My take on author-blogger interaction

Today I'm over at BookSworn, talking about author/blogger interaction, and why it's good for authors to think very very carefully before joining in discussion of their own work:

If you were on Twitter yesterday, likely you saw the firestorm of debate generated by a column at Strange Horizons: “You Got Your Industry In My Fanwork” by SFF blogger Renay of Lady Business.  If you haven’t read the column and its comments, you should; but as a short summary, Renay discusses her discomfort with authors jumping into fannish discussions of their work without an explicit invitation.

My first thought upon reading the article was to remember a conversation I had not long after my first novel The Whitefire Crossing came out in 2011.  One  of my co-workers, a huge SFF fan and active participant on a major SFF forum, came by my cube to chat...

Head on over to BookSworn to read the rest.

My WorldCon in Pictures

Oh gosh, I had such a great time at WorldCon.  Since the con, I've seen a lot of thought-provoking discussion about the aging of WorldCon.  I've heard many authors say that other cons offer better promotional opportunities and chances to connect with newer/younger readers.  But I don't actually go to cons to sell my books.  I go to cons to get inspired and meet awesome people, and in that respect WorldCon kicks ass.  (Though I do very much believe the lack of diversity at WorldCon is a bad thing, and one I hope the con will address.  Just think of how many *more* awesome people there'd be to meet if a greater variety of people came.)

I had countless great conversations with friends, met a whole host of fascinating new folks, and came back all fired up to work even harder on Labyrinth of Flame.  (Which is why this post is so late.  As I dig my way out from the mountain of day-job and real-life tasks that piled up while I was gone, when I do get spare time, all I want to do is write more of Dev and Kiran's story, not blog posts!)

I'm not even going to try and name all the wonderful people I met and hung out with, or give you a detailed day-to-day con report.  After all, Labyrinth of Flame calls!  But I do have some fun pictures and links to share from my various unofficial events.

First up: the BookSworn open suite party, which I co-hosted along with a whole gang of author-friends on the first night of the con.  SO MUCH FUN.  

The BookSworn & Friends party gang.  Front row: Zack Jernigan, Martha Wells, Doug Hulick.  Middle row: Stina Leicht, Betsy Dornbusch, me, Katy Stauber.  Back row: John Hornor Jacobs, Brad Beaulieu, and a photo-bombing Sam Morgon of JABberwocky Lit agency.

I put up a post on the BookSworn website that has a lot more pictures and commentary about the party - head on over and check it out!  

I also had a wonderful time at the group signing that fellow author Mike Martinez organized at The Twig bookstore.  We ended up with 9 authors: Kevin Hearne, Drew Karpyshyn, Mike Martinez, Betsy Dornbusch, me, Brian McClellan, Kay Kenyon, Scott Lynch, and Myke Cole.  I sold & signed some books - met some wonderful fans who came all the way out to the signing specially for me (wow!).  Though my favorite was the young girl walking past with her family who stopped and begged her dad to buy Whitefire Crossing for her - it seems she'd read Tainted City but not book 1 in the series.  Of course I also had fun chatting with my fellow authors; it was a particular thrill to meet Kay Kenyon and Scott Lynch, whose books I've loved for years.  Kay has a new book out (A Thousand Perfect Things) that I'm really excited to read, and of course I'm counting down the days until Scott's release of The Republic of Thieves.

At our table outside the bookstore (which was right beside a popular farmer's market): Mike Martinez, Betsy Dornbusch, me, Brian McClellan.  

Looking down the table: Betsy, Mike, Kevin Hearne, Drew Karpyshyn

Kay Kenyon and Scott Lynch talking to readers

Signing books for Cheryl, an absolutely lovely reader I'd corresponded with on Twitter

Back at the con, I had some particularly great conversations at the Reddit r/Fantasy fan table, and even did a "live" AMA (Ask Me Anything) - click here to read it!  r/Fantasy moderator Steve Drew and the rest of the Redditors who came to WorldCon did a spectacular job on short notice; the fan table was THE place to hang out in the dealer's room, and Steve & the gang came up with a bunch of neat ideas to involve fans unable to attend the con.  (If you've never checked out the r/Fantasy forum, I highly recommend it.  Lots of author-reader interaction & interesting discussion.)  

r/Fantasy moderator Steve Drew and author Stina Leicht at the r/Fantasy fan table.  (Author Wesley Chu sitting behind the table, frantically typing away for his live AMA.)  Sorry for the light flares - all I had was my cell phone camera!

