N.K. Jemisin

The Inheritance Trilogy Book One:

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

The Hundred One Thousand Kingdoms Cover

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with a pair of cousins she never knew she had. Learn more.

Wolfin’ it up this Saturday

I mentioned this here awhile back, but just a reminder: this Saturday I’m getting up at stupid o’clock in the morning to go on Hour of the Wolf, the long-running science fiction radio broadcast on WBAI 99.5 FM, hosted by Jim Freund. It’ll be my first time on the show by myself, which means I’ll be a bit nervous, and my brain doesn’t fully switch on ’til at least sensible o’clock in the morning, so I’m sure I’ll be a veritable fountain of babbling and incoherency. But it could be fun.

If you happen to be awake between 5 and 7 a.m., please do tune in — and note that there’s a call-in portion for the show. Ask me anything! I’ll be so sleepy that I’ll actually answer honestly.

For those of you who would rather not get up before dawn, you can always download the episode later from the WBAI website — look in the archives. (Speaking of which, if you search there, you should find the previous times I’ve been on Hour of the Wolf as part of Altered Fluid’s writing group demos.)

Several posts in need of a header

Am just getting back from the annual Altered Fluid writing retreat — it was awesome — but boy are my arms tired. And my brain, and my immune system, and so on. I need some recovery time, so in the meantime shall give you a bit of annotated linkspam.

First and foremost, I want to point you at a philanthropic effort that needs more attention. Last year, the sturm und drang of RaceFail produced a number of beautiful results, once of which was the Con or Bust fund, intended to get more fans of color to attend SF conventions, ideally Wiscon, which wants them. (Wiscon’s just cool like that.) Buuuut, since Wiscon’s in the middle of the country, it ain’t cheap to go there, so the fund needs more money. I have an auction going there for a signed copy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and it’s currently at an impressive (well, to me) bid. Let’s see if we can get it higher! BTW, lots of other authors are offering signed stuff, and also other cool things like rumballs! There are rumballs, ya’ll. Go bid now.

Also, I’ve been enjoying my month as featured author over in the Barnes and Noble forums (join us! Or if you’d rather, feel free to join the 100K Open Thread). To pair with that, forum admin Paul Goat Allen has also posted a review/interview of 100K on the B&N blog. It’s based on a short interview with me that’s a bit buried within the forums, so I’m going to point to it here if people would like to read my complete answers. Paul sees some connections between me and Octavia Butler that I don’t, but there’s room for interesting discussion here. He also compares 100K to Ursula LeGuin! Which is a better match than Butler, IMO, and also holycrap! LeGuin! I feel all shiny.

Also, another shiny thing I saw recently on Orbit’s site: Lauren Panepinto, the Art Director there (who designed the 100K cover and has just shown me the prelim of book 2, and its AWESOMENESS CANNOT BE DESCRIBED), shows in two minutes how she creates a book cover — in this case book 3 of Gail Carringer’s hilarious Victorian supernaturals series, Blameless. Strangely absorbing.

Also! Also! Also! Book 2 of the Matthew Swift series — The Midnight Mayor — is out! People who’ve heard me rave about book 1 of this series, A Madness of Angels, know how much I’ve been anticipating this book. I’m only about a third of the way into it — been rationing it; also, retreat — but thus far it’s just as good as the original. So go buy it!

BTW, if you’re wondering, I did 7500 words at the retreat. Not as many as I’d hoped — I went in with admittedly ambitious goals of doing twice that much — but still pretty substantial for 4 days’ work. And book 3 is at 92,000 words thus far.

Hundred Thousand Kingdoms Open Chat Thread

OK, since the book has now been out for more than a week, I think it might be fun for me to create a space here where readers can chat with each other about the book’s characters or content. Spoilers will abound necessarily, and I’ll be keeping an eye on the thread to make sure things stay civil, but other than that I will be hands-off here. Want to speculate about future books of the trilogy? Rant about characters who should’ve gotten more story time, or characters you just want to hate? Rave about characters who surprised you in a good way? Have at it.

Going to see if I can find a way to put this as a permanent link somewhere in the sidebar, so people can add things to it on an ongoing basis.

Interview at Sci-Fi Fan Letter

Still on retreat, and making good progress — wrote 2000 words yesterday and did 2 chapters of copyedit. Also, having fun.

But in the meantime, the promotion machine churns on; I did this interview with Sci-Fi Fan Letter awhile back, and they’ve posted it today. Check it out! An excerpt:

When and where do you write?

