David Anthony Durham

This blog has moved

2010-03-10T10:33:00.001-05:00

This blog is now located at http://acaciatrilogy.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://acaciatrilogy.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Hugo Voting Deadline

2010-03-10T08:42:00.000-05:00

Hey, are you a Hugo voter? Just in case, don't forget that ballots must be received by March 13th!

Here's the Writertopia website that features information on the Campbell Award, both on past winners and on folks that are eligible for it now.

Yes, as of today it features a photo of yours truly, blissfully holding on to the Campbell plaque and sporting wee tiara. What can I say? Campbell thoughts still make me very, very happy...

Of course I'll be watching the Campbell category with interest this year, but there are all those other categories to consider. My votes are in - are yours?

La Guerre Du Mein For Your Pocket!

2010-03-09T09:27:00.000-05:00

It's always fun to post a new cover treatment. This time, it's for the Pocket edition of Acacia in France. The lovely Benedicte Lombardo recently sent it along to me, along with the announcement that it's scheduled for publication in May!

Didier Graffet did the artwork once again.

An Impromtu Writers Cabal

2010-03-06T10:41:00.004-05:00

I had a very enjoyable evening the other night - something of a surprise get together of fantasy writers.

I'd headed out to South Hadley to see Jedediah Berry and Paul Tremblay read at the Odyssey Bookshop. On arrival, I see Robert Redick is there too. I happen to be reading his Redwolf Conspiracy - and enjoying it very much - at the moment, so it was great to reconnect with him and say so. Also in attendance was Holly Black of Spiderwick Chronicles fame! I'd almost crossed paths with her a bunch of times, but this was the first time we properly met. Lots of chatting ensued.

Of course, we were there to hear Jed and Paul read. That they did, and an engaging reading it was. Paul went first, opening with - I kid you not - a Powerpoint presentation that had mostly to do with his treatment for sleep apnea and resulting severing of his uvula from his body. Strange? Yes it was, but in a tangential way it had everything to do with the protagonist of his weird boiled novel, the narcoleptic private investigator Mark Genevich. Paul then read a bit from No Sleep till Wonderland: A Novel. Good fun.

Jedediah began with a reading from his Crawford Award winning The Manual of Detection. Terrific stuff, also of a detective nature but with a healthy dose of hard to categorize fantastical elements. After that he read from another story he's been cooking up. It was on a pack of cards, which he shuffled and had audience members cut, etc. He then read the segments of the story on the cards in that random order, creating a surreal, comical, strangely cohesive narrative.

That's how readings should be - fun, interactive, playful but still honoring the words and the readers of them.

And then we all went out for food and beer! Now, I've been at a table filled with accomplished - famous even - writers before, but it's also been part of some event like a con or festival or award ceremony. The cool thing about this was that it just happened one Thursday night, pretty much on home turf.

A good time was had by all, I think. Holly didn't even seem to mind being asked several times if she liked the film version of Spiderwick. (She does.) And I learned which of these authors always gets emotionally upset (as in tears flowing) while writing, which one never does, and which one just did so for the first time and considers it a troubling development.

Of course, having tempted you with that, I'll offer no more details. You'll have to join us next time to find out...

Ten Rules For Writing Fiction

2010-03-02T10:37:00.003-05:00

I like this piece from the Guardian (which Mike Kimball pointed out to me). It starts with Elmore Leonard's tips, but then goes on with a grabbag of other authors, including Richard Ford, Margaret Atwood, Geoff Dyer, Neil Gaiman, PD James, Phillip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo, Zadie Smith, Jeanette Winterson and many others!

Take a look HERE.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

2010-03-01T08:48:00.000-05:00

Here's a fantasy publication I've been looking forward to for a long time. N.K. Jemisin's debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, (The Inheritance Trilogy), is out now. I haven't read it yet, but I've known Nora for a little while I expect wonderful things from this book. The response so far seems to have been great, and I know that Orbit invested in her with enthusiasm.

Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say in a Starred Review:

Convoluted without being dense, Jemisin's engaging debut grabs readers right from the start. Yeine desires nothing more than a normal life in her barbarian homeland of Darr. But her mother was of the powerful Arameri family, and when Yeine is summoned to the capital city of Sky a month after her mother's murder, she cannot refuse. Dakarta, her grandfather and the Arameri patriarch, pits her against her two cousins as a potential heir to the throne. In an increasingly deep Zelaznyesque series of political maneuverings, Yeine, nearly powerless but fiercely determined, finds potential allies among her relatives and the gods who are forced to live in Sky as servants after losing an ancient war. Multifaceted characters struggle with their individual burdens and desires, creating a complex, edge-of-your-seat story with plenty of funny, scary, and bittersweet twists.

Sounds good to me.

On Saying No

2010-02-26T16:03:00.002-05:00

I find it quite hard to.

In particular, I find it a constant struggle to turn down or step away from offers of employment. Seems reasonable, doesn't it? Look at the unemployment situation out there! Why would anyone turn down work, especially when it's teaching work at the college level? At the best of times these jobs are hard to get. And now that's even more so. When I accepted the Associate Professor job at Cal State Fresno a few years back it was in an attempt to take a bite of that security pie.

Problem was, my family wasn't happy in Fresno. They wanted back to our house in the woods in Western Massachusetts. It was hard for me to leave the job for a variety of reasons, but when I did it was with plans to return to a near-fulltime writing life. That's what I headed toward in late June...

But by late July I'd accepted offers that meant I was doing as much teaching work as before. (I was even getting less money for it - though we were back in our chosen home, so that counts for a lot.) Instead of making daily progress on Acacia 3 I was only nibbling at it, and spending the bulk of my work life reading, critiquing, planning lectures, grading, etc. Don't get me wrong. Teaching is very good work. In particular, I enjoy the teaching I do for the Stonecoast MFA Program. That could easily be part of my life for a long time. Problem is that I'd added other stuff to that and allowed it become the center of my work life, instead of a just a component of it. How'd that happen?

Several things. There's the old notion that I still have to build my resume, get more credentials, more respectability. There's the dire economy. There are fears about the future of publishing. There's the understanding that as a writer I have very little control over my publishing prospects. (So, so much of it is out of the writer's hands. This is something I know aspiring writers don't understand.) There's the quantifiable numbers on a contract, compared to the ever changing mystery of royalty statements. There's the lingering desire to do right by my mother. As much as she supported my writing, she herself leaned toward steady, dependable employment. There are a lot reasons. I can see and understand how it happened, and I can recognize the virtues of it.

Thing is, I didn't become a writer to secure a teaching job. I became a writer to write and to be read by an audience of readers. The thing is... the longer one doesn't write, the more doubt creeps in that one ever will write again. That's not acceptable.

So I recently said no to a new offer of employment. No. It means I'm scaling back the teaching a bit, and hopefully pushing forward on the writing throttle. (By the way Stonecoasters, this changes nothing about my relationship with the Stonecoast MFA Program. That I'm quite happy with.)

Do you approve?

Go To The Next Room

2010-02-23T11:29:00.000-05:00

Random post, this one.

Okay, so you know I'm writing for George RR Martin's Wild Card series, right? A month or so ago, he responded to my three part Infamous Black Tongue story. Lots of edits, lots of things to change. My story has to jive with the work of like six other authors - and none of us have read the other author's work! Just George. Master of it all, he is. And good thing, too, because he's an awesome editor. Everything he asked for - either to fit with other stories, or just editorial in general - made sense to me. So I rewrote.

Thing is, as I approached revising the end of one of the climatic scenes, I realized I had to make a change that George hadn't mentioned. When IBT has beaten down a particular baddy, he punches him one last time. Seeing him go unconscious, he says, "Go the next room."

Go to the next room.

Made complete sense to me, but I doubt it would make sense to anybody else. Why'd I write that line? Well, let me take you back...

When I was a young, spritely, twenty something Outward Bound Instructor living and working in Baltimore I spent one summer doing a long course that was urban based. We worked in partnership with the Yale School of Forestry. Basically, I spent the summer doing urban forestry with at-risk kids from inner city Baltimore.

