Martha Wells's Blog, page 157

Questions and Other Stuff

Questions: Ask me questions in the comments of this post, about writing in general, about publishing in general, about my books, about whatever, and I'll try to make some coherent answers, either here or in a later post.


Good news: Emilie and the Hollow World is now scheduled for May 2013 instead of August 2013!

Bad news: Two parts of my childhood died this month: Jean Craighead George, author of ‘My Side of the Mountain’ and ‘Julie of the Wolves,’ dies at 92 and Donna Summer.

If you're new here and missed it: I have a free short story, a prequel to The Cloud Roads on my web site: Adaptation. It's the story of how Chime turned into a warrior.

Other short stories set in the Three Worlds on my site are: The Almost Last Voyage of the Wind-ship Escarpment, which is about a different set of characters, and The Forest Boy, which is another prequel, about Moon as a young boy. And there's Three Worlds Compendium with extras, fan art, resources for fanfic writers, etc.

links:

If you haven't seen it yet: List of Non-European Fantasy by Women Writers

Locus Online: 2012 SF&F Translation Award Finalists

Kickstarter: Crossed Genres Publications: over a year of indie publishing

Kate Elliott: World Building: The Map Is Not The Territory

There's a thing going around about a self-published autho...

There's a thing going around about a self-published author who posted a very self-aggrandizing giant-ego comment on a big fantasy book discussion forum and then started a fight with the moderators and other commenters. I'm not going to link to it, because I feel that about 50% of the time when someone does that, they are doing it deliberately knowing that starting an internet hatestorm is fabulous advertising for their books. People link to the fight on book discussion blogs everywhere, people leave tons of 1-star reviews on Amazon for their books (which doesn't do any good since Amazon pays more attention to total number of reviews than the star rating) and inevitably, people buy their books to see for themselves how bad they are, and their sales skyrocket. So I just don't link, because I don't want to give someone who does that even more free advertising, especially knowing that that may be exactly what they want.

So instead, here's a link to author Alex Bledsoe's interview with filmmaker Sterlin Harjo
Sterlin Harjo is an Oklahoma filmmaker with two extraordinary feature films under his belt. His first, Four Sheets to the Wind, is about a young man struggling to connect to the world after the loss of his father; Barking Water tells of two elderly lovers on a last road trip. Both are set against the background of Oklahoma Native Americans (Harjo belongs to the Seminole and Creek Nations), but they’re not special-interest films at all; they’re universal stories about feelings that we all have, against a unique and vivid cultural background.

And Congrats to the Nebula award winners!

Sunday Stuff

I cleaned out my office last night and got rid of old dead computer stuff and reorganized. I ended up with five bags for the charity story and a couple for trash and recycling. I also got some baseboards painted in the dining room that I've been meaning to do. A productive weekend so far. Let's see if I can keep it up today.

Went to see Dark Shadows last night and it was okay. The funny bits were funny, but the story didn't hang together very well. The movie starts with Victoria Winters as the main character, and is creepy and quirky and scary, and the woman playing her is excellent. Even though the Collins house is daunting and weird and haunted, it's clear that she's somewhat weird herself and can take it. Then it shifts to Barnabas (Johnny Depp) as the main character, and it's more funny, but it loses some of that neat gothic feel and story flow. It would have been better to stay with Victoria's perspective and tell Barnabas' story through her eyes.

links for Sunday:

Atlas Obscura: Chaukhandi Tombs

The Oatmeal: Why Nikola Tesla was the Greatest Geek Who Ever Lived

For steampunk fans: Galveston Historical Society Store pocket sextants, compasses, other cool stuff.

Book rec: The Emperor's Knife by Mazarkis Williams PW says: "A riveting and intense debut ... compelling characterizations will keep fans of grim fantasy entirely enthralled"

Katharine Kimbriel: Book Review - The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells

N.K. Jemisin just linked to this on Twitter: Kate Hart: Uncovering YA Covers: 2011
Last year, I started a series of infographics about YA book covers, mostly as a tongue-in-cheek reaction to the Wall Street Journal's "Darkness in YA" controversy. But the further I got into compiling statistics, the more alarmed I became at the covers' monochrome approach to models. All total, I found 224 white girls-- and only nine of any other race or ethnicity.

