Midnight in Karachi interview

/ 1 Comment / Interview, On Writing / By

I’ve been doing a lot of interviews lately, and it’s been hard to keep track of them. I post them on Twitter or FB usually, but I wanted to point to this one in particular since it contains a lot of behind-the-scenes info on The Fifth Season and the Broken Earth trilogy. MASSIVE SPOILERS HEREIN, and I strongly do NOT recommend you listen to it if you haven’t read TFS. But for those of you who’ve read the book, you might find it interesting. A great Skype-based interview with Mahvesh Murad of Midnight in Karachi.

Midnight in Karachi interview KEEP READING

Creating races

/ 14 Comments / On Writing, The Broken Earth / By

So, now that The Fifth Season is out, I can finally talk more about the making of. Over at Scalzi’s I blogged a bit about why and how I chose to use second person, among other things. Now I’m going to talk about creating the Sanzeds, the orogenes, and the stone eaters. BTW, after further thought on this topic, I’m going to use the words “race” or “people” rather than “species” in talking about these groups because all three are obviously people. It used to bug me to see “race” used in lieu of species, particularly when the human race

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The Stillness, in all its glory

/ 10 Comments / Natter, The Broken Earth / By

So, I still don’t like the idea of maps in fantasy novels in general. But I needed one as I wrote The Fifth Season, so after I scrawled something hideous in a Microsoft Word file and sent that to Orbit, and the collective screams of horror died down, they worked with artist Tim Paul to create something much better (click to embiggen): Yeah, OK, I could get to like maps a little now. Maybe. Seriously, Tim did an awesome job, especially considering he got a lot of vague guidance from me like, “I can’t remember if those pokey things are

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It’s a(nother) book!

/ 19 Comments / The Broken Earth / By

So strange and amazing to be here at the publication of my sixth novel. I remember being a newbie writer and struggling just to imagine myself publishing one book. That was only… hmm, eight years ago? I got my agent in 2007, as I recall. I remember despairing, as it became clear that my first book wasn’t going to sell first, and giving serious consideration to quitting all this shit. Wow. Confession: I had a despair moment again while writing The Fifth Season. Convinced myself that it was just too strange, too dark, too hard to write, and no one

It’s a(nother) book! KEEP READING

Worldbuilding 101

/ 19 Comments / Conventions and Workshops / By

I did a recent talk for the Writers’ Digest Online Workshop and Annual Conference on worldbuilding, in which I basically explained how I do what I do, and led participants through an exercise in creating their own world. I’d hoped to actually do the exercise in realtime, using some poster paper and audience participation, but alas, ran out of time. There’s a good example in the Powerpoint, though. Note that if this doesn’t make sense in places, remember that it was meant to be shown alongside me talking and filling in conceptual gaps. But hopefully you can figure it out.

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The Fifth Season is coming!

/ 3 Comments / Appearances, The Broken Earth / By

And I’ve got some stuff lined up in the next few weeks. I will not be doing a book tour; I’m still in Deadline Hell on book 2 of the Broken Earth trilogy, which is due at the end of August. So this is it for big events… but I’m amenable to the occasional podcast appearance or phone interview. (No guestblogs or text interviews, sorry; those eat up too much writing time.) Week of July 27th: Goodreads giveaway Some lucky people will have a chance to win a free signed copy of any of my novels, including The Fifth Season.

The Fifth Season is coming! KEEP READING

The Apocalypse of Unfortunate Implications

/ 44 Comments / On Writing, The Broken Earth, The Mysterious Glowing Box / By

Just saw a trailer for the Shannara TV series that’s soon to exist: Very pretty. Don’t think I’m going to particularly go out of my way to see it, because at this point I’m a little tired of New Zealand landscapes, orcish hordes, and John Rhys-Davies. I like Tolkien, but I was never a fan of Tolkien clones in textual form, and the film medium doesn’t make them any more palatable. But those of you who are Shannara fans, yay! Enjoy. I got distracted from the cool landscapes and glowing beads and so on, though, by the fact that once

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Now it can be told!

/ 27 Comments / Inheritance, Shorts / By

I’ve been sitting on the news of this for a few months now, waiting for the cover, etc., so I could squee about it in the shiniest way. But in addition to writing “The Awakened Kingdom” as a palate-cleanser after The Fifth Season, I also wrote some shortier shorts. I’d intended them to just be fun stress relievers, a chance to play with style in a familiar milieu, but the result ended up being so good that I thought, “Readers should see this.” So now you can. From the shadows of the greater stories, away from the bright light of

Now it can be told! KEEP READING

An open letter to the WSFS about unintended consequences

/ 18 Comments / Awards, Controversies, The Industry / By

ETA: I missed that there’s been a new development since I started writing this; the folks putting forward the proposal are dropping the novelette clause. Still not liking the “saga” portion of the proposal either, for the reasons I’ve said here and which Scalzi said in his post, but at least the proposal isn’t actively harmful anymore. Whoa. Did you guys think this through? No, seriously. Beyond whether “The Wheel of Time” could get a Hugo, or whether you, personally, like short fiction or not. Did you consider how proposal B.1.3 looks, both within and outside SFFdom? What message it

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New author photo, starred review

/ 13 Comments / Review, The Broken Earth / By

For those of you not be-Twittered or a-Facebooked, these are the new author photos I got recently, since my old one was a whopping 7 years old. (Time flies when you’re having fun.) And while that old photo was awesome — taken by fellow pro author and amateur photographer E. C. Myers, with a little touching-up by fellow pro author and graphic designer Kris Dikeman — it was time to retire it. Haven’t worn my hair that way in years, and also I’ve earned my “older and wiser”, and I wanted that to show. So this time around I went

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