In keeping with tradition, let’s have us a vote. I’ve chosen three possible pieces of art to reveal, so choose wisely.

Which would you rather see in glorious color?

1) The bridge of the Leviathan

2) A Sultan’s elephant walker

3) A fléchette bat!

Use the comments thread below to vote (by number makes it easier), or simply to cajole, convince and coerce your fellow commenters about how they should vote.

Sydneysiders! Don’t forget that Justine, Isobelle Carmody and I will be at the Sydney Writers Festival this Sunday. Come see us talk. It’s free!

A Neverending Story: Fantasy Worlds
Sunday, May 20
11:30AM-12:30PM
Scott Westerfeld, Isobelle Carmody, Justine Larbalestier, and Joy Lawn (facilitator)
Sydney Dance 4, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay

From steampunk to the supernatural, from urban fantasies to dystopian futures, our love affair with speculative fiction is all-consuming.

Three authors who create imagined worlds explore our enduring fascination with fantasy and unpick the complexities of the genre. Isobelle Carmody, Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier talk to Joy Lawn.

Here are the online details for this event.

Let’s start with the art that was handed to me at my Free Comic Book Day event at Kinokuniya in Sydney. Thanks again to everyone who came and said nice things to me on my birthday, and especially to those who handed me art and cake.

First there was some Midnighters art from (appropriately) Melissa:

Yes, that’s Rex looking pretty cool, and I like how Melissa seems a bit annoyed at having to pose for the drawing.

And from Christina, a triptych of Tallys:

The hot air balloons are a cool touch, as are the necklace, interface cuff, and knife for each Tallyversion.

And finally, from Meshell, I got Alek and Deryn as lovebirds:

It’s cool that I got fan art from every trilogy at that event. You’re all doing a good job of coordinating! Plus: OBLIGATORY LORIS WITH MUSTACHE.

And now return to the regular mode of art delivery, these were all sent to me via the internets.

Here from Laura is a bit of Darwinist fashion design!

One of the coolest thing about Keith’s art is how it hints that there would be a whole different Darwinist culture out there, with clothes, furniture, and whatnot all influenced by the Victorian biotechnology at the base of Darwinist society. This hat is a great example of what all that might look like, complete with bee and nautilus-shell motifs.

And here’s a very a spunky-looking Deryn from Lilly.

I like her haircut, and the way she’s leaning forward, ready to go.

And briefly leaving the monochrome, here’s some Deryn cosplay from Alexa, showing before and after:

Pretty amazing difference. According to Alexa, this transformation required “two rolls of athletic tape, half a can of hairspray, and many uncountable bobby pins.” Just remember that the next time you’re cross-dressing: Never say die!

And finally, here’s a lovely still life in the stack-of-books mode, which for some reason I have lost all attribution to except the letter “g”:

Please identify yourself, G!

And now for the NEWS . . .

Given that the Manual of Aeronautics, the all-color large-format guide to the world of Leviathan, will be appearing on August 21, it’s almost time to start THE OBLIGATORY ART REVEALS. I’ve decided to do one twice a month, on the 1st and 15th. (I hope that’s not too much for you guys.)

May 15 will be the first of these, or maybe that’s when we’ll do some voting for the first reveal. BUT SOON.

And finally, Sydneysiders can see me tonight at:

The Aurealis Awards
Saturday, May 12
7:30 for an 8PM start
Independent Theatre
269 Miller Street
North Sydney NSW 2060

The Aurealis Awards celebrate the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers every year. Kate Forsyth with be mistress of ceremonies, and I’ll be presenting the award for Best Illustrated Book or Graphic Novel.

You can get tickets here.

Lots of people brought me cool fan art, which I’ll be sharing with you next Friday.

For you Sydneysiders who missed me, I’ll be appearing twice more in the next two weeks. The first one:

The Aurealis Awards
Saturday, May 12
7:30 for an 8PM start
Independent Theatre
269 Miller Street
North Sydney NSW 2060

The Aurealis Awards celebrate the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers every year. Kate Forsyth with be mistress of ceremonies, and I’ll be presenting the award for Best Illustrated Book or Graphic Novel.

You can get tickets here.

And the second:

Sydney Writers Festival
A Neverending Story: Fantasy Worlds
Sunday, May 20
11:30AM-12:30PM
Me, Isobelle Carmody, Justine Larbalestier, and Joy Lawn (facilitator)
Sydney Dance 4, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay

From steampunk to the supernatural, from urban fantasies to dystopian futures, our love affair with speculative fiction is all-consuming.

