Martha Wells's Blog, page 87
May 27, 2016
Books!
Stories:
* Tor.com: A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark
* Strange Horizons: Momi Watu by Nisi Shawl
* Tor.com: Red as Blood and White as Bone by Theodora Goss
* Wattpad: Dark Claw by Joyce Chng
Books:
* Preorder: The Mountain of Kept Memory by Rachel Neumeier
Long ago the Kieba, last goddess in the world, raised up her mountain in the drylands of Carastind. Ever since then she has dwelled and protected the world from unending plagues and danger... Gulien Madalin, heir to the throne of Carastind, finds himself more interested in ancient history than the tedious business of government and watching his father rule. But Gulien suspects that his father has offended the Kieba so seriously that she has withdrawn her protection from the kingdom. Worse, he fears that Carastind’s enemies suspect this as well.
* Janet Kagan's books are now available again in new editions: Hellspark, Mirabile (my absolute favorite), and The Collected Kagan
* Preorder: Everfair by Nisi Shawl
Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II.
* Tor.com: A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark
* Strange Horizons: Momi Watu by Nisi Shawl
* Tor.com: Red as Blood and White as Bone by Theodora Goss
* Wattpad: Dark Claw by Joyce Chng
Books:
* Preorder: The Mountain of Kept Memory by Rachel Neumeier
Long ago the Kieba, last goddess in the world, raised up her mountain in the drylands of Carastind. Ever since then she has dwelled and protected the world from unending plagues and danger... Gulien Madalin, heir to the throne of Carastind, finds himself more interested in ancient history than the tedious business of government and watching his father rule. But Gulien suspects that his father has offended the Kieba so seriously that she has withdrawn her protection from the kingdom. Worse, he fears that Carastind’s enemies suspect this as well.
* Janet Kagan's books are now available again in new editions: Hellspark, Mirabile (my absolute favorite), and The Collected Kagan
* Preorder: Everfair by Nisi Shawl
Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II.
Sex and the Single Raksura
(I'm reposting this essay I wrote a couple of months ago because I found it again and I really like it.)
It took two years to sell the completed manuscript of The Cloud Roads to a publisher. (My agent was the one doing all the work. I was just sitting at home writing The Serpent Sea and Emilie and the Hollow World (which didn’t have a publisher either at that time), and quietly freaking out.) But one of the comments my agent got back on The Cloud Roads was that it was hard to follow.
If you’ve read it, you know it’s not a multi-character, multi-storyline epic. Moon is the only POV and the story is pretty linear. After talking to other readers about it for a while, I think the reason for that comment was the Raksura’s gender neutral names.
For me, this was a feature, not a bug. I found it hard to talk about the bisexuality or pansexuality of the characters when they had no concept of heterosexuality, so I tried in various ways to show it. And our concepts of gender don’t map exactly onto the Raksura’s concepts of gender. Using gender neutral names helped me keep that in mind while I was writing. But for some people it was too confusing; they had to assign a gender to identify who the character was.
There were other things people didn’t like. Raksura form intensely close bonds with each other, but are not romantic in the way most earth humans would interpret it. The closest they come to kissing is biting, and they don’t say to each other “I love you.” The queens and consorts are the only ones who form single permanent sexual relationships that we would recognize as marriages, and even they aren’t exclusive with each other. (Though a consort wouldn’t sleep with another queen unless he wanted to start a war.) Moon is the only Raksura in the book who has seen any other type of relationship, and even he only has an outsider’s understanding of them.
For infertile warriors and fertile Arbora, sexual relationships are friendly and casual. Having children is a serious business, and partners are selected with a lot of attention toward the court’s bloodlines and what the court needs. But the relationships between Arbora child-bearing partners aren’t exclusive and aren’t marriages, the way we’d think of marriages, and children are raised communally. (When it’s normal to give birth to five babies at one time, it takes an organized segment of the community to take care of all of them.)
The entire court is basically a very large, often cranky, extended family.
I had beta readers for The Cloud Roads who tried to see the Raksuran relationships as marriages and nuclear families, and it just didn’t work for them because the relationships didn’t make sense that way. To me, trying to see the relationships of your flying lizard ant lion people as being exactly like earth human relationships was what didn’t make sense.
