I am full of bliss. Delia is already hunkered down on the sunporch, working on WIZARD'S APPRENTICE. Tomorrow we may go to Blue Hill to look for books with colorful Maine sayings in them, which she needs for the book. And to see what the trees along the road look like. Again. Can't get too much of that. And if she considers picking blueberries ( Read more... )

Assured one of my anxious Hollins students that there are web pages that briefly & clearly tell historical/fantasy writers how long it takes to get places on horseback or by carriage (and how it all works).

Am I right?

Yes, I did it! I wrote *5* Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books for Bantam/Edward Packard back in the day. Recently the delightful Molly Tanzer interviewed a few of us original writers - and readers! - and.... series creator Ed Packard himself!  What a nice guy he was - and clearly still is.  And now her piece on CYOA is up on Fantasy Magazine's online ( Read more... )

Thank you, Harvard Book Store, for the signing Saturday, and thank you everyone who showed up!  (We did leave some signed books there, if you want  one.)  Thank you, Vericon, for the very nice time!  Got home to find copies of TEETH waiting for me.  Holy smokes - it really is as good as the reviewers say.  By not-quite-concidence, I read aloud my ( Read more... )

For the past week, Delia & I have been with friends in a perfect little jewel of a colonial town in Mexico.  We're in a huge glorious palazzo of an 18c house together on a writing retreat, and while I fear I have spent far too much of my time trying to raise funds and attract stations to our Witches of Lublin show for April, I have managed to ( Read more... )

YA fantasy author Mette Ivie Harrison has an interesting new post up on Mistakes in Romance, comma, LIterary, on her LJ (metteharrison ).  I must say I agree with her and blackholly  that the Misunderstanding is not such an enjoyable mistake to read about -  of beloved Georgette Heyer's delicious romantic plots, it is definitely the least tasty to me.

When you write historical/ historical fantasy novels, you need to be able to imagine looking at the world through very different eyes.   One of the best ways to do this is by reading source material:  text from an earlier period, in which cultural suppositions are clearly stated - and usually unexamined by the writer . . . Unless, that is, he is ( Read more... )

The Datlow/Windling teen vampires that are profound & have literary value & can be genuinely scary YA anthology  TEETH is coming this March - and already advance reviews are popping up and torturing me.  Because I hate spoilers, that's why:  I want to come all brain-virginal & pristine to new work by personal heroes like Suzy Charnas & Jeff Ford & ( Read more... )

deliasherman  deserves all the credit for her wise, warm & wonderful Letter to a Young Writer on How to Survive a First Draft - but I'm the one who, when asked to look it over before she sent it to said relative, got all choked up and said, "You have to post this for everyone to read."  "Really?" our modest darling asked.  "Really."

(And you do know that "My ( Read more... )

I belong to a very loose-knit writer's group:  when someone has a big project done, h/she convenes all the others in our little brain trust to critique and discuss it.  Last year, someone finished the first draft of a novel.  By the time the group was able to meet, she'd already gotten notes from her editor for revision.  We all assembled in the ( Read more... )