Three authors who create imagined worlds explore our enduring fascination with fantasy and unpick the complexities of the genre. Isobelle Carmody, Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier talk to Joy Lawn.

Here’s the online details for this event.

And finally, here’s a little promo for my sister-in-law’s new e-book start-up, SnappyAnt. Her first app is an animated and read-out-loud iPad version of a picture book called My Mom’s the Best, by Rosie Smith, with illustrations by Bruce Whatley. You know, for Mother’s Day!

It’s all about wee baby beasties interacting with their moms, and is very cute.

Note that in Australia and UK iTunes store, it comes in its original Oz-English version: My Mum’s the Best. (Fight the power!)

You can check it out at the iTunes store.

Okay, that’s it. See you on Friday for FAFF, if not sooner.

“When will this novel be out?” you may ask.

Indeed, you may. But I don’t know yet. Maybe autumn of 2013, maybe a year after that. I know, that’s a long time. But novels are long things, and publishing timelines are even longer things, and I can tell you that this novel is probably going to be FAT. (Like, longer than any of my other books.)

As for all the other possible questions you might have, they must wait for another day. This particular s3krit project is still too fragile to be interrogated and explicated.

Also, it’s time for FAF! Since mentioning the unnamed-loris-with-mustache thread last time, I’ve gotten a lot of loris/Bovril/Moggle art. So really this is all about the sidekicks.

The first one is from Adam, and it’s a shot of the kraken scene in Leviathan.

It’s great to see that encounter from a distance.

I’ve also been getting some Shay’s Story fan art trickling in, which is totally cool. Keep it coming. Here’s a notebook doodle of Shay from Daliz:

I like that the Uglies character have manga versions now, whether with pigtails up or down.

The rest of today’s FAF is all lorises and Moggle in many different media! Thanks to everyone for sticking with a theme.

First, some Bovril/Moggle crossover from Phrancie:

They are clearly going to conquer the world together. Or run into a lamppost, maybe.

Next is the highly anticipated Moggle-with-a-mustache, again from Oskar and his Spore software:

Undercover Moggle is undercover. And jaunty.

And we also have photoshopped Bovril, or quasi-Bovril creature, from Rebecca:

If you’re going to wear a mustache, you should probably get a top hat. It’s funny because it’s true.

And in case you’ve forgotten what the real Bovril looks like, Alex offer this book-style rendering of the Bovril birth scene:

He totally gets Keith’s composition right. It’s cool how Bovril in that scene isn’t cute yet, more kind of new-born and weird. But then gets cuter and cuter as the series progresses.

Okay, that’s it. I’ll be back in two weeks with more FAF. And probably before then I’ll post something interesting, though I don’t know what.

Sydneysiders, don’t forget that net Saturday I’ll be at Free Comics Book Day at Kinokuniya! Here’s the FaceBook page for the event, and here are the details:

Kinokuniya Bookstore
Lvl 2, The Galeries, 500 George Street
Sydney, NSW 2000
Saturday, May 5, 2012
10AM-7PM (I’ll be there from 11AM-4PM-ish.)

Hope to see you there.

This is the first time I’ll be a guest at an FCBD, thanks to my first ever graphic novel, Shay’s Story.

I’ll be at Kinokuniya from 11AM to 4PM, in the Artists’ Alley.

Here’s the FaceBook page for the event, and here are the details:

Kinokuniya Bookstore
Lvl 2, The Galeries, 500 George Street
Sydney, NSW 2000

Saturday, May 5, 2012
10AM-7PM

ARTISTS’ ALLEY, 11am – 4pm
A great opportunity to meet some of our best local comic artists and writers.

COSPLAY COMPETITION
We’re looking for the best Comic/Manga, Undead and Gothic Lolita costumes for both adults and kids. More details will be provided closer to the date.

See you there.

Food blogging may well commence in the near future.

But enough of my excuses. Here are the fan arts of today’s Fan Art Friday!

First we have a Darwinist/Clanker wristband by McKenna:

I love how the tag line of the Leviathan trailer came to define the series, even though “Do you oil your war machines, or feed them?” doesn’t appear in the books. This wristband above, of course, uses a variation on the “war machines” line, but that kind of reinforces my point: everyone knows what it’s a reference too. (Well, not EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, but you know what I mean.)

Here’s a great triptych of Bovril from Alyssa:

This is a very snow-adapted Bovril, which is cool. A great thing about Leviathan having black and white illustrations is that the fan art winds up with lots of different color schemes, Bovril especially. Of course, once the Manual of Aeronautics comes out in August, we’ll have canon to contend with. But I’m sure the other color interpretations will live on, because of the internets and stuff.