I make myself write every day, at least a thousand words a day, preferably two thousand. Generally I work best in midmorning to afternoon (which is one of the reasons why I quit my job), and I work equally well in my home office or in a local coffee shop (though that gets expensive and fattening, since I have to “pay rent” by buying coffee and food). When an idea has really grabbed hold of me, though, I start writing everywhere, anytime. I have often brought my laptop to bed with me; once I typed out a few paragraphs while cooking dinner, with the laptop balanced on top of the microwave. Don’t try that at home, kids.

Note: interview contains a spoiler for late in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

Sexing Up Gods Pt. 2: SMITE as an STD

OK! Now that The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has been out for a week, I can finally start to make some posts that include spoilers. These will be tagged “Spoilerrific” from here forth, and will be cut so that innocent eyes will not be sullied by the GIANT HONKING PLOT DETAILS FROM DEEP IN THE BOOK unless the really want to be sullied by them. So I repeat, if you have not finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, don’t click on the “continue reading” below!

On the heels of my previous post, I had another thought on the topic of “sexing up” gods. Continue reading ›

Mind Meld, Flights of Fantasy

A bit tired today; drove up to Albany yesterday to do a reading at the Flights of Fantasy bookstore. It went well, though there were several amusing moments — my cellphone going off in the middle of the reading was not one of them — like one of the store cats deciding to leap onto the table and inspect my book while I was reading. Also, for those who wonder, the woman with the toddler was a friend and I asked her to bring the baby; had been hoping to meet her at last. (And I desperately wanted to pick her up, but she was looking very dubious after that reading. Everyone’s a critic.)

Well, aside from two-year-olds, most of the people in the audience seemed to enjoy the reading. Since some had read the sample chapters here on my site, I did a mix of old and new — read from chapters 1, 2, and 5. I guess it worked; later the very large stack of books beside me whittled down to only four copies left. I’d guess 18-20 copies got sold as a result of that reading. Cool!

Didn’t get home ’til 2 a.m., though, so feeling blah today.

Perked up to see this, though: I’m participating in the SF Signal Mind again this week, and the question was: “If your work couldn’t have been on the ballot this year, what work would you have liked in its place?” Go see my answer over there. (And go read the story I recommended!)

ETA: Re: Flights of Fantasy. Now that I think about it, it was probably 16 books sold; I think I signed 20 altogether, but 4 of them were just signed copies for the store. Speaking of which, if you want a signed copy of the book, please contact Flights of Fantasy for one of theirs — they ship nationwide!

Pings and plugs

I’m going on a writers’ retreat later this week — the same annual retreat my writers’ group always goes on around this time of year. I really need it, too; between the stresses and labors of launch parties and self-promotion, I haven’t been able to write in over a week. (Feeling kind of spiritually bloated, as a result.) Also, I’ve got the copyedit of THE BROKEN KINGDOMS to entertain me while I’m not writing. Fun times, ya’ll.

(Actually, I’ve found that copyediting is strangely exhilarating — makes me reflect on stuff I wrote in a new way. But it’s also tedious, which is not as much of a contradiction as it sounds.)

Anyway, in the meantime I’ve still got promo stuff happening all over the place. For the entire month of March, I have agreed to be an online guest in the Barnes and Noble Science Fiction and Fantasy forum, where they’re doing a book-club-style reading of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I’ve already joined and been chatting there intermittently, but now I’ll be poking in every day or so. After each set of chapters, they’ll pause for discussion with me. Feel free to join in!

Also, I’m going to be appearing on a number of other blogs this week and next week. First up is the blog of my astounding splendiferous agent, Lucienne Diver of The Knight Agency. She’s hosting a Debut Week at her blog, and I’m honored that she’s chosen to showcase me first. Go read my guest blog there.

Will still be online, note — I’m too shamelessly addicted to the internet to cut myself off from it, and most of Altered Fluid is the same, so we always make sure to secure retreat sites with wireless. Just will be a little quieter.

Thinkythoughts on Caprica and Race

Caught another episode of “Caprica” on TV last night. I’ve been haphazard about watching this series since the miniseries failed to capture my interest, and it’s still not really holding me. But there was nothing else on, so I watched. Note that I’ve missed a couple of eps of this series, so take all below with a grain of salt.