On one of those days, we worked at some sort of men's home/shelter. We were given a tour of a the facility by a charismatic, talkative resident of the place, a guy that had lived his own hard life to get to the relative stability the home offered him. He had a great cadence to his speech as he led us around, a combination of street-smart slang and no nonsense gruffness that he somehow delivered with spiritual equanimity.

When he was done talking about a room, he would always say the same thing. "Alright? Got it? Good. Go to the next room." It seemed a strange, loose, kinda funky mantra at the time. And over the years it's come to have spiritual significance for me. Like, he wasn't just saying move your body into the next room so we can carry on with this tour. It's become an invitation to a higher plane. "Go to the next room, where rewards - or karmic retribution - await you." I've never forgotten it, and every now and then that phrase pops into my head.

That, in some strange way, was what Infamous Black Tongue was laying down on the villain in question. But without context I understand that it would mean nothing to anybody but me. Oh, and you - now that you've read this far.

Still, though, it doesn't make that much sense in that moment, so I cut it. Perhaps one day I'll write a story in which I can build that line and let someone deliver it in context. Here's hoping, cause I need to get it out of my system...

Nebula Awards Final Ballot

2010-02-19T11:09:00.003-05:00

It's just gone up! The titles in the novel category (where my attention always goes) are:

The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Nightshade, Sep09)

The Love We Share Without Knowing, Christopher Barzak (Bantam, Nov08)

Flesh and Fire, Laura Anne Gilman (Pocket, Oct09)

The City & The City, China Mieville (Del Rey, May09)

Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor, Sep09)

Finch, Jeff VanderMeer (Underland Press, Oct09)

For the rest, take a look HERE. Congrats to them all!

Locus: Three Out Of Four

2010-02-18T10:51:00.004-05:00

Locus has just come out with their list of recommended titles from 2009. Alas, The Other Lands (Acacia, Book 2) isn't on the list. Sigh. Not that I'm surprised. I don't think Locus reviewed me this time around, and that kind of precludes later inclusion in a "Best Of" list. Such is the way it is, though, and one must remember that you can't have everything. In this case, there's a balance that still leans in my favor.

Locus did, for example, give me a doozy of a great review for Acacia: The War with the Mein. And this year they also published Jeff VanderMeer's reaction/list of his own. The Other Lands features nicely on that one.

And... I'm to be featured in an interview in an upcoming issue! So I'll get to have my say within their pages in my own words. All in all I'm quite happy about it.

Now, if the New York Times would just remember how much they used to love me…

New Cover

2010-02-13T16:23:00.003-05:00

I'm writing from the lobby of the hotel at Boskone. Just taking a break for a sec. It's been good, but I'll keep this quick.

I just got a glimpse at the cover Doubleday has planned for the massmarket paperback of The Other Lands. It's the same basic image, but retooled a little. Take a look...

New York Times on E-Book Pricing

2010-02-11T09:15:00.002-05:00

Here's another article about the whole thing. Nothing new really, although for me it's official confirmation of stuff I've watched happen personally.

It's got a quite a few quotable lines in it, but I'll resist the urge.

Are You Sure You Want To Say That? Just Wondering...

2010-02-10T09:17:00.001-05:00

I recently noticed a blog post by an aspiring sf writer of African descent. She got turned on to the genre, apparently, by reading Harry Potter, and now she has a recently completed manuscript. Thinking she would look into what other black writers had accomplished in the genre, she looked for some titles to read, found Acacia: The War with the Mein, read it and... decided to blog about how lame it was. She didn't like it much. Found the characters mostly uninteresting, their names annoying, nothing much surprising in it and just way too many words for such a nothing story, that sort of thing.

Now, I have absolutely no problem with someone not liking a book of mine. She may think it's not a good book; I'd say it is, but it's not a good book for her. I wish people would understand that a bit more often. But so be it.

