Martha Wells's Blog, page 199

The line edit/copy edit on The Cloud Roads is finished an...

The line edit/copy edit on The Cloud Roads is finished and turned in, and now I'm back working on the YA fantasy I'm co-writing with Aaron de Orive, until the proofs for The Cloud Roads arrive.

Last night I watched Death at the Funeral, which I think I liked better than the British version of the same name, and followed it up with Toy Story 2. I may watch the DVD of Toy Story 3 today, which I saw in the theater and loved. Barbie FTW!

Reading: Dreadnought by Cherie Priest


Links:

Particular Friends by Camille Alexa, is being serialized at Red Penny Papers. jess_ka calls it "gender roles-bendy future steampunkish pulpy awesomeness."

The Fantasy Novelist's Exam When I first saw this linked, I didn't want to look at it, because I thought it was serious and I was afraid I'd fail it. Yeah, I can haz Imposter Syndrome, among other issues.

nisi_la has the press release for the Carl Brandon Society's eReader prize drawing, a fundraiser for the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund. The drawing's tickets will cost one dollar US ($1) and can be purchased at http://carlbrandon.org/drawing.html. Entrants may purchase an unlimited number of tickets, which will be available from November 5, 2010 through November 22nd, 2010. Sales will close at 11:59PM EDT on November 22nd. Winners will be drawn randomly from a digital "hat" and announced online.

Amazon's List of Top Ten SF/F books includes books by N.K. Jemisin, Michal Ajvaz, Felix Gilman, Charles Yu, and others.

Patrick Rothfuss' annual fundraiser World Builders will begin on his blog on November 10. Over the last two years we geeks of all creeds and nations have banded together and raised over $250,000 dollars for Heifer International. I heard a rumor that this makes us pretty awesome. More information here.

Quickie post:nihilistic_kid has a post on a magazine that...

Quickie post:


nihilistic_kid has a post on a magazine that plagiarized a writer's article from the web, then told her the internet is "public domain" and she should be grateful for their attention. The word on Facebook is that they also stole articles from the Food Network site. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that works out for them.

Thanks to mahoni who linked me to Matthew Stewart's web s...

Thanks to mahoni who linked me to Matthew Stewart's web site. He's the cover artist for The Cloud Roads and has some different versions of the art on his blog here.

And I made this neat icon, which is up for grabs if people are interested.

***

I'm going to be doing more conventions next year, probably hopefully including the WorldCon in Reno, Nevada. Which means I probably won't go to the World Fantasy, which is in San Diego. I've still got to limit the more expensive trips that involve plane tickets.

I'm also going to ConDFW in Dallas, February 18-20.


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Neat Star Wars Art:

Star Wars representado con dibujos tradicionales mexicanos

Retro Star Wars Travel Posters

The Cloud Roads Cover

I'm not voting today, because I early voted last week. I think it was last week, time has started to telescope lately. Anyway, I drove downtown to the regular early voting location, walked past the building it was actually in to the old building, returned to the new correct building, voted, got a sticker and was offered a cookie.

And today I got to see the preliminary cover for The Cloud Roads, and it is gorgeous, and I am very happy. The artist, Matthew Stewart, and the designer, Rebecca Silvers, did a fabulous job. I'll post it as soon as I get the word that it's okay to release it into the wild.


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And I wanted to link to the new online issue of Apex Magazine: Apex Magazine Issue 18 posted This is the special Arab/Muslim SF/F issue, and has some great stories and poetry in it.

Now I need to stop looking at my cover and get to work.

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And I got word that I can post it! Here it is:


Click to see a bigger version

World Fantasy 2010

I'm back from World Fantasy, and somewhat less tired than I was last night after the two hour drive back from the airport.

It was awesome. I got to have lunch with my agent, arcaedia , and brunch with my publisher and three other new Night Shade writers. And me and my roommate, J. Kathleen Cheney, got to have breakfast with Madeleine Robins, Sara Mueller, and Esther Friesner, and dinner with Sharon Shinn and Kay Kenyon. (Yes, there was a lot of eating.)

The two panels I was on went really well. There was about 50 or 60 people in the audience for both, maybe a bit more, and since the Sword and Sorcery panel was in a smaller room, there was standing room only for it. The What Is Left to the Imagination panel was the first World Fantasy panel I'd ever moderated, but the panelists and the audience were great, and it seemed to go really well.

The free book goody bag given out with your registration was huge, with maybe 6 or 7 hardcovers or paperbacks in it, plus some digest size magazines. I only kept a few, by Holly Black, Kage Baker, and Cherie Priest, because I was a afraid my suitcase would weigh too much. The unclaimed books went down on the book exchange table, which by Saturday looked like it had been attacked by book-loving locusts, so at least all the books went to good homes.

The Black Gate group reading on Saturday night was great, though I couldn't stay for the whole thing, because I'd woken up at 6:00 am that morning and by 11:00 I was about to fall over. A bunch of great people read, including James Enge, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Michael Shea, and Howard Andrew Jones.

Downtown Columbus was very nice, with old buildings and lots of good restaurants. I ended up going to Lemongrass, Kneady, which was an organic, locally-sourced food place, and Deep Wood, and they were all fabulous.

The weather was good except very very cold on Thursday and Friday, and the heat in the hotel made my humidity-loving sinuses extremely painful at times. By Sunday morning I was starting to droop and almost decided to take a quick nap under the flyer table. (It had a heavy tablecloth, no one would have noticed.)

Anyway, I had a great time, and now I need to go to the grocery store, since all I had for dinner last night was Halloween candy.

I'm about to run off to World Fantasy, my first one since...

I'm about to run off to World Fantasy, my first one since 2005. I'm a bit nervous, so wish me luck.

