June 2011

Locus Roundtable on, er, Me

Locus, that nice magazine that just gave me a big shiny award, also does other cool things. Who knew? Like, they have a series called Roundtables, in which they ask a bunch of writers, reviewers, and other literary folk to chat about a particular work or topic. And — starting before the award, actually — they decided to talk about me. Disclosure: I’m on the Roundtable list, but I obviously bowed out of this conversation. So a couple of the folks there have met me in real life, one (Rachel Swirsky) knows me quite well, and the rest I only […]

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Nebula Awards Interview

I didn’t win at the Nebs this year, but they’re the gift that keeps on giving nevertheless. SFWA’s got a lovely interview posted with me that I did while I was in France. An excerpt: In writing Book One, what was the hardest part? The easiest? Probably the political intrigue was hardest, because it interested me the least. I’ve written stories whose focus/purpose was politics, and when that’s what I intend, I enjoy writing it — the forthcoming Dreamblood novels are all politics, all the time — but in this case my purpose was to play with mythological archetypes. I

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Never Judge a Book By Its… Title.

A friend sent me this link to an article at the Awl in which four literary writers talk about their reactions to editorial title changes. An example, from author Suzanne Morrison re her book Yoga Bitch: A lot of writers think their editors are crazy when they try and change their titles, but I didn’t. I knew exactly what she was talking about, because I had been worrying about the same thing. In writing the story as a book, deeper themes emerged that hadn’t been present in the play; fear of death, yearning for faith, the hunt for something real.

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Welcome, folks from Blastr

Please mind your manners and wipe your feet before coming in. Everyone else: sorry, but a couple of people (or one determined person with a lot of time on his hands) have not minded their manners re my last post. Apropos of which, the blog is on moderation — if you’ve commented here before successfully, your comments will be approved. If not, they’ll be held ’til I can get to them. Also, I’ve shut down commenting altogether on older posts — everything past 14 days old. Sorry, ’bout that. I’ll lift the moderation once the children get bored and go

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Go#$%!$ Hollywood!

YOU CAN’T DO THAT. YOU CAN’T TELL A NUANCED, COMPLEX, INTERESTING STORY ABOUT BIGOTRY AND USE BIGOTRY TO DO IT. YOU WILL SHOOT YOUR OWN MESSAGE IN THE FOOT AND RUIN AN OTHERWISE EXCELLENT MOVIE. DOES THIS NOT OCCUR TO YOU? ARE YOU INCAPABLE OF THINKING FOR TWO MINUTES DURING THE SCRIPTWRITING? DO YOU JUST NOT SEE THAT SAYING “RACISM IS BAD” DOESN’T WORK IF YOU’RE PERPETUATING IT YOURSELF?! WHAT THE EVERLIVING HELL — ?! ::Stops. Takes deep, calming breath. Goes for bike ride, reads something, seeks the peace within herself, etc.:: Okay. Let’s try that again. I went to

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I’m a-doin’ the Write-A-Thon

I’ve never been to a Clarion. Or any six-week workshop. Never worked in the kind of career field that would permit it, and never had a fortuitous conjunction of money and unemployment in between careers. Still, I like the idea of the whole thing — creativity boot camp, total immersion in ideas and discipline with the isolation necessary to foster the imagination to its fullest. It’s something I get in smaller increments with my writing group, particularly when we go off on our annual retreat — but how cool is it to go on a massive, six-week-long retreat with guest

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Some points of general interest.

This is not addressed to anyone in particular, though it is triggered by a comment or two — not necessarily negative ones, if you’re wondering, mostly just perplexing ones — that I’ve seen or heard in places, about me and mine. And me being the kind of girl who points at the giant stinking elephant in the room and says, Dear gods, what is that thing? — well, I felt the need to explain: 1. My editor did not know I was black when she bought my novel. She found out the first time we met in person — after

Some points of general interest. KEEP READING

The obvious vs the oblique

You may have noticed that I’ve been a little quiet lately. Sorry! It’s the whole two-fulltime-jobs thing; doesn’t leave a lot of time for extras. So in the spirit of maximizing efficiency, this is a two-birds-with-one-stone post: I’m going to talk about writing, which I haven’t done here for awhile, and I’m also going to plug a new novel that rocked my socks off. The novel is Genevieve Valentine’s Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, which has already gotten some nice press. It deserves more. When I first started out as a short story writer, I had a rough

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