Sue Burke's Blog, page 33
November 6, 2019
Giveaway reminder and updates for ‘Interference’
Reminder: Goodreads is hosting a giveaway of 20 copies of Interference. Enter here before November 14.
Not sure if you’ll like the book? You can read the first chapter here. You can hear a preview of the audiobook here. You can also read a few reviews at Goodreads.
Ready to buy? Links to online and bookstore outlets for the hardcover, ebook, and digital audio are here.
Want to meet me? I’ll be at Windycon, a Chicago science fiction convention, on November 15, 16, and 17, at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center, 70 Yorktown Center, Lombard, IL. On Saturday, I’ll be participating in the Writer’s Workshop in the morning; at a reading at noon; on the panel “Talking to Little Green Men (Alien Languages)” at 1 p.m.; and autographing at 2 p.m. The rest of the weekend I’ll be wandering around more or less aimlessly. Come say hi.
I’ll be at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, MN, on Thursday, November 21, at 7:00 p.m. It will be Sci-Fi Night with Naomi Kritzer and Marissa Lingen. Naomi’s YA technothriller novel, Catfishing on CatNet debuts on November 19.
Not sure if you’ll like me? You can read interviews at PaulSemel.com and the Verge.
Warmth and food!
October 30, 2019
What an eight-year-old knows
[image error]At a dinner recently, I found myself sitting next to an eight-year-old. I’m working on a trilogy of novels about a medieval queen, Urraca, who is eight years old when the novel opens, so I thought I’d use his help to see if I gauged the maturity of the character right. He was very willing to help.
I explained the situation. In those days, a woman wanted to learn everything she could about her husband’s work so that if he died or went on a long trip, she could take over. Since Urraca knew she might grow up to be a queen, she wanted to learn everything she could about being a king.
He asked, “Did kings need to know what queens did, too?”
“Well, no.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t,” I admitted.
“What happens if the queen dies?”
“The king would get a new queen.”
“So,” he said, “it’s like an iPhone that dies. You throw it away and get a new one because phones aren’t important. If you can just get a new queen, then queens aren’t really important.”
He had immediately identified the underlying conflict that Urraca faced throughout her entire life (and in the trilogy).
Kids these days … they give me hope for the future.
October 23, 2019
Goodreads review: “Armed in Her Fashion”
Armed In Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a fun book — and it just won the 2019 Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association’s Aurora Award for Best Novel. Congratulations, Kate!
A grumpy, greedy, dying widow, her head-in-the-clouds daughter, and a mercenary soldier who is secretly a woman join up with another rag-tag group of refugees fleeing medieval Bruges at war. The weapons against them include plague, revenants, and horrible animal-human-weapon chimeras sent by the Chatelaine of Hell, who has betrayed and imprisoned her husband, the Hellbeast.
As life goes from bad to worse for these refugees, they find they have no choice but to defeat the hellish Chatelaine and her ghastly army. It looks impossible – a mad plan, suicidal in fact, and complicated, but the widow’s money is in hell and she’s going to get it back.
Besides the action, plot twists, and historical accuracy, a bright thread of humor runs through the story and ties it up in a bow like a gift: a thinking woman’s tale of medieval sword-and-sorcery.
October 16, 2019
“Interference” book launch – with free plants!
These coleus plants come direct from my living room: happy, healthy, colorful, accustomed to human interaction, and mostly harmless.*
The book launch for Interference will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 24, at Volumes Bookcafe, 1474 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago.
The novel goes on sale October 22.
On the 24th, I’ll be reading from the novel, answering questions — and giving away the plants in the photo made from cuttings from one of my own houseplants.
The idea behind the novel Semiosis and its sequel Interference started when some of my houseplants tried to kill other plants. So far, these coleus seem enthusiastic but not aggressive.
*No guarantees. As it says on the cover of Interference, “Sentience craves sovereignty.” Who knows what these plants are thinking?
October 15, 2019
Giveaway of “Interference” at Goodreads!
Tor Publishing is giving away 20 copies of Interference at Goodreads.
If you’re a member of Goodreads, click here to enter! (Limited to Goodreads members in the US and Canada, sorry.)
