Max Gladstone's Blog, page 13

Karma, Privilege, and Hungry Ghosts

I’ve been thinking a lot in the last few weeks about privilege as a karmic phenomenon, and enlightenment as a pursuit of social justice.

Let me try to define ‘privilege’ in its social justice sense, for those who aren’t used to the term.  Your privileges are advantages you have that most of the time you don’t even see because they’re too ingrained.  If you’ve ever thought “so when I make the account registration page I can just ask people to tell me if they’re male or female”, that’s privilege—for lots of people the answer to the question ‘what’s your gender’ is so complicated and contextual it borders on offensive.  (This can be true for whole cultures, so this statement also is pretty heavily culturally privileged.)  Saying “well I worked hard in school so I got good grades on the SAT” displays other kinds of privilege—class privilege (kids from higher classes display lots of advantages on standardized testing) or ableist privilege (some folks’ mental conditions make standardized testing much more difficult for them).  ”I love shopping in classy clothing stores—you get so much respect from the salespeople”—class privilege (I mean, obviously, right?  The word class is right there in the sentence), racial privilege, cis privilege, etc.  (Even the examples I’ve chosen here give you a sense of my privilege ecosystem: technocratic, classist, male, etc.)

So when Andy makes a statement that fellow-traveller Babs thinks is conditional—dependent, that is, on Andy’s position within the world—Babs can say “Andy, you need to check your privilege,” and (ideally) Andy can look back, realize how the the truth of his statement actually depends on who he is (his position, orientation & velocity in the world) in a way he didn’t realize, and think, “oh, right, my understanding is limited and I am now more aware of this and will remember it in the future!”

I think this is a great concept.  Taken in the right spirit, it can help people be aware of their advantages, and live more lightly and compassionately in the world.  But I’ve struggled to roll it into my daily psychology in healthy ways.  I don’t know if other people have this issue, but it’s easy for me to fail over from “I’m aware of my own respective advantages” to “I am fundamentally broken and I should regard all my thoughts, words, and actions with such suspicion that I am reduced to a mute paralytic ball.”  Which smacks, to me, of interpretations of doctrines of original sin that have prompted more psychological pain than good works in the minds of my friends who were raised in them.  So, how to walk the line?

Now, let me try to define karma as used in the Buddhism I grew up with / around, for those who aren’t used to that term.  There’s this World Religion 101 sense that karma is Fate kicking you in the metaphorical ‘nads for something you did in a past life—which isn’t the way that term’s used in the Buddhism I know.  That 101 version of karma says if your life sucks now, it’s your fault and you should just stop sucking so bad in the future.  The version I learned says: karma is social and physical cause and effect through history.  We’re all the products of decisions made before our time—by our parents, and their parents, and the guy who cut us off in traffic and made us pissed so that when we got to work we were rude to the manager who then was a dick to the fry cook who then burned all her orders so everyone got horrible tips all afternoon and Brenda ended the month five dollars short on her electric bill.  And so it goes.  Our every action vibrates off in all directions, affecting people we hate and love and have never met.  Best/worst part?  We are, ourselves, in our identities and in our actions, the product of karma—our every deed and choice is, at root, a response to stuff that’s happened to us before.

The Buddhism I know (and I’m pulling threads of this from Vajrayana and Mahayana and Theravada and Chan, so the notion’s pretty widespread) says: faced with such a crazy situation, our response is—must be—to wake up.  To seek freedom.  To become aware of all the ways in which we are constantly being produced by and bearing karma, the ways we inflict suffering and make choices not because we want to, but because (our background / our current condition / our psychological problems / our own blindness to the true nature of society) made us into a person who makes those choices.  Karma is a state of being unfree—you think you have free will, but actually you’re stuck doing the things karma tells you to do.  When you’re awake to the ways in which your actions are predetermined, you can act as a dampener for these karmic vibrations—when you become aware that suffering is being enacted through you, you can stop it.  You can save people “downstream,” calm the network, and improve conditions for everyone.

See how these concepts connect?  Then you’re smarter than me, because it took me a long time to get this far.

I thought for years that the Buddhism I knew was weak on social justice, because all that stuff about karma and suffering looked very psychological to me.  If you wake up in the way I’ve described, you feel better about your life and you’re nicer to people around you, and what does that change?  Well.  It changes a lot when you think about privilege as a karmic phenomenon.

