Martha Wells's Blog, page 46

Podcast

I was on the Serious Fun podcast at Brown Library ComicCon in Green Bay:

https://soundcloud.com/serious_fun/episode-31-marthas-merry-murderbots-w-martha-wells

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Update again

I think my back is much better today :knock on wood: mostly due to spending most of yesterday taking the medication and not moving. My husband has been staying home from work taking care of me and the cats.

Also, my giant head bump has shrunk down to about the size of a nickel and has stopped hurting.

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Update

I had another back spasm this morning but not nearly as bad as the one yesterday. No more fainting or falling down. Someone had asked about heart issues and I did have an EKG yesterday along with the CAT scan and both were fine. So I’m going to be on medication again today not doing much except communing with the TV.

And thanks to everyone for all the good wishes, they made me feel a lot better.

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Ok, first, I am fine, I'm at home now. But I had a back s...

Ok, first, I am fine, I'm at home now. But I had a back spasm early this morning and ended up passing out in the kitchen, and hit my head on the floor, and had to go to the emergency room.

They did a CAT scan and everything and everything looks fine, I just have a large bump on my head. I'm home now with pain medication, and they said I should be fine to travel next week to Capclave.

So I just may be moving slowly for the next few days. :)

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State of Me

So a lot has been happening, none of it particularly dramatic. I shall sum up!

* After we got back from WorldCon in Dublin, I had the back patio and sidewalks around the house replaced with stone pavers and had some drains put in. I'm hoping this will help keep water out of our house but it hasn't rained hard enough since then to test it. The patio was also a huge trip hazard, since it was cracked down the middle and half of it was tilting up, and there was a cavity underneath it.

* The car got crunched in the garage partly due to the sidewalk replacements changing the angle of the driveway slightly and had to be fixed, which took a week and a half.

* I got to go to a week-long writers retreat with friends out in the country and it was completely wonderful, even though it rained a lot. Not unrelated, I finished the copyedit of Network Effect and got it turned in.

* I'm working on a new thing but can't go into detail until the publisher announces it.

* I found out my doctor retired suddenly without telling anybody, but found a new doctor's office that is much more robust, and was able to get my ear fixed (it turns out water is supposed to drain out of your ears almost immediately and if it doesn't, it means there's a problem. I did not know that! So I had wax build-up in there that was holding water in my ear and was causing all kinds of problems. Pro tip: have the doctor look in your ears.) And I got an x-ray for my upper back problem, and a flu shot, and a prescription refilled, all in about 40 minutes.

* I hurt my lower back yesterday somehow while I was working out. It's a little better today, but I need to drive to a dentist appointment in about an hour, so that will be fun.

* Capclave is next week!

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Capclave

Next week (October 18-20) I'll be one of the guests of honor at Capclave, in Rockville, Maryland. https://www.capclave.org/capclave/capclave19/

Here's my schedule:


Friday 6:00 pm: Mystery Crossovers (Ends at: 6:55 pm) Washington Theater
Panelists:Martha Wells, Beth Brenner, Keith DeCandido, Gordon Linzner, Jean Marie Ward (M)
How can writers play fair in a mystery in a world with magic or teleporters? When crossing the genres how do authors put equal weight on both? Do mystery readers read mysteries with sf/fantasy? And how do bookstores determine where to put them?


Friday 7:00 pm: Nontraditional Protagonists (Ends at: 7:55 pm) Eisenhower
Panelists:Martha Wells, Brenda W. Clough (M), J. L. Gribble, Natalie Luhrs, Ted Weber
Until recently, the typical sf/fantasy protagonist was a white male in his late teens early 20s. Now we have more diversity. How has greater inclusion changed science fiction/fantasy? How does this diversity affect plot and characterization beyond just descriptions of the protagonist? Can this diversity attract new readers who now can see characters who look like them; or does it alienate existing readers? Have things gone too far or not far enough?


Saturday 11:00 am: Reading: Martha Wells (Ends at: 11:25 am) Wilson
Author:Martha Wells


Saturday 2:00 pm: World-building (Ends at: 2:55 pm) Eisenhower
Panelists:Martha Wells, Leslie Burton-Lopez , Charles E. Gannon, Edward M. Lerner (M), Mike McPhail
What does it take to build a world? How much world building is done before the writing starts and how much while writing. How do you know when to change things? What are common mistakes in world building? What authors get world building right and what are they doing?


Saturday 3:00 pm: Martha Wells Interview (Ends at: 3:55 pm) Eisenhower
Interviewer:Martha Wells, Jean Marie Ward (M)
Interview with Capclave GoH Martha Wells on Murderbot and a whole lot more.


Saturday 5:00 pm: Murderbots & Terminators (Ends at: 5:55 pm) Eisenhower
Panelists:Martha Wells, T. Eric Bakutis, Neil Clarke, Edward M. Lerner, David Walton (M)
How much do we have to fear from robots and AI? Will humans build our own replacements? How can we ensure they will not turn on the human race? Are Asimov’s Three Laws enough? What are some of the best stories about robots?