The novel goes on sale in a week, and if you’re not feeling lucky, you can pre-order it now.
October 9, 2019
“Departing and Arriving”
by Sue Burke: short fiction
This story isn’t about departing, it’s about arriving. That’s not obvious at first, though.
As the story opens, a young woman gets into a car and drives off. She leaves people standing in front of her former home: her family, a crowd of friends, and a dog. They wave, the dog barks, everyone calls goodbye and grins madly – even the ones hiding tears.
The young woman had been direly ill, bedridden and convalescent for years, her survival not guaranteed. Early on, she started to think about travel, a dream that might or might not come true, but it was the only future she wanted to imagine.
Whenever she could, she sat in bed or on a sofa and talked to anyone, sometimes just to the dog, about travel. They shared stories, fantasies, wishes, Youtube videos, travelogs, books, souvenirs, and photos. Her friends even invited their friends just back from trips to come talk to her, since she was always delighted to hear every detail, and they always left feeling happy.
This went on for years. Once she even exchanged a few emails with an astronaut orbiting the Earth.
Slowly, her health improved. She remembered everything she’d been told, waited for relapses, planned carefully, stared hard into her future, and finally the day came when she took to the road, her dreams fulfilled – and the dreams of her family and friends. She had reached the end of the journey she really wanted to take, arriving at the best possible destination, health.
That’s the story. The only one sad at the end is the dog, who had always hoped to come along on the next journey with her.
October 2, 2019
Suddenly, I saw the solution…
[image error]This is the towel bar in the guest bathroom of my apartment.
It looks okay, but it’s not really practical. Those curvy little points at the ends of the hooks dig into anything hung on them.
I was sitting and looking at it last week, trying to think of a way to make it useful, when suddenly I realized what was wrong — and how to solve the problem.
The towel rack was installed upside down.
September 27, 2019
“Interference” has a surprise for my husband
To Jerry, for his love and patience.
I’ve received an early copy of Interference. The book has a surprise for my husband, Jerry. Today is his birthday, by the way.
The novel will be officially released on October 22 (you can find out how to preorder it here).
September 25, 2019
I’ll be at two Volumes Bookcafe events in October
[image error]The Speculative Literature Foundation’s October 3 Deep Dish SF/F reading in Chicago will feature Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jane Rosenberg Laforge, and Scott Huggins. The Rapid Fire Readers that evening will be me, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Jeremy John, and Anaea Lay. I’ll read an essay about a key difference between literary fiction and science fiction.
The readings will start at 7 p.m. at Volumes Bookcafe, 1474 N. Milwaukee Ave. Volumes offers snacks and beverages, including wine, beer, coffee, and soft drinks. And it sells lots of fine books and gifts.
More information is at the Volumes website and the Facebook event.
I’ll also be at Volumes at 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 24, to launch the novel Interference, the sequel to Semiosis.
More information is at the Volumes website and the Facebook event.
You’ll be very welcome at either or both evenings!
[image error]
September 18, 2019
The crap you don’t mind
[image error]My late friend Suzanne Allés Blom, author of the novel Inca among other works, had a theory about why books are categorized as science fiction, romance, thriller, Western, literary, etc.
As you know, Sturgeon’s Law says that 90% of everything is crap; that is, most science fiction, romance, thrillers, Westerns, and literary fiction, etc. (along with movies, poetry, comics, you name it) simply isn’t great stuff.
But 10% of it is great. Sue thought that pretty much all of us would like the best of anything. I agree. I prefer speculative fiction, but now and then I read the best in Westerns, romance, thrillers, literary fiction, etc., and I enjoy it.
I also read a lot of speculative fiction that’s not in the top 10%, and I enjoy that, too. I can tolerate speculative crap, although romantic or literary crap sets my teeth on edge.
Sue believed that’s why there are categories. They help lead us to the shelves where we will probably enjoy most of what we pick up. Categories don’t exist just to help marketers know how to sell a book and to tell booksellers where to put it. Categories exist to protect us readers from the wrong kind of crap.
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Photo of Sue Blom by David Dyer-Bennet at the 1976 Midamerican Convention.
