August 2011

A brief public service message

/ 60 Comments / Rantage / By

Saying this because in the past couple of days I’ve had some Incidents, both professional and personal, and I’m beginning to be Pissed Off. Warning for profanity. Let me make something clear: I talk about race, gender, and other issues of social justice because I have to. Because if I want to survive in this business, I don’t just have to adapt myself, I have to adapt the field itself — or I will die young of a heart attack or a stroke or something. But this does not in any way mean I talk about race and gender because […]

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Snippets 2: The Gods’ Realm

/ 1 Comment / On Writing, Snippets / By

(Snippets 1 is here.) One of the things I had to spend a lot of time on, in creating the Inheritance Trilogy, was figuring out what went on in the gods’ lives when mortals weren’t around to see them. This was something that I knew might never actually show up in the story — the gods are the focus of the trilogy, but it’s their interactions with mortals that matter most — but I still needed to understand it. I’ve heard other writers compare worldbuilding to an iceberg, and I think that analogy fits perfectly: readers see only ten percent,

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Here, have a pretty.

/ 3 Comments / Fan Fun / By

Folks who follow me on Twitter already saw this, but otherwise it’s buried in the comments of the previous post. So I decided to bring it out here where everyone could see, since the author was kind enough to share it with me, and since it’s amazing: Click to biggify, which is well worth it. Original here at Casey’s art Tumblr, where you may comment to the artist directly. I don’t know Casey, and haven’t yet mastered the mysteries of Tumblr so haven’t sent a response to her — but Casey, if you’re watching, my response is WOW. As I

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Reading outside the lines

/ 29 Comments / Appearances, Conventions and Workshops, Thinkythoughts / By

Just flew in from Reno, and boy are — ::slaps self:: Sorry. Punchy from the jetlag, hangover, sleeping on airplanes, and oxygen deprivation. Just got back from Worldcon, which was in the quite lovely town of Reno, Nevada. Unfortunately it was in an unlovely series of spread-out, smoke-filled, noisy-with-many-blinky-lights casino hotels, which I might’ve enjoyed more if I was a gambler or a smoker. I’m neither, so I spent much of the weekend trying to fend off sensory overload, watering eyes, and potential emphysema. (On a completely different level, I can’t help but admire the social engineering of casinos like

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Worldcon Schedule

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Yes, I will be at Worldcon next week, ’cause hey, possible Hugo. But I’ll be doing other things besides! Like this: Fri 13:00 – 15:00, Writers Workshop (with Louise Marley as a co-host!) Fri 16:00 – 17:00, Manga: Which Book Series got You Hooked? (Panel): An introduction to manga. Fri 17:00 – 18:00, Post-Modern Fantasy, Epic and Otherwise (Panel): There’s been considerable discussion of Fantasy, Fantastika, and Post-Modernism. What is this about, and why is it interesting for those who read, review, or critique present day fantasy? Sat 12:00 – 13:00, Autographing Sat 15:00 – 16:00, Exploring Social Justice via

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Snippets 1: The Broken Kingdoms

/ 3 Comments / On Writing, Snippets, Spoilerrific / By

Going to try something new now, as I lead up to the publication of The Kingdom of Gods (remember, kids: October 27th!). I’ll try to post these once a week or so. Like many authors, I make lots of false starts in the process of writing a novel. Some had legs, but just didn’t go far enough toward my goal; some were badly-written crap; some would have been beautiful — in a different novel. I tend to keep most of my significant text cuts, just because I’m a textual packrat and I’m always worried I might change my mind about

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Considering Colonialism

/ 35 Comments / 100K, On Writing, Thinkythoughts / By

A few years back, I read a great anthology: So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Meehan. Having not really started studying historical analysis or the impact of colonialism back then, I wasn’t entirely clear on what “postcolonial” meant. “Colonial” I got, since as a longtime fan of SFF I’d read scenario after scenario of stories about people from one society establishing beachheads in another, whether as invaders or friendlier visitors. But what was the “post” part all about? Reading the definition didn’t really bring it home… but that anthology did. In

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Yeine, Concept Art

/ 11 Comments / Fan Fun / By

Hi, all! I suppose I’ve never gotten around to posting an official policy on fanworks, mostly because a) I’m a n00b author and never had to think about it before, and b) it’s not like there are scads of people out there just waiting on tenterhooks for me to bless their Nahadoth-Hosts-The-Muppet-Show multipart AU crossover, so it didn’t matter. But in general I’m pro-fanstuff so long as it’s created in the spirit of sharing and not profit — though for legal reasons I don’t read fanfiction. I can’t draw a straight line, though, so fanart is less of a problem.

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Attack the Block vs Cowboys & Aliens

/ 11 Comments / SFF on Screen / By

Went to see two movies this past weekend, in my gleefully between-deadlines free time: Attack the Block (redband trailer, note — profanity and violence), and Cowboys and Aliens. Both were movies I’d been anticipating like whoa; both were movies that promised to hit all my usual sweet spots: alien invasions, action, cleverness, stuff blowing up, Daniel Craig’s lovely ass. (What? I’m not saying that’s the only reason I went to see it.) And though I’ve been hearing good things about Attack the Block for months, I went into both movies expecting to like Cowboys and Aliens better. Because, I mean,

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