July 2005

German rights to the Uglies trilogy sell.

Uglies and Pretties Italian rights sold.

June 2005

May 2005

Japanese rights to the Uglies trilogy sell (for more money than the English-language rights!).

Scott begins work on Specials, the third book in the Uglies trilogy.

April 2005

Scott and Justine return to New York.

March 2005

Uglies comes out in trade paperback (Simon & Schuster). Starred reviews in Kirkus, School Library Journal, Booklist, and Kliatt. (Snarky review in Publishers Weekly.) Is nominated for the 2006 BBYA (ALA's Best Books for Young Adults) list.

Midnighters 2: Touching Darkness comes out in hardback sixteen days later. Starred review in Kirkus.

The UK edition of The Risen Empire (which reunites the severed halves of Succession: The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds) comes out from Orbit in trade paperback.


February 2005

Scott teaches at Clarion South.

Turns in first draft of Midnighters 3: Blue Noon.

The Killing of Worlds comes out in mass market.

January 2005

Midnighters 1: The Secret Hour wins the Aurealis Award for Best YA Fantasy or Science Fiction Novel in 2004. Woo-hoo!

December 2004

Scott turns in first draft of Peeps. (At this point he has shingles, possibly from stress.)

November 2004

Scott and Justine return to Australia.

October 2004

Russian translation of The Risen Empire published in hardback by Eksmo.

September 2004

So Yesterday comes out in hardback. Starred reviews in Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, BCCB. Is a BBYA book for 2005.

Scott turns in Pretties.

August 2004

Scott and Justine do a writing holiday in Buenos Aires, working on Pretties and Magic Lessons (Magic or Madness 2), respectively.

The Risen Empire comes out in mass market.

July 2004

The mass market edition of L’I.A. et son Double (the French title for Evolution’s Darling) is released.

April 2004

Scott becomes an Australian permanent resident (that is, gets an Aussie green card).

March-May 2004

Scott and Justine spend fall in Australia. Scott is working on Pretties.

March 2004

Midnighters 1: The Secret Hour comes out in hardback.

December 2003-February 2004

Scott and Justine go to Mexico, where they write first drafts of Midnighters 2: Touching Darkness and Magic or Madness, respectively.

December 2003

So Yesterday bought by Penguin/Razorbill, along with two other books yet to be named.

August 2003

Tor releases The Killing of Worlds (part 2 of Succession) in hardback.

May 2003

Scott returns to New York City after eighteen months in the southern hemisphere. Immediately begins work on New-York centered novel So Yesterday.

April 2003

First draft of Uglies turned in. Due to convulsions at Simon & Schuster, there is no response until October.

March 2003

Tor publishes The Risen Empire in hardback. Named an “Essential Summer Read” in the NY Times, it sells some 5,000 copies in hardback and goes onto several other editions, including a Russian translation and a Science Fiction Book Club edition.

Scifi.com publishes the 17,000-word story “Unsportsmanlike Conduct.”

February 2003

Scott spends a month in Dunedin, New Zealand, writing the first two-thirds of Uglies. Justine watches and thinks about maybe writing something herself some day.

July 2002

Tor decides to split Succession into two halves: The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds. Erp. (This is at the behest of a certain large bookstore chain.)

April 2002

First draft of Midnighters 1: The Secret Hour completed.

February 2002

Evolution’s Darling comes out in France (trade paperback). Scott briefly becomes the Mickey Rourke of science fiction. L’I.A. et son Double is touted in Le Monde, L’Express, and many other L’s. The excellent and wildly conscientious translator, Pierre-Paul Durastanti, is awarded the Grand Prixe du l’Imaginaire (Big Prize of the Imagination) for his excellent rendering of the work. (Which, sadly, Scott will never, ever be able to read.) A French sf convention in Nantes propose to fly Scott over for the award ceremony, but when they learn he lives in Australia now, the offer is quietly withdrawn.

January 2002

The Midnighters trilogy is bought on proposal by HarperCollins. Let the madness begin.

December 2001

Scott moves to Sydney, Australia, having secretly married writer Justine Larbalestier the month before.

November 2001

Tor makes an offer for The Risen Empire and Killing of Worlds (still one book called Succession at this point).

October 2001

Scifi.com publishes the 10,000-word story “Non-Disclosure Agreement.”

August 2001

Scott sends The Risen Empire (still called Succession) to various publishers.

April 2001

Evolution’s Darling receives the Special Citation of the Philip K. Dick Award. Basically, that means it came in second, to Michael Marshall Smith’s novel Only Forward. Scott goes to his first sf convention, Seattle’s Norwescon, to attend the award ceremony.

November 2000

Scott pitches the Midnighters concept to 17th Street Productions.

May 2000

Evolution’s Darling is released from boutique publisher Four Walls/Eight Windows in trade paperback. This radically sexually explicit work about an AI art dealer and a brain-damaged assassin searching for a missing sculptor, written half in present tense and half in the past, is reviewed in the NY Times, Review of Contemporary Fiction, and loads of other fancy-pants places. It is ultimately named a NY Times Notable Book of the Year and awarded the Philip K. Dick Award’s special citation. It sells only some 3000 copies, but is optioned for the movies by Stan Winston’s sfx house and purchased for French translation. Surely great wealth is just around the corner.

A 10,000-word excerpt, entitled “The Movements of Her Eyes,” is published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

February 2000

While finishing up his legal thriller, Scott gets an email from an old high-school chum, asking for a pitch for a paranormal kids TV series. In a state of crazed exhaustion, he scrawls down an idea about five teenagers all born on the stroke of midnight with gnarly powers. Months later, Fox TV passes, but the seeds have been sewn.

November 1999

Scott contracts to ghost-write a legal thriller for a certain celebrity lawyer who shall remain nameless. He is paid the whopping sum of $50,000 to write 120,000 words in ten weeks. Can he do it? No, it takes him twelve weeks. (Hack.)

March 1999

Scott takes a second writing holiday, swapping his NYC apartment for one in Barcelona for several weeks. Writes first 30,000 words of Risen Empire proper. This 190,000-word work will take most of the next two years.

October 1998

Trapped alone in a Fire Island beach house by Hurricane Mitch, Scott writes a 3,000-word sketch about an intelligent house seeded in an arctic wasteland. This becomes the basis of the flashback sequence in The Risen Empire, then titled Succession.

July 1998

Scott finishes final draft of his third novel, Evolution’s Darling, which at that time goes under the rip-roaring title Economies of Measure. All major sf imprints take a pass.

August 1998

Scott’s second novel, Fine Prey, is released, also in mass-market. Like all books with xenolinguist protagonists, it is bought and enjoyed by many hundreds of people.

February-March 1998

Scott spends a month in Mexico, the first of his writing trips. Finishes a 60,000-word first draft of Evolution’s Darling in 21 crazy days. Then sleeps.

December 1997

Polymorph is released in mass-market paperback. The excellent Poppy Z. Brite cover blurb ensures that goths review it in great numbers on Amazon.

October 1996

Scott is offered a two-book deal from Penguin/Roc, based on the Polymorph ms. and the first 100 pages of Fine Prey. As a published novelist, all his problems are solved. He will live in wealth and splendor for the rest of his days, or until the $9,000 advance runs out, whichever comes first.

September 1996

Scott gets an agent based on a manuscript for the novel Polymorph.

March 1996

Scott is let go from his job at Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, thus setting in motion a chain of events that will shake the literary world to its foundations. But not right away.

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