Sarah Monette's Blog, page 21
May 6, 2014
BItten By Books event starting TODAY at noon CDT
Just a quick reminder that the Bitten by Books chat/AMA event avec moi (as Miss Piggy would say) is today, starting at noon CDT. If you RSVP, you get 25 entries in the giveaway contest: 5 copies of The Goblin Emperor up for grabs. (As I'm writing this at 7:57 a.m. CST, Bitten by Books' site seems to be down. Hopefully, this is a transitory problem.)
Please drop by the chat. I would love to see you all there!
Please drop by the chat. I would love to see you all there!
May 4, 2014
Another round-up of guest posts & so on
The Goblin Emperor has gone back for a second printing!
On MAY SIXTH I am doing an AMA-type event at Bitten by Books. We kick off at noon CST and I would love to see you there! ETA: if you RSVP here you get 25 entries in the giveaway contest (5 copies of The Goblin Emperor to give away!) when you show up for the event.
I've done guest posts at:
SF Signal (genre conventions in fantasy)
The Booksmugglers (grimdark)
A Dribble of Ink (hope in fantasy)
Fantasy Cafe (women in Tolkien)
And interviews with:
Dungeon Crawlers Radio
The Book Plank
Between Dreams and Reality
My Bookish Ways
I will have at least four more guest posts and a podcast interview appearing like daffodils in the month of May.
And just a reminder, because seriously this cannot be said enough times, to help the career of ANY WRITER YOU LOVE, Buy, Read, Talk.
On MAY SIXTH I am doing an AMA-type event at Bitten by Books. We kick off at noon CST and I would love to see you there! ETA: if you RSVP here you get 25 entries in the giveaway contest (5 copies of The Goblin Emperor to give away!) when you show up for the event.
I've done guest posts at:
SF Signal (genre conventions in fantasy)
The Booksmugglers (grimdark)
A Dribble of Ink (hope in fantasy)
Fantasy Cafe (women in Tolkien)
And interviews with:
Dungeon Crawlers Radio
The Book Plank
Between Dreams and Reality
My Bookish Ways
I will have at least four more guest posts and a podcast interview appearing like daffodils in the month of May.
And just a reminder, because seriously this cannot be said enough times, to help the career of ANY WRITER YOU LOVE, Buy, Read, Talk.
UBC: Maccabee, Oates, Oney
Maccabee, Paul. John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks' Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul, 1920-1936. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1995.
Oates, Jonathan. Unsolved Murders in Victorian and Edwardian London. Barnsley: Wharncliffe Books-Pen and Sword Books, 2007.
Oney, Steve. And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003.
One of these things is not like the others.
The Maccabee and the Oates are similar in a number of ways: both are true crime books organized by place rather than time or person; both are well researched (the Maccabee in particular is exhaustively researched, and I admire him deeply for it); and both are, for all their excellent research, very poorly written. Neither of them has any feel for how to organize their facts into something either compelling or, frequently, comprehensible. My favorite is this passage from Oates: "There was certainly much to show that the boy had been deprived of food. This was due to the fact that the lungs were severely inflamed and cut to pieces." Maccabee has sentences just as bad.
I recommend the Maccabee, certainly, if you are interested in the history of St. Paul, because it is impeccably researched and it is full of fascinating details. It also does give a vivid sense of how wide and deep corruption ran in St. Paul during Prohibition and how vital an effect that had on the careers of Prohibition-era gangsters.
If you're interested, as I am, in the crimes of Victorian London that nobody writes about (like the Thames Torso murders, for instance), I will recommend Oates, because he does write about crimes that otherwise, at best, get a glancing mention from Ripperologists. But, given how poorly it's written, it is definitely a book for the fanatic.
The Oney is a completely different ball of fish. For one, it is an excellent book, extremely well-written along with being well-researched. For another, it is about a single disaster bookended by two catastrophes, the dreadful murder of Mary Phagan in the basement of the National Pencil Factory in 1913 and the lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta in 1915.
As Oney says, at this point, we are probably never going to be able to determine whether Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan or not. I tend to lean toward "not" (and I think Oney leans with me), but there are just enough discrepancies and doubts that I'm not sure. On the other hand, we can be sure that he should never have been convicted of her murder, because there was more than enough evidence for reasonable doubt, and he as sure as sin shouldn't have been lynched for it. The course of the trial, the petty, self-interested politicking of the state prosecutor and the corrupt Atlanta police, the demagoguery of a gentleman named Tom Watson, and the cold-blooded lynching (Frank wasn't just lynched, he was broken out of/kidnapped from the state prison farm in Milledgeville and driven 118 miles to Marietta and then lynched), and the aftermath, which proves with sickening exactitude how the good ol' boy network worked (two members of the grand jury who determined that, no, they had no hope of discovering who lynched Frank had been in the lynching party and EVERYBODY KNEW IT) are just horrifying. And the good faith efforts to figure out the truth of Mary Phagan's murder were a dismal failure. The bad go unpunished and the good go unrewarded.
