Martha Wells's Blog, page 107

Busy week, busy weekend.This is the image for the kicksta...

Busy week, busy weekend.


This is the image for the kickstarter I'm going to be involved in with five other authors. It'll start November 28. (Art for the kickstarter image is by Julie Dillon)

Part of my contribution to it will be a new Reynard Morane and Nicholas Valiarde story, set before The Death of the Necromancer.

Book recs:

* The Breaker Queen by C.S.E. Cooney

* Black Gate: Charles R. Saunders (author of the Imaro books) has a new fantasy novel: Epic Fantasy from the Father of Sword & Soul: Abengoni: First Calling by Charles R. Saunders
Full disclosure here: Milton Davis asked me to preview this book earlier this year and give him a blurb if I felt like it. Well, I jumped at the chance to read a new Charles Saunders book. That’s like asking if I want to hear some unreleased Led Zeppelin tracks before they hit the general public. There was no way I was going to say no. And before I go any further, I love the book and gave Milton this blurb I totally stand by: "In Abengoni: First Calling, Charles Saunders writes the sort of epic fantasy I want to read. He tells the tale, with its large cast of sharply drawn characters and complex history, in a wonderfully spare and fast-paced style that doesn’t waste time getting to where it’s going. I can’t wait for the next book."

Links

* Why Falling Down Stairs In Your Underwear Is Solid Prep For Being A Female Director
Discovered by Chuck Norris, loved by fanboys, and punching up at the old directors' network: Lexi Alexander fights for justice and her films' success.

* The truth about the dungeon master who disappeared in the steam tunnels
Jason Louv on the short life of James Dallas Egbert III, and the long shadow his death casts on those used him as a prop in the age of Satanic Panic

Wednesday

I'm too depressed and angry to talk about the election results. I am a big Wendy Davis supporter, and one of my goddaughters worked for her campaign, so.

A thing:

I'm going to be involved in a Kickstarter towards the end of the month, with several other authors. I'm not supposed to tell too much about it yet, but I am writing a new story for it, and it's going to have Reynard Morane and Nicolas Valiarde, set some time before the beginning of The Death of the Necromancer

If you missed it, I did:
Tor.com: the Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe, an SF Signal Interview, and an article at Black Gate: Black Gate Magazine: Fanfiction and Me

Signing this weekend

* I'm doing a signing Saturday November 8, 2014, at 1:00 pm for Stories of the Raksura Volume I and the paperback edition of Star Wars: Razor's Edge at Murder by the Book, in Houston, Texas.

If you can't be there, you can use this page to order a signed book from the store. They can also order The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, and The Siren Depths from them to be signed and shipped to you also, so if you wanted a signed set of all the books, say as a Christmas or other winter holiday present, this would be a good time to do it.


Sale

The Serpent Sea, the second Raksura book, is still on sale on US Kindle and Nook for a $1.99. This should end on Nov 6.


link

Salon: I’m not "that creepy guy from the Internet": How Gamergate gave the geek community a bad name by Arthur Chu


Book recs:

* Author J Damask/Joyce Chng is undergoing serious medical treatment right now and buying her books would really help:
Of Oysters, Pearls, and Magic - a novella set on a planet colonised by Asians–and the story of their tumultous relationship with the sea.
The Rider, Speaker - Young Adult SF. A cross between Dragons of Pern and Chinese culture–Agri-Seer Lifang never expected to ride one of the fabled Quetz; much less the depth of the bond that develops between them...
The Jan Xu series/ A Wolf's Tale - Heart of Fire - urban fantasy set in Singapore. The MC is a mother-of-two and member of a pack of Chinese werewolves.

* Tainted Blood by M.L. Brennan
Former film student Fortitude Scott is finally gainfully employed. Unfortunately, said employment happens to be with a group of sociopathic vampires-his family. And as much as Fort is loath to get too deep into the family business, when his brother, Chivalry, is temporarily unable to run the territory, it’s up to Fort to keep things under control.

* The Turning Season by Sharon Shinn
For Karadel, being a shape-shifter has always been a reality she couldn’t escape. Even though she’s built a safe life as a rural veterinarian, with a close-knit network of shifter and human friends who would do anything for her—and for each other—she can’t help but wish for a chance at being normal.

* A Play of Shadow by Julie E. Czerneda
The law forbids Bannan from leaving Marrowdell and travelling to Mellynne to help his sister. In this world. As a turn-born, Jenn Nalynn has the power to cross into the magical realm of the Verge, and take Bannan with her. Once there, they could find a way into Mellynne.

Sunday

Good luck to everyone who's doing Nanowrimo! Every time I try to do it something happens and I get half my normal wordcount or less, so I don't jinx myself. And good luck to everyone doing the Yuletide challenge! Special good luck if you're doing both.


