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.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag zu den Chroniken von Ninavel!

I may not have a book releasing this year in the US, but I've got a "book birthday" coming up tomorrow in Germany!  August 16 is the official release day for The Whitefire Crossing's German edition, a.k.a. Die Chroniken von Ninavel: Die Blutmagier.  My fingers are crossed that German  fantasy readers will enjoy Dev and Kiran's adventures!  Just yesterday I officially signed and sent back the contract for the German edition of The Tainted City, and I hear the publisher also wants to see The Labyrinth of Flame as soon as I finish it, so I have every hope the entire trilogy will be available auf Deutsch before too long.

Haha, and for any readers who wince at Dev's profanity in the Shattered Sigil books - you can always give the German versions a try!  When I took a peek at the preview my German publisher made available through Google books, I discovered to my combined surprise and amusement that all of Dev's f-bombs have been carefully translated out.  ("You've got to be fucking kidding me" => "Boy, you've got to be kidding me"; "Fuck you, Cara" => "Don't you talk, Cara"; etc.)  I've no idea of the publisher's reasons - maybe they want to aim for a younger readership, or maybe German fantasy readers are more bothered by profanity?  While it's true Dev's foul mouth was a deliberate choice on my part, I'm not upset over the change, since I figure the Germans know their market best.  (Besides, the English versions of the books are still exactly as I wrote them.  No harm, no foul...so to speak. :)  It does make me wonder if other foul-mouthed fantasies (e.g. Joe Abercrombie's) have been cleaned up in translation.  Perhaps I will dust off my rusty German and go read some to find out!

The Hardest Lesson in Publishing

Been suffering from a nasty cold these last few days, ugh.  On the up side, my virus-related misery has been mitigated by reading some awesome books: namely, the conclusion to Mark Lawrence's excellent Broken Empire trilogy, Emperor of Thorns (link to my brief goodreads review here) and Catherine Fisher's Obsidian Mirror (my favorite YA read of the year so far! Link to my brief yet gushing goodreads review is here).

I have to say, looking at other people's goodreads reviews of Obsidian Mirror brought home to me once again just how subjective reader taste is.  To me, Fisher's writing is everything I want in a YA novel.  Haunting, tense, dark, compelling, with characters I'm dying to figure out, plenty of adventure and action, and no angsty teen romance - I flat out loved the book, same as I did Fisher's earlier novel Incarceron.  Yet plenty of other readers apparently read the very same pages and go "meh."

Which just goes to illustrate the hardest lesson of all in publishing: you can write the story of your heart, and craft it to near perfection; other people (agents, editors, readers) can love it too - yet unless that story happens to be the story of a LOT of other people's hearts, it's not going to sell in big numbers (no matter how much those readers who adore it wish it would).  Whereas a story that has all kinds of craft flaws yet strikes the right chord with a large number of people will sell like crazy.

The real kicker is that you as an author can only write what's in your own heart; try to write a story that you're not passionate about yourself, and readers will notice the lack.  Plus, for all that publishers try to predict what will speak best to people's hearts, nobody really knows until the book gets into readers' hands.  Every author deals with this uncertainty in their own way.  Me, I like to keep my expectations low.  If my book reaches even one other person's heart, then writing the story was worth every moment at the keyboard.  (I'm well aware this is far easier to say when writing is a well-loved hobby, not a means of putting food on the table. Reason #1,001 why I have no dreams of giving up my day job.)

But really, doesn't matter what your coping strategy is, so long as it lets you a) keep writing and b) have fun along the way.  I'll admit, some of my fun comes from things like this:

• Brett Ellis reviews The Whitefire Crossing as part of Worlds Without End's Women of Genre Fiction Challenge: "I love sword and sorcery. Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock… well, you get the idea. Based on her debut novel, Courtney Schafer may very well belong in that esteemed pantheon. In other words, I heartily enjoyed The Whitefire Crossing."   
• The r/Fantasy Goodreads Group finished up their discussion of The Whitefire Crossing as July's Book of the Month - and I was hugely delighted to find out that a certain fantasy author who both my husband and I have admired for years read and liked the book.  (Which author?  Go read the discussion thread and find out.) 

But mostly I love the joy and challenge of writing a story unique to my own heart.  In honor of that, I'll finish off with a picture that'd go well with the chapter I'm currently working on for The Labyrinth of Flame:

Near the junction of Buckskin and Paria Canyons.  Picture doesn't do the grandeur and beauty of the slot justice.  Flash flood's a serious risk, but at least (unlike Dev and Kiran!) canyoneers don't have to worry about demons or blood magic.  

   

The Illustrated Guide to Writing A Novel (Grand Canyon edition)

I was realizing the other day that while I've shown off plenty of pics here of the Sierra Nevada, the Rockies, even Utah's canyon country, I've neglected one of my other favorite haunts: the Grand Canyon.  Ever since I first hiked rim to river and back on one memorable February day back in the early 1990s, I've been returning to backpack the canyon's many trails and explore its majesty.  I did something like eight backpacking trips there during the years before my son was born, but my favorite adventure of all was a 3.5 week rafting trip in which we floated the entire length of the canyon, rollicking through North America's largest navigable rapids and scrambling up scores of rugged side canyons along the way.

