Kameron Hurley's Blog, page 41

Re-imagining the Legion

I get asked about worldbuilding a lot, and now that I’m starting a new book, LEGION, it’s probably a good time to talk about what’s working for me and what’s not.

Shorter blurb for this one: LEGION is a stand alone space opera about two feuding families battling for control of a legion of worldships sent out beyond the edge of known space. Not that they know any of that.

A lot of folks talk about different aspects of writing like once you know how to do it, you just do it. But the thing is, if...

Monster Fights & Mayhem: Thoughts on Throne of the Crescent Moon

Remember your favorite Sword and Sorcery novel? Disappointed when you went back, ten or fifteen years after you read it, and realized the writing kind of sucked and it was pretty sexist and racist? Did you wonder, then, why it was nobody was creating less crappy S&S these days?

Well, maybe you didn’t. But I sure did.

That’s why I was pretty stoked to read Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon, a solidly S&S novel complete with ghuls, dervishes, shape shifters, monster hunters, and swordfi...

No Refund for Bugs

I spent last weekend off the grid at a cabin in Hocking Hills. Packing up four adults, two dogs, and a 2-year-old may not have been the best idea we ever had, but it worked out.

Before I came out here to Ohio, the whole “cabin in the woods” horror movie cliché thing was foreign to me. I *lived* in the woods. Why on earth would I want to rent a cabin in the woods? And why would I want to go somewhere without a cell phone signal?

But now that I’ve lived in and around cities for the last six or se...

All Quiet on the Apocalyptic Front

So you may remember that I'm finishing up this book, RAPTURE. It's the final book in the Bel Dame Apocrypha, about Nyx and her mad gang of magicians, mercenaries, and shapeshifters. It's got bugs and beheadings.

It's also due to my publisher on April 30th.

Learning how to balance book marketing/promo/public presence with actual writing has been one of my toughest challenges the last year and change. Add in a day job that's been very busy the last few weeks (Ok, months), and another manuscript I...

Power

Look at all the women in this photo! It's... um, a wedding scene. But one of them besides female protagonist talks! But, well... it turns out she's a guy. Women are still just scenery on Mars.

I've been thinking a lot about women and power.

J. and I went to see John Carter last week, but this isn't really a rant about John Carter, which has its own issues. What particularly struck me was when J. pointed out that he was surprised to see so many women background characters in the army in the...

Sometimes you’re going to piss people off…

..and you need to decide if you’re OK with that.

I was going through my Youtube videos this week and tabulating views and such. I did several different versions of the GOD’S WAR trailer in an effort to reach different types of readers. For the most part, I think those succeeded. But if you look at views, the most popular video is still the most controversial – the Anti-Urban Fantasy (UF) Heroine trailer.

I knew this trailer had the potential to piss off a lot of people when I made it, and I hes...

Sometimes you're going to piss people off…

..and you need to decide if you're OK with that.

I was going through my Youtube videos this week and tabulating views and such. I did several different versions of the GOD'S WAR trailer in an effort to reach different types of readers. For the most part, I think those succeeded. But if you look at views, the most popular video is still the most controversial – the Anti-Urban Fantasy (UF) Heroine trailer.

I knew this trailer had the potential to piss off a lot of people when I made it, and I...

The Dirty Little Secret to “Imaginative” Worldbuilding

I’m continuously tinkering with my draft of RAPTURE right now, banging my head against some chapters set in Ras Tieg, which is a country that readers of the Bel Dame Apocrypha haven’t really seen before. It’s no surprise, then, that I haven’t seen it either.

No, really. I’ve never been to Ras Teig either. I’m MAKING THIS ALL UP, you guys. Shocking, right?

Thing is, when you’re building a place from the ground up, you have to take a lot of stuff into account. It’s not just about where these peop...

The Dirty Little Secret to "Imaginative" Worldbuilding

I'm continuously tinkering with my draft of RAPTURE right now, banging my head against some chapters set in Ras Tieg, which is a country that readers of the Bel Dame Apocrypha haven't really seen before. It's no surprise, then, that I haven't seen it either.

No, really. I've never been to Ras Teig either. I'm MAKING THIS ALL UP, you guys. Shocking, right?

Thing is, when you're building a place from the ground up, you have to take a lot of stuff into account. It's not just about where these...

The Unreasonable Weight of Being

Some folks might know that I'm a Jillian Michaels fan. I mean, how can you not love somebody who kicks people's asses all day, screams at them to suck it up, and then provides a thoughtful psych evaluation on them after she's beaten them raw?

I was working out six or seven weeks ago and listening to one of her free podcasts, and she said something, only half-joking, like "If everybody would just do everything I tell them to do, they'd have no problems."

And I thought… well, fuck it. I'm just...