Very few things could lure me out of the fugue-state of finishing a novel, but a note that I received yesterday from a reader sent me into full-on rant mode: I just finished reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and I enjoyed it a lot. I was confused, though, to see that my library had chosen [...]
Category Archive for ‘The Industry’ 
The Romance Pitch
Wow. RT has been an Experience — all good, but a bit overwhelming. I’m not on any panels or anything; mostly I just wanted to get a better understanding of the romance genre. And man, was this the place to do it. Have been schmoozing with authors like Karen Miller and Linnea Sinclair, as well [...]
Book Covers Explained
Apologies for the relative silence, ya’ll. Been seriously motoring on book 3, which is threatening to become a doorstopper. ::ulp:: I’m planning to chop it ruthlessly when I get into the editing phase because I just don’t believe a fantasy novel should be heavy enough to punch a hole in the fabric of existence, but [...]
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. [...]
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
Title quote from the first Matrix film; Morpheus. So, noticed that the German version of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is now available, when it showed up on Goodreads under “other editions” recently. That was my first time seeing it. For those of you who aren’t Goodreads members (why aren’t you?), here’s what it looks like: [...]
Boycott? No, thanks.
And here I thought I was done with controversies for the week. For those who haven’t heard, there’s been a big to-do in the past few days over another instance of cover art whitewashing re a YA novel called Magic Under Glass by debut author Jaclyn Dolamore. Like the last instance, it turned into a [...]
Why I Think RaceFail Was The Bestest Thing Evar for SFF
This post is for MLK Day. It’s also prompted by the coincidental approximate anniversary of RaceFail, which began in January of last year. (Missed the fun? Google is your friend. But here is a good place to start.) For those who want the Twitter version, RaceFail was a several-months-long conversation about race in the context [...]
The Harlequin Horizons Thing
As you know Bob(s), I’m a member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA). This is because a) there’s romantic content in many of my books, so there’s an obvious crossover of interests; b) I read and enjoy romance on occasion; and c) RWA is simply a kickass organization — quite possibly the most efficient [...]
Everybody’s Doin’ It: NebDo!
(Ugh. OK, yeah, that was bad. I blame the lack of coffee.) In the category of “All my friends are shilling their Nebula-eligible shorts so I’ll do it too!” for a thousand, Alex: I had two short stories and two reprints published during the eligible period. The reprints aren’t eligible, and of the two, there’s [...]
Another $%^ing one, what are they, breeding?
I posted last week in solidarity with the Outer Alliance, a spanking-new group of GLBTQI writers and straight/cisgendered allies. Lo and behold, within a week of its formation the OA has encountered its first incidence of homophobic discrimination. More on this there. It’s hard, sometimes, being a writer with a conscience. I mean, how much [...]
