Meet the Rewards: Tarot Readings

I meant to post these a while ago, rather than in the last week of the Kickstarter — but hey, better late than never, right? So over the next few days, I’ll be making a few posts to talk about the non-book rewards available for Chains and Memory, and why I chose them.

First up are the tarot readings by my friend Emily Dare. I included these because Kim is a divination major at Welton, and tarot is her preferred tool, so it’s something that’s both very fitting for the story and also kind of unusual. And I asked Emily to participate because pretty much any time* Kim sits down with a tarot deck in this series, that’s Emily’s handiwork you’re seeing: I tell her what I want the reading to convey, and she reverse-engineers that to say what cards Kim should get, what layout she would likely use, etc. For Kim’s big reading in the early part of Lies and Prophecy, that ended up adding quite a lot of depth to the scene, because of Emily’s suggestions for how to complicate the process. And that’s exactly why I look for outside help: I could sit there with the itty-bitty Rider-Waite booklet and try to make something up, but I wouldn’t get the nuances and the neat little details that make it seem more real.

(Which is pretty much a true statement of any instance where I recruit help on a particular topic for a story. It’s always good to ask the people with the hands-on experience; they know the things you wouldn’t even think to ask.)

So that’s it for the first of the special rewards. I’ll be back later to talk about the miniscript, Tuckerization, and the t-shirts. Stay tuned!

*The exception being the Tower scene in Lies and Prophecy. I made up that particular reading all on my own. 😛

Shield and Crocus

I always love it when my friends’ books come out, because: dude! Book! By a friend of mine! That’s awesome! 😀

But it gains extra awesomeness points when it’s a book like Mike Underwood’s Shield and Crocus, because I’ve been with this one very nearly from its earliest days: I read what I think was the first draft, years ago, back when Mike was saying “what happens if I take this Clarion story of mine and try to make it a bit biggOH HOLY GOD IT’S GROWN TENTACLES AND IT’S TRYING TO EEEEEEEEEAT MEEEEEEEEEEEE,” and I’ve offered various bits of feedback and assistance since then. I’m bouncing-in-my-seat happy that it’s made the journey from his brain to the shelves. My blurb for it compared it to Perdido Street Station and David Edison’s The Waking Engine, because it has that kind of setting, sort of New Weird-ish (but less heavy on the grotesquerie than some). If that sounds like your cup of tea, you should check it out.

Because today, my friends, it is out in the world. There’s a preview on Tor.com, or you can buy it from Powells or Books-a-Million or IndieBound or Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon (whose imprint 47North are the publishers). You can also get it in audio form.

Congratulations and happy bookday to Mike!

A Year in Pictures – Proof Pistol

Proof Pistol
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I can’t remember the details for certain, but the Royal Armouries exhibit in the Tower of London has a small collection of weapons that I think were designated “proof” pieces: official examples of standard armaments produced by various craftsmen. This is the grip of a proof pistol, with the red seals marking it as such.

Countdown to the final week

Eight days left on the Chains and Memory Kickstarter! We’re just $285 from a short story. Less than that, even, if I count the people who have donated via Paypal — which is a thing I should mention here, I suppose. If you cannot or do not wish to contribute via either Amazon or Facebook (and I can totally understand that decision), then I am more than willing to accept donations by other routes, and will include you in the appropriate reward level when I send things out to backers. Ping me here or by email and we can work out the details.

I’ve been working steadily on Chains and Memory for a little while now, so as to be sure I can finish it by October 4th, and it’s proceeding apace. There’s been some two-steps-foward, one-step-back shenanigans as I figure out how to launch the various strands of the plot, but I’m experimenting with Scrivener for this novel, and I think it may assist with tracking that stuff. Regardless, I am definitely on schedule for finishing the draft by the fifteenth anniversary of Lies and Prophecy.

Anyway, we’re headed into the final push. Do spread the word wherever you can, and let’s see if this thing goes to 11!

