Adrian Tchaikovsky's Blog, page 20

Nerdeast and Writing About Race updates

The schedule for Nerdeast on 9th June in Durham is set — I will be giving some sort of talk, hopefully assisted by fellow author Russell Smith, from around 3pm. We'll be the last people on, so if anyone fancies grabbing a drink (1) afterwards that's probably a good time — also for getting stuff signed or similar. The talk is currently looking to be the fair shoe-in topic of gaming and writing, especially what modern fantasy writing owes to its gaming roots.

As noted, 30th June I'll be in London at Forbidden Planet for a general small press minicon potlatch, including the release of Hauntings from Newcon Press in which I have a ghost story I'm rather proud of, entitled "Not a Cat Person."  I'm also happy to relate that I've had a new story, "Good Taste" accepted for an anthology by Siren's Call Publications, Now I Lay Me Down To Reap.

Finally, the second part of the Writing about Race interview conducted by Zach Jernagan is up at SF Signal here.

(1) I'm not saying "buying a thirsty author a drink" here. That would be boorish.

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Some ads you cannot parody.

Samsung Galaxy (untranslatable squiggle) III ad, actual text:

"It knows it's early

It lets you have an extra 3 mins in bed

It tells you where the nearest coffee shop is

It chooses the best photos from last night

It knows when you're looking at it

and when you're not.

At last a phone that understands you."

And the tagline: "designed for humans"

… by the faceless robot overlords, presumably. This may be the most terrifying ad I've ever come across. Seriously, "it chooses the best photos from last night"? And there you are thinking… "I don't even remember going out last night… wait, what's that… is that a severed arm? What did you do last night, phone? What did you do?"

"It knows when you're looking at it"? So do those angels in Dr Who. How creepy is your mind control brain-eating phone supposed to sound?

Or maybe I'm just old. Meh.

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Writing about Race at SF Signal plus more news

Over the last few months Zach Jernigan has been conducting a long-distance interview on the subject of race in fantasy writing. His interviewees are David Anthony Durham, Aliette de Bodard, and myself, and it's been a privilege to be amongst that company and get to talk around that subject. Zach put a huge amount of work into getting this off the ground, and the results are now up at SF Signal here. I seriously encourage you to take a look. I can't vouch for my own contributions but overall it's thought-provoking stuff.

On a more generally organisational note, as well as Nerd East (9th June, Durham Uni Student's Union) and Edge Lit (1) (14th July, Derby Quad) there is a real chance of my ending up in London's Forbidden Planet on June 21st for the launch party of Newcon Press's Hauntings anthology, so if you're a Londoner with some Shadows of the Apt books unsigned, that would be a good time to remedy that (2). This isn't a definite yet — I will update the post when I know for sure.

(1) I am minded to suggest a new name. If you google "edge lit" it directs you to a surprising number of sites about things that are lit around their edges.

(2) The signing thing. I'm not suggesting you move out of London just because I'm going to be there. You have the Olympics for that.

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All sorts of news

So, something of a news update in brief, but:

I have been asked to make a showing at Nerd East, the Larp fair at Durham on 9th June 2012. There may be some manner of speechifying. The speech may include recycled elements from my Picocon speech. See how green I am? I'm constantly trying to reduce my inspiration footprint. Anyway, I shall be there, and I shall be happy to sign stuff, answer questions, receive drinks and the like.

After that I am one of a host of names at Edge Lit on 14th July 2012 at Derby Quad. No idea what I'm doing there but ditto the signing and the questioning and also probably the drinking.

I have another short story on the way into print, too. I'm not a prolific ghost story writer, but I'm very proud of my creepy little piece, Not a Cat Person, which will be coming out soonish in Newcon Press's Hauntings anthology. I'm also working my way through their back catalogue at the moment. I can strongly recommend Ian Watson's new collection, Saving for a Sunny Day.