* I'm on the Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe on Tor.com.


Big Sale

* The Serpent Sea, the second Raksura book, is still on sale on US Kindle and Nook for a $1.99. So if you ever wanted to get the ebook, this is a good time.


Upcoming signings

* I'm doing a signing Saturday November 8, 2014, at 1:00 pm for Stories of the Raksura Volume I and the paperback edition of Star Wars: Razor's Edge at Murder by the Book, in Houston, Texas.

If you can't be there, you can use this page to order a signed book from the store. They can also order The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, and The Siren Depths from them to be signed and shipped to you also, so if you wanted a signed set of all the books, say as a Christmas or other winter holiday present, this would be a good time to do it.

* I'll also be doing a signing for Blade Singer with Aaron de Orive, at the Barnes & Noble Arboretum in Austin, Texas, on Saturday November 15 at 2:00. Hopefully they'll have some of my other books, too.

Happy Halloween!

First news: The Serpent Sea, the second Raksura book, is on sale on US Kindle and Nook for a $1.99. So if you ever wanted to get the ebook, this is a good time.

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Book recs:

* Juliet E. McKenna's collection about Victorian monster hunters is also on sale: Challoner, Murray & Balfour: Monster Hunters at Law

* Shadowboxer by Tricia Sullivan
Thai martial arts, international crime, celebrity and mythical creatures combine in this masterful new tale of two people facing incredible dangers, from award-winning author Tricia Sullivan.

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We're not having a party tonight, but we are having a few people over for Halloween dinner, and I'm going to decorate the house and yard. So I'll take pictures.

Here's a few pictures from previous years:


That time I built a bat cave in the hallway.


Vampire hunter's kit

Wednesday

They're about to replace a power utility pole on our street today, so I will probably be disappearing abruptly from the internet for several hours. I'll take pictures, including the car that for some reason has decided to park right in front of where the giant pole has to go through.

Shows I'm really enjoying:

Sleepy Hollow is fast-paced action mystery fantasy horror. And I mean, fast-paced. One of the things I like best about this show is that characters don't withhold information from each other. They run to their friends and blurt out everything the bad guys would like them to keep quiet about. And I love Nicole Beharie, Lyndie Greenwood, and Tom Mison. And I'm really worried about what's happening to Orlando Jones' character.

If there's ever a live action Raksura movie, I want Lyndie Greenwood to play Jade.

How to Get Away With Murder. I'm loving this one too. Viola Davis and the whole cast is awesome. It's complicated and twisty and also fast-paced, and would lend itself well to binge-watching.

Weird thing that happened the other night: One of our cats, Tasha, woke us up in the middle of the night with what was apparently a nightmare. She was sleeping at the foot of the bed, and started crying, and when I turned on the light she ran up to us, still crying, and kept running between us and looking at us both. Her fur was puffed up and she was crying and purring (I think because she was glad to see us) at the same time. This is not the most demonstrative cat, though she's affectionate in her own way. (Jack is the one who will continually throw his body at your face and knead you and wind around your legs, etc.) So it was odd, and the only thing I can think of is that she had a nightmare and it scared the crap out of her. She finally settled down and went to sleep up by my shoulder. (And yes, I got up and walked around the house to make sure it wasn't on fire or being invaded by snakes or something.)

Book Day

* Star Wars: Razor's Edge is out in paperback, and the ebook price has been dropped.

* There is a short interview with me on SF Signal: INTERVIEW: Martha Wells on the Raksura and the Three Worlds

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The We Need Diverse Books Indegogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/we-need-diverse-books
Reading is the ultimate form of empathy. Though more than half of schoolchildren are minorities--people of color, LGBTQIA, and/or people with disabilities--the fact remains that too few of these children see reflections of themselves in the books they read. Books are more than mirrors-- they’re windows as well. The more kids read, the more they understand not just themselves, but the Story of Us All.

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Other people's books:

* Drawn Blades by Kelly McCullough
"Aral the jack, formerly the noble Aral Kingslayer, is the best kind of hero: damaged, cynical, and despondent, yet needing only the right cause to rise from his own ashes."—Alex Bledsoe, author of The Hum and the Shiver

* A Death at the Dionysus Club by Melissa Scott, Amy Griswold
In the sequel to Lambda Literary Award-winning Death by Silver, metaphysician Ned Mathey and private detective Julian Lynes again challenge magical and murderous threats in a Victorian London not quite the city in our history books.

* New Rivers of London short story: The Home Crowd Advantage by Ben Aaronovitch

Question and Book Day Tomorrow

First, a Raksura question I forgot to answer earlier:

beccastareyes asked What do newborn Raksura look like? Especially since they're shifters.

