Kameron Hurley's Blog, page 32

Surviving an Extroverted World, Pondering the Soft Apocalypse

I hadn’t been to Europe in over ten years, so I was about due. Trips of this length have their drawbacks – costs being one, and exhaustion over the sheer logistics to get there being another. I’m pretty introverted, so navigating the astonishing mob of people en route to other places can be a nightmare.

But if you want to live life to the fullest, well.. you have to do uncomfortable things sometimes.

London is a mad, bustling place, and had the same sort of cost/benefit issues for me that NYC h...

Why Everyone Should Be Reading Ancillary Justice

Last night I stayed up late to finish Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. It’s been a long time since I stayed up late to finish a book. Way too long.

If you follow SF/F book blogs or are active in SF/F circles on Twitter, you’ve probably already heard of Ancillary Justice. If you STILL have not read it and bought copies for all your friends – NOW IS THE TIME.

(if you already bought copies, go buy some more)

Ancillary Justice is a colonial-era mystery/revenge saga (which colonial era? Well….) about...

Why Being “Good” Isn’t Good Enough

When I was a younger writer, I was obsessed with figuring out whether or not I was “good.” At most writing workshops I went to, from 14 onward, I was always the best or, at least, most experienced writer in the bunch. I’d been writing fiction and studying fiction since I was 12 and sending it out for publication since 15. It got very frustrating. When you’re in a group of people where you’ve got the most experience, you’re less likely to learn things unless you’re teaching others. And let’s b...

Forgotten Fantasy Favorites: Assassin’s Apprentice

Forgotten Fantasy Favorites: An irregular series

In the rush of GRRM and Joe Abercrombie madness these days, I couldn’t help but notice that a good deal of excellent grimdark-y fantasy from the last thirty years seems to have been tucked under the rug and forgotten, as if nobody wrote about incest or political intrigue before 2001. In this irregular series of posts, I want to highlight some of my favorite fantasy epics – gritty and otherwise – of the last twenty years.

You might think it’s impo...

The Blog Post that Lost Me Half My Audience

Back when I first started this blog in 2004, I grew an audience that was primarily and deeply feminist. My regular traffic was about 400 visits at day, which – at the time – seemed like a whole lot of people. Then I wrote a post about “women-only” forums that pissed off a whole lot of people, and my readership fell in half. Obviously things have changed since then, but at the time it was a really big blow. I had made a lot of people angry, and I couldn’t understand why.

What was I saying that...

Forgotten Fantasy Favorites: Sword Dancer

Forgotten Fantasy Favorites: An irregular series

In the rush of GRRM and Joe Abercrombie madness these days, I couldn’t help but notice that a good deal of excellent grimdark-y fantasy from the last thirty years seems to have been tucked under the rug and forgotten, as if nobody wrote about incest or political intrigue before 2001. In this irregular series of posts, I want to highlight some of my favorite fantasy epics – gritty and otherwise – of the last twenty years.

First up is the excellen...

New Article in Locus Mag: Silence in Publishing

Hey! Guess what!? I’m part of the establishment now!

Or, rather, I have an article in Locus Magazine this month. Check out the teaser below, and then go grab (or view) a copy of the October issue to read the rest:

“Everybody Already Knows”: How Silence About the Realities of Publishing Hurts Authors

Families are full of secrets. Publishing is no different.

There are the ho-hum secrets – the affairs, the folks who stole money from now dead relatives, the folks who aren’t paying their taxes. There...

The Horror Novel You’ll Never Have to Live: Surviving Without Health Insurance

In 2005, I was a robust 25-year-old living in Chicago and working as a project assistant for an artchitectural and engineering firm. In the fall of 2005, I started to lose weight.

This was a good thing, I figured. I worked out a lot. I ate right. It’s just that losing weight got… easier. It was nice. After so many years of working out relentlessly just to stay at a reasonable size, I didn’t have to think about my weight anymore. As the months passed, I started to experience other problems, tho...

Why My Single-Mother Sister Hates Food Stamps

One of the ideas I always struggled with – as a person who makes a fair amount of money now and is happy to pay taxes toward stuff like schools and roads and Medicare to help people out – was why so many of the folks who are the target beneficiaries of those services and programs hate that people like me are happy to fund them.

I mean, it’s not like they’re really paying Federal taxes (the fed government pays for 100% of the benefits and states share half the administrative costs with the fed)...

Books I’m Reading (and you should be reading too)

Here’s the latest roundup of what I’m (perpetually) reading:

Ascensionby Jacqueline Koyanagi

There’s been some buzz about this one in the circles I follow, and for good reason. Complex, fascinating heroine (she has a chronic illness!) running around a space-opera-ish universe. I’ve heard the book likened to really good Firefly fanfic, and that’s not a bad thing. There are badass women running around doing badass things and falling in love with each other and with starships, and I’m totally down...