Lou is truly one of my favorite editors.  I like who he is as a person (creative, smart, driven) and how he supports and promotes his authors.  And now I get to be one of them.  I’m quite pleased to report that Lou has acquired a duology from me.

A little about the books:  I’ve always been fascinated with how single individuals can make a big difference.  Churchill.  Lincoln.  Hitler.  And for this series, Eva Peron.  Yes, the story is told in space and it’s adventure fiction.  And no, I don’t have a character named Evita.  But I did steal ideas from her real life, and from the musical, and mixed them all up with a generation ship story.

I can’t say any more lest I give out spoilers.

The first book, The Creative Fire, is done.  I’m excited to start the second one shortly.

So watch for The Creative Fire from Pyr books late this year…

I came away feeling like I learned a lot about the time, I enjoyed the characters, and I’m very likely to pick up her next book and enjoy it, too.  I think part of the magic for me was that this set in a time I remember, in a place I’ve never been but which is on my list of places to go, and Stina managed to both keep the work clicking along on pacing and to leave it close to the character.

I suspect some of that change is about transformation.  I certainly hope so.  I also suspect that destruction will happen on the way to that change.  Indeed, it already has.  Last year saw a lot of destruction.  But out of death, comes rebirth.  Out of fall, spring.

Anyway…these are the themes I pondered over at Futurismic in my latest Today’s Tomorrow’s column.  I’m enjoying these essays.  Love feedback, too.  I’m trying to get better at writing essays, to make them more thoughtful….

Silently and Very Fast is over at Clarkesworld in three parts…here’s the first.

This is a YA series with great voice, a brave and tough heroine, a few fabulous friends, and all set in the very well-developed world of Tortall where other Pierce books have been.  Even as an adult reader, I was fully enthralled with these books which are really better described as in the 9-90 age range.

Publishing and Creativity:

I left this section in so I could re-predict the following:

There will be more attempts to make good franchises with rich multimedia (like Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson’s Mongolaid, like Al Gore’s Our Choice iPad App).  I’m expecting more of this to come out in 2012 than 2011.  One major success could drive this market – Twilight or Harry Potter like sales of something interactive and multimedia but that is not a movie or a mash up of marketing with a book.

In the book biz, the end of 2012 will see:

• Most publishers doing better than the end of 2011, with some winners in the big companies and a few rising stars that keep rising in the mid-pack (Nightshade, for example, or Prime).  Which ones succeed at this size depends on individuals rather than corporate culture.
• Barnes and Noble will still exist.
• Authors will gain a bit more leverage on things like e-royalties because self-publishing will remain viable, and smaller publishers with less overhead will be able to compete better against the big boys.

Technology

I’m not making tech predictions this year.  Better minds than me do that well.  My bet for the most accurate?  Mark Anderson of SNS.  I’ve watched him for a few years now and attended some of his fabulous conferences (wish I could go every year).  Here are his predictions.

America:

• I expect a dismal political year.  So far, as an election year, it’s already boring and bad.
• The economy is a heck of a wild card, and its global underpants are showing as the Eurozone and China affect us. My prediction, with a whopping barely over 50% feeling of a half-full glass?  Our economy will keep struggling up.  Outliers?  Continued Eurozone problems are at worst a drag, but if China sees big change downward, we could teeter all over again.  This is a time when every single strong economy helps the whole:  We should root for everyone.  This is not a zero-sum game.
• We’ll keep having climate disasters and for the most part, the America public will keep (illogically) believing it’s not caused by us.  Those of us who are NOT skeptics remain frustrated as hell and write brilliant essays that are ignored.

Governance

Regardless of the fact that it won’t impact America as much as it should, governance will be a topic for thinkers everywhere.   The Arab Spring and Occupy are all about tearing down existing structures.  The conversation of what to do after that will play out at least in actions (e.g. continued struggle like what is happening in Egypt today).  I am sure this is a conversation happening behind the closed doors of the powerful.  Hopefully it will also play out in the blogosphere and elsewhere is a truly meaningful way. Consider this a prediction of the conversation, but not of conclusions.

Whatever happens, I wish everyone a great 2012.

Publishing and Creativity:

Prediction: Ebooks will keep up their relentless march to take over print.  They’ll be at or near 20% of the market next year.  25% isn’t unreasonable and print book sales will fall by 5 to 7% (to some extent ebook sales will spur regular book sales).  Note that I think this means there will more total book sales than there were in 2010.

And?: I can’t find 2011 numbers – I think they’ll be out in February.  I’m close, but I don’t know how close.  Will update in February.  In the meantime, I’ve gotten into infographics (finding – not making).  Here’s one on e-readers. And here’s another one.

Prediction: We are likely to lose Borders as a major outlet.

And?: Yes.  Same as above – a give-me for anyone paying attention.

Prediction: I can’t put a number on it, but there will be more attempts to make good franchises with rich multimedia (like Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson’s Mongolaid).  I doubt there will be a lot of uptake yet, but I’m not firm on this.  One major success could drive this market.  I just kind of expect the major success will happen after 2011.  What I mean is Twilight or Harry Potter like sales of something interactive and multimedia but that is not a movie or a mash up of marketing with a book.  I’d love to be wrong (to have this happen in 2011) since whenever this happens it will be fun to watch.

