Marie Brennan's Blog

New Worlds: Quartering (No Drawing)

Every U.S. schoolchild learns about the Bill of Rights, but how many of us remember why the Third Amendment — the one about the quartering of soldiers — was so important to the Founding Fathers? The problems with housing soldiers, in war and in peacetime, is the topic of this week’s New Worlds Patreon essay; comment over there!

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New Worlds: Camp Followers

As part of its current tour of military topics, the New Worlds Patreon is taking a look at all those other people involved: not the soldiers, but the secondary army of people who support and/or profit off them. Comment over there!

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New Worlds: Foraging (and Pillaging)

The counterpart to the New Worlds Patreon‘s discussion of supply lines last week is “living off the land” — usually meaning off the backs of the civilian population. Comment over there!

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New Worlds: Supply Lines

My New Worlds patrons having voted for a set of military topics this month, we’re taking a look at the logistical side of warfare! Not to the depth that an officer or military historian would study it, of course, but we can at least manage a top-level overview of how worldbuilding factors shape the way armies get fed. Comment over there!

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Two poems!

I have not one but two new poems out this week! Putting me up to double digits in the number of poems I’ve had published so far, whee.

The first is in Merganser Magazine: “Hallucination,” about AI, linguistics, and the wish for a better world.

The second, “Cutting the Cord” in Small Wonders, is probably the closest to straight-up science fiction I’ve ever written? It’s got aliens and a space elevator in it, anyway.

Both are free to read online, so enjoy!

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New collection: A Songbooks of Sparks!

Years ago, I formed the idea of making novella-sized short story collections organized around particular subgenres. Sorting through the stories I had at that point, I determined that there should be six of these (or, well, seven, but one of those I set aside for a slightly different plan; it turned into Driftwood).

Today, the last of those six is finally published at Book View Cafe!

I was able to publish Maps to Nowhere and Ars Historica almost immediately; it took a little longer to do Down a Street That Wasn’t There and to decide that, really, I wasn’t going to write any more short stories set in The Nine Lands, so I could go ahead and publish that one. Because I became determined to balance out the regions featured in A Breviary of Fire, the fifth of the set came out only last year. And then secondary world fantasy lapped the pack with The Atlas of Anywhere a few months ago.

But it took a while to complete the sixth of the original set, A Songbook of Sparks, because its requirements were very particular. As the cover and title suggest, this is a follow-up of sorts to A Breviary of Fire (as Atlas is to Maps), likewise consisting of stories drawn from traditional folklore — but in this case, it’s specifically folksongs. Ballads and the like. And after a spate of writing those while I was in graduate school, I just kinda . . . stopped. Without having quite enough material to cross my minimum threshold for making one of these books. So it’s only quite recently that I wrote and published the last story needed to complete this set!

But now it is done, and out in the world: you may buy it in ebook or print, as you prefer. Within you’ll find nine stories, one unpublished poem that mashes up sources half a world apart, and — a bonus specific to this collection — the lyrics of the traditional songs that inspired the stories. Enjoy!

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New Worlds Theory Post: The Worldbuilding On-Ramp

In obedience to long-standing tradition, in a month with five Fridays, the New Worlds Patreon turns its attention to matters of theory and craft! This time, we’re taking a look at the worldbuilding on-ramp — which is to say, the vital questions of how much to explain at the start of your story, and how choosing the right entry point can ease the reader’s way in. Comment over there!

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It’s heeeeeeere!

Apparently I did not hallucinate a couple of weeks ago . . .

(I opted for the shot where I’m looking pensive rather than trying to smile, because I am atrociously bad at smiling for the camera. There’s a reason my author photo features me looking like I’m about to stab somebody; it was preferable to any of the alternatives.)

So, yes: my award came!!! I could have opted to take it with me, but the logistics of getting it packed up — especially the fragile glass part — and handed over to me before I left on Sunday were complicated enough that it was simpler to just have them ship it to me. The downside, of course, was that I had to wait a whole WEEK AND A HALF to put my shiny new rocket on display!

. . . hilariously, a rejection for a packet of poems hit my inbox while I was reassembling this.

It’s going to live in my office for at least a while, so that I see it every time I come in. Eventually I think I’ll move it downstairs to our front room, where visitors to the house will see it, but for now — nope, it’s mine, my preciousssssss.

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New Worlds: Responses to Crisis

This week, the New Worlds Patreon pivots slightly from human migration and cultural contact to the question of how societies respond to crisis — a question whose list of possible answers unfortunately includes “turn on any perceived outsiders” among its historical and present-day options. Comment over there . . .

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Hugo!!!!!

There once was a writer who wrote,
and wound up with an odd anecdote —
how it happened, who knows,
but she won a Hugo,
for being, of all things, a good poet!

. . . and with that atrociously bad limerick (I decided not to bother trying harder; it accurately reflects the state of my brain right now) [edit: ffs, even in this state, I reflexively went back and revised it to make it scan better], I announce that last night I won the Special Hugo Award for Best Poem! My acceptance speech should have thanked Fluevogs for making heels I could actually walk onstage in without falling over out of shock. I still feel like a newbie in poetry; I only started writing it about four and a half years ago — January 2021 — and so to have my fourth published poem ever earn this major of an award is still making me reel. I would have woken up this morning thinking it was a delusion were it not for all the congratulatory messages I’m getting from various directions, which at least assure me that it’s a mass delusion, if so.

As I said in my speech, I hope I’m the first person to win this award, not the only one. It’s a special award right now because each Worldcon can choose to create a temporary category of its own, but I’m one of the sponsors of the Speculative Poetry Initiative, which has cleared the first hurdle in passing a proposal to make this a permanent category in the awards. So it already feels historic to get the special award, but it’ll be even better if I can describe myself as the start of a longer line!

If you have not read the winning poem, “A War of Words” — or if you would like to read it again — you may do so for free at Strange Horizons! My heartfelt thanks to Romie Stott, the editor who acquired it, for making this possible.

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