I suppose I ought to do some kind of end-of-the-year post.

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…except I don’t really feel like it. This year has been both heaven and hell in various ways. I got a day job which has made me financially stable — and it’s been eating into my ability to write. I published one book and am looking forward to two more next year… but I recently realized I’ve sold only one short story, and had none published this year — a record low since I started writing seriously. I threw a bigass party on the other side of the country, and attended a bigass party on the other side of the […]

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Carving a New World

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Ah, the holidays. That lovely time when lists begin to dominate my life: holiday shopping lists, menus for family meals, packing lists for shipping and travel, eight million flavors of to do. I’m sure all of you reading this post, in any culture can relate. But there’s one list I’m working on right now that I suspect only the fellow writers among you will fully grok. Here’s what it would look like if I jotted it down on a sticky note: !!! Synop Characters Plot? Test Chapter 1 Test Chapter 2 Proof of Concept R&D (books and stuff) R&D (practical;

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A Writer’s Education

/ 16 Comments / On Writing, Rantage, WTF World? / By

Apologies in advance; not gonna talk about writing for the moment. Instead I’m going to talk about the writing life, in a way. See, I took the GRE on Saturday. I did OK. Astounding on the verbal and abysmal on the quantitative, as I expected. I’ve been using my verbal skills steadily and with increasing intensity throughout my adult life, after all, and I haven’t done combinatorics in 20 years. No amount of short-term cramming can really make up for that, and I didn’t expect it to. All I really wanted to do was not embarrass myself, and I think

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The (not really) Deafening Silence

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Apologies for being quiet here. I’m busy a) studying for the GRE, because I’m thinking about getting an MFA, and b) talking elsewhere, which has absorbed most of the free chat time I had available. Per the latter, I’m on a mailing list with some other authors, constituting the Locus Roundtable. Basically, our moderator (usually Karen Burnham) throws out an interesting question. Then she lets us do what writers do best (aside from writing), which is blather on about whatever tickles our fancy, while she collects the answers. The latest question actually spawned several subthreads of discussion, which will all

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Magic4Terri

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FYI for all: there’s a fundraising auction going on right now to benefit author, artist, and editor Terri Windling, who’s going through a rough time right now. But even if you don’t know or care about her, you should care about this auction, because there’s all kinds of stunning stuff available. Like this custom “personalized” fairy tale poem from Jane Yolen! ::bites fingers, wanting:: And manuscript critiques, and art, and just… wow. For my own part, I’ll be offering a signed ARC of The Killing Moon, book 1 of the Dreamblood, for the highest bidder (minimum $10). This book won’t

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More Wow.

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You should definitely click to enlarge this one: Here’s another one from DubuGomdori, folks! This time she’s tackled Yeine, and it’s just as gorgeous as her last effort. The artist has this to say about the work: What you see before you is my depiction of Yeine Darr with Sky City in the background. Yeine describes herself as short, flat and brown as the forest. She wears her traditional garment of her people, the Darre, from the north. Amazing, isn’t it? I love the coloring, the expression on Yeine’s face, the detail. I love the hint-of-Greek, hint-of-Egyptian, hint-of-nothing-of-this-earth architecture on

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GRAVY I WILL DEFEAT YOU

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Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow USians, both those of you who celebrate its intended spirit and those who regard it as the PR campaign that it is, and also those of you who think of it as National Football & Food Coma Day. Personally I regard it as a day to polish up my cooking skills and test various experiments on hapless guinea pigs friends and family members who dare to eat the results. Already mentioned on Twitter that I would be making rosemary-crusted standing rib roast as the main dish; I’m not a fan of turkey, so when I

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Character Study: Deka

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I’ve heard a few complaints from readers about the fact that Deka’s role in The Kingdom of Gods isn’t advertised in the jacket copy. That’s my fault, partly; I do get a say in the copy, and it seemed more important to me to emphasize the novel’s plot rather than its relationships. All things considered, these books are marketed as fantasy, not romance, and Deka is more important as a love interest than he is as a mover and shaker in the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Not that love interests are meaningless, mind you. Since love and desire are key drivers

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Wow.

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Please, please click for the full spread; depending on your screen size you may only be seeing a portion of it. It’s truly epic. This beautiful and amazing illustration of chapter 1 of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms — the scene in which Yeine meets Dekarta for the first time, is called “Grandfather”. The artist is DubuGomdori on DeviantArt, who graciously allowed me to post this with permission. Stunning, isn’t it? The artist had this to say: I’ve always been fascinated in mythology and symbolism. The world you narrated in the book was impressionistic yet left a strong, haunting, and strangely

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