Firefly novel from Brust: free for the reading

skzbrust has released as fanfic his Firefly novel, My Own Kind Of Freedom, under a creative commons license.

I had the unique experience of copyediting an early draft of the novel with Steve, unique in that we sat on the phone, he in Nevada, I in Michigan, and discussed how to best fix all the errors and problems spots I identified (we were using collaborative software, both viewing a document as I was changing it). Usually a copyeditor only gets to highlight and query, not knowing how the author will respond to each point. I got to sit there and get confirmation of my corrections and also see the process when the author said, "You know, that whole section doesn't make sense, and it's because I left out this part I meant to put in the last chapter. Let's go back and do that."

It was a joy to work with Brust on that project, and I hope everyone enjoys the book as much as he clearly enjoyed writing it and I enjoyed editing it. Actually, I'm sure you will-- Steve's special delight during our collaboration was in hearing me chuckle and finding out where what he wrote worked. And it does. :)

write-up of the Paul Courant/Steven Levy conversation

I have posted my notes as a comment to my original post about a public conversation between Paul Courant and Steven Levy on the future of the book.

ETA: The audio recording of the talk is now available.