Swan Tower

Next year is going to involve more stuff of mine being published in the first two months than I had in the entirety of 2020, but sometimes that's the way the publication schedule cookie crumbles.

I did, however, publish things this year! Two short stories:

• "Cruel Sisters" at Daily Science Fiction (wherein I deal with a continuity error in a folksong), and
  
• "The City of the Tree" at Uncanny Magazine (wherein I explore a different corner of the world of the Varekai novellas).
  

Book-wise, I put out Driftwood, which, if not one of the best things I've done (and it's gotten enough rave reception in different places that it might well be up there), is certainly the most timely: this is, after all, the book Publishers Weekly described as "hope in the face of apocalypse." May it continue to bring light where it is needed -- as it likely will be for some time.

Come on, 2021. You will not solve all our woes on January 1st -- one at least will need to wait for the 20th -- but may you at least be a path up out of the underworld.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/7xvQul)

Happy book day to me! It feels a little strange saying that on a Friday. :-)

Driftwood goes on sale today. If you're getting a print book, I heartily encourage you to order it from a local bookstore; they need your support more than ever right now. I also recommend making use of IndieBound or Bookshop.org, both of which can help you support a local business (in the latter case, either directly or through your purchase going to a general pool for participating stores).

I'm . . . frankly astonished at how good the response to this book has been. I could wish it hadn't hit at the right time for "how do you decide what matters to you and hold into that in the face of destruction?" to be such a resonant question, but here we are, and it's gotten a trifecta of starred reviews from Publishers' Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus, along with positive mentions from a score of other venues so far. The premise may be bleak -- worlds crumbling en route to their final destruction -- but ultimately this is a book about friendship, community, and not giving up. If that sounds like something you would want to read, maybe not today, but some day, then I heartily encourage you to pick it up.

Oh, and also? I GOT A FRICKIN' 3D AR COVER HOW COOL IS THAT. :-D :-D :-D

[I had forgotten that my Wordpress plugin for cross-posting to Dreamwidth wasn't working, until Alyc reminded me. So there's a minor flood of posts here as I catch up manually.]

As of right now, we're about two months from the publication of Driftwood. It's been getting some amazing reviews: I already linked to the starred review from Publishers Weekly; now that's been joined by a starred review from KIRKUS, of all places -- I think this might only be the second or third star I've pried out of them in my career to date. The full text is here, but the quotable bit is:

Through these stories, a portrait of Last as a tragic figure, accidental deity, and distant friend emerges. The patchwork quilt of his acquaintances' tales mirrors the very nature of Driftwood itself, slowly peeling back the veil to reveal the living—and departed—people who make up this strange and riveting new cosmos. Readers will close the cover aching to read more about Last and his world.

(Also, the beginning of the review calls me a "veteran author." When the &#$% did that happen? I mean, okay, sure, my first book came out fourteen years ago . . . and okay, sure, I've got over a dozen novels out . . . but maaaaaaaan does that feel weird.)

I've also gotten some gorgeous blurbs from authors I hugely admire: Karen Lord called it "bittersweet and rich, like fine chocolate," and both Mary Robinette Kowal and Max Gladstone referred to it as "haunting." I could wish that the whole "hope in the face of apocalypse" thing (PW's description) weren't quite so timely right now, but on the other hand, it also feels like the right timing. While it's not a great year to be putting out books, if there's one thing I've written that I would want to see in the world right now, it's this one.

And, I mean. Look at that cover. Don't you want one of your very own?

At home, obviously -- like a truly staggering percentage of the planet's population. But it's been near-total radio silence around here, apart from links to the weekly Patreon posts, so I figure I should update.

The good news is, the silence has not been due to any sort of illness with me or mine. Instead . . . you know all those people posting about the stuff they've finally gotten done around the house or the new bread-baking hobby they've picked up? That is not me. Through a confluence of factors (some of which were my fault, some of which weren't), I got behind on drafting Night Parade -- which meant that circa early March, I had to put my head down and start charging ahead at speeds nearly unprecedented in my writing career in order to get it done by deadline. (The only comparable instance even in the running was during my senior year of college, after I turned in my thesis and then a novel fell out of my head in about seven weeks.) We're talking working at at least 150% my normal pace for weeks on end, with no days off anywhere in there. Oh, and partway through that time I had to drop it for five days so I could copy-edit a 214K-word novel, which is about 200% my normal pace for a task of that kind.

