Over the last few months Zach Jernigan has been conducting a long-distance interview on the subject of race in fantasy writing. His interviewees are David Anthony Durham, Aliette de Bodard, Ken Liu and myself, and it's been a privilege to be amongst that company and get to talk around that subject. Zach put a huge amount of work […]
So, something of a news update in brief, but: I have been asked to make a showing at Nerd East, the Larp fair at Durham on 9th June 2012. There may be some manner of speechifying. The speech may include recycled elements from my Picocon speech. See how green I am? I'm constantly trying to reduce my inspiration […]
Way way back in the early 1990's I was at university and I was running an RPG campaign using a horrible mishmash home-grown system I had slung together. The setting was a place called the Lowlands. Instead of elves and dwarves, it was populated by a pack of oddities known as the insect-kinden. There was a Beetle intelligencer called Stenwold, a Mantis Weaponsmaster […]
OK — I'm on the final attack run for the last book of the series — everything speeds up at this point, so no time to write. Also working on Super-Unpublishable Project Zeta, several non-kinden shorts and my writing group project. Upshot: Damn all time for proper blog posts. However: This is phenomenal : This is the […]
Soooo, we've got to that hilarious third act section of book 10 where I keep getting these fantastic ideas about stuff I absolutely have to include, only that means I would have to rejig the entire end third of the plot to fit in this, by now, irresistible idea. So, spent considerable time faffing about with my chapter […]
Alt Fiction last weekend — and 2 cons on the trot is a bit wearing on body and soul, especially when I managed to clock a 20 hour day on the Saturday. The early start was the fault of the remarkable time it takes to get from Leeds to Leicester — longer than it does to hit London somehow. […]
So Saturday really was something of the sort of late night that I (poor tame creature that I am) haven't had since university. However something seriously off about the beds in the place ensured I was up bright and early for the fantasy politics panel (Jared Shurin of Pornokitsch moderating Hail Carriger, David Durham, Jude Roberts — […]
Blimey, but I make a meal of these writeups. Will try and hurry things along. Up bright and early to the sort of cooked breakfast that seemed mostly made by people to whom cooking isn't their first language, save for the mushrooms, which were so remarkably good that I can only assume there was one ancient Zen mushroom […]
Eastercon 2012 had three win conditions, namely [1] put in a good showing at my own particular panels, [2] see at least some of the other panels [3] have a writer to writer (2) conversation with George R R Martin. Arrived lunchish Friday in the company of Justina Robson, fellow Leeds-based writer, and was treated to sumptuous lunch […]
Eastercon write up will come soon, but following on from a comment a few posts ago — happy Easter! And in general celebration I do indeed give you an Easter Egg, being deleted scenes from Heirs of the Blade. In the original version there was quite a digressive subplot near the beginning involving Tynisa, Gaved and an old enemy, […]
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