June 10th, 2010
• • Shorts
I’m working on one! News at 11.
I sold one! “The Trojan Girl” has sold to Weird Tales, a very classy print market I’ve been trying to break into forever. This was a story I wrote a while back, trying out the concepts I’m thinking about using for the YA cyberpunk story. Specifically it concerns a gang of tough, hardscrabble AIs risking an alliance with a rival gang in order to capture a young program who may hold the key to self-actualization and a new level of sentience. Uh… yeah, I’ve never liked the term “cyberpunk” for this. A friend suggested “cybergoth”, but I don’t think it’s very gothic. I think I’ll start calling it “cyberpsych”. We’ll see if it sticks.
I’ve got a new one up at Escape Pod! Except it’s not new, it’s “Non-Zero Probabilites”, the one that’s up for a Hugo now. EP is using the Clarkesworld podcast, as a kind of market crossover collaboration thingie. I’m glad, because I love that production of the story. If you haven’t heard it yet, go check it out.
June 9th, 2010
• • Pimping, Review
I’ve been writing so much lately that I haven’t had nearly as much time for reading as I usually do. That’s one of the reasons I treasure the subways in NYC so much — if I were a driver, I wouldn’t get any reading done. As it is, subway reading time isn’t much, but it adds up. And since I’ve been traveling too — six hours sitting on the tarmac in Minneapolis on the way back from Wiscon allowed me to read the second book here (for which I’m not exactly grateful, just looking at the positives) — I’ve actually got two good books to recommend.
Continue reading ›
June 7th, 2010
• • Progress, Thinkythoughts, ThirdK
::whew:: I have now finished the first draft of The Kingdom of Gods. Deep breath taken; celebratory drink with friends accomplished; happy tears shed. There will be more revisions, of course — lots more; “writing is revising”, as they say. Having done this process twice now, here’s how it usually goes:
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May 27th, 2010
• • Appearances
I’m not here right now. At the sound of the beep, I will probably be flying over the flyover states, only to stop and land in one of them: Wisconsin, where there will be Wisconnage. Wiscon is probably my favorite SFF convention, with its mix of Deep Social Issues conversation and sheer aesthetically-pleasing silliness: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume samples, the Dessert Salon’s gustatory glory, the chance to wear shiny things. I only hate that writing work has forced me to withdraw from the Concom; for a con as dynamic as this, I’m happy to roll up my sleeves and work to make it happen.
In any case, I’ll be working through this Wiscon too, doing a bit of self-promotion in the form of a reading. Oh, but what a reading it will be. Check out the flyer, put together by the phenomenal writer M. K. Hobson, who’s pretty handy with the graphic design skillz too.
Since The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms isn’t transgressive enough for these ladies, oh no, I’m going to be reading from my soon-to-be-published-in-Postscripts story, “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters”. A New Orleans story set post Hurricane Katrina, which is particularly apropos given the new disaster happening down there. ::sigh::
If you’re in the Madison vicinity, come check it out!
May 26th, 2010
• • Uncategorized
Just finished the raw draft of The Kingdom of Gods.
::fwomp::
May 26th, 2010
• • Appearances
And now for something completely different…
From the New York Review of Science Fiction‘s press release:
NYRSF presents
An Evening with Altered Fluid’s
N. K. Jemisin
E.C. Myers
Devin Poore
Tuesday, June 1st – Doors open 6:30 PM
SoHo Gallery for Digital Art
138 Sullivan Street
$5 suggested donation
In which I will get to read with the folks from my kickass writing group! This is a bit last-minute so I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to read — probably not from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, as the attendees at NYRSF events overlap heavily with those who heard me read from 100K at the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading a while back. I am inclined to read from a short story, but will decide after Wiscon. Come see us!
Continue reading ›
May 26th, 2010
• • Causes, The Industry, WTF World?
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 to shelve it under “African-American Fiction,” a separate section of the library. If this were standard policy for how the library handles African-American authors, I wouldn’t blink, but Butler, Delany, Hopkinson, and Durham are all shelved under “General Fiction” with the rest of the library’s SF&F books. (The library doesn’t have a separate section for SF&F, though it does generally mark them with a sticker on the spine. Hundred Thousand Kingdoms does not have a SF&F sticker.)
This strikes me as making the book harder to find for interested readers. But before I talk to my library to see if they’d at least be willing to put an SF&F sticker on the book, I figured I should ask–do you have a preference about where your books are shelved? If it’s shelved where you want it, I definitely don’t want to be the one to quibble with it! (I suppose one benefit of the current placement is that it pushed this white–and perhaps too narrowly SF&F-focused–reader into exploring a new section of the library.)
Many thanks to the reader, who asked to remain anonymous, for letting me quote her. And also thanks to her for caring enough to ask how I felt about this. It is a lucky author who has such readers.
