Blake Charlton's Blog, page 7

World Fantasy 2010 Pregame Report

Dearly Beloved YOU GUYS:

The annual, ritualistic gathering of lovers and writers of fantasy literature is upon us! Last year's ritualistic gathering in my hometown was grand, as documented here, here, and here. This year promises to be just as good. Check out the 2010 website and its official schedule [PDF].

This year will be the first I attend with a book on the shelves, as such it's going to be crowded with business meetings, interviews, panels. However, if you're going to be there, I'd love to meet up.

If you'd like to see me in 'official' capacity drop by the "Continued Viability of Epic Fantasy" panel on Saturday, 11AM. Here's the descriptor "How has this evolved in the 50-plus years since Tolkien hit it big?" It features the marvelous David B. Coe, John Fultz, David Drake, Freda Warrington, and Yours Truly.  David's moderating, and if he's got half the wit he had at last WFC, it should be a great time.

If you're more into parties than panels, drop by the Tor Party Saturday night (location TBD) to hang out with Tor authors and editors. I'll likely get there around 9ish.

If informal socializing is more your style, be sure to come up and say in the hotel bar. I'm usually camped out there during the day with my laptop but am always looking to close the thing to chat with folks. I'm ussually camped out there at night too, sans laptop.

I regularly check twitter with whatever hashtag the con is using (#wfc I imagine or maybe #wfc2010?)

Hope to see you there!

Todd Lockwood's Beautiful SPELLBOUND Cover Art

I'm very proud to introduce Spellbound's breathtaking US cover. Art by the amazing Todd Lockwood, art direction by the super talented Irene Gallo. For a description about the process of making the cover and how it fits into the story of Spellbound click through to my Tor.com post on the art.

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Read Like No One is Watching

Got a crosspost for you today. I was invited to contribute a mini-essay for the blog of the the "Everybody's Reading" festival in Leicester, UK. Given that Spellwright is now entering its *fourth* day on the UK's Top 100 Bestselling Kindle Books, I jumped at the chance to give something back to the isle across the ocean that gave us the Beatles and bangers & mash. You can check out the original post here. Also, if your anywhere near the midlands, checkout the festival and see about getting involved!

Read Like No One is Watching

Watch young children dance to music and you will notice that almost all of them do so to the beat. Maybe they're graceless or even clumsy, but they've got an intuition about music and movement. Watch a bunch of adults and…not so pretty. What gives? How did so many of us lose the beat? Probably no one knows, but I blame puberty. Somewhere in there, we started to care more about how we looked when dancing than about the dance itself. Like you, I have a two word reaction to this; the second word being "THAT!"

There's a famous, if slightly precious, line about 'dance like no one's watching.' I believe in that famous, if slightly precious, line. Passionately. I certainly wasn't dancing on beat until I stopped caring what others thought. And even if I am off beat now and then, I don't have to worry about anything getting between the music and me. I propose we apply the same idea to reading. I hear a lot of bellyaching these days about young people not reading enough or nobody reading enough or everyone reading only about wizards in boarding schools or bodice ripping romances or vampires who glitter in the moonlight. Forget that noise. Listen to any and every kind of music that makes you dance; pick up any and every kind of book that makes you read.

But I'm biased. I didn't learn to read until I was old enough to start dancing off beat. Why not? Mostly for the same reason that the words "dough," "bough," "enough," and let us not forget "hiccough" don't rhyme; which is to say, I'm severely dyslexic and my brain has issues with English's "loose" orthography. I wouldn't have this problem had I been born in Italy. There are one third as many dyslexics per capita in Italy as there are in English speaking countries. There are no spelling bees in Italy or most any country with a logical orthography for its language.

So I still wasn't reading fluently at thirteen, and all the adults had opinions about what a young man should and shouldn't be reading. The classroom classics were recommended, paperbacks with dragons and spaceships on the cover were definitely not.  Thing was, The Catcher in the Rye or Anne of Green Gables (great as they are in their own right) weren't inspiring me. It wasn't until I stopped caring what others thought of my reading that things began to change. I started sneaking science fiction and fantasy books into special ed study hall to surreptitiously read them under the desk; doing so made me—a few decades later—both a medical student and a novelist. I believe there are enough barriers to reading today that the last thing we need weighing upon us is the sensation that we might be judged for what we read. So I salute the Everyone's Reading festival and hope that this autumn everyone will be reading like no one is watching.

The Student-Doctor Newbie-Author Shuffle

Dearly Beloved Y'All,

Apologies for the blog abuse. A sudden turn of events a few weeks back has made things pretty hectic. Here's the 411.

The line edits for Spellbound started coming in and are looking good, correcting smaller errors and adding polishing touches. Nothing major. Well, at least not yet. My editor's been sending the manuscripts in hundred page chunks as he goes. We'll see what he thinks at the end.

The first round of edits on a manuscript always makes me blue. It seems among my g...

Spellwright's First European Covers: "De Taal der Spreuken" & "Czaropis"

The one thing—if you trust in the wisdom of proverbs—we are not supposed to judge a book by is the one thing we most often use to judge a book. Perhaps this has become more true as the number of books proliferates. I've been thinking about cover art a lot as the Tor's art department has collaborated with the amazing Todd Lockwood on cover art for Spellbound.

Authors have very little, almost no, control over covers. Though anxiety provoking, this is probably this is a good thing. Covers are...

Why You Should Be Excited about Spellbound

About a week ago I turned in a more polished draft of Spellbound to the Editing Powers that Be. I now forge on to Disjunction and get back to my medical research day job until the edit letter comes back. In the meantime, I'm really excited about Spellbound.  Here are a few, non-spoiling reasons why you should be too:

A female physician protagonist who might best be described as genetically engendered love child between House MD, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, and Locke Lamora.Airships made of...

Guerilla Reading in *Boston* Next Thursday!

It never rains but it pours here in the balmy tropical island of Boston.  After setting up this Saturday's event in the wildness of Manhattan, I've gotten the green light to put together a reading up here in where the palm trees sway.  This event will take place in the cloud forest known as Pandemonium Books & Games, about which I've heard wonderful things. Please stop by to have a copy of Spellwright signed, hear a preview of Spellbound, and meet the friendly natives of Pandemonium.

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Guerilla Reading in *NYC* this Saturday!

Dearly Beloved You All,

This weekend, I've decided to leave palm-tree infested Boston for the rugged boreal forest that is Greater New York. I hear the Queens wood elk can been seen this time of year, along with the Yonkers moose, the Lower East Side Woodrat, and the tight-pantsed Williamsburg hipster.

I also have heard that there's a bumping SFF community in the NYC forest and that putting together a reading amid the evergreens could be fun. So tuck in your flannel, pull up your suspenders...

Guerilla Reading in NYC this Saturday!

Dearly Beloved You All,

This weekend, I've decided to leave palm-tree infested Boston for the rugged boreal forest that is Greater New York. I hear the Queens wood elk can been seen this time of year, along with the Yonkers moose, the Lower East Side Woodrat, and the tight-pantsed Williamsburg hipster.

I also have heard that there's a bumping SFF community in the NYC forest and that putting together a reading amid the evergreens could be fun. So tuck in your flannel, pull up your suspenders...

Books are for Girls?

Dearly Beloved YOU GUYS:

In my hometown there was a genre bookseller named Future Fantasy. Small store, off the beaten path, beside a coin collector and a funky, old taquería. When I finally learned how to read at thirteen, I used watch their author signing schedule and bike my fantasy paperbacks over to get signed by the likes of Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, and Robin Hobb. The booksellers, noticing what I read, would point me toward other books. Recently I had cause to think back to who was ...