Antique Rose Emporium

Yesterday I took the day off and went with a friend to the Antique Rose Emporium, which is about a twenty-five minute drive from our house. It's a large plant nursery/garden site out in the country which is really gorgeous. Then we drove on into Brenham and had a very good lunch at a neat little place on the square (homemade bread, nom nom nom) and looked into the stores for a while. Then came back home and stopped on campus to walk around so she could see what had changed and we could check out the newly remodeled student center.

So here are photos, all of the Rose Emporium

First, a kitty:

This is Tasha

News and Links

If you missed it yesterday, I had great news: I sold two new YA fantasies to Strange Chemistry Books.

Last night there was much celebrating involving chocolate cake.

Also, The Siren Depths is now up for preorder at Barnes and Noble and Amazon US, and they both have the preorder price now.

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Links I have been meaning to post and got way behind on:

* N.K. Jemisin: Why There's No Tipjar
For as long as I’m traditionally published, I’m not planning to do a tipjar. I really appreciate the thought, but thing is — you are contributing by checking out books from the library. The more lends and reservations a library gets for a particular book, the more books that library will purchase. And if it gets checked out a lot, they might prominently display it somewhere, which will (hopefully) earn me more long-term readers.

You can also fill out a request card for your local public library, and ask that they get books they don't have yet.

* Black Gate: C.S.E. Cooney’s How to Flirt in Faerieland & Other Wild Rhymes On Sale

* Sense of Wonder: Interview with Verbena C.W., editor of Liu Cixin in English

* XOJane: CeCe McDonald, the Girl Who Lived (And Why There is No Justice for Transgender Women of Color)

* Cynthia Leitich Smith: Video: "Bookloose" by Dowell Middle School (McKinney, Texas) in support of continued funding for their school library. This was really cute.

* Salon: Whitewashing, a history From "Tiffany's" to "Khan," we look at Hollywood's illustrious tradition of casting white actors in non-white roles by Aasif Mandvi

* Air & Space Smithsonian: The Weird World of Folk Aviators With his whimsical sculptures, Gregory Bryant celebrates early ideas about winged flight.

* Kate Elliott: Guest Post: Decolonizing as an SF Writer By Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
As I write this, I am thinking of a young writer somewhere in the world who comes from a country just like mine. I write reflecting on the process of decolonization that I am going through as I consider history. This look back may be painful and I may have to face unhappy truths, but still it is important. I need to understand the source of the pain, to accept it, embrace it and find healing so I can reclaim what is mine and become the writer that I want to be.

Great News - sold two new YA novels!

I have great news to announce: I sold 2 YA novels to Strange Chemistry! http://strangechemistrybooks.com/2012/05/15/announcing-martha-wells/

The first book is Emilie and the Hollow World, to be published in August 2013, with a sequel to follow in Spring 2014. It’s a steampunkish fantasy adventure, set in a secondary world.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started writing Emilie in July 2009 when my husband was facing a lay off and The Cloud Roads had been on submission for about a year and still hadn’t sold. I finished it around December 2009, and it started out on its submission adventure around the summer of 2010, so it’s had a long road too. And I’m so so happy that it found a home with Strange Chemistry!

And I want to thank my agent Jennifer Jackson (Arcaedia) for believing in me and my crazy books.

In short, WOOHOO!!!!!

The Siren Depths

The Siren Depths, the third Books of the Raksura, (set after The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea) is up for preorder at Amazon.

The preorder price isn't there yet, and there's no hurry since the book does not come out until December, but I thought I'd let people know. (Yes, there will be an ebook but it won't be out until December when the trade paperback comes out.)

It will eventually be available for online ordering at Barnes and Noble, Powell's, Mysterious Galaxy, The Tattered Cover, Books-a-Million, Book Depository.com (free shipping worldwide), Waterstones UK, Book Depository.uk, Whitcoulls NZ, Amazon UK, Amazon.ca, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, or look for it it at an independent book store in the US through IndieBound, and in December it will be available in person at bookstores.