Privilege isn’t pre-existing.  It emerges from history—infinite vibrations passing through these webs of karmic connection from the beginning of time to now, billions of choices conditioned by animal fear or by other choices made earlier.  We don’t realize that the life we live, the way we think, is oppressive, in part because the oppressions from which we benefit (and which are inflicted upon us) are the result of other people’s actions which themselves were karmically determined.  We don’t realize that we are the hungry ghosts, wandering around devouring one another’s entrails.  Waking up to that reality, we can stop inflicting unthinking damage on those around us, on our societies, and on ourselves.  And we can come to common cause in the struggle to wake up the universe as a whole: to damp the reactive flows of karma, the unconscious infliction of pain, and live a life of freedom and joy.  

I think this means that Buddhist mindfulness techniques can be a huge help in recognizing, and defeating, our own privilege, and in preventing ourselves from inflicting harm on others.  The same metacognition that lets a meditator recognize “this is an emotion” and let the emotion go, or that “I am thinking now” and stop, can be used to wake up to our own privilege and our defensiveness of that privilege, and to stop inflicting reflexive harm.  By being aware of our, and everyone‘s, karmically determined nature, not only in reflection but in real-time (in the middle of a conversation, say), we can meet others as fellow sentient beings rather than as puppets of our ancestors’ fears.

And as we reach for that goal, we can also start to work toward the bodhisattva vow: toward the liberation of all sentient beings.  Which is a big thought, and this is already a long blog post, so maybe I’ll just leave the essay here for now.

Awards Season, and Arisia Schedule!

Here’s a great, and also weird and interesting, thing about science fiction and fantasy: anyone (with a little money) can vote on the Hugo award, the flagship award in genre.  I’ve written before about why I think that’s incredibly cool, and the old logic still applies: it gives final responsibility for what we want the genre to look like to the people who read books and watch TV and play games.

Now, it’s not free to vote in the Hugo Awards, which sucks because there are plenty of folk who want to vote but can’t afford it.  Still, the franchise is cheaper this year than it was last year—for about US $40, you can buy a supporting membership to this year’s WorldCon, which happens to be LonCon 3 in London.  The supporting membership doesn’t let you actually attend the con, but it does let you nominate works, and vote.  As an added bonus, all supporting members receive the Hugo Voter’s Packet: electronic copies of every nominated work.  In practice, this means five or six novels, novellas, short stories, and graphic novels, and that’s just to start.  Even if you’re thinking of this as a purely financial transaction (which you shouldn’t, because authors don’t get paid for the works they submit to the Hugo Voters’ Packet, but still), you come out well ahead on the deal.  It’s a great way to discover new writers, and to encounter works you might have missed.  I discovered Kim Stanley Robinson through last year’s packet, and now he’s one of my favorite writers in genre.  (Seriously, 2312 is absurdly great why aren’t you reading it RIGHT NOW?)

*Ahem.*

Anyway, if this sounds good to you, follow the directions below!

1. Before January 31, 2014 buy a “supporting membership” to this year’s WorldCon.  Here’s the relevant page!

2. You will receive a Hugo Voter PIN.  This is what you’ll use to nominate folks for awards!  Be careful, though—sometimes the PIN email gets caught in spam filters.

3. Once you have your PIN, and Before March 31, 2014, go to this page, enter your name, your voter PIN, and click “next.”  Then fill out the form, click submit, and you’re done!

Stuff That’s Good and You Should Totally Vote For It

Let me start with the Blatant Self Promotion and get that out of the way—this list counts for the Nebula awards too, by the way, if you happen to be a member of SFWA:

This is my second, and final, year of eligibility for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award.  I was nominated for it last year, and that was a huge honor.
Two Serpents Rise is eligible in the Best Novel category.
My short story Drona’s Death is eligible for Best Short Story.
My game, Choice of the Deathless, may theoretically be eligible for Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form.  Maybe.

Obviously I’d be pleased if y’all thought I was worth a nomination in one of these categories.  That said, there was a ton of great work published this year.