Stina tries on the Helm - a piece that Steve Drew brought & had authors sign, which will be auctioned for charity.

Steve Drew was also one of the co-organizers of the con's biggest unofficial event: the Drinks With Authors party, along with the ever-awesome Justin Landon of Staffer's Book Review and author Myke Cole.  Talk about a great party!  Tons of people came - and since they were smart enough to hold it off-site in a bar with far more space than any hotel suite could provide, we even had room to breathe while talking. :)  Steve's got the best pics of the event, but here are a few I snapped:

Redditors Dave Wohlreich and Ian Everett guard the books.  So many were donated by publishers & authors they had to give them away in lots.  

The party's back room. (The front area by the bar was even more packed.)

Reviewer Justin Landon and author Wesley Chu hold an impromptu handstand competition.  (Wes won.)

Last but very definitely not least, WorldCon was awesome because I got to hang out with my brother Matt.  (He reviews SFF books both on his own site and for Strange Horizons, and there's nobody better at detailed, thoughtful analysis.)  We don't get to see each other that often, and since we both love SFF, what better venue for some quality sibling interaction?

Matt by a seriously huge prickly pear cactus during our visit to the Alamo. 

So, yeah.  Good times. Next year WorldCon is in London, and alas, I cannot go.  (Aside from the expense, my son starts kindergarten right around the time of the con.)  I may give Dragon*Con a try instead - I've been a little leery of attending the bigger media cons, thinking it might be a bit too overwhelming for an introvert like me - but hey, always good to step outside your comfort zone.  Still, I'm pretty sure that when WorldCon returns to the US in 2015 (Spokane won the bid), I'll be back.  

My WorldCon Schedule

I am so looking forward to going to WorldCon in San Antonio next week. Four straight days of hanging out with author-friends and fellow SFF fans is awesome enough, but as a parent I can't help but drool over the chance for FIVE WHOLE NIGHTS of blissful, uninterrupted sleep.  Even if that sleep starts at 3am after I leave the parties.  Because y'all, I can sleep in.  I...I think I've forgotten what that feels like!  

Better yet is the chance for uninterrupted writing time. Yeah, I'm at the con to be social, but I totally plan on locking myself in my hotel room for at least a short while each day to write.  It's amazing how much progress you can make when you've got the chance to sit down and really focus (again, without any cries of "Mommy!").

I'll have plenty of time for both socializing and writing, since this year the programming committee didn't assign me to any panels, readings or signings.  That's the way it goes with big cons; some years you're loaded up (at last year's WorldCon I was on a whole slew of panels), some years you get nada.  But despite the lack of official programming, I've still got a few planned events:

8pm Thurs Aug 29, Rivercenter hotel Suite #3436: The BookSworn & Friends Party

Those of us from BookSworn have ganged up with a bunch of other SFF author friends to host a truly awesome open suite party.  Free booze, free food, and LOTS of free books & other swag!  Well okay, you want a free book, you gotta eat a bug.  They're not alive, and they're heavily flavored - it's no sweat, I promise. Even if you cringe at the thought of bug-eating, come for the awesome company and conversation, because it's gonna be a blast.  Check out our official poster (design by the insanely talented John Hornor Jacobs):

11am-1pm Saturday Aug 31: group signing at The Twig bookstore

I'm joining fellow authors Scott Lynch, Myke Cole, Brian McClellan, Betsy Dornbusch, Mike Martinez, Kevin Hearne, and Drew Carpyshyn for a group signing at local independent bookstore The Twig.  The store's a short distance away from the con hotel, right in the middle of the San Antonio farmers market, so it should be a fun time.