What I am interested in here is that she chose to write a blog post that included all the above information. Why, I'm inclined to ask, would an aspiring writer hoping to break into the genre and become one of very few black writers in the genre choose to begin by writing publically and negatively about one of the few other black writers to find success in the genre? Does that sound like the best career planning? Especially when they're writing on a personal blog that nobody is reading, but that the author in question is more likely to come across because it's their book being trashed. See what I mean? She's reaching very few people, but the one person she's most likely to reach is... me.

I'm not sure how much folks know this, but part of what it means that black writers are so few in this part of the literary world is that we tend to... ah, know each other. Go to a con and you're likely to connect with Nalo and Nnedi, with Alaya and Nora, with Steven and the Minister, Tananarive and Doselle and Tempest and... well, I was going to say Samuel, but the only time I was at a con with him I was too shy to say hello. But my point is that it's a small group, and the way we stand out in this community makes it easy to connect, strike up friendships, and find professional support. We don't all know each other, but in general we do know each others' work, and I reckon we keep an eye on each others' careers to some extent. None of these writers is doing exactly the same thing. None of us need love each other's writing without question (though I often do). But all of us benefit from looking out for each other. A blurb here, a recommendation there, a shout out on occasion, choosing a particular title for a course and thereby selling twenty books... It's small stuff, but it counts.

In my opinion, this aspiring writer has unintentionally demonstrated how little she knows about the industry she wants to be part of. After writing this negative review, what's she gonna do if she meets me at a con? It's fine if she says hi without commenting on my writing, but it's hardly a great opening to say, "Hi, I read your book and didn't like it and went out of my way to tell other people it wasn't that good. I'm hoping to be a writer myself, though. Can you help me get an agent?" Of course she never would introduce herself that way in person, but... that's exactly what she's done with her blog post!

Remember folks, when you post something on your blog people may read it. It may serve as your introduction to them. Just something to keep in mind...

AudioFile Interview

2010-02-08T08:54:00.003-05:00

My librarian just informed me that I have an interview/article in the current issue of AudioFile magazine. Nice.

HERE it is!

Barack/Barad the Lesser

2010-02-05T12:32:00.005-05:00

I got an email from a kind fan recently. Let's call him V. He said nice things about the series, and then he asked me a question. It was about the character Barad the Lesser from The Other Lands (Acacia, Book 2), a character who appears to be mentioned once in the first book - but only in passing - as Barack the Lesser.

Part of V's question was worded like this:

"I wondered when exactly you'd been working on the novel and how much Obama was on the national radar when you chose to name a character after him. I wondered if he was still a junior senator in Illinois, kind of a minor politician you were fond of and wanted to tip your cap to, or whether he was already gaining enough steam that you could imagine his becoming President... Maybe it was a coincidence that you used the name in the first novel, during the writing of which Obama might not have been very well known, but then you felt the need to change it now?"

And here's how I responded:

Great question. The funny thing is, you're the first person to ask it! I'm sure some others must have noticed, but none of mentioned it to me directly yet. Thanks for the careful reading, and I'm happy to answer.

So, it's like this... Yes, the character named Barack the Lesser in the first book became Barad the Lesser in the second. No, I didn't explain that anywhere in the text. Yes, Barack Obama is probably to blame for it, but no, the first name choice wasn't any direct homage or endorsement of him. I'm not a big fan of that sort of thing, and don't do it intentionally in my fiction. It's just one of those strange situations where life surprises you and throws chinks into your work.

I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but let's go back in time. First, note that the first book came out in 2007. Before the election. The text of the book was accepted and put into production a year before that, in 2006. And the book itself was written in 2004 and 2005. All of that is just to say that I wrote the thing before Barack Obama was president, and I wrote quite a bit of it before he was even a national political figure.

But I said he was to blame, right? Yes, I think that at some point when I was writing the book Obama made a speech, maybe at a Democratic convention in 2005 or something like that. I recall liking the speech, but moreover the name Barack seemed perfect for this minor character I had in mind. In the first book he's only a name mentioned once - literally once on page 259 of The War With The Mein. That makes him a tiny character, and at that point Obama was a relatively unknown wannabee from Chicago. Nobody involved in the book's production even noticed or thought about the name. Not my early readers. Not my agent, not my editor or the copyeditor.

