I’m at a crossroads with a new piece I’m working on. I am peering down the roads rather dubiously.

You see, this is not going to be a very short piece. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to make it under the official short story limit (7.5K), and the unofficial ones are right out (anything longer than 4-5K is de facto harder to sell). I ( Read more... )

I’ve heard people talk about dreaming in a foreign language as a sign that they’re getting really fluent in it. I have a step that is much, much, much earlier in the process, and that is dreaming in foreign language gibberish. Yesterday I watched two hours of The Eagle (because Netflix is taking it away from me! WOE!), and last night I went to ( Read more... )

One of these days, I will get through an entire half-month without getting sick. This is not that day. In the meantime there are books.

John Joseph Adams, ed., Federations. Mixed bag, and I had been hoping it would be focused on actual federations (federations are cool!) rather than just vast space thingers. Not that vast space thingers are not ( Read more... )

1. Tim is having a print sale of sunrises. Amazing photos, amazing prices. The Belle Fourche Reservoir one particularly knocks me over-if you think it looks intense on the screen, wait ’til you see what he does with it as a print.

2. Today’s Google Doodle fills me with joy (thanks, Catherine, for pointing it out). Maria Mitchell! Hurrah!

( Read more... )

Last week, when I was preparing for a birthday and a house guest, my friend Kethry asked for advice on how to get in the habit of writing stories, and I promised her I’d try to give some. And now the birthday has passed and the house guest has gone home and I am completely full of head cold, and I am trying to wade through my to-do list, and here ( Read more... )

Tomorrow (Friday, July 26) is my birthday. I’m telling you this now because one of the main ways to celebrate my birthday worldwide-by which I mean it happens in both Eagan and Apple Valley-is to have something unusually awesome for breakfast.

I am a big fan of breakfast. No matter what a crappy day I have had, I can go to bed and think, “Well, ( Read more... )

I have had my share of horrific cover art/illustrations for a short story writer, or possibly more than my share. So when I get really good art not once but twice from the same artist (and the same art director: thanks, Irene and Tor.com staff!), I sit up and take notice. That artist is Julie Dillon. I’m so glad other people are noticing her ( Read more... )

Last week I was doing a polishing draft of a book of mine, working with my agent* to make sure it’s the best it can be when she shows it to editors. And one of the questions we’d talked about was a name change.

In the first version of this book, there was a major character whose name began with the Kj- dipthong. But when I was first writing this ( Read more... )

You all remember when I linked to the Spellbound Kickstarter, right? And lo, it came to pass, that there was once again a children’s fantasy magazine in the land? Well, shocking all of us who know here, Raechel Henderson’s goals have not stopped there. She’s doing another Kickstarter, this one for companion volumes of Spellbound and an adult ( Read more... )

Saladin Ahmed, Engraved on the Eye. Kindle. Short story collection, some in the same world as Throne of the Crescent Moon and others not. The former are the collection’s better stories, I feel; too many of the latter are an idea without an arc.

Joan Aiken, Go Saddle the Sea. Kids’/YA Napoleonic adventure tale ranging from Spain to England. A ( Read more... )