A Year in Pictures – Undercroft of Ste. Chapelle

Undercroft of Ste-Chapelle
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This is the lower level of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris — the church that’s still (or rather, re-)painted in the style of the medieval period. The effect is really just stunning: the same gothic architecture you see all over western Europe, but picked out in blue and gold and red. As much as I like the plain stone, the original look is really phenomenal to see.

A Year in Pictures – Relaxing on the Cam

Relaxing on the Cam
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One of my rare photos in which not only am I okay with having people in it, that’s the reason I took the shot. 🙂 During my research trip for A Star Shall Fall I went up to Cambridge, and (of course) went punting while I was there. This fellow was sacked out in his punt taking a break, and something about the composition of the long boat and the tall brick wall and the pole and his slouched posture just really pleased me.

Under the Mango Tree

I’m slightly torn about posting this only because of Amazon’s recent bad behavior — if I could point you at a different retailer, I would. But this is a good cause in its own right, and I don’t want people to be reluctant to support it just because of Amazon.

Under the Mango Tree is a collection of folktales from Sierra Leone, assembled by a Peace Corps volunteer in the country. All profits from the book go to the students who wrote it, and to a scholarship fund for their education. Given the economic differences between the U.S. and Sierra Leone, roughly three book sales is enough to pay for a year of education for one child, meaning that every copy sold is rather more than just a drop in the bucket.

I’ve picked up a copy myself; in fact, I installed the Kindle app on my tablet just so I could do so. 😛 I haven’t read it yet, but will certainly report in once that’s done.

A Year in Pictures – Paired Horses

Paired Horses
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I stood for bloody ever at the railing above this sunken area, waiting for a gap in which to photograph this pair without somebody else in the picture. (In fact, I didn’t quite succeed; fortunately, the person who started walking into frame as I took the photo could easily be cropped out.) I loved the foreground/background juxtaposition — even if horse-head sculptures always do make me think of the Mafia . . . .

A Year in Pictures – Dome of St. Peter’s

Dome of St. Peter's
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The fact that you can see anything in this photo is a testament to the power of Lightroom. The lighting inside St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is rather on the dim side, and you aren’t allowed to use flash; as a result, the structure in the foreground is still basically invisible. But that’s okay, because the real attraction here, at least for me, is the gorgeous dome and the gold background on the inscriptions.

Books read, May 2014 (and other months, too)

April was another month where I was terrible about recording things, and then never even got around to posting about it. But the good news is, I remembered another book from January, which is the previous time I forgot to record stuff! So this post is mostly but not entirely from May.

(more…)

Chains and Musicry

Over the weekend, the Chains and Memory Kickstarter reached its first stretch goal. This means that every backer, current or yet to come, will also be receiving the next best thing to me sharing the novel soundtrack itself: a discussion of the “score” I made for Lies and Prophecy, with links to the songs where possible.

I’m looking forward to putting that together. The first song on the list is basically the reason I make novel soundtracks at all: I listened to it a bunch while writing the first draft of the novel, which caused it to become associated with the story in my mind, and then I leveraged that to help me get in the mood for writing, which led to me making playlists for books and so onward to the actual, formal score-type-thing. I love having the story in musical form; it adds another layer to how I perceive the characters and events. And now I can share that with other people!

Now, of course, it’s on to Stretch Goal #2: Short Story. The most likely prospect is that I’ll write about Henry Welton during First Manifestation — the days when half the planet suddenly had psychic powers and no idea how to control them. It’s possible something else will suggest itself while I’m drafting Chains and Memory, though. Speaking of which: I’ve started work on it, and am now a little more than 7K in, counting some material that got written beforehand. That puts me on track to finish it before October 4th, with time off for being in Okinawa and having ankle surgery, with a bit of a cushion to spare. Fingers crossed that things continue to go well.

A Year in Pictures – Malbork Fragments

Malbork Fragments
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Like much of Poland, Malbork got the snot bombed out of it during World War II. Restorations are ongoing, but in the meanwhile, bits and pieces get stuck . . . wherever. These decorative fragments are hanging off a wall near where you purchase your ticket and audio tour, and the late afternoon sun lit them very pleasingly.