I've been added to a second panel, on Sunday:

11AM Panel A20: What Is Left to the Imagination. (Fantasy fiction as the art of leaving things out.) Lawrence Connolly, Madeleine Robbins, Delia Sherman, Martha Wells (m), Gregory Wilson

See you guys when I get back!

Sorry I've been missing lately -- my fifteenth wedding an...

Sorry I've been missing lately -- my fifteenth wedding anniversary was last week, we went on a quick trip to Galveston, and this week I've been kind of swamped with stuff that needs to be done immediately.

I'm going to be at World Fantasy this weekend, in Columbus, Ohio. If you're going to be there, come say hi!

My panel is:

Saturday Noon: Panel B16: Sword & Sorcery. Scott Andrews, Martha Wells, Howard Jones, Patricia Bray. Sword & Sorcery. Clearly this "literary fossil," as Alexei Panshin once called it, is not yet extinct. But has it evolved? A discussion of the continuing appeal and the nature of the form.

I'll also be at the mass autographing Friday night.

There was talk of a Black Gate Magazine Group Reading on Friday, but it's actually on Saturday:

2nd Floor, Madison room* (or immediately next door), Hyatt Regency Hotel
Saturday, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

A number of Black Gate authors will be doing ten minute readings of their stories, including me, so come on by. It's not on the official schedule, so probably won't be listed on the program.

***

While we were in Galveston, we got a chance to do the Ashton Villa Haunted Tour, which is actually the Ashton Villa Post-Hurricane Ike Restoration Tour, with bonus ghost stories. The house, built in 1859, got three feet of water in it during hurricane Ike. (This sounds like a lot, but it got nine feet of water during the 1900 storm that killed between 6000 and 12,000 people. It flooded, but didn't wash away or implode and kill everybody inside, so go house.) The Ike flooding ruined the downstairs floor and damaged the entire collection of ground floor furniture. The furniture has been restored now and is stored upstairs in the bedrooms. (For a mansion, it's not actually that large a house, especially compared to the Moody Mansion or the Bishop's Palace, which is built like a combination castle/bomb shelter.) The floor is still being replaced and the walls are being worked on.

(One of the people on the tour with us wanted to argue about all their decisions, particularly why the older women who were working in the house during Ike didn't save the collection (chairs, tables, couches, the piano) by carrying all of it up the 30-40 foot grand staircase designed by the human mountain goats common in 1859. If I never hear the words "why didn't you just--" again, I will be a happy, happy woman.)

One of the cool things we heard was about the buried basement. After the 1900 storm, the seawall was built and the grade of the island was raised by several feet. A lot of people at the time had their houses jacked up to the new level, but the Ashton Villa didn't bother, and the family just had the basement filled in with dirt. (Which is why the house sits flat on the ground now, unlike the other mansions on Broadway. The short ornamental iron fence in front also extends several feet below the ground -- the only thing they moved up was the gate.) After Ike when they had the floor torn up, they started excavating the basement to find out what was down there.

They found a crypt under the basement.

They have no idea who, if anybody, is in it. But it certainly casts the family's decision to fill in the basement on top of it in a new light.

Quickie post, because I'm in Galveston right now and have...

Quickie post, because I'm in Galveston right now and have very very limited internet access! (Saw lots of dolphins and a sailing regatta - next week I'll post pictures) We also took the Strand Haunted tour, which is more like a spooky history tour or a history of ghosts tour, and it was excellent.

And I wanted to link to this: jimhines posted a First Book Friday post from me at http://jimhines.livejournal.com/535112.html or on his blog http://www.jimchines.com/2010/10/first-book-wells/

Quickie link:From Laura Ann Gilman on Facebook: Gail Gaut...

Quickie link:

From Laura Ann Gilman on Facebook: Gail Gauthier: Burned Gauthier writes about her career crash, and trying to get back on track.

After a ten-year career in espionage, Michael woke up in Miami to find that he had been unceremoniously let go and blacklisted by his handlers, or burned. After a twelve-year career as a children's writer, I received my first major rejection from my long-time publisher in March, 2008, which was kind of like being let go, leading to what has felt like de facto blacklisting, or burning. My "letting go" wasn't as dramatic as the "letting go" Michael experienced, of course. It did not, for instance, involve my waking up in a strange bed. And while Michael has often seemed mystified about what happened to him, searching to find someone who can set him straight, I'm pretty clear on what happened to me.

But the end result is the same. Michael Westen and I had work we liked, and we don't have it anymore. We're burned, and we're spending a whole lot of time trying to get back into the game.

Wow, I just got an email from Holland Taylor, from Two an...

Wow, I just got an email from Holland Taylor, from Two and a Half Men, because I wrote a review about her one-woman play Money, Marbles, and Chalk, about the life of Ann Richards. We saw the premiere in Galveston at the Opera House back in the spring. She said the play's name has been changed to "Ann," and she's going to do it in San Antonio on December 10-19. It's going to Austin in May, and eventually making its way to New York by winter 2012.

It's a fabulous play, and I definitely want to try to catch the Austin performance.

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We saw Red last night and enjoyed it a lot. It was funny, fast-paced, and Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirrim and John Malkovich were excellent in it, and the romance with Bruce Willis' and Mary Louise Parker's characters was great.

And there was a trailer for this: The Warrior's Way, a ninja steampunk western starring Dong-gun Jang, Kate Bosworth, and Geoffrey Rush. I'm ready to camp out at the theater until they show it.

more links:

Golden Age Comic Book Stories: Art from The Flying Islands of the Night

Her Universe Shop really nice Star Wars t-shirts

Scott Edelman: What Was the Publishing World Like in 1850? "The Literary Profession—Authors and Publishers" from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850