The Broken Earth

TFS on TNT!

/ SFF on Screen, The Broken Earth, The Mysterious Glowing Box / By

So, for the handful of you who don’t follow me on social media, I had a little surprise to share the other night! There’s not much I can say about this, for now. I jokingly answered a few questions on the night of the announcement, but the truth is that I don’t really know enough about what’s happening with this to discuss it. The article’s got all the salient details. And I think it’s important to note that this isn’t a 100% thing, even now. There are still points where this show could fail to happen — it’s unlikely, but […]

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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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On Family

/ 11 Comments / On Writing, The Broken Earth, The Fifth Season, Thinkythoughts / By

I’ve been dealing with an unpleasant family issue lately in my personal life. Not anything I intend to talk about here, and I’ve found a good therapist so don’t worry, but thinking about these things triggered some thoughts about family in The Fifth Season that I wanted to share. Now, As You Know Bob, I am not a perfect writer. It’s entirely possible that I did a poor job of trying to depict the relationships in this story, which are admittedly complex. But here’s what was in my head: the black family. Really, any families formed under oppressive conditions —

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The Obelisk Gate cover reveal!

/ 5 Comments / The Broken Earth / By

If you haven’t seen it yet via Twitter or Facebook, the Mary Sue is today featuring an exclusive (well, except for here) reveal of Book 2 in The Broken Earth trilogy: The Obelisk Gate. Of which I just finished the raw “zeroeth” draft about two weeks ago. Should be turning in the first draft today or Monday. After that it’s anyone’s guess as to the release date, but considering I’m turning it in literally a year after the publication of the first book, my guess is roughly a year before Book 2 actually comes out. I’ll tell you when I

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Tricking readers into acceptance

/ 46 Comments / The Broken Earth / By

OK, to start this post off, I have to say that it is only for people who have already read The Fifth Season. Haven’t read it yet? This post is not for you. No, seriously. If you haven’t read TFS, scram. Oh, so you wanna be hard headed. OK. But I am not responsible for any damage done to your reading experience, if you continue. And if I may say, TFS is a lot more fun with its surprises unspoiled. But from here forth I’m going to assume you’ve read it.

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Creating races

/ 14 Comments / On Writing, The Broken Earth / By

So, now that The Fifth Season is out, I can finally talk more about the making of. Over at Scalzi’s I blogged a bit about why and how I chose to use second person, among other things. Now I’m going to talk about creating the Sanzeds, the orogenes, and the stone eaters. BTW, after further thought on this topic, I’m going to use the words “race” or “people” rather than “species” in talking about these groups because all three are obviously people. It used to bug me to see “race” used in lieu of species, particularly when the human race

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The Stillness, in all its glory

/ 10 Comments / Natter, The Broken Earth / By

So, I still don’t like the idea of maps in fantasy novels in general. But I needed one as I wrote The Fifth Season, so after I scrawled something hideous in a Microsoft Word file and sent that to Orbit, and the collective screams of horror died down, they worked with artist Tim Paul to create something much better (click to embiggen): Yeah, OK, I could get to like maps a little now. Maybe. Seriously, Tim did an awesome job, especially considering he got a lot of vague guidance from me like, “I can’t remember if those pokey things are

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It’s a(nother) book!

/ 19 Comments / The Broken Earth / By

So strange and amazing to be here at the publication of my sixth novel. I remember being a newbie writer and struggling just to imagine myself publishing one book. That was only… hmm, eight years ago? I got my agent in 2007, as I recall. I remember despairing, as it became clear that my first book wasn’t going to sell first, and giving serious consideration to quitting all this shit. Wow. Confession: I had a despair moment again while writing The Fifth Season. Convinced myself that it was just too strange, too dark, too hard to write, and no one

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