An excellent SFF adventure: a day with Janny Wurts and Don Maitz

I didn't want to leave for Australia without sharing pics from another recent adventure. These last months I've been enjoying the hell out of Janny Wurts's Wars of Light and Shadow series, which is a masterwork of epic fantasy--one of the best combinations of grand scope and tight plotting I've ever read. Plus, the Empire trilogy Janny co-wrote with Raymond Feist is my husband's favorite SFF series of all time! So I was beyond delighted when Janny invited me to visit her home in Florida after I finished a business trip last week in Orlando.

Hanging out with one of my heroes: veteran author Janny Wurts

Not only is Janny an amazing writer, she's also an immensely talented artist, as is her husband Don Maitz. They've been doing cover art for the big SFF publishers for decades, along with their own personal paintings, and every wall of their home is covered in absolutely stunning examples of their work. It was like being in a museum of fine art--I tell you, I could have spent hours admiring all the paintings on display. Just look at this:

Some of Janny's gorgeous art for her Wars of Light and Shadow series

Don Maitz in his & Janny's studio

Janny in her art workspace

Don with some of his recent work

What you can see in the above pics is only the smallest sampling! Check out the art catalog on their website for a whole lot more.

Janny and Don were wonderful hosts, and after their decades working in art and publishing, they have a wealth of fascinating (and sometimes heartwrenching) stories to share. I knew about the changes in the publishing industry that have been squeezing out the midlist, but I had not realized a similar sea-change happened in the art world, as publishers turned to photoshop/stock-art covers and stopped commissioning many original paintings. It's a hard thing to see income streams vanish and have to reinvent yourself at a time when you should be enjoying the fruits of a long career. But Janny and Don are not the sort to bemoan changes they can't reverse; instead they are seeking out new ways to reach readers and art patrons alike, and continue doing the creative work they love.

Janny with her Paravia sketchbook, full of beautifully realized scenes from the Wars of Light and Shadow. Seeing this was a huge treat for a fan of the series like me!

Janny's also a horsewoman, a skilled bagpiper, a search-and-rescue volunteer, and she's passionate about conservation and wildlife. She and I spent a lovely few hours hiking together in Myakka River State Park, one of her favorite local haunts. The Florida forest is quite a different experience from anything we have in Colorado! I got to see alligators, black vultures, blue herons, egrets, and some beautiful spring flowers. I only wish I'd remembered to bring my real camera! I had to make do with my cell phone, but I still got a few decent shots:

Oaks adorned with spanish moss

Black vultures sunning themselves

Hiking through native forest

We don't get green like this in Colorado!

Janny at Clay Gully: watch out for the alligators!

Janny with her favorite tree, a truly massive oak

Myakka Park has a "canopy walk" that was pretty neat: a swinging bridge high in the forest canopy that leads to an observation tower with a 360-degree view of Florida forest (and building thunderstorms!).

Enjoying the view from the tower

They just need to add a Faraday cage to the tower and it'd be the best place ever for thunderstorm viewing

Looking down at a forest clearing

After hiking, the fun was just starting. Janny's husband Don loves all things piratical and has participated in quite a few pirate re-enactments. I got to see a real flintlock pistol and fire off a (small) black powder cannon, a.k.a. swivel gun.

Don's swivel gun; Janny had a wonderfully funny story about how she got him the cannon as a present, and how hard she had to work to keep the gift a surprise

Don getting ready to fire. (Note he's wearing earplugs. The cannon is seriously loud. The first time we fired it, Janny's horses spooked and ran. But the 2nd time, the horses were all, "Oh yeah, that's just the crazy humans doing their crazy things again. We're over it.")

We finished off the day with a quick trip to Siesta Key to watch the sunset. The beach has really interesting sand--it's 99% pure quartz, crushed very fine, so it's blindingly white and has the consistency of powdered sugar. The sky was overcast so we thought we might miss seeing the sun actually set into the water, but just at the last minute, the sun peeked out beneath the cloud layer in a blaze of pink.

