The Serpent Sea cover, without titles, by Steve Argyle. ...

The Serpent Sea cover, without titles, by Steve Argyle. It's neat to have Jade on the cover this time.

links:

Kameron Hurley: By the Numbers: Earning Out the Advance on a First Novel
So I've mainly been sitting around gnawing on my nails for months waiting on royalty statements to see just how screwed I was writing a feminist science fiction novel with far too much religion and billions of expletives.


Terrible Minds: What It's Like Being a Writer

Every word of this is true, and it's why I generally try hard to avoid telling people what I do for a living.

"Oh. A writer. Uh-huh. Well, that's great." They blink and offer a kind of dismissive or incredulous smile, as if I just told them I was a cowboy or a space marine. Occasionally there exists a follow-up question. "So, you write, like, what? Books?" And that word — books — is enunciated as if it's a mythical creature, like they're asking me if I spend all day tracking Bigfoot by his scat patterns.

What I'm reading this weekend:

The Shirt on His Back by Barbara Hambly. This is the newest Benjamin January historical mystery. Ben is a black musician and surgeon in 1830s New Orleans. In this one, Ben, Hannibal, and Abishag Shaw are at a mountain man rendezvous in the Rocky Mountains, trying to find the man who killed Shaw's brother. Publishers Weekly said Along the way, January and company encounter eccentric trappers, reptilian fur traders, tragic prostitutes, raging missionaries, and sensitively three-dimensional Sioux, Omahas, Crows, and Blackfeet. Their expedition plays out against the British-U.S. rivalry for the enormously profitable beaver fur trade, while American covered wagons toil on toward Oregon. Excellent, excellent book.