Jay Lake

Most of you have probably seen in one or more places already that Jay Lake passed away, after a long . . .

I don’t actually know how to finish that sentence. The usual phrase is “battle with cancer,” but Jay had opinions on that metaphor and its flaws. I remember him noting that it would be more precise to say he was the battlefield of cancer.

Last December I sent him an email with a link to a song that made me think of him. The email was much larded about with warnings that the song was about death, and I would totally understand if that was something he thought about enough already; I had no way of judging whether this would be of interest to him or one straw too many. He wrote back to say he did indeed like the song, which I had described as sort of “an atheist anthem about the afterlife.” Jay was a committed atheist — he had no belief that he would persist after he died — but this is an afterlife I think he could believe in:

But I place one foot before the other, confident because
I know that everything we are right now is everything that was

(Full lyrics here.)

I didn’t know Jay nearly as well as many of the people memorializing him today. I met him at ICFA and hung out with him there on several occasions; I showed up to various dinners and such when he came to the Bay Area, or would say hi to him in passing at conventions. Diana Sherman and I once chased him through a room party at World Fantasy describing the anthology concept we’d had over dinner, until he suddenly turned and began declaiming ex tempore the epic charge of the war elephants across the fields of Gettysburg. (Another reason to be sad Jay is gone: we never did get that anthology off the ground, and if it happens eventually it will not have the title story from Jay that it deserved.) He had an expansive personality, boundless energy, and a faster wit than probably any human being I’ve ever met.

Cancer is a thief, taking those things from Jay, from all of us. If you want to do something for Jay, and for what he fought for, make a donation here:

Clayton Memorial Medical Fund
c/o OSFCI
P.O. Box 5703
Portland, Oregon 97228

Jay is gone, but he is remembered; he remains.

A Year in Pictures – Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia
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This is the exterior of the Hagia Sophia, as seen from across the park outside. The building has a fascinating history, having started out as a Greek Orthodox basilica before the Ottomans revamped it as a mosque (hence the addition of minarets). It is not in the best of shape, but it is still an excellent place to visit.

Updates: Kickstarter, tour, sale, SF Novelists, WisCon

Five updates make a post . . . .

1) The Chains and Memory Kickstarter is a bit over halfway to the first stretch goal. The pace of progress has (unsurprisingly) slowed down; I welcome any signal boosting, and/or suggestions for other things I could do to spread the word.

2) While Mary and I were on tour earlier this month, Tor sent a camera crew to film our Portland event and interview us afterward. It was a fascinating experience; this wasn’t the “sit and have a conversation in front of the camera” kind of thing, but rather raw material for the following video:

If you’d like a sense of what our events were like, check it out!

3) Driftwood fans take note: I’ve sold the audio rights for “The Ascent of Unreason” to Podcastle.

4) My SF Novelists post for this month was “Pleaser Don’t Doed Thising”, in which I take aim at Bad Fantasy Latin, Bad Fantasy Japanese, and other such linguistic sins.

5) WisCon! I went. It was a thing.

Sorry, that’s just the tiredness talking. Going to WisCon was a good idea; going right after being on tour, less so. I feel like I didn’t take full advantage of the experience, partly because I was going easy on myself, partly because I’m new to the con’s culture and therefore didn’t know in advance about things like the Floomp. It was fun, though: lots of interesting people, some good panels (and some I really wish had dug further into their topics), some &@#$! awesome GoH speeches, etc. The good news is, now I know what to expect and can get more out of it in future years. Will I be back in 2015? Dunno; I’ll have to look at my schedule. But I do intend to be back eventually.

A Year in Pictures – Entrance to St. Paul’s

Entrance to St. Paul's
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I have taken a lot of photos of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. (When I went there for research, the hostel I stayed in was literally one block away from it.) After a while I figured I had taken all the shots I needed of the cathedral as a whole, so I started focusing on details — like this shot of the western portico.

