Kate McIntyre's Blog, page 8

M: Magical Normalcy

Earlier this week, I touched on the central touchstone for the tone of my books: life is routine.

I think most everyone knows what I mean. No matter how exciting your life seems, it’s all too easy to be acclimized to it. If you’re doing paperwork in a tiny office, your life is boring. But if you’re travelling the world hunting meteorites, well, your life is boring too. Everyone in the world, from the most lowry janitor to the most glamourous movie star, all experience the exact same feeling w...

L: Learning To Write the Stuff You Suck at Writing

When it comes to writing, I think we all have things that we think we’re pretty good at and enjoy doing. Our comfort zone, where we would spend most of our writing hours given the choice. It’s a nice place to be, where you feel you’re competant and the words you’re putting out are weighty and valuable and good. But then there’s the other side of the coin. The stuff that you’re pretty sure you’re terrible at and hate writing.

If only we could stay away from that stuff entirely! Unfortunately,...

K: Kate’s Favourite Authors

Hi, I’m Kate, and there are a whole lot of authors that I love!

But that’s kind of a loaded statement. Because to me, loving an author is about more than loving a few books they wrote. Some of my favourite books haven’t been written by a favourite author. And some of my favourite authors don’t have any books that would crack the top ten. It’s about more than just a couple entries into their bibliography. It’s about their body of work as a whole, the patterns that emerge when looking at everyt...

J: Junking Writing You Still Like

Gah! Just realized I forgot a really simple word-building rule and 1k GREAT words need to get flushed. #writing #amwriting That's rough!

—
Kate McIntyre (@KateMcBooks) February 28, 2015

Grr! Is there anything worse?

It’s one thing when you realize that everything you just wrote is terrible and you have to delete it. But it’s quite another when you loved it and you have to get rid of it anyway! Maybe it’s slowing the chapter down. Maybe the scene meandered away from the point and you can’t get...

I: Inspiration, or, Where Did the World of My Book Come From?

Today I’m just going to talk a bit about my own work. My first book, The Deathsniffer’s Assistant, offers a lot of things that I don’t think you can get just anywhere. Like my cast of very different women, each with different kinds of strength and their own individual weaknesses. Or my melding of the whodunnit, conspiracy, and urban fantasy genres. But I think the most unique thing I’m bringing to the table is my setting.

The Deathsniffer’s Assistant takes place in an entirely fictional world...

H: How Much Research is Too Much Research

All right, writers; stop me if you’re heard this one.

You’re planning a new book. It’s got an interesting setting, something you’ve always been interested in but don’t actually know that much about. You want to be informed and know your material. You start doing some research. Articles, fashion plates, photographs. You’re making notes. You keep discovering more and more minutae about the period or area you’re looking into. The more you learn, the more you feel you need to learn. How can you p...

G: Great Books (That You May Not Have Read)

(Short personal note! I’ll be trying to make a couple of posts today! I’m on a trip and not even 15 hours in, I fell down a flight of stairs and wrecked my ankle! As I’m in a foreign country, I don’t have any medical coverage, so I’ve been resting my ankle, icing it, and being extremely careful so I don’t get any complications! It hasn’t exactly been the right atmosphere around here to get work done. But I’m finally hobbling around and have so many exciting things to talk to you guys about, s...

F: Feminism Isn’t a Dirty Word, and if it is, I Have a Filthy Mouth

One of my favourite authors is Scott Lynch, writer of The Lies of Locke Lamora and its sequels. Lynch is often considered more pulp than quality, but his books are so beautiful and perfect to me. They’re funny. They’re horrifying. They’re thrilling. They’re sad. The way Lynch juggles mood and tone and his mastery over clever dialogue is why he’s become a beloved voice in 21st century fantasy. I consider him one of my biggest inspirations. Not just because he’s a genius and not just because he...

E: Electroswing (It’s My Jam)

I was about three quarters of the way through my first draft of The Deathsniffer’s Assistant when my best friend linked me a song. “I showed everyone else and it got a good response,” she said. “I think you’d like it.” I loaded it up and gave it a listen.

Oh my god.

Clash by Caravan Palace changed my life. It was the first song that I’d heard in my absolute favourite genre of music, something called electroswing. It mixes the bouncing, frenetic 3/4 time signature of old school swing music wi...

D: Dreaming of the Publishing World

Am I the only one who’s just enamoured with publishing as an industry?

I know, I know. It’s flawed. It’s a business. It turns art into commodity. Good books get rejected cause they don’t match trends. Bad books get accepted because they do. Etc.! I know all the flaws with capitalism and the industries it births as well as anyone else does, but is it okay to love those industries with all your heart in spite of that?

I love publishing.

I always wanted to be an agent or an editor for my day job...