Jim C. Hines's Blog, page 146

Who Fears Death, by Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] won the 2011 World Fantasy Award for best novel and made a number of other award shortlists and “Best of the Year” lists. This is a powerful book, one that looks unflinchingly at issues like rape and genocide, slavery and female circumcision. Unlike many books I’ve read, Okorafor’s approach never felt exploitative; she writes honestly. The book is sometimes brutal and sometimes beautiful and occasionally both at once.

The book is set in post-apocalyptic Africa, and tells the story of Onyesonwu. The bones of Onyesonwu’s story will be familiar to fantasy readers. She is an outsider in her village, marked as a child of violence by her sand-colored hair and lighter skin. She possesses magical powers that she must learn to master. There is a prophecy she hopes to help bring about, one which leads her to leave her home and set off on a quest with her companions.

But Who Fears Death is so much more than a quest story. What impresses me most is that this book never looks away. It never glosses over beauty or ugliness, love or hate. It doesn’t present simple answers, and never shies away from the complexities and contradictions of life. Good things can come from the most evil or brutal acts, while evil and darkness can come from the best intentions.

Okorafor has talked about the genesis of Onyesonwu’s story, some of which is posted on the Amazon listing for the book.

“My father’s passing caused me to think about death, fear, the unknown, sacrifice, destiny and cosmic trickery. Only a week or so after my father’s passing, I read the Washington Post article, We Want to Make a Light Baby: Arab Militiamen in Sudan Said to Use Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing by Emily Wax. I was absolutely infuriated. The storytelling spider in my head started weaving faster. I realized that this article was showing me why the people in my story’s town disliked Onyesonwu and why she was so troubled.”

The result is a book that feels both universal and intimately personal.

The ending was fascinating, and while I’m not going to spoil things by going into details, I’ll say it’s another example of Okorafor refusing to follow the simple, oft-trod paths of the fantasy genre.

I suspect the book would be triggering for some readers due to rape and other violence, but with that disclaimer, I strongly recommend it.

I know a number of you have also read this one, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Campbell Interview: Karen Lord

Today we have the fifth and final interview with the finalists for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. You can read them all by clicking the Campbell Award tag. Please welcome Karen Lord, who writes about trickster spiders and is therefore extra-awesome.

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[image error] 1) In exactly 26 words, who is Karen Lord?

Lover of paradox finding dreams in reality and reality in dreams, freedom in rules and order in chaos and now, as a writer, play in work.

2) Tell us about the kind of fiction you write, and where we can find some of it!

I write speculative fiction, by which I mean fiction that contains elements of science fiction and or fantasy. My debut novel Redemption in Indigo is mainly fantasy. The US edition was published by Small Beer Press and the UK edition by Jo Fletcher Books/Quercus. There is also an audiobook by Recorded Books beautifully narrated by Robin Miles (also on Amazon’s Audible.com, Barnes & Noble, etc.) A list of bookseller and publisher links is available in the sidebar of my website.

My second novel, The Best of All Possible Worlds, is mainly science fiction and it will be published in February 2013 by Del Rey and Jo Fletcher Books.

3) What has been the best moment of your writing career thus far?

Winning the Frank Collymore Literary Award for the second time, two years running. I’d been terrified that the first win, which was for the Redemption in Indigo manuscript, had been a fluke. Hearing my name announced again for The Best of All Possible Worlds was a real ‘this is it’ moment. This is it, this is when I call myself a writer, without excuses or equivocation.

3b) And if you’re comfortable sharing, what was the worst?

There are always challenges, and while there have been one or two bad moments, it’s when several slightly bad moments pile up in a heap that I really stumble. It’s hard to be creative in the face of many small crises happening all at once, even more so when a portion of your work consists of thinking, which can too often resemble doing nothing to the untutored observer.

4) You won’t be at Worldcon this year, which makes us sad. Give us your best, most outlandish and creative excuse for missing the convention…

Sadly, the most outlandish and creative excuse I could give is that I’d be relaxing on a beach, sipping a cocktail and watching the sun sparkling on the waves of the Caribbean Sea. It could happen so easily, and it won’t. I’ll be closed up in my office chasing deadlines and forgetting that the beach even exists, as usual.

