writing Archives - Page 41 of 46

Posts Tagged ‘writing’

that whole resolution thing

At the beginning of the year, I set myself the challenge of writing a short story a month.

First off, I need to remind myself that I didn’t challenge myself to write a good, saleable story a month; sometimes one produces a clunker, after all. So I am hereby officially accepting the fact that I didn’t actually finish “Kingspeaker” until the beginning of March, and my February short story was “Schrodinger’s Crone.” Doesn’t matter that SC actually needs to be a poem; I wrote it first as a story, and if it’s a bad story, oh well.

Which is me telling myself that I can officially not kick myself over the fact that “Once a Goddess” (theoretically my March story) isn’t done. “Kingspeaker” was my March story. This is my April story.

But the real issue is on the horizon: Midnight Never Come. (And the wedding.) I don’t know if I’ll be able to write a short story a month while also writing a historical novel with lots of research. (And planning a wedding).

I might be able to, were it not for the fact that many of the short story ideas on hand also require research. “Hannibal of the Rockies” (which is technically on ice at the moment) requires me to know about elephants, Siam, the Civil War, and nineteenth-century mountaineering. “Mad Maudlin” needs research into mental health care. “The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots” might pass, since half of it’s the same research I’m doing for MNC anyway, but “Xie Meng Lu Goes on Pilgrimage” and all the subsequent stories I want to write for it require me to learn about imperial China, and what I presently know about imperial China would fit comfortably in a thimble. Etc. The stories that don’t need research mostly aren’t developed enough to be written yet.

I had a secondary goal for this year, though, which was to get a new story out the door each month. This isn’t the same thing as writing a good, saleable story a month because I have a small backlog of things I’ve written but not revised. So I think I’m revising my intentions: the submissions will be the real priority, and the writing will be something to aim for but not freak out if I fail to achieve it. I have two non-researchy things I can write in May and June, and then I can let myself slide in July, August, and September if I need to, picking myself back up in the fall, after the novel’s turned in and I’m officially hitched.

This sounds wise. Whether or not it will happen remains to be seen. But ultimately, the point is to aim for it; any progress I make toward the goal(s) means I have more short story production than I’ve had in the last year or two, and that is a Good Thing.

the story behind the story

When I announced Midnight Never Come as my next novel, I made some allusions that, for some of you, need expansion.

Or, to put it a different way, I need to apologize for (on the surface of it) committing one of the cardinal sins of fantasy writing: I’m writing up a role-playing game.

Generally, of course, that phrase indicates something along the lines of “an elf, a dwarf, and a ranger walk into a dungeon . . .,” and in such cases it is rightly despised; god only knows how many bad queries agents and editors see that are thinly-disguised writeups of D&D campaigns, even when they aren’t working on the Forgotten Realms. But of course game systems have come a long way since D&D debuted, as have the uses to which people put them, and this particular instance is about as far away from the dungeon scenario as one can get.

Last year I ran my first RPG, a one-year (okay, ten-and-a-half-month) tabletop game based on White Wolf’s system Changeling: The Dreaming. In a very tiny nutshell, the idea of the system is that faerie souls have survived into modern times by taking refuge in mortal bodies, and that when the mortal host dies, they reincarnate. So I ran a game that went through 650 years of English history — backwards — going from 2006 to 1916 and so on back to about 1350, and then back to 2006 to finish up the plot. For structural reasons, I called it Memento, after the very intriguing Guy Pearce movie.

The 1589 segment of the game grew like kudzu. It didn’t run any longer than the others (three sessions), but by the time I was done, its background and consequences stretched the entire length of the game, from the time of the Black Death through to nearly the last of our 2006 sessions. And at the heart of that web of action and reaction, folly and consequence, was Invidiana, Queen of the Onyx Court, who ruled the fae of Albion for a period of time mostly overlapping Elizabeth’s reign.

