May 18th, 2010
• • Uncategorized
…may it please those of you attending Worldcon this year to remember that “Non-Zero Probabilities” has also been nominated for a Hugo? Speaking of which, the Hugo Voter Packet is now available for download, including my little story.
And in other news, am waiting for the contracts so that I can announce the sale of some additional foreign-language and audio rights to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, etc. I prefer not to say something’s a done deal ’til I’ve signed on the bottom line. But I will happily hint all over the place!
May 16th, 2010
• • Awards
Didn’t win. (The NYC Simulcast was fun, though.) But I’m honestly not put out about that, because — as I’d been telling people for the past few days — I know and like something like 5 of the 7 nominees in the short story category personally, and I thought most of the stories up for award were phenomenal (haven’t read two of them yet, though), so I don’t mind losing in this situation. Some great writers did win, like Kij Johnson (my category) and Paolo Bacigalupi and Eugie Foster, and I just can’t feel bad about that.
Besides… next year, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms will be eligible for the novel category. Hmmmmm?
Congrats to all the winners!
May 14th, 2010
• • Awards
So, there’s this little award in the science fiction/fantasy realm called the Nebula. It’s big stuff.
And see, there’s this author named N. K. Jemisin, who’s up for one of these nice awards for a short story that she wrote. And, well, tomorrow night she’ll find out if she won it.
::ulp::
Cross your fingers for me, folks. Gonna be a bit of a basket case for the next day or so.
Granted, either way I’ll be okay. I never expected to be on the Neb ballot this early in my career; if I don’t win, there will be other years. And of the folks competing with me in my category, I know and like nearly all of them. I won’t pretend that I’ll be happier if they win than if I do, but I certainly won’t be unhappy if any of them wins. They’re all great authors, and the stories are fantastic this year.
Anyway, if any of you want to join me on tenterhooks, you can do so in person if you’re in the New York area; or at the event proper if you’re in the area of Cocoa Beach, FL; or anywhere if you feel like livestreaming it.
::ULP::
May 12th, 2010
• • Appearances, Conventions and Workshops
For those of you who’ll be at Wiscon in a couple of weeks, here’s what I’m scheduled for:
Friday:
Writers’ Workshop (I’m leading a novel group!)
Saturday:
When to Speak Up, When to Let It Go; Sat, 10:00–11:15 am
How do you balance political activism and relationships/work/life? When do you let things pass? When do you make allowances for people, or stop making allowances? How can you speak up without turning something into a fight? How do you protect your personal and emotional safety when you do activism? What words and phrases do you find particularly helpful? Let’s discuss and strategize around all kinds of activism.
Sunday:
Privilege and Discussion Dynamics: How We Talk, How We Listen, and How Who We Are Changes Things
Just what is a “productive” discussion? Gender, race, sexuality, and culture all factor into interpretations and misinterpretations of what has really been said. How does privilege disrupt an open dialogue? How can we converse with each other in producing useful knowledge about topics that are controversial?
Taboo III: Now with Even More Taboo! (reading with Vylar Kaftan, Rachel Swirsky, and Jennifer Pelland!)
Readings from “transgressive” and controversial works. I’ll be reading an excerpt from “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters”, to run in Postscripts this Summer 2010.
What If They’d Been Invented Earlier?
Steam–driven mechanical computers, telegraphs in the Roman Empire, computers in ancient Greece, lasers in the 19th century. What inventions had all of the building blocks but weren’t invented centuries early? How would the world have been different with them?
The SignOut
This will be my last bit of travel for awhile, so I’m planning to savor it mightily. Have already begun rubbing it in with my housesitter how much fun I’ll have. Mwaaahahahaha!
May 7th, 2010
• • Appearances
For those of you in the Boston area, I’ll be in my old stomping grounds again briefly as part of the Danvers Literary Festival, all day at the Peabody Institute Library of Danvers. I’ll be on a fantasy panel with fellow New Yorker Leanna Renee Hieber, and an old buddy from the BRAWLers writing group (of which I was a member of while I lived in Boston), Margaret Ronald. (Paul Park was going to be there too, but cannot attend, alas.) We’ll be on a panel discussing all things fantasy.
The whole event is free, so come on out!
May 6th, 2010
• • Awards, Interview
1) Although my short story “Non-Zero Probabilities” has been nominated for a Nebula (and a Hugo!) this year, I will not be attending the Nebula Weekend in Florida this year. Just got too much on my plate already. But there will be a New York-area Nebula simulcast sponsored by SFWA, which is open to the public (though cheaper for SFWA members). If you’re in the area, check it out!