And I agree with Reader; it’s great that my book in the African American Fiction (AAF) section lured her to a part of the library she wouldn’t have ordinarily visited. That’s actually the one heartening note in this whole situation, for a variety of reasons. But at the risk of pissing off some AAF-section proponents, let me be really really blunt here.
I hate the “African American Fiction” section. HATE. IT. I hate that it exists. I hate that it was ever deemed necessary. I hate why it was deemed necessary, and I don’t agree that it is. I hated it as a reader, long before I ever got published. And now that I’m a writer, I don’t ever want to see my books there — unless a venue has multiple copies and they’re also in the Fantasy or General Fiction section.
Continue reading ›
May 24th, 2010
• • Appearances, Interview
Gah! Been so obsessed with book 3 that I’ve missed a few things. Quick update:
First, I’m going to be phone interviewed tonight, at the blog Other Worlds of Romance. You can tune in on BlogTalk Radio (see the widget on her site).
Next! I’ll be at Wiscon starting on Thursday. I did mention that, at least.
More! NYC-area folks, my writing group Altered Fluid will be the gala — which is New Yorkian for “last minute” — guests at the NYRSF reading this coming Tuesday. I and three of my AF peeps will be reading short pieces, so come out and hear the gang! Not sure yet about the details, so keep an eye on this site for time and location.
May 22nd, 2010
• • 100K, Sales, Shorts
I don’t like to announce deals until they’re set in stone — i.e., I’ve signed the contract or otherwise have everything in writing. So I’ve actually been sitting on this news for over a month, because that’s how long contracts take in the publishing world (usually longer, especially internationally). But anyway –
Polish rights for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms have sold to — apologies if I leave out some accents and agraves, don’t have time to look up the HTML, and there are a lot of them — Wydawnictwo Papierowy Ksiezyc S. C., R. Szymanski, A. Wroblewski. (I think that’s the name, anyway…) They’ll be publishing only the first book for now, though I imagine they might be interested in The Broken Kingdoms if the first book sells well over there. So Polish readers, rejoice! And buy.
Also, I haven’t seen the contract for this yet, but it’s up on Barnes and Noble, so I guess that counts as “in writing”. Audio rights to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms have sold to Brilliance Audio. No word yet on who’ll be doing the reading/voices or any of that, but I note that it’s scheduled for release in September of this year, so I imagine they’re recording it as we speak! I can’t wait to hear it; I love hearing my stuff done in audio.
Speaking of which, in case I forgot to mention it, Escape Pod will be running “Non-Zero Probabilities” as part of its Hugo-nominee series. Since the story was already podcast beautifully over at Clarkesworld, the EP folks will just be re-running that same version for their listeners. It should be an interesting experiment in cross-market promotion — and I hope it works, because I think the EP listeners will like Clarkesworld, if they aren’t reading it already, and vice versa, if the CW listeners aren’t tuning into EP already. Either way, I’m happy.
Got one more set of foreign-language rights to anuncio (::cough::), but that one I haven’t seen the contract on, so it’ll have to wait hasta luego.
(Wow, I feel like I do nothing but talk about myself here these days. Sorry about that, folks — I’m so busy with book 3 that I don’t have time to write thinkyposts or comment on stuff that happens around the ‘net. As soon as book 3 is done, I’ll be more interesting, I promise.)
May 20th, 2010
• • Contests, Shorts
(Hmm. Was going for the same rhythm as “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms”, but I think the post title needs more syllables for that.)
I didn’t win a Nebula, but good things are still happening re my short stories. This time it’s the Million Writers Award, for which my story “Non-Zero Probabilities” is now one of the top ten picks for 2009! But wait, there’s more — one of my fellow Altered Fluidians is competing with me again! (Last time was Saladin Ahmed, for the Nebula.) This time it’s Alaya Dawn Johnson, who besides trying to steal my thunder has also recently published a shiny new vampire novel set in the 1920s. How’s this for a tagline: vampire flappers! I haven’t read it yet — novel writing — but I can’t wait. Anyway, one of her stories is up for the Million Writers too.
It’s an honor to be in the top ten, but you know me by now — I always go for number one. So! The Million Writers winner is judged by public vote, which began a couple of days ago and will continue through the end of May. I’m not interested in a popularity contest, though, so here’s all I ask: go to the StorySouth page, read the ten entries, and vote for the one you like best. That might be me, or Alaya, or someone else entirely. I don’t care who you vote for — just vote! That way if I win, I’ll know I did it honestly. (And then I can crow at Alaya in good conscience.)
(Of course, if she wins, I’ll have to eat this blog post. Oh, well. I’ll do that in good conscience too, because she’s a kickass writer.)
Remember, you now have 11 days!