Next is an interesting counterfactual from Libby: a portrait of Alek’s sister. This sister, of course, doesn’t exist in my books, but in real life Franz and Sophie had a daughter who was named after her mother. Libby calls her “Princess Sophie, Alek’s sort of, actually-existed sister.”

Libby has clearly done her research, because this portrait looks a LOT like the real Sophie in 1914, whom you can see here.

(Did you know that this Sophie was fictionalized in The Young Indiana Jones? I just found out that she was Indiana’s first kiss!)

And now, because I must BY INTERNATIONAL LAW have an image of Bovril with a mustache in every FAF, here’s an image from Melissa that makes ingenious use of graph paper.

Digital Bovril is digital.

UPDATE:
A few of you have pointed out in this and other threads that it’s NOT BOVRIL IN A MUSTACHE. It’s Dr. Barlow’s nameless loris, who has different coloring and everything. Sorry to keep making that mistake. But it’s not like I’m some kind of expert on all this stuff. (Ahem.)

And to round out our Leviathan FAF, a couple of pencil works from Lauren and Tabitha:

It’s amazing how these two simple pencil drawings, which are in very different styles, both get Deryn’s expression exactly right.

And now for some Uglies FAF! First we have a drawing of Shay, based on the interpretation from Shay’s Story:

Manga pig-tails for the win!

When I wrote Uglies, I had no idea that there was such a thing as manga pigtails, and I certainly didn’t realize that a manga version would ever come out from Shay’s POV. But I’m so glad that I gave Shay canonical pigtails, so that she would have her own distinctive look in her own story.

And finally, here’s another piece of Spore-generated art from Oskar, who this time gives us Moggle:

There’s not enough Moggle fan art. I think my big mistake with Moggle was never having it wear a mustache.

From now on, all the sidekicks will wear mustaches.

This is a common human response to reality: We comprehend the world not by its own logic, but by the logic of how we encountered it. In other words, whatever we heard first must be more true and more real and more first than all the other versions out there.

This happens a lot with urban legends. You know, you tell the story of the Mexican Pet to a bunch of people and someone complains, “No, the rat-pet was from Venezuela, not Mexico!” This person has, of course, heard the same urban legend as you, but a slightly different version of it. And for some reason they think that the one they heard must be the correct one. They have NO reason to think this, because both versions are ridiculous and silly and untrue. But that other variant is theirs and so they become Team Venezuelan Pet in this stupid argument. And you all fight late into the night, your positions not based on logic, but on how you first got introduced to the story.

It’s like baby ducks seeing their mother or something. (I will also point out that most people have the same religion as their parents. Just sayin’.)

This phenomenon is part of a larger phenomenon called egocentrism. Not egotism, which is thinking that you are the best, but egocentrism, the assumption that your personal experiences are central and somehow universal.

But here’s the irony in applying this egocentric logic to the reading of books: The modern novel was invented as a way of being inside someone else’s life.

Think about it. Every word of Hunger Games and Uglies was carefully chosen to create the experience of being in Katinss’ or Tally’s head. This is why neither book has the line, “Gentle reader, unlike the people of your time, no one in this future world knows what an iPad is.” Because that would put you back in your life and ruin the whole point of modern narrative.

I keep saying “modern” because it wasn’t always this way. When the novel was a younger form, lots of them started with some sort of leisurely preamble, like, “This strange tale you are about to read was discovered in an old sea chest blah blah blah.” But in novels these days, the first sentences usually go BOOM THESE ARE SOMEONE ELSE’S THOUGHTS—DEAL WITH IT. Like, “When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”

It’s the opposite of egocentrism, letting yourself become another person for a few hours. Especially when that person lives in a radically different reality, like a post-scarcity utopia or a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This departure from self is essential to reading novels, and it’s one of the ways that reading makes us better people. (It’s key to writing as well, which is why I gave this advice three years ago.)

Of course, there’s also a positive side of making our egos central to the reading process: When we read new books, we use the knowledge gained from all the other books we’ve read. We supplement the story of a novel with the story of our own reading history. This is a major reason why people can react to the same novel differently, like this:

New Reader: “I had no idea that Romantic Lead 1 and Romantic Lead 2 were going to get together. They HATED each other at first!”

Slightly More Experienced Reader: “That book was stupid. I knew from the first chapter that Romantic Lead 1 and Romantic Lead 2 were going to get together!”

