Natter

Random crap I ramble on about.

TV Tropes!

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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 […]

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Home!

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ICFA was lovely, as was the weather down in Orlando… ’til the day I needed to travel home. Also, since that day was the end of spring break for much of the country, the Orlando airport was a madhouse. I arrived early, hoping to fly standby and get home at a reasonable hour rather than an insane hour, and the standby list was seventy people deep. So I sat at the airport for seven hours, then flew home at the insane hour anyway. And the weather followed us the whole way, so it was a long, fraught flight full of

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The Cascade Effect

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Things haven’t really slowed down for me since Launch Week, which is a good thing, but the result of this has been that I’ve been a little slack on blogging. Sorry, folks! But here’s what’s going on this week, for example: The copyedit of book 2, The Broken Kingdoms, is due on Friday. But… …since I’m traveling to ICFA on Thursday, I actually need to get it done by then. Except… …since I have to work on Wednesday, and am doing a reading as part of the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series that night, followed by our usual Chinese group

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Several posts in need of a header

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Am just getting back from the annual Altered Fluid writing retreat — it was awesome — but boy are my arms tired. And my brain, and my immune system, and so on. I need some recovery time, so in the meantime shall give you a bit of annotated linkspam. First and foremost, I want to point you at a philanthropic effort that needs more attention. Last year, the sturm und drang of RaceFail produced a number of beautiful results, once of which was the Con or Bust fund, intended to get more fans of color to attend SF conventions, ideally

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What is Epic Fantasy?

/ 11 Comments / Natter, On Writing / By

Shamelessly mooching an idea from one of the Amazon discussion forums, in which user J. E. Johnson defined epic fantasy with this list: I would say in order for a story to be considered ‘epic’ to me, it would have to have the following elements: 1. A multiple book series 2. A quest of some sort that must be fulfilled 3. A main character who must face dangers, overcome foes and somehow change throughout the series (either become a better person or become the villain) 4. A great evil, often times one that uses its several minions to challenge the

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Meme Mooching: Favorite 5 Fantasy Nonhumans

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Mooching a meme from a friend, and tweaking it for fantasy, my favorite 5 fantastic nonhumans, in no particular order: Gerald Tarrant, “Coldfire Trilogy”, C. S. Friedman. I have a thing for humans who become nonhuman, especially if they embrace the change and leave their old selves behind completely. But I get tired of overdone varieties of this, like vampires. Tarrant embodies this transformation with a marvelous complexity — he feeds on blood, but only as a last resort, finding simple vampirism too crude for his tastes. He prefers to feed on cold and darkness and just general evil. But

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Happy Thanksgiving!

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in Canada. Hey, why isn’t our Thanksgiving in October too? Then we could have fun at the same time as our northern neighbors. We celebrate Guy Who Got Lost And “Discovered” A Continent Already Full Of People And Boy Did He Mess Them Up day in October. In principle Thanksgiving alludes to this, being a quintessentially colonialist holiday. So why not do a Columbus Day/TG mashup? Then have candy for Scary Pagan Day/Halloween as dessert? Probably more historically accurate too. I’ve lived in New England — trust me, the Pilgrims weren’t harvesting diddlysquat in late November. If it wasn’t out

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Science Fiction in Black Music

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Happy Labor Day, USians! Also, fellow Brooklynites, enjoy the Caribbean day parade! Had a small dinner party for friends last night, firing up the balcony grill one last time before retiring it for the season. Baby back ribs, grilled green tomatoes and eggplant, and peach cobbler. Aaaangh. At Worldcon, I was on a panel about Michael Jackson and his music/videos’ influence on speculative fiction. At the panel, I mentioned Sun Ra and other MJ precursors, and the fact that MJ was part of a long tradition — though IMO he helped shunt it from the auditory into the visual with

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Random thought.

/ 2 Comments / 100K, BrightGod, Natter, ShiningStar / By

In The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, human beings exploit their gods as literal slaves, using their magical abilities as weapons. In Book 2 (name undecided), human beings exploit their gods’ very flesh and blood in various ways. For example, a drug called “godsblood” has become popular in the mortal world, and it’s exactly what it sounds like — small vials of blood drawn from (willing) gods. When humans ingest this, they gain magic power. Book 3 is still in flux, but the core story is solid in my head, and it occurs to me that the gods are exploited in this

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