5) As a writer, where would you like to be in ten years?

Surprising people, including myself. I’d like to keep challenging myself and improving as a result. I want to try different forms of storytelling, varying the length, the style and the medium. I hope I will always be able to keep the ‘play’ aspect of writing in whatever I do and however long I do it. I think that’s where the core of my creativity lies.

6) A review of REDEMPTION IN INDIGO mentions the presence of trickster spiders. I’m very much pro-trickster spiders! Could you tell us more about these spiders and the other magical characters in the book?

A trickster spider, yes … also a godhorse, a ladybird, a beetle and various other insects! They’re disguises for the real troublemakers. Should we call them magical? They’re hard to explain or understand, certainly, and even harder to predict. Some are playful mites, easily swatted, and others are implacable forces. They belong to that part of the world which lies beyond the ken of our five senses, and at times they like to interfere in the part that we call ‘reality.’ That’s what creates the tension, the complication and the resolution of the story.

More on my Trickster – a nancy story deserves an Anansi character, and mine turns up early in the book – drinking in a bar (why not?), fooling two minor characters (of course!), and then weaving his way lightly in and out of the story until he gets himself tangled up a bit more than he expected.

Friday Stuff

1. I’ll be at the Westland Public Library tomorrow as part of their Local Authors Fair. At 11:00, I’m giving a presentation on “Publishing with the Big Wigs.” Details here.

2. Raechel Henderson has been reviving Eggplant Literary Productions. Raechel was one of the first editors to buy my stuff, so I’m excited to see this. She’s doing a kickstarter for Spellbound, a children’s fantasy magazine. A pledge of $5 earns an electronic sampler that includes my story “Like Father, Like Daughter,” a sequel to my Writers of the Future tale “Blade of the Bunny.”

3. Whedon and the Avengers Cast discuss the need for more women on the team. Thank you calico-reaction for the link. I particularly appreciate Johansson’s comments here.

4. Bechdel: Not Actually a Test. An essay by Rawles Marie Lumumba that nicely articulates some strengths and limitations of the Bechdel Test.

Criticizing our Fandoms

I want to start by thanking people for their contributions to the discussion on Avengers and Black Widow. While I don’t expect or want everyone to agree with me, and I didn’t agree with everything that came up in the comments, you gave me a lot to think about and helped me to refine some of my thoughts and reactions to the film.

That was a weird discussion for me. Again and again, I found myself talking about the bits of the film I found problematic. After a while, I started feeling like I was just hating on a movie I generally loved. (Overall, I’d rank it as one of the best superhero movies I’ve seen.) It started to feel uncomfortable.

I also saw responses that felt less like argument over the points I was making and more like, “HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE JOSS WHEDON???”

I’m not surprised by this. If anything, I’m surprised there wasn’t more of it. But it led to something I feel is important. Namely, the fact that we love a story or its creator does not and should not make it immune from criticism.

I love Doctor Who. I think the show does a lot of things well, particularly in some of the matter-of-fact ways they portray race and sexual orientation. On the other hand, the season six episode “Closing Time” opens up with the tired stereotype of Craig the overwhelmed and clueless father, because as we all know, guys aren’t supposed to be able to care for an infant. That’s the woman’s job!

You could argue that this was about Craig’s character, not a broader statement about men and women and caregiving. Or you could say, “But Doctor Who is awesome Donna Noble saved the whole universe you’re crazy you’re only seeing sexism because you’re looking for it stop inventing problems that don’t exist!”

The former has the potential for discussion. The latter kills discussion and gives a free pass to any problems that crop up in the show.

It’s hard to criticize stuff we love. The cognitive dissonance can get nasty. Am I a bad person for loving something that includes sexism or racism or whatever? If I watch or read it anyway, am I excusing or even supporting those flaws?

I don’t think so … unless we choose to excuse or ignore those flaws.