Midnight Never Come is not really a Memento novel; the overarching plot that spanned all that time (which was basically a 650-year alchemical experiment) will be absent, and many of the outlying tendrils of Invidiana’s plot will be pulled in, to make a more compact story. But she wouldn’t leave my head, and neither would a lot of the characters surrounding her, and I gradually came to realize that it wouldn’t be all that hard to file off the Changeling-specific serial numbers and make it an independent story about curses and dark pacts, lost memories and betrayed loves, Machiavellian intrigues and faerie/mortal politics. And while the proprietary ideas that belonged to White Wolf will be gone, those were never the central part of it anyway; the most important bits will still be there, and that’s why I can make it a novel. It was very nearly standing on its own two feet to begin with. (Hell, I’d thrown in so many things that violated White Wolf canon, half of it was hardly recognizable as Changeling anyway.)

So there you have it: I am committing RPG novelization. I pray you all forgive me.

the awesomeness of friends

I have several things I’ve been meaning to post about, and lucky me, they share a theme: how awesome my friends are.

Let’s take them in chronological order, shall we?

First up: khet_tcheba. Some time ago, she created the mask you can see in my LARPing icon, plus a mask for kniedzw, because I wanted something very particular for the White Court game and suspected she would have the costuming-fu to create it for me (and then my boy jumped on the bandwagon, too). The results were spectacular. So, like a bad person, I e-mail her a month or so ago and ask whether she can make me a fore-and-aft bicorn for the Regency LARP, ’cause the only ones I can find for sale online cost several hundred dollars (I can only assume they’re vintage pieces, not replicas). The photo of me from the game doesn’t show it all that well, but keep an eye out for an upcoming post with links to other people’s pics and you’ll get a better idea. (The thing is freaking ridiculous, but the fault for that lies with history, not Khet.) So the Swan Tower Millinery Award goes to her, for adventures in felting.

Second: tooth_and_claw. Back when I was running Memento, she made a number of awesome sketches for the game, and I commissioned from her a portrait of Invidiana. I ended up getting two: a headshot and a full-length portrait. So if you want to have an idea of what the fae queen in Midnight Never Come looks like, there you go. (I’m hoping she’ll end up on the cover, but I have next to no control over that; all I can do is suggest it to my editor.) The Swan Tower Illustration Award goes to her — as if she hadn’t already earned it with the Memento cast painting.

Third: unforth. I have a hardcover copy of Doppelganger! Y’see, she’s a librarian, and she knows how to bind books. A while back she mentioned that she was looking for suggested rebinding projects. Until she delivered it into my hands, I had no idea she’d decided to make her first project a hardcover rebinding of my very own novel, complete with a wrap-around paper cover replicating the front, spine, and back of the original. Unless there’s somebody else out there with her skills and deranged enthusiasm, this will probably be the only hardcover edition there ever is — certainly the only hardcover of the first edition. For her, the Swan Tower Bookbinding Award.

So there you have it: I have awesome friends. Seriously, you all (not just those three) have a stunning array of knowledges and skills, and if I occasionally get depressed that there are a million and one things I’ll never learn to do, I cheer up when I remember that I might know people who do. Keep up the random hobbies, folks; they make me proud to know you.

MNC Webpage Report: “Elizabeth’s Household,” Sara Batty

Not a book, but very useful: this website, which appears to be more or less the text of someone’s bachelor’s thesis. (I say “more or less” because it’s rather lacking in citations for its quotes.)

. . . okay, I suppose it’s only useful (let alone interesting) if one might have a need for knowing what the acatry was, where it fit in the hierarchy of Elizabeth’s household, and how many people it employed. (Except that the acatry is one of the few departments for which Batty doesn’t give that last detail. Bad example, I guess.)

In other words, this is a highly tedious website I mention only because it might be of use to anybody else planning to write historical fiction set in Elizabeth’s reign and involving the daily life of her Court.

Which might be precisely none of you. At best, it is very few.

Carry on.

Now I have it right.

With a nice bit of distance between me and the story, I finally went back to “Kingspeaker” and got it right. It is the story I thought it was; I just needed to put an omen here, chop out that bit of awkwardness there, and play around a bit with the horses.

