Charlie Jane Anders's Blog, page 41

Here’s another quote from All the Birds in the Sky, turned into...

Here’s another quote from All the Birds in the Sky, turned into a gif!

I also have this quote as stickers (if you come to one of my book readings, I will give you one! Tonight I am in Seattle and tomorrow, San Diego!) I also have it on T-shirts (I may have some of those at my readings, too. And Borderlands Books in San Francisco is selling them. Plus POD versions are available here.) 

See the other gifs with fun quotes here!

I’m in Boston today!

I’m so excited to be back in Boston. I grew up a couple hours’ drive from there, and I used to spend hours in the Boston Science Museum watching the giant roller-coaster that measured the kinetic energy of a ball going around and around. And the Van de Graaf generator that made a dummy’s hair stand up! And the planetarium, holy shit. THEY SHOWED US HOW THE EARTH WILL DIE.

I lived in the Boston area a few times, on and off, and I had some of the geekiest conversations and most thrilling discoveries there. It’s no accident that Boston (and particularly MIT) are where Laurence, the mad scientist in my book, goes when he needs to Find His People in the book’s second chapter. San Francisco also has a lot of outstanding nerdery, but Boston is one of those places where you just feel like nerdy conversations are around every corner. You can stand in Harvard Sq., under the Dewey, Cheatem & Howe window (is it still there??) and overhear people chatting about quantum physics and Spaceballs and Anglo-Saxon epics.

Tonight I’m at Brookline Booksmith at 7 PM. Hope to see you there!

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Today’s the day! All the Birds in the Sky is out in the world!

It’s finally here! My book is out! I’m kind of freaking out, mostly in a good way.

ICYMI, this is my book about the relationship between a witch named Patricia and a mad scientist named Laurence. They go through the hell of middle school together, and then meet up again as grown-ups. It’s really all about what it’s like to be the strangest person you know – and then you find someone else who’s equally strange, in a different way. It’s about growing up and figuring out who you are, and learning to understand someone else who has a totally foreign perspective on the world.

I am going to be doing readings in NYC, Boston, Seattle, San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The book is available wherever they sell books. You can get a signed copy from Barnes & Noble in the U.S., and Goldsboro Books in the U.K. And Shelf Awareness is giving away signed copies, too. And you can read what people have been saying about the book.

I can’t believe the book is finally here! If you tweet about it, please use the hashtag #allthebirdsinthesky. And thanks for checking it out!

I care about people who geek out together

One of the fun things about promoting a book, that I never expected, is that people ask you about things you wrote, and it makes you stop and think. Why did I include that section in my novel? Like, people have been asking me about some of the parts where the witch, Patricia, and the mad scientist, Laurence, are having random discussions about stuff like whether it would be better to be a shapeshifter or an illusionist.

The thing is—and this is something I didn’t realize until I was asked about this a couple times—I automatically care about characters who geek out together.

Like, if you want me to invest in a relationship or a team or whatever, show me them discussing stuff. Not like “figuring out the plot” discussion, but just “which is cooler: unicorns or pegasi?” discussion. Maybe because I spend every waking minute of my life geeking out and arguing about science fiction and fantasy stories, I automatically identify with characters who enjoy geeking out and dissecting nerdy ideas. I don’t even think of it as a thing – I just get more invested and excited when characters are having a highly theoretical or nitty-gritty discussion, just because they enjoy it.

I live for that kind of stuff. Just like I love characters who are curious, in general. Characters who take things at face value or don’t think to question their surroundings, I always have a really hard time rooting for. But I immediately am on the team of characters who have a lively mind and want to know stuff. You know, geeks.

“What the Hell was I thinking?”

I’m in the middle of writing my second novel for Tor Books. (It’s not a sequel to All the Birds in the Sky, it’s actually Something Completely Different.) I haven’t actually worked on this book that much in the past couple months, because of short-story deadlines and book promo craziness.

But I’m right at the stage with this novel where I keep thinking about all the stuff I’ve decided to try and do in it, all the wild geese I’m trying to chase down, all the nutso ideas. And I keep clutching my head and asking, “What the Hell was I thinking?!”

It’s kind of terrifying and maddening, to be honest. I look at all the things that looked like good ideas when I first came up with them. I side-eye all of the stuff I fell in love with and absolutely had to have in my book at any cost. And I’m like, “This is all terrible and foolish and I’m a moron for thinking it could possibly work.”

This is totally normal though.

I had that same feeling, pretty much nonstop, for about two years while I was working on All the Birds in the Sky. And in the end, I was able to convince myself, along with an agent and an editor and a few other people, that my nutso ideas really did belong in a book together. (I’m still waiting on the edge of my seat to find out if I managed to convince everyone else who winds up reading the book!)

