R.B. Lemberg's Blog, page 29
October 30, 2012
WFC accessibility
I hear that WFC is not fully accessible to people yet again. Last year, accessibility at WFC was a disaster.
If you are going to WFC this year, please if you can note what was not accessible, and if you can, let me know. (If it is too much spoons, please preserve your spoons). I am not at WFC this year, but I am going to write a letter, and hopefully do more. It is not OK for people with disabilities to be effectively barred from major cons. As a community I feel we absolutely must address this issue.
October 29, 2012
People in the path of Sandy, please stay safe. I am think...
October 25, 2012
Scrivener question
October 22, 2012
Fall 2012 Issue of Goblin Fruit is Live!
alankria
. FOXFOX
FOXFOX
F F FOXFOXFOXFOX
FOX FOX FOXFOXFOXFOX
FOXFOX FOXFOXFOXFOXFOXFOXFOXFOXFOX
FOX FOXFOXFOXFOX
F FO FO
X X
And also this beast on the cover and other marvels. Go read eat !
OK, my lovely textual foxfoxfox is coming out all scrunched, but here it is on capscreen:
Now do you believe me? Do you? FOXFOXFOX LIVES!!
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Originally posted by
tithenai
at Fall 2012 Issue of Goblin Fruit is Live!Oyez, oyez! As of Friday evening, the new issue of
Goblin Fruit
is up, with astonishing artwork by , and fantastic poems by Mike Allen (
time_shark
, Sonya Taaffe (
sovay
), Rose Lemberg (
rose_lemberg
), Kelly Rose Pflug-Back, Ruth Jenkins, Alex Dally MacFarlane (
alankria
), Brock Marie Moore, C. W. Johnson, Jennifer Crow (
kythiaranos
), Virginia Mohlere (
snowy_owlet
), and Rachel Dacus.Step forward.
As early as last year we were guided in our editorial choices for this issue by a certain tendency towards apocalypse -- the last issue of a year which has groan-inducingly been touted as the last since, well, whenever the last time was that people longed to be at the End of History in ways more literal than metaphorical. The first poem we took for this issue with that in mind was Mike Allen's "The Vigil," and so we're particularly delighted to find that this poem sparked Elisabeth's imagination such that she oriented her artwork along its lines, setting the issue's overall tone with a glance.
But this is not an issue of violent explosions so much as aftermaths; it is not an issue of bangs so much as whispers, crouchings, look-over-your-shoulder-ings.
We hope it enjoys you you enjoy it.
As a futher delight,
csecooney
has set her eye and hand to making up a poem out of lines from this issue's pieces. A taste:I do not feel beautiful
I tasted mysteries at an early age, drank secrets
while father watched like a
moon, from the upstairs window
the Devil likes his blue-eyed boys
I brought him down
In the wreckage of his secrets
October 11, 2012
Roundup of "Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing"
Mike Allen (
time_shark
) is talking about his novel The Black Fire Concerto upcoming from Black Gate Books: "Magic-wielding musicians battle the undead in a post-apocalyptic world."Athena Andreadis (
helivoy
) is talking about The Stone Lyre, The Wind Harp, and Shard Songs, all set in the same universe. "The Stone Lyre is a reversed-gender Orpheus story fused with the distortions caused by interstellar colonization. Shard Songs tells of the decipherment of Linear A (the Minoan script, later used to write Mycaenean Greek), of past and future women rulers and their consorts (polyandry is fairly common), of lost homelands, and of rifts and time loops created by stable wormholes."C.S.E. Cooney (
csecooney
) is talking about her book The Bastard Duchess: "Ellene and her tutor Dagassar must discover who's been killing the Heirs of Lunette and stop them -- before it's Ellene's turn to die."Carrie Cuinn is talking about her novel Bloom: " Post-apocalyptic urban fantasy retelling of The Odyssey."
Francesca Forrest is talking about her novel Pen Pal: "A message in a bottle leads to correspondence between a 12-year-old in a floating community off the Gulf Coast and a political prisoner in a fictional southeast Asian island nation."
