Martha Wells's Blog, page 69

Update

We're having sleet and ice today, and most of the schools and universities are closed here and in the surrounding cities. We already had snow in early December, plus several days of below freezing weather, and I feel lucky to be warm right now. The houses here aren't built for this much cold weather.

This is has been a weird month so far. The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red is nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award which is both totally unexpected and totally cool. I haven't been nominated for anything since The Death of the Necromancer was nominated for the Nebula in 1998.

I'm about midway through my writing project I can't talk about yet. It should be announced in February, I think. It's keeping me pretty busy, since the deadlines are really tight.

There's some other exciting news I can't talk about yet, but hopefully soon.

I finally got to see The Last Jedi and loved it, and now I need a Rose action figure to go with my Rey and Finn and Poe figures. I'm behind on Star Trek: Discovery and trying to avoid spoilers.

I have been reading a lot and need to catch up on doing my new book list posts. There's a lot of great stuff coming out this year.

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This is a surprise

I seem to be nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries:

http://www.philipkdickaward.org/2018/01/philip-k-dick-award-nominees-announced.html

The judges of the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award and the Philadelphia SF Society, along with the Philip K. Dick Trust, are pleased to announce the seven nominated works that comprise the final ballot for the award:

THE BOOK OF ETTA by Meg Elison (47North)
SIX WAKES by Mur Lafferty (Orbit)
AFTER THE FLARE by Deji Bryce Olukotun (The Unnamed Press)
THE WRONG STARS by Tim Pratt (Angry Robot)
REVENGER Alastair Reynolds (Orbit)
BANNERLESS by Carrie Vaughn (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
ALL SYSTEMS RED by Martha Wells (Tor.com)

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, March 30, 2018 at Norwescon 41 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport, SeaTac, Washington.

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Holidays

So this was an interesting holiday season. Things were going pretty well early last week, then I got sick with a fever and congestion, and then someone stole my credit card number and went on a buying spree. That pretty much halted holiday prep and present-buying. Luckily a lot of it was already done. I couldn't get in to see my actual doctor but the doctor that was open that day was really good, and I went from being extremely miserable to recovering in an afternoon. (I had a sinus infection so the antibiotic shot helped a lot.) Then my husband got sick.

Fortunately it didn't ruin too many plans. A friend came to stay with us for Christmas, and did our traditional going out for Japanese food Christmas eve night, and we had a total of seven people for dinner Christmas day. (Roast leg of lamp, collard greens, green beans, stuffed mushrooms, thyme potatoes, popovers, and pumpkin pie and a Yule Log cake from a bakery.) Then another friend came over to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special with us.

I had a lot of work to get done this month and I mostly did it, except for a couple of days last week when I was just too sick to think. If I can get what I need to get done today and tomorrow, I'll be pretty much on schedule.

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State of Me

I'm still here, just super busy. I'm working on something with a hard deadline that I need to get finished. I can't talk about what it is yet, but it will probably be announced in mid-February.

I also have some really exciting news, but again, can't talk about it until everything is final.

I'm also working on the revision for Exit Strategy, the fourth and final (as yet) Murderbot Diaries story. It should be out late next year, I think.

I'm also working on a new Raksura story for the Patreon. At this point I'm just hoping to get it done by Xmas. (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2458567 There's about 44 total short Raksura pieces on there.)

We're having a lot of friends over for Christmas so I need to get housecleaning and dinner planning crammed in the next week, too, but for me that's the fun part.

It snowed here! (see tumblr post: https://marthawells.tumblr.com/post/168571775637/state-of-me-im-still-here-just-super-busy) It was neat, except I was flying home from a trip to Seattle and our tiny plane had to land in it, and my husband had to drive to the airport to pick me up in it.

On the big plane to Dallas I got to watch The Big Sick which I highly recommend. It was hard not to laugh out loud. Just an excellent movie and I want to get the DVD for Xmas.

I did a book rec list for the year on the Book Smugglers blog: http://thebooksmugglers.com/2017/12/books-year-smugglivus-post-martha-wells.html

I haven't seen The Last Jedi yet and probably won't get to until next week.

Now back to work.

