RatCreature's Journal

I've been looking at Amazon to pre-order, and it looks for this one there will be a paperback available at around the same time (publishing date June 16) as the expensive hardcover (June 14)? Does anyone know whether this is correct?

With the last couple of volumes I've ended up getting the hardcover because paperbacks were out much later, but having a hardcover is not worth paying more than twice as much for just two days earlier, especially since I've been not as into the series in the later volumes. And hardcover is harder to carry around.

But I've had Amazon advertising wrong dates before when there were multiple US/UK editions available for pre-order, and ended up pre-ordering an edition (based on picking the cheapest), that then didn't come out at that date after all. (Most recently that happened to me with Foxglove Summer, iirc.)

I just stumbled upon this via my friendsfriends view: Del Rey now offers some free pdf files of their books, among them the first Temeraire book.

Because some people find the production process interesting, I decided to do a sort of "making of" post. If you'd just like to see the finished fanart, go here.

( very image heavy )

Fandom: Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik
Characters/Pairings: Iskierka
Media used: only pencil so far
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: I seem to be on a dragon kick lately. But I like Iskierka. I hope she looks enough like a baby while still fitting the description that they look just like smaller versions of the big ones. But making the head long and lean like I normally do for dragons to make them look ferocious didn't work for me for a baby dragon. The hatching pose took a ridiculous amount of time to get right. Maybe I'll do a real process post once it is inked and colored, showing excerpts from all the steps that were like tooth pulling, like the dozen thumbnails and head design sketches, and failed attempts. OTOH that would be kind of embarrassing, now it looks like I sat down and just did a pencil drawing as a process step...
Preview:

( the pencils are behind the cut )