As I so often say in reviewing true-crime books, I wish that Oney had gone ahead and pulled back for the meta chapter, a careful review of the evidence, what we actually know, what we can responsibly conjecture, and which theories of the crime we can prove to be incorrect. Excluding notes and index, this is a 649 page book, and by the end of it, I could really have used a clear summation of what had happened. But that's a fundamentally minor complaint in a book that is an excellent, careful, impartial-as-possible piece of history. (When someone's viciously, virulently anti-Semitic rhetoric is (a) in large part responsible for the (1) conviction and (2) lynching of a very possibly innocent man, and (b) in large part responsible for the revival of the KKK, and that someone is thrilled by and proud of both these things, it's a little difficult to remain impartial about him, Tom Watson I am looking at you.) It is not a pleasant read, but it is compelling, and I do recommend it if you can bear its subject matter.
Oates, Jonathan. Unsolved Murders in Victorian and Edwardian London. Barnsley: Wharncliffe Books-Pen and Sword Books, 2007.
Oney, Steve. And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003.
One of these things is not like the others.
The Maccabee and the Oates are similar in a number of ways: both are true crime books organized by place rather than time or person; both are well researched (the Maccabee in particular is exhaustively researched, and I admire him deeply for it); and both are, for all their excellent research, very poorly written. Neither of them has any feel for how to organize their facts into something either compelling or, frequently, comprehensible. My favorite is this passage from Oates: "There was certainly much to show that the boy had been deprived of food. This was due to the fact that the lungs were severely inflamed and cut to pieces." Maccabee has sentences just as bad.
I recommend the Maccabee, certainly, if you are interested in the history of St. Paul, because it is impeccably researched and it is full of fascinating details. It also does give a vivid sense of how wide and deep corruption ran in St. Paul during Prohibition and how vital an effect that had on the careers of Prohibition-era gangsters.
If you're interested, as I am, in the crimes of Victorian London that nobody writes about (like the Thames Torso murders, for instance), I will recommend Oates, because he does write about crimes that otherwise, at best, get a glancing mention from Ripperologists. But, given how poorly it's written, it is definitely a book for the fanatic.
The Oney is a completely different ball of fish. For one, it is an excellent book, extremely well-written along with being well-researched. For another, it is about a single disaster bookended by two catastrophes, the dreadful murder of Mary Phagan in the basement of the National Pencil Factory in 1913 and the lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta in 1915.
As Oney says, at this point, we are probably never going to be able to determine whether Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan or not. I tend to lean toward "not" (and I think Oney leans with me), but there are just enough discrepancies and doubts that I'm not sure. On the other hand, we can be sure that he should never have been convicted of her murder, because there was more than enough evidence for reasonable doubt, and he as sure as sin shouldn't have been lynched for it. The course of the trial, the petty, self-interested politicking of the state prosecutor and the corrupt Atlanta police, the demagoguery of a gentleman named Tom Watson, and the cold-blooded lynching (Frank wasn't just lynched, he was broken out of/kidnapped from the state prison farm in Milledgeville and driven 118 miles to Marietta and then lynched), and the aftermath, which proves with sickening exactitude how the good ol' boy network worked (two members of the grand jury who determined that, no, they had no hope of discovering who lynched Frank had been in the lynching party and EVERYBODY KNEW IT) are just horrifying. And the good faith efforts to figure out the truth of Mary Phagan's murder were a dismal failure. The bad go unpunished and the good go unrewarded.
As I so often say in reviewing true-crime books, I wish that Oney had gone ahead and pulled back for the meta chapter, a careful review of the evidence, what we actually know, what we can responsibly conjecture, and which theories of the crime we can prove to be incorrect. Excluding notes and index, this is a 649 page book, and by the end of it, I could really have used a clear summation of what had happened. But that's a fundamentally minor complaint in a book that is an excellent, careful, impartial-as-possible piece of history. (When someone's viciously, virulently anti-Semitic rhetoric is (a) in large part responsible for the (1) conviction and (2) lynching of a very possibly innocent man, and (b) in large part responsible for the revival of the KKK, and that someone is thrilled by and proud of both these things, it's a little difficult to remain impartial about him, Tom Watson I am looking at you.) It is not a pleasant read, but it is compelling, and I do recommend it if you can bear its subject matter.
