Kate Elliott's Blog, page 49

AussieCon4 - Australia Worldcon

A brief reminder that I am planning to attend Aussie Con 4, Worldcon, in Melbourne, Australia, Sept 2 - 6. Orbit Books will have a table in the dealer's room where they will be doing signings for various of their authors.

Also, I'll be signing at Galaxy Books in Sydney, with Karen Miller and Charles Stross, on Thursday 27 August as well. I hope not to be too jet lagged!

By the way, Cold Magic *should* be available at the Sydney signing and at Worldcon.

kateelliott @ 2010-08-02T22:49:00

These days a typical first draft pattern for me goes like this:

Four or five false starts before

settling into something reasonable as a starting place

and writing along in fits and starts for a while until

I finally realize what the starting place should have been

which allows me to rewrite that for the sixth time

and then begin to hit a reasonable forward pace as I push into and through the middle of the book

(which is totally crap, except when it isn't)

and then just as I'm really hitting on all c...

"I don't expect everyone to read my books."

Michelle Sagara West waxes wise.



1. Every author wants everyone to read and love their books.
2. This will never happen.
3. The world's nicest people sometimes write books I don't care for
4. While I am not, sadly, the world's nicest person, I also write books that people
simply don't care for.



She goes on, very sensibly and not at length.

I know this is being linked all over (well, around my f-list anyway) but if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

In my...

A Month of Entries

One month ago I decided to do my best to post every single day in the month of July in honor of . . . whatever you wish. My birthday. My anniversary. The forthcoming publication of Cold Magic (just over one month away now). Or just to see if I could do it.

Looking back, the most successful posts in terms of comments were definitely those in which I simply asked a question. When I opined, I generally got fewer comments (no surprise there). I find blogging rather artificial in the sense th...

Life As A Writer: Notes from an email interview

Periodically (although rarely) in the past I have answered questions from a high school student about writing. I don't really have the time to do this now, however.

Here is a section from one longer interview I did some years ago:



LIFE AS A WRITER:


44. How do you balance writing with your real life?

I try to take weekends off, but I am always thinking about writing. Also, real life has a habit of intruding, no matter what.



45. What is your writing schedule like?

I try to treat writi...

More on Epic Fantasy and the Bechdel Test

My recent post--more of a question than a post, really--on Epic Fantasy and the Bechdel Test has by now reached over 200 comments.

I would ask myself "Why? Why should such a question--does epic fantasy pass the Bechdel Test?--attract so much comment?" Except I am not surprised.

For me, the Bechdel Test is not a way to declare that specific works Pass or Fail. It's not a way to draw down opprobrium onto specific individuals or certain works as opposed to others. A book or film can fail the B...

iPad

Still not the best name ever. But there it is.

I now possess an iPad, courtesy of my children (I knew I had them for some reason), who pooled their resources and gave me one for my birthday (probably because they were sick of hearing me whine on and on about whether or not I should get one or wait until v2 or the End of Time, depending).

I have purchased one book on iBooks now. I think I may in future buy pretty much all new novels as e reads. It just makes more sense *for me* (not for every...

Marriage

My spouse and I have now been married 25 years. We have what is, by some, called a "traditional marriage" if by traditional marriage you mean between a cisgendered male and a cisgendered female, which has produced children (in our case, three).

25 years is a long time, some days of which have been much longer than others.

What it makes me reflect on most, though, is that I think it's really time for marriage equality in this country (by this country I am specifically referring to the USA, but ...

Reviews: To Read, or not To Read? Another question.

I have really enjoyed reading the answers and discussion to my question about what people think about writers linking to reviews on their blogs (or, I suppose, on social media in general). I have several opinions about this, which I'm mostly not going to talk about right now.

One thing I have noted recently is how many book bloggers there are these days and how book blogs are a relatively new and quite wonderful way in which like-minded readers can discuss the books they love and hate with ot...

Contest

CONTEST WINNER!

First I have to say that the alt-history suggestions were great entries, and I wish I had more than one ARC to give away.

Go and read them for some alt histories I would love to read, or write, versions of.

I liked them all so well I did a random draw (actually, my spouse did the actual draw).

The last ARC goes to:

Alan C, of Cambridge, England

Congrats, Alan!