We know that when queens clutch, you can't tell which of their offspring will be fertile queens/consorts and which will be warriors, enough that warriors from Aeriat clutches have a reputation for being stuck up compared to the Arbora-born warriors who always knew what role they would play as adults.

Actually, that's two different things: 1) warriors born from queens' clutches rather than Arbora clutches get stuck-up because of a belief that it means their bloodline is superior, more closely related to the royal Aeriat. 2) The other is that when it's a queen's clutch and all the babies are female, it's impossible to tell at first if they're all queens or all warriors or a mix of both, because queens don't develop the web overlay of color until they're past the toddler phase, and there's a belief that this can cause psychological problems in the female warriors. (We don't know whether the second one is true or not, and it may be a Raksura urban legend.)

I'm going to leave the rest of your speculation here, because it's interesting:

But Aeriat in their winged form have different coloration depending on if they are queens, consorts or warriors. Consorts and (male) warriors look the same in their groundling form, but queens don't have groundling forms.

The only thing I can come up with is that newborn Raksura have a 'baby' coloration in their Aeriat forms (or a 'baby' form that they lose once they can shift*) that obscures the difference between a blue/green/brown warrior and a black consort, or the bicolor markings of a queen.

So what are Raksura infants like? Besides probably adorable.

(Of course, the problem is that Moon probably won't see a royal clutch until Jade has one, since I gather it's not the sort of thing shown to visitors, even of allied courts. And Indigo Cloud might forget that Moon wouldn't know this because the longer Moon says with other Raksura, the less obvious his knowledge gaps get, and I'm sure all consorts and queens are a bit jittery about their first clutch and making sure all their children are healthy.)

* This one I'm questioning because it might have come up when Chime changed, if only as a comparison to (re)learning to shift and work in two forms.

In the next set of novellas, in the one called "The Dark Earth Below," Jade actually has her first clutch, and scene goes into a bit more detail than the one in "The Tale of Indigo and Cloud."


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I have a book coming out tomorrow! The paperback edition of Star Wars: Razor's Edge.

Online, it's available at Amazon US, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, Amazon UK, Waterstones, Amazon DE, Amazon Canada, Amazon France, Amazon Spain or look for it in an independent bookstore in the US through Indiebound.

It's also still out there in hardcover: Barnes and Noble, Powell's, Mysterious Galaxy, The Tattered Cover, Book Depository, Book Depository UK, Waterstones, Books A Million, Chapters Indigo, Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon Canada, Amazon France, Amazon Spain or look for it in an independent bookstore in the US through Indiebound.

ebook: Kindle US, NookBook, Kobo, iTunes, Kindle UK, Kindle Germany, Kindle Canada, Kindle Australia.

and audiobook: Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon Canada

Thursday Stuff

I got sick yesterday afternoon, like a mild IBS attack, so did not get much done yesterday besides email. I feel better today, so hopefully I can catch up.

Couple of things:

* If you missed it yesterday, I did a post for Black Gate on Fanfiction and Me. The editor's daughter is into fanfiction and he was getting tired of seeing nothing but negative articles about it.

* Stories of the Raksura I got a great review from SF Signal: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/10/book-review-martha-wells-stories-of-the-raksura-volume-one-the-falling-world-the-tale-of-indigo-and-cloud/
The worldbuilding and characters in these stories are asw wonderful as the novels and I had no difficulty immersing myself into Wells’ world and societies again. The Three Worlds is a world rich with sentient humanoid and semi-humanoid species. While a D&D or Pathfinder world has humans, elves, dwarves, and others, sometimes in a vibrant mix, the Three Worlds has dozens, perhaps hundreds of species and races, both present and past. Walk along the Long Road from Kish to the Gulf of Abascene, and one will meet communities of all sorts of beings on the way. These species often have mistrust and conflicts, but the rich diversity allows Wells to explore psychology and social structures among very different races. And I haven’t even mentioned the astonishing non-sentient biodiversity found in her world.

* The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy was mentioned on a Mind Meld on fancasting: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/10/mind-meld-the-books-that-should-be-films-fancasting-who-should-star-in-them/

* A couple of people asked Raksura questions on Tumblr: here and here

* Interesting article on Black Gate by Sean McLachlan: World War One: An International, Multiracial Conflict
With the centennial of World War One in full swing, there’s a lot of press repeating the received truths about the war. If one listens to the UK media, it sounds like the British dealt with the Germans almost single-handed, saving Brave Little Belgium with a bit of help from the French and of course the Commonwealth allies. American media coverage, such as it is, stresses the American role while glossing over the first three years they missed. Neither of these national media spend much time on the wide diversity of people involved in the conflict.

Okay, that was more than a couple.

Preorders

Stories of the Raksura II: The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below is available for early preorder in paperback on Amazon US and Barnes and Noble.

