Marie Brennan's Blog, page 65
March 27, 2020
about the Clarion West workshops
My apologies to everyone who wasn’t able to get into any of the free workshops Clarion West is offering. There was an initial delay, and then some technical difficulties that appear to mean people on certain browsers could see the registration links but others couldn’t, plus the overall demand was so high that courses filled up more or less instantaneously. I know a lot of people are disappointed.
The good news is, the CW staff are now aware of how much interest there is in this stuff, and are working to both set up future options and make sure it runs more smoothly next time. Apparently they were already intending to start offering more online options (since not everybody can travel in-person to their one-day workshops); the current situation just made them step up their timetable, is all. So if you weren’t able to register for the things that interested you, there will be more opportunities in the future — including my own workshops, because like CW, this is something I was thinking about doing anyway.
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New Worlds: Evidence
The New Worlds Patreon wraps up this pass through legal topics with the question of evidence: what we accept as legally valid, what we don’t, why, and how that’s changed over time. Comment over there!
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March 25, 2020
FREE Clarion workshops!
The Clarion West Writers’ Workshop is taking the extraordinary step of offering free online writing workshops for the next several weeks. (Extraordinary because they’re still paying the instructors, but not charging the students.) I had a splendid time teaching an in-person workshop for them last month, so I’m diving in to do a series of worldbuilding workshops inspired by the New Worlds Patreon. There will be four of them, each independent of the others, meaning that you only need to sign up for the one(s) that interest you. It’ll be first come, first served, with registration opening on Friday, March 27 at 12pm PST. The current list of workshops is here, so if any of them pique your interest, mark your calendars now!
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March 24, 2020
I know that isolation is hard . . .
Not just that, but the Washington Post’s outbreak simulator visually demonstrates that a strong “social distancing” policy is the most effective strategy we’ve got.
So keep it up, y’all. I know it’s difficult, and I know there are knock-on problems for the economy and so forth, and none of us really know yet how all of this will end — at what point we’ll be able to go back to normal life. But right now, it’s doing good. It’s saving lives. It’s buying time for us to test antivirals and develop vaccines and manufacture more needed gear like masks, sanitizer, and medical equipment. It is doing exactly what it’s supposed to: flattening the curve, so that the impact of this gets spread out, and we don’t buckle entirely under the hit.
Stay safe, and keep others safe, too.
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March 20, 2020
New Worlds: Other Kinds of Trial
In this time of lockdown, the New Worlds Patreon continues! (I mean, my regular life is only about one step away from lockdown regardless. Though I do miss going to the dojo.) This week we move on to other kinds of trial — specifically, the various types of ordeal once used to determine guilt or innocence. Comment over there!
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March 18, 2020
Need some distraction?
Following in the footsteps of a number of other authors, I’m offering a free ebook to anybody who wants one, because we’re going to need a lot of entertainment in the next few weeks of quarantine. To get one, all you have to do is drop me a line through this form and let me know which book you want EDIT and tell me which format! (Epub, for most readers, or mobi, for Kindle.) Nota bene: I can only provide books that are actually under my control, which is to say, my solo Book View Cafe titles. Those are as follows:
Onyx Court
Midnight Never Come (#1)
Deeds of Men (#1.5, novella)
In Ashes Lie (#2)
In London’s Shadow (omnibus)
Varekai
Cold-Forged Flame (#1)
Lightning in the Blood (#2)
Wilders
“Welcome to Welton” (prequel, novelette)
Lies and Prophecy (#1)
Chains and Memory (#2)
Short story collections
Maps to Nowhere
Ars Historica
The Nine Lands
Micro collections
Never After
Monstrous Beauty
Nonfiction
New Worlds, Year One
New Worlds, Year Two
Writing Fight Scenes
Dice Tales
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March 16, 2020
And now for something completely different
I could talk about how the Bay Area is officially going under a “shelter in place” order for the next three weeks, and the surreal sight of my local grocery store completely denuded of flour, rice, chicken, and other staples . . . but you know what? My brain is desperate for other material right now.
So! Please recommend to me what you consider to be the best recorded performances of each of Shakespeare’s plays. I do mean each: not just the ones that have been done a bunch of times, like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, but anything for which Shakespeare’s authorship is moderately certain. Cymbeline? The Winter’s Tale? Movies, TV miniseries, filmed stage performances, any of those are fine, but not adaptations that use the plot without the script (e.g. 10 Things I Hate About You).
This question brought to you by me thinking, hmmmm, I’ve written some Shakespeare fanfic for Yuletide — I wonder if I could sell some short stories in that vein? I need grist for the mill, basically.
(And feel free to pass the link to this post along to anybody who might have recommendations.)
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March 13, 2020
New Worlds: In the Courtroom
Do you like watching legal dramas? This week, the New Worlds Patreon goes into the courtroom for a look at how trials operate — which turns out to be quite variable depending on the circumstances and which legal system your country runs on. Comment over there!
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March 10, 2020
New story at Daily Science Fiction!
Half an hour before the end of 2019, I got an email notifying me that the magazine Daily Science Fiction wanted to buy my flash story “Cruel Sisters” (available to read for free at that link) — a story which may be glossed as “that continuity error had bugged me for years, thanks a lot, Loreena McKennitt.” Except it’s actual thanks now rather than sarcastic, because in the end I got a story and a sale out of it.
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