So part of my brain knows that the “What am I doing? This is a terrible idea” thing is normal and just part of the process. There’s a lotta leaps of faith that go into writing a book, after all, and some of those leaps start to feel kind of insane when you’re in mid air.

But at the same time, that doesn’t mean I want to ignore that voice of doubt inside me. Because it’s healthy to have doubts, and sometimes it turns out that some of the ideas I got madly infatuated with really don’t fit in my book. It’s part of the testing process: Which stuff actually stands up to “What the hell” test, and which stuff actually falls apart when you start asking. And sometimes… it all falls apart once you start having doubts, and you’re left with a godawful mess and you just have to light it on fire and walk away. That’s happened to me, plenty times.

I guess we’ll find out if this new novel is going to survive the doubting process, or turn into a noxious trash fire, in like two or three years. Here’s hoping!

"Charlie Jane Anders’ brilliant, cross-genre novel “All the Birds in the Sky” has..."

“Charlie Jane Anders’ brilliant, cross-genre novel “All the Birds in the Sky” has the hallmarks of an instant classic. It’s a beautifully written, funny, tremendously moving tale that explodes the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy, YA and “mainstream” fiction.”

- Elizabeth Hand, writing in the L.A. Times. Still walking on air about this!

therealjambery:bookriot:There’s a lot that goes into the...

therealjambery:

bookriot:

There’s a lot that goes into the production of the books you
love, you know, in addition to all the writing. Publicity, sales,
editorial, production… there are so many parts that come together to
make a book happen and get it into your favorite local bookstore. And
there’s one in particular we notice quite often, but never really dig
deep into.

The cover.

Just who is it that makes our books look so lovely? Can you tell
when a book is designed by a particular designer or illustrator? You’d
be surprised. Welcome to By the Cover, where I’ll be spotlighting some
of those artists that make your books look so gorgeous.

WILL STAEHLE is a freelance book designer residing
in Seattle, Washington, and the former Art Director for HarperCollins.
From his iconic work on Michael Crichton’s novels to his colorful,
vibrant covers for Michael Chabon, if you’re a book lover, you’ve seen
his iconic work. Some of his recent covers include Victoria Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic and Ernest Cline’s Armada.

Will answered some questions on how he got his start in publishing,
some of his favorite projects, and covers that didn’t quite make it.

http://bookriot.com/2016/01/21/cover-meet-will-stahle-freelance-designer/

I spy, with my little eye, a novel I am really excited to read! @allthebirdsinthesky

Still so incredibly thrilled about that cover. It makes SUCH a huge difference.

torbooks:All the Birds in the Sky author Charlie Jane Anders...

torbooks:

All the Birds in the Sky author Charlie Jane Anders talks inspirations and influences on The Book Smugglers.

We always want what we can’t have

Rule #1 for compelling characters is that they have to want something, right? They’re supposed to have a goal or a desire that they’re working towards, and that allows us to sympathize with them and root for them. But the thing that is always my crack with characters is when what they can never, ever have. Like, at a certain point, Buffy knows that she and Angel can NEVER be together, but she still wants him. I always try to figure out what my characters really, really want – but what I really want to know is, what impossible thing do they want?

In the case of All the Birds in the Sky, both Patricia and Laurence have some goals that are totally realistic – she wants to be a real witch and learn to use her powers, he wants to be able to use his science skills to make the world a better place. I spent a lot of time, while working on this book, trying to make their goals feel like burning desires. And even at the 11th hour, doing revisions on this book, I was trying to find a way to make their personal desires feel intense and gut-wrenching.

But it was super, super important to me for Patricia and Laurence to want things that are harder to define, and probably impossible to get. Patricia will always want her parents’ approval, because they were so hard on her when she was a kid, and her parents just aren’t going to be able to give it to her. Laurence is always going to dream of just up and escaping from all the ugliness of this world, and he wants to see himself as this idealized heroic explorer. I guess part of it is that you can’t fully torture your characters unless they have some desires that will always be beyond their grasp. Plus, it’s realistic, because that’s real life. We always want things that we can never, ever have.

This is something I’m struggling with in my new novel, too – not just how to give my characters desires, but how to give them desires that are at the very least unrealistic.

magic-in-every-book:There are legitimately no requirements to being a book lover. If someone tries...

magic-in-every-book:

There are legitimately no requirements to being a book lover. If someone tries to tell you that you aren’t a book lover, I will personally fight them on your behalf because that is some gatekeeper bullshit.