Fast forward a couple years... When I began writing The Other Lands Obama was still a crazy long shot for the presidency. I'm sure I began it before he was even a candidate. But you know what happened with that... With my writing, I became more and more drawn to making Barack the Lesser a point of view character in the second book. I'd never thought of him as connected to Obama by anything other than the fact that I'd casually pinched his name, but still, I started to write more about him. You know how that went...

I honestly didn't think a thing about it until I delivered the book to my editor, in the winter of 2008. At that point - though even he had read much of the book earlier than that - he went, "Ah... wait a minute. You can't call this Barack anymore. Nobody is going to be able to read that without thinking of Obama." He was right, of course. Obama owns the name for all intents and purposes. My minor character had been named after a man that had suddenly become one of the most famous men on earth!

It was quite strange to face that. On one hand, my character felt to me like he inhabited that name. He was his own thing. On the other hand, I was fully involved in following the election. I was even an Obama supporter. But it didn't really occur to me until my editor pointed it out that I had a problem with that particular name.

So I changed it. I made it Barad so that it was close to the original, so that it felt similar to me but was still different. And that was that. Now, it's easy for me to think of him as Barad - and he's got nothing to do with Obama - at least not that I'm overtly aware of.

That's the story. Nothing like this had happened before with my previous novels. I doubt it ever will again. Thanks for the question. If you stick around for the third book you'll get to see what happens with Bara... With BARAD the Lesser. He's got a role in all the craziness, right up to the end!

And that's it. Now, dear reader, what do you think? Should I amend the name in future editions of The War With the Mein? (It is only a single word in the text, after all.) Or should it stay the way it is, a weird moment of real history intruding on an imagined world?

Hampshire Reading

2010-02-02T15:36:00.000-05:00

Hey I'm doing a reading!

"Fiction writers Christine Lehner and David Anthony Durham will read from their most recent works of fiction on February 11 at 7 p.m. in the Hampshire College Library Gallery. A book signing and reception will follow the reading. The event is free and open to the public. "

HERE'S more info on it.

Charlie Stross on Amazon, and Toby, and fashionista_35

2010-02-01T16:06:00.003-05:00

Another examination of the subject, with some great points.

And here's Tobias Buckell.

All these guys know way more about this stuff than me...

As does fashionista_35, as proven here.

You know, I'm actually not too confused anymore. :)

Ah, So Amazon Has "Capitulated"

2010-02-01T09:03:00.007-05:00

Things are happening fast, apparently.

Amazon.com has announced that it's going to have to accept Macmillan's terms. HERE'S their announcement. I put the quotes around the "capitulated" because Amazon used it themselves. They've "capitulated" to selling ebooks at a higher profit margin, to likely making more money while also allowing the publisher to maybe remain able to publish titles in the future. Tough deal...

Listen, I'm no enemy to Amazon. That's not it at all. Please note the Amazon links in this blog. Rest assured that I check my Amazon sales ranking daily, and that I'm a frequent customer myself. I just find some of the rhetoric around this dispute... questionable.

For example, I find the wording that Amazon uses - that "Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles" - a bit strange. Shouldn't they? That's what it means to be a publisher, to take all the risks of publishing and supporting titles. And that's a misuse of term "monopoly". If Macmillan was not only the producer of the titles but also the only venue to sell them that would be one thing. But that's not the case. And why shouldn't a publisher have ownership of the titles they've legally contracted to bring into the world? As an author, I signed a contract with my publisher (who is not Macmillan, by the way) to look after the future of my books; not Amazon. By pricing them publishers are not making people buy them at that price. They're not selling gasoline, here. They're only saying selling them for less doesn't work for them as a business.

