I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “bridges” since reading this analysis of a prominent New York Times reporter’s writing on Africa, and his admitted tendency to center his stories on the non-African foreigners (usually Americans) present, rather than the people whom the stories are ostensibly about. Texas in Africa — correctly, IMO [...]
Category Archive for ‘On Writing’ 
Brainstorming Immersive Inclusive Worlds
Long post is long! And full of intellectuobabble. But hey, this is for Readercon; it’s appropriate. I mentioned this in my previous post about Readercon, but I’m going to be running the following workshop there (description as submitted to Readercon; I think it’s been trimmed down for the program book): Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetorics of Fantasy [...]
Character Study: Kinneth
I’ll post pics and shout-outs from RT later this week; it was a lot of fun, but I’m still in the grind on book 3 and now working on copyedits for book 2, so necessarily limiting my blogging time ’til that’s done. Anyway, Kinneth. I could have — and did, in an early short story [...]
Atheism in a world of gods
I mentioned in passing awhile back that I’ve been contemplating atheism in the context of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Book 3 currently contains a minor character who describes himself as atheist. When he meets Sieh — a god — the following exchange occurs (cutting for length and worldbuilding spoilers for the second and third books):
Darre Details
One of the reader complaints I’ve seen a few times about 100K is frustration with the amount of detail allotted to the barony of Darr, since it’s one of only a handful of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms we get to see (beyond Sky, which isn’t so much a kingdom as a self-incorporated city-state of its [...]
Character Study: Dekarta
I have to admit that Dekarta fascinates me. He’s probably the only truly religious character in the whole book, for one thing. This is a world where everyone believes in gods because hello? they’re right there in your face. (I’m wrestling with the idea of how an atheist would function in this world right now, [...]
Character Study: Nahadoth
Continuing the theme on the character studies, next up is our boy, Nahadoth. He’s a complicated man, and no one understands him but his — actually, wait, no, she doesn’t get him either. Cue the “Shaft” theme anyway. RIP Isaac Hayes. And cut for spoilers.
Character Study: Scimina
I decided to jump to this character after reading some recent reviews which noted that Scimina is the most two-dimensional character in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I agree with this characterization wholeheartedly. Cut for spoilers:
I am the market.
Was having a conversation with someone in the publishing industry recently, and it triggered an epiphany for me. Basically, I think The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms became my “breakout” novel (i.e., the one that actually got published, as opposed to the ones still sitting in my harddrive) because I stopped caring about what the market wanted. [...]
Character Study: Yeine
Writers cannot live by fiction alone, and I need some mental breaks from working on Book 3, so it occurred to me that folks might be interested in learning more about the thought processes involved in creating and writing the characters from the Inheritance Trilogy. This will be a series; you’ll be able to find [...]