Official Member of the Insect Army

As of about ten minutes ago, I am (finally) a member of SFWA.

I’ve been eligible to join since 2004, when I sold my first novel. But back then I was a starving graduate student, for whom the membership fee was a non-trivial expense . . . and soon thereafter, SFWA began shooting itself very publicly and head-deskingly in the foot, not just once, but several times in a row. Its forums were legendary for their toxicity, the org as a whole was run by people who hadn’t been working professionals in the field for years, and while some may have had good intentions, SFWA was not doing a very effective job of coping with the realities of modern publishing. Why should I pay money I didn’t really have to call myself one of them? The answers people gave me basically fell into two categories: 1) “Griefcom and the EMF are good things and worth supporting!” and 2) “Join and be the change you want to see!” While I had no disagreement with #1 (the Grievance Committee advocates for authors in disputes with their publishers or agents, and the Emergency Medical Fund assists writers without health insurance), #2 got up my nose something fierce. Oh, yes, let me give you money for the privilege of trying to reform a group that shows no signs of wanting to reform. Where do I sign up?

But things got better. Actual working novelists and short story writers stepped up to run for election and, well, did what I wasn’t willing to do: dragged the org kicking and screaming toward a better future. Members who weren’t toxic layabouts raised their heads and went “oh, thank god, I’m not alone.” SFWA’s officers did yeoman work during the whole business with Night Shade’s ongoing implosion. Incidents that would have been allowed to slide ten years ago started to be called out.

It still isn’t perfect. SFWA has its share of dinosaurs and reactionaries, and they don’t always get rebuked as fast or as effectively as they should. But it’s improving, and then there was this thing, and I said to myself, “Self, I want to be one of those people Scalzi et al. brought in.” He isn’t president anymore, but the truth is that he and his cohort — people like Mary Robinette Kowal and Rachel Swirsky — are the ones who changed my thinking about SFWA. I actually meant to join after that happened . . . but I got busy, and I forgot. Fortunately (for suitably flexible values of “fortunately”), the sexist racist homophobic assholes of the speculative fiction field are the gift that keeps on giving. Two weeks ago, when John C. Wright was spreading his revisionist history around the web and various people were debunking him as he deserved, I got off my posterior and joined.

So there you have it: I am officially a member of the Insect Army — which is to say, SFWA, The 21st Century Edition. I will try to use my newfound powers for good.

Recommend things to me!

As many of you may have noticed, I am a fan of historical fantasy and historical-adjacent fantasy — by which I mean, stories taking place in settings clearly modeled on a real period and place, but technically a secondary world. (In other words, the kind of thing the Memoirs are.) I like this sort of novel a great deal.

But.

I find myself craving stuff that isn’t quite so tied to reality. Secondary-world fantasy in which invention can fly more freely. I don’t mean that it has to be so wacky and out there that it bears no resemblance to anything we know; things like Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky books are fine, because while the cultures are clearly inspired by Central Asian sources, they also have lots of imaginative details unrelated to real history. But further out is also good. I want worlds where humans rub shoulders with sentient non-human creatures. I want cosmologies that don’t obey our rules. I also — and this is a more specific and directed part of the current craving — want settings where the tech level isn’t generically medievalish, but has printing presses and guns or things that are like printing presses or guns but operate in different ways and occupy not quite the same role and are powered by magic or whatever instead. (Because this notion that high fantasy and technology are antithetical is bollocks.)

Things I do not want: grimdark epic fantasy. China Mieville (I’ve bounced off too much of his work.) Brandon Sanderson (ditto.) Anything else is good, though: adult, YA, comic books, humorous, dramatic, stand-alone novels, series, etc. I feel like I need to feed my brain with some stranger stuff than it’s been getting lately.

Recommend things to me?

Technical note

Just a heads-up to say that I am aware of the difficulties with the WP installation of this journal, and am working on fixing them. If you want to comment on or link to any of my posts, then for the time being the Livejournal mirror is the way to go.