Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 168

Crash Course in "Make Write Good"

I'm at that stage of editing when you grasp desperately at everything to help you in the Herculean task of Make Book Better. I inhaled Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword specifically to kick the 'write good sentences' part of my brain into gear, and found myself startled at just how good a book it was to inspire me to work on The Creature Court – far above my own skills, but sharing many similar themes and elements, enough to spur me on. Now I'm reading the Demon's Covenant by Sarah...

A Crash Course in "Make Write Good"

I'm at that stage of editing when you grasp desperately at everything to help you in the Herculean task of Make Book Better. I inhaled Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword specifically to kick the 'write good sentences' part of my brain into gear, and found myself startled at just how good a book it was to inspire me to work on The Creature Court – far above my own skills, but sharing many similar themes and elements, enough to spur me on. Now I'm reading the Demon's Covenant by

The Privilege of the Sword, by Ellen Kushner

For some reason I thought that the Small Beer Press edition of The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner was an older, "classic" fantasy novel, reprinted in a pretty edition for the sake of posterity. It turns out that I was wrong – this novel was published for the first time in 2006, in this special hardback edition simultaneously with a paperback release by Bantam Spectra. My misapprehension comes from this being a sequel and indeed a prequel to previous books in the same setting...

Editing is Hard, Water is Wet

My big change to my writing/working routine that I made this year was actually taking weekends – which is to say, not heaping up lists of things I needed to get done on the weekend only to discover on Sunday night that I had failed to do so.

The current edits of Book Two are kicking my arse well and truly – I'm getting the work done, but it's gone painfully slowly for the first nearly two weeks, and I only have 9 days now before they're due. You know that thing where people keep asking me...

Linkage of Wonder

Cat Valente talks about That Twist Ending (with spoilers for Lost, The Sixth Sense) and how much of a letdown it can be.

Tehani talks about Judging Books by their Cover, specifically at Australian SF and fantasy of 2009 and 2010. I particularly like this bit about Power & Majesty: "Power and Majesty is not only already receiving rave reviews – promising to be one of the hottest fantasy novels of the year – but it has the most gorgeous cover, ensuring it will fly off bookstore shelves."

Mari...

Mean Streets and Fight Scenes

The new CreatureCourtCast is up! I talk about some of the processes that went into creating the city of Aufleur, why I love cities in fantasy generally, and the influence Ancient Rome had on the whole thing. I also read a chunk from later in the book (I tried to pick one that avoided most spoilers) with some geography and a juicy fight scene.

If you want to stream the podcast on the site you can do so from the main page and you can also subscribe by searching for creaturecourtcast on...

Prime Minister Gillard

Sure, it didn't start out as a pretty day in politics, but by lunchtime I was pretty delighted with the end result.

I love that we have an unmarried, unreligious Prime Minister. I love that our new Prime Minister is smart and confident and strong and has a real knack for calling people out when they say something stupid (believe me, with Abbott around that's going to be handy)

But I love, love love that when it came to it, the best person for the job of coming in and picking up the...

Galactic Suburbia Episode 10 Show Notes

Ep 10 downloadable/available to subscribers now from itunes – won't be available from the Galactic Suburbia website for non i-tuners until tomorrow morning.

EPISODE TEN

In which we chat about branding and female inclusion in the SF Hall of Fame, discuss our childhood genre loves, and keep derailing ourselves with excitement about the Australian leadership spill & the possibility that we might get a female prime minister tomorrow… GO JULIA! (featuring extra commentary from baby Jem, our...

Reviewy Goodness

I've been slammed by edits the last few days and feeling a bit at a low ebb – the pretty book plates went a long way to cheering me up, as did this long and thoughtful review essay by Alexandra Pierce.

Alex unpacks a lot of things I have been hoping people would notice about Power and Majesty – some I've talked about publicly and some I haven't. I'm delighted she got so much out of it and was particularly pleased to see her discuss it in relation to the urban fantasy genre – I always...

Cat on a Hot Book Plate

I went by my post box today to pick up the June issue of Locus and to hope vainly that maybe my just-shipped copy of The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan might have miraculously arrived already (it hadn't).

What I found instead was even more exciting – a box full of my very own bookplates!

These were designed for me by the marvellous and multi-talented Rowena Cory Daniells (whose own trilogy King Rolen's Kin is due out from Solaris in a month or so) – I like particularly that it reflects ...