2) As part of the Nebula Awards process this year, the administrators are doing interviews with all the nominees, posted on the awards website. Some fantastic interviews have already been posted with Rick Bowes, Jeff VanderMeer, Saladin Ahmed, and John Scalzi among others. Mine is now up too. Some meaty stuff therein, since the interviewer asked questions about both my short fiction and the Inheritance Trilogy. An example:
Some readers have interpreted Yeine’s precarious situation among the Arameri as being a concrete metaphor for what bi/multi-racial peoples experience. Was there a conscious attempt to convey this in the writing, or are there other elements to consider when interpreting Yeine as a character?
It’s not possible to use a single person’s experiences as a metaphor or symbol for millions of people. That wouldn’t be a metaphor, it would be a gross overgeneralization. And while I know that kind of essentialism is common in epic fantasy, particularly with non-human races (e.g. “Orcs are inherently evil” or “Half-Elves are always bitter and unstable because nobody accepts them”), I think that’s a simplistic and unrealistic way to handle groups. Not to mention offensive, when this kind of thinking is applied to human beings.
Thought-provoking questions, so I got thinky with the answers.
3) Look at this!
A possible star in the process of being born — i.e., a preplanetary nebula. Which I think is superultramegamaxicool.
I just like to look at pretty things sometimes. Don’t you?
May 3rd, 2010
• • 100K, Character Study, On Writing
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 that hasn’t been published — written whole additional tales about her, beyond the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Continue reading ›
April 30th, 2010
• • 100K, Appearances, The Industry
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 as familiar faces like Leanna Renee Hieber, Diana Rowland, and John Scalzi. Tomorrow is the big Book Fair, which has been described to me as “a full-contact book buying, author-signing squee-and-stompfest”, by an author who shall remain nameless on her request. I’m concerned that maybe I should be wearing safety equipment.
I’ll give a full report later, but just wanted to share something I thought was interesting now. Since this is my first time dipping into another literary genre, I can’t help comparing RT to the SF/F cons I’ve been to. Romance readers are, in many ways, more eclectic and voracious than SF/F readers; they’ll read anything so long as it’s got a good story, solid (usually woman-centered) characterization, and some emotional payoff along the way. And they’re really good about not pooh-poohing another genre just because it doesn’t suit their tastes — an attitude I wish more SF/F readers would take. However, a lot of romance readers have avoided science fiction and fantasy because, well, SF/F has (until recently) put up a lot of GIRLZ KEEP OWT signs, and shown a distinct allergic reaction to romance and sexuality. Romance readers will read this genre… but only if they can be assured that it’s not another Lord of the Rings, in which our hero (Aragorn in this case) sallied forth and saved the world while his girlfriend sat at home and sewed a banner for him. That, while romantic, isn’t romantic. Continue reading ›
April 27th, 2010
• • Uncategorized
Wow, that sounds so dreamy, doesn’t it? I’m off to a place where I’ll be whisked away by handsome and charming men who will greet me with flowers and Vaseline lenses… well, no. Instead I’m going to the Romantic Times Booklovers’ Convention, a romance industry con which is part of my attempt to cross-market the Inheritance Trilogy to readers who actually like romance in their fantasy. Romance is big business, and I mean big — I’ve never been to RT before, but by all accounts it’s about the size of Worldcon in a good year, with 300+ authors alone. So I’ll be there schmoozing and attending panels, and will be participating in the Author Expo on Saturday too. Should be interesting, but I imagine I’ll be pretty busy the whole while, so things will be a bit quiet around here.
You can amuse yourselves by adding some tropes over here, or linking descriptions in the tropes already there; talking amongst yourselves in the Open Chat Thread; or maybe letting me know which Character Study you’d like to see next!
April 23rd, 2010
• • Natter, silliness
The TV Tropes site is both magnificent entertainment and my nemesis. I love reading it, and can get lost in there for hours — usually when I’m supposed to be writing. In fact I had to put it into my “Writing Time” set of LeechBlocked links, because it tests my self-control too much otherwise.
So imagine my utter delight at getting a notice from the TV Tropes folks about this!
TV Tropes is a wiki, so please feel free to go in there and add to the Inheritance Trilogy’s page, connect it to other entries, etc. I can’t wait to see the results! (But not during writing time.)
