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Posts Tagged ‘patreon’

New Worlds: Painting

I’m not sure why, but it turns out my last two posts about new Patreon essays going up failed to post as scheduled. My apologies for not noticing that! I’ll keep an eye on it this week and manually push it if I have to.

Anyway, this month we’re talking about art! Starting with a discussion of the lines along which we declare things to be Art vs. Not Art, then continuing on to sculpture and, as of this week, painting — less the specifics of style and technique, more the uses to which we put such things. Comment over there (including on the older posts)!

(Edit: yeah, something’s wrong with WP, as this post also missed going live as scheduled. I’ll look into fixing that.)

Double release day!

I’m having nostalgic memories of when my first novel was released, thirteen years ago . . . on April Fool’s Day. (Yes, I spent rather a lot of time persuading myself that no, my editor wasn’t going to say “haha, fooled you!” and then the book wouldn’t come out.) This year I’m managing to dodge that day — which is good, because I have not one but two things out!

The first is New Worlds, Year Two: More Essays on the Art of Worldbuuilding, which you can get at Book View Cafe — i.e. direct from the publisher, and it’s a little bittersweet, because Vonda beta-read this for me — or Amazon US or UK, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, iTunes, Kobo, and Indigo. And if that’s not enough anthropological and worldbuilding goodness for you, there’s always New Worlds, Year One: A Writer’s Guide to the Art of Worldbuilding, the collection from the first year of the New Worlds Patreon.

The second thing out today is my short story “Vīs Dēlendī” at Uncanny Magazine. Their Kickstarter backers got this a while ago, and half of the contents went live earlier, but as of today the entire issue is available for free online: fiction, poetry, articles, and interviews. One (1) Internet Cookie to anyone who can identify the main folksong that inspired this story; fifty (50) Internet Cookies to anybody who can identify the other folksong that contributed to it, without which this refused to cohere into an actual story. (Offer null and void after the podcast interview with me goes live, wherein I talk about both songs.)

No joke! Go forth and enjoy!

New Worlds: Trash

I haven’t nearly finished addressing the topic of cleanliness in human societies — we haven’t even started on personal hygiene — but since the month is nearly over, this segment of the New Worlds Patreon will wrap up for now with trash. Next week, for the fifth Friday in the month, I’ll be back with a bonus essay!

New Worlds: Public Sanitation

This week’s New Worlds Patreon essay delves into that most fragrant of topics: sanitation! To bait you into clicking that link rather than going “ew, no thanks,” I will use my favorite piece of historical trivia on this topic, which is that there was a time and place in history where human waste was so valuable, people literally stole it. To find out where, when, and why, head on over to Book View Cafe!

Book pre-orders and post backlogs

With the second year of the New Worlds Patreon having wrapped up, it’s time for it to emerge from its chrysalis as a beautiful butterfly ebook! New Worlds, Year Two: More Essays on the Art of Worldbuilding is now up for pre-order at Amazon US and UK, Barnes and Noble (Nook), Google Play, and Kobo. iTunes and Indigo will follow shortly. The book will be out on April 2nd!

NEW WORLDS, YEAR TWO by Marie Brennan

Also, a glitch with the plug-in I use to crosspost from my website to Dreamwidth recently glitched. Everything still crossposted . . . but on a private setting, which means none of you could see it. So if you missed it, the posts were, in sequence:

New Worlds: Just Add Water (and Year Three!)

This week, the New Worlds Patreon launches into Year Three! As part of the celebration, I’ve added a monthly poll where my patrons at the $5 level and above can vote on the topic for the upcoming month . . . and my wonderful, amazing, fantabulous patrons voted for the thing I thought nobody than other me wanted to hear about, which is sanitation. So this month we’re starting off with water supplies, and in upcoming weeks I’ll be talking about bathing, trash heaps, and whether premodern cities really were open sewers or not.

The ebook for Year Two will be out in early April, with copies going to patrons at the $3 level and above before that. If you’d like to become a patron, you can do that right over here — let’s start Year Three together!

New Worlds: Honeymoons (and anniversary announcement!)

In the excitement of Book View Cafe’s new hosting provider being stable enough for the New Worlds Patreon to return to its usual home, I forgot to announce the latest essay here! Last Friday’s contribution was on honeymoons, and you can still head on over and add your thoughts.

I’m also pleased to announce a book giveaway to celebrate the second anniversary of the Patreon! Six lucky patrons will receive signed books from me. If you’d like to have a chance at a prize, just sign up before this Friday!

New World: Wedding Customs

(This post is part of my Patreon-supported New Worlds series.)

A truly comprehensive survey of wedding customs around the world and throughout history would probably fill several volumes. I’m not going to attempt that; we’d get so far down into the weeds we’d never see the sun again. Instead I’m going to do a more top-level sweep of the steps involved in getting married, with some attention to the specifics of how those can manifest.

It starts with engagement, i.e. the promise to get married later on. This doesn’t have to last for a long time — it can be as short as the gap between “hey, want to get married?” and finding an Elvis impersonator at a drive-through Las Vegas chapel to hitch you two together — but the longer the gap is, the more preparation you can do. Today’s wedding-industrial complex pushes the ideal that you should do a lot of prep (and spend a lot of money on it), which echoes yesteryear’s necessity of assembling a wedding trousseau. (I’m reminded of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s line in The Lion in Winter, dismissing the likelihood that Richard and Alais will get married any time soon: “The needlework alone can last for years.”)

But even engagement can involve more than mere agreement. There may be a prenuptial contract to negotiate, or permission to secure: from parents, a master, a liege lord, or anyone else with the authority to gainsay a match. Posting the banns is or was required in a number of Christian countries, giving the general public a chance to raise objections — though usually only within set limits, e.g. “he’s got a wife in another town.” This also creates a mandatory waiting period, helping to stave off the buyer’s remorse that often afflicts the clients of those drive-through Vegas chapels.

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