Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 74

The Iron Dragon's Daughter & the Dublin Worldcon

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The Dublin Worldcon begins today! So I'll be busy all weekend.

Meanwhile, there is a flash sale of The Iron Dragon's Daughter as a Kindle Daily Deal TODAY ONLY at  Amazon.com. The ebook will be downpriced to $1.99.

So if you're an ebook reader and curious about the first book in the Iron Dragon trilogy, this is a good opportunity.

But you'll have to act fast.

Meanwhile, I've got people to schmooze and Smithwick's to drink.



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.The Dublin Worldcon begins today! So I'll be busy a...

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The Dublin Worldcon begins today! So I'll be busy all weekend.

Meanwhile, there is a flash sale of The Iron Dragon's Daughter as a Kindle Daily Deal TODAY ONLY at  Amazon.com. The ebook will be downpriced to $1.99.

So if you're an ebook reader and curious about the first book in the Iron Dragon trilogy, this is a good opportunity.

But you'll have to act fast.

Meanwhile, I've got people to schmooze and Smithwick's to drink.


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Bones of the Earth Ebook Sale!

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I leave for Ireland on Sunday! (But--a friendly note to criminal opportunists, the house will be occupied by My Son the Black Belt) So I'll be spending the day running around and doing things that have to be done.
While I'm away, I'll do my best to keep you posted. Brace yourselves for a flood of photos of people having way too much fun in one of the most beautiful countries on the planet.
Meanwhile, I got an email from Open Road Media. As follows:

I am pleased to let you know that Bones of the Earth will be featured in BookBub, a daily ebook deals newsletter with millions of subscribers, on 8/10/2019. The ebook will be downpriced to 1.99 across all US retailers on that day, and Open Road will promote the feature via social media.

You can subscribe to BookBub here so that you'll get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears in the newsletter.

So if you're an ebook reader and love dinosaurs (as who doesn't?) and don't already have my dinosaurs-and-time-travel novel, this is a good deal.

But, if I read this correctly, it's a one-day-only good deal. So be prepared to pounce!


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A Horror Movie for Trees

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After posting a new picture from the Image Book every day (almost) for over three months, I have reverted to my old, slovenly ways--promising three posts a week and immediately being a day late with Monday's.

The problem is that I'm feverishly working to have a promised story finished, polished, and delivered before flying to Ireland. Which means writing it over and over and over again. There up above is my wastebasket, en route to the recycling bin.

I buy paper by the case, and frequently. When trees go to horror movies, they see my office. "Don't go in!" they shriek at the innocent young fir on the screen. "Swanwick needs paper!!!"

There's got to be an easier way to write. But I haven't found it yet.


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The Iron Dragon Notebooks

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If there is a theme to this blog--and who knows?--it would be that whenever I'm busiest and most productive, I have the least to say. Conversely, when I have announcements galore, I'm rarely getting much of anything done.

Right now, because I am waist-deep in any number of very interesting projects that I cannot yet talk about, I have almost nothing to say. So I thought I'd share a few pages from the Iron Dragon Notebooks, compiled as I was writing The Iron Dragon's Mother, to keep my notes and thoughts in one easy-to-find place.

Don't worry, I'm not going to share every page of them, the way I did with the Image Book. But when  it's a question of dipping into them or letting the blog lie too long fallow...



Here's an interior page with a picture of Caitlin's half-brother Fingolfinrhod that I think really captures him. As the text in the bottom left corner puts it:

Long, tall, regally thin
A pale flame
Fey in the truest sense
Pansexual
Knowing but kind

The pages are largely taken up with the attempt to find a name for the character. Apparently he came close to being named Echthelion, hard thought that is to imagine.

At this point, Caitlin was still named Charlotte.



Finally, here's the inside cover of Book I.As you can see, I was originally thinking of calling it Mother of Dragons. The success of a Certain Show on HBO put the kibosh on that.

It's probably just as well. The Iron Dragon's Mother seems to be the title the book was meant to have.


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A Wondrous Strange World

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Look what popped up today... a rave review not for The Iron Dragon's Mother, but for The Dragons of Babel, the second book in my accidental fantasy trilogy.

The reviewer (or, almost, essayist) is Jonathan Thornton and the review appears at The Fantasy Hive. I won't say a lot about it because a positive review can be almost as entertaining as a blood-letter, if the reviewer is knowledgeable enough. So you should consider reading it.

The piece does identify the insight that is central to all three books (The Iron Dragon's Daughter being the other): That this is a wondrous strange world we live in, and though we go to fantasy to escape into worlds unlike our own, it is the duty of fantasy to at some point reconnect with reality and comment upon it.

More than that I will not say, because I'm getting perilously close to humblebragging here, and I am a modest man.

You can find the review here.


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My Worldcon Schedule

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Wow. In less than two weeks, I'll be back in Ireland! Wandering the desolate beauty of the Burren. Discovering the Ring of Kerry for the very first time. Returning to Tara. Drinking Guinness in a Dublin pub.

Oh, yeah, and there's this Worldcon thing.

The Dublin Worldcon committee have given me my marching orders, and I have to say that it's a pretty nice schedule. It's spread out over three days, gives me a reasonable amount  of free time, and includes a reading, a kaffeeklatsch, and an autographing session. Also, the panel topics are pretty interesting.

So kudos to the scheduling people. I really do appreciate their hard work.