The ebook will be at Baen Webscription eBook (DRM free), Barnes & Noble NookBook, Books-a-Million, Amazon US Kindle, Kobo, Waterstones UK, Whitcoulls NZ, Kindle UK, Kindle Germany, Kindle France, Kindle Spain, Kindle Italy.

I'll post when I see more preorder options show up, but to celebrate, I thought I'd go ahead and post the first chapter as a teaser, and it is here.

And there is fan art, short stories, and missing scenes here at the Three Worlds Compendium.

Busy Weekend

This turned into a busy weekend, that actually started on Thursday. One of our goddaughters graduated from the university this weekend (with two degrees, one in Wildlife and Fisheries Science and one in Zoology) so there was a lot of partying.

I went to a graduation reception at the Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collection on Thursday afternoon, then we went out to dinner and the family came over. (To use our iron to decorate her mortar board hat for the graduation ceremony.) Then Friday a friend got off work early so we went to lunch and caught another showing of The Avengers, despite me getting the time and the theater wrong. We saw the 3D version this time, which was okay, but it does make me realize even more that I like the 2D format better.

There are multiple graduations for the university because there are so many graduates. We went to the one on Saturday morning which worked out really well because the son of two of our oldest friends in town was also graduating then. The whole thing was over three hours long, and that was without a speaker, since the speeches and all that were done at a ceremony on Thursday night that we didn't go to. The University president said he had already shaken 4000 hands, and alternative greetings like fist bumps and hugs were welcome. (And they still had one more graduation ceremony to do after that one.)

But it was very cool watching them graduate. (At one point Troyce commented about this being the only reason he'd sit in a cramped seat for over two hours for something that didn't involve Nick Fury.) The mortar board decorations were great. We saw ones with the Batman logo, a double helix, some blinking LEDs, and "please hire me" in glitter paint.

I also picked the first batch of green tomatoes from our garden last week, and made fried green tomatoes, and they were nummy.

Saw the Avengers last night and loved it! And I managed ...

Saw the Avengers last night and loved it! And I managed to see it without being spoiled, yay! Which is pretty amazing, considering I've already been spoiled for movies like Star Trek which are still being filmed.

A friend who is staying with us while she works in town arrived just in time to get flung into the car and we took off to the theater to meet two more friends. The 6:15 show was a little crowded for a Tuesday night, especially a Tuesday night in this town during finals week. But when we got out, there were lines all across the lobby, and ticket-buying lines across the parking lot. And it's a pretty big parking lot.

links:

BBC News: Lack of contact with nature 'increasing allergies'

John Hodgeman THAT IS ALL: a reblogged tumblr essay on Tony Stark and Bruce Banner SPOILERS

Better World Books for each book you buy, they donate one to someone in need. (my books are here)

Aliette de Bodard: SFF as metaphor: aliens, vampires, foreigners and immigrants

If you haven't checked it out yet, see the list of fantasy with non-European settings by women writers 106 writers on the list so far.

We had a huge storm last night, with a long power failure...

We had a huge storm last night, with a long power failure, and there have been storms in Austin and all around us in the past couple of days. This is actually a good thing, because it puts off the chance of wildfires again. Last year, we were surrounded by fires, with hundreds of acres of pine forest and hundreds of homes burned down. But last year it also stopped raining around early February, and this year we're still getting these storms now.

I'm hoping for a summer where I don't get up every morning and check the fire map to see who we know might lose their house today and watch all the frantic pleas for horse trailers and help moving livestock on Twitter.

I got a new laptop on Friday, and it's very nice. I had gotten used to how overheated the old one was, so it's a great to have one that isn't flirting with the possibility of giving me second-degree burns. It's a MacBook, so we didn't have to reinstall anything, just migrated the contents from the old MacBook. (You hook them up together and the new one clones itself from the old one.) I did have to get a new mail program, but that was it.

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lillian13 who makes gorgeous jewelry has a couple of pieces up on the ebay site that is raising money for Spider Robinson's daughter's cancer treatment here. Her pieces are the friendship pendant and the double-sided pendant.