Podcast fun: discussing worldbuilding, characters and craft with Kate Elliott, Helen Lowe, and Paul Weimer

So you might remember me mentioning a while back that I'd recorded a podcast with fellow fantasy authors Kate Elliott and Helen Lowe, hosted by the always-awesome Paul Weimer for the Skiffy and Fanty show. The podcast is now live, and you can listen to the four of us discuss all manner of things relating to our books and the craft of fantasy writing, from characters to magic systems to geography to plot. (Kate, a veteran of the genre, has many fascinating things to say--as does Helen, who has the added bonus of a lovely New Zealand accent!)

This was the most fun I've ever had with a podcast, I think because of the group discussion setting. As with panels and signings, I find sharing the limelight (so to speak) always significantly lessens my nerves and helps me relax and enjoy myself. Recording this felt to me more like sharing in the sort of interesting dinner conversation you might have with friends at a convention (my favorite part of cons!), as opposed to a live interview where I'm always worried I'm about to say something stupid (I tend to babble when I'm nervous).

In other news, in case you missed it, I put up my February reading round-up over on tumblr...though arrgh, I got the name of Catherine Fisher's book wrong (it was The Speed of Darkness, not Obsidian Mirror--the latter is the 1st in the series instead of the last). If it's possible to edit tumblr posts, I haven't yet figured out how. Maybe next time I'll just post the roundup here and link to it there, instead of the other way around. (The one thing I do like about Tumblr is it feels more casual, somehow...I don't feel pressure to make a post all beautiful with pics of the books I'm talking about. Instead I can just whip out a quick "here are my reactions" post, which takes far less time and therefore is more likely to happen.)

And because this blog has been sadly lacking in wilderness pictures lately--my main computer with all my photos on it died, and we're still working to recover them off the hard drive--I'll end with a couple pics I found on my laptop of our last trip to Utah. Because Utah pictures make every Monday better.

Klondike Bluffs in Arches National Park

Slickrock bowl and Delicate Arch

Classic Utah: red rock, blue sky

Goblin Valley

Utah has the best sunsets

Interview, art prints, and buckling down to work

Today's news: I did an interview over at fellow writer Amanda McCrina's blog in which I talk about my influences, my favorite scenes in the Shattered Sigil books, my writing process, and whether or not fantasy has a responsibility to tackle real-world issues. Plus I share a bunch of the books I'm looking forward to in 2016--always one of my favorite discussion topics!

Life continues to be busy at Casa Schafer, but thankfully a little less busy than before. I'm still slowly making my way through the Kickstarter art print orders--turns out packing posters is even more time-consuming and finicky than packing books. But just look at these lovely prints:

When my six year old first saw the prints, he begged me for a set to put up in his room. I'm calling that a parental win. (I'm even more amused that his favorite is the Tainted City cover, because of the ward-lightning. Appropriate, since that's the book I dedicated to him. Not that I'll let him read it for a long, looooooong time. Like maybe when he's 30.)

The best part of life calming down a bit is that I finally feel ready to write seriously again. Oh, I've been mucking about with the short stories for the Kickstarter, laying out plot and writing the occasional few paragraphs here and there when I felt like it, but I hadn't been working with any real consistency. But now I'm rested and energized and ready to buckle down to proper work, not only on the stories, but on my next full-length book. I'm setting myself a nice attainable goal: 1K/day of first draft words, and it doesn't matter how awful and first-drafty the words are, or which project I choose to work on. Just gotta get 1K words and I can call it a good day. So, onward!

Worldcon (Sasquan) in Pictures

I know everyone else is busy talking about the Great Hugo Drama, but for me, that's not what Worldcon was about. For me, Worldcon means the chance to hang out with friends and meet interesting new people and hear my favorite authors read from books I can't wait to see released. So I am not kidding at all when I say I had an absolute blast in Spokane last weekend.