7pm Saturday Aug 31: Drinks With Authors

The ever-awesome team of Justin Landon of Staffer's Book Review, Steve Drew of Reddit's r/Fantasy, and author Myke Cole put this event together.  I'm just one of many, many authors participating - I think it'll be standing room only, and you should see the stacks of free books Justin's already accumulated to give away!  Trust me, you don't want to miss out.

That's it for the official stuff!  Otherwise, I'll be hanging around, attending panels, maybe doing an impromptu AMA over at the Reddit r/Fantasy fan table, and having a generally terrific time.  If you're at WorldCon and you see me in the hall, please, say hi! I love meeting new friends.

Bias in SFF Publishing, or, Why It's Good To Venture Outside Your Comfort Zone

A quickie post to say that today I'm over at BookSworn, talking about bias in SFF publishing and how challenging yourself to read outside your comfort zone can lead to all manner of awesome book discoveries:

If you hang around online SFF forums like I do, you’ve probably seen the following: a blogger will post that they are challenging themselves this year to read X number of books by women (or writers of color, or LGBT writers, or what have you). Invariably, another poster will respond saying something like, “That’s silly. Books should be judged on quality alone, not on the race/gender/orientation/etc of the author. I pick my reads solely based on whether or not the story appeals to me – isn’t that how it should be?”

I sympathize with this reaction. It’s one I would have had myself only a few years ago. After all, there’s truth in it: the identity of the author *shouldn’t* matter. And personal taste is, well, personal – not something that can (or even should) be forcibly changed.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned since I’ve become an author and gotten a much deeper experience of the publishing industry: personal taste is not the only factor that affects our reading choices...

Read the rest: On the Utility of Reading Challenges

Women in SFF Month

A quickie post while traveling, because I realized I hadn't yet highlighted something I find really cool: Fantasy Book Cafe is celebrating "Women in SFF" all this month with a whole slew of guest posts from authors and bloggers (including such luminaries as Patricia McKillip, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jacqueline Carey).  I contributed a post talking about some of my favorite female-authored SFF novels from the 1980s and 1990s - books that influenced me deeply and that I'd love for more people to discover and enjoy, so please, head on over and check them out.  Oh, and as part of the fun, Renay of LadyBusiness blog is asking for everyone's top 10 female-authored SFF novels - at the end of the month, she'll collate them all and share the list.  I've gotta say, it's pretty darn hard for me to narrow it down to 10 books...I might have to cheat and go for my top 10 series rather than top 10 novels!  

A few more tidbits of news:

• The Tainted City got a wonderful review from Bibliotropic - reminding me that I don't care how crazy the business side of publishing gets; so long as people out there are enjoying my books, it's all worth it!
• The Whitefire Crossing got a review recently from Elitist Book Reviews that I found very interesting, because it shows just how deeply an audiobook narrator can affect a listener's experience of a story.
• Another review for Whitefire from Obligated to Exaggerate
• If you haven't checked out all the cool posts over at BookSworn by my fellow authors on objects that reveal their worlds, you should! Lots of fascinating stuff there.

And because it's Thursday where I am, here's a wilderness picture to finish things off:

The "Devil's Coach House", in Jenolan Caves

Want to read a deleted scene from The Whitefire Crossing?

Then head on over to BookSworn, where I talk about an outrider's most vital possession, and share a deleted scene from and early draft of The Whitefire Crossing to illustrate its use.

(The scene originally took place right after Kiran's near-disastrous encounter with the drover-who-would-in-later-drafts-become-Pello, at Ice Lake.  I'm sure you'll be able to tell why I cut the scene: it's all about the mountaineering, and not about the tension. :)  But I did later use a reworked version of it in The Tainted City - yet another reason why it's good to always, always keep a "cut scenes" file and never truly delete words!)

And to further illustrate the glissade in yon deleted scene, I offer these photos:

Ascending a snow slope near Navajo Peak with my trusty ice axe

Preparing to glissade! (My hiking partner's glissade track is visible as the long furrow in the snow.)