I guess a lot of folks think Amazon.com should have that ownership, judging by the comment thread. Seems like a lot of people think publishers are just making a big money grab, since ebooks should just be like gravy to them. I may just have a different perspective on this, but I think folks have the wrong idea if they're thinking the publishers are some sort of fat cats in control of everything, and if they think that ebooks are completely separate from the economics of the entire industry. As a novelist with five books behind me my feeling is that the publishing world is struggling to stay afloat - not chowing down on big ebook profits.

Tina Jordan, in a short piece for Entertainment Weekly, words it this way:

"As someone who has been following this drama, and reading all the comments on this and many other books blogs, I'm alarmed that so many people seem to see Macmillan as the villain here. It's not that simple. The book business has never had high profit margins (I believe 3% is considered fairly healthy, which ought to give you some idea.) It costs an enormous amount of money to produce a book. The author is paid an advance; the book is edited and copyedited and often put through a legal check; a jacket is designed; the publisher pays for marketing (ads!) and publicity (sending the author on tour, or, if they're lucky, paying to bring the author to New York so that they can appear on a national TV show). The printing, binding, and shipping of a title are not the real expenses involved in publication. The issue that Macmillan had with Amazon is a very real one: Given the punishing terms that Amazon insists upon (most e-book profits are going to Amazon, not to the publisher/author), publishers are literally often losing money on their e-book ventures with the company. What Macmillan wants to do is what it calls "agency pricing", that is, offer the e-book for more money when it first comes out, and then decrease the price as time passes - much in the way that a book is first available in hardcover and then in paperback."

Strange Things In Publishing

2010-01-31T14:53:00.005-05:00

We all know these are strange times for publishing. I find it hard to get a handle on where the industry is going and if that destination is a good thing. I tend to be hopeful, confident fundamentally that people will always need stories, and therefore always need writers to produce them. The rest is just details, right?

But... I keep bumping up against strange, kinda unexpected twists.

There are the Kindle $9.99 protesters that go around leaving bad reviews on Amazon, really only saying that no Kindle book should cost more than that amount. Not sure how they came up with that, what amount of market research and analysis of production budgets and profit and lost calculations they've considered. I'm not saying what they should cost, I'm just wondering... I also think they might find that the price is only higher for a period of time - like the first year that the book is in hardback format. My Kindle version of Acacia: The War with the Mein is $6.39, and I figure The Other Lands (Acacia, Book 2) will drop in price too - once the print version heads into mass market paperback. I wonder if these folks that haven't read my books but have written negative "reviews" will come back then and remove them?

Or there's stuff like Amazon pulling Macmillan titles off because they couldn't come to terms on pricing/royalties for ebooks...

Here's a New York Times blog piece about it.

Here's a letter from Macmillan about it at Publishers Lunch.

What's up with this?

And then there are the folks that wrote protest "reviews" because my books weren't available for... ah... free. For free? (These reviews seem to have been removed, but still.) Just a question about that... How do people that advocate for free books explain how the author gets paid? Or does the author not need to get paid? That's absurd from my point of view, but that's because I know how many days, weeks, years of work writing a book is, how much it effects the circumstances of my family's life on a daily basis. Am I crazy for thinking that writing novels of 200k+ word length (that people want to read) is actually work? I don't make extravagant money writing. I make enough to sustain my family. If everything is free how can I do that? And if I can't do that, folks, I can't spend my life writing books. I just don't really understand this free book thing. If you do, please explain it to me.

And then there's the whole changing landscape thing. Independent bookstores gutted. The chain stores in trouble despite that. Newspapers not reviewing books much anymore. Lots of articles with titles like "The Death of Fiction". (That one is at Mother Jones. Kind of interesting, not just the article but the comment thread afterward.)

I'm not really advocating anything here. Just being dazed and confused...

Jedediah Berry

2010-01-28T11:19:00.003-05:00

I just want to congratulate Jedediah Berry on winning the 2010 William L. Crawford Award for his first novel The Manual of Detection.

I haven't read the novel yet, but I had the pleasure of hanging out with Jedediah at Readercon last year. Very good guy. I'm looking forward to checking this out. You should too!

Here's the Locus Announcement.

