Marie Brennan's Blog, page 248

Things learned from tonight's revision

1) If a word or phrase isn't in [square brackets:], I should trust that means I've already looked up whether it's in period or not.

2) Scenes are so much more exciting when your protagonist doesn't play nice.

3) kniedzw gets a funny look on his face when I appear in the doorway of his office and say, "Can I get your help for a second? It's spousal abuse for fun and profit."

4) But he is then very good about dragging me across the living room floor so I can figure out where a flying elbow would c...

What should I read?

So I've got this reading and signing at Borderlands Books on Saturday (3 p.m., if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to come). I have a fair bit of time to fill, and so I'm intending to read several different things, as well as answering questions and signing books. I'll definitely do a bit from A Star Shall Fall, but I'd also like to do a couple of short stories. The question is, which ones?

You know what that means: time for a poll.

View Poll: What would you want to hear...

oof.

Went to bed early last night, slept gloriously, woke feeling more like a human being. Which is good, because I've got a book that needs revising.

To entertain you while I do that: Alyx Dellamonica's got an interview with me posted on her blog, wherein I ramble on about a whole bunch of things, including the grade-school evolution of me as a writer, and the perfectly legal tax scam I've got going. :-)

Also, a review of A Star Shall Fall, from a place entertainingly named "Elitist Book Reviews."...

first of (probably) many

I have so many things piled up in my head, waiting for the time and energy to say them; I decided to start with this one.

There is still discussion going around concerning the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque." (Which is neither, of course -- but "downtown Islamic community center" doesn't sound as scary, no matter how much the word "community" has been beaten up by those who will say anything to score points against their enemies.) There is still debate about its appropriateness. There is sti...

139,446.

It's messy, it's ragged, it's got continuity holes big enough to drive a subway train through, but for the moment, it's done.

I now have four Onyx Court novels.

Good Christ that epilogue was hard to write. Possibly it sucks. I have no idea. What the hell does one write, to end a four-book series? Especially when one isn't sure whether this is the end permanently, or just the end for now? How does one wrap something like that up? How many readers will kill me for not showing the [spoiler:] ...

for the Jane Austen folk

Is Colonel Brandon's first name ever given in Sense and Sensibility?

I don't even need to fall over!

Pssssh. That was only 2,908 words of writing. I feel like I should write something else before I go to bed; I was expecting to do so much more.

What I wrote was the climax, not the ending: this isn't a complete draft yet. It probably won't be for a couple of days; I have this Thing about finishing novels, where the last thing I write has to be the final scene (in this case, the epilogue), and what precedes it can't have any holes in. There are definitely some holes in what I have at presen...

Um.

(Okay, maybe we're going to write the seance AND the Giant Ridiculous Climax tonight.)

130K! (actually 131K!)

Long-time readers of this blog know that many of my metaphors for writing are related to textiles: weaving, or embroidery, or whatever. Well, the end of this book is presently the narrative equivalent of the test garments I sometimes sew, where I trace the pattern out on the cheapest muslin I can buy and baste the pieces together, then rip them apart and cut them down or stick in extra pieces of fabric and then sew the results back together again, and the whole thing ends up covered in Sharp...

last of the series

I only just barely managed to get it written in time, but I do have an SF Novelists post this month: "Woman =/= Body," which is the last (for now) in my series about stereotypes of female characterization.

Same drill as usual; comment over there, no registration needed, though if you're new I'll have to dig your first comment out of the moderation queue, so don't be alarmed if it doesn't appear immediately.