Sunday 10:00 am: Series: Diminishing Returns? (Ends at: 10:55 am) Eisenhower
Panelists:Martha Wells, Ken Altabef (M), Jack Campbell - John G. Hemry, Alan Smale
If no one will read book three in a series who didn’t read the earlier books, isn’t doing a series guaranteeing diminishing returns? If so, why are series so popular for publishers? What are the advantages for authors? Why are there so few standalones?


Sunday 1:00 pm: Managing Great Expectations (Ends at: 1:55 pm) Washington Theater
Panelists:Martha Wells, Beth Brenner, Suzanne Palmer (M), Alan Smale, Sherri Cook Woosley
Your first novel is coming out, you just got that nomination, or your book became a best seller. How do you manage career and writing expectations? Is it better to strive and fail or to set reasonable goals? What do you do if you fall short of your dreams? And what constitutes success for a writer?


Sunday 2:00 pm: Authorial Intent and Rewriting Cannon (Ends at: 2:55 pm) Washington Theater
Panelists:Martha Wells, Keith DeCandido (M), Kelly E. Dwyer, Natalie Luhrs, K.M. Szpara
What are problems with post-publication author revelations? What happens when the author changes cannon without rebooting (sometimes, in the case of Darkover, rewriting entire novels). What is the importance of fan fiction and reader interpretation?


***


FYI, The Cloud Roads, the first book in the Books of the Raksura series (Hugo-finalist for series in 2018) comes out in mass market paperback on November 19. https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Roads-One-Books-Raksura/dp/1949102181/

with The Serpent Sea and The Siren Depths to follow in 2020

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Vanishing Again

Here's a Twitter thread by Marissa Lingen about finding a comment in a post declaring that women didn't write much SFF before the year 2000.

https://twitter.com/MarissaLingen/status/1176591162393747464

I said: I did a talk at the 2017 San Antonio World Fantasy Convention about making people vanish from history, but wow, this is really moving the goal posts. My first novel was published in 1993, and a lot of women writing SFF before 2000 are still writing and you can like, talk to them on Twitter?

Here's that thread: https://twitter.com/marthawells1/status/1177193858653966336

And the link to the speech I did: "Unbury the Future" https://www.tor.com/2017/11/07/unbury-the-future-martha-wells-full-speech-from-the-2017-world-fantasy-awards/

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Me in Green Bay WI

If you're going to be near Green Bay, WI on Saturday, Oct 5, I'll be a guest at the Brown County Library ComicCon https://www.browncountylibrary.org/comic-con/

And on Friday Oct 4, I'll be doing a program at the UWGB union from 2-3.

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Warning: Anxiety

From Twitter:

So I have anxiety issues and have had them for as long as I can remember. So when people mock me for always writing characters with anxiety it's funny to me because I have trouble imagining how a brain can work in any other way.

My anxiety has had it's ups and downs but it's doing great right now. This is an excellent time for having the recurring anxiety dreams. (Sleeping is also a great time for anxiety because when the rational part of your brain is asleep anxiety has the driver's wheel.)

I've had the same type of anxiety dream forever, where it's night, I'm alone in a house (usually based loosely on a house I've lived in or seen) and someone is in the backyard trying to get into the house or destroy stuff or something. And I'm trying to get help and can't. I was realizing today I have never had an incident like that happen, at least as far as I remember, and I clearly remember having this dream since I was a kid.

It does make me wonder, did something like this happen when I was too young to remember it or is it just one of those random things anxiety seizes on because it bugs you? Very weird.

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State of me

After more than a week, I'm finally getting some of my hearing back in my left ear. It was kind of nerve-racking, mostly because it took me so long to be able to get to a doctor, I was afraid the infection did something permanent. So this is a huge relief.

Unlike poor Houston, we only had a few rainstorms from Tropical Storm Imelda, another relief. We had our broken concrete sidewalks and back patio replaced with stone pavers a couple of weeks ago, and added some drains out to the street, so hopefully we won't have to worry too much about water getting into the house from hard rain. Because it's just going to get worse.

On Thursday, Rebecca Roanhorse did a talk at TAMU as part of the Cushing Library Hal Hall Lecture Series, and she spoke on Diversity in SF/F Short Fiction. Cushing just closed their Diversity in SF/F exhibit this past Friday, which had opened in the Spring and been running all summer. Now I'm looking forward to the next exhibit. It's been really nice to have these SF/F events and exhibits in town, and not have to drive to another city to see anything cool. Even though my hearing was really bad on Thursday, I really enjoyed it.

And my car is finally fixed so I can actually catch up on all the errands I need to do.


A couple of upcoming events:

October 4-5, 2019.
I'll be a guest a the Brown County Library ComicCon at Central Library in Green Bay, WI. https://www.browncountylibrary.org/comic-con/

October 18-20, 2019.
I'll be a guest of honor at Capclave in Rockville, MD. https://www.capclave.org/capclave/capclave19/

And next year:

February 14-16, 2020.
I'll be a panelist at Boskone in Boston, MA. https://www.boskone.org/

February 29, 2020.
I'll be a panelist at PopCon in San Antonio, Texas. https://guides.mysapl.org/sapopcon

May 22-24, 2020.
I'll be a panelist at Comicpalooza in Houston, Texas. https://www.comicpalooza.com/

July 24-26, 2020.
I'll be a guest of honor at Confluence in Pittsburgh, PA. http://parsec-sff.org/confluence/

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