I think it works now.

If the folks at Sword & Sorceress decide they don’t like “The Waking of Angantyr” (which is in their hands right now), then I’ll send them this. Otherwise, it will be off to F&SF in the nearish future. Either way, I’m happy.

Mind you, this doesn’t finish “Once a Goddess,” which is supposed to be done this month. I really ought to have made notes of the ideas that were in my head when I set it down a while ago, but I was distracted by other things. My bad, and now I’m paying for it. But I’ll get some dinner, and then see what I can do.

MNC Book Report: Her Majesty’s Spymaster, Stephen Budiansky

The major criticism I’ve seen of this book online is that in its efforts to canonize Sir Francis Walsingham as the founder of English espionage, it gives too short shrift to Cecil, who apparently used (or invented?) many of the same techniques credited here to Walsingham. Which might be true, but for my purposes it’s irrelevant; the point is that Walsingham did use them, around the time period I’m going to be writing about, and therefore I can wreak whatever havoc with them I like.

But oh, is this book full of tasty espionage. (Espionage, and political backbiting; god, I never knew educated Renaissance gentlemen could be so damn catty.) Maybe Budiansky is novelizing his subjects a little too much, but there’s a good sense of personality in a lot of the incidents, some of it reassuringly backed up by genuine quotes from period documents. Until this book, I had no idea Walsingham had a sense of humour; one wouldn’t have expected it, given the Puritanism and the espionage, but it seems to have been true.

It’s very readable, though a touch novelistic in places, which makes me a little wary that Budiansky might be interpreting events to make them fit his story, but I don’t see any glaring evidence of that. I’d give it a thumbs-up as both a short bio of Walsingham and an example of Renaissance spy-work (which I want for other purposes besides Midnight Never Come) — he gives good, detailed accounts of the diplomatic and covert work that went on around the St. Bartholomew massacre, the Ridolfi plot, the Babington plot, and the Armada.

My complaint from this book is directed at Mr. Secretary Walsingham himself. He was so very adroit in the matter of the Babington plot, and moreover kept such very good records of it, that I’m left with far less wiggle room than I would like in which to have Other Stuff Going On. C’mon — couldn’t he oblige me by being less good at his job? It would make my job so much easier.

Oh. Right. Nobody ever promised this would be easy.

shiny

Today’s trip to Indy resulted (quite randomly) in the purchase of a lovely new fountain pen.

Now I have a burning desire to write something with it . . . but I don’t know what.

Maybe if I can settle on the tack I want to take with the Bluebeard story, I can write that. It ought to be short. All of my dark-and-twisted fairy-tale stories are pretty short, and this would be a good pen to write one with.

Newsletter!

If you’re reading this post, then odds are you’re already well-informed about my writerly doings, but I should still announce the creation of a newsletter, which you can sign up for here. It will be a once-a-month thing (no more — I promise) with a quick rundown of short story and novel news (like sales and street dates), website updates, and public appearances. So if you want a nice, compact version of the straggling announcements that show up here, that’s the way to go.

MNC Book Report: Elizabeth’s London, Liza Picard

Step one in writing that wretched beast known as a historical fantasy is, of course, research. Ergo, I’m alternating between Elizabethan history books and English fairy lore, on the theory that will produce the correct state of mind necessary for the novel. So far, it’s mostly melting my brain. Whether this is suitable remains to be seen.

But I figure I can at least share the progress of my research with you, the reader, by making brief posts on the books I read as I go along. If you have recommendations of other books I might find useful, or caveats about the ones I’ve read, please share with the class.

First up is Elizabeth’s London, from Liza Picard. For readability, you can’t beat her. Let me quote from the section on period gardening: “Hill suggests olive oil or soot for snails (Oxford snails would come miles for a nice extra-virgin oil) and for that other pest, moles, put a live mole in a pot — first catch your mole — and after a while ‘he will cry and [all the other moles in the neighborhood] will hastily draw near unto him and minding to help him forth will fall into the pot’. But what do you do with a potful of crying moles?” Or there’s the plate caption for a woodcut where, after having carefully identified all the other figures in the image, she concludes by saying “I have no explanation for the man in bondage gear.”

