Barbara Friend Ish's Blog, page 5

Heading out to ConCarolinas

Today I'm loading up the car for a trip to Charlotte, NC: for my first visit to ConCarolinas. This looks like it's going to be tremendous fun! Very active Facebook group, a bunch of terrific guests and cool parties, and I get to sit in on some really cool panels. I'll actually be moderating a couple of them.

Here are the panels I'm participating in:

How to Write a Sex Scene–Friday 11PM

This one will be hosted by Davey Beauchamp, so I know it's going to be fantastic fun. Other members of the panel include Mason Lavin, Josiah W English, Jana Oliver, and Linda Walsh. Rose petals and scented candles optional…

Learning to Write–Saturday 3PM

I'm moderating this one. We'll be talking with authors Rachel A. Aaron, Glenda C. Finkelstein, Bobby Nash, Carrie Ryan, Allen Wold, and Debra Killeen, which is a nice diverse group with a variety of backgrounds. I'm planning to allow plenty of time for audience Q&A, so join us here to get your answers questioned.

The Red Pen–Sunday 12PM

This is slated as a panel in which editors discuss what they look for in submissions and how they work. Teresa Bane is moderating, and she's a fanstastic moderator, so I know this will be good. I'll be sitting with Mason Lavin, Wendy S. Delmater, and Edward McKeown while Teresa exercises crowd control over the notorious opinionation (is that a word? It is now. How ironic to have this happen while I'm wearing my Editor hat.) of a group of editors.

The Future of Fantastic Fiction–Sunday 3PM

Once again I'm moderating, and sitting with another nicely-diverse group: Wendy S. Delmater, Rachel A. Aaron, and David B Wood. We'll be discussing where the market may be taking genre fiction.

I'll have a table in the Authors Alley; when I can't be there, Mark will be. Sometimes he looks fierce, but he's a big teddy bear, and he's still new to the convention scene, so if you're at the con, please stop by and smile at him. We'll have books by all the Mercury Retrograde authors on hand.

 

Crafting Matriarchal societies in SF/F

As you know if you've been playing the home game, I have a certain fascination with the way we breathe patriarchy with our air. It's a driving force behind the worldbuilding in my series. Reading this blog post on the question of matriarchal societies in SF/F gave me some new food for thought.

Before you ask yourself "Why would anyone want to write about matriarchy?", take a minute and think about how many of the really tired tropes in genre fiction stem from the assumptions of patriarchy. Then explore further–the above-linked  blog post from The Border House is a good place to start–and consider all the truly awful examples of matriarchal societies in SF/F lit and gaming. This is definitely one of the areas in which we can do better.

What would a real, functioning matriarchal society look like? What limitations would it impose on people of both genders? I've tried to look at those questions, in a limited fashion, in my fiction. What are some books (or games) that have gotten it right?

Writing Geekery

Have I mentioned that I'm a plot structure geek? Surely you knew that.

Last night about bedtime, I realized that there are so many one-on-one interactions  between Ellion and his enemy Nechton in this novel that they constitute an entire subplot, which I have not analyzed in terms of its own story arc–and that until I look at that thread on its own, I will be failing to maximize the opportunities inherent in those interactions. Today I am entirely too excited to sit down and do this piece of analysis. I can't wait to see what surprises the Muse in his Architect aspect has in store.

I am an irredeemable geek.

Interview and sneak preview on Darkcargo

Today on the Darkcargo blog, nrlymrtl and I did a Q&A on The Shadow of the Sun. She asked some stunningly penetrating questions, mostly about the philosophy and craft behind the work. I found the interview amazing on two levels: the questions she asked led us to discussions from which readers who enjoyed the work might get new levels of insight into their own reading; but people interested in writing craft in general rather than this work in specific might also find new ideas to take home. I had a great time dialoguing with her, and I appreciate the depth of thought that went into her questions more than I can say.

Also, at their request, I passed along an excerpt from the second volume of the Way of the Gods series, War-Lord of the Gods, which the Darkcargo editors included at the end of the post. All you really need to know about that excerpt is that Ellion is having his worst day yet, and that's saying something.

It's all typical Darkcargo: so much more than we expect from review blogs. Stop by and check it out!