Gwynne Garfinkle (
gwynnega
) is talking about her novel Can't Find My Way Home: "In mid-1970s New York, soap opera actress Joanna Bergman is haunted by the ghost of Cynthia Foster, her best friend who blew herself up protesting the Vietnam War."Nicole Kornher-Stace (
wirewalking
) is talking about her novel Archivist Wasp: " An unwilling ghosthunter/priestess of a rather unpleasant post-apocalyptic cult travels through the underworld with the ghost of a supersoldier to solve a mystery and attempt to win her freedom."Ann Leckie (
ann_leckie
) is talking about her novels Ancilliary Sword and Ancilliary Justice, forthcoming from Orbit next year (wo-hoo!): "A far-future space opera in which a ship's ancillary A.I. or "corpse soldier" uncovers a dangerous secret at the heart of a galaxy-spanning civilization."For the sake of completeness, here is me, in the ever-popular 3rd person :)
Rose Lemberg (
rose_lemberg
) is talking about her novel Bridgers: “A foreign linguist attempts to do fieldwork, gets embroiled in a revolution; sociolinguistics ensue." A. C. Wise is talking about her novel The Thief of Precious Things: " It has shape shifting fox women, and men whose shadows are crows, and humans who are mostly caught in-between."
A handy summary of "Ten Interview Questions for the Next Best Thing"
Mike Allen (
time_shark
) is talking about his novel The Black Fire Concerto upcoming from Black Gate Books: "Magic-wielding musicians battle the undead in a post-apocalyptic world."Athena Andreadis (
helivoy
) is talking about The Stone Lyre, The Wind Harp, and Shard Songs, all set in the same universe. "The Stone Lyre is a reversed-gender Orpheus story fused with the distortions caused by interstellar colonization. Shard Songs tells of the decipherment of Linear A (the Minoan script, later used to write Mycaenean Greek), of past and future women rulers and their consorts (polyandry is fairly common), of lost homelands, and of rifts and time loops created by stable wormholes."Carrie Cuinn is talking about her novel Bloom: " Post-apocalyptic urban fantasy retelling of The Odyssey."
Gwynne Garfinkle (
gwynnega
) is talking about her novel Can't Find My Way Home: "In mid-1970s New York, soap opera actress Joanna Bergman is haunted by the ghost of Cynthia Foster, her best friend who blew herself up protesting the Vietnam War."Nicole Kornher-Stace (
wirewalking
) is talking about her novel Archivist Wasp: " An unwilling ghosthunter/priestess of a rather unpleasant post-apocalyptic cult travels through the underworld with the ghost of a supersoldier to solve a mystery and attempt to win her freedom."Ann Leckie (
ann_leckie
) is talking about her novels Ancilliary Sword and Ancilliary Justice, forthcoming from Orbit next year (wo-hoo!): "A far-future space opera in which a ship's ancillary A.I. or "corpse soldier" uncovers a dangerous secret at the heart of a galaxy-spanning civilization."For the sake of completeness, here is me, in the ever-popular 3rd person :)
Rose Lemberg (
rose_lemberg
) is talking about her novel Bridgers: “A foreign linguist attempts to do fieldwork, gets embroiled in a revolution; sociolinguistics ensue." A. C. Wise is talking about her novel The Thief of Precious Things: " It has shape shifting fox women, and men whose shadows are crows, and humans who are mostly caught in-between."
October 5, 2012
Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing
Mike Allen of Mythic Delirium Books has tagged me to answer ten questions about my current work in progress. Thanks, Mike, for giving me a chance to talk about the novel.
Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing
1. What is the title of your book?
The current title is Bridgers, but it might not be final. My original title for the project was Languages of Wakewood, which I love, but it no longer works, since the book now includes many other languages.
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
I’ve been telling myself stories set in Birdverse for the last five years. The stories form a loose arc, a series of tales set in motion by an environmental disaster whose inception goes almost unnoticed, until it suddenly and precipitously deteriorates. I call the arc The Earthkeepers. In the beginning of 2012, I found myself working on a YA novel set fairly close to the end of the arc. The story took me to the east of the landmass, where I have not formerly dared to go. The main character in the YA discovers some very grim and yet exciting things that had happened to her parents at the time of the revolution, seventeen years prior. I became fascinated by the MC’s father, a lice-maker for the government and a broken and frightened man who had once studied languages now dead or forbidden. Something clicked; I needed to know exactly what happened during the revolution, and I realized that the whole arc begins then. I needed to know more about this group of people who called themselves Bridgers – in our terms they are linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, ethnomusicologists – and what they did to bring about the very revolution that eventually outlawed their discipline. I thought, well, I could put the YA on hold for a moment and write a novella about all this. So it began.
