Tiger Resting, c. 1830, Pierre Andrieu
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Citadels of Darkover cover reveal!
Here's the cover for the forthcoming anthology (edited by me!), Citadels of Darkover. The design is by Dave Smeds. The Table of Contents is here. Author interviews and pre-ordering information will go up soon.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Lace and Blade 4 Author Interview: Adam Stemple
The release date is Valentine's Day 2019, but you can pre-order it now:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/
Adam Stemple sent me a wonderful and complex Japanese fantasy, "The Ghost of Lady Rei," for "Lace and Blade 3" but because of a change in publisher (and name) I wasn't able to include it. When I began work on this present volume, #5, I wrote to him inquiring whether the story was still available. It was, and I'm thrilled to be able to present it to our readers.
Adam Stemple sent me a wonderful and complex Japanese fantasy, "The Ghost of Lady Rei," for "Lace and Blade 3" but because of a change in publisher (and name) I wasn't able to include it. When I began work on this present volume, #5, I wrote to him inquiring whether the story was still available. It was, and I'm thrilled to be able to present it to our readers.
Deborah J. Ross: Tell
us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?
Adam Stemple: Writing
is the family business. My mother and my siblings are all writers, and most of
my friends, as well.
DJR: What inspired
your story in Lace and Blade 5?
AS: The
characters in The Ghost of Lady Rei were existing characters
from two stories I had written for the now defunct speculative and historical
fiction magazine, Paradox. I had always wanted them to take a
trip to Edo, and was just waiting for a reason for them to go.
DJR: What authors
have most influenced your writing?
AS: I have
co-written eight novels with my mother, Jane Yolen, so I have certainly been
influenced a great deal by her. I also like to steal...er...borrow techniques
from crime writers like Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block. I try to learn
something from everything I read.
DJR: What’s the
most memorable fan mail you’ve ever received?
AS: My first solo
novel, Singer of Souls, featured a main character who was a
heroin junkie. I received a call from a young man who had read my novel while
on a jobs program for recovering addicts and he said that my novel helped him
beat his heroin addiction.
Friday, January 25, 2019
Very Short Book Reviews: John Scalzi's Whatever Blog Collection
Virtue Signaling and
Other Heresies: Selected Writings from Whatever 2013-2018, by John Scalzi
(Subterranean)
John Scalzi is as
noted for his opinionated blog as for his excellent science fiction. Fans will
find much to delight in this collection of Scalzi’s thoughtful, often
provocative commentary on life, politics, writing, fandom, and more. The
entries suffer from the predictable limitations of their original format. That
is, there’s a repetition of tone and theme that make reading them in large
chunks less than exciting. This is not to say that Scalzi’s collection lacks
content or lively prose. Both abound, but as in life, one person’s viewpoint
and way of expressing it are consistent. There’s a clear effort to vary more
serious topics with humorous ones. For Scalzi fans, this book should be a feast
of eloquent, beautifully articulated blog posts, even if they must necessarily
be taken in small bites.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Monday, January 21, 2019
Lace and Blade 5 Author Interview: Steven Harper
The release date is Valentine's Day 2019, but you can pre-order it now:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/
In the marvelous serendipity of anthologies, Lace and Blade features not one but two love stories with djinni (or jinni, or djinn, depending on which dictionary one consults). One is "Fire Season" by Anne Leonard. The second, quite different, is Steven Harper's "The Bottle."
In the marvelous serendipity of anthologies, Lace and Blade features not one but two love stories with djinni (or jinni, or djinn, depending on which dictionary one consults). One is "Fire Season" by Anne Leonard. The second, quite different, is Steven Harper's "The Bottle."
Deborah J. Ross: Tell
us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?
Steven Harper: I've
been writing since I learned my letters. There were few fantasy authors in
those days, and when you can read a book in a couple hours, you run out right
quick. And I realized no one seemed to be writing the kind of stories I
really wanted to read. So I started writing my own.
DJR: What inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?
SH: An old folk tale from the Middle East. A man accepts a bargain with a djinn, who will grant him one wish every day, but if he ever fails to make a wish, or if he repeats a wish, the djinn will kill him. At first, this seems like a good deal. But after a few months, the man sees the curse. I started to write my own take on the story, and eventually realized I was writing about slavery vs. free will.
DJR: How does your writing process work?
SH: I write almost daily, usually between getting home from my teaching job and making supper. My first drafts tend to go slowly because I edit quite a lot as a go. This means my first draft takes a long time to do, but it also means the rewrites go very fast.
DJR: What inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?
SH: An old folk tale from the Middle East. A man accepts a bargain with a djinn, who will grant him one wish every day, but if he ever fails to make a wish, or if he repeats a wish, the djinn will kill him. At first, this seems like a good deal. But after a few months, the man sees the curse. I started to write my own take on the story, and eventually realized I was writing about slavery vs. free will.
DJR: How does your writing process work?
SH: I write almost daily, usually between getting home from my teaching job and making supper. My first drafts tend to go slowly because I edit quite a lot as a go. This means my first draft takes a long time to do, but it also means the rewrites go very fast.