Beltane, May-Day, and other religious disconnects

When I was in first grade, on the first of May our classroom teacher herded all of us outdoors and made us "decorate the Maypole", which I recall being an immense flag pole but (given that I was 7) was probably a tether-ball pole. She offered us no explanation for what we did except that it was May-day, which was explained to us as the first of May. Duh. All we knew was that we were to carry colored streamers which had been affixed to the top of the pole in concentric circles while some of us walked clockwise (er, was that deosil?) and some walked counter-clockwise (no one used the word widdershins), gradually wrapping the entire pole in multicolored strands. We had no sense of why we were performing this antic, although I'll admit it was pretty.

Now, of course, I know that was a holdover from the pagan holiday of Beltane, though I'm certain my thoroughly Christian teacher had no idea what apostasy she was spreading among impressionable youth. Beltane, for those of you who haven't been playing the home game, is one of the great festivals of the pagan religion and a fertility festival. (Take a moment; pause to consider the pole we were decorating. We were seven.) Personally, I'm a fan of a good fertility festival, but like so many of the holiday traditions I met as a child, it was just one of the things I had to connect the dots on later. Like, you know, the Easter Bunny. And, for that matter, Easter.

Schools are much more self-conscious about that sort of thing these days; I'm sure my younger readers never had such a bizarre and unexplained holdover of an older religion manifest at school. Except, uh, Halloween. Groundhog Day, anyone?

This sort of disconnect between received wisdom, religion, and the eternally elusive truth has always fascinated me. It's one of the most important thematic drivers of the series I'm working on. And it's probably no coincidence that the climax of the first novel, The Shadow of the Sun, takes place on Beltane.

That's why, in honor of Beltane and informational disconnects everywhere, I'm giving away The Shadow of the Sun ebook throughout the month of May. Check here for details on how to get your own copy.

Free eBook of The Shadow of the Sun

Happy May! In honor of Beltane, May-Day, and all the intellectual disconnects those days imply, I'm giving away The Shadow of the Sun ebook throughout the month of May. You can download the ePub/Kindle/Nook version from Goodreads, or read it directly on the Goodreads site. If you simply must have it in Kindle format, get in touch with me and I'll hook you up.

There's only one thing I'd like to ask in return: if you read the book, please take the time to post a review on Amazon. All of us rely on those reviews when making buying decisions; having people take the time to post a review, whether positive or negative, really makes a difference.

Happy reading!

Interview on the Pendragon Variety podcast

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of getting up early to talk with the Ladies Pendragon of the Pendragon Variety podcast about publishing, writing, and a variety of other geekish topics. Thanks to the miracles of Skype and podcasting, we were all able to do the interview in our pajamas, with favorite hot morning beverages in hand. Well, at least most of us did: Adryn lives in Japan, and it was evening for her.

We had a great conversation! We covered a lot of very interesting territory, discussing the publishing industry, small press, and the choices available to writers interested in publishing their work; promotion, publicity, and distribution for books; the experience of working with an editor before a book goes to press (spoiler: my editor is Awesome); and a variety of other topics of particular interest to writers of SFF.

I met Scribe and Raven at StellarCon, where they were recording panel discussions and interviews of interest to SFF writers; since then I've enjoyed a few of their episodes, which blend practical information for writers with discussions of their writing journeys and the things they're learning along the way. If you're a SFF writer, you owe it to yourself to check the Pendragon Variety podcast out. Besides, how else are you going to get to listen to me talk shop for an hour without running into people dressed like Storm Troopers?

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Click through and listen below:

Pendragon Variety –Episode 30–Interview with Barbara Friend Ish

Today's Dirty Writer Secret

A couple days of forward motion at the keyboard does not constitute total immunity to creative malaise. That is a battle we have to fight more days than not. After just one day of derailment by the mundane (in this case, allergies) I am back down at the bottom of the mountain trying to push that damn rock again.

Heave. Ho.

Today's progress meter

Because apparently it won't work in a WordPress.com widget, and I just don't have the time to figure out hosted WordPress.

Did I mention that this represents the completion of a chapter?

Writing again

Huzzah! The Muse is back! After far too many months of absence (mine) from the study, I am sitting at the writing desk for longer and longer periods this week…and today the words began to flow.

Miles to go before I sleep, of course. 6%* is probably a generous estimate; The Shadow of the Sun hit 215,000 words during editorial. But this is the best work in the world.

* In case you're wondering: No, I didn't write 13,000 words today. I wrote about 2000. But a hundred 2K-word days is a 200K-word novel.