April 16, 2014
promotional literature (The Goblin Emperor)
I will be at C2E2 on Saturday (April 26), doing a panel, All Things Fantastic, and an autographing session, both with Mary Robinette Kowal, C. Robert Cargill, Douglas Hulick, Steve, Bein, and Simon Green.
Guest post for Daniel Libris on worldbuilding.
Guest post for the Tor/Forge Blog on rules vs. guidelines.
Guest post for Speculative Book Review about The Goblin Emperor and the Wars of the Roses.
And guest post for No More Grumpy Bookseller about The Goblin Emperor and Elizabeth I.
I also did a live interview with Dungeon Crawlers Radio and a guest post for SF Signal, but neither site will talk to me at the moment.
Guest post for Daniel Libris on worldbuilding.
Guest post for the Tor/Forge Blog on rules vs. guidelines.
Guest post for Speculative Book Review about The Goblin Emperor and the Wars of the Roses.
And guest post for No More Grumpy Bookseller about The Goblin Emperor and Elizabeth I.
I also did a live interview with Dungeon Crawlers Radio and a guest post for SF Signal, but neither site will talk to me at the moment.
April 1, 2014
Happy Book Day!
FIRST, Happy Book Day to Felix Gilman, whose book
The Revolutions
also comes out today. I don't know Mr. Gilman personally, but I admire his writing. And The Revolutions sounds awesome.
SECOND, Happy Book Day to me! To celebrate, my invaluable webtamer has put up the map of the Ethuveraz on katherineaddison.com.
THIRD, there's also a FAQ. I'm sure that more questions will need to be added for The Goblin Emperor, but I haven't been asked them yet.
FOURTH, John Scalzi graciously let me do a Big Idea post about fantasy and technology.
FIFTH, for Forces of Geek, I did a post about inventing languages.
SIXTH, for Tor-dot-com, I wrote a post about coming-of-age stories and quests.
SEVENTH, I also did the Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe for Tor-dot-com and can't remember if I posted the link or not.
EIGHTH and furthermore, there's a Q&A up at Riffle.
NINTH, if you haven't had enough of me yet, there will be other guest blog posts cropping up as my gracious hosts' schedules permit. I will, of course, post links.
TENTH, not one atom of this post is an April Fool's joke.
ETA: ELEVENTH, Tor-dot-com's That Was Awesome feature, in which I explain why you should be reading Scott Lynch.
SECOND, Happy Book Day to me! To celebrate, my invaluable webtamer has put up the map of the Ethuveraz on katherineaddison.com.
THIRD, there's also a FAQ. I'm sure that more questions will need to be added for The Goblin Emperor, but I haven't been asked them yet.
FOURTH, John Scalzi graciously let me do a Big Idea post about fantasy and technology.
FIFTH, for Forces of Geek, I did a post about inventing languages.
SIXTH, for Tor-dot-com, I wrote a post about coming-of-age stories and quests.
SEVENTH, I also did the Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe for Tor-dot-com and can't remember if I posted the link or not.
EIGHTH and furthermore, there's a Q&A up at Riffle.
NINTH, if you haven't had enough of me yet, there will be other guest blog posts cropping up as my gracious hosts' schedules permit. I will, of course, post links.
TENTH, not one atom of this post is an April Fool's joke.
ETA: ELEVENTH, Tor-dot-com's That Was Awesome feature, in which I explain why you should be reading Scott Lynch.
March 31, 2014
Goblin Links
So, things are gearing up for the official street date of The Goblin Emperor, which is tomorrow.
I have a guest blog post at Tor-Dot-Com: The Emperor and the Scullery Boy; mrissa has a review of the book, and also, I did a Q&A; and there's a very in-depth review from the Jaded Consumer (beware spoilers).
I am also doing a slew of guest posts for other blogs; I will provide links as they happen.
And it seems like a good time to link to my Buy, Read, Talk post: what readers can do to help an author's career. (Again, that's not just my career, although that's obviously where my vested self-interest lies.)
I have a guest blog post at Tor-Dot-Com: The Emperor and the Scullery Boy; mrissa has a review of the book, and also, I did a Q&A; and there's a very in-depth review from the Jaded Consumer (beware spoilers).
I am also doing a slew of guest posts for other blogs; I will provide links as they happen.
And it seems like a good time to link to my Buy, Read, Talk post: what readers can do to help an author's career. (Again, that's not just my career, although that's obviously where my vested self-interest lies.)
ATTENTION ZAFAR--sock elephant update
Five of the six promised books are on their way to (or possibly have already arrived in) California, Oregon, Washington, and Estonia. (Also, the book from the Con or Bust auction went to Scotland. I love it when my books are world travelers!)
Zafar, if you are reading this, I owe you a book! Please email me at semonette (at) gmail (dot) com so we can work out the details.
