Martha Wells's Blog, page 200

Jim Hines has a wise post on Bullying, and janni has one ...

Jim Hines has a wise post on Bullying, and janni has one on It's Not You, It's Them, sparked by shweta_narayan 's post One More Note on Bullying. I hope these posts help at least a few people, because bullying has become so ingrained and accepted and essential to status in so many online groups. It's safer to bully online, when there's no chance that the bully might pick the wrong victim at the wrong moment and get that punch in the face.

I was bullied like crazy as a kid, and painful ridicule was pretty much a way of life for me through my childhood. I'm not going to go into specifics, because I still spend a lot of time trying not to think about it.

Here's a link to The Trevor Project and this video by Tim Gunn (it's on Facebook, I don't know if you need to be logged in to see it)

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I've got a giant butternut squash and I'm going to make soup out of it tonight. I've been trying to find the recipe I used lat year during giant butternut squash season. It's similar to this one but not quite, as I'm pretty sure I didn't need to add honey, since it was sweet enough by itself.

For some reason, the B&N link to Cold Magic by Kate Elliot wasn't working for some people yesterday, so here it is at Book Depository.

Yay for the Chilean Miners Rescue!***I've just started re...

Yay for the Chilean Miners Rescue!

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I've just started reading Cold Magic by Kate Elliot, and you all should be reading it too. It's fantasy, set in 1857, in an alternate world where the fall of Rome played out differently and a frozen Europe was settled by peoples from West Africa. The young female main character is very engaging, and the combination of steampunk, epic fantasy, and the different mix of cultures is ringing all my bells.

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I'll be going to World Fantasy 36 in Columbus, Ohio, at the end of the month, and according to the preliminary schedule on the web site, I'm set for:

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.

World Fantasy programming generally only assigns each participant one programming item, though hopefully I'll also be at the general autograph session. And Black Gate is organizing an off-schedule reading for their authors, so hopefully I'll be around for that, too.

ETA to actually put when the panel would be held.

We had a good Sunday, and had dinner with some friends vi...

We had a good Sunday, and had dinner with some friends visiting from Austin, and got to see Troyce's goddaughters. And there was tiramisu for desert!

Speaking of Austin, Scare for a Cure has a Zombie theme for their awesome haunted house this year. You can scare yourself senseless while raising money for cancer research.

There is one more episode of Wallander to go next Sunday. What the show needs is a guy in a hooded black robe carrying a scythe, silently following Wallander everywhere he goes.


Neat thing: 14 Inflatable Structures at Web Urbanist I want the Air Forest. I don't know what I want it for, but I want it.

Texas Renaissance Festival

We went to the Texas Renaissance Festival yesterday, since it was the first weekend and the tickets were half-price. It was a great day, sunny and not too hot. We ended up leaving in the early afternoon, since by that time everybody in the world was on their way in and it was getting hugely crowded.

( mahoni , there was a place that had a whole trunk of stripey socks for sale. I thought of you!)

After we got back, I had the migraine/sinus headache from hell, so spent the rest of the day waiting for the medicine to kick in. It finally went away in time to watch the DVD of the new Karate Kid movie with Jaden Smith. We saw it in the theater and loved it, and I wanted to see it again.

Here's some pictures from last year I don't think I ever posted:











































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Another Writing Question

Another question from Facebook: Susan Zahn asked: How do you come up with "original" plots? I struggle to come up with story ideas that don't already seem done to death. Where do you find your inspiration, and how do you go about developing that into a full story? Do you set up road-blocks for your characters and then try to find the solutions along with them, or do you already have it all mapped out before you start? (And yes, that's more than one questions...)

This is a tough question, too. For me, I don't tend to start with the plot, I start with the character I want to write about, the story about them I want to tell, and the world that they would need to live in to make that story possible. The plot comes out of that. You just have to tell the story that you want to tell, that's important to you, that's your own take on it and nobody else's.

When you start developing your character, you have to figure out what his or her conflict is, what problem she's facing that's at the core of her story. The place she needs to go, the place she needs to get out of, the thing she needs to get, the mystery she needs to solve.

Also, if there's a type of story you really like (whether it's epic quest fantasy, cozy mysteries, sf adventure, whatever) you can look at it and ask yourself, what elements are missing from these stories that you really want to see. (For a couple of broad examples: A cozy country house murder mystery, but instead of a high society detective, the cook and a gardener team up to solve it. Or a fantasy quest, but instead of being alone the adventurer is a single parent with kids to take care of.) Or look at the types of stories that you always liked, but that aren't being told very much anymore. Remix, combine, put your stamp on it by putting in the stuff you always wanted to see.


Still taking writing or publishing questions here.

Writing Question

Tina Holmboe asked a hard question: A few days ago, on showing a friend the very first short story I've finished in years, he remarked that "it feels as if some of the things that you need explain are not, and some of the things you need not explain are ... "

For the most part - exceptions exist - I, like most I'm guessing, would like to avoid the "infodump" chapters/paragraphs.

How do you decide which "things" in a story needs explicit explanation, and which can/ought be glossed over? Any rules of thumb?

There's really no rule of thumb, except that in a short story, you really have to pare down anything that doesn't advance the plot, or is important to the impact of the story. There may be great details of world-building and characterization that just aren't important to the story, and they may have to go. Getting a balance between what's necessary, what isn't necessary, and what may not be necessary but makes the story more worth reading can be tricky. Some writers have a knack for this and others work very hard to develop the knack for it. This is why short stories are sometimes so much harder to write than novels, and why some writers stick with longer formats.