Originally I was going to do this lovingly detailed post discussing everything I did at the con and everyone I met. But I've got line edits in hand for Labyrinth of Flame, and I'm pushing hard to get all the prose-level fixes done so I can hand off the book to the copy editor. That doesn't leave me time to write long blog posts. But I can share pictures that capture a few of my con highlights:

I got to meet veteran fantasy author Kate Elliott! I read her recently-released YA novel Court of Fives on the plane to Spokane and loved it. I wanted to steal her Black Wolves ARC - that's her latest adult epic fantasy, coming out this fall. But she only had one ARC with her, so I restrained myself (with difficulty). 

Meeting Kate Elliott was extra-special because she (along with the also-awesome Alison Croggon) helped motivate me to keep plowing through Labyrinth of Flame's first draft, at a time when I was struggling to balance writing and work and life and feeling like I was failing on all fronts. I can't thank her and Alison enough, and it was lovely to meet Kate in person at last. (One day I hope to thank Alison in person, too!) 

The r/Fantasy fan table! Awesome mod Melissa is on the left, while Kate Elliott (right) types away for her AMA.

Another highlight was hanging out with folks from r/Fantasy, both at the fan table and the excellent Drinks With Authors party. Huge thanks to moderator Melissa Shumake and author Megan O'Keefe, who did a fantastic job of organizing on short notice! 

Giveaway table at the Drinks With Authors party

One of the best moments at the party was running into a friend from Caltech I hadn't seen in twenty years - Divya is a fellow mole from Blacker Hovse, and she's also an SF writer, how cool is that! We had no idea we were both authors. Can't wait to check out her work.

Moles reunited after 20 years! Me and S.B. Divya

Similarly, I was delighted to meet up with a friend I first met years ago when we were both skating at the U.S. Adult National Championships. Sharon's not only a figure skater and SF fan, but a mountaineer/climber - we joke that we were separated at birth. I hadn't seen Sharon in ages, so it was great to catch up.

Figure skaters for the win: Sharon Reynolds and me

I also got to see a former member of my critique group: Catherine Montrose (who writes as Catherine Cooke) moved from Denver to Seattle a while ago, and we still miss her lots! 

Without Catherine's insightful critique, the Shattered Sigil books wouldn't be half as good

Lots more awesome folks I didn't get pictures of (like Karen Bovenmyer, and Joel Pearson, and Luke Matthews, and Lyndsey Zusi!) Amid all the socializing, I did go to some actual programming at the con.

Martha Wells reading from the 2nd of her upcoming new Raksura duology. Cannot wait for these books!

Jo Walton, Jack Campbell, Chip Hitchcock, and Ann Leckie discuss the work of C.J. Cherryh (my all-time favorite science fiction writer)

Plus I did a signing, and a pop AMA ("Ask Me Anything") on r/Fantasy, and hung out with my book reviewer brother Matt Hilliard and his girlfriend Rachel. Oh yes, and managed two separate trips to the local climbing gym! Once to take Labyrinth of Flame Kickstarter backer Melissa climbing, and once with anyone I could drag away from the con.  

Climbing with Joey Hewitt and Alex Ristea

Alex posted a few more pics of our climbing fun on twitter:

Climbcon at Sasquan

On belay

Time to get flexible

Dead arms are fun

My one comment on the Hugos is that I did go to as many WSFS business meetings as possible, so I could support the E Pluribus Hugo proposal for changing the method of tallying nominations to a system that will be better representative of fandom's broad range of tastes. 

I was disappointed my flight left too early on Sunday for me to participate in the final vote on the proposal (though I convinced a friend to go and vote for EPH, so at least the proposal didn't lose a vote!). At the airport I was glued to my smartphone, hitting refresh on Rachael Acks's liveblog of the business meeting, hoping to see if EPH passed. Which it did, hooray! The proposal still has to be ratified at next year's Worldcon in Kansas City before it can take effect, but I hope that by 2017, the new (and better) system will be in place. 

Even before then, this next year I encourage everyone - regardless of political persuasion or taste in SFF - to nominate whatever 2015 books you've read and loved. I think a lot of Worldcon members are scared to nominate because they feel they haven't read widely enough in the field, or if they are voracious readers, it's too hard to winnow their list down to only a few choices. (I've certainly been guilty of that last.) Heck with that! Get out there and nominate, even if you have to throw a dart to choose between your favorites. The more people participate, the more likely it is the Hugos will have a shortlist of great reads from all over the SFF spectrum.

