January 2010

Pause for triangulation

/ 2 Comments / On Writing, ShiningStar / By

Been working hard on Book 3 of “The Inheritance Trilogy” for the past 7 weeks now, ever since I restarted it with a new PoV character. It’s really flowing — I just hit 75,000 words — which tells me that I’ve found the right voice for it at last. But because a) my outline for this book was written from a different character’s perspective, and b) I’ve been writing so fast I haven’t stopped to re-outline, I’m starting to stumble. It’s the same overall story — but because the different characters of this story do different things and travel in […]

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Shameless self-promotion, times three

/ Pimping, Shorts, silliness / By

Hey, SFWA members! You, yes, you, have in your hands a unique opportunity! See, I have a short story, “Non-Zero Probabilities”, that’s doing pretty well in the Nebula preliminary-ballot voting. At this point there’s a very strong chance that my story will get onto the final ballot(!!). Now, I won’t lie; I’ve been entertaining fantasies of winning a Neb since I saw the vote tallies, but at this stage of my career I’d still be happy — ecstatic, actually — just to get onto the final ballot. So if you happen to have not yet done your Nebula voting, please

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Sexing Up Gods

/ 9 Comments / 100K / By

So, got another review over the weekend, this one from friend and fellow author Gord Sellar. Gord is an English professor, so as you might imagine his review was very thorough and deconstructiony and contained many 12-cent words, which I kinda loved. He warns of spoilers at the outset, and he’s not kidding, so be forewarned. But his post triggered some thinking for me, on the topic of sex and gods. I live in the US, and was raised Christian, of a particular variety of Christianity that pretty much had this to say about sex: “Sex? Where did you hear

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Sample Chapter 3 posted!

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A bit early, because I realized just recently that the release date for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is actually February 3rd. What that means is that even though it’s not officially out until its pub date of February 25th, many retailers will actually start to shelve it anytime between those two dates. So posting chapter 3 early means I get to torment people longer with the book’s unavailability. Mwahaha! Also, today is my mom’s birthday, so I’m feeling celebratory. Enjoy! Chapter 3 is here.

Sample Chapter 3 posted! KEEP READING

Now it can be howled…

/ 2 Comments / Shorts / By

Been holding off on mentioning this because I wasn’t sure how “official” it was, but we’re talking business stuff now so I guess it’s a done deal. My fantasy/erotica/fairy tale deconstructionist short story “Red Riding-Hood’s Child” is going to appear as a reprint in Running With the Pack, a forthcoming anthology of werewolf fiction due out in May from Prime Books. It’s got some serious big names attached to it, and is edited by World Fantasy Award-winning editor Ekaterina Sedia. I’m super-excited that my little story is going to be in such big company. Preorders available on Amazon now! ETA

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Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

/ 11 Comments / 100K, Controversies, The Industry / By

Title quote from the first Matrix film; Morpheus. So, noticed that the German version of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is now available, when it showed up on Goodreads under “other editions” recently. That was my first time seeing it. For those of you who aren’t Goodreads members (why aren’t you?), here’s what it looks like: According to Google’s translation tool, the title is something like “The Heiress of the World”. Submitted without comment for now. (Am talking with my agent about it.) Feel free to discuss. Oh, and there’s a description of Yeine in chapter 1, if you’re wondering what

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Audio Trailer!

/ 3 Comments / Pimping / By

I was feeling kind of ambivalent about getting a video book trailer, as I’ve mentioned here before. I’ve seen a very few book trailers that had a positive impact on my interest in/remembrance of the book being advertised, and I’ve seen a whole lot of book trailers that just fell flat. (Or worse, made me want to avoid the book like the plague.) So I decided to go with something different, and instead had an audio trailer put together. I’m going to be running this on some of the skiffy podcasts in the next few weeks, like I Should Be

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Boycott? No, thanks.

/ 15 Comments / Controversies, The Industry, WTF World? / By

And here I thought I was done with controversies for the week. For those who haven’t heard, there’s been a big to-do in the past few days over another instance of cover art whitewashing re a YA novel called Magic Under Glass by debut author Jaclyn Dolamore. Like the last instance, it turned into a big thing, with some big-name editors and authors in the field weighing in on the issue. And a whole lot of readers got pissed off — again — as they should, IMO, because the problem of whitewashing has gone on for literally decades in the

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Warriors who don’t make war

/ 2 Comments / 100K, Review / By

OK. Calm now. Going to be slightly more coherent than in my last post. The reviews of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms have thus far been mostly positive, which is phenomenal. (See last post for my typical reaction.) But I’m kind of glad for the occasional notes of critique that have cropped up amid all the praise. See, like all writers I’m still learning, constantly seeking to improve my skills in various areas. Part of that learning process is experimentation, which generally consists of me trying something weird and then seeing how readers react. The critical reviews are giving me an

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io9!!! io9!!! io9!!!

/ 2 Comments / 100K, Review / By

Submitted without comment beyond HOLY FUCKING SHIT: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, out Feb. 25, is an impressive debut, which revitalizes the trope of empires whose rulers have gods at their fingertips. It feels suitably big, and yet incredibly intimate as well. And we can’t wait to read the other two volumes of the Inheritance Trilogy.

io9!!! io9!!! io9!!! KEEP READING

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