Friday, January 18, 2019
Short Book Reviews: Captive of the Norse Goblins
White Stag, by Kara
Barbieri (St. Martin’s)
I was done with
Western European pseudo-Celtic fantasy a long time ago, so I welcomed this
Norse-based setting. Instead of dangerous/intoxicating elves/fae/fairies, we
have goblins. These are not the hunched-over, hook-nosed second-class orcs from
Middle Earth or fairy tales; these guys are seriously bad news. Their outer
forms can be just as supernally beautiful as those of Lothlorien elves but the
goblins are as blood-thirsty and contentious as it comes, quickly transforming
into their SuperPredator forms. In short, they’re extremely not-nice
characters, they live in the Permafrost where time and physics operate
differently, and every once in a while, they slaughter their king, take off
after the white stag that is the king’s spiritual guide, kill it on the border
with the human world, and the whole murderous shebang cycles through again.
Enter human heroine Janneke,
raised in a village near the Permafrost border, trained from childhood as a
hunter and tracker (and preferring the masculine form of her name rather than
the feminine Janneka). Enslaved by the goblins who burned her village, she’s
been subjected to a century of brutality. When, finally, she’s discarded as an
insulting gift to her master’s nephew, she’s near death and not about to trust
any goblin. At all. Ever.
All of this is
prelude to a love story.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Monday, January 14, 2019
Lace and Blade 5 Author Interview: Pat MacEwen
The release date is Valentine's Day 2019, but you can pre-order it now:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/
I think I ran across Pat MacEwen at our local science fiction convention, BayCon, but didn't really get acquainted with her work until I edited two novels, Rough Magic and The Dragon's Kiss for Sky Warrior. I look forward to many more.
I think I ran across Pat MacEwen at our local science fiction convention, BayCon, but didn't really get acquainted with her work until I edited two novels, Rough Magic and The Dragon's Kiss for Sky Warrior. I look forward to many more.
Deborah J. Ross: Tell
us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?
Pat MacEwen: I’m
told I started when I was four. I would use crayons to draw the story, and then
I would tell it. Often, those stories featured my favorite toy, a rubber
giraffe missing one foot the dog had chewed off. In my stories, there was
always a grand adventure involved in how that happened because I knew even then
that heroes wind up scarred by life, win or lose. Some of that may be genetic –
my father’s people were bards and seanachies for the Campbell clan for
centuries, and my mother’s people include lots of preachers and teachers. We’ve
always had a tale to tell.
DJR: What
inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?
PM: The fairy
queen Sathyllien came out of my first novel, Rough Magic, where she does forensic work on modern murders
involving magic. She has a history stretching back over centuries, and a habit
of using Elizabethan insults. I wanted to find out more about that period in
her life, and her relationship with a human queen of great renown. So I started
with a basic problem – a murder victim who’s been concealed by being rendered
invisible. And I tied it to another fae and bits of hidden history concerning
the Virgin Queen. It so happens that lots of information has survived about her
40th birthday party, organized by the original “Nosy” Parker, then
Archbishop of Canterbury, so I set it then and there.
Friday, January 11, 2019
Short Book Reviews: Explosions and Loaded Guns, Oh My!
They Promised Me the
Gun Wasn't Loaded, by James Alan Gardner (Tor)
Sequels are always
challenging: how much backstory to include, how much to omit; how to bring new
readers up to speed without boring those who’ve just finished previous volumes;
and most of all, how to keep the series fresh and engaging. They Promised Me succeeds on every
measure. If anything, it’s more entertaining and has even more heart than All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s
Fault.
In Gardner’s
intriguing world, people acquire Dark and Light superpowers, Dark by paying
obscene sums of money for immortality (and surrendering any control over their
form this “gift” takes – vampire, ghost, demon, or something incredibly squicky
and nameless). Light sort of happens to folks, as it did in the first
installment, turning our current protagonist, hockey player and science student
Jools, into Ninety-Nine, the human Olympic-level best at everything (including
WikiJools, encyclopedic knowledge resident in her mind).
Throw into the mix
an array of Mad Geniuses and superhero/Mad Genius Robin Hood (who steals from
the rich but can’t give to the poor without revealing his secret identity) and
his Merry Men, a supernatural bazooka claimed by the villain in the first book
and sought after by all and sundry, and a handful of unexpected explosions and
side-effects, and the result is a delightfully wacky first-person narrative.
It’s got an immense amount of heart, too, because now that the basic rules of this
world are established, Light/Dark sides drawn, and action moving right along,
the choices Jools makes and the sacrifices she’s willing to make for the people
she loves are really what the story is all about.
I hope this one-two
switcheroo in point of view character follows through in subsequent volumes,
and as I would love to get to know the other flatmates/superheroes in the gang
as their lives unfold.
Highly recommended,
but do read All Those Explosions
first for maximum enjoyment.