Yyyyyeah. It's been a busy time around here.

The good news is, Night Parade is done and turned in on time (a day ahead, even!), The Mask of Mirrors is copy-edited, and Tachyon gave me until early May to handle the proofs for Driftwood, because I think the Look of Utter Panic I got when those were sent to me a couple of weeks ago was visible even in email. And we're all healthy here.

We've been weathering lockdown fairly well. I work from home anyway, and so does my husband more days than not; my sister (who lives with us) does not, but she used to, so on a domestic level this is a familiar routine. The big changes for me are that I can't go to the dojo, and I can't have in-person gaming. Both of which I miss rather acutely, but I'm not among the people who have had to figure out how to do their job from home while also wrangling kids doing distance learning, etc. We've figured out how to make online gaming work about as well as it can -- the trick is to reboot our Discord video call every 40 minutes or so, as soon as it starts to get choppy -- and over the winter I purchased a folding exercise bike that's put about 500 miles on the odometer in the last two months, as all three members of our household have been making use of it. I've also been doing a lot of online teaching, fitting the already-existing theme of 2020 being the year I teach a lot more than I have lately. I did four of Clarion West's free one-hour workshops, on a variety of worldbuilding themes, and there's a plan in progress for a six-hour workshop in the near future -- that being another thing that got delayed until early May so my brains wouldn't liquify and pour out my nose. And I'm working for the Kelly Yang Project, teaching creative writing to a kid in Hong Kong.

Free time? What's that?

In all seriousness, I have also been giving myself a break with some entertainment. Not a whole lot of reading, simply because my brain's reaction to text on a page is NO NO MAKE IT GO AWAY, but TV shows, video games, and (most unexpectedly) opera, because the Met has been making one opera available for free every night for weeks now. Maybe look for some posts on those in the upcoming days, as I regenerate my ability to word.

Right now, though, I'm doing my best to take a break.

From the Department of News I’ve Been Sitting on for Ages . . .

Ever since I published the first Driftwood short story, I’ve had people asking me whether I would ever write a novel set there. To which I’ve always said no, because a novel is the antithesis of what Driftwood is about. In a setting about fragments, a large, coherent story seems entirely out of place.

A fix-up, on the other hand — that’s a different matter. 😀

I’ve teamed up with the lovely folks at Tachyon Publications to create Driftwood, Larger Edition: all the existing short fiction, now embedded in and given context by a frame story, with a brand-new novelette to shed light on a heretofore unexplored part of the setting. In other words, a book that sort of epitomizes the nature of Driftwood itself. (With a freaking beautiful cover. Look at that typesetting!)

So fans of the series, rejoice! You’ll be able to get your hands on this July 17th of next year.

Edmund R. Schubert, editor of Intergalactic Medicine Show, has withdrawn himself for consideration in the category of Best Editor, Short Form.

My understanding is that it’s too late at this point to actually withdraw; his name will be on the printed ballots. But he no longer wishes to be in the running, and therefore would prefer people not vote for him.

Why am I posting about this? Because he’s put together a free sampler of material from IGMS — basically the stuff he might have put into the Hugo Voters’ Packet had he stayed in. And there’s a story of mine in there: “A Heretic by Degrees,” the first Driftwood story I ever published.

Schubert approached me ahead of time and asked whether I would be willing to let him reprint that story in the sampler, given the controversy around the Hugos. I told him I was fine with that, and in turn, I asked and received his blessing to talk about my relationship with IGMS.

As many (but possibly not all) of you know, the full name of IGMS is Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. And Card, as many (but possibly not all) of you know, has become increasingly vocal over the years about his homophobia. This is, to put it mildly, not a position I support — which makes my relationship with the magazine complicated.

