Martha Wells's Blog, page 133
June 10, 2013
Part Two of The Death of the Necromancer
The second part of The Death of the Necromancer is now online at Black Gate.
* Part One is here
It's basically about a Moriarty-like master criminal and his friends in an otherworldy version of La Belle Epoque Paris with magic, who get involved in a clandestine battle with a sorcerer who seems to be trying to raise the dead.
Here's a snippet from Chapter Eight:
Nicholas took out his watch and checked the time, again: the only nervous gesture he would allow himself to make.
The private chamber was small and intimate, its walls covered in red brocade and the mirror above the mantelpiece etched with names, dates, and mangled verses by diamond rings. On the virgin white cloth of the table stood an unopened absinthe bottle and a silver serving set with the other paraphernalia necessary for drinking it. Nicholas normally preferred wine but for this night he favored the dangerous uncertainty of the wormwood liqueur. For now he was drinking coffee, cut with seltzer water.
He glanced up as the door opened. Reynard sauntered in, crossing the room to lean heavily on the table. "They've just arrived — they're getting out of the coaches now," he murmured.
His evening dress was a little disheveled and Nicholas could smell brandy on his breath but he knew Reynard was only pretending to be drunk. In the doorway behind him were several young men and women, laughing, leaning on each other tipsily. One of the young men was watching Reynard jealously. Nicholas pitched his voice too low for them to hear. "Very good. Will you be free to alert the others?"
"Yes." Reynard jerked his head to indicate his companions. "I'm about to shed the window dressing and head for the hotel." He took Nicholas’s hand and dropped a lingering kiss on his fingers.
Nicholas lifted an eyebrow. "Reynard, really."
"It will make your reputation," Reynard explained. "I'm quite fashionable this week." He released Nicholas and turned to gesture airily to his audience. “Wrong room,” he announced.
***
If you get impatient and want the rest, it's available for $2.99US DRM-free on Barnes and Noble NookBook, Kobo, Amazon US Kindle, Amazon UK Kindle, Barnes and Noble UK, Kindle Canada, Kindle Germany, Kindle France, Kindle Spain, Kindle Italy and all the other international Kindle stores.
* Part One is here
It's basically about a Moriarty-like master criminal and his friends in an otherworldy version of La Belle Epoque Paris with magic, who get involved in a clandestine battle with a sorcerer who seems to be trying to raise the dead.
Here's a snippet from Chapter Eight:
Nicholas took out his watch and checked the time, again: the only nervous gesture he would allow himself to make.
The private chamber was small and intimate, its walls covered in red brocade and the mirror above the mantelpiece etched with names, dates, and mangled verses by diamond rings. On the virgin white cloth of the table stood an unopened absinthe bottle and a silver serving set with the other paraphernalia necessary for drinking it. Nicholas normally preferred wine but for this night he favored the dangerous uncertainty of the wormwood liqueur. For now he was drinking coffee, cut with seltzer water.
He glanced up as the door opened. Reynard sauntered in, crossing the room to lean heavily on the table. "They've just arrived — they're getting out of the coaches now," he murmured.
His evening dress was a little disheveled and Nicholas could smell brandy on his breath but he knew Reynard was only pretending to be drunk. In the doorway behind him were several young men and women, laughing, leaning on each other tipsily. One of the young men was watching Reynard jealously. Nicholas pitched his voice too low for them to hear. "Very good. Will you be free to alert the others?"
"Yes." Reynard jerked his head to indicate his companions. "I'm about to shed the window dressing and head for the hotel." He took Nicholas’s hand and dropped a lingering kiss on his fingers.
Nicholas lifted an eyebrow. "Reynard, really."
"It will make your reputation," Reynard explained. "I'm quite fashionable this week." He released Nicholas and turned to gesture airily to his audience. “Wrong room,” he announced.
***
If you get impatient and want the rest, it's available for $2.99US DRM-free on Barnes and Noble NookBook, Kobo, Amazon US Kindle, Amazon UK Kindle, Barnes and Noble UK, Kindle Canada, Kindle Germany, Kindle France, Kindle Spain, Kindle Italy and all the other international Kindle stores.