Finally, there's this: Waterstones and Amazon are exploring a new Book Coprosperity Sphere . I will freely say that I honestly don't know enough of the ins and outs of the business to make any comment as to whether this will work for Waterstones (or Amazon, but one kind of feels that Amazon will be selling books to the cockroaches long after we're gone (1)), or what other considerations are going to rear their heads, but as I am very much in favour of high street bookshops, I do hope this means that we might have the last chain left for a little longer. It's also potentially a step towards the strategy that was being talked about at last year's Fantasycon, the idea that you could buy the physical book at a store and get the ebook in the same purchase (meaning you could have your library and home, in pleasing paper, and also cart it around conveniently, without having to buy everything twice). Now this current deal is a long way from that, but what it is, is infrastructure that might conceivably lead to it. Anyway, we'll see.

(1) And you know me well enough by now to know that I genuinely mean it in a good way.

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Twenty Year Dream

Way way back in the early 1990's I was at university and I was running an RPG campaign using a horrible mishmash home-grown system I had slung together. The setting was a place called the Lowlands. Instead of elves and dwarves, it was populated by a pack of oddities known as the insect-kinden. There was a Beetle intelligencer called Stenwold, a Mantis Weaponsmaster named Tisamon, a resistance leader in Myna by the name of Kymene. There was an empire of the Wasps poised to roll over the map.

In around 2004, and having amassed enough rejection slips to auto da fe a dozen heretics, I decided to start work on a Grand Project. I was feeling strongly as though I was running out of chances with this writing lark, and very much as though, if the next manuscript bit the dust like the last few (1) then I should probably give the business up as a bad job. In order to make that Grand Project a good one, therefore, I ransacked my past for an idea that had been with me a while, and grown and developed, and still held its appeal. There were actually a few other contenders, but what got resurrected was the insect-kinden and their world. I set to writing Empire in Black and Gold and, rather than submit that as soon as it was done, I didn't stop until I'd got Salute the Dark down because I knew that I'd not finish it otherwise, if Empire got knocked back.

It was my extreme good fortune that, amongst my submissions I sent the first few chapters of Empire to Mic Cheetham & Co, and a certain Simon Kavanagh who, thereafter, mercilessly badgered the publishing industry on my behalf until he convinced the then-editor of Tor, Peter Lavery, to take me on. The selling point that swung things was that four books were already in the bag and so Tor could turn them out at whatever rate of knots they liked. As they did. Empire hit the shelves in 2008.

I have, this evening, put down the last words of the first draft of Seal of the Worm, the tenth and final volume of Shadows of the Apt.

It has been a long and joyous run. There's still work to do — I need to go read the damn thing now and see whether or not it's turned into unreadable tosh since I wrote it, and it won't see the light of day until around 2014, but even so. Standing at the end of that road, looking back over all of those words, all of those battles and betrayals, twists of fate, all the many characters of the insect-kinden (2), it's a strange feeling.

And yes, I will go back to them. The plan's already there. But for now, who knows? Fresh fields and pastures new.

And yes, this does mean that if I suddenly drop dead now, you still get to finish the series.

(1) /several/all

(2) albeit that, owing to my particular machine-gun approach there are now not nearly so many of them.

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Nerdbroidery

OK — I'm on the final attack run for the last book of the series — everything speeds up at this point, so no time to write. Also working on Super-Unpublishable Project Zeta, several non-kinden shorts and my writing group project. Upshot: Damn all time for proper blog posts.

However:

This is phenomenal :

This is the work of Rene Sears from her Nerdbroidery blog, and I love it beyond words.

More blog stuff soon.