I’ve been intrigued by the construction of the various colonies’ people as races in this society. The show’s creators seem to be trying to do a better job of things since Battlestar Galactica’s early years, when their handling of colony/race led to some really hamhanded and problematic depictions, like the planet of the black fundies, as fellow author Naamen Tilahun calls Gemenon (sp?). Thus far it seems like Caprica’s trying to depict the Taurons as a combination of Mexicans, Aztecs, Jewish people, Arabs, and Italians, maybe with a smidge of Japanese. (Too many, I wonder? An effort to avoid essentializing, certainly, but I’m not sure the mishmash technique is working. I don’t see any other race being given the same distinctive set of traditions, etc. — not even the Capricans, who are supposed to have a “20th century American” culture, I know. But that’s incomplete; where are the Graystones’ religious rituals? Have we seen Caprica City celebrate any holidays? What does their organized crime look like? The result of the Tauron mishmash is that they’re becoming a kind of generic “ethnic people”, while the Capricans are increasingly looking “non-ethnic” rather than “ethnic in a different way”. This falls into common misconceptions that only PoC have a race, and white people are somehow raceless.)

Anyway, in last night’s ep, Joseph dragged his son William — who later becomes Admiral Adama of the BSG series — out fishing with him, and they settled near a large group of teenagers who catcalled racial slurs at them. I found myself perplexed by this whole scene. First off, I’m not much of a fisher, but doesn’t it help to do it in a quiet place, away from a rowdy group whose noise might scare off the fish? But that aside, Joseph stayed near this group, even though there was only him and his son there, and tried to tell William to just ignore the taunts.

This made no sense. Seriously.

OK, Basic Common Sense 101: when you are not part of a big enough group to defend yourself, and/or you do not have weapons and/or you do not know if they have weapons, you do not stay near a large and rowdy and drunken group of teenagers who’ve taken a hate-shine to you for whatever reason. That’s just effing stupid. But then there’s the whole matter of Basic PoC Racial Common Sense 101. A good parent of color (repurposing “PoC” here) teaches his/her child how to deal with racists. You can just ignore them, yes, in certain situations. Given the numbers problem, it would have made far more sense for Joseph and William to simply leave. But since they were going to stay? You do not simply let a group of people like that work up a head of steam. They’ll eventually get drunk enough, aggressive enough, hateful enough, whatever, to attack. The only logical thing to do is head that off at the pass, and show aggression first. That way, if there has to be a fight, it happens on your terms and at a time of your choosing, and will (hopefully) go in your favor.

William chose to do this. His uncle Sam has been teaching him how to survive as a Tauron in the racist Caprican society, so fortunately William has learned the correct coping mechanisms for this situation: he kicked the racist’s ass. Joseph’s strategy would have gotten them beaten or killed, IMO.

I was glad to see that the correct strategy was modeled, and even more glad to see that Joseph finally decided to resort to Tauron methods of dealing with his son, since it seems clear that the kid is going through an immersion/emersion experience. I’m impressed by the show’s handling of this. I’m also impressed by the fact that Joseph’s turn to Tauron culture wasn’t depicted as a failing on his part — i.e., if he would just work harder at being a good Caprican, he’ll eventually be accepted, and his son too! His son’s Tauron traits are a bad thing that must be stopped! Instead, the ritual was beautifully handled, and clearly meant to be a good thing. Still, I wonder if there will be any further analysis of the situation, and the fact that Joseph’s constant attempts to assimilate are likely to hurt him and his son if he keeps it up.

I’m also wondering how, or if, they’re going to explain how this brown-eyed child version of William is going to grow up to be the blue-eyed adult Adama. Maybe they forgot that little detail.

Anyway, just thinking out loud.

Recovery Mode

Last night I had my launch party — don’t get upset if you didn’t get an invite; I restricted the notices to people who lived in NYC, in part because the venue was a bit small. (Also, this has been a hectic time and I get frazzled easily when I’m stressed, so I’m almost certain I forgot some people I should have invited; will apologize to you personally as I remember my multiple faux pas.) Anyway, the party went great despite the Blizzard of February (since I doubt it’ll be the last of 2010) howling outside, and I am incredibly touched that so many people came to help me celebrate in that mess. More on this later.

In anticipation of post-party exhaustion, I set up a couple of things in advance to continue the Launch Week promotion momentum. One of those things was my post for John Scalzi’s “Big Idea” feature over on his blog, which went up today. Go check it out — includes a mini-review of a nonfiction book I’ve been enjoying lately, which I will elaborate on here once I’ve had a chance to finish it.

Now, off to drink some nice tea to soothe my mostly-destroyed voice, after four hours of talking…

IT’S OUT

IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT “it” being The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, of course IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT y’know, copy and paste is a wonderful feature IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT hey, I saw my book on a bookstore shelf yesterday! IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT huh, I really ought to put something substantive here, but IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT I guess I’m a little excited about it but well IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT IT’S OUT oh I give up.

So. Yeah. It’s launch day. My book is officially out. Just sayin’. Y’know. In case you didn’t notice?


 

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