Charlie Jane Anders's Blog, page 43
January 8, 2016
lucidlyhoney:
An illustrated gif based off of As Good As New...
An illustrated gif based off of As Good As New Charlie by Jane Anders
Kaylani J. Fuller
January 7, 2016
I’m (maybe) coming to your town!
Over at Goodreads, there’s a complete list of the tour dates I’ll be going on in late January and early February, and you can RSVP and get reminders. Here they are:
Jan. 26, NYC: powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn, 7 PM
Jan. 27, Boston: Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA, 7 PM
Jan. 28, Seattle: Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA, 7 PM
Jan. 29, San Diego: Mysterious Galaxy, 5943 Balboa Avenue Ste 100, San Diego, CA, 7:30 PM
Jan. 30, San Francisco: Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA, 3 PM
Feb. 4, Los Angeles: Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 7:30 PM
January 6, 2016
"Anders’ knock-your-socks-off blend of science and magic will be a strong contender for science..."
- Booklist (Starred review) - OMG YAY!
January 5, 2016
If things had turned out different...
…I’d be promoting a hard-boiled urban fantasy novel right about now. When I finally sold All the Birds in the Sky to a publisher, I had already written five other novels. (And by “written,” I mean that I had revised each of them a ton, torn them up and put them back together a bunch of times, and polished them up.) One of those novels was published, back in 2005. Three others got shopped around and just never went anywhere, for various reasons. But the fifth one, a hard-boiled urban fantasy, seemed like it had a shot at getting published. It was about an enforcer who works for a secret magic society, but he’s also a recovering alcoholic. It was very much influenced by Chandler, Spillane, Macdonald, Hammett, Westlake etc., but also Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim (pictured above) and a bunch of other hard-boiled urban fantasies. This novel was called The Dark-Eyed Girl, or The Witch-Killers, and it has a lot of really cool stuff in it. I really thought it could have gotten a good book deal. But then my story “Six Months, Three Days” started getting some attention, and I was halfway done with this novel that was similar in tone and feel to “Six Months.”
In the end I decided if I got to have a science fiction “debut,” it was way better to lead with the book that was more like “Six Months, Three Days.” And also, even though my hard-boiled urban fantasy novel was funny and weird, it still felt like it was more obviously derivative. It was a book that anybody could have written, maybe. Whereas All the Birds in the Sky, for better or worse, was a book that only I could have written.
January 4, 2016
Doorstoppers
The “finished” sixth or seventh draft of All the Birds in the Sky was like massively way longer than the version that’s coming out in a few weeks. I had already cut one major subplot and streamlined a ton of the action, but it was still crazy long. Every supporting character got moments in the spotlight, and there was tons and tons of worldbuilding. I personally love huge “doorstopper” novels, even in spite of what I was writing last week about “not wasting the reader’s time.” There’s something about a huge dense book, with a ton of threads running through it, that makes the experience that much more rewarding. But in the case of All the Birds in the Sky, I am like 98 percent sure that the shorter, streamlined version is a much stronger book, even apart from not presuming on everyone’s patience. But once the book is out and people are actually reading it in the wild, I’ll post a ton of “deleted scenes” and stuff that got cut mostly for length.
January 3, 2016
January 2, 2016
Can you be a die-hard rationalist but also totally superstitious? (Asking for a friend)
I’m serious, I wonder about this a lot. One of the reasons I was keen to get into the relationship between a mad scientist and a witch in #AlltheBirdsintheSky is because I am 100 percent pro-science, and pro-empiricism, and all that good stuff. And I’m also mad superstitious. I have weird things. Like, I pick up pennies on the sidewalk and don’t walk under ladders, but I also hug trees. A lot. And I pet stone lions and other kinds of statues. For luck. I also believe in fortune cookies way too much. Yesterday, I went to wayyy too much trouble to eat Hoppin John on New Year’s Day. I engage in “magical thinking” a lot, especially when I’m obsessing about trying to make sense of a story. I guess it comes down to thinking that magic and storytelling are closely linked, and you need a bit of one to get the other. But maybe I have to hand in my “empiricist” card? What do you think?
Top image: Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind.
January 1, 2016
Here’s to all the freaks, the misfits, the weirdos, the fidgety...
Here’s to all the freaks, the misfits, the weirdos, the fidgety oddballs, the people who “don’t count.” It’s your world. Let’s hope 2016 treats everyone better. (Pic: Chewbacchus Den Mural, New Orleans. via Infrogmation/Flickr)
December 31, 2015
Words of wisdom (at Dog Eared Books on Valencia St)
Words of wisdom (at Dog Eared Books on Valencia St)
December 30, 2015
The Real Problem With Tropes Is Unquestioned Assumptions
I was noodling recently and thinking about tropes. Everybody always says that a trope can be good or bad, it’s just a matter of how well you execute it. I totally believe that, although I also think some tropes are just too overused. (Like Bullet Time was, for a while.)
But really, the thing that can make tropes bad is when they reflect an assumption that’s never questioned. Of course the keys to every car are going to be inside that flap over the car’s windshield, because everyone always leaves them there. Of course the badass female lead will fall in love with the male hero after thinking he’s pathetic for two hours, because that’s what chicks are like. Etc. etc. Tropes are fine, but one of the reasons why we get so much pleasure out of seeing them subverted is because they usually come bundled with lots of unquestioned assumptions, and expectations about the way the world works. I’m all for a trope that feels like someone has thought about how this works for 30 seconds. Not asking for a whole minute, just 30 seconds.