Joss Whedon has done a lot of things I like and respect. He’s also made choices that leave me banging my head on my desk. Looking at this as an author, I spend a fair amount of time trying to fight things like sexism and sexual violence. That doesn’t give me a free pass, and to this day I continue to make mistakes or trip over my own sexist assumptions.

It’s easy to criticize people and things we don’t like. (Star Wars prequels, anyone?) But I think it’s equally important — probably more important — to be willing to take a critical look at the stuff we love, to accept them as perhaps awesome but also imperfect, and to talk about the warts, too.

What do you think? And how do you reconcile it when a story you love makes that kind of misstep?

See also: How to be a fan of problematic things.

Campbell Interview: Stina Leicht

This is the fourth of my interviews with the finalists for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. You can read all of the interviews by clicking the Campbell Award tag. Today we have author Stina Leicht, whose interview includes the immortal phrase, “…kick Snork ass.”

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1) In exactly 27 words, who is Stina Leicht?

I’m a perky goth with technicolor hair, sometimes known as the acorn of death. I’ve a light and a dark side. “Driven,” “perceptive,” and “serious” also apply.

2) Tell us about the kind of fiction you write, and where we can find some of it!

I write historical urban fantasy with an Irish crime edge. I also enjoy writing science fiction and plain old fantasy. At the moment I’m working on a fantasy series for older teens. You can find my work at your local bookstore as well as Barnes and Noble. My novels are also available online and in electronic format (DRM-free and Kindle) at the Night Shade Books website, IndieBound and Amazon.

3) What has been the best moment of your writing career thus far? (And if you’re comfortable sharing, what was the worst?)

There are a number of great moments. They seem to come in pairs. Two are from 2005 when I attended a writer’s workshop. Jim Minz asked for my first novel manuscript based on reading my short story entry. That same weekend Charles de Lint introduced himself and then asked to read that story. The next two great moments involve Joe Monti. First, when he called to tell me he wanted to be my agent and the second when he called to say he’d sold my first book. This year I’ve been given two major award nominations — being short-listed for a Crawford Award and then being nominated for a Campbell Award.

The worst moment was my first real agent rejection in 2007. We’d been communicating and discussing manuscript changes for a year. Then that first novel manuscript, the one that Jim Minz was interested in, didn’t sell. After that, I wrote the first draft of Of Blood and Honey and the agent promptly lost all interest. At the time, I was convinced that I’d done the best work I’d ever produce, and it still wasn’t good enough. It felt like lightning had struck (with the second short story I’d ever written, no less) and I didn’t think I’d get another chance. Everyone knows lightning doesn’t strike twice. I’d screwed it up. I’m so thankful for that experience as painful as it was. It taught me that there’s always room for improvement. It also taught me that writers have very little control over the outside forces that shove them about. However, they do have one thing that they can control: the quality of their writing. In the end, it’s best to focus on what you can control and not what you can’t. Doing otherwise will drive you insane.

4) Who would win in a fight, Papa Smurf or Spider-man?

Papa Smurf wouldn’t fight Spider-man. Spider-man wears smurf colors and is therefore, an honorary smurf.  Everyone knows smurf doesn’t fight smurf. As for Spider-man, he wouldn’t fight Papa Smurf because he isn’t a member of Spider-man’s rogues gallery. In fact, Papa Smurf and Spider-man would join forces and hire Matt Murdock to file an IP suit against the Snorks because Spider-man knows what it’s like dealing with evil impersonators. If that fails, they would then team together to kick Snork ass.

Or maybe they’d just opt to hang out with Rainbow Brite, listen to The Clash, eat veggie curry and get drunk. You never know.

5) As a writer, where would you like to be in ten years?

I’d like to have produced as many great novels as I can and to have sold every one and for them to be successful and well read. It’d be nice to have had some film options too, but it’s not the be all end all.

6) What drew you to write about Ireland in the 70s for OF BLOOD AND HONEY and AND BLUE SKIES FROM PAIN? What was the biggest challenge?