Here's my schedule:

Friday, August 16

Unwritable storiesFormat: Panel14:30 - 15:20, Stratocaster BC (Point Square Dublin)
Every author has that perfect story that just refuses to be written. From wilful characters to wandering narratives and gaping plot holes, our panellists share the stories that would have even defied the Greek muses themselves. What made these stories so hard to write? What traps did they hold? And whatever happened to those old untold tales? Will they ever see the light of day or will they remain locked away in a hidden drawer?
Jacey Bedford (M), Karen Haber, Nina Allan, Jay Caselberg, Michael Swanwick

Saturday, August 17
Reading: Michael Swanwick12:00 - 12:50, Liffey Room-3 (Readings) (CCD)
Autographs: Michael Swanwick   15:00 - 15:50, Level 4 Foyer (CCD)

Kaffeeklatsch: Michael Swanwick17:00 - 17:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)

Sunday, August 18
The author as a fellow traveler on the hero's journeyFormat: Panel10:30 - 11:20, Odeon 4 (Point Square Dublin)
Many authors, unsurprisingly, form a strong emotional bond with their characters, experiencing the joys and frustrations of the story along with them. How does this affect the writing process itself? What about the impact on the writer's critical engagement with their own work? How much does an author's engagement depend on their personality, their approach, or the type of story being written?

Dr Kristina Perez (Macmillan ) (M), Michael Swanwick, Karen Simpson Nikakis (SOV Consulting LLC -SOV Media), Naomi Kritzer, Daryl Gregory


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Carol Emshwiller, Remembered

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Saturday I went to New York City for a memorial in the honor of Carol Emshwiller. I will not enumerate who was there and what transpired, other than to note that her children and other family members did her proud.

I was one of those who stood up to talk about Carol. Here, roughly, is what I said:


I won't try to compete with Gordon [Van Gelder, who spoke immediately before me] in analyzing Carol's fiction. She was a very fine writer, with a vision all her own, and I am particularly fond of Carmen Dog, but I want to talk about her as a friend.

I don't remember when I first met Carol. But I vividly remember being at some-damned-event-or-other when she saw me and exclaimed, "Michael! It's so good to see you!" We then proceeded to have a really splendid conversation about pretty much everything on earth.

Later, I told all this to Marianne and a little bemusedly said, "So I guess Carol and I are good friends."

We were, too. Carol wouldn't kid about something like that.

Every time I saw her, she always greeted me by saying, "Michael! It's so good to see you!" And after we had parted, I always found myself thinking: Maybe I should try being a better person. It seems to work for Carol.

The last time we met was at the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series, when her eyesight was so diminished that when I said hello, she had to ask me who I was. But one thing was certain: Whoever I was, she was glad I was there.

Carol was that rarest of creatures, a writer who could talk matter-of-factly about her own fiction. One time, I saw her first and said, "Carol! It's so good to see you! What are you up to?"

"I'm in mourning," she said. "I just finished writing a novel"--this would have been Ledoyt--"and all these people I've been living with for years are gone. It's like they all died! I'm bereft." Then she asked, "Doesn't it feel that way to you, too?"

I considered the question seriously. "No," I said. "When I finish a novel, I feel like I've stopped persecuting my people. I imagine them running down the street, waving their hands in the air, saying things like, 'I'm free!' and 'I'm going to eat a hamburger--and nothing will happen to me!' and 'I'm going to move to Albany and get a job in a hardware store!'"

But maybe that's just because she was a better person than me.

Now she's gone. And I'm bereft. I'm in mourning.

I'd like to think that that's because I've become a better person. But no. It's because Carol was alive in a way that no fictional characters can be. In fact, she was alive in a way that very few living people are. She had a gift for life. She was good at it. It was not wasted on her.

Carol freely shared her friendship and with her joy. But in life nothing is really free. This is something you learn, if you live long enough. The price for someone's presence in your life is the pain you feel at her absence. When she's gone, the only question that matters is: Is the joy her life brought you worth the sorrow you feel at it ending?

In Carol's case? Yes. Yes, it was.

It was worth every tear.


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Of a Swallowtail Farm and the Final Image Book Picture

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Pictured above is Marianne's swallowtail farm on the front porch. She didn't set out to raise butterflies. But it turns out that swallowtails love parsley. So they come unnoticed to lay their extremely small eggs, which hatch into extremely small caterpillars, which then proceed to eat and eat and EAT. Growing all the time.
Remember reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar when you were small? Something like that.
The caterpillars put away an astonishing amount of parsley and grow to a respectable size. Then they disappear. Sometimes during the night, they crawl away from the pot and go... somewhere. We've never been able to determine where.
The world is full of mysteries. One of them is on our front porch.
Marianne also has a second patch of parsley, which is used in her cooking. There's something unspeakably cool about going out in the middle of winter to brush the snow off the parsley and bring in a few sprigs for garnish.
When she finds a swallowtail caterpillar on her cooking patch, Marianne plucks it off and removes it to the pot on the porch.

And from the Image Book . . .



This is the very last image in the book. Put there because it's obviously a photo of the Triune Goddess. Most of the images of women taken from fashion and art magazines are far more glam than I would have liked. This one has the right edge of scariness. These are three dangerous women.

I first saw this image in an ad for the Cafe Luxembourg (West 70th St., NYC) in, I think, the New Yorker . It definitely raises in the mind an expectation of a rather louche drinking hole, probably somewhere high up in a skyscraper. Imagine my surprise when I ate there and discovered a cheerful, street level eatery with fish and chips and grilled rack of lamb on the menu.

Ah, well. The sinful bar of my dark imaginings surely exists somewhere in New York.


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Young Caitlin

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This is one of the saddest images in the entire book. Caitlin did not have a happy childhood. Which is why it's hardly ever referred to in the novel.

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