Experienced Reader: “It’s cool what the author did with Romantic Lead 1 and Romantic Lead 2 in that scene, because that will make it more ironic when they get together later.”

This is in fact the major way we can tell how sophisticated a reader is, by how they relate the text in question to all the other things they’ve read.

But I’ll leave all the subtler points of readerly ego in your capable hands. I’m curious how your experiences with other writers’ novels changed your view of mine, whichever order you read them in. Let me know in the comments.

Of course, here is where I reveal that this was all a leisurely preamble to my own news: My UK publisher has released new covers for the Uglies series, featuring a crass-tastic tagline that will solve all problems of priority forever and ever!

Yes, gentle reader. They went there.

Here’s the rather awesome cover:

And the cover copy:

The Season has finally arrived, filled with the magnificent balls, scandalous gossip, and clandestine romances that every lord and lady in good society has come to expect. But far within the walls of lavish estates and in the dark corners of the city lies a world that the aristocracy dares not touch, with rules and risks that glamour cannot overpower. Yet true love has no boundaries, and heiresses and street thieves alike must use their savvy and strength to create new beginnings and happily-ever-afters. Sometimes luck is enough, but every once in a while, a touch of magic may be needed.

Deliciously alluring, these thirteen historical romances from a talented array of YA authors will make even the most cynical heart swoon.

How can you resist it?

Edited by Ekaterina Sedia, Willful Impropriety comes out September 4, 2012.

Oh, and here’s the full roster of writers:

AT WILL by Leanna Renee Hieber
THE UNLADYLIKE EDUCATION OF AGATHA TREMAIN by Stephanie Burgis
NUSSBAUM’S GOLDEN FORTUNE by M. K. Hobson
THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER by Barbara Roden
MERCURY RETROGRADE by Mary Robinette Kowal
FALSE COLOURS by Marie Brennan
MRS BEETON’S BOOK OF MAGICKAL MANAGEMENT by Karen Healey
THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS by Caroline Stevermer
THE DANCING MASTER by Genevieve Valentine
THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND by Sandra McDonald
RESURRECTION by Tiffany Trent
OUTSIDE THE ABSOLUTE by Seth Cadin
STEEPED IN DEBT TO THE CHIMNEY POTS by Steve Berman

Hovercams!

A company called Helimalibu provides flying cameras for “a variety of industries such as, Residential and Commercial Real Estate, high-level inspections for electric towers or HV lines, or for land survey and construction purposes.” The film industry is considering using cameras of this type for movie-making. And, of course, police are using flying drones in all sort of ways.

For more, read this story at FastCompany.

Aviatrixes of Yore!

That’s Amelia Earhart, aviatrix, trailblazing woman, and paragon of goggled hotness. I want that jacket.

Ganked from this story at QuiteContinental.

Tunguska!

These paintings by Bill Pullman, a meteorological painter, attempt to recreate what the Tunguska Event in Siberia looked like to those on the ground. This is the meteor (or something) strike that leveled millions of trees and for which Nicola Tesla attempts to take credit in Goliath.

Flash Tattoos!

Thanks to everyone who tweeted to me about Nokia’s patent on vibrating tattoos. For those of you who missed the low-information internet storm about these tattoos, they’re skinplanted ferro-magnetic patches that respond to a device (like a phone), so you can feel a very personal buzz when you have a call/message/eBay auction to attend to.

I’m sure at some point many of us will have implanted devices to make interfacing with the internet and machines easier, but I have one problem with a ferro-magnetic tattoo. What happens if some April Fool’s Day prankster develops a “buzz broadcaster,” a device that gives everyone around them a great big vibration?

Nothing good, I’m sure.

That’s it. Have a fun April Fool’s Day, and try not to be evil.

Thanks so much for buying my books and make sure that a) there will be more books by me, and b) I get to eat and clothe myself.

In other news, if it weren’t for The Walking Dead, I would be #4 instead of #9. And after all I’ve done for the zombies!

Shay’s Story is available at most bookstores and comic shops. But call ahead, because not all stores carry a wide range of manga, even bestselling manga.

You can check out the first chapter by clicking here.

You can order Shay’s Story online at Indie Bound, BarnesandNoble.com, or Amazon.

Nook owners can get it by clicking here.

For iPad owners, the Shay’s Story page on iTunes is right here. It says you can read it on your iPhone, but you’d better have pretty good eyes, because it’s fixed width format. iPad is way better.

Sydneysiders can find signed copies at Kinokuniya Bookstore at the Galleries. Other Australians can get it pretty cheap from Fishpond.