Links and a Writing Quote
A few people have asked, so I thought I'd address it here: No, I am not getting paid for the free kindle downloads of The Cloud Roads on Amazon US. Just like I don't get paid for sales of used copies or pirated copies. So being number one on the Kindle sales rank doesn't mean I'm rich now. It doesn't mean much of anything, except I should probably take a screen shot and save it as I'm unlikely to see my name there again. :)
The drawing for the free copies of The Cloud Roads or The Serpent Sea is still taking entries today here.
links:
The Night Bazaar: Kameron Hurley: 10 Things I Learned About the Publishing Biz The Year My First Novel Was Published
This year, after writing and submitting stories and manuscripts for 15 years, 10 years since attending Clarion, 9 years since I went to my first SF convention, 7 years after I started blogging, and 3 years after my first book acceptance... my first book was published. Followed six months later by the second.
The Writer Unboxed: The Darkness Within Ann Aguirre has a post about writers being stalked and receiving violent threats because someone didn't like what their characters did in a book or because of how the book turned out. This isn't that uncommon, unfortunately.
Nnedi Okorafor has a post on Lovecraft's racism & The World Fantasy Award statuette, with comments from China Miéville On Sunday, a friend of mine wanted to see my World Fantasy Award statuette. When he saw it, he was taken aback. He looked like he'd seen an ugly ghost.
***
I used to collect writing quotes, though I think most of them got lost several computers ago, but I found this one yesterday and had to grab it:
"...poetry isn't the outcome of personality. I mean by that that it exists independently of your mind, your habits, your feelings, and everything that goes to make up your personality. The poetic emotion's impersonal; the Greeks were quite right when they called it inspiration. Therefore, what you're like personally doesn't matter a twopenny damn; all that matters is whether you've got a good receiving set for the poetic waves. Poetry's a visitation, coming and going at its own sweet will."
"Well, then, what's it like?"
"As a matter of fact, I can't explain it properly because I don't understand it properly, and I hope I never shall. But it certainly isn't a question of oh look at the pretty roses or oh how miserable I feel today. If it were, there'd be forty million poets in England at present. It's a curious passive sensation. Some people say it's as if you noticed something for the first time, but I think it's more as if the thing in question had noticed you for the first time. You feel as if the rose or whatever it is were shining at you. Invariably after the first moment the phrase occurs to you to describe it; and when that's happened you snap out of it: all your personality comes rushing back, and you write the Canterbury Tales or Paradise Lost or King Lear according to the kind of person you happen to be. That's up to you."
"And does it happen often?"
"Every day. Every year. There's no telling if each time, whenever it is, mayn't be the last... In the meantime, of course, one gets dull and middle-aged."
Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop
(Oddly, this novel was published in 1946 and contains a scene sort-of-almost-identical to the climactic carousel scene in Strangers on a Train (book 1950, movie 1951). I'm just sayin'.)
The drawing for the free copies of The Cloud Roads or The Serpent Sea is still taking entries today here.
links:
The Night Bazaar: Kameron Hurley: 10 Things I Learned About the Publishing Biz The Year My First Novel Was Published
This year, after writing and submitting stories and manuscripts for 15 years, 10 years since attending Clarion, 9 years since I went to my first SF convention, 7 years after I started blogging, and 3 years after my first book acceptance... my first book was published. Followed six months later by the second.
The Writer Unboxed: The Darkness Within Ann Aguirre has a post about writers being stalked and receiving violent threats because someone didn't like what their characters did in a book or because of how the book turned out. This isn't that uncommon, unfortunately.
Nnedi Okorafor has a post on Lovecraft's racism & The World Fantasy Award statuette, with comments from China Miéville On Sunday, a friend of mine wanted to see my World Fantasy Award statuette. When he saw it, he was taken aback. He looked like he'd seen an ugly ghost.
***
I used to collect writing quotes, though I think most of them got lost several computers ago, but I found this one yesterday and had to grab it:
"...poetry isn't the outcome of personality. I mean by that that it exists independently of your mind, your habits, your feelings, and everything that goes to make up your personality. The poetic emotion's impersonal; the Greeks were quite right when they called it inspiration. Therefore, what you're like personally doesn't matter a twopenny damn; all that matters is whether you've got a good receiving set for the poetic waves. Poetry's a visitation, coming and going at its own sweet will."
"Well, then, what's it like?"
"As a matter of fact, I can't explain it properly because I don't understand it properly, and I hope I never shall. But it certainly isn't a question of oh look at the pretty roses or oh how miserable I feel today. If it were, there'd be forty million poets in England at present. It's a curious passive sensation. Some people say it's as if you noticed something for the first time, but I think it's more as if the thing in question had noticed you for the first time. You feel as if the rose or whatever it is were shining at you. Invariably after the first moment the phrase occurs to you to describe it; and when that's happened you snap out of it: all your personality comes rushing back, and you write the Canterbury Tales or Paradise Lost or King Lear according to the kind of person you happen to be. That's up to you."
"And does it happen often?"
"Every day. Every year. There's no telling if each time, whenever it is, mayn't be the last... In the meantime, of course, one gets dull and middle-aged."
Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop
(Oddly, this novel was published in 1946 and contains a scene sort-of-almost-identical to the climactic carousel scene in Strangers on a Train (book 1950, movie 1951). I'm just sayin'.)
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