It took two years to sell the completed manuscript of The Cloud Roads to a publisher. (My agent was the one doing all the work. I was just sitting at home writing The Serpent Sea and Emilie and the Hollow World (which didn’t have a publisher either at that time), and quietly freaking out.) But one of the comments my agent got back on The Cloud Roads was that it was hard to follow.
If you’ve read it, you know it’s not a multi-character, multi-storyline epic. Moon is the only POV and the story is pretty linear. After talking to other readers about it for a while, I think the reason for that comment was the Raksura’s gender neutral names.
For me, this was a feature, not a bug. I found it hard to talk about the bisexuality or pansexuality of the characters when they had no concept of heterosexuality, so I tried in various ways to show it. And our concepts of gender don’t map exactly onto the Raksura’s concepts of gender. Using gender neutral names helped me keep that in mind while I was writing. But for some people it was too confusing; they had to assign a gender to identify who the character was.
There were other things people didn’t like. Raksura form intensely close bonds with each other, but are not romantic in the way most earth humans would interpret it. The closest they come to kissing is biting, and they don’t say to each other “I love you.” The queens and consorts are the only ones who form single permanent sexual relationships that we would recognize as marriages, and even they aren’t exclusive with each other. (Though a consort wouldn’t sleep with another queen unless he wanted to start a war.) Moon is the only Raksura in the book who has seen any other type of relationship, and even he only has an outsider’s understanding of them.
For infertile warriors and fertile Arbora, sexual relationships are friendly and casual. Having children is a serious business, and partners are selected with a lot of attention toward the court’s bloodlines and what the court needs. But the relationships between Arbora child-bearing partners aren’t exclusive and aren’t marriages, the way we’d think of marriages, and children are raised communally. (When it’s normal to give birth to five babies at one time, it takes an organized segment of the community to take care of all of them.)
The entire court is basically a very large, often cranky, extended family.
I had beta readers for The Cloud Roads who tried to see the Raksuran relationships as marriages and nuclear families, and it just didn’t work for them because the relationships didn’t make sense that way. To me, trying to see the relationships of your flying lizard ant lion people as being exactly like earth human relationships was what didn’t make sense.
May 25, 2016
Catching Up
If you're on Twitter or Tumblr or Facebook, you may have seen yesterday that I finished the first draft of The Harbors of the Sun. It needs a lot of revision, and the first and second chapters may switch places, but the principal photography is done, basically. It's the fifth Raksura novel, and the seventh book, counting the two novella collections. I'd take some time off, but I don't actually have time to take some time off.
Also, yesterday I posted the 14th Raksura story for the Patreon, where Malachite meets the Sky Copper clutch: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2458567&ty=h
Comicpalooza
Coming up on June 17-19, I'll be at Comicpalooza in Houston. It's a comiccon, with actors and media guests, and a huge dealer's room and artist's alley plus a small makerfaire, but it also has a full schedule of literary and writing panels (like 50 of them) and a large number of writer guests.
I'll be on:
- Friday 11:30 to 12:30 Outlandish Others: How Genre Fiction Employs Androids, Elves, and other non-human Races
Carrie Patel, Tex Thompson, Donna Grant, Martha Wells
- Friday 2:30 to 3:30 Young Adult Fantasy
Joy Preble, J.L. Clark, Katherine Catmull, Angela Holder, Martha Wells
- Saturday 11:00 to 12:00 Plotting and Pacing a Short Story
Ken Liu, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, C. Stuart Hardwick, Martha Wells
***
Con or Bust
Today is the first day of the Con or Bust Fundraising Auction to help people of color/non-white people attend SF/F conventions. There are tons of great items to bid on, like signed books, art, jewelry, flash fiction, and critiques.
My items are here. (A signed set of the two Stories of the Raksura books, a signed copy of The Edge of Worlds, and an audiobook CD set of Wheel of the Infinite.
