Psst! Look up. Are you reading this on the main page of this blog? Then in the header you should see the words “Chapter 2” all lit up underneath that photo of The Killing Moon. Reading it on a subsidiary page? Look up again, but this time scroll over the “Books” link, and go to one of the pages there for the Dreamblood or the first book. It’s linked there too. Enjoy!
THE KILLING MOON sample chapter 2 posted! KEEP READING
FYI for all — for those of you who missed it in Weird Tales last January, my “cybergoth” story “The Trojan Girl” is live now at Escape Pod. “The Trojan Girl” is part of a sequence of science fictional stories I’ve been working on — another of those stories, “Valedictorian,” will soon be published in the dystopian YA anthology After later this year– in which artificial intelligences that have risen spontaneously from a futuristic internet struggle to figure out their place in the world. An excerpt: Fizville was where Meroe had been born. Such places littered the Amorph, natural collection
“The Trojan Girl” online at Escape Pod KEEP READING
Rantytime. Warning for profanity — although I’m going to try and rein it in, as best I can. Nobody listens to Angry Black Women, after all. This rant has been partially triggered by yet another discussion of “strong female characters” circulating in the blogosphere. (A good jumping-off point for this discussion is this io9 article, where I butted into the comments for a minute to pretty much make this same point.) This isn’t a new discussion, of course; people have been talking about it for awhile on and off. It’s just the latest hiccup. The strong female character (SFC) is
There’s no such thing as a good stereotype. KEEP READING
::sigh:: I get emails from readers from time to time, and 99% of these emails are positive and welcome. (Thank you!) But every so often I get one that’s… soooo very not. It isn’t exactly “hate mail”. Generally I only get those via the comments on my more “controversial” blog posts, like when I complain about messed-up video games or movies. (Yeah, I don’t think those are controversial either, but the fact remains; I get more crap over the stuff I watch/play than the stuff I write.) I’m quick on the banhammer, so most of you don’t have to see
Ignorant Mail, and Linkspam KEEP READING
Cool points to whoever gets the subject line reference. Just an FYI — I’ve mentioned this before, but finally got around to posting the Inheritance Trilogy Non-Wiki — that is, the notes I kept while I was working on the trilogy, to try and keep track of which godling had what affinity and where the Toks live and whether it was the Ken or the Min who were famous for their piracy. Why am I posting this? Because I’m not planning to write any more books in this universe — I’m not discounting the possibility of a creative bolt of
Wikiwikiwikiwiki (shut up) KEEP READING
Back from Hawaii. Exhausted, as one is wont to be after any 12-hour flight and jetlag, but it doesn’t help that I spent the whole trip doing stuff like this: That was day 1 of the trip: a 4-mile hike around and across Kilauea Iki, which is basically the remains of a lava lake that was pretty jumpin’ — by which I mean, boiling hot and utterly deadly — back in 1959. These days it’s a much more sedate place, although the hike is substantially challenging even for people who haven’t just traveled to the other side of the planet
Now THAT was a trip. KEEP READING
No time/energy to post in multiple places, so for the next few days I’ll be mostly on Facebook, where I’m liveblogging (livestatusing?) my research trip to the Big Island of Hawai’i. You can see photos from today’s hike across Kilauea. Tomorrow’s menu includes a helicopter tour of the active lava flows, and hopefully a visit to the Mauna Kea observatory (depending on whether my rental car can handle the drive). Friday is assorted debauchery with Kate Elliott, as we get up to whatever shenanigans two wild fantasy-writing women can get up to and stay legal. Saturday’s anything-goes day, and then
Facebooking Hawai’i KEEP READING
This is where I’m going: Off to Hawaii to research the coolest stuff ever. Back in a few days.
And then it hits me. KEEP READING
Nebula nomination number three, for The Kingdom of Gods. I found out on Friday, if you’re wondering why I’m so calm about this; had time to go out and celebrate with friends, recover from the hangover, and cool down over the last few days. But I’m still kinda ¡holyshit! about it, just more quietly so. I totally wasn’t expecting it. Yeah, it’s common for the third thing of a trilogy to get nominated for the Oscars, and stuff like that, but I don’t think it’s particularly common in SFF. Also, I knew there was really good stuff out there to
So, yeah. This happened. KEEP READING
Now, don’t get all excited. Nobody’s offered or expressed any interest whatsoever in creating a game out of the Inheritance Trilogy. It’s just that a fan mentioned the idea on Twitter, and it intrigued me, so I’m bringing the question here: How would an RPG based on the Inheritance Trilogy work? For now, let’s go with tabletop RPGs rather than a video game. Not that the idea of a Squeenix or Atlus take on 100K wouldn’t thrill me — ohholycrapyesitwould — but there’s so many ways for games like that to be formulated. Tabletops, though, are a little more strict.
The Inheritance Trilogy: The Roleplaying Game? KEEP READING