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Book 10 Update and Cabin in the Woods

Soooo, we've got to that hilarious third act section of book 10 where I keep getting these fantastic ideas about stuff I absolutely have to include, only that means I would have to rejig the entire end third of the plot to fit in this, by now, irresistible idea. So, spent considerable time faffing about with my chapter plan today, in the manner of someone performing open heart surgery with a lump hammer. I do use a chapter plan, always have done. Pacing and judging the correct geometry of the plot arc would be difficult for me otherwise, although I know many writers don't pre-plan to the same extent (or possibly at all in some cases — some people can apparently "just write", lucky beggars). During the course of my tinkering today the plot looked dangerously close to ballooning out of control, but I was able to rein it in by the end of the pitstop and get it back on the road with only a minor weight gain. I'm trying very hard not to have the length of the last SOTA book go crazy  - some stuff that I'd ordinarily show in detail is going to have to happen offscreen or the book will become a trilogy of its own (1).

So, aside from finishing one chapter and starting another (just past the 2/3 mark on the first draft now), and also writing about 1,000 words on Super Secret Unpublishable Project Force (2) I went to see Cabin in the Woods, a film that has been Wowed beyond Wow by reviews that are maddeningly unable to talk about the Wow without spoiling the film for you. So, yes, Wow. And I myself am now not going to spoil the Wow, save to say that, as I am not a habitual horror moviegoer, the stuff that scared the bejeezled crap out of me probably wasn't actually all that, on a scale of one to Cannibal Holocaust. The ideas and the thought behind the film, as well as the crazygonuts fantastic third act, make it a definite must see if you've got the nerve though.

Although… and this is a weirdness… I wrote part of that film in a weird and totally non-litigious way. Not actually the part that is the point of why the film is so very interesting, but there is a point where Cabin runs on parallel tracks for just a tiny bit with my own story The Dissipation Club, which I had out in Miskatonic River's Dead But Dreaming 2. So, great minds, y'know (4).

(1) Tad Williams and GRRM have both produced (very good) volumes long enough that they had to be split up for the paperback release. I am waiting for some wit to write something so long that the ppb is in itself a trilogy. That will mark some sort of Mayan Apocalypse of fantasy novel memes, I think.

(2) It's like Mighty Morphing Power Rangers except nobody cares (3)

(3) Sorry, it's like Mighty Morphing Power Rangers except even fewer people care.

(4) Please don't sue, Joss.

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Alt Fiction and further doings

Alt Fiction last weekend — and 2 cons on the trot is a bit wearing on body and soul, especially when I managed to clock a 20 hour day on the Saturday. The early start was the fault of the remarkable time it takes to get from Leeds to Leicester — longer than it does to hit London somehow. The late finish was entirely and unashamedly my fault.

Did a couple of decent panels — the first was "not another f*cking elf" where the four of us had no moderator whatsoever, and ran everything quite satisfactorily as a socialist commune. This explored a lot of good ground on fantasy tropes, and especially the different way that elves and other races are used — we got onto orcs, too. I contended that there was little ground between Tolkien's "orcs" and the lower class "oiks" but Paul Cornell stuck up for Professor T on that one. There was also a suggestion that orcs have now migrated to the noble savage archetype and everyone wants to show how lovely and misunderstood they are, which does seem to be a think with orcs.

Sunday's panel was diversity in fantasy — we managed to cover gender, sexuality and race under the able helming of Mark Charan Newton. As someone pointed out after, we didn't look at disability, which was true and a shame. Still, much was said, and the general conclusion is that the genre is at least having a go at broadening its demographic — both in terms of characters, authors and hopefully readership.

Also got to see some other fun stuff — nice SF panel — "is SF dead", which as was pointed out contrasted nicely with last year's "has SF taken over the world". Next year: "SF has risen from the grave."

On the subject of SF, I would like to think that I have in some small way diversified myself into that sister-genre by getting a (very) short story accepted for the Nature magazine Futures section — this prints brief stories dealing with a speculative treatment of real science, and I'm very chuffed to have something accepted (hint — it wasn't the first time I tried it). No idea what issue it'll be in, but the story is called "21st Century Girl" and more details as and when. I've submitted a few other stories to various anthologies that have been on the hunt, and so crossed fingers for some more shorts news in upcoming months.

