes, but only as an ebook, not sitting has hardcopy on the shelf beside it.

That means that Mouse will need to make sense to Brand! New! readers who have never heard of the Liaden Universe®, and! it will have to Not Be Boring to readers who have been with us for years.

This is, believe it or don't, a tall order. And we the authors are far too close to both the universe and the text to know if we've hit or missed our various marks.

So! I'm asking for volunteers. For readers. For quick, canny readers who can tolerate romance with their SF and SF with their romance. I will this weekend have "ready" the first 100 pages of Mouse and Dragon. I propose to email them to willing readers, who will then let me know if the story so far works for them, if they're lost, or bored, or...whatever. This is not a call for proofreaders or for people to nitpick sentence structure. This is broad-base feedback, on a quick turn-around time.

In an ideal universe, I'd like to have the following:

*Someone(s) who has never read anything in the Liaden Universe®
*Someone(s) who adored Scout's Progress and Aelliana (oneminutemonkey, I'm lookin' at you)
*Someone(s) who is a Liaden Head, who has read the books multiple times and can quote significant chunks of them

Volunteers, please email me at rolanniATkorval.com (where The Usual replaces AT), with your qualifications. I plan on sending a pdf of the file, but I'm willing to talk format with those who are chosen.

Thank you for listening.

Edited to add: I've got a bunch of volunteers who are well-read Liadenphiles -- thank you! I'm really looking for that reader or two who hasn't gotten around to the Liaden Universe® yet.

Edited to add: Ladies and gentlemen, we have hit critical mass! Thanks to everyone who volunteered!

Comments

[shana.livejournal.com]

I volunteer!

Email has been sent.

Possible alternative

[psw456.livejournal.com]

Should you not have someone refer a friend or acquaintance, I'd be pleased to post a request on the All About Romance message boards where there are many who enjoy SF romance and in spite of my (and others) recommendations not everybody is acquainted with the Liaden Universe

Re: Possible alternative

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Would you please do that?

Re: Possible alternative

[psw456.livejournal.com]

Done - I pointed them to this blog entry for contact details.

Re: Possible alternative

[psw456.livejournal.com]

Item on AAR message boards updated with info that critical mass has been reached.

Re: Possible alternative

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much.

[orlacarey.livejournal.com]

I've sent one your way and another will be responding when she comes home tomorrow... :)

[wolfshaman.livejournal.com]

I have not read any Liaden Universe and I am sending an email. :)

[deb-krol.livejournal.com]

OK, I've sent an email to a friend who I don't believe is a fellow Liadenphile but who is pretty well read in the SF field. Worst luck, she's at a con this weekend but I'm sure we'll he hearing from her soonest.

We HAVE to have Mouse and Dragon in hard copy!! Those ebook readers just don't have the same feel for this old broad...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Unless A Miracle Occurs(tm), Mouse and Dragon will appear without backup -- which is to say that the prequel book will be available, yes, but only as an ebook, not sitting has hardcopy on the shelf beside it.

Does this mean that Baen would be bringing out Mouse and Dragon as only an ebook (no hardcopy at all?) or that the other books (Scout's Progress, for example) won't be available? I would have guessed that Baen would be bringing Mouse and Dragon out with hardcopy, but might not print the related books?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Does this mean that Baen would be bringing out Mouse and Dragon as only an ebook

No, it means that Baen will be publishing Mouse and Dragon as a paper book, but! that Scout's Progress will Very Likely Not be published in paper a month ahead of time so that people will have a chance to acquaint themselves with the backstory. This could change, but one must look at the worst case and right now, Ace has the mass market rights.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought. Hum... is there a subtle way to suggest to Ace that doing at least some reprints might work out well, timed to go with the Baen releases? Nah, publishers don't like that kind of thing very much...

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Ace has previously decided that they cannot sell the Liaden books in sufficient quantities to bookstores (http://rolanni.livejournal.com/386848.html), so...probably not.

Sequels and prequels

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

I understand your necessities (and your publisher's), but they make me sad. There is, bluntly put, no way to make _Mouse and Dragon_ accessible to Brand! New! readers without damaging it for those of us who have read the entire Korval canon twice or thrice.

Are there really so very many readers (or indeed any) who are going to pick up _Mouse and Dragon_ as their first ever Liaden book? That's something I would never do with a series, and can't imagine doing except by accident -- at which point I would be sufficiently furious with the publisher for disguising a sequel/prequel as a freestanding book that I probably wouldn't ever read another in the series.

Is that just me?

Re: Sequels and prequels

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

There is, bluntly put, no way to make _Mouse and Dragon_ accessible to Brand! New! readers without damaging it for those of us who have read the entire Korval canon twice or thrice.

Well, that's lowering, certainly.

Are there really so very many readers (or indeed any) who are going to pick up _Mouse and Dragon_ as their first ever Liaden book?

I need to hope so. We need more readers.

Re: Sequels and prequels

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

I suspect that that's not the case--people who didn't know anyone under their Tuckerizations in Fallen Angels by Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes apparently enjoyed the book*, and there are series which people I have have picked up and read books starting at #2 or #3 and not had problems with (a friend recently read Michelle Sagara's second and third books in the Cast in... series from Luna, without having read the first book, and liked them a lot, and understood what was going on). There have been some series which I wondered about how accessible the series was for people who hadn't read the earlier book(s), which the people who read the books entering on later books, seemed not to have problems with.

