David Anthony Durham's Blog, page 57

IBT Delivered

Just a small note as I exhale...

Today, I delivered my three part story about my character, Infamous Black Tongue, to George RR Martin and Melinda Snodgrass for the upcoming Wild Cards novel, Fort Freak. I'm kinda pleased with it: glad to be done and to deliver on exactly the assigned delivery date, and also feeling pretty good about what I came up with. It's still me, but it's me writing in a modern world for once, with a little bit of humor, quite a few scales and tales, some gang fights, ja...

Babel Clash

Just wanted to mention that some of my blogging this week is happening over at Babel Clash, the Borders Scifi blog. I'm a guest for the next week or so, along with Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Tremblay and Annalee Newitz. Jeff, Paul and me are reading in Boston next Friday, and this is part of the build up to that.

The blog is HERE. Pop over and say hi!

The Guardian on Waterstone's

Interesting article in the Guardian. It's about book selling in Britain. There are, of course, a lot of parallels to the US industry. This is particularly interesting for me as I have fond memories of Waterstones. I wrote a bit of Pride of Carthage in one on Prince's Street in Edinburgh...

The article is HERE. Lots of comments follow it, and by no means do they all commiserate with the author!

Boskone

I just got my first invite to Boskone, the regional sci-fi conference based in Boston. I've never been, but I'd been thinking I was going to go, especially since I'm now based in Massachusetts. So the invitation is very welcome. I'm thinking I'll be there. It's on March 12-14th, at the Westin Waterfront.

My friend John Picacio, artist extraordinaire, will be on hand as one of the guests of honor. Alastair Reynolds will be there as the writer guest of honor. Looks like Lois Mcmaster Bujold will...

A Revelation

I had one. I've been writing, folks, working on Book Three. I've a long, long way to go still. I mean a long way to go. But that's not anything I haven't budgeted for. I'm still planning on delivering this one with about the same gap as I had between books 1 and 2. Consistency, that's what I'm going for. But in this case that also means I'm in the fairly early stages of cranking this one out.

Thing is, I've been living with something of a conundrum for about the last nine months. I knew one th...

Amazon's Top 10 Books of 2009: Science Fiction & Fantasy

Amazon.com just released it's editor's choices of the top books of the year. (Credit goes to io9 for alerting me to this.) Within that, they have a list featuring their top SFF books. Guess who's on it?

Well... Ah... Cherie Priest. (Lovely person with what sounds like a terrific book.) Catherynne Valente. (Wonderful.) Jonathan Strahan. (Very nice chap.) Caitlin R. Kiernan. (Don't know her, but I'm sure she's lovely.) Peter Straub (Just heard him on NPR, sounds cool enough.)

Ah... and David Anth...

Thank You Mr. Riordan

My kids have gone mad. They've turned into glazed-eyed zombies. They've shut out the physical world and ventured into a realm in which shouts, prods, invitations to dine and threats of punishment cannot reach them. What's caused this?

Rick Riordan and his creation Percy Jackson. They're the culprits. Because of them my kids have spent the last three weeks inhaling tales of Greek gods run amuck in the modern world. It's been wild, and very cool to watch.

My kids have always had books read to the...

TOL Available At Audible!

Yes, it's finally there. The Other Lands is now downloadable at Audible.com! I'm very happy about this, as it seems like a lot of the folks that enjoyed The War With The Mein did so by listening to Dick Hill's narration. They can now continue to do that with the new book!

If you're interested, please check it out HERE.

The Type Of Things That Keep Me Teaching...

I was supposed to be cutting down on the teaching. More time spent writing, getting Book 3 done, Jedi-Knight training, stuff like that. Leaving the tenure track has helped that a bit, but then again... I've continued to teach at the Stonecoast MFA Program. (What can I say? They let me teach pop fiction!) And then I got this offer to teach a fiction writing course at Hampshire College, topic of my choice. I came up with a focus on reading and writing from other cultural/ethnic perspectives. Ki...

The Type Of Things That Keep Me Teaching..

I was supposed to be cutting down on the teaching. More time spent writing, getting Book 3 done, Jedi-Knight training, stuff like that. Leaving the tenure track has helped that a bit, but then again... I've continued to teach at the Stonecoast MFA Program. (What can I say? They let me teach pop fiction!) And then I got this offer to teach a fiction writing course at Hampshire College, topic of my choice. I came up with a focus on reading and writing from other cultural/ethnic perspectives. Ki...