June 7, 2013
Various Things
I answered this question on Tumblr:
tavianas asked: When are you going to tell Madeline's story? between DotN and wizard hunters? Then we have not been told the story about Thomas Boniface his new bride and his children surely a daughter ....
For me, those books were written fifteen to twenty years ago, and while I’d still kind of like to write those stories, in the meantime I’ve found a lot of other stories I’m excited to write about too. So I don’t know if I’ll ever have a chance to get back to them.
But I also think this is exactly what fanfiction is for. One book can generate little plot threads for hundreds of stories. I could never write all of them. So fanfic is a great way for readers who get really interested in some particular plot thread to play with it and write their version of what they think might have happened.
* People had also been asking about future Raksura books and the situation with the publisher Night Shade: I answered that here
* Free book: Part One of The Death of the Necromancer is now online at Black Gate Magazine. The next four chapters will be posted this Sunday.
* This is the final day to donate to the Red Cross and enter to win autographed books at Literati Literature Lovers Blog I've contributed a slew of books, including the Raksura books, Emilie and the Hollow World and Wheel of the Infinite.
* The kickstarter for A Knight in the Silk Purse anthology, the sequel to the Tales of the Emerald Serpent anthology, is going on this month. This is a shared world anthology, and I'll have another Jelith and Kryranen story in it.
Appearances
Here's my appearances for the next few months:
* June 21-23, 2013. ApolloCon, in Houston, Texas.
* Friday July 26, 2013. I'll be signing Emilie and the Hollow World at Murder by the Book, at 6:30 pm in Houston, Texas, with Joy Preble (The Sweet Dead Life), Mary Lindsey (Ashes on the Waves), and P.J. Hoover (Solstice).
* August 29-September 2, 2013. LoneStarCon 3, the World Science Fiction Convention, in San Antonio, Texas.
* Saturday October 5, 2013. I'll be signing Empire and Rebellion: Razor's Edge as part of Star Wars Reads Day at 2:00 pm at the Barnes and Noble at 10000 Research Blvd in Austin, Texas. Aaron Allston will also be signing his latest books.
tavianas asked: When are you going to tell Madeline's story? between DotN and wizard hunters? Then we have not been told the story about Thomas Boniface his new bride and his children surely a daughter ....
For me, those books were written fifteen to twenty years ago, and while I’d still kind of like to write those stories, in the meantime I’ve found a lot of other stories I’m excited to write about too. So I don’t know if I’ll ever have a chance to get back to them.
But I also think this is exactly what fanfiction is for. One book can generate little plot threads for hundreds of stories. I could never write all of them. So fanfic is a great way for readers who get really interested in some particular plot thread to play with it and write their version of what they think might have happened.
* People had also been asking about future Raksura books and the situation with the publisher Night Shade: I answered that here
* Free book: Part One of The Death of the Necromancer is now online at Black Gate Magazine. The next four chapters will be posted this Sunday.
* This is the final day to donate to the Red Cross and enter to win autographed books at Literati Literature Lovers Blog I've contributed a slew of books, including the Raksura books, Emilie and the Hollow World and Wheel of the Infinite.
* The kickstarter for A Knight in the Silk Purse anthology, the sequel to the Tales of the Emerald Serpent anthology, is going on this month. This is a shared world anthology, and I'll have another Jelith and Kryranen story in it.
Appearances
Here's my appearances for the next few months:
* June 21-23, 2013. ApolloCon, in Houston, Texas.
* Friday July 26, 2013. I'll be signing Emilie and the Hollow World at Murder by the Book, at 6:30 pm in Houston, Texas, with Joy Preble (The Sweet Dead Life), Mary Lindsey (Ashes on the Waves), and P.J. Hoover (Solstice).
* August 29-September 2, 2013. LoneStarCon 3, the World Science Fiction Convention, in San Antonio, Texas.
* Saturday October 5, 2013. I'll be signing Empire and Rebellion: Razor's Edge as part of Star Wars Reads Day at 2:00 pm at the Barnes and Noble at 10000 Research Blvd in Austin, Texas. Aaron Allston will also be signing his latest books.