Also, yesterday I posted the 14th Raksura story for the Patreon, where Malachite meets the Sky Copper clutch: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2458567&ty=h
Comicpalooza
Coming up on June 17-19, I'll be at Comicpalooza in Houston. It's a comiccon, with actors and media guests, and a huge dealer's room and artist's alley plus a small makerfaire, but it also has a full schedule of literary and writing panels (like 50 of them) and a large number of writer guests.
I'll be on:
- Friday 11:30 to 12:30 Outlandish Others: How Genre Fiction Employs Androids, Elves, and other non-human Races
Carrie Patel, Tex Thompson, Donna Grant, Martha Wells
- Friday 2:30 to 3:30 Young Adult Fantasy
Joy Preble, J.L. Clark, Katherine Catmull, Angela Holder, Martha Wells
- Saturday 11:00 to 12:00 Plotting and Pacing a Short Story
Ken Liu, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, C. Stuart Hardwick, Martha Wells
***
Con or Bust
Today is the first day of the Con or Bust Fundraising Auction to help people of color/non-white people attend SF/F conventions. There are tons of great items to bid on, like signed books, art, jewelry, flash fiction, and critiques.
My items are here. (A signed set of the two Stories of the Raksura books, a signed copy of The Edge of Worlds, and an audiobook CD set of Wheel of the Infinite.
May 19, 2016
Quickie Post
Quick post, because I'm still flailing around while revising and finishing off The Harbors of the Sun for its June 1 deadline.
Air conditioning: still broke while we're waiting on a compressor. Luckily it's been rainy and cool off and on.
* There are now MP3 CDs available of the audiobooks of The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea. I don't know about the when/if the others will show up in this format. Hopefully they will?
* An audiobook for The Harbors of the Sun is coming, still not sure of the date. Hopefully in June sometime.
* I did an unlocked Patreon post to answer a question about Raksura naming conventions.
* There's a post here by Emu's Debuts about how to help authors. (Request your library to order their books, leave reviews, etc) Reviews (on Amazon and GoodReads) really, really do help, even if you didn't love everything about the book.
I post a lot of random stuff on tumblr if you want to catch me over there.
Air conditioning: still broke while we're waiting on a compressor. Luckily it's been rainy and cool off and on.
* There are now MP3 CDs available of the audiobooks of The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea. I don't know about the when/if the others will show up in this format. Hopefully they will?
* An audiobook for The Harbors of the Sun is coming, still not sure of the date. Hopefully in June sometime.
* I did an unlocked Patreon post to answer a question about Raksura naming conventions.
* There's a post here by Emu's Debuts about how to help authors. (Request your library to order their books, leave reviews, etc) Reviews (on Amazon and GoodReads) really, really do help, even if you didn't love everything about the book.
I post a lot of random stuff on tumblr if you want to catch me over there.
May 13, 2016
State of Me II
Well, the air conditioner was not a quick repair. The compressor is dead, so they're going to have to order one, and it won't be here until next week sometime. We're just lucky it's still been in the mid 80s and it's dropping down to 70 or below at night. I just hope the humidity isn't too bad. The good thing is this is an $1800 repair and because we have a parts and labor warranty, it's free, because there's no way I could afford $1800.
May 12, 2016
State of Me
I feel like I need to write a post about what I've been doing, but it's mostly been writing and managing household difficulties.
Writing: I'm on the last chapter of The Harbors of the Sun and also inserting some earlier scenes. I've finished all the action arcs and now need to complete the remaining emotional arcs, plus give closure, but not go on too long, which is tricky. I'm not into "they went out to lunch and felt better" territory yet. (This is from MST3K, where in one episode they rewrote The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald so the boat got back to port and everybody lived, and it's always seemed to be a good term for trying to end the story at the right spot.) The book is due June 1, so I should have a complete draft by then.
I've seen the cover art with the titles on, and it's stunning. The art is by Yukari Masuike again, and beautiful.
Household stuff: On Saturdays I've been helping a friend with the ongoing project of cleaning out a storage shed so she can get rid of her storage lockers, so it's a lot of moving boxes and unpacking but it's going way faster than we thought it would. A few more hours at it this weekend and I think we'll have it done, or at least all the outside work done, so we can sort stuff inside the house.