Zafar, if you are reading this, I owe you a book! Please email me at semonette (at) gmail (dot) com so we can work out the details.
March 25, 2014
THE SOCK ELEPHANT HAS A NAME
First, THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE who suggested a name. You are all awesome, and I love all your suggestions.
In fact, not only was I not able to choose ONE correct name and ONE favorite, I couldn't even manage to choose TWO.
THEREFORE.
The sock elephant's name is Eleftheria Ada Lavanda Snodgrass, and her nickname is Elsu.
Eleftheria Snodgrass was suggested by Zafar (who does not have an LJ account), and I combined it with Ada Lavanda from
aerinha
, because (a) I loved both names and (b) she just seems to need a ridiculously long dactylic name. On the other hand, you can't call somebody Eleftheria Ada Lavanda Snodgrass all the time. The nickname Elsu was suggested by
nipernaadiagain
.
My three favorite names, in no particular order, are:
1. Aerandir (@MollyKanHas)
2. Galahadral (
ejmam
)
3. Madame Socky-Trunk (
neko_san
)
SO. Zafar,
aerinha
,
nipernaadiagain
, @MollyKanHas,
ejmam
, and
neko_san
, you have each won a copy of The Goblin Emperor! Email me at semonette (at) gmail (dot) com. Put "sock elephant" in the subject line so I know what it's about. Then tell me:
1. Name and shipping address. (I will ship anywhere in the world, no need to worry.)
2. Do you want the book personalized? (If you don't, no harm, no foul.)
3. IF YOU DO, to whom? (If there's a particular version of your name that makes you happier, please specify it.)
Once I have your information, I will send your book to you as quickly as I can.
Again, thank you to the winners, and thank you to everyone who made a suggestion. You have all brightened my life considerably, and I appreciate it.
Eleftheria Ada Lavanda Snodgrass thanks you, too.
In fact, not only was I not able to choose ONE correct name and ONE favorite, I couldn't even manage to choose TWO.
THEREFORE.
The sock elephant's name is Eleftheria Ada Lavanda Snodgrass, and her nickname is Elsu.
Eleftheria Snodgrass was suggested by Zafar (who does not have an LJ account), and I combined it with Ada Lavanda from
aerinha
, because (a) I loved both names and (b) she just seems to need a ridiculously long dactylic name. On the other hand, you can't call somebody Eleftheria Ada Lavanda Snodgrass all the time. The nickname Elsu was suggested by
nipernaadiagain
.My three favorite names, in no particular order, are:
1. Aerandir (@MollyKanHas)
2. Galahadral (
ejmam
)3. Madame Socky-Trunk (
neko_san
)SO. Zafar,
aerinha
,
nipernaadiagain
, @MollyKanHas,
ejmam
, and
neko_san
, you have each won a copy of The Goblin Emperor! Email me at semonette (at) gmail (dot) com. Put "sock elephant" in the subject line so I know what it's about. Then tell me:1. Name and shipping address. (I will ship anywhere in the world, no need to worry.)
2. Do you want the book personalized? (If you don't, no harm, no foul.)
3. IF YOU DO, to whom? (If there's a particular version of your name that makes you happier, please specify it.)
Once I have your information, I will send your book to you as quickly as I can.
Again, thank you to the winners, and thank you to everyone who made a suggestion. You have all brightened my life considerably, and I appreciate it.
Eleftheria Ada Lavanda Snodgrass thanks you, too.
March 21, 2014
SOCK ELEPHANT CONTEST WILL END MONDAY MARCH 24 AT 5 P.M. CDT
My author copies of The Goblin Emperor have arrived. (Please add exclamation points to taste. I don't think LiveJournal's character limits will let me put enough in.)
That means that the contest to name my sock elephant is coming to a close. I'm going to let it run through the weekend, so that if somebody has been dithering about putting in a suggestion, they don't get the rug yanked out from under them. (Also, so that there's a fighting chance no one will only HEAR about the contest when it ends.)
Please spread the word widely! All suggestions are welcome, and remember you can make more than one entry!
That means that the contest to name my sock elephant is coming to a close. I'm going to let it run through the weekend, so that if somebody has been dithering about putting in a suggestion, they don't get the rug yanked out from under them. (Also, so that there's a fighting chance no one will only HEAR about the contest when it ends.)
Please spread the word widely! All suggestions are welcome, and remember you can make more than one entry!
March 20, 2014
THE GOBLIN EMPEROR: Launch event
Saturday, April 12, I will be doing an event at the Stoughton Public Library. From 2-3 I'll be doing a worldbuilding workshop, and from 3-3:45 I will be doing a reading & signing. A Room of One's Own will be there selling books.
Free and open to the public. I hope to see you there!
Free and open to the public. I hope to see you there!