June 6, 2013
Future Raksura Books
Some people have asked about the situation with the Raksura books and Night Shade. Michael J. Martinez explains it here with regards to his own book way more graciously than I can manage at the moment.
The only thing I'm going to say is that this situation has been up in the air since late March/early April, and it took a real toll on me. I was sick, I lost weight, and was so stressed there were parts of April I don't really remember. The worst of this was also going on while part of my house had been partially dismantled due to a burst hot water pipe and I was scrambling for money to pay off the large portion of the repairs the insurance didn't cover.
If the sale of Night Shade to Skyhorse/Start had not gone through, all three Raksura books would have been unavailable and tied up in bankruptcy court for an unknown number of years. For me it would have been the six years of my work those books represented, and some of my favorite characters and my favorite world, basically down the drain. I've had a lot of setbacks in my career, but this was the first time I ever cried on the phone to my agent, and I'd like to thank Jennifer Jackson for putting up with my meltdown. And I have a lot of gratitude toward SFWA and Mary Robinette Kowal who worked incredibly hard to help make the sale happen. I'd also like to thank my husband and my friends who were very supportive. Not so much the people who shrugged at my situation because the drama of the online fight was just so much fun, and told me to get a bankruptcy lawyer, as if I had the 1000s of dollars it would have taken to do that, as if it was a magic bullet to cure everything.
I'm going to close comments on this post because I still really don't want to talk about it. I'll post more about future Raksura stories as soon as the details are settled.
The only thing I'm going to say is that this situation has been up in the air since late March/early April, and it took a real toll on me. I was sick, I lost weight, and was so stressed there were parts of April I don't really remember. The worst of this was also going on while part of my house had been partially dismantled due to a burst hot water pipe and I was scrambling for money to pay off the large portion of the repairs the insurance didn't cover.
If the sale of Night Shade to Skyhorse/Start had not gone through, all three Raksura books would have been unavailable and tied up in bankruptcy court for an unknown number of years. For me it would have been the six years of my work those books represented, and some of my favorite characters and my favorite world, basically down the drain. I've had a lot of setbacks in my career, but this was the first time I ever cried on the phone to my agent, and I'd like to thank Jennifer Jackson for putting up with my meltdown. And I have a lot of gratitude toward SFWA and Mary Robinette Kowal who worked incredibly hard to help make the sale happen. I'd also like to thank my husband and my friends who were very supportive. Not so much the people who shrugged at my situation because the drama of the online fight was just so much fun, and told me to get a bankruptcy lawyer, as if I had the 1000s of dollars it would have taken to do that, as if it was a magic bullet to cure everything.
I'm going to close comments on this post because I still really don't want to talk about it. I'll post more about future Raksura stories as soon as the details are settled.
June 5, 2013
New Anthology Kickstarter
The kickstarter for A Knight in the Silk Purse anthology, the sequel to the Tales of the Emerald Serpent anthology, has just gone live. This is a shared world anthology, and I'll have another Jelith and Kryranen story in it.
If you want to check out Tales of the Emerald Serpent, it has stories by me, Julie Czerneda, Rob Mancebo, Lynn Flewelling, Harry Connolly, Juliet McKenna, Michael Tousignant, Todd Lockwood, and Scott Taylor, and it's available in trade paperback: Lulu.com, and in ebook at: Amazon.com, NookBook, Amazon.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, Amazon.fr.
Other books out today:
* The paperback of Queen's Hunt by Beth Bernobich
* The Flames of Shadam Khoreh by Bradley P. Beaulieu, the third book in The Lays of Anuskaya
If you want to check out Tales of the Emerald Serpent, it has stories by me, Julie Czerneda, Rob Mancebo, Lynn Flewelling, Harry Connolly, Juliet McKenna, Michael Tousignant, Todd Lockwood, and Scott Taylor, and it's available in trade paperback: Lulu.com, and in ebook at: Amazon.com, NookBook, Amazon.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, Amazon.fr.
Other books out today:
* The paperback of Queen's Hunt by Beth Bernobich
* The Flames of Shadam Khoreh by Bradley P. Beaulieu, the third book in The Lays of Anuskaya
June 3, 2013
Monday, Monday, Monday
I think this is going to be a low energy day. I hope I get my writing quota done before 9:00 tonight.
