Broken Earth Archives - Epiphany 2.0

How an author feels upon receiving her page proofs

Please excuse my messy kitchen and crap film production skills. Slightly intimidating. On the other hand, I love this stage of the book production process. I probably shouldn’t, because at this point I’ve read the novel what feels like ninety times… but I do. This is the point where that year of sweat and harsh language starts to feel like a book. A really, really, really big, book. Whew.

You can tell a lot about a fantasy novel by its glossary

November 10, 2014 / 28 Comments / On Writing, Snippets / By nkjemisin

Was just working on the glossary for The Fifth Season. Glossaries are both fun and frustrating for me — fun because a glossary is worldbuilding at its most stark, and frustrating because it’s part of the story, and can enhance or detract from the reading experience if it’s mishandled. The tension between TELL THEM EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING, HA HA HA and tell them nothing, nothing, they don’t need to know gets kind of uncomfortable after awhile. That’s why I’ve asked that all of my glossaries be located at the backs of my books, rather than the fronts — because, like maps,

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