For novels, this year saw the publication of The Shattered Pillars (second in Elizabeth Bear’s awesome Central Asian-rooted fantasy series), and Republic of Thieves (the Gentlemen Bastards return!), and Ancillary Justice (The Left Hand of Darkness meets Dune, sort of, and it’s great), and Bleeding Edge which, well, it’s only sort of science fiction and Thomas Pynchon really doesn’t need the help but I’d be tickled to bridge the genre gap by nominating Pynchon of all people for a Hugo award.  Not to mention the books I desperately need to catch up on: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, MaddAddam, Something More than Night, The Golem and the Jinni, The Accursed, The Lives of Tao, the most recent James SA Corey book, etc. etc. etc.

Comics (or Best Graphic Story): I’m in love with Hawkeye, Saga, and Chew at the moment.  There are certainly other projects out there that merit attention, but I’m putting those three on the nomination ballot without a second thought.

As  for Best Dramatic Presentation: basically you should just go read Andrea Phillips’ post on the subject, because she nails it.  If you don’t want to click on the link (and why do you hate links, really?  Meditate on that.): she argues that this is the time to nominate a game for Best Dramatic Presentation.  I wholeheartedly agree.  An immense amount of creative genre work is being done, today, in interactive media.  Ignoring that is just silly.  This was a great year for games with speculative elements, everything from The Last of Us all the way to the mad mad mad-fest of Saints Row IV.

And on a completely unrelated note: Arisia!

I’m on… um.  A staggering number of events at Arisia next weekend.  If you’re in the Boston area, drop by!

Friday, Jan 17, 7:oo PM—Autograph: Gladstone, Grant, Linzner — Writing, Signing — 1hr 15min — Autograph Space (1E)

Autograph session with Max Gladstone, April Grant, and Gordon Linzner.

Saturday, Jan 18, 5:00 PM—Rebuild of Evangelion — Anime, Panel — 1hr 15min — Revere (2)
[COME SEE ME BE A TOTAL ANIME GEEK GUYS IT WILL BE SO MUCH FUN / I AM GOING TO GET MYSELF IN SO MUCH TROUBLE]
3 out of 4 of the Rebuild of Evangelion movies have come out in Japan. It is a very unusual remake that starts veering away more and more from the beloved series that it comes from. Are they improvements on the originals or a confusing money grab? What do people expect from the anticipated conclusion?
Max Gladstone, James T Henderson Jr, PJ Letersky, Richard Ralston (m)

  Sunday, Jan 19, 10:00 AM - Interactivity in Fiction — Literature, Panel — 1hr 15min — Faneuil (3W)

[I TALK ABOUT CHOICE OF THE DEATHLESS AND GAMES AND STUFF]

Fiction has never been a static experience, but we’ve recently gained whole new vocabulary for talking about its interactive aspects, and a generation of readers are coming of age who have never not known explicitly interaction-centered entertainment in addition to more traditional fiction. What are some of the techniques creators in other media are using to put more and better narrative into their interactive works and what, if anything, can authors learn from their attempts and techniques?Heather Albano, Erik Amundsen (m), Max Gladstone, Forest Handford, Carolyn VanEseltine

1:00 PM - Reading: Garrott, Gladstone, Grant, Odasso — Writing, Reading — 1hr 15min — Hale (3W)

Authors Lila Garrott, Max Gladstone, April Grant, and Adrienne J. Odasso and will read selections from their works.
Lila Garrott, Max Gladstone, April Grant, Adrienne J. Odasso

 4:00 PM - Why Root for Monarchies? Class and Fantasy Lit — Literature, Panel — 1hr 15min — Faneuil (3W)

Most of us come from democratic nations and don’t have a fancy title. As history classes taught us, most of our ancestors fought the tyranny of monarchs and aristocrats. But when it comes to fantasy literature, people seem to love protagonists who hold titles or become queens and kings. Why do we root for the aristocrats? Why aren’t more fantasy protagonists truly from the lower classes and stay there? Where are the fantasy revolutionaries?
Mark L Amidon, Stephen R Balzac, Max Gladstone, Tanya Huff, Vanessa Layne (m)

 

5:30 PM - Spirituality in Fantasy and Science Fiction — Literature, Panel — 1hr 15min — Faneuil (3W)