I want to say I spotted something in the book that contradicted what I’d read elsewhere, but a) the other thing I read might have been wrong, and b) I don’t remember what it was anyway. In general, the book is chock-full of concrete facts, including things like different types of cloth and their uses, prices for vast numbers of things, and a very good map with all the halls of the major livery companies marked. In other words, the kind of information most books I read take for granted.

The biggest drawback is not Picard’s fault: this book focuses on the lives of common-to-wealthy Londoners, not nobles, and as such it doesn’t tell me much about life at court. I need another book for that one. Anybody have a recommendation?

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven . . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce the decision on my next novel. The title of my forthcoming book will be . . .

. . . <drum roll> . . .

Midnight Never Come.

(Confidential to Memento people: yes, that means exactly what you think it means.)

For everyone else, who does not already know what this is, here’s a redacted (read: spoiler-free) version of the pitch I sent to my editor.

THE TUDOR COURT
A jewel in the crown of Renaissance Europe, glittering with power and wealth. For over thirty years Elizabeth has held the throne, taking no husband, but surrounding herself with the great names of the age. Sir Francis Drake plagues the Spanish at sea, while Sir Francis Walsingham quietly removes more subtle threats at home. Sir Walter Ralegh charts new lands abroad, and Doctor John Dee charts the stars of England’s destiny. With a keen mind and an overwhelming force of personality, Elizabeth plays the game of politics as well as any king.

THE ONYX COURT
A dark mirror of the glory above, hidden in the catacombs beneath London. Since Elizabeth took the throne, a new queen has reigned over the fae: Invidiana, a frozen, ageless beauty who rules with a ruthless and Machiavellian hand. Surrounded by dark fae and mortal pets like her mad seer Tiresias, she works in the shadows, weaving a web that touches the world above.

Ancient traditions once kept mortal and fae affairs largely separate. That changed with the rise of these two queens, who play an intricate political game, using the power of one side to manipulate the other. But someone is about to uncover, not just their game, but the secrets that lie behind it.

tooth_and_claw? Yeah, there’s a reason I’ve been pestering you for that portrait of Invidiana. ^_^

I am giddy about this one. Where by “giddy,” I mean about to go on Amazon and buy the rest of the books I need for research (I say “the rest” because I caved and bought some of them already). And I’m contemplating a brief trip to London — not the lengthy visit I want to make someday, but enough to walk around the Square Mile, go to the Tower again, get a feel for the place even if few buildings from Elizabethan times still survive. (Stupid Great Fire. Why did it have to interfere with my research?)

Oh, and the really awesome news? Warner wants to bump this one up to trade paperback, instead of mass-market. I know some people dislike that format, but from the moment I started thinking about this book, it wanted to be bigger — hardcover or trade — it just didn’t feel like mass-market in my head. And it turns out my editor agrees.

I’ll leave it at that for now, but watch this space for more information, as I babble about the awesome things I’m finding in my research, the story of where this novel came from, the music I’m already assembling for it, and so on. That will all have to wait for later, since right now I kind of need to go jump up and down and squeak with joy. *^_^*

A Cultural Fantasy Manifesto

People wo have engaged in certain kinds of discussions with me are probably quite tired of hearing me flag my comments with “that makes the anthropologist in me think X” or “since I’m an anthropologist . . . .” (I’m a little tired of it, myself.) But I’ve come to realize that it’s an important clue to how I think and what I think, not just in an academic or general context, but specifically with regards to my writing. Which has led me to identify what I’m trying to do with my fiction, at least a good percentage of the time. And since “anthropological fantasy” is an unwieldy term, let’s call it “cultural fantasy.”

What this means is that worldbuilding is not just important to me; it’s one of the most central parts of what I do. (With some stories, maybe the most central.) Character, for me, arises from and is shaped by the socio-cultural context of the individual; their beliefs and the actions they take aren’t independent of that context. People aren’t puppets of their cultures, of course, but neither are they free of them.

