HOLY FUCKING SHIT I WON A HUGO

/ 67 Comments / Awards, The Broken Earth, The Fifth Season / By

In realtime, I am speechless. Fortunately, I wrote a speech ahead of time, which was read beautifully by Campbell nominee Alyssa Wong in my stead at the ceremony. Here’s the text: My apologies for not being present this evening; I’m deep in Deadline Hell right now on book 3 of the Broken Earth trilogy. I’ve thanked them already in the acknowledgements, but I really want to thank the people who talked me down from quitting this book. At the nadir of my Chasm of Doubt — hat-tip to Kate Elliott for the term — I thought THE FIFTH SEASON was […]

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Sample first chapter of THE OBELISK GATE

/ 12 Comments / The Broken Earth / By

Well, it’s just about a month until The Obelisk Gate releases in print and ebook — August 16th in the US, August 18th in the UK, no idea why it’s different — and per my usual pre-publication tradition, I’m now posting the uncopyedited first chapter of the book for people to peruse (and if you like, preorder)! Alas, I have no information yet on the audiobook version, or whether it will again be read by the amazing Robin Miles. Normally I would post the second chapter a month later, but I’ve belatedly realized that Amazon routinely includes the first two

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Turn and Face the Strange

/ 10 Comments / Natter / By

So, internets. Big changes in Noraland. For the few of you who don’t follow me on Twitter and FB, I Did A Thing. Specifically, last Friday I started a Patreon campaign with the specific goal of breaking free of the 9 to 5 life. I launched it officially at 5:35 pm on Friday afternoon, thinking nobody would much care since Friday News Dump, and thinking that would give me time to fix bugs and work out any kinks in the campaign over the weekend. Instead, to my absolute shock, I hit my baseline goal within 24 hours, and my stretch

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So, this happened

/ 13 Comments / Awards / By

Yeah, so. Cool. This makes Hugo nom number three. Going to be an interesting year. But all things considered, I’m pleased; I’m actually going to have a hard time voting in my category because I like some of my competitors better than I like my own work. Congrats to those of my fellow nominees who earned their spots with skill, creativity, and fair play!

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Hello! You just used the “damned if you do/don’t” fallacy!

/ 33 Comments / Rantage / By

Hello! If you’ve been directed to this blog post, it’s because you just said something akin to “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t” (DIYD2) in a discussion about bigotry, misrepresentation, or cultural misappropriation in fiction. I’ve written this blog post to save me time so that in the future I won’t have to write a unique comment on each of the endless occasions that I hear this fallacy repeated. As you can probably guess, it happens a lot. So let’s get started! Here are some common conversation topics which might spur the DIYD2 response: White writers who write

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HAMILTON

/ 22 Comments / Squeeage / By

I got a surprise opportunity to go see Hamilton last weekend — friend of mine got lucky with the ticket lottery, so there we were on the FRONT ROW, literally looking up the actors’ noses and screaming our heads off in squeeful delight. It was fully as amazing as everyone says. So amazing, in fact, that I needed a few days to process it, because otherwise the only thing I could’ve managed to say about it would’ve been AAAAAAAMYGODWHATISTHISIT’SSOHOLYSHITASDFJKL;WHAAARGARBL, which really wouldn’t have been any use to anyone. There are an astronomical number’s worth of analyses and reviews of this

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It could’ve been great

/ 69 Comments / Controversies / By

You know, the thing I always try to remember when I’m borrowing from mythology is to be a shit-ton more careful with still-living traditions than I am with those long gone or transformed away from their roots. I feel relatively safe treading on the threads of Egyptian myth because there isn’t a centuries-long-and-ongoing history of using, say, the worship of Bast as an excuse to steal people’s ancestral land and children in the name of Christianity. But you know what? I’m still careful, even with “dead” faiths, because I don’t know how playing with these things might hurt real people.

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What I’ve Been Up To For the Past Week

/ 4 Comments / Conventions and Workshops / By

So, I went on a boat. This was my first time on a cruise ship, and while I have to admit that cruise travel isn’t for me — it was intensely frustrating to visit an interesting place for only a few hours, when I prefer to immerse for days or weeks — I did enjoy doing it with a buncha nerds, a.k.a. the SeaMonkeys of the JoCoCruise. The whole thing is a massive, 7-day-long immersive science fiction convention, except it’s also got cool stuff like comedy shows and performances by amazing musicians, so really it’s a thing all its own.

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Gaming as connection: Thank you, stranger

/ 11 Comments / Gaming, Thinkythoughts / By

Haven’t talked about gaming in a while. I still play, all the time, but with deadline after deadline looming I don’t dare buy anything new that might actually be good. (Side-eyes Fallout 4, warily.) I’ve been settling for comfort-gaming instead. You know, some soothing State of Decay and Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer, and my favorite real estate investment simulator, Skyrim (with Hearthfire DLC). But I did buy a new, old game that I’ve been wanting to play for ages, which I could finally get now that I have a PS4: Journey. If you’ve never played the game, it’s haunting and

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