Zooming down, using the ice axe's base spike as a rudder

Wheeeeee!!!

BookSworn Masked Ball Reveal, and SF Signal Mind Meld

Two quick things:

• The BookSworn Masked Ball has ended, and today is the great unmasking!  Come find out the characters behind the masks (and which lucky reader gets signed copies of all 15 books!).  How would I have done at guessing?  Pretty well, I think, since I've read 13 of the 15 novels.  The two I haven't read yet are Zachary Jernigan's No Return and Mary Victoria's Tymon's Flight.  Both are sitting on my Kindle right now; I'm looking forward to reading them.  (I've been on a great reading streak lately, in fact.  I really need to put up some more book rec posts!)   
• In today's SF Signal Mind Meld (put together by the ever-awesome Paul Weimer), I and a bunch of other interesting SFF folks discuss which books we devour like candy (or popcorn!), and which we savor.  My answer's a little different than the rest.

The Tainted City takes the ring in BookSpotCentral's 7th annual book tournament

BookSpotCentral holds a fun little tournament every spring in which the editors compile their picks for the 64 best SFF books of the prior year, and then face them off in pairs.  Blog readers vote to determine the winner, which then advances to the next round and faces off with another champion.  This year I was delighted to find out that The Tainted City is among the contenders - truly, it's an honor to be nominated!  I'm up against a real heavyweight, though: NYT bestseller Brent Weeks's The Blinding Knife.  So please, go vote for me, so The Tainted City can face only crushing defeat instead of utter annihilation!  :D

In other news, all of the character masques are now live at BookSworn.  You've got until midnight US Eastern time on Monday Mar 25 to send us your guesses as to the characters, so head on over for your chance to win a whole pile of awesome books!

• Masque 1
• Masque 2
• Masque 3
• Masque 4
• Masque 5

BookSworn Launch Celebration

Last week was pretty epic, and not in a good way.  Two massive day job deadlines, a nasty cold, and other associated difficulties made for a grueling couple of days that I'm very, very glad to put behind me.  Fortunately, the times they are a-changing, and today is epic in all the best sense of the word.  Why?  Well, for a few months now, I and a gang of fellow fantasy authors have been making plans and hammering out details for a brand-new author collective called BookSworn - and today, we go live!

(What is an author collective, you ask?  At the most basic, it's a way for us to gang up for joint promo efforts, which I've found are more fun not only for authors but for readers, too.  Just look at the parties those of us from Night Shade have held at WorldCon the past 2 years, haha.  Our other goal is to foster a community, not only among the authors participating, but fantasy readers who visit the site.  When I ran the Night Bazaar blog back in 2011, one of my favorite parts was the community aspect, and I'm hoping to expand upon that here.) 


The Book Sworn

To celebrate our launch, we're having a fun "masked ball" contest: all this week, we'll be posting snippets from our novels that describe an unnamed character; guess the character right, and you'll be entered to win a whopper of a prize: signed novels from 15 of us.  The first masked ball post is up, so head on over and check us out!  (Hint: it's pretty easy to enter even if you've never read the other folks' books and haven't a clue.  Google search is your friend. :) 

So yeah, I'm pretty excited to see BookSworn launch at last, and hoping it'll be a success for all.  And in other "cool things on the internet" news, here are 2 other posts I want to share:

• Fellow BookSworn author Mark Lawrence gives the Best Writing Advice Ever.
• Over at A Dribble of Ink, Elizabeth Bear (one of my favorite fantasy authors!) shares her take on grimdark fantasy:  "I Love A Good Tragedy as Much as the Next Guy"

And now, for the rest of my lunch hour, I will go WRITE.  For the first time in almost 2 weeks!  (My day job ate my time and my brain so thoroughly during that time that I didn't manage a single sentence.  Which I hated.)  I'm so, so glad to get back to Labyrinth of Flame...Dev and Kiran were in an awfully sticky spot when I last left them. :)