It also means that I’m promoting cultural relativism. Often people misunderstand this idea; they think it means that everything’s okay, that you can’t criticize a practice if it’s a part of somebody’s culture, so in the end you can’t criticize anything. Not true. Cultural relativism means trying to understand the reasons why people do things, how that practice fits into what they believe about the world — trying to see it from their point of view. It means releasing the assumption that there’s automatically something more natural or right about the way your own culture does things — which, yes, in the long run means you’re going to be more accepting of odd practices, because they don’t look so odd anymore. Something they do in one culture may be no weirder than what you do in your own — or equally weird. You end up seeing how your own cultural practices are constructed and artificial. But understanding the reasons behind human sacrifice or whatever does not require you to say it’s okay: a reason is not the same thing as an excuse.

Corollary to that: I’m not interested in constructing an ideal society, where there’s perfect gender equality, racial harmony, religious tolerance, and a benevolent government, to name a few things I happen to like. Utopias bore me. I’m interested in constructing messy, complicated societies that are full of flaws and then saying, ooh, this is interesting, let’s see what happens if I poke it here. And concurrently with this and the previous point, I’m interested in making up cultures that are different.

Folks, the real world, taken in all its multifarious glory, is weirder and more wonderful than you could possibly imagine. And what that means is that there are (to butcher Kipling) nine and sixty ways of constructing governments, families, religions, genders, meals, music, fashion, houses, and anything else you care to name, and every single one of them is neat. I have an abiding love for Celtic, Norse, and medieval culture, but you’ll rarely find them in my fiction, because I want to introduce readers to things they haven’t seen before. It’s a fine line to walk; too much weirdness, too many new and unfamiliar things, and you start losing readers. But I want to keep extending my writing out into new cultural territory, exploring all the different ways people can live, and what that means for who they are and how they act. Especially in fantasy, where metaphysical propositions can be accepted as literally true, with demonstrable consequences that might seem unrealistic in the real world.

So when I say “cultural fantasy,” this is what I mean: fantasy where the world is as interesting and developed as the characters are (and develops those characters in turn), where you’ll find ideas and practices that aren’t all familiar north-western European constructs. And since some of you Gentle Readers reading this may know my writing only through my novels, I have this to say to you: if you’re in the camp that thinks their setting isn’t that original, I’ve gotten better since then, and if you’re in the camp that things they were fabulously original, I’ve gotten better since then. I have a thousand and one worlds in my head, and I want to spend the rest of my life exploring them, and bringing readers with me.

back from ICFA

It pleases me that I already have twenty-three comments on this weekend’s rant, without me having had a chance to answer any of them yet. For those who have contributed to the discussion so far, I will respond, but probably not until tomorrow. For those who haven’t read it: go see me compare SF elitists to nineteenth-century anthropologists. As I said to ninja_turbo, the post lacks swearing only if you think “warmed-over nineteenth century unilinear cultural evolutionary theory” isn’t me swearing.

ICFA? ICFA was good. It’s moving to Orlando next year, and from the sound of it that’s going to be all-round a positive change, but I confess I will miss the familiarity of that hotel. (And I’ve only been going for five years; what of the people who have known it for twenty?) I would still love to see someone kidnap the Con Cat and bring him to Orlando, even if he does have fleas. Because I will miss having a kitty to pet.

My paper seems to have gone over well, despite being ten pounds of idea shoved in a five-pound sack. I will probably expand it a bitsy and then try to sell it to Strange Horizons, for those who wanted to read it. The expansion will be a Good Thing, though it will necessitate another round of prioritizing information, since I still won’t be able to get remotely everything in there. (What, you mean trying to cover twenty-eight novels, three and a half editions of D&D, and thirty years of textual history in five thousand words isn’t a manageable idea?)

Every paper and discussion I attended was good. This is unique in my conferencing experience so far. Either ICFA’s getting better, or I had good karma this year.