When I sold “Heretic” to IGMS, Card’s homophobia and other offensive behaviors were not fully on my radar, and I had not yet begun to think through such matters to the extent that I do today. I was just looking for a place to sell the story, that would pay me a decent rate. Later on, that changed: I knew full well what he was like when I sold them “Love, Cayce,” which is the other story of mine they’ve run. By then, my decision hinged on two things:

1) Card’s name is on the magazine, but he isn’t the editor. He hasn’t been the editor since 2006, and while he has occasionally selected a story for the magazine, this is rare. The vast majority of what you read in IGMS is there because of Schubert, who is not taking his marching orders from Card.

2) It pleased me to take money from a magazine bearing Card’s name for a story that has a lesbian relationship in it. (It’s a small detail, not the focus of the story — which is part of why Schubert didn’t pick “Love, Cayce” for the sampler. But it’s there, and it’s treated as both positive and unremarkable.)

And this brings us back to the sampler. Schubert told me his reason for putting it together was, he wanted to showcase what IGMS stands for, under his leadership. Because he is not Orson Scott Card, and he is not running a magazine that stands for homophobia, racism, misogyny, or any other kind of bigotry. I’m not claiming IGMS is a flawless paragon of diversity and progressive ideals; to be honest, I don’t read it regularly. (These days I don’t read any magazines regularly, not even BCS: most of my fiction consumption has been novels.) But it is not a microphone for Card’s views. Nor is it the kind of straight white male conservative bastion the Puppies seem to love so much. Schubert was not asked if he wanted to be on the Puppy slate; he does not applaud their tactics. And he does not agree with their bigotry.

Jim Hines posted recently against the polarization of the field, the sense that you have to “take sides” (and of course in that view there are only two sides, with no crossover or nuance or conflicting agendas). In the end, I think of my stories in IGMS, and my professional interactions with Schubert, as being a rejection of the notion of “sides.” As I told Schubert in email, I have no idea what his politics are, and I don’t care. Or perhaps it would be better to say: what matters to me about his politics is how they influence his professional behavior. I have seen no sign that he’s using his editorial position to promote bigotry; on the contrary, he deliberately crafted the sampler to be 50/50 men/women, and a quick glance shows me at least four non-white writers on the TOC. Nor has he been so publicly hateful that I can’t avoid knowing about it, a la Card. Could I judge him for keeping company with Card, for being willing to run a magazine that bears the name of a man who is so interested in hurting gay people? Sure. And I’m sure there are people out there who judge him in precisely that way. I can’t really fault them for that. But if I’d let that stop me back in 2011, IGMS wouldn’t have run a story about a bunch of second-generation D&D-style adventurers, one of whom happens to be a lesbian, getting into all kinds of trouble.

I don’t want to help build the echo chamber. I’d rather tear the walls down.

So that is where I stand. I haven’t sold IGMS anything since 2011, though I did send them one piece in 2012. Whether or not I send them anything else will depend on how much short fiction I manage to write, whether I think any of it fits with the magazine, and whether think I can sell it somewhere else that will pay me more — no offense to Mr. Schubert. :-) They aren’t my top market, but they aren’t off the list, either. And I’m happy to see “A Heretic by Degrees” included in the sampler, because I’m happy to be an example of what Schubert wants IGMS to stand for.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

I’ve done a number of interviews and guest posts lately, so here’s a quick link dump:

Five Underused Mythological Creatures at Fantasy Cafe, in which I talk about weird things in bestiaries that show up all too rarely in novels.

Interview at Fantasy’s Ink; they ask me about my favorite characters and what I consider to be the most important element in a book.

Another interview, this one with Mike Underwood, who leverages the fact that we’ve known each other for more than ten years to ask me a lot of fabulous questions about gaming, Driftwood, and what martial arts master I would train with if I could.

“Time, Writing, and Tricks of the Trade”, a guest post at Bookworm Blues where I talk about the challenges of writing a sequel fifteen years after the first book.

“Kick(start)ing Myself into Scrivener”, a post at Book View Cafe on my first-ever attempt to write a novel in a program other than Wordperfect.

And finally, one that isn’t mine, but mentions me and makes for entertaining reading: Science in Fantasy Novels is More Accurate Than in Science Fiction.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Thank you to everybody who's been offering feedback on the research thing; I'll be posting more about that in a little bit, and also the icon dealie from before. (A lot of things have been delayed by busy-ness around here.)

But first!

First, I must tell you the happy news that Mythic Delirium has begun its spiffy new relaunch. And as part of that relaunch, you can read "The Wives of Paris", which might just be one of my favorite stories I've ever written. It isn't the story I intended to write, mind you -- there's an author's note about that at the end -- but it's the story that came out of my fingers when I started typing, and it's apparently what happened when my Inner Folklorist slips her leash (and takes the snark with her).

Also!

Beneath Ceaseless Skies is doing their annual reader poll to select stories for the "best of year" anthology. Despite not having done much on the short story front lately, I do have one in the poll: "The Ascent of Unreason", aka the most recent Driftwood story. (And it's a happy Driftwood story! For realz! Not all depressed about the ends of the worlds and stuff!) The story is free to read on the site (or to download as a pdf, epub, mobi, or audio podcast), and if you like it you can vote for it in the poll. And vote for other things, if you like them, too -- you can pick up to five. Heck, you can even vote for five stories and leave mine out. :-) But anyway, go forth and vote your conscience.

That's it for now; more later on the aforementioned topics.

My senior spring of college, I was taking three courses, one of which was my thesis tutorial. After I'd turned that beast in, I was down to two courses, one of which I was taking pass/fail. In other words: I wasn't very busy. So -- because that semester was also my last chance to write material for this award -- I decided to see how much I could write in the final two months of college.

The answer ended up being "a novel and six short stories in seven weeks flat," which is a total I don't expect to equal again. But I spent most of November as a spinster hermit (kniedzw being in Poland for three weeks after I left), so I figured, as long as there was nobody around to look at me funny for working at all kinds of random hours and not having a social life, I might as well see how much I could write in the month of November.

As it turns out, I managed 59,144 words. (Which annoys me a little, since I thought I had hit 60K that final night. But apparently I did some math wrong in there.)

It isn't NaNoWriMo. I will almost certainly never do NaNoWriMo; I don't need the event to make myself write a novel (duh), and I know the pace would result in me writing a bad novel if I tried. Only 30,492 words of that is book, i.e. my standard working pace. The rest, the other 28,652, is a combination of other things: substantial blog posts (like the nearly 4K I wrote for my first ToM entry), promo stuff for A Natural History of Dragons, Yuletide material, progress on the short story that's trying to kill me, the beginnings of a new Driftwood story, etc.

Even changing up my focus like that, 59K was a lot to churn out in thirty days flat. I'm not a slow writer, but I'm also not one of those people who can do 4K days for an extended period of time. It was, however, good to work on gear-shifting between projects -- that's something I'm not great at, and could benefit from improving. My short story production has fallen off substantially these last couple of years, because it's hard for me to get my head out of whatever the current novel space is and find some kind of flow on a totally different setting and characters. There are more reasons for that than just gear-shifting, of course; it also has a lot to do with the increased investment my short story ideas are requiring, research and other things. But still and all: gear-shifting is a good thing to work on.

So that was my November. I still have two thirds of this book to go, so it's going to stay busy around here for a while. But all in all, a nicely productive month.

Three recent reviews of With Fate Conspire:

Chris at The King of Elfland's Second Cousin has some very interesting things to say about the structure of the book.

Julia at All Things Urban Fantasy liked it enough to run out and buy the rest of the series, which is always encouraging. :-)

And a snippet from Faren Miller at Locus: "For more tales of a London based on history as well as sheer invention, try With Fate Conspire and its predecessors. Instead of the old-style fantasy of quests through green fields and dark domains, Brennan makes the most of one extraordinary city."

Also, BCS has released The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Year Two, which includes my Driftwood story "Remembering Light." You can download it in your choice of ebook format, from a whole variety of sources.

And it isn't available yet, but you can preorder the Intergalactic Awards Anthology, Vol. 1, which includes another Driftwood story, "A Heretic by Degrees." That one's print, and will ship in mid-December.