3. What genre does your book fall under?
Social science fantasy. Oh, wait, there’s no genre like this. Then I guess it’s secondary world fantasy. It really is social science fantasy, though – it tackles social science questions, the process of research, and the evolution of these disciplines within the constraints of my secondary world. The story revolves around linguistics primarily and anthropology second. But it is also fantasy, with deepname magic and dreaming magic and a Bird deity who might or might not exist.
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
That’s not a question I feel equipped to answer. I am not a movie person, and I just don’t think in these terms.
5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book?
I don’t have an elevator pitch yet. It is hard with a book like this. “A foreign linguist attempts to do fieldwork, gets embroiled in a revolution.” “A linguist discovers her informants are people.” “A linguist discovers her informants are people; sociolinguistics ensue.” See, this is hard, because much as I love Ulín, she is an outsider. There are six other characters who are insiders, and each one of them deserves a pitch. I’ll just have to keep thinking about this.
“A tale of revolution and linguistics, with a bonus lion.”
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
At this time I am not planning to self-publish, but I am not ruling this out as a possibility. I am hopeful that my book will find an audience, but I cannot gauge at this point whether it is just the 20 or so people who are already waiting to read it when it’s done, or a larger group.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Bridgers began as a novella, The Languages of Wakewood. I started writing it in mid-February and wrote 30k in two months. I sent it to my wonderful beta-readers for critique, revised, and was dithering when at the end of May Amal El-Mohtar convinced me to expand the novella into a book. She was right – the story needed more space. In addition, I have excluded some characters from the novella because of length restrictions, and they needed to be in the story. As of early October I am still writing (now at 90k, with about 20k still left) and hope to finish the manuscript by the end of the year.
8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?
While I know of no books exactly like this, Bridgers wants to hang out with C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner, the work of Ursula Le Guin, and the Elemental Logic series by Laurie J. Marks.
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
This is a book that stems from my passions, work, and activism. I am a linguist who has been repeatedly told that sociolinguistics is not ‘real’ linguistics. It is too real linguistics that matters to real people in real circumstances every single day. Last semester I’ve been teaching a course on multilingualism, and writing about multilingualisms, language shift, language loss, and language and prestige; these themes are at the core of the book. I am multilingual myself, and a twice-immigrant; those issues are of intense interest to me. The book was set in motion by Shweta Narayan and Amal El-Mohtar, who wanted to read it.
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
If you like intersectionality: this story is told by people who are disempowered in different ways. They lack magic, they are poor, they are queer, they are renegades, they belong to ethnic and religious minorities. They come from different cultures.
If you like interesting female characters: this book is full of them.
If you want images, then I give you these: four hundred bird-shaped weathervanes rattle on the roof of the university. The names of rivers past. A people who follow the tumbleweed star across the great desert. A lion of fire.
If you want to know more about the protagonists: the heroines are a linguist, disinherited after her loss of magic; a revolutionary in a short sack dress; a peasant who has once killed a bear out of mercy; an artificer who makes mechanical rats and paints them with flowers. And the heroes are a musician who has been forbidden to sing; a folklorist who sews a baby quilt at night; and a killer desperately in love with a woman more ruthless than him and twice his age.
Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.
Mike Allen’s responses are found on his blogs (Descent into Light; Livejournal mirror). Tagging Sofia Samatar, Mat Joiner, Ann Leckie, Lisa Bradley, Amal El-Mohtar, and Bogi Takács. You can write about any creative project you are working on, be it a short story, a novel, a novella, a poem, an anthology – anything.
Originally published at RoseLemberg.net. You can comment here or there.
September 30, 2012
September 25, 2012
If you are fasting Yom Kippur, wishing you an easy fast.&...
Issue 1 of Through the Gate is Live!
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Originally posted by
mitchell_hart
at Issue 1 of Through the Gate is Live!Finally, after much too long, Issue 1 is up! Read it over at: http://throughthegate.net/currentissue.html!Within Issue 1's electronic pages, one may find poems by, in no particular order, Rose Lemberg, Mari Ness, Sonya Taaffe, Bethany Powell, Michele Bannister, Devon Miller-Duggan, Alicia Cole, Dominik Parisien, Mat Joiner, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Adrienne J. Odasso, Shira Lipkin and Sally Rosen Kindred.
Please spread the word!