I have a head full of thoughts, not all of them fully baked. Look out in the near future, though, for a manifesto on Anthropological Fantasy, coming to an LJ near you.

I have reached the point where I have a Manifesto.

This is an interesting place to be.

numbers to chew on

When the Sword & Sorceress antho call went out, I sat down to see how many stories I had around with female protagonists (as that’s one of the requirements). I was startled to find the answer was: not many. Which surprised me; I thought I wrote female characters on a regular basis.

So I sat down and did some counting. These numbers have changed some since the original count (story sales, new stories in circulation), but the pattern’s still there, and still interesting. (At least to me. Your mileage may vary. If so, skip this post.)

Number crunchiness ensues

Huh.

Maybe “Kingspeaker” is the GT story, after all. Since I just tried to revise it, taking those parts out, and they stubbornly migrated to other parts of the story, rewrote themselves, and generally burrowed in deeper. I’m not sure if it quite works yet, but now I believe it might eventually.

I think maybe I need to work out, for my own edification if no one else’s, the mythical backstory for how the kingspeaker thing got started. If I know that, I’ll know why this story needs to be the story it is apparently trying to be.

Um. Right. Enough with the vague babbling, methinks.

naming woes, part two

So here’s the problem, really. I keep embarking on projects (short stories, novels, games) where the people — the guys in particular — need to have relatively mainstream English names, the sort that have been used historically. And when you get down to it, there aren’t a lot of those. And the more of these projects I build up, the more of the mainstream names I’ve used for major characters, such that I would feel weird then applying them to someone else.

But at this point, it means I’m hesitant to name anybody Julian, Robert, Leonard, Roger, Luke, James, Gregory, Edward, or Jacob, just to choose the most major ones. If I let Memento get in there, I have to add in Thomas, William, Simon, Francis, Stephen, Philip, Jacob again, Christopher, Archibald, and Nicholas. “Nine Sketches” also used Nathaniel, Francis again, Charles, Richard, and Jonathan. I could keep going, but you get the point; a lot of the common names have strong associations for me already.

This doesn’t mean there’s nothing left. I haven’t had anybody important named Henry (except oops, there will hopefully be the thing about Henry Welton someday) — okay, George (wait, that’s Caroline’s husband) — how about Samuel (Eleanor’s father) — crap. And some of my remaining choices, I don’t like very much; Andrew isn’t one I’m particularly fond of. Some of the names are currently reserved by future projects; others are bound up in old projects, and I face the question of whether I think I’ll ever resurrect them, or whether I should just go ahead, cut The Kestori Hawks loose as unusable, and free up half a dozen names for other people to have. (Assuming I can. Assuming my subconscious will let go of the idea that “Leonard” means that guy, the one over there, with all the angst.)

Oh yeah. And then, because I’m not having issues enough, there’s the problem that if I name a character in the Elizabethan period Gabriel, most of you will roll your eyes at the slightly flashy name, and a few will run screaming and waving your copies of the Lymond Chronicles. My own work isn’t the only association I have to watch out for.

I should name the guy John and be done with it, but it just doesn’t work. And I’m not yet to the point where my subconscious is ready to reuse things. For secondary characters, sure. But not the main ones.

Which is how I end up with ideas like Peregrine Thorne. But that isn’t his name — though whoever’s name it is, he looks interesting — so I keep working.

naming woes

Few writing blocks frustrate me more than a character I can’t name. I can’t do jack if I don’t know a character’s name. Without that, how do I know who he is? How can I guess what she’ll do? The name is everything, and sometimes it takes forever to find; I think Saoran eluded me for three years.

Right now, I’m trying to figure out if this guy’s name really is going to be Sir Peregrine Thorne. If so, I’m going to have to work a damn good reason into his backstory; you can’t go parading around with a name like that and pretend it happened by accident.

Even if that is his name, it still only gives me half of what I need. I’m trying to explain to the female character that “Malkin,” while a genuine British diminutive (of Maud, actually), also has a variety of slang meanings ranging from “slattern” to “female genitalia.” Neither of which are meanings she wants to be carrying around with her.