* Part One of The Death of the Necromancer is now online at Black Gate Magazine. The first four chapters are up now and new section will be posted every week.
***
* Ann Aquirre posts about Sexism she's encountered on SF panels at an SF/f con and Comic-con.
* I really liked this poem, by C.S.E. Cooney: Bless Us, Nellie Bly, Saint of the Secular Upstarts
* Part One of The Death of the Necromancer is now online at Black Gate Magazine. The first four chapters are up now and new section will be posted every week.
***
* Ann Aquirre posts about Sexism she's encountered on SF panels at an SF/f con and Comic-con.
* I really liked this poem, by C.S.E. Cooney: Bless Us, Nellie Bly, Saint of the Secular Upstarts
June 2, 2013
Weekend, Bank Robbery, Anniversary
This was kind of a weird weekend. Friday, I decided to try to pick up another aerobics class and went to one at noon. (It turned out to be a combination of zumba and bar/weightlifting. It was fun for the first ten minutes! Then it was painful for fifty minutes. Note to self, be careful about committing to a class where you don't actually know what's going to happen.) On the way I drove past the bank near our house, and on the way back, saw it was surrounded by police cars. I looked at the news online, and yeah, while I drove past it earlier it was in the process of being robbed. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and they caught the guy within about fifteen minutes. It was the small local bank we use, where everybody's nice and they sell fruit and nuts through the drive-through for part of the year and have events for the animal shelter and sometimes give away popcorn on Fridays. If a bank was going to be robbed, I wish the guy had picked the Citibank.
Then there was another tornado in Oklahoma and it was just a crap week for a lot of people I know. At breakfast yesterday, a friend said he wished that there would be a week -- just one week -- where nobody we know died or had an accident or some other kind of major or minor disaster. So far this year, it feels like that hasn't happened.
We also had a hellacious storm last night, so I didn't get much sleep. And had an anxiety dream that I was late for a panel at a huge WorldCon and couldn't find my pants.
Twenty Year Anniversary
In the first week of July, it will be my twenty years since my first novel, The Element of Fire came out in hardcover from Tor in 1993. I'd like to do something for it, but have no idea what. One problem is that I'm super busy right now trying to fulfill commitments (I have to finish Emilie and the Sky World, the sequel to Emilie and the Hollow World, among other things.) and I don't have time to write a story or anything.
The Death of the Necromancer
Black Gate Magazine will be serializing the complete The Death of the Necromancer free online as part of their fiction series. It was my third novel, and came out from Avon Eos in 1998, and was a Nebula nominee. The first four chapters will be posted today at the Black Gate site, I'm not sure when it's going live.
I wrote it because I wanted to read a fantasy-mystery set in a world based on La Belle Epoque France, and couldn't find one I liked. And I wanted to write a Moriarty-like main character who have been the villain in other books.
It is and will be still available in DRM-free ebook at Barnes and Noble NookBook, Kobo, Amazon US Kindle, Amazon UK Kindle, Barnes and Noble UK, Kindle Canada, Kindle Germany, Kindle France, Kindle Spain, Kindle Italy.
Then there was another tornado in Oklahoma and it was just a crap week for a lot of people I know. At breakfast yesterday, a friend said he wished that there would be a week -- just one week -- where nobody we know died or had an accident or some other kind of major or minor disaster. So far this year, it feels like that hasn't happened.
We also had a hellacious storm last night, so I didn't get much sleep. And had an anxiety dream that I was late for a panel at a huge WorldCon and couldn't find my pants.
Twenty Year Anniversary
In the first week of July, it will be my twenty years since my first novel, The Element of Fire came out in hardcover from Tor in 1993. I'd like to do something for it, but have no idea what. One problem is that I'm super busy right now trying to fulfill commitments (I have to finish Emilie and the Sky World, the sequel to Emilie and the Hollow World, among other things.) and I don't have time to write a story or anything.
The Death of the Necromancer
Black Gate Magazine will be serializing the complete The Death of the Necromancer free online as part of their fiction series. It was my third novel, and came out from Avon Eos in 1998, and was a Nebula nominee. The first four chapters will be posted today at the Black Gate site, I'm not sure when it's going live.