Infodumps can occur at any length, and one way to avoid them is to stick closely to the perspective of your viewpoint character, her knowledge and her actions and her priorities -- if she doesn't know the history of your world, then there's no one to infodump it on the reader, if that makes sense. You can also try to keep your exposition pared down to what the reader needs to know at that moment, to keep your plot moving or to understand what the characters are talking about.

The best rule, I think, is just to keep trying. You'll learn from each story you complete, and your next story will benefit from the experience.


Still taking writing or publishing questions here.


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The thing that really makes Fall feel like Fall at our house is that on weekdays I wake up hearing the band practicing at the high school just outside our neighborhood. They start early in the morning, with a time-keeping metronome-like sound for the marching, and it's mostly the percussion that you hear. At this distance, it's white noise, and doesn't really bother me.

Also, last night a friend had a minor motorcycle accident, so that was a bit scary until we found out he was back home and okay.

Just wanted to do a quickie post and point out that I jus...

Just wanted to do a quickie post and point out that I just noticed that The Cloud Roads is now listed on the Night Shade catalog here.

From the catalog: Coming March 2011

The new novel from the author of The Death of the Necromancer

Moon has spent his life hiding what he is--a shape-shifter able to transform himself into a winged creature of flight. An orphan with only vague memories of his own kind, Moon tries to fit in among the tribes of his river valley, with mixed success. Just as Moon is once again discovered and cast out by his adopted tribe, he discovers a shape-shifter like himself... someone who seems to know exactly what he is, who promises that Moon will be welcomed into his community.

What this stranger doesn't tell Moon is that his presence will tip the balance of power... that his extraordinary lineage is crucial to the colony's survival... and that his people face extinction at the hands of the dreaded Fell.

Moon must overcome a lifetime of conditioning in order to save and himself... and his newfound kin.

Trade Paperback - 978-1-59780-216-1
300 Pages - $14.99

I have an ISBN, and everything. :)

Like I said on Facebook, this is exciting for me, since it's been two years since I've had a book published, and I forgot how all this feels.

Taking Writing Questions

In honor of Nanowrimomo starting next month, I thought I'd do writing questions again. If anyone has a question about anything writing-related and/or publishing-related in general, or in particular, comment with it here and I'll answer it in a later post, if I know what the answer is.

I'm still in the mid-book slog, where getting 300 to 500 words a day is good for me, even though it's much less than my usual amount. I've never done Wrinanomomo, because it just doesn't work that way for me, though I know it's great for a lot of people.

I also don't read writing advice books, though I know a lot of people find those incredibly helpful. One thing I think people should realize early on is that everyone's process for writing is different, and if your process enables you to finish a story or book, then it's a successful process, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't conform to anyone else's experience.

I'm not a big fan of conformity in general, and as I get older, I like it less and less.

Food, food, food:

I made beef stew last night, in honor of our slightly lower tempertures, and it was very successful. I got the meat on Saturday from the ranch that comes to the local Farmer's Market, and used this recipe. Though if we have red wine available I like to add that, too.

A new thing I tried recently was chicken with Thai green curry. The second try, with coconut milk, worked out much better and was yummy.


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Joe McKinney: 10 Rules For Writing About Cops Joe is a writer, and a homicide detective in San Antonio.

Neat art: When Steampunk Meets Surrealism

Oh boy, it's Monday. Whee. It was actually cool enough ...

Oh boy, it's Monday. Whee. It was actually cool enough to really need a blanket last night, but it should be back to the upper 80s next weekend, right in time for our day at the Texas Renaissance Festival.

Oh, and the first new episode of the second season of Wallander was on last night. Not a show to watch when you're already depressed, which I am, but it was still very good.


Cabinet des Fees Our mission is to publish stories and poems that reflect the diversity of folk and fairy tales from around the world.

Scheherezade's Bequest 11 now online and there are some very good stories there.


How to Take Intelligent Risks But every time I walk through my hall, I think about how important it is to take risks with my house – because that's what makes it mine. Which, of course, is very similar to a life. You can live someone else's tried-and-true template for a life, or you can make your life your own.

For the Love of YA: Censorship at its Finest: Remembering There are far more banned books than ever make the official list, and all it takes is one complaint.

I'm hoping I can get some work done today, since it hasn'...

I'm hoping I can get some work done today, since it hasn't been going well lately. Mostly because I'm hitting that middle-of-the-book slog.

On Faceplace, I was talking about Tasha and her lair in the corner of the dining room where she stores all the bug legs, lizard tails, and other bits of small moving things she's hunted down in the house and killed. Latest victim was a wasp, dead but still intact and very carefully arranged. If Tasha was a human, she would be the serial killer from Saw.


Tasha last Halloween

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Writer friends from Austin visited the Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection at the Cushing Library, at Texas A&M University, the fourth largest collection in the US, and the Hundred Years Hence exhibit.

No Fear of the Future: Sci-Fi Excursion to College Station

Nicky Drayden: Writer's Life: A Three-Hour Tour, A Three-Hour Tour

I posted about the exhibit's opening last spring here and a visit a couple of years ago to the collection's stacks here.