The Chronicles of Narnia are famous for, among other things, incorporating many of C.S. Lewis’s Christian beliefs. But did it inspire its readers to be more religious? Are there fans of fantasy and science fiction who look to their favorite works in times of crisis or to inspire their faith (or, possibly, lack there of)? What works of literature have people in fandom, whether Christian, Wiccan, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, agnostic, or none (or all) of the above, found formative to their beliefs?
Erik Amundsen (m), Max Gladstone, Kate Kaynak, Daniel José Older, Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert

7:00 PM - So You Think You Can Write a Fight? — Literature, Panel — 1hr 15min — Griffin (3E)

Come find out how viable your fight scene really is. An experienced panel of talented authors, martial artists, and maybe one hapless would-be victim will take your quick fight scene and act it out while our esteemed panelists help you work out the physical and literary kinks. Please no epic wave battles.
Stephen R Balzac, Keith R. A. DeCandido, Genevieve Iseult Eldredge (m), Max Gladstone, Nicole L. Mann, Michael McAfee, Mark Millman

 Monday, Jan 20, 10:00 AM — This Book Looks Nothing Like My Ren Faire! — Literature, Panel — 1hr 15min — Adams (3W)

Especially since the success of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, a large number of secondary world fantasy series have been set in worlds that greatly resemble pre-industrial Western Europe. Many fantasy novelists are now creating worlds that draw inspiration from other global cultures. This panel will discuss works by writers such as Nnedi Okorafor, Saladin Ahmed, N.K. Jemisin, and David Anthony Durham and why these non-Western settings are so important.
Vikki Ciaffone (m), Max Gladstone, Nisi Shawl, Brian Staveley

 11:30 AM — Stick with It! Complex, Rewarding Literature — Literature, Panel — 1hr 15min — Burroughs (3E)

Most of the time, the SF we read is easy enough to get through; however, at times, we’ve picked up or been recommended a work of SF only to find it more than we bargained for. Not a tedious read, but rather an epic journey, fraught with trials and tribulations yet eminently Worth It. What favorite works of the panelists’ are difficult to get through, but ultimately worth the read? How does one make the reading of one of these diamonds more feasible without losing any of the effect?
Lila Garrott (m), Greer Gilman, Max Gladstone, Dennis McCunney, Sonya Taaffe

 Whereupon I then collapse in a heap of jelly.  But it should be fun!

One Year behind the Keyboard

It’s been a TARDIS of a year: fast-moving, far-traveling, yet much bigger on the inside than I would have expected back in Jan of ’13.

Three Parts Dead came out a little over a year ago; I didn’t know what to expect, and like a genius started writing my next book the day before Three Parts Dead hit shelves.  Because Essays!  Travel!  Reviews!  and Airplanes! are all perfectly conducive to the germination of a novel.  I put fingers to keyboard, sure, but I threw out the first 20,000 words I wrote, and the next 20,000 too.  But the third 20,000—those stayed up.

Mostly.  I still deleted half of those and added another 10,000 or so, but the point is, they worked for a start.  The ensuing book was one of the hardest drafts of my life, but  eight revisions later, I think it’s the best book I’ve written yet.  Different, but then, so’s everything.

Meanwhile Three Parts Dead was very well received, for which thank you all.  The book was nominated (or got me nominated) for a few awards, including the John W. “NOT A HUGO” Campbell Award; I thought I’d been to cons before but there’s no con quite like WorldCon.  I can’t wait to go back this year.

(Three Parts Dead, by the way, is now $2.99 on various e-Book stores—if you’ve wanted a copy for the e-reader of your choice, no time like the present!)

So, yeah.  Tours.  Awards.  Two Serpents Rise hit shelves back in late October, and people seem to like it as much as Three Parts Dead.  Excellent.

In terms of creative productivity, last year I wrote a bunch of stuff:

The next Craft Sequence novel, Full Fathom Five, coming July 2014.
The Craft Sequence novel after that, which I’m tentatively calling Last First Snow—this one isn’t under contract from Tor yet, which is completely fair since they have two unpublished books of mine under contract.  But I’m really excited about Last First Snow, and can’t wait to share more of the plot with you.  It’s a return to Dresediel Lex, yes, but to the DL of the past.
Choice of the Deathless, a novel-length choose-your-own-path type text adventure game available for iOS, Android, the Kindle Store, the Chrome Store etc. etc.  Reviews for this one have been very positive, and the title’s been a bestseller for the publisher.  If you haven’t played this yet, it’s only $2.99—follow this link to find the game on your platform of your choice.