I don’t want to admit how much of tonight I’ve spent on this task. But since I can’t go anywhere until I get over this hurdle, I’ll keep plugging away at it.

Edited to add: Christ. This is apparently trying to be a story full of People With Inexcusable Names, since now the female character is pondering options like Amaranth, Celandine, and Chrysanthe.

Edit #2: No, dear, you can’t be Britomart. I dislike authors who use names from other things but don’t know what they’re referencing, and I refuse to read The Faerie Queene for you.

Edit #3: Maybe Sylfaen? Or Ailis? She’s allowed to have a weird name; she isn’t human. Unlike Mr. Sir Peregrine Thorne up there, who is supposed to be quite human. I don’t know. At this point, I think I’ve been beating my head against it too long. Time to go to sleep, and see if any of my possibilities still look good in the morning.

it’s back!

“Once a Goddess”

1,266 / 4,000
(30.0%)

I celebrate the return of the Zokutou meter (which was down for a while) by showing the progress I made after last night’s post.

The 4000 total is just an estimate. I have the beginning of the story, now. I’m formulating the middle, and I’ve got a vague niggling that might turn out to be the end. This is farther than I’ve ever gotten with this story (remember, this is attempt #5), and I’m pretty sure it’s got the legs to make it to the end.

next!

Man, I miss the Zokutou word meter. I’ve embarked on my fifth attempt to write “Once a Goddess” and I’m 472 words in, but I don’t have a visual way to show it.

(Yes, I know there are other word meters. I don’t like them as much.)

Hey, if I do well enough with this story, do you think they’ll put me on the Nebula ballot like ksumnersmith?

Dude, how cool is it that a writer I know personally — not “hey, I’ve had conversations with her” but “hey, she’s about my age and we’ve been in an anthology together and shared a room at a con” — is on the freaking Nebula ballot? And not just on it; her story got the slot reserved for the Nebula jury’s hand-picked choice.

Go, Karina!!! When you’re a Big Name Author, I’ll be able to tell other people I once shared a migratory sun patch with you. 🙂

explanations, seen and unseen

A few days ago, I had an brief exchange with Frank Wu on the topic of explanations and how they differ between genres. The comment that started it was anent my own story in Talebones, but the part I found myself in disagreement with was a broader issue than the instance in question:

We had some interesting discussions at Radcon about science fiction and fantasy; one idea that fell out was that in science fiction, things are explained (perhaps poorly, but at least there is an attempt), and in fantasy, we just accept the hand-waving (oh, it’s magic).

I’d like to expand on the thoughts I started in the comments over there.

(more…)

dangit

The irritating thing about having finished “Kingspeaker” is, now that I’ve done so, I think I might be wrong about what story it is. Originally it was supposed to be one of a set I’d love to publish as a collection someday, under the title Blood and Flowers. In shorthand terms (that won’t spoil the stories), I have the GR, FW, and BG stories for that set done, and this was supposed to be the GT story, which would give me one hemisphere of the set.

But then I finished it, and I thought maybe it ought to be the GR story. Which would be irritating, since I already have a GR story, but that one isn’t great, so I wouldn’t mind replacing it (except that I still only have three of the eight, then). The more I think about it, though, the less I’m sure that works. Maybe it isn’t a Blood and Flowers story at all. Which would be really irritating. Unfortunately, that seems more and more likely to me. (There’s a thematic link to the eight, and thematically, this one doesn’t seem to want to be a part of that. Mind you, it would explain why I had a hard time putting in there the thing that was supposed to be in there. It wasn’t supposed to be in there at all.)

So now I have a Sahasraran story that maybe doesn’t belong in Blood and Flowers — grand. And if it isn’t the GT story, then it could have been a political story instead of a military one, though I suppose a war never hurt any story’s chances on the market.

But we’ll let it sit for a bitsy and age before I make any radical decisions.

« Previous 1 … 39 40 41 42 43 … 46 Next »