Then Sunday I ended up washing the siding on the front of the house and the porch, which you have to do, because it gets moldy and gross, and it's a two story house and we can't afford powerwashing, so I use a hose with an attachment and a nineteen foot pole with a brush on the end. I still need to do some other bits of the house but it's mostly done for the year now. I am trying to lure a company out here to clean our gutters, but hopefully that should be affordable. (They're supposed to have screens on them, but the stupid squirrels keep pulling them off and throwing them down in the front yard.)
Then last night our air conditioner broke, and the company is coming today to fix it, so hopefully that won't eat up all the gutter money.
The good news is we've had a lot of rain and the house doesn't seem to be leaking anywhere anymore. :knock on wood:
Writing: I'm on the last chapter of The Harbors of the Sun and also inserting some earlier scenes. I've finished all the action arcs and now need to complete the remaining emotional arcs, plus give closure, but not go on too long, which is tricky. I'm not into "they went out to lunch and felt better" territory yet. (This is from MST3K, where in one episode they rewrote The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald so the boat got back to port and everybody lived, and it's always seemed to be a good term for trying to end the story at the right spot.) The book is due June 1, so I should have a complete draft by then.
I've seen the cover art with the titles on, and it's stunning. The art is by Yukari Masuike again, and beautiful.
Household stuff: On Saturdays I've been helping a friend with the ongoing project of cleaning out a storage shed so she can get rid of her storage lockers, so it's a lot of moving boxes and unpacking but it's going way faster than we thought it would. A few more hours at it this weekend and I think we'll have it done, or at least all the outside work done, so we can sort stuff inside the house.
Then Sunday I ended up washing the siding on the front of the house and the porch, which you have to do, because it gets moldy and gross, and it's a two story house and we can't afford powerwashing, so I use a hose with an attachment and a nineteen foot pole with a brush on the end. I still need to do some other bits of the house but it's mostly done for the year now. I am trying to lure a company out here to clean our gutters, but hopefully that should be affordable. (They're supposed to have screens on them, but the stupid squirrels keep pulling them off and throwing them down in the front yard.)
Then last night our air conditioner broke, and the company is coming today to fix it, so hopefully that won't eat up all the gutter money.
The good news is we've had a lot of rain and the house doesn't seem to be leaking anywhere anymore. :knock on wood:
May 11, 2016
Last Two Days for Mech: Age of Steel
We're about to start the last two days of the Mech: Age of Steel kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jmmartin/mech-age-of-steel-anthology?token=31c68a42
Someone's dropped out, so there's now one left of the "Head in the Clouds" reward level where whoever selects it gets an autographed copy of The Cloud Roads along with the Mech book and the other items.
(My story is a Three Worlds story, though it doesn't have the Raksura and is set in another part of the world.)
Someone's dropped out, so there's now one left of the "Head in the Clouds" reward level where whoever selects it gets an autographed copy of The Cloud Roads along with the Mech book and the other items.
(My story is a Three Worlds story, though it doesn't have the Raksura and is set in another part of the world.)
May 9, 2016
Couple of Quick Things
* I was interviewed on IO9 about the Books of the Raksura and worldbuilding. Yay!
* Catherine Lundoff has a feature on SF/F authors, particularly women, LGBT authors and others when they drop out of the limelight (or never step into it despite the quality of their work). Writers and artists can produce a ton of work and still be completely disappeared in a depressingly short time.
* Catherine Lundoff has a feature on SF/F authors, particularly women, LGBT authors and others when they drop out of the limelight (or never step into it despite the quality of their work). Writers and artists can produce a ton of work and still be completely disappeared in a depressingly short time.
May 5, 2016
Thursday
Sorry I haven't been posting more. I'm trying to finish The Harbors of the Sun and that's about all I can think about right now. I even almost forgot to post the Raksura Patreon story for Tuesday.
Stuff:
* I'm getting a lot of questions about the audiobook of The Edge of Worlds. Yes, there will be one and it will have the same narrator Chris Kipiniak (yay!). Audible didn't decide to do one until early April and they take about three months to produce, so it should be out by early July, I hope.
* Mech: Age of Steel funded yesterday on kickstarter (yay!) so I will have a story in it. If it gets to $20,000, all the authors get a pay raise.