The Troubles (1968-1994) is a fascinating and utterly tragic time period in Irish history. (Although, there isn’t much in Irish history that can’t be described as tragic.) I’ve always been drawn to stories about ordinary people trapped in horrific circumstances. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I don’t believe reality operates in absolute black and white. Yet, absolute good versus absolute evil is a fantasy trope. That kind of thinking doesn’t work in realistic settings, and I prefer realistic settings. Extreme situations tend to bring out the very best in people as well as the very worst. I guess you can say it’s my way of finding a real situation that fits extreme good versus extreme evil. Again, the real world is far more complicated. But I find it much more moving to read about the ordinary person who is changed into a hero than I am by an already perfect person doing perfect things. Sometimes I wonder why we have that particular fantasy trope. Is it because traditional fantasy relies on older history and older history is often edited to create the black and white picture? I wanted to play with that. The only way to do so was to chose a more recent history. Current events are far too muddled to even attempt the bigger picture. We need distance before that dichotomy starts happening. Also, the British deliberately changed the record of events and got away with it.

We often hear the phrase “History is written by the victors.” It isn’t just a truism. Bloody Sunday (1972) proves it. It was a rare incident in which the finger prints and DNA had yet to be wiped clean. I found it horrifying that so few people outside of the UK had bothered to notice. (Note: I started writing two years before the British apology of 2010.) Everything Sinéad O’Connor got so much flack for ranting about was true. So, Of Blood and Honey was, in many ways, my reaction to that. In addition, there is much Americans can learn from The Troubles. I see no reason we should repeat what the British did. That’s outright stupidity. So, I wanted to draw attention to the similarities. Personally, I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy that addresses difficult topics and makes me think. My hope is that my readers want to think too.

I enjoy music a great deal. It helps me get my head in the right place and time when I write. So, part of my research was what sort of music might Liam like? Punk rock was born in 1976. As I saw it, punk would appeal to him. Liam is, in many ways, the embodiment of Irish rage. Punk music is a great outlet for anger. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that punk was a factor in Northern Ireland and not in the way I (as an American) would have thought. Kids from both sides of the wall came together to rebel against the extremist politics and violence. They used punk as a means for peace. Outside of Northern Ireland, punk lasted nine months. I loved that. Who wouldn’t? Again, it’s something that very few Americans are aware of. So, when I sat down to write And Blue Skies from Pain I decided to bring that aspect into the story.

As if writing about a place you’ve never been wasn’t challenge enough, the fact that I’d chosen to write about a foreign culture that I had no connection with was pretty difficult. However, I’d say the biggest challenge was the research. The established record had been tampered with. That meant not only gathering all the information I could, it meant having to discern the truth of, as well as the motivations behind, its contents. It meant gathering more than one account of events — checking and triple checking. It meant having locally written materials shipped to me because I wouldn’t have any other access. It made interviewing at least one person who’d lived through The Troubles a necessity. Frankly, I had all the problems of a non-fiction writer. Also, I knew I had a hard sell on my hands. I had to earn that setting with all my might. Sloppiness just wasn’t an option.

Oh, and let me just add that it was more than a little bit frightening ordering things like the “Green Book” (the IRA’s old handbook) and Cage Eleven by Gerry Adams online during the Bush era. [shudder]

Black Widow and Power

I’ve been thinking more about Avengers, particularly about Black Widow. I liked her character, but something wasn’t sitting quite right. It wasn’t until I read cleolinda’s post on LJ that things started to click into place for me.

There be minor spoilers ahead…

[image error]When we first see Black Widow’s character, she’s captured, tied up, and being interrogated by nameless Russians. We see the Standard Villain Torture Kit waiting on a nearby tray. But when SHIELD calls, Black Widow goes from helpless prisoner to fully in control in an eyeblink. By allowing her captors to see her as weak and vulnerable, she got them to tell her what she needed to know. It’s set up as a reversal of expectations: the men expect the woman to be powerless, and she does a masterful job of turning that against them. She was in control the whole time, and you know it.