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Monday, January 7, 2019
Lace and Blade 5 Author Interview: Gillian Polack
My introduction to the work of Gillian Polack was The Wizardry of Jewish Women, a concoction of pink tutus, sarcasm, amulets and bushfires. and oh yes, Jewish women with and without magic, set in Australia. I was instantly literarily smitten.
Deborah J. Ross: Tell
us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?
Gillian Polack: I
love telling people that when I was eight I stopped in front my Grade Three
Classroom - for I was in Grade Four and had just been moved to the Big School
to study with Mr Remenyi – and said to the empty air, “I’m going to be a
writer. I’ll need another job because I won’t make enough money to live on.” My
other job was going to be in history, though I flirted with other careers from
time to time. I have no idea how I could have known that much about myself or
the writing world when I was eight. I suspect Mr Remenyi was a part of it, for
he taught us Christina Rosetti’s work and it was love at first reading. I knew
I wanted readers to react to my work with the same voraciousness we reacted to
her poems.
DJR: What
inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?
GP: I had just
been diagnosed with glaucoma and told it was not responding to treatment. I
spent three months talking myself through the emotions of it. This story was to
remind me that blindness is not going to stop me being myself and that I need
to find the people who will see that in order to lead a happy life in future.
This story, then, is my declaration to the world about the future I’m carving
for myself.
Friday, January 4, 2019
Short Book Reviews: A Vaccination Medical Thriller
The story begins with journalistic descriptions of Patient Zero, her fatal illness, and the spread of the disease, which is highly contagious and easily spread by contact with inanimate objects such as door knobs. A more personal view of the unfolding catastrophe comes through the point of view of that child's aunt, Dr. Isabelle Gauley, a physician who later devises a strategy to save humankind from the epidemic. Some medical thrillers jump from one point of view to the next, showing the many different and varied experiences as characters either succumb to whatever plague has arisen or take part in finding a solution. By focusing on just one character who has a personal relationship to the first victim and who also has complicated relationships with other members of her family, Grant skillfully sets up the surprising twist at the end. Cataclysmic historical events — like the Black Plague of the 14th Century CE — affect multitudes but can be emotionally remote unless dramatized through the lives of individual characters. Grant achieves both the world-changing nature of a pandemic and the intimate journey and ultimate personal responsibility of a small set of characters.
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Happy New Year: 2019 Intentions, Goals, and Wishes
I'm not big on resolutions, New Year's or
otherwise. More often than not, all they do is set me up to fail or put me in
competition with others, and who needs that? However, I do see a great deal of
value in taking some time to clarify where I'm going in my life, if it's where
I want to be going, and what I'd like to see different.
Years (as in, decades) ago, a friend suggested
making a list of goals instead of resolutions, and to break them down into
1-year, 5-year, 10-year, and lifetime goals. I did that for quite a while, and
I still have the notebook I kept them in. It's fascinating to look back at what
I thought I wanted, 30 years ago -- what I have achieved, what I no longer
want, and what is no longer possible.
Along the way, I realized that some of these
things were within my power to achieve, but others were not. I might long for
them, but I could not bring them about, or not entirely by my own efforts. For
instance, finishing a novel or studying Hebrew are things I can choose to do,
but my children being happy, however much I might desire to see that come
about, is not something I myself can create. These things are wishes,
not goals. Of course, many things are both. On my list is to write a work of
enduring value -- I can write the best stories that are in me, but how they are
received and how they endure the test of time is another matter entirely. I
have no say over that.
For 2007, the year I turned 60:
1 year goals:
Finish (a specific book I was working on)
Transfer family videos to DVD
Celebrate becoming a crone
5 year goals:
Keep writing good stuff
10 years/lifetime:
Be active and happy
Do something activist and outrageous
As I wrote down goals and wishes, year after
year, I found that they changed in other ways. The specifics tended to be
resolved or discarded, but things emerged that were more general and had more
to do with quality and spirit than measurable achievements. An example --
writing something that would speak to people long after I'm gone as
opposed to selling a novel or selling a particular novel -- shows this
change. The farther out in time the goals/wishes, the less they resembled
"resolutions." I've started to think of them as intentions instead.
Yet, the universe does not cooperate with our best
intentions. I can wish for and intend to have a year that is one way but get
presented with situations and challenges I had no way of anticipating and end
up with something quite different, marvelous or heart-breaking. Part of the
shift from resolutions to intentions is the
introduction of flexibility, of a suppleness of response to whatever life
brings. Life is not limited by my imagination (or my fears). It is an
adventure, not a fixed syllabus.
For 2019, the year I will turn 72, my intentions
are:
1 year intentions:
Write well most days
Exercise well most days
Make music most days
Let the people I love know how precious they are
to me
5 years/10 years/lifetime:
Keep writing good stuff
Live a happy life
Be of service to others
My wishes are:
A more compassionate world
A return to political sanity
Hope for the devastation of global warming
Saving the most vulnerable people from poverty
and climate change
Photo by Cleo Sanda (1962-2012), may her memory
be for a blessing.
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