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The Murderbot Diaries: Rogue Protocol

https://marthawells.tumblr.com/post/168502531182/a-cat-with-an-arc

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What I've Done This Year

Award-eligible stuff:


Novella: May 2017 All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries in ebook and paperback, from Tor.com


Novel: July 2017 The Harbors of the Sun, the last book in the Books of the Raksura series, in hardcover, paperback, and ebook, from Night Shade Books.

The Books of the Raksura is eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Series, and this will be its last year of eligibility.


Short Story: July 2017 "Birthright" in Mech: Age of Steel from Ragnarok.


Not Award Eligible:

The trade paperback reprint of The Edge of Worlds


Writing Stats:

I wrote three more Murderbot Diaries novellas this year, Artificial Condition, which will come out in May 2018, Rogue Protocol in August 2018, and Exit Strategy, which isn't scheduled yet. All three together are a total of about 105,000 words. I also wrote a bunch of short fiction for the Raksura Patreon, probably around 15,000 to 18,000 words worth.


Misc:

This was a really...strange year in a lot of ways, but career-wise, it was very good. I completed the Books of the Raksura series and I was very happy with how The Harbors of the Sun turned out. All Systems Red, my first SF novella, came out and it did really super well, and got lots of great reviews and was listed as one of Amazon's best books of 2017, which was awesome.

And I read a lot of great books by a lot of new and new-to-me authors: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3386681-martha-wells?read_at=2017

And I was toastmaster at the World Fantasy Convention in 2017, and this was my speech: https://www.tor.com/2017/11/07/unbury-the-future-martha-wells-full-speech-from-the-2017-world-fantasy-awards/

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Quickie Book Rec on Wednesday Post

(If you've been following my book rec and new book listing posts for a while, you may have noticed this already, but while most book lists emphasize books by popular straight white men, this one emphasizes everybody else. I include books by straight white men, but in about the same percentage that other book lists include everybody else. I also try to highlight books that are less well known.)

(I only link to one retail outlet in the book's listing, but most books are available at multiple outlets, like Kobo, iBooks, international Amazons, Barnes & Noble, etc. The short stories are usually on free online magazines.)


* The Man in the Tree by Sage Walker
Helt Borresen is an Incident Analyst. What that means is that aboard the seed ship Kybele, he is the closest thing that the organization has to a security officer. But he doesn’t think that it’ll be a big part of his job, as all the candidates have been carefully screened. Why the need for a seed ship? Because our planet is toast and the colonists that leave our world are the best shot that we have for our species to continue. Everything is set...and then someone is found hanging dead just weeks before the launch.


* The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez
Before Buffy, before Twilight, before Octavia Butler's Fledgling , there was The Gilda Stories, Jewelle Gomez's sexy vampire novel. This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next two hundred years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story.


* The Serpent's Secret Sayantani DasGupta
On the morning of her twelfth birthday, Kiranmala is just a regular sixth grader living in Parsippany, New Jersey . . . until her parents mysteriously vanish and a drooling rakkhosh demon slams through her kitchen, determined to eat her alive. Turns out there might be some truth to her parents' fantastical stories-like how Kiranmala is a real Indian princess and how she comes from a secret place not of this world.


* Peter Darling by Austin Chant
Ten years ago, Peter Pan left Neverland to grow up, leaving behind his adolescent dreams of boyhood and resigning himself to life as Wendy Darling. Growing up, however, has only made him realize how inescapable his identity as a man is. But when he returns to Neverland, everything has changed: the Lost Boys have become men, and the war games they once played are now real and deadly. Even more shocking is the attraction Peter never knew he could feel for his old rival, Captain Hook-and the realization that he no longer knows which of them is the real villain.

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Update

I am really behind on stuff in general, and I'm going to be swamped until basically February, but here are a few things:

1) I'm working on a holiday Raksura story for the Raksura Patreon https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2458567 and that should be posted sometime in early December.


2) The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red got reviewed in the LA Times! http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-robot-sci-fi-20171122-story.html This is really exciting.

It’s hard not to immediately sympathize with a misanthropic robot — can’t we all understand the desire to just binge-watch TV instead of dealing with people? Wells imbued Murderbot with extraordinary humanity, and while this is a fun read, don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s not a profound one.


3) There is a sale on Tor.com books on Kindle, including The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red, Infomocracy by Malka Older, and Binti by Nnedi Okorafor https://www.tor.com/2017/11/20/cyber-monday-torcom-publishing-alert/

(And just a reminder, this is a sale by the publisher, and authors don't control the prices of the books, or when or where the sales occur, or the cover art, packaging, etc.)