I also wrote a number of blog posts, including this one about how the humans of Star Wars are actually ginormous bees.  I even received threats of fanfic written in Giant Bee Star Wars Universe.  No such fanfic has materialized, but I go to sleep every night with my fingers crossed.

‘Tis the season to make long lists, so let’s talk standout artistic experiences from 2013.  (If you don’t really care what art I spent this year consuming, just skip to the bold text at the top of the next paragraph!)  I wrote a lot this year, which means I spent a lot of time listening to music, specifically stuff with beat and without intelligible lyrics.  Nomad, by Tuareg guitarist Bombino, was a huge help; I wrote an entire novel while listening to Clint Mansell’s soundtrack for The Fountain.  Not to mention the Pacific Rim soundtrack—perfect for fight scenes.  As for video games, 2013 was the year I became a Mass Effect-er (approved term?), and also the year in which I started forcing people to play through the first 20 minutes of Saints Row IV, because fun.  I played catchup on reading for much of 2013: Wolf Hall, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Witches Abroad, Bleeding Edge (in which Thomas Pynchon decides that Neal Stephenson’s been horning in on his territory enough and decides to horn back).  Elizabeth Bear’s Range of Ghosts is the Mongolian fantasy novel that I’m so glad exists , and I have no idea how I’d never read Barry Hugharty’s Bridge of Birds before.  Movies and TV…  Well, if I pretended I knew what I was talking about in this realm I’d look like an idiot.  I saw the first episode of Breaking Bad over Christmas?  Um.  Oh, and I loved Iron Man 3, in which Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Shane Black fused with A Long Kiss Goodnight Shane Black and absorbed some superhero DNA.  And The Raid, oh my god.  Comics-wise—if you like comics and you’re not reading Hawkeye and Saga and Chew, please, why?  Do you have a reason?  You should have a reason.

So that’s enough plugging.  Here comes 2014!  What does that mean for me?  A few convention appearances, on which more soon.  I’ve spent the last two days breaking story for a self-contained novel and am STOKED—both by the novel and by the breaking process.  After I write that book I have another Craft book in mind (really I have another 10 or so Craft books in mind, but one’s front-runner), and Choice of Games is interested in another game from me.  I have a comic project inching toward completion, and I really would like to try my hand at a screenplay this year, to stretch my legs.  With luck this’ll be a growth year for me.  I’d cross my fingers but they’re still crossed for Star Wars Bee fanfic.

And speaking of growth, I’ve been debating what to do on this site.  I’ve tried  many times to adopt a 3x or 5x/week posting regimen, and what tends to happen is: I start, I’m going strong for a week or three, and then I disappear for several months until I return for some crazy neat announcement.  This is a Bad Practice.  Not fair to y’all, really, and psychologically problematic for me, since I keep thinking “damn Gladstone you should post something to your blog” at inopportune times, like in the middle of a fencing bout, while cooking dinner, or—and this is the real killer—while I’m trying to write a book.  That ‘post’ button hangs overhead like the Sword of Damocles, which is not comfortmaking.  So here’s my plan.  This year, I’m going to post on my blog once a week.  Every Wednesday afternoon, I’ll have something here.  Might be a cool essay.  Might be an announcement.  Might be a video.  Might be a magic trick.  (Probably won’t be a magic trick.)  I’ll have ‘em up noonish, so you can go watch the week’s Zero Punctuation, then drop on by.  That way you get stuff to read, and I can use this blog as an outlet for everything I think about that isn’t wizard-lawyer-related, while at the same time robbing the “Max you really should post something to your blog” gremlin of its guilt-ammo.  Gremlins are helpless without their ammo.

So that’s me, and that was 2013.  Awesome year.  Thanks to everyone who moved through it with me.  And—onward into the new era!

Choice of the Deathless—out TODAY!

Do you want to be a skeletal law wizard?  Of course you do.  Who doesn’t?  Well, today your wish comes true.