And?: I didn’t see as much activity as I expected here.  Al Gore’s ipad app version of the book “Our Choice” did well.  I’m going to re-prediuct this one though, these books are coming.  I think the application development just isn’t cheap enough yet.

America:

Prediction: We’re due for some wake up on climate change.  Unless nature itself pushes us even harder than it has been, there are slim chances of the wake-up happening now.  Still, it’s more likely that we pay attention to climate and energy in 2011 than in 2012, since 2012 will be full of the theater of the election.  But to be honest, I think as long as climate change is gradual and each individual event could be “normal” this is like being a frog in a pot of water set to boil – we just aren’t likely to notice in time.  So my prediction is that we keep making progress, but that our gains are way less than we need them to be.  In other words, we make headway, but the problem gets worse.

And?: Dismally, about right.  And that’s WITH nature pushing us extra hard.

Prediction: The economy will get better, but unevenly.  I actually expect the Seattle economy to do pretty well, and in fact most of the technology and entertainment fields to do well.  Well means forward progress, not bubbles or even ecstatic growth.  But I suspect unemployment and a tough housing market to be problems all year, with  minor progress on both.  The middle of the country will not fare as well as the coasts, and a traveler might feel like they are going through different worlds as they go from one side of the country to the other.

And: About right.  We are doing pretty well (comparatively) in the Seattle area, and the country is still dragging itself along it’s belly, barely moving forward.

Prediction: I don’t see anything to make our politics get better. 2011 will be a year of continued divide, of set-up for next year’s elections, of little to no progress on much of anything that matters.  Let’s hope I’m wrong.  It’s still unclear to me what Wilkileaks will do to politics and governance, but it is probably a major a game-changer. To some extent it increases transparency, which I believe is good.  But it is also theft and disrespect, which are not so good.  It’s also bad for order, and we need order to solve the problems we have right now.

And?: 2011 politics sucked.  Wikileaks did turn out to have less of an impact that I thought – at least on the surface.

Technology

Prediction: I think it’s a give-me prediction that we’ll continue to see e-readers and tablets do well, that the three major ecosystems (Android, Apple, and Microsoft) will continue to grow, and that consumers will align around them.

And?: Yep.  At least Android and Apple.  The ‘Soft is still struggling, although Kinect has done them well.  They are also doing OK in the business market – O365 is holding its own against also-successful Google Docs.

Prediction: More cloud computing adoption will war with the major broadband providers desire to charge differentiating fees, and net neutrality will be lost unless the major cloud providers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle) somehow get on the bandwagon where they should be.   At the moment, it appears that the major carries like Comcast and Verizon are poised for the win.   The telco’s are too big for regulatory bodies to fight alone – they’re nasty and richand have a LOT of lawyers. This is really, really important.

And?: On cloud? Lot’s of us, including me (in my day-job hat as a CIO), remain hesitant to outsource our security and data stewardship responsibilities for what is still a price premium for mid-sized organizations.  Cloud adoption has continued, but I don’t know any other government CIOs of about my shop’s size that have gone wholeheartedly or big into the cloud – we’re nibbling the edges and watching. On Net Neutrality? Not a lot of change.  I think I’d characterize the year as a slow erosion of net neutrality, but nothing real will happen until after the election.

Prediction: Social media is ready for the growth curve to slow.  I predict more growth, but less than in 2010.

And?: Same problem as book sales – the numbers aren’t in yet.  But here’s an infographic from September that’s pretty good.

What did I miss? I think we almost all miss more than we see.  Most importantly, the impact of social media.  The amount of users grew across all platforms; the rate of growth does appear to have slowed down (except for Twitter).  But the impact – ?  An exponential increase that fueled the Arab Spring and Occupy.  A real impact on the world.  One we still don’t know the outcome of….

On a personal note, it was a weird year of recovery after losing my little brother to Cancer in 2010.  I wrote less (but still wrote – I finished a YA novel and a few stories, and managed to get my column at Futurismic out every month). I did a lot of promotion for Mayan December which is about one of my favorite places in the world.  It was published by Prime in August.  I worked hard since it was a year of monumental change and slim resources (once again wearing the day job hat).

1. Sieh as narrator was a tough choice, and well-executed.  Yes, he is the only logical narrator (and I won’t say much about why lest I leave spoilers behind).  To use the voice of a god and actually pull it off is pretty spectacular.
2. The writing, as always.  Norah is lyrical and pretty in her prose.
3. The way that it wrapped the series.  The story as  whole is complete.  The mild sense of disjointedness that came from making the first two books be completely different characters in different timelines was redeemed for me, and the whole experience of the trilogy left me feeling quite satisfied.

This is NOT a perfect book.  Nevertheless, I gave it five stars over on Goodreads, largely because the series is so brave and so different and came together so well for me.  I did have to push through the middle of this book – but if you find yourself in the same predicament, just do it.  At least, I feel like it was well worth it.

Do read the whole series.  The first and second books could perhaps be read in any order, but this one relies on knowledge from the first two.