And now, back to line edits...

Kickstarter Day 10 (19 left): Short story stretch goal unlocked!

I've been doing a Snoopy happy dance ever since I found out: The Labyrinth of Flame Kickstarter passed the first stretch goal!  (Special thanks to backer Leah Petersen, who put us over the top.  She's an author too; go check out her Physics of Falling trilogy!)

Happy face in Dang Canyon, Utah.  An accurate representation of my feelings today.

This means I'll be designing new bookmarks and writing a short story from the POV of one of the secondary characters in the series, as voted on by backers.  The poll's up and I'm very curious which character will win. Whichever character it is, their story will be a lot of fun to write.   I've spent so many years in Dev and Kiran's heads that it'll be quite interesting to get in someone else's!

And with one goal already passed, I've got another that I'm just as excited about: interior art for the book.  I always think it's a shame modern books don't often have interior illustrations, and I think it'd make for a really cool edition of the book to have certain scenes illustrated.  (I'm not telling which ones. No spoilers! :)  Should the Kickstarter make $9K, I'll commission 3 pieces of interior art.  Plus, because I know some of the biggest fans of my books don't have a lot of spare cash, I'll run a drawing for interested backers that'll let one lucky person get upgraded to the full-on "Ultimate Fan" reward, which includes a short story written just for you and your choice of peak climb or climbing lesson or skating lesson or lunch with me, along with a whole bunch of other goodies.

$9K really is a stretch, so we'll see.  My fingers are crossed!  In other news, the ever-excellent Paul Weimer interviewed me for SF Signal (thanks, Paul!).  And I've got another pic for you, from one of the canyons that inspired locations in The Labyrinth of Flame

Near the confluence of Buckskin and Paria Canyons

Today I rec a book that fits with my boisterously joyful mood: Diana Wynne Jones's Archers Goon.  Instead of blathering on about how much I love Jones's sharply witty humor and wild imagination and vivid characters, I'll let the book speak for itself.  Because how can you resist a book that promises to prove the following ten facts (quoted from Jones's "Author's Note" in the front):

1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there.
2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch.
3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
4. When an irresistible force meets an unmovable object, the result is a family fight.
5. Music does not always soothe the troubled beast.
6. An Englishman's home is his castle.
7. The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
8. One black eye deserves another.
9. Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm.
10. It pays to increase your word power.

Read it, and I promise you, you won't regret it.

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.

Monday Update

Today's authorial news:

• I participated in a Q&A on gender issues in SFF over at Fantastical Imaginations blog, along with fellow authors Teresa Frohock, Elspeth Cooper, Anne Lyle, and Francis Knight.  Part 1 of the Q&A is now live - two more parts will be posted there over the next few days (I'll add links here when they're ready: here's Part 2 and Part 3.  It's been really interesting to see everyone's answers!

And in more general SFF news, if you haven't already checked out the list of nominees for this year's Nebula Awards, you should!  Some great reads there.  I'm particularly excited to see N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon on the slate for Best Novel.  That was one of my favorite reads last year.  Similarly, I'm delighted to see Rachel Hartman's Seraphina and Holly Black's Black Heart on the list for the Norton award for Best YA Novel.

And...that's about all I've got.  Day job plus working on a Sekrit Group Author Project (soon to be revealed!) has been keeping me very, very busy.  But fear not, I have not been neglecting Labyrinth of Flame. (Just finished a tricky chapter that was giving me fits for ages...hooray for moving on in the story!)  Oh yes, and I'm pleased to report that at long last, real snow came to Boulder, and my son got to build his very first igloo (well, with a lot of help from his daddy):

"Mommy, I want to live in an igloo FOREVER." 

Chilling with the kiddo in the igloo

Want ebooks of Whitefire Crossing and Tainted City cheap? Quick, buy now...