So far, so good. I liked the scene. I also liked the way it set up Black Widow’s later confrontation with Loki on the Helicarrier. Once again, Black Widow allows a man to play on her apparent vulnerabilities and weakness, and in doing so, tricks him into admitting his plan.

But this time, as she turns away, you realize the vulnerability wasn’t faked. She wasn’t in control the same way she was in that earlier scene. Loki got to her. You see it in her expression, and you see it again later.

Some of what bugs me is the intersection of Black Widow being both the only female Avenger and the only one to use her vulnerability as a weapon like that. In a way, it feels like a subversion of sexism, since she’s using her targets’ expectations against them. But it also feels seductive in a way that disturbs me — in the case of Loki, “I’m going to let you paw all over my very real pain so I can get the answers I need.”

And look at the way Loki treats her. He rips into her more viciously than he does anyone else in the film, including his own brother. That level of scorn and loathing is reserved for Black Widow alone — for the woman who dares to be as powerful as the men. He also — and I missed this in the theater — calls her a “mewling quim.”

I wasn’t familiar with that particular verbal assault. I believe the modern U.S. equivalent would be “whining c**t,” making it the most hateful and sexist insult in the entire film.

All right, so Loki is an asshole. But then I thought back to when Black Widow went to recruit Bruce Banner. Banner was calm and cool, except for one moment when he slammed the table and shouted something like, “Stop lying!”

Black Widow jumped back, visibly shaken. Banner immediately calmed down, saying it was just a test to see how she’d respond. He was fully in control, of himself, and of the situation. He learned she didn’t come alone, and that he’s completely surrounded by SHIELD agents. I.e., he learned what he wanted to know.

Yet the way he did it resonates with Loki’s treatment of Black Widow later on. He lashed out in a way we never see directed at men, and in that moment, everyone knew exactly who had the power and who didn’t.

I’m certain some people will read this and say I’m overthinking, or that I’m reading too much into it. To be clear, I loved this movie. And I liked Black Widow’s character a lot. She’s capable, competent, and kicks plenty of bad guy ass. However…

The only female Avenger is sent in to use her vulnerability as a weapon of interrogation.
There are at least two scenes that feel like she’s being “put in her place” by a more powerful man.
The phase “mewling quim” was utterly unnecessary and not at all in keeping with the rest of the dialogue, so why it used?

I find this problematic.

Comments and discussion are welcome, as always.

Avengers Discussion and Ann Arbor Event

Tonight at 7 p.m. I’ll be joining Emmy Jackson, Bethany Grenier, and Gary W. Olson at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor for reading, Q&A, and signing of books.

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Like so many others, I saw Avengers this weekend. Short version: I liked it. A lot. I don’t read comics, so I can’t say what they did or didn’t change from the canonical Marvel universe, but overall I thought it was a wonderfully fun story. My inner seven-year-old was thrilled. So was my actual seven-year-old, for that matter. (He particularly liked the Hulk.)

And now, on with the spoilerific specifics…

Loved Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. It was almost too much sexy intelligence in one room.

Loved Black Widow’s introduction scene, and her interrogation style (which comes back in a wonderful way with Loki later on).

My son’s favorite moment was after Thor and the Hulk finish taking down an alien ship, and the Hulk casually slugs Thor, sending him flying.

My favorite bit was probably Loki’s monologue to the Hulk … and the interruption thereof. “Puny god” indeed. Loved the Hulk’s comic timing. The green guy might not have had great standalone films (though I thought the Ed Norton movie was pretty good), but he was perfect in this one.

I liked finally seeing Nick Fury/Samuel Jackson in action.

The only moment I remember my suspension of disbelief breaking was Hawkeye shooting an arrow into a computer terminal so precisely that the various pins lined up with the terminal in order to hack the system.

Though the “Loki’s mind control can be broken by hitting you in the head” bit was a little too convenient as well.

Such lovely, lovely snark all around.

The final post-credits scene was just fun.