I’ve written a choose-your-own-path type game set in the world of the Craft Sequence.  As a junior associate in the international necromantic firm of Varkath Nebuchadnezzar Stone, you may:

Explore a fantasy realm with a rich and evolving backstory, based my novels Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise.
Play as male or female, gay or straight, dead or alive (or both).
Build your career on carefully reasoned contracts, or party all night with the skeletal partners at your firm.
Navigate intrigue and mystery in a world of scheming magicians and devious monsters.
Depose gods!  Battle demons!  Raise the dead!  Catch falling stars!  Get with child a mandrake root!
Okay, no actual mandrake roots in the game.  Sorry, Donne / DWJ fans.  But still!
Look for love in at least some of the right places.
Balance student loans, sleep, daily commute, rent payments, and demonic litigation—hey, nobody said being a wizard was always fun.

The game is out TODAY for iOS and Android, as well as in-browser.  It’s $2.99 for the full game; on Android or in-Browser you get to try the first bit of the game for free!  I had a lot of fun making Choice of the Deathless.  It shows a ton of new facets of the Craft Sequence world, including the actual inner workings of necromantic firms, what’s the deal with demons, and the disturbing luxury of travel-by-dragon.

What are you waiting for?  Check it out!

Choice of the Deathless—in time for Christmas!

Unlike MC Lars, I have not been touring everywhere  to give this world joy.  To the contrary, I’ve stayed put with my nose to the grindstone for joy-generation purposes.  It’s been a fun grind though and fortunately I have nose to spare.

Here’s why I’m excited: this Friday we launch  Choice of the Deathless, the Craft Sequence adventure game.  Take on the role of a young Craftswoman or Craftsman in Tara’s world!  Deal with demons!  Depose gods!  Make partner!  Pay off your student loans!  If you dare.

This is your chance to see how the undead half lives.  I mean, it is technically possible to make it through the game without becoming an undead skeleton wizard, but why on earth would you want to?  You might miss glandular emotion a little, but let’s be honest here.  Unstoppable law-lich or fleshy human being with a chance of achieving love and redemption?  I know which I’d choose.

Especially since skeletons can still drink coffee.

Some specifics: this is a text-based choose-your-own-path adventure of the “You wake up naked in a trackless desert with a hangover.  You: (a) hunt for water (b) arrange stones into the shape of an S.O.S. (c) Call upon the Dark Gods and sell your soul for passage to safety (d) wait can you run option c by me again?” variety.  Each choice you make affects your character’s statistics, which are then checked to determine success or failure.  Some of you may remember game books in the Lone Wolf style—this is sort of in that vein only with necromancer lawyers.

The game goes live Friday, and don’t worry, you’ll be hearing plenty about it from me on that day.  But I wanted to give y’all a heads-up.  If you want an email reminder, may I suggest my (very infrequently used) mailing list, or the more commonly updated but less Max-specific list over at Choice of Games?

Some other news:

For those of you who want a more Tabletop-friendly game experience, I have good news.  A couple weeks ago at Anonycon in Connecticut we ran a number of Craft Sequence tabletop games, in Dogs in the Vinyard, Fate, and D&D Next.  Excellent times were had by all.  I should have some system-agnostic information about how to game in the Craft Sequence soonish, once I figure out the best way to represent the Craft itself…
Tabitha of My Shelf Confessions loved Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise—and today she finally succeeded in tying me up for an interview.  Read our chat-slash-torture session over on My Shelf Confessions!
SIGNED BOOKS: If you want a signed copy of Three Parts Dead or Two Serpents Rise, but didn’t make it to any of the signings, you’re in luck!  I’m working with Porter Square Books to sign books by mail-order—order from them and we’ll make sure a signed copy gets your way!

That’s it for now—but I’ll be back in the near future.  I have more chaos to inflict.  I mean.  Um.  News!  News.  I have more news to… provide.  Possibly.  Also chaos.

Full Fathom Five Cover Reveal!

Hello, friends and neighbors! I have emerged from the Editorial Mines, covered in word-dust, to share with you the cover for my next book, Full Fathom Five.  Get ready:

 

Awesome, non?  This is a draft of the cover—text isn’t final yet, for example—but I love it.  I’ve pushed the story into new territory—this book is the Craft Sequence by way of Black Diamond Bay, featuring new characters as well as a few returning favorites from Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise.  Skulduggery, slam poetry, offshore banking, spy shenanigans, the nightmare telegraph, and more.  On the island of Kavekana, caught between the gods that rule the Old World and the undead wizards that rule the New, a defrocked and godless priestess struggles to save her career—and her soul. Coming this July!