I wrote it because I wanted to read a fantasy-mystery set in a world based on La Belle Epoque France, and couldn't find one I liked. And I wanted to write a Moriarty-like main character who have been the villain in other books.
It is and will be still available in DRM-free ebook at Barnes and Noble NookBook, Kobo, Amazon US Kindle, Amazon UK Kindle, Barnes and Noble UK, Kindle Canada, Kindle Germany, Kindle France, Kindle Spain, Kindle Italy.
May 31, 2013
The Death of the Necromancer serialized online
Black Gate Magazine is going to be serializing The Death of the Necromancer as part of their online fiction series starting this Sunday: Black Gate Online Fiction Presents the Complete The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells
If you get impatient at any point, it is still available in DRM-free ebook at $2.99 in Nook, Kobo, and all the various countries' Kindle sites.
May 29, 2013
New review of "The Other Half of the Sky" feminist SF/F a...
New review of "The Other Half of the Sky" feminist SF/F anthology: The F Word
Quote about my Raksura story: All manner of strikingly original creatures, technologies and universes are rendered with thoughtful detail - I particularly enjoyed Martha Wells' gruesomely sophisticated predator-prey interactions." YES! Someone who gets me.
Quote about my Raksura story: All manner of strikingly original creatures, technologies and universes are rendered with thoughtful detail - I particularly enjoyed Martha Wells' gruesomely sophisticated predator-prey interactions." YES! Someone who gets me.
May 28, 2013
Weekend
This weekend I mostly wrote (self-employed writers generally don't get days off), did some housecleaning, and caught up on Inspector Lewis. Now that Doctor Who and Elementary are done for a while, I'm waiting for the third season of Luther (which I don't know when it's coming out, I just know it's been filmed) and for Broadchurch with David Tennant, which should start airing on BBC America soon.
Yesterday I made a pot roast with a cumin and red wine braising liquid, and it made a delicious gravy.
Links:
* Steve Gould's introduction to presenting the Andre Norton Award for YA SF/F: What I Said
A reading from the sacred texts of my people. As you are brought to remembrance, recite them with me.
* Ocean Sole a company that makes toys out of discarded flipflops collected off beaches in Kenya.
Books coming out with sample chapters:
* Meridian Six by Jaye Wells
* Blade Reforged by Kelly McCullough
Reviews of my books: (a lot was going on last month so I'm not sure I remembered to link to these)
* Emilie and the Hollow World
* The Wizard Hunters
* Wheel of the Infinite
* And, Emilie and the Hollow World got sqeed about on the SF SqueeCast
Yesterday I made a pot roast with a cumin and red wine braising liquid, and it made a delicious gravy.
Links:
* Steve Gould's introduction to presenting the Andre Norton Award for YA SF/F: What I Said
A reading from the sacred texts of my people. As you are brought to remembrance, recite them with me.
* Ocean Sole a company that makes toys out of discarded flipflops collected off beaches in Kenya.
Books coming out with sample chapters:
* Meridian Six by Jaye Wells
* Blade Reforged by Kelly McCullough
Reviews of my books: (a lot was going on last month so I'm not sure I remembered to link to these)
* Emilie and the Hollow World
* The Wizard Hunters
* Wheel of the Infinite
* And, Emilie and the Hollow World got sqeed about on the SF SqueeCast
May 23, 2013
Book Fundraiser for Oklahoma
* Literati Literature Lovers Blog is doing a fundraiser for the Red Cross to benefit communities affected by the tornadoes in Oklahoma. Donate and enter to win signed books by a bunch of different authors. I've contributed signed copies of Emilie and the Hollow World, The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, The Siren Depths, and Wheel of the Infinite.
They're hoping to raise $2500 by June 7. Please pass the info on.
* It's not part of the drawing above, but if you want to help displaced and injured animals too, you can donate to the Animal Resource Center of Oklahoma City and Pet Food Pantry.
They're hoping to raise $2500 by June 7. Please pass the info on.
* It's not part of the drawing above, but if you want to help displaced and injured animals too, you can donate to the Animal Resource Center of Oklahoma City and Pet Food Pantry.
