Wednesday Magic District, plus a review
Today’s Wednesday Magic District talks a little about workshops and how to get through them without tearing your notebook in half, flinging it at the critiquers, and gibbering in a corner for the next hour. It’s also got a couple of important links to the Worldcon Writers’ Workshop, which I’ll have the honor of assisting this year. Take a look, and tell me if you think I’ve gone off the deep end from one too many crits.
Also, there’s a review of Spiral Hunt up in Strange Horizons today: “Fans of kick-ass heroines and well written characters rejoice!” Wheeee!
SCIFI Wire article on Spiral Hunt
Huh. After Anything But the Book Week, it feels weird to be writing two book-related posts in a row.
Today there’s an article on Spiral Hunt in SCIFI Wire. It concentrates on some of the worldbuilding I did for the novel, and what that turned into as I started to work out the plot.
(Also, while browsing on the site, I found that my nightmare of Jane Austen zombie novels has come true. I don’t know whether to raise my fists to the sky and scream “NOOOOO!” or pre-order the book. Probably both.)
Made it!
Whoo. Made it. Now the fun starts.
And by “fun,” of course, I mean “overtime at my day job for totally unrelated reasons.” So it looks like I’ll have plenty to occupy my mind in the next couple of days without even getting into Spiral Hunt. I’ve also been tagged for the “seven things you might not know about me” meme by the Velveteen Rabbi, so I’ll be getting to that a little later in the week, and my short story “Dragon’s-Eyes” will be coming out in Beneath Ceaseless Skies soon.
In the meantime, My Favorite Author has been kind enough to post another author interview, as well as a review of Spiral Hunt. I think I managed to avoid sounding like a total idiot, so I’ll count it a victory. Thanks again to the blog-keepers there for giving me space to babble!
Onward!
Anything But the Book Week: Distraction
First things first: If you’re interested in taking a look at Spiral Hunt, or if you’re planning on getting a copy but just can’t wait till next week, then check out the widget below:
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  Browse Inside this book
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The first fifty-some pages are available for you to read. Enjoy! (I’ll be adding this to the sidebar as soon as I can bully WordPress into doing what I want it to do.)
In the meantime, however, I’ve realized that if I keep thinking about Spiral Hunt over the next week, then my head will probably pop. So for the next week, I’ll be blogging once a day on anything but Spiral Hunt. Anything.
Today’s topic, predictably enough, is distraction. How do you distract yourself when you need to keep your mind off something?
It used to be that working with my hands would be enough – needlework, for example, kept me nicely distracted over a summer. But once I learn a skill well enough that I can do it without concentrating on it, the advantage is gone, and I get caught up in my own thoughts again. Cooking or baking something works, cleaning doesn’t. Writing only works if I’m writing something totally different from the matter in question. And while going for a long walk does wonders when I’m trying to work out a plot point, it’s no good when I’m trying to distract myself.
What are your favorite techniques for training your own thoughts in the right direction? Meditation? Conversation? Goofy TV shows?
In which I answer questions and sometimes make sense
Aubrey and Speed Reader at My Favorite Author kindly offered me an interview spot, and my Author Q&A goes up today (just in time for Thanksgiving!). I think I managed to avoid cramming both feet into my mouth — I still haven’t got the hang of this interview thing. Or, come to think of it, this whole author thing…
Thanks again to Aubrey and Speed Reader for the opportunity to appear on their blog!
Real
When I was a kid, I hadn’t quite made the connection between authors and books. Books just happened; there weren’t people involved with the process until it got to the library. Even after logic told me that yes, someone had to make this stuff up, I still didn’t quite believe the connection. Authors were like Mr. Earbrass in The Unstrung Harp, or like the Hollywood conception of an author, complete with garret and