Laura Anne Gilman's Blog, page 64

A date of note (for me, at least)

June 14th, 1989.

It was a Wednesday.  I believe that it was a sunny day, but not too warm.  I was probably sweating anyway.  I got on the train to come into NYC from NJ, walked over from the PATH station on 34th street to 200 Madison Avenue, on the corner of 35th street, and took the elevator up to the... I don't actually remember what floor.

I walked into the HR department, signed papers, and was escorted to another floor, to meet with my new boss (Neil Nyren, Editor-in-Chief and newly-minted publisher of G.P. Putnam's Sons (the hardcover side of what was then Putnam-Berkley).

Officially today, I have been in the publishing biz (on one side of the desk or another) for twenty-five years.

Which is weird, because I'm pretty sure I'm still in my mid-30's.  Child prodigy, right?

(okay, I was 21.  Close enough)

So yeah. Twenty-five years ago. If you'd told me the path I'd take to get to this point, I probably would have said... "oh, that's AWESOME!"

then.....

and now...

hello I must be going...

Off at Oh Ack Early to Albany, and the SUNY-LA conference, where I will be moderating a panel with the lovely Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner, Chuck Rothman, and Carrie Cuinn.

After which, I will be departing for a Location Undisclosed for a Revisions Mini-Retreat. So I'll see ya all Sunday night....

Be good. Or at least don't leave incriminating evidence.

do me this one thing...

General request out into the world, because this has been bugging me for a while now...

Can we put a kibosh on "if you'll give up your double-whatever latte?" as push to get people to give money elsewhere?  Most of us cut double-whatever lattes out of our budget a long time ago, and the assumptions of spendthriftiness (when I know damn few people who aren't economized to the bone) are really... irritating.
And if a double-whatever latte is what someone has budgeted to get them through the day?  Telling them even by implication that they're selfish gits for needing that is...not really a good motivator for them to do something nice for someone else.  All it does is weigh down the hammer of guilt on someone who might already be barely making it through that day.





this post has been Boomer-approved.

thinky thoughts

After spending a year creating a new world and new characters for SILVER ON THE ROAD, returning to Sylvan investigations, and the world of the Cosa Nostradamus is kind of... interesting, in a shake-up-the-brain way. Because none of you have met Isobel, Matthew or Farron yet. None of you have encountered the boss, or Calls Thunder, or Graciendo - or Flatfoot, bless his pointy little head. They're still entirely mine. And that's nice, but it's also...incomplete.

But coming back to writing Danny and Ellen (and Wren, Sergei, and Pietr, yes, shhh) is less creating than catching up. Because they've already been out in the world. People have reacted to them, claimed them.  And so now I'm seeing them not only as my creations, but yours, too.  Because writer->character->reader is a chemical reaction.  It's alchemy.

You can't remove the author from the work - we created it, we shaped it, we pressed it onto the page. But you can't remove the reader, either. Not once they've gotten their fingerprints all over it.  Because that's when a book really lives - when it doesn't belong to just one person any more.

And now you kind of understand, maybe (and so do I) why every new book's release is such a traumatic moment.  Because we're waiting for that alchemy to happen.

(of course, sometimes you're going for gold and you get silver.  But sometimes you get platinum. Or gold-pressed latinum)

Read in 2014

* means it was on my #TBRin2014 list

9. CLIENT MANUSCRIPT, Unidentified Client
8. *GARMENT OF SHADOWS, Laurie King
7. *THE LIVES OF TAO, Wes Chu
6. THE GOD OF THE HIVE, Laurie King (re-read)
5. SPIRAL PATH, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel (pre-pub)
4. CLIENT MANUSCRIPT, Unidentified Client
3. *EIFELHEIM, Michael Flynn
2. KNOWN DEVIL, Justin Gustainis
1. *INK, Amanda Sun

Better a little late than....well, a lot late?

"Kindness, just then, made her want to break things." And - a few weeks late - the 1st chapter of WORK OF HUNTERS is happening... :-)

(if you didn't support the Kickstarter, you're going to have to waaaaaaaaaaaait to read this. But you can still pick up the first two novellas at Book View Cafe / B&N /Kobo/ Amazon, or in print form from Plus One Press)

This break in the novel is sponsored by short fiction....

So I rarely (never) have playlists (or even listen to music) when I'm writing a novel. For short fiction, though? Almost always. I don't think it through - I rummage in the bin and pull out whatever feels right, and then try to figure out what those choices are telling me about where I'm going to go.

Anyone want to hazard a guess, here?

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Or die for it.

China is attempting to erase this day in their peoples' history.
Remember.
Remember the students who died, and why.

27 days til deadline

comment from my beta-reader, on the most recent section: "the long space between notes in spots in this section is because I forgot I was supposed to be making them. Those are the places where the story just carries me along with it and if this were a paper book, I would be turning pages like mad. "

Okay, maybe I don't entirely hate this book right now.

*goes back to work*

an utterly random and yet really important commercial announcement...

Hey, hey you!  While I'm off doing fantasy-writer deadline writing things, don't forget about my alter-ego.... the new book's out next month!


(which means you have a month to catch up on the first two books, if you haven't already....)