Michel Martin On Media In Times of Disaster

2010-01-27T10:17:00.002-05:00

Small Thing

2010-01-26T23:14:00.000-05:00

The Other Lands now has a page for the mass market paperback edition on Amazon. And I've a sales rank, which means at least one kind person has actually ordered it!

Don't necessarily wait until August 31st to pick one up, though. The hardbacks really are lovely, and they're available now!

My Boskone Schedule

2010-01-25T10:58:00.000-05:00

February 12-14, 2010 at the Westin Waterfront Hotel.

My schedule is: Friday 6:30pm A Reading! (0.5 hrs) by David Anthony Durham

Friday 7pm Seriously, Where *Do* Your Ideas Come From?

Lois McMaster Bujold
David Anthony Durham (M)
Darlene Marshall
Paul G. Tremblay
Mary A. Turzillo

We know ideas don't come from a mailbox in upstate New York. So, seriously, where do they come from? Do you muse on "what if's"? Are there personal inspirations for your tales? Do you find a particular setting evocative, and just waiting to be detailed in a story?

Saturday 2pm Autographing - David Anthony Durham

Sunday 11am One More Time - If You Liked That, Read This...

Debra Doyle (M)
David Anthony Durham
Faye Ringel
Edie Stern
Christopher Weuve

Continued (again!) from last year… Your favorite stories or authors can lead you to others, alike in interesting or unexpected ways. Tell the experts on the panel your likes (and dislikes) and they'll give you recommendations on what to read next!

Sunday 12noon When The Magic Goes Away

David Anthony Durham
Rosemary Kirstein
Tom Shippey (M)
Jo Walton
Jane Yolen

There is magic and mystery and great beauty. And then the Old Magic slips away from the forests, the gates to Faerie close, and the last ships sail to the west. There is a bittersweet memory, perhaps, of what it was to be more than merely mortal. Explore this theme, and why it is so potent.

Sunday 2pm Are Good and Evil Gone from Epic Fantasy?

Beth Bernobich
David Anthony Durham (M)
Greer Gilman
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Michael Swanwick

The world we live in has always been defined by shades of gray, however fantastic fiction has a long tradition of black and white politics, usually complete with a Dark Lord on his sufficiently dark throne. Recent series that have garnered praise such as Martins 'A Song of Ice and Fire,' Lynch's 'The Gentlemen Bastards,' Bakker's 'The Prince of Nothing,' and Rothfuss's 'Kingkiller Chronicle' all feature fallible characters without perfect moral compasses and by extent are more compelling. Are the days of the Dark Lords done in adult fiction?

That's me.

Boskone 47 Participants

2010-01-24T19:18:00.000-05:00

I'll be attending my first Boskone this year. This is a Boston-based regional SF convention, sponsored by the New England Science Fiction Association. I'm looking forward to.

The Guest of Honor is Alastair Reynolds. Official Artist is my friend John Picacio. The Special Guest is Tom Shippey. And the Featured Filker is Mary Crowell. Beyond that, NEFSA will also be bringing Lois McMaster Bujold, Michael Whelan, and Vernor Vinge.

The general list of participants looks quite good, too. The list is HERE if you'd like to take a look!

KGB

2010-01-22T09:51:00.000-05:00

I had a terrific time at KGB last Wednesday. I've been lax in posting about it, but that's because I've been rather busy these last few weeks. I'm looking at a week with an even keel, though, and very happy about it.

It was great to show up and immediately see familiar faces. K. Tempest Bradford greeted me, along with Nora Jemison. Before I knew it I was talking with Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Felix Gilman, Rick Bowes, and a contingent of students from the Stonecoast MFA Program. Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel were gracious hosts. We had a great crowd, and I think the readings even went well! Yes, I did wear the Campbell Tiara...

I had a great time talking with Lev Grossman, whose The Magicians I quite enjoyed!

After the reading a big crowd of folks headed off to get some really impressive Chinese food, and I ended the evening being a guest of Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, who have an absolutely amazing, rambling apartment stuffed full of antiques and thousand and thousands of books!

Yes. A lovely time.

There are more pictures HERE, if you must see...