Monday Night Linkstorm!

I continue to be Everywhere on the Internet.  In case you missed it—

I did a swing of articles on ThinkProgress last week which were a lot of fun!

Everything Pop Culture Taught You About Genghis Khan is Wrong. Much as I hate to argue with Bill and Ted…
The cinema audience is learning the language of superheroes, and that’s awesome.
The Story of Loki and Slepnir, or why mpeg fanfiction is doing a good job of Loki characterization really.  (Note to my parents: if you don’t know what mpreg fanfiction is, do not look it up.)
The Resurrection of Indiana Jones, in which I talk about why there’s no better audience for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade than a room full of Chinese highschoolers.

In the non-ThinkProgress universe, here are a couple more posts:

 Building an Analogue World, or: writing fantasy novels if you don’t live in a castle, on All Things UF
Mosaic Worldbuilding, in which I talk about the power of perspective in writing—because not everyone’s the good guy, but most people think they are.

More of a recap on the Enigma Signing tomorrow—oh, and, cool new thing!  If you’re in the Wellesley area, you can come see me at their Fresh Voices Author Night this Thursday, Nov. 14!

Reddit AMA Today!

Friends and neighbors: do you have some question you desperately want answered about me, my books, or the universe in general?  Swing by Reddit today and ask me anything!

How it works:  Click here.  Then type a question in the box and hit ‘save.’  (If you don’t have a Reddit account, you may be prompted to create one.  It’s not a difficult process, and they require no personal information, so hah.)  The rest of the madness will take care of itself!

 

Dragons! Cities! Two Serpents Rise Giveaway!

Some things for you today:

On ThinkProgress, I write about how dragons are fractal representations of the fantasies in which they appear.  It makes sense in context.  Trust me.
Over on Bastard Books, I write about the uniqueness of cities in fantasy.  Also, Bastard’s giving away copies of Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise!
Reviews for Two Serpents Rise have started to appear in the wild!  Fantasy Book Critic had this to say: “I love how organically all of these issues work in the social and political framework, the characters, everything. I love that there are no taboos on sexual orientation or on having sex at all. The characters are all riveting, even when I don’t like them — I particularly loved the Red King, who is creepy as anything and completely amazing.
 
All this and I haven’t even gotten around to mentioning the whole story is built around economics and the logistical realities of providing water to an urban settlement in the desert and the risks of water conflict — I challenge anyone who thinks fantasy doesn’t deal with reality and is purely about escapism to take a harder look at this one.“

TOMORROW, I’ll be doing an AMA on r/Fantasy.  Come by the r/Fantasy website around 9pm Eastern Time.  Ask me questions!  Ask me any questions you can possibly imagine!
November 9 I’ll be signing at Enigma Books!
And, on November 14, I’ll be part of Wellesley Books’ Breakout Author Evening—so come by if you’re in the neighborhood and see me break out of things.  I think that’s how this works.

Two Serpents Rise All Around the Internet

We had a great time at the book launch Tuesday!

 

Plenty of volumes sold, and great questions asked, including “Will you show the rural side of the coin in these books?” (Yes) and “What creatures won’t we see in the Craft Sequence?” (Elves.)

I’ve been hosted liberally around the internet in the last few days, too!  Consider the following essays a peek behind the curtain.  You may never recover!

My post on John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever, concerning the Big Idea of the Craft Sequence and Two Serpents Rise.
Mary Robinette Kowal leant me her blog to talk about My Favorite Bit of Two Serpents Rise, and the value of friendship in fantasy.
Alyssa Rosenberg interviewed me about Two Serpents Rise, economics, and manic pixie dream girls.
Over on Fantasy Book Critic, I talk about how to build worlds that are full of stuff without permitting them to collapse under their own weight.
Also, on SF Signal, I talk about how You Got Your Fantasy in my Science Fiction!  Wait, no, You Got Your Science Fiction in my Fantasy!
And on the Mind of the Geek, I channeled a little DFW to discuss impostor syndrome and cosplay.

For the next week, I’m also guestblogging over at ThinkProgress!  So far my posts have included:

A discussion of why the Addamses are the model American family.
A post proclaiming Vaughn/Staples’ Saga to be the first space opera about nonviolence.

Because when life hands you a platform, why not use it to promote work you love?