I never really felt like any of our heroes were in genuine danger. Tony’s heavily-telegraphed potential sacrifice at the end was nice and all, but you knew perfectly well he’d survive. The world was at risk, yes. The heroes, not so much. Heck, most of them are already signed up for various sequels.

I have no idea if Agent Coulson is really dead or not. I expected to see him in one of the post-credits scenes. It would certainly be in character for Joss Whedon to kill him off, but it also felt like a setup… What do you think?

I really wish they’d done more with Pepper Potts’ character. She had a fun exchange with Tony Stark in the beginning, but for the most part, she felt like generic off-screen love interest. In such a male-dominated film, it struck me as a missed opportunity to have another active female character, particularly given that the end of the film took place at Stark Tower.

Overall though, I loved it. Major kudos to Marvel for such an ambitious, long-term project. More please.

For everyone else who’s seen it, what did you think? I haven’t had much of a chance to get all geeky and talk about the film, and I’d like to remedy that now…

Campbell Interview: E. Lily Yu

Welcome to the third of my interviews with the finalists for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. You can read all of the interviews by clicking the Campbell Award tag. Today’s author is E. Lily Yu, who is also on the Hugo ballot for Best Short Story.

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1) In exactly 21 words, who is E. Lily Yu?

A tetchy paper caterpillar with teeth. That’s all. And I’ve got the scrappiest cat and purdiest sister east of the Mississippi.

2) Tell us about the kind of fiction you write, and where we can find some of it!

The vast majority of my work is on my hard drive, and you can find it by hacking or stealing my laptop. For the less larcenously inclined, I have two stories in The Kenyon Review Online, here and here, one stock-market fairy tale in the May/June issue of Cicada, and half a novel on my hard drive that I’m hoping to finish this summer. I have several stories circulating and picking up rejection slips, and others in various drafts, which might or might not appear soon.

3) What has been the best moment of your writing career thus far? And if you’re comfortable sharing, what was the worst?

There’s nothing like the first time you have something published. I was fifteen, heading home on the school bus on afternoon in March, when I checked my rarely-touched Nokia and found a message from over a month ago, telling me my entry had won The Writer’s 69-word story contest and that I needed to call them to get my $50. The check arrived, the story was put online, and my parents, lovely people, were happy for me but pointed out that this was not a good way to make a living. There. I just made both of us feel old.

I was rejected from my university’s creative writing program almost exactly a year ago. That’s small beer, though.

4) Which is better: yo-yos or juggling? Defend your answer!

Juggling, hands down. You can’t set yo-yos on fire and perform the same tricks with any real panache. Neither can the common yo-yo stand against a juggler’s clubs, knives, and torches. If you mean diabolos, though, which under the right conditions are lethal spinning wheels of death, complete with nunchuks, then I’d have to abstain.

5) As a writer, where would you like to be in ten years?

Snoozing on a towel beside a small pile of elegantly bound books that I’m proud of having written, amid the wreckage that is the draft of the next one, with wavelets slinking up the white sand to just below my toes.

More realistically, it would be nice to have access to a good public library system, perhaps also access to a very good university library system, and health insurance. I’ve just started sending out job applications and thinking about these things, and what I’m thinking isn’t too good.

6) You’ve also been nominated for the Best Short Story Hugo for “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees.” Congratulations! I love the voice and imagery of those opening paragraphs. How long did it take before you felt the story was ready?

That’s kind of you. I had about four full drafts of the story between December and the third week of March, when Clarkesworld accepted it, and I was tinkering with it up until the last minute. There was one clunky sentence that I was deeply unhappy with, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. The deadline kept crawling nearer. I was biting through the caps of my pens. Three days before it was published, I came up with a better sentence. The audio had been recorded by that time, though, so if you try to listen to the story while following the text, you’ll notice that the first paragraph is different in each version. Escape Pod is just about to podcast the story again, this time including the change.

7) So what do you do when you’re not writing fiction?

Poetry. Plays. Actually, the last year has been all schoolwork and applications. Two academic theses: one submitted, one I’m struggling with. The deadline’s been extended to three days after the Nebulas. I’ve put everything else aside to work on those.