A perfect ending to a perfect day

Can't thank Janny and Don enough for opening their home and lives to me. The best part of publishing has been the amazing people I've met that I might never have otherwise. If you're not familiar with Janny and Don's art and novels, you really, really should check them out. As for me, it's time to get back to packing for Australia...

So you think not many women write epic fantasy/sword & sorcery?

I've been busy busy busy with revisions on The Labyrinth of Flame (now approaching the 50K revised mark!), a big day job project, and yes, more than a little skiing.  Yet amid all that, I haven't been ignoring the internet entirely.  So when Teresa Frohock posted on her blog about the challenges she's faced as a female author of SFF, and then Mark Lawrence ran a poll asking his readers whether their decision to buy his book would've been different if it'd said Mary Lawrence on the cover, not Mark, and then on Reddit's r/Fantasy forum a huge discussion sprang up about Mark's poll...I followed the conversation.  And after I saw about the fifth instance of someone saying, "Well, but not many women write epic fantasy..."  I couldn't take it anymore. 

I marched over to my bookshelves and scribbled down 40 books written by 40 different female authors that could be categorized as either epic fantasy or sword and sorcery, and posted the list in a thread on Reddit.  (Note: since people on Reddit appeared to be using a fairly broad definition of  "epic fantasy," so did I.  I included alternate histories with significant magical elements, though I did NOT include sword-and-planet SF, or dark/mythic fantasy, or YA fantasy). 

I was delighted at the response!  Hundreds of commenters added more names and said how excited they were to have new books to try.  I know it's a drop in the bucket of this weird invisibility that female-authored novels seem to have in online fandom, but it's a drop that makes me happy and renews my hope that things are changing. 

And speaking of reviews and visibility, my absolute favorite kind of reviews are long, detailed, thoughtful ones.  Like this one Tainted City recently got from Renay of Lady Business.  (The hilarious GIFs are just the icing on the cake!  Also, I am totally using the pull quote "Courtney Schafer is THE WORST." :D) The best part of all is that the comments continued the discussion.  It is surreal but also 100% awesome to see people analyzing my characters and story and discussing their reactions, no matter whether those reactions are positive or negative.)

And now, back to radio silence and revisions...



 

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

Boosting the Signal

If you haven't already read Elise Matthesen's excellent post on sexual harassment at SF conventions, then go.  Read now.  Elise discusses how to properly report an incident of harassment - important information to know for everyone who ever might attend a con, because even if you are never the subject of such harassment, you might witness it happening to someone else.  Since Elise spoke out about her experience being harassed by a senior Tor editor at a con party, there's been a veritable blizzard of posts and tweets from other women about their negative experiences at cons (here's a post from Tansy Rayner Roberts with links to a few).  I can't even tell you how sad and horrified I am to hear that so many of my fellow female authors have had to endure such awful behavior.

To extend a shred of hope, I myself have had nothing but good experiences at cons.  I've been to WorldCon the last two years, World Fantasy and my local convention MileHiCon the last three, and had a wonderful time at each, without any inappropriate remarks or touching or anything that would make me feel the least bit uncomfortable.  I don't say this to deny the prevalence of harassment - I know I've been lucky - but to say that I've seen what cons *could* be like for women in an ideal world, and I want very, very badly for every woman to have my experience of a safe, fun event.

But to make that happen, we need people who feel safe enough to do so (women AND men) to stand up and say, THIS IS NOT OKAY, when inappropriate behavior does happen.  Mary Robinette Kowal wrote a great post on why it can be hard to do this - and why you should do it anyway.  More and more cons are putting policies into place, so people will have official recourse.  I know as the organizer for this year's BookSworn party at WorldCon, I'm going to make sure those of us hosting have a plan set in advance for how to handle any inappropriate behavior at our party.  Because con parties should be FUN, dammit, not places where women have to fend off creeps.

ETA: Carrie Cuinn has a great post on how to stop sexual harassment at conventions. 

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