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Book Recs on Wednesday

(If you've been following my book rec and new book listing posts for a while, you may have noticed this already, but while most book lists emphasize books by popular straight white men, this one emphasizes everybody else. I include books by straight white men, but in about the same percentage that other book lists include everybody else. I also try to highlight books that are less well known.)

(I only link to one retail outlet in the book's listing, but most books are available at multiple outlets, like Kobo, iBooks, international Amazons, Barnes & Noble, etc. The short stories are usually on free online magazines.)


* A Matter of Oaths by Helen S. Wright
When Commander Rallya of the patrol ship Bhattya hires Rafe as their new Web officer, she knows she is taking a risk. As an oath breaker, Rafe has suffered the ultimate punishment - identity wipe - but luckily for him, there's no one else around qualified for the job. Shunned by his previous shipmates, Rafe is ready to keep his head down and do his job, but his competence quickly earns him respect, admiration, and, in one particular case, love.


* Short Story: The First Witch of Damansara by Zen Cho


* Jade City by Fonda Lee
Jade is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. It has been mined, traded, stolen, and killed for — and for centuries, honorable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it to enhance their magical abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion. Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon's bustling capital city. They care about nothing but protecting their own, cornering the jade market, and defending the districts under their protection. Ancient tradition has little place in this rapidly changing nation.


* Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer
Victorian London is a place of fluid social roles, vibrant arts culture, fin-de-siècle wonders . . . and dangerous underground diabolic cults. Fencer Evadne Gray cares for none of the former and knows nothing of the latter when she’s sent to London to chaperone her younger sister, aspiring art critic Dorina. At loose ends after Dorina becomes enamored with their uncle’s friend, Lady Henrietta “Henry” Wotton, a local aristocrat and aesthete, Evadne enrolls in a fencing school. There, she meets George Cantrell, an experienced fencing master like she’s always dreamed of studying under. But soon, George shows her something more than fancy footwork—he reveals to Evadne a secret, hidden world of devilish demons and their obedient servants.


* Novella Preorder: Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
Binti has returned to her home planet, believing that the violence of the Meduse has been left behind. Unfortunately, although her people are peaceful on the whole, the same cannot be said for the Khoush, who fan the flames of their ancient rivalry with the Meduse. Far from her village when the conflicts start, Binti hurries home, but anger and resentment has already claimed the lives of many close to her.


* After the End of the World by Jonathan L. Howard
The Unfolded World is a bitter and unfriendly place for Daniel Carter and Emily Lovecraft. In this world, the Cold War never happened because the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1941. In this world the Nazi Großdeutschland is the premier superpower, and is not merely tolerated but indulged because, in this world, the Holocaust happened behind the ruins of the Iron Curtain and consumed only Bolsheviks, Communists, and others the West was glad to see gone. In this world, there are monsters, and not all of them are human.


* Novella Mandelbrot the Magnificient by Liz Ziemska
Born in the Warsaw ghetto and growing up in France during the rise of Hitler, Benoit Mandelbrot found escape from the cruelties of the world around him through mathematics. Logic sometimes makes monsters, and Mandelbrot began hunting monsters at an early age. Drawn into the infinite promulgations of formulae, he sinks into secret dimensions and unknown wonders.


* The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trades she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, and a mysterious gift for healing—are all tricks, both the means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles and a reliable way to survive. But when Nahri accidentally summons Dara, an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior, to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to reconsider her beliefs. For Dara tells Nahri an extraordinary tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire and rivers where the mythical marid sleep, past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises and mountains where the circling birds of prey are more than what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass—a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.


* Novella The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island. These are the facts. Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

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Writespace Houston

I'll be doing a first page workshop and a question and answer session at Writespace Houston tomorrow, Saturday, November 11.

Writespace is Houston's new writing center. Founded in April of 2014, we are a grassroots literary arts organization founded by writers, for writers. At Writespace, we support writers of all genres, including writers of literary fiction, poetry, science-fiction, fantasy, mystery, young adult, and other genres.

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And I have a book in this multi-genre Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/multi-genre-fiction-books?view=khf_G0QiImO0 The charity is Doctors Without Borders.

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