* I have an entry in this Mind Meld on magical weapons.
* If you missed it yesterday, writer Judith Tarr could use some help.
* The Locus Awards Finalists were posted, so if you want to get an idea of what some of the Hugo categories (like Short Story and Best Related Work) might have looked like without the RPs using nomination slates trying to game the system to keep women-POC-LGBT writers off the ballot, check it out. It takes two years to implement a Hugo rules change, so hopefully after the new rules are voted on this summer, the RPs won't be able to do this anymore.
Stuff:
* I'm getting a lot of questions about the audiobook of The Edge of Worlds. Yes, there will be one and it will have the same narrator Chris Kipiniak (yay!). Audible didn't decide to do one until early April and they take about three months to produce, so it should be out by early July, I hope.
* Mech: Age of Steel funded yesterday on kickstarter (yay!) so I will have a story in it. If it gets to $20,000, all the authors get a pay raise.
* I have an entry in this Mind Meld on magical weapons.
* If you missed it yesterday, writer Judith Tarr could use some help.
* The Locus Awards Finalists were posted, so if you want to get an idea of what some of the Hugo categories (like Short Story and Best Related Work) might have looked like without the RPs using nomination slates trying to game the system to keep women-POC-LGBT writers off the ballot, check it out. It takes two years to implement a Hugo rules change, so hopefully after the new rules are voted on this summer, the RPs won't be able to do this anymore.
May 4, 2016
Signal Boost
Writer Judith Tarr could really use some help:
http://dancinghorse.livejournal.com/330335.html
Right now I do not know how I’m going to feed the horses for the rest of the month. I have managed to scrape out enough to pay for the last load of hay (if that late check finally gets here), but once it’s eaten, which it will be in about ten days, I don’t know what I’m going to do. The farm will be gone by midsummer unless I find a steady source of sufficient income. I’ve been hustling like a hustling thing but so far with minimal results.
The market does not want either me or the horses. The horses are all old and therefore retired and unsalable, or else would require thousands of dollars’ worth of training and show fees to have any sale value. No one can take them. The market is saturated with unwanted horses and the rescues are overloaded. I am over 60, hearing impaired (ergo, unable to use the phone), and with chronic fatigue syndrome which makes office or minimum-wage work difficult to impossible. And minimum wage would not support the animals, let alone me. All my income streams from backlist books, editing, writing, etc. have shrunk to a trickle or dried up. No one has booked a Camp in over a year.
You can sponsor or partially sponsor one of the horses (details here: http://dancinghorse.livejournal.com/330335.html)
She has a Patreon for fiction here: https://www.patreon.com/dancinghorse?ty=h
And a sale on editing and book mentoring services and Horse Camp here: http://dancinghorse.livejournal.com/330113.html
And you can buy her books on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, and iBooks.
Please signal boost.
http://dancinghorse.livejournal.com/330335.html
Right now I do not know how I’m going to feed the horses for the rest of the month. I have managed to scrape out enough to pay for the last load of hay (if that late check finally gets here), but once it’s eaten, which it will be in about ten days, I don’t know what I’m going to do. The farm will be gone by midsummer unless I find a steady source of sufficient income. I’ve been hustling like a hustling thing but so far with minimal results.
The market does not want either me or the horses. The horses are all old and therefore retired and unsalable, or else would require thousands of dollars’ worth of training and show fees to have any sale value. No one can take them. The market is saturated with unwanted horses and the rescues are overloaded. I am over 60, hearing impaired (ergo, unable to use the phone), and with chronic fatigue syndrome which makes office or minimum-wage work difficult to impossible. And minimum wage would not support the animals, let alone me. All my income streams from backlist books, editing, writing, etc. have shrunk to a trickle or dried up. No one has booked a Camp in over a year.
You can sponsor or partially sponsor one of the horses (details here: http://dancinghorse.livejournal.com/330335.html)
She has a Patreon for fiction here: https://www.patreon.com/dancinghorse?ty=h
And a sale on editing and book mentoring services and Horse Camp here: http://dancinghorse.livejournal.com/330113.html
And you can buy her books on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, and iBooks.
Please signal boost.