PSA for Reviews: If you liked a book or didn't like it, it really does help to leave reviews. This is especially important on Amazon where the number of reviews control how often the book shows up in searches and suggestions. Reviews on Barnes and Noble, other retailers, and GoodReads and LibraryThing, or just on your own blog, twitter, FB, tumblr, etc help too.

PSA for Libraries: You can also look for my books at your local library, and if they don't have a book, request that they buy it for their collection, or see if they can get it through interlibrary loan. (Remember that some libraries let you check out ebooks now too.)

Fanfiction and Me

This is a link to an article I wrote for Black Gate on how I found fanfic and early Star Wars fanzines: Fanfiction and Me: http://www.blackgate.com/2014/10/22/fanfiction-and-me/

The editor's young daughter is very much into fanfiction and he was getting tired of seeing negative articles about it.

Excerpt: I was introduced to fanfiction after The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, when I was around fifteen. This was long before the internet, and fanfic was printed in fanzines, fan-produced magazines that were mimeographed or xeroxed, or if the editor could afford it, offset printed. But finding them, if you didn’t already know someone who knew about them, was nearly impossible.

As a lonely, feral, anxiety-ridden, teenage fan, my only connection to the fandom world at all was Starlog magazine. Back then, Starlog was a lifeline for me, and it not only featured articles and news about TV shows, movies, and books, but also fan groups and conventions. (I chose the university I went to because Starlog had an article that mentioned its student SF/F club and convention, but that’s another story.)

The magazine also had a section of small cheap personal ads in the back for fan-related merchandise. One issue a fanzine called Facets, dedicated to fanfic about Harrison Ford’s various characters (mostly Han Solo and Indiana Jones) bought an ad, and I sent my money in (I don’t remember how much, probably less than $10) and bought a couple of small fanzines.

I was hooked. The back of each fanzine was filled with ads and flyers for other Star Wars fanzines, and I dived in and ordered more.

Question Answer, Appearances

Sorry for the delay in answering! One of our goddaughters came to visit this weekend and we went to a great wedding. It was very fannish, with table centerpieces from all different fandoms (we sat at the Stargate table) and lots of delicious food. I think they said the bride made the curry, which went really well on top of the barbequed brisket.

Yesterday was also my 19th wedding anniversary, so we went out to dinner and had way too much food. There has been wacky publishing news I can't really talk about yet, though some of it (dealing with the Strange Chemistry/Angry Robot disaster) is mostly not good. I am really looking forward to being able to show off the cover of the next Raksura collection, because the sketch was looking pretty gorgeous. I'm also going to be involved in a couple of kickstarters that are coming up.


kalinara asked I've been rereading the Raksura books (which are lovely) but I'm finding myself confused a bit about how Raksura age. I had gotten the impression that Jade and Moon were fairly young for Raksura. However, I remember reading that Tempest was (or appeared to be) about the same age as Jade, and she already has an adult child. On the other hand, characters like Lithe and Shade still seem very young.

I was hoping you might clarify: how long do Raksura remain fledglings? Approximately what age do Raksura reach adulthood?

Thank you!

Aeriat Raksura basically have a long period of adolescence, even after they leave the nurseries. The Arbora do as well, but it doesn't last quite as long. Once Raksura reach adulthood, they don't change physically or show signs of aging until they get into what would be the equivalent for a human of their late 60s, early 70s, when they start to lose the pigmentation in their skin/scales. So Tempest looks about Jade's age, but is older. (You also have to remember the descriptions are from Moon's perspective and there's a lot he doesn't know or realize yet.) Lithe and Shade are both younger than Moon, but have also been sheltered quite a bit in Opal Night. (Because of Moon's experiences, most if not all of the Raksura his age that he meets are going to seem younger, just because they've spent their lives protected by a court.)

Moon's been alive about forty turns, but as far as Raksuran aging/maturity levels go, this would be the equivalent of being in his early twenties.

I hope that makes sense!

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Upcoming signings

* I'm doing a signing Saturday November 8, 2014, at 1:00 pm for Stories of the Raksura Volume I and the paperback edition of Star Wars: Razor's Edge at Murder by the Book, in Houston, Texas.

If you can't be there, you can use this page to order a signed book from the store. They can also order The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, and The Siren Depths from them to be signed and shipped to you also, so if you wanted a signed set of all the books, say as a Christmas or other winter holiday present, this would be a good time to do it.

* I'l also be doing a signing for Blade Singer with Aaron de Orive, at the Barnes & Noble Arboretum in Austin, Texas, on Saturday November 15 at 2:00. Hopefully they'll have some of my other books, too.

* On February 13-15, 2015, I'll be a panelist at ConDFW in Dallas, TX. This is one of my favorite cons, so if you're nearby, check it out.