Because Steel Blues is featured in the current Historical Fantasy Storybundle, I thought I'd repost a piece from several years ago about how we got the idea for the Great Passenger Derby that features in the novel. Becasue sometimes you just can't make this stuff up...

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As its curator, I'm delighted to announce the launch of the Historical Fantasy StorybundleMy favorite fantasy novels are the ones that ground the fantastic in the historical - that use pieces of our known past to build their fantasy worlds. Partly, of course, that’s because I was trained as a historian, but even when a novel is based on an ( Read more... )

Once again, I’m going to be an author guest at Shore Leave - anyone else who’s going to be there, I’ll be at the Meet-the-Authors event Friday (with books to sell/sign!) and also on assorted panels ( Read more... )

It’s high summer here, and I’ve been busy! The Astreiant Patreon is up and running - in fact, I just posted the second sketch, a bit from Philip and Nico’s early days, in the period between Point of Knives and Point of Dreams. Thanks very much to everyone who has subscribed! I’m thoroughly enjoying playing with these bits as I ramp up toward the ( Read more... )

I am old enough that the Orlando murders feel entirely, sadly familiar: death and murder, violence and threat, have always been a part of being queer, the shadow that makes the fabulous burn brighter. I came out in 1979, the year Harvey Milk was murdered. I stumbled through the AIDS years, through goodbye phone calls where neither one of us wanted ( Read more... )

My Patreon is live!After a bunch more talking and tweaking, I’ve decided to concentrate on Astreiant for now. I’m doing a simple monthly appeal: if enough people sign up to bring in $100 a month, I’ll post a sketch from Astreiant. It can be anything - a bit of drama, a character’s background, daily life, one of Old Steen’s sea-stories as Rathe ( Read more... )

I’ve been following Judith Tarr’s re-read of the Deryni books over on Tor.com, and it sent me searching for a photograph that seems to have disappeared in my most recent move. It showed me and Lisa, sometime in the 1980s, indulging in cosplay from the Deryni books. I had made us both lovely medieval gowns (roughly twelfth century, though the ( Read more... )

I’m currently re-reading one of the formative books from my teenage years, which has just become available in ebook, Patrick Carleton’s Under the Hog. (If you’re not already interested in the novel’s subject, the English king Richard III, you are saying “what a bizarre title.” If you are, you’ve probably already read the book.)* I hadn’t read it in ( Read more... )

A very quick post to say that i've been interviewed over at Let's Get Beyond Tolerance! Only a few questions, but they were good ones.

Also in brief, Dreaming Metal is now available in ebook from Amazon and Smashwords. Five years after the Manfred riots, the question of machine intelligence is still a dangerous one on Persephone, and the coolie ( Read more... )

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Patreon poll! I am still considering the logistics, but will probably start in June or July. My goals are fairly modest: if I get $100 in a given month, I’ll post a 250-750 word sketch set in the Points universe; if I get $200, I’ll post a Points sketch plus either a second Points sketch or a 250-750 word ( Read more... )