Fantasy Fans: Where’s Your Outrage?

/ 89 Comments / WTF World? / By

This is hurriedly written and unedited; gotta take Besame Mucho to the vet in a few. Apologies for typos/inclarities in advance. If you didn’t know, something relevant to your genre happened last night. Beasts of the Southern Wild, a fantasy film I’ve been raving about, got nominated for four different Oscars — yeah, they didn’t win any last night, but getting nominated is still awesome. One of those nominations was for the film’s star, Quvenzhané Wallis, who also made history for being the youngest-ever Oscar nominee. She’s 9 years old. Here’s the part that happened last night: half of Hollywood […]

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Three Things Make A Post

/ 11 Comments / Awards, Natter / By

Except I can’t count. State of the NoJo: plugging away slowly on the UMSP still. The ash has begun to fall and the world is changing; this novel’s got a very eerie, surreal quality to it that’s making me wonder if I’ve got some latent horror writer inclinations in me somewhere. Diverted a bit to work on a short story in the 100Kverse; more on that later. Because… The Killing Moon has been nominated for a Nebula!! I got the call about it this weekend, but had to sit on the news ’til the official announcement today. This is my

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From the Mailbag: The Unbearable Baggage of Orcing

/ 54 Comments / From the Mailbag, On Writing, Thinkythoughts / By

Awhile back I got an email from a reader which asked, “When are you going to write some real fantasy, y’know, with orcs?” This is a paraphrase, because I didn’t get the reader’s permission to quote (I asked, no reply). But I’d say it’s pretty accurate as to its tone and implications, since the email went on to explain that the reader really really liked me and thought I was a good writer, but hated the fact that the stuff I write is labeled “epic fantasy” when it doesn’t resemble Tolkien much. In fact, the reader felt that this was

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Gamefail bluescreen

/ 54 Comments / Rantage, WTF World? / By

Apologies, ya’ll. I know you haven’t heard much from me lately. Partly it’s that I’ve been busy; this is the time of year when my day job ratchets up, and since I’m still plowing full speed ahead on the UMSP, I don’t have a ton of spare brain. What little I’ve got has mostly been channeled into stress relief — hanging out with local folks, long meditative walks on snowy evenings, and among other things, gaming. But lately the gaming has been… shall we say, less than fun?

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Tis the Season

/ 3 Comments / 100K, Awards, Pimping, Shorts / By

Awards season, that is. Now that 2012 has passed into honored and unlamented history — happy New Year, everybody — people are looking back and thinking about what was best in the year, what was worst, and everything in between. And because I keep getting asked about it, here’s what I’ve got that’s eligible for awards consideration this year. It’s not much, alas; writing novels on deadline plus working a full time job has made me a much less prolific woman of late. Short Story Although I had a lot of reprints published this year, there was only one truly

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Consent is Sexy

/ 11 Comments / 100K, Thinkythoughts / By

Writer Beth Bernobich started this, after hearing complaints that it’s somehow unsexy to seek or confirm consent during sex (or during fictional sex). So far she and Martha Wells have posted examples of sex scenes showing clear consent, so I figured I’d join in. Three posts make a meme, and all that. This one’s probably familiar to many of you; it’s from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Consent was an ongoing theme of the relationship between Yeine and the god Nahadoth, in part because Nahadoth actually can’t do anything to her without her consent, and in part because Yeine is effectively

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Holiday Gifts for Publishers

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This is something I didn’t know about before I became a published author: it’s kind of traditional to give your publishers a gift at the holidays. I followed tradition unknowingly that first year after the Inheritance Trilogy was contracted, because in my day job life I’m a career counselor and I know it’s always a good idea to give gifts to people you’re doing business with, or who are professionally valuable to you. But lest this sound mercenary, I also just genuinely liked the folks at Orbit, and wanted to show them how pleased I was to be working with

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“The Next Big Thing” Meme

/ 8 Comments / Interview, Natter / By

Last week I got tagged by buddy Kate Elliott to participate in The Next Big Thing, a meme that’s been going around. I’m slow, so only just now doing it (d’oh). But this looks fun, so here goes. I think it’s meant to be filled out by someone who’s got a soon-forthcoming novel, but I’m going to treat this as a between-series snack and just talk about everything I’ve ever written. Cutting for brevity!

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Fantastic Profanity

/ 33 Comments / On Writing / By

So today I’d like to talk about fantastic profanity — by which I mean not “really good” profanity, but “made up for fantasy and science fiction” profanity. Therefore this post will contain quite a bit of cussin’. FOR ART AND SCIENCE. You are warned. There are some words that are universally vulgar, in my opinion. I only speak 1.25 languages — English and just enough of a few other languages to mangle them all magnificently — but in my vast experience I haven’t yet found a language that doesn’t treat either the act or the product of defecation as something

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Assorted Awesomeness

/ 7 Comments / Appearances, Fan Fun, Interview / By

Sorry for the silence lately; holidays, travel, the usual. Back now and getting into the swing of things again, so here’s a little of what I’ve been up to: The folks at Open Road Media have created a series of advertisements for Octavia Butler’s novels, which are being released in ebook form at last now that it’s the 25th anniversary of Dawn — not her first novel, but arguably her first hit. (If you haven’t read the Lilith’s Brood books, read them. They’re my favorites of hers.) The first one came out a few months ago, showcasing Butler’s agent, some

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