It occurred to me that writing a novel is a lot like that rafting trip.  You start out typing your story all perky and excited, knowing the journey will be long and arduous but confident you have the strength to make it.

Day 1 of our Grand Canyon raft trip: wheee, rowing is fun!

  Gradually, you become aware the boat you're rowing is really damn heavy.  Also, there's a headwind.  The perkiness fades, replaced by determination.

Day 3: rowing is hard work.

You pause, take a look at the bigger picture...and realize exactly how far you have yet to travel.

Looking down the Colorado River from the Nankoweap overlook.

Then you hit the rapids. They are bigger than you imagined.  You master your fear and face them head on.

Helloooooo, big rapids.

Sometimes you fall out of the boat and get a bit more of a ride than you bargained for.

Swimming the rapids of the Little Colorado River. (This, we were doing for fun. I don't have any pics of the people who fell out of the raft in the real rapids, because we were too busy rescuing them.)

Other times, you take a detour and end up someplace surprising.

Me exploring a lovely little side canyon.

There are other people on the same journey who understand the trials, tribulations, and joys.  If you feel a little overwhelmed, you can always get silly with them.

River guides pretending they are scuba mice. (Long story. You had to be there.)

No matter how arduous the journey, there are times when you're overcome by its beauty.  

Gorgeous Grand Canyon landscape.

And so, day after day, you forge on.  Knowing that even when this journey comes to an end, there will always be another story waiting for you to explore it.

The Little Colorado River beckons.

Surviving the Publishing Industry

Yeah, yeah, so it's been quiet around here again. Not only because I've been working on The Labyrinth of Flame, but because my husband and I are singing in two Colorado Music Festival performances of Ernest Bloch's Sacred Service at the end of this week.  If you've never heard Bloch's Sacred Service, it's not an easy piece to sing.  Some parts are hauntingly beautiful (like the a cappella Silent Devotion and Response). Other parts...as my husband muttered to me during one rehearsal, "Why don't we just bang tin cans together and wail random notes instead?"

But even though singing with the CMF this year requires a lot of practice time (we've got about a zillion rehearsals this week alone), which is hard for two busy parents like us to fit in - it's worth it, to spend time together doing something that's wholly unrelated to our day jobs, parenthood, or even our usual outdoor hobbies.  Or in my case, writing.  I've talked before about how it can be so, so tempting for an author with limited free time to try and spend every spare second working on their novel-in-progress - and why that's a truly terrible idea.

But it's hard not to feel guilty, you know?  You hear so much so-called wisdom about publishing.  You've got to put out a book a year, preferably more.  And don't forget the marketing - your books are sure to sink without a trace unless you get off your ass and plaster yourself all over the internet.  You see other authors seemingly following those guidelines to great success - putting out multiple books a year, guest-posting & schmoozing up a storm, their readership steadily climbing.

But if you're like me, struggling to balance writing with other responsibilities (day job, family, etc), you'll have to step back and ask yourself: how much of my life am I willing to let the publishing industry consume?

I read a great article yesterday by Harvard computer scientist Radhika Nagpal on how she avoided misery and burnout during her tenure-track years - an article that applies equally well to writers struggling to navigate the craziness of publishing (thanks to fellow author Kameron Hurley for tweeting about it).  I want to quote one part of the article that particularly struck me:

We (myself included) admire the obsessively dedicated. At work we hail the person for whom science and teaching is above all else, who forgets to eat and drink while working feverously on getting the right answer, who is always there to have dinner and discussion with eager undergrads. At home we admire the parent who sacrificed everything for the sake of a better life for their children, even at great personal expense. The best scientists. The best parents. Anything less is not giving it your best.

And then I had an even more depressing epiphany. That in such a world I was destined to suck at both.

Needless to say it took a lot of time, and a lot of tears, for me to dig myself out of that hole. And when I finally did, it came in the form of another epiphany. That what I can do, is try to be the best whole person that I can be. And that is *not* a compromise. That *is* me giving it my very best. I’m pretty sure that the best scientists by the above definition are not in the running for most dedicated parent or most supportive spouse, and vice versa. And I’m not interested in either of those one-sided lives. I am obsessively dedicated to being the best whole person I can be. It is possible that my best whole is not good enough for Harvard, or for my marriage; I have to accept that both may choose to find someone else who is a better fit. But even if I don’t rank amongst the best junior faculty list, or the best spouses list, I am sure there is a place in the world where I can bring value.

 This is so true.  The hardest part of setting boundaries in your life is that there ARE costs.  You can't have it all.  If you choose not to dedicate your every spare second to your career, then yes, you may fall behind those who do.  But when it comes to the game of chasing material success, my own private conviction is that the only way to win is not to play.  For me, I want to focus on the things that bring me joy.  One of those things is certainly writing: not only the heady excitement of creating characters and worlds, but the quiet satisfaction of completing a book you've worked your ass off to make awesome.  But if I focus solely on that joy, I'll miss out on a whole lot of others, and both my life and my writing will be the poorer for it.  Like Dr. Nagpal, I would rather strive to be a better whole person.  Not just a better author.        

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