The reading experience is different for someone showing up reading a later book without reading earlier book(s) in the series, but.... that's also true for e.g. someone who wasn't around when Star Trek the original series was airing, who's watching now something from the 1960s rooted in the perceptions of the 1960s and cultural outlook way back then, with the new viewer having grown up in a drastically different world--one which Star Trek in many ways was a key influence and conditioner of (compare cellphones to tricorders, the use of the term "sensor" ....).
* Fallen Angels is perhaps the most MarySue pastiche novel ever, in the sense that the book is basically the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society and resurrects the space program, fans save the universe, and there are dozens of people Tuckerized in it and made Heroic in various ways.
(On the other hand.... I suddenly remembered Heinlein's Number of the Beast was it? My sister read it and thought it so lacking in merit that she proceeded on the phone to try to give me a detailed description of plot and chapter by chapter events to spare me in her perspective from reading the books and from wanting to read the book. I told her that it wasn't working and wasn;t going to work, because my main interest was in reading the book for the injokes and to see how much of the injokes and the Tuckerizations I picked up.... she's never been in the SF community, she's strictly a reader.)

Re: Sequels and prequels

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

I meant no slight to your skills as an author; I just don't think (from what I've seen of similar attempts) that it's possible in general to make every book in an extended, complex series be an entry point. At least not without a lot of referencing and synopsizing and summarizing and infodumping. Even done well, the sheer mass of relevant backstory messes with the pace.

And I do fervently hope you find more readers. I help with that project whenever I get the chance. I guess the part I don't get is the assumption that new readers must necessarily start with the book that is On Shelves Now. Of all publishers, Baen is the master of putting no-long-er-on-shelves introductory books in multi-book series in their Free Library, or Webscriptions, or other places where new readers can get hooked on an author or series, so that they want to buy the new ones as physical books when they come out.

At any rate, I will read it and love it when it comes out, with or without New Reader Accomodations. Moreso 'without', but if 'with' really means more new readers buying more books, then please do what you need to.

Re: Sequels and prequels

[chaddai.livejournal.com]

I think the assumption is that an hardcover book is liable to touch new readers that wouldn't bother or wouldn't know how to get the previous books on Webscription and read them prior to "Mouse and Dragon"... And that's a good opportunity to extend the community to new people that wouldn't discover it any other way.

And I disagree with your assessment, while it isn't an easy task, there are ways to make a book in a series nice for new readers without long expositions putting to sleep old readers.

I would volunteer but I'm a little late and of a category which is probably already well supplied. :)

Re: Sequels and prequels

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Hum? Jo Walton, over here http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=20889 talks about four different kinds of series. Type 1 is one book divided by cardboard. Type 2 is where each volume has some closure, but they still need to be read in order. Type 3 is where reading volumes provides investment in the characters and may have some cumulative arc, but really, any book provides an entry point and you can read them in any order. Type 4 is basically a shared universe, but the books are independent. She also provides examples of each.

I see no real reason that Mouse and Dragon cannot be a new entry point to the corpus. Certainly reading other volumes may provide more background and reflections, but I would class most of the Liaden Universe books as Type 3, maybe even tending to Type 4 in some cases. Heck, even we dedicated readers have been reading them out of order, because that's the way parts of the series have been written.

Re: Sequels and prequels

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure that's true. I've picked up some other series mid-stream - and if the middle book is engaging, I can be captured by the series without the initial book. In some cases, the later books get better than the first one - though this is most usually the case with new authors.

But it depends on the intro and the skill of the writers - and I suspect Sharon & Steve could do it.

B. O'Brien

[(Anonymous)]

would it be too awkward to have a "things past" prequel in the book? then if someone wants to skip that bit, they could?

[(Anonymous)]

People doubting that Mouse and Dragon can serve as an entry point, need to remember that it comes BEFORE the main Agent of Change arc, so that its only prequels are Er Thom's and Val Con's romances, which (while totally delightful in all respects) are not as complex as the later (chronologically) books. They are mostly romances, with fairly limited settings and dramatis personae. There are many many series of historical romance that I have read starting with no. 2 or 3 with no problem. Of course, the setting of such romances is fairly standardized, so Liad will have to be sketched in quickly. But our authors are very good at doing that, without requiring any infodumps. I think it will work. Rolanni has said she will send my uninitiated cousin the first section, so I will shortly get a feel for whether I am correct here.

Abigail

oops, sorry, didn't mean to write anoymous letter

[amm-me.livejournal.com]

That last one was me. -- Abigail

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

would it be too awkward to have a "things past" prequel in the book?

I'm afraid I'd fall asleep writing it. If I could even figure out how to synopsize Scout's Progress. No, I'm afraid it's in-cluing or die...

[kahva.livejournal.com]

{Raises hand sheepishly} Haven't read anything Liaden, still need a Liaden newbie?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

We're all filled in -- but thanks for offering!

I'm your A candidate

[(Anonymous)]

The books are on my TBR pile, which teetered and fell long ago. I've read sci fi most of my life and I don't mind a romance line in the story. I am a top Amazon reviewer, write myself, and have done full novel critiques before.

Pardon--I meant to log in

[phoenyx-13.livejournal.com]

Here's my LJ account. My email is:

Beckeroo13@gmail.com

Picking up in the middle?

[(Anonymous)]

Hrm.. Mayhaps I am just odd. If I find a book on a shelf and the blurb pricks my interest, the first thing I do is check the front pages and see if there are any books that come before it. If there are then I put in an order for the first book and start at the beginning. If the series is any good then the first book will be good enough to keep me interested and there for the long haul.

Nathan

If you still need a reader...

[kmblush.livejournal.com]

I hate to admit this, but I've never, ever read any of the Liaden books (I've heard about them and they are on my horrendously long list of books to read... but so far haven't had a chance). Please consider me if you need an absolute newbie.