Last up: I have now registered formally as an author on Goodreads. This appears to have a kind of forum-like thing in its Q&A sessions, and so I will probably set something like that up. For now I'm busy giving good ratings to all my books. Yes, even that one.

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A Talk with George — Eastercon 2012 part 3

So Saturday really was something of the sort of late night that I (poor tame creature that I am) haven't had since university. However something seriously off about the beds in the place ensured I was up bright and early for the fantasy politics panel (Jared Shurin of Pornokitsch moderating Hail Carriger, David Durham, Jude Roberts — and although my programme doesn't say it, I would swear Juliet McKenna.) This is exactly the sort of panel I like — as panellist or audience, a good nuts and bolts look at a particular aspect of fantasy — mostly in the direction of "why monarchy?" and Nic Clarke (reviewer for Strange Horizons (1)) was kind enough to flag up Shadows of the Apt as an example of varied political systems in the genre. Indeed, the panel covered enough interesting ground that I feel a "politics amongst the insect kinden" sort of post coming up some time soon, possibly in the form of a fake academic document from Collegium like the language piece I did. Language in fantasy came next with "Wench, fetch yon tankard here!" (my editor Bella Pagan moderating Joe Abercrombie, Jane Fenn and David Tallerman(2))  discussing use of archaic quothage and general writing style. David was kind enough to speak up for my fight scenes as, basically "very long, in a good way" and overall it was another good "genre writer's craft" panel.

At 2, after a rather hurried and mostly liquid lunch, we had the Fantasy Clarke Awards. Now these weren't really the Clarke Awards, or not yet. Readers will be aware of those rather august accolades for science fiction, and this panel was a sort of trial run, in which Niall Harrison moderated(/manhandled) judges Nic Clarke, David Hebblethwaite, Erin Horakova, Edward James and Juliett E McKenna (for real this time), as they considered five fantasy works with the same high standard of critical eye that the Clarkes are noted for. Up for grabs were Grimwood's The Fallen Blade, Abercrombie's The Heroes, Oyeyemi's Mr Fox, Elliott's Cold Fire, Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and, to my great delight, Frances Hardinge's Twilight Robbery — a particular favourite of mine. Analysis was erudite, and all the books had their champions, with Joe inching out the rest by a hair to claim the prize. The judges were aware that a single hour's panel was insufficient to do the works justice, but the exercise is hopefully due to be repeated next year (crossed fingers for The Air War maybe?)  and the chief message I carried away is that a wide variety of fantasy books can be considered side by side and given a full and fair consideration.

Next Panel was "You got your robot elf sex in my SF" on the topic of romance in Sci-fi and genre generally (Tanya Brown moderating Gail Carriger, Francis Knight, Adam Roberts and Justina Robson) For pure usefulness in my own writing, this was a cracking panel and it's simply not a topic I've seen discussed and dissected in this sort of detail before. After that I caught Adam Christopher reading a segment from his upcoming Seven Wonders, and then ended up in the bar again. By this time I was starting to come a bit unstuck with two mostly sleepless nights and no natural light for something like 48 hours, and everything was going kind of Fear and Loathing in las Vegas(3), with a distinct feeling of unreality to the entire proceedings. The BSFA awards were particularly surreal, for reasons that other sites have already trodden, but suffice to say that Paul Cornell won the short fiction with his Copenhagen Interpretation, I got to see David Langford (4) when he accepted the non-fiction award for the SF Encyclopaedia with Graham Sleight, and Christopher Priest gave a very elegant acceptance speech after The Islanders won long fiction, which I think to some extent defused the Priest/Clarke contretemps that had been mentioned on a number of panels up to that point.  Nic Clarke then managed to rescue me and got me out of the hotel for a mass Chinese meal.

So far, the closest I had got to achieving goal [3] (the titular Talk with George) had been on Saturday night, when I gave him directions on how to find his own fan party (5). On Sunday evening, though, feeling detached from time and space and quite sozzled, I did at last manage a very pleasant and convivial chat with Mr Martin and his wife on a variety of subjects, some of which I can even remember. I was also bold enough to press on him a copy of Empire in Black and Gold, which he took in good spirits. I will say that, for someone who is arguably the most successful fantasy writer currently on the go, and with the TV business as well, he is a man still very much in touch with his fans and his readers.

OK, wrapping up, Monday was Paul Cornell day, or mostly. I caught some of his interview, but then had to head off for my own panel, "Epic legends of the Hierarchs" on writing big ol' fantasy series — Nic Clarke (6) moderating me, Mr Martin, Sophia McDougall and editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Some interesting talk on logistical problems, maps, plots and the like, and I acquitted myself passably well. After that I did catch Paul C again reading excerpts from his upcoming London Falling (former working title Cops and Monsters) which frankly sounds fantastic — but decidedly a step further into horror territory than I'd thought. Last up before Justina and I got the hell out of Dodge was the closing ceremony, which was mostly given over to thanking the host of people who had made the con happen — and I am quite in awe of the programming, logistics and technical organisation that went into what is essentially an "amateur" event — everything was just about flawless in execution so hats off to the lot of them. Also at the closing ceremony, and something that must be seen to be believed, was this, which I leave to speak for itself.

And we're done, finished the write up just in time to naff orff to Alt Fiction in Leicester on Saturday, so possibly see you there.

(1) Among other things — and though is but new entered into our tale, believe ye me, she hath verily her role to play, before ye ende, to get onto the language in fantasy panel a bit early.

(2) And for some reason I am also thinking Juliet McKenna, although it's surely impossible that she was also here. Sunday was when the precise borders of reality started fraying a bit, although it seems unreasonable that I was seeing phantom Juliet E McKennas where McKennas there were not.

(3) But without the lizards, which was a shame.

(4) David's review column, Critical Hits, in the old White Dwarf magazine, was a huge guide to me in recommended reading when I was younger.

(5) Anyone who knows my sense of direction is welcome to gasp in horror now. He did get there, though, so I must have been having a good day.

(6) If anyone is playing the veteran level Cornell/McKenna/Clarke drinking game you probably want your liver looking at by now.

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A Talk with George — Eastercon 2012 part 2

Blimey, but I make a meal of these writeups. Will try and hurry things along.

Up bright and early to the sort of cooked breakfast that seemed mostly made by people to whom cooking isn't their first language, save for the mushrooms, which were so remarkably good that I can only assume there was one ancient Zen mushroom savant on the kitchen staff. Panel at 10am — "Sufficiently advanced magic" (Marcus Gipps of Gollancz moderating Stephen Deas, Juliet E McKenna, Chris Wooding, Shana Worthing and me) — lots of different viewpoints from people whose worlds had more or less tech, and very different types of magic. Mention of David Brin's The Practice Effect and Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn. Juliett and I are both going similar places with our fiction — she's just finished a cycle of books involving social revolution and the overthrow of a feudal/monarchic system, for example. This clashed with what sounded like a very interesting panel on AI chaired by Paul Cornell.

After that, caught "How Pseudo do you like your Medieval" (Anne C Perry, Jacey Bedford, Anne Lyle, Juliet McKenna (1) and George RR Martin), discussing history and fantasy, followed by another (with, for bonus points, Juliet McKenna and Paul Cornell) on gender parity in convention panels. After that I was able to badger Bella Pagan of Tor into springing for lunch. I made the Wild Cards panel, with Mr Martin introducing two of the newest writers to be invited into the world's longest-running shared world (David Anthony Durham and Paul Cornell) and eventually ended up signing some books, some programmes and an enormous polystyrene monkey.  That evening was the fan party of the Brotherhood Without Banners, Mr M's followers, into which I snuck alongside Joe Abercrombie, Sarah Pinborough and David Durham, and at which a third instance of general [3] fail (see last post) occurred. I did draw some raffle tickets though.

(1) Who was giving Paul Cornell a run for his money in the ubiquity stakes.

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