I don't like to write about writing ( Read more... )

I'm over at Strange Horizons today, as part of a roundtable on representing marginalised voices in historical fiction and sff, alongside two writers I admire a lot, David Anthony Durham and Joyce Chng (aka J Damask). I loved getting to do this: Joyce and David are very insightful people and I learnt a lot; and our moderator Vanessa Rose Phin asked ( Read more... )

So, over on twitter, I have a personal hashtag of #redwriter. I use it for those moments when I'm explicitly talking about my socialism, and sometimes when I realise that something in whatever I'm working on is bouncing off that. I do it, because I am of the age and type that agrees with the slogan 'Politics is life.' And it keeps me thinking, ( Read more... )

So, I'm most of the way up a French mountain, watching the cloud come down and the wind make waves in the snow, and I'm thinking about confidence and courage and technique. We're here, the marquis and me, to ski, but I am not skiing: I'm here in the hotel room with my tablet while the marquis skis out there in the wind and cloud ( Read more... )

I had a lovely time at Picocon last weekend. It really is an excellent convention: enthusiastic, lively and full of energy and imagination. I'm very grateful to the committee for having me back. I enjoyed talking to them, too, and the joint panel I did with Ian MacDonald ( Read more... )

I'm looking at my hands on the keyboard, the hands that are, so much, the way I speak. Words written down, with pens and pencils; school work and university work, childhood stories and poems, the Star Trek fanfics I wrote as a teen, and the files and pages of the research that built my PhD -- and the drafts of the final work. The chapters and ( Read more... )

" His name was Blais Begart, and he was an Eschappé. A troublemaker, the mayor would most likely call him, a rabblerousing criminal dedicated to nothing more than destruction ( Read more... )

So, yesterday I decided to indulge in another round of that intermittent habit, poking the internet with a stick, by starting a hashtag -- #womentoread -- over on Twitter. I asked people to recommend sff by women. The response was astonishing: I'd hoped that some of my friends would pick it up, but... One of the very first to do so was seanan_mcguire (Thank you ( Read more... )

I've been tagged to do this at least 3 times -- by Kat Richardson over on Google+, by Jaine Fenn on Facebook and by kateelliott here. And I've procrastinated, because I'm not really sure what to write about. However....

1) What is the working title of your next book?
Death and the Madwoman
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
It's the sequel to The ( Read more... )

I do not, if I'm honest, care much for zombies. They squick me. I'm not keen on anything which seeks to eat me alive: call me a coward, call me atavistic, but when it comes down to it, the idea of being ripped to pieces simply does not appeal. Nor would I wish that fate on others. As anyone who knows me well can attest, I'm just not keen on the ( Read more... )