Fundraiser Results

My thanks to everyone who participated in the Rape Crisis Center Fundraiser. We raised a total of $3573, more than double what we raised last year. That’s wonderful and amazing. Thank you so much!!!

Thanks also to everyone who donated prizes. I’m in the process of drawing names and contacting winners, and will be working with the donors to arrange delivery of said prizes as quickly as I can.

And I spent all of last night finishing up page proofs for Libriomancer, so that’s all I’ve got for today…

Campbell Interview: Mur Lafferty

Welcome to the second of my interviews with this year’s finalists for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. You can read them all by clicking the Campbell Award tag. For now, meet Mur Lafferty: author, podcaster, and owner of a very cool hat.

1) In exactly 25 words, who is Mur Lafferty?

A carbon-based life form, podcaster, editor, and writer (obviously). I like martial arts, gin, and dogs. Contrary to popular belief, I do own dresses.

2) Tell us about the kind of fiction you write, and where we can find some of it.

All of my fiction can be found linked at Murverse.com - I wrote superhero satire (Playing For Keeps, Swarm, 2008), afterlife adventures - aka Bangsian Fantasy - (The Afterlife Series), lunar gladiatorial adventures (Marco and the Red Granny, Hub, 2010), and zombie audio dramas (The Takeover). I also write for scripts for others (The Leviathan Chronicles, audio, and Nanovor, animation scripts), have a history of writing for role-playing games, and have a love of writing Christmas short stories. I have a book (title TBA) coming out in 2013 from Orbit concerning a woman working on a travel book for monsters.

ETA: Shortly after this interview went live, Mur announced that she would be giving her fiction away for free for the next two months. Details are here.

3) What has been the best moment of your writing career thus far? (And if you’re comfortable sharing, what was the worst?)

Gosh. One best moment? Campbell nomination? The phone call from Orbit? Those two tie, I think.

Worst moment was coming to terms that my afterlife series, which is by far my listeners’ favorite of my work, would not find a home with a publisher, and I’d have to be content with it living in audio and epub.

4) If you had to incorporate that wonderful red hat into a superhero costume, what would your superhero name and powers be?

OMEGA MUR - a mild-mannered woman who, upon imbibing caffeine, loses all fear and gains super strength and rage. A child of Daredevil and the Hulk, if those two wacky kids would ever get together.

5) As a writer, where would you like to be in ten years?

One thing I’ve discovered is a love of writing for many different media. I’d love to be writing books, but also scripts for web series, and still putting out original, episodic podcast fiction. Of course, being a best-seller, Hugo-winner, and “making enough money to live off of” are nice goals too.

6) You run or work with several different podcasting sites (Escape Pod, I Should Be Writing, Princess Scientist’s Book Club, and the Angry Robot Books Podcast), and have podcast at least one of your novels as well. What is it that draws you to podcasting?

I was drawn to podcasting in the beginning, 2004, when it was a new medium - that excited me. I wanted to play with all the new ways of storytelling. I didn’t need NPR to publish essays, I didn’t need the BBC or a US radio station to do an audio drama, and I didn’t need a publisher to make an audiobook. I was able to build an audience for my work well before I got a book deal. Podcasting has been instrumental for building my career, when I never expected it to.

7) For anyone who might want to get into podcasting, what resources would you recommend, and what’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about doing a successful podcast?

Microphone: Start small. A  $20 mic from the store will do just fine.

Software: Windows - Audacity is free. Mac - Garageband is free. (Aside - Audacity is also available for the Mac, but crashed a lot for me, so I got Amadeus Pro, which is quite affordable and much like a stable Audacity.)

Host: Libsyn.com - The first podcast host, designed to handle the greater demands of large audio and video files.

Other resources: Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, by Lafferty/Walch (Come on, I had to!), Podcasting for Dummies, by Morris/Terra

Advice: Interact with your listeners. Give them a place to contact/follow you and respond to them; when your voice is in peoples’ ears, it creates an intimacy not found in providing text.