A couple important bits of pricing news, in case anyone reading this might want to gift a friend the ebook versions of The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City for Christmas (you know you want to...):

1) Want a DRM-free copy in the format of your choice at Baen for only $6?  Then you'd better hurry...Baen's prices are about to go up, since they recently signed a deal with Amazon and as soon as it goes into effect (I've heard dates as early as Dec 15), they'll have to match Amazon's (usually higher) ebook prices.  The good news?  Baen will still sell ebooks DRM-free, so hopefully international folks will still have the option of buying my books in e-format there.

2) The Whitefire Crossing's ebook is currently only $3.99 on US Amazon...but I hear that's likely to end Jan 1, so if you want it cheap, buy it soon!

And to catch up on other authorial news, since I've been remiss about sharing lately:

1) I did two new interviews in the last few weeks, one at Fantastical Imaginations (in which I discuss my favorite books and share how much of my personal mountaineering experience went into The Whitefire Crossing, among other things), and the other at Only The Best SciFi (which features questions nobody else has ever asked - that always makes it  fun to answer!).

2) My writerly ego got an extra little boost when fellow fantasy author Helen Lowe (The Heir of Night, The Gathering of the Lost) enjoyed both Whitefire and Tainted City and reviewed them on her blog, and another excellent fantasy author, Blake Charlton (Spellwright, Spellbound), liked and reviewed Whitefire on Goodreads.  It's wonderful to hear that from anyone, but it's extra nifty to hear it from authors as talented as Helen and Blake. Warm fuzzies all around!  

I've got this enormous backlog of awesome books I've read recently that I'm dying to blog about, and I really meant to add in at least a couple to this post, but I'm trying to be good these days about saving most of my scant writing time for working on The Labyrinth of Flame.  So!  Soon, I shall do a mega-post with a whole slew of book recs.  After I finish this latest scene that's giving me fits.

Authorial Tidbits

Just a quick post to share some authorial tidbits:

• Want to know how much of my personal mountaineering experiences went into The Whitefire Crossing?  I talk about that and more in an interview at Fantastical Imaginings. 

• Only The Best SciFi reviews The Tainted City: "One of the best reads this year as well as last, Courtney Schafer has delivered again.  Not only with engaging characters and compelling plot, but with something new and diverse that I can't wait to come back to in The Labyrinth of Flame, book three in The Shattered Sigil Trilogy."

• La Biblioteca de Ilium reviews The Whitefire Crossing, both in English and in Spanish: "The Whitefire Crossing is a good debut novel and a good start for an attractive series with some good characters and intriguing elements."

• My Literary Leanings reviews The Whitefire Crossing:  "I wish there was a version of it without the swearing but there isn’t. However, if you think you can tolerate it, by all means pick it up. The story itself definitely does not disappoint."

News Round-up

Today's just going to be a quick news round-up and not any book recs, mostly because I spent all my blog-writing time this weekend working on a guest post sharing a bunch of my favorite books for the Stumptown Book Blog series on "Non-European Fantasy by Women."  The post should go live soon over at Stumptown Books - I'll link when it does, because the books I talk about are all awesome and everyone should read them. :) In the meantime, here's what I've been doing online this last week:

• Want to know which significant character wasn't at all in the original draft of The Whitefire Crossing, and how I took the book from just okay to publishable quality?  Head on over to the Night Bazaar, where I talk about the most valuable feedback I ever received.  

• A transcript of the SF Writers' Chat I did on Twitter is available here, in which I answer questions about my novels, my writing process, and talk about plans for the future.

• All three parts of my interview at Stumptown Books are now live: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3.  Here I talk about everything from narrative choices for the Shattered Sigil series to my favorite climbs, and even give a sneak peak of what readers can expect from The Labyrinth of Flame.

• Paul Weimer reviewed The Tainted City over at SF Signal, saying: "I truly enjoyed The Whitefire Crossing, and I approached sequel with that peculiar mix of anticipation and dread that I often have when returning to a new author whose first book I enjoyed. Will this second book meet my expectations and response to the first? Has the author grown and developed since their initial effort? Is the magic still there? Happily, for me, The Tainted City lived up to my expectations..."