Nancy Kress's Blog

Author Lynn Viehl has, for the second time, posted her sales and income figures for her novel TWILIGHT FALL on-line (http://www.straightgoods.ca/2009/ViewBrief.cfm?Ref=187&Cookies=yes). TWILIGHT FALL was a paperback original that spent a few weeks on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list in the paperback division. It has now gone through two royalty periods, and Viehl has posted both actual statements. She's brave to do this, since most writers do not share their numbers and would feel more c...

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I am selling a house. This is a bad time of year to be selling a house, and a bad market to be selling a house, and to make it worse, three of the twelve houses on my road are for sale at the same time. This is not the result of foreclosure or a suddenly discovered toxic dump, although it does give prospective buyers the impression that people are fleeing en masse from Mallards Landing. In fact, one sale is due to a divorce, one to a newly perceived need to own a barn, and one (mine) to a ...

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I have a book problem, and I'm hoping someone out there has a solution. I am moving to Seattle (that's not the problem). Like most authors, when my hardcover books were remaindered by their publishers, I bought up a few hundred copies of each. New authors, especially, tend to get over-enthusiastic about this. So did my late husband, Charles Sheffield. As a result, my basement is full of literally, thousands of books that I do NOT want to ship to Seattle. I want to get them into the...

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A few days ago I saw the new Coen brothers' movie, A SERIOUS MAN. Its effect on me was serious: It set me thinking about expectations in fiction plus the experience of reading/viewing it.

A SERIOUS MAN is based on the Bible book of Job, sort of. (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD) Arthur is a nebbish to an extreme degree; he is pushed around by his wife, his wife's lover, his kids, his deadbeat brother, his macho neighbor, and his students at the college where he teaches and is up for tenure. But...

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Yesterday I attended a local con in Rochester, NY: Astronomicon. Guest of Honor was Mike Resnick, and his GOH speech was hilarious. He talked about past Worldcons, including the one where the Hugo bases had arrived in time for the ceremony but not the metal rocket ships which screw onto the bases. R.A. Lafferty won one. Later Mike and friends found him crawling under the table, very drunk, saying plaintively, "I think I might have won a Hugo, but i lost part of it!"

I did three panels...

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Two weeks ago Western Washington University released a study on "inattentional blindness," which means you don't see something because you're paying attention to something else. Specifically, they wanted to know how much talking on a cell phone "blinds" you to other sensory input. Test subjects were in one of four states: talking on a cell, walking in pairs, listening to music on an MP3, or just walking along without benefit of electronic or human companionship.

The cell phone users were far ...

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Much SF is concerned with environmental issues, from dead oceans (e.g., TIMESCAPE) to calorie shortages (most of Paolo Bacigaluppi), to global warming. In the best of these books -- unlike most SF movies, which goes for simple disaster -- attention is paid to the need to balance the concerns of various forces. You can't change one part of the environmental equation without affecting other parts.

A real-life version of this is playing out right now with regard to wolves in the West. Since t...

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Tuesday was my last class in this particular session of teaching at Hugo House, and an interesting question came up in class. One story, extremely well written, did not seem to come together at the end as a complete story. Or maybe it did. A few students said yes, a few said no, some waited to see what I would say.

What I said was this: Different literary genres, as well as different readers, expect different degrees of pattern. All art imposes some pattern on life, or else you end up...

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The final day of MileHiCon began in the con suite, which was having a kerfuffle with the hotel over serving hot food. But there were donuts and bagels and coffee and conversation. Barbara Hambly and I caught up on who is writing what. Her new book, HOMELAND, a mainstream Civil War novel, is just out. Here is Barbara, wishing she had a copy of the book to display:

After breakfast, down to work. I did a curious program item called "An Hour With Nancy Kress." I'd been told that during this ...

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Conventions are fun. They are also exhausting. I did three panels today, one of which was "The Nancy Kress" panel, during which I discovered how embarrassing it can be to sit there while four other people discuss your work and tell anecdotes about you. More comfortable was the "Writing as Craft" panel, when established writers gave advice to aspirants. Everybody loves to give advice.

MileHiCon has all the usual con attractions, including an art show, kaffeeklatsches, dealers' room, con suite a...

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