Laura Anne Gilman's Blog, page 65

Writerbrain and writer-recommendations

The book I'm working on now is studded with small details - things that may or may not reflect back into the reader, and will probably be overlooked or ignored by most, but were, yes, placed there deliberately, the way a garden architect chooses what trellis to climb each rose on. I do this sort of thing all the time in my short fiction, but never so consciously in a longer piece

(aside: and that just made me realize why there's been no short fiction written this year: this book is scratching both my itches.  Huh.)

But whenever I think I might be too subtle in a reference, or layering things too deeply for anyone save me to notice, I go back to this quote in the Black Gates review of HEART OF FIRE:

"Gilman’s fairyland bears a remarkable resemblance to the chilling otherworld of C.L. Moore’s great pulp sword and sorcery classic story 'Black God’s Kiss.'”

And then I think, "okay, odds are good that SOMEONE other than me will see it, and that makes it worth doing.

And if you've never read "Black God's Kiss," then I highly recommend it to you.  I'm not much of the "you MUST read the classics" school - some classics are best respected at a distance - but this one, yeah. I did not realize how much C.L. Moore had influenced my own writing until I went back and reread her a few years ago.  It's like seeing a picture of a distant relative, and recognizing the vaguely familiar frame of the eyes, or the fold of an ear...

(my copy is part of JIREL OF JOIRY, published by Ace back in 1977.  There is not a soul I love enough to loan this book out to.  If you want to read it, you have to come here and sit on the sofa and read it where I can keep an eye on you.)

old friends

If you were online in SF-social areas today, you know that Jay Lake lost his six+ year standoff with cancer.  I've been trying to come up with a blog post that would be meaningful, would say something about Jay and his impact on so many lives, those of us who knew him, and those who only knew his words. But everything feels trite, and I said my farewells to him already, before the fact.  The immense exhaustion he - and his family - felt at the end, I can only imagine, and sympathize with. But Jay would not give an inch until death took the mile.

Two things I'll always remember about Jay: 1) the slyly gleeful look on his face before he dropped a bon mot into the conversation, and 2) the advice he gave when I was stressing about a new, risky project - "fuck that, just do it."

Joy and determination. Two pretty good legacies to leave, I think.



(Jay was militant about not believing in god, or any 'afterlife' he didn't have decent evidence for, and so I'd ask that anyone commenting here refrain from even the most heartfelt of heavenly/better place platitudes. It feels disrespectful, somehow, to me.) 

That was the week that was(n't)

I have spent the past few days locked in the windowless Inner Circle of Hell that is the Javits Center, helping man the SFWA booth for Book Expo America.

And yes the reading horde (comprising of bloggers, librarians, publishers, various and sundry publishing-related folk, and General Readers) were unleashed upon us, and lo we did our best to feed the horde with free books, samplers, bookmarks, signings, and stickers. And they did, on the appointed hour, allow us to escape, wherein several of us headed for the traditional (or at least habitual) post-BEA Scotch.

And now I am dead.

I love you all but I don't want to talk to anyone for at least 24 hours and I'm not going to smile or at least 48 more.

Meanwhile, work continues. I spent half an hour, last session, fixing two paragraphs. They're incredibly important paragraphs, and I'm still not sure they're sharp and layered enough, but for now it will do.

My favorite line from that section: "The wind whistles me up and down, and it tells me of the crackling of bones.”

Some days, this book fills me with despair, that it will never match my intentions. And then some days it glows darkly on the page, and I think I might just get it...

Tuesday-like-Monday

Yesterday I tried to put all the crap to the side, and enjoy time with friends (and a well-smoked slab of brisket). And it was lovely, but... I came home and had emotional-stress-related insomnia.
Because everything that happened this weekend hit some of my less-traumatic but still-present buttons, just as they did most every woman I know.

Because we know all too well it could just as easily have been us.

So now I'm going on three hours of sleep. My eyes feel like sandpaper and my brain's jello. BEA begins on Thursday. I have emails to send I don't want to write, projects I need to finish, and chapters to revise.

If I were the sort to drink Irish coffee for breakfast, this would be a day I would do so.

Hope your Tuesday-like-Monday (or ordinary Tuesday, for those outside the US) is going better.

C.E. Murphy on The Hachette Job

I've been working on my own post about this, to follow-up on my earlier one, but Catie pretty much sums it up.  So: ditto for DOGHOUSE, which will be out in July. If you can order Ms. Kornetsky's latest via a not-Amazon means, consider this my wish that you would.

And I WILL be doing an update on this, in my own words, RSN.
----------------

Originally posted by mizkit at The Hachette Job

For those of you who have not been following along–and frankly, I have no expectation that the larger percentage of my readers will be, because it’s a topic that at best affects them from a distance–Amazon is trying to force publishing house Hachette to agree to more-favorable-to-Amazon contract clauses.

They’re doing this by:

- not listing Hachette titles

- setting Hatchette title prices at (sometimes extraordinarily) high price points to discourage readers from buying them

- setting shipping dates for already-available Hachette books at 3-5 weeks out, instead of making them immediately available

- suggesting other books when readers search for Hachette titles

This is not the first time Amazon has done this. (B&N has been known to do it too, for that matter.) And it’s not the first time that publishing houses and writers are the ones being hurt. Lilith Saint Crow spells out how writers are being hurt, and Harry Connolly writes about Amazon and an eye-opening experiment he ran regarding sales.

I hate this. I really do. Amazon is the biggest game in town; like Harry, 90% of my sales from self-published material comes through it. But for my traditionally published stuff, I have a favor to ask.

Don’t order SHAMAN RISES from Amazon if you’ve got another choice. A local bookstore is best by far: go in (or call) and ask them to pre-order you a copy of SHAMAN RISES. Or B&N, whether online or local to you, if there’s not an independent nearby.

And then–especially if you’ve cancelled an Amazon pre-order to do any of this–email Amazon and tell them you’re not ordering this book (or some other book, if you’re not looking forward to SHAMAN RISES (*sob*)) because their predatory approach toward publishing houses and writers gives you sufficient incentive to shop elsewhere. If enough people change their buying habits, even briefly, and tell Amazon why, it might get their attention.

Let me say this, though: if Amazon is your best available choice for whatever reason, please understand that I am *not* going to hold it against you if you keep shopping through them. It’s not like I’m going to stop *selling* through them, and I like to think I’m not quite that hypocritical. So really, truly: this is not a post to censure anyone ordering through Amazon. It’s just–if you can, this once, stick it to ‘em.

(but for god’s sake pre-order SHAMAN RISES one way or another so the first week numbers are bright and shiny! O.O :))

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(x-posted from The Essential Kit)

#YesAllWomen

People in various social media are throwing words like “mentally ill” around, with the regard to the UCSB killings, making it a singular (dismissible) issue, rather than addressing the underlying social issues of WHY he went after those women. They're saying "oh but" and "Actually," and generally trying to talk over the real problem:

that this isn't the first time a man has killed a woman for saying no. It's not even the first (second, third, tenth) time a man has killed women he didn't know, because another woman said no.  Was the shooter mentally ill?  Generally, mentally healthy people don't go on shooting rampages.  But every time you say "well, he was ill" you're also saying "not my fault, not my responsibility, not my problem."

Except it's every woman's problem.  So your dismissal is a dismissal of our right to safety.

Yeah, I get it: it’s easier to say “the guy was mentally ill” rather than face the real issue. The real issue makes a lot of men uncomfortable (see: "not all men"). Guess what? We don’t care if the discussion makes you uncomfortable. No woman should be afraid to say no. No-one should die because a man couldn’t handle “no.”

If violence against women is a sign of mental illness, then this world has an epidemic. And it needs to be treated. Now. Better: yesterday.

Colorado Whimsy

The rocks are frogs.

The trees are watching.

The air’s kinda thin up here.

But I’m not wrong.

and part two of the research road trip report is up...

over at Book View Cafe, with a bonus research question for y'all to respond to...



Remember: blog views are love. Views and comments are love with a side of chocolate. :-)

Linking you elsewhere...

Over at Book View Cafe, I talk about travel and research, in "There and Back Again, or "Why are you here?"

You laugh because there's nothing else you can do

So, L.A. Kornetsky now has a FOURTH editor, to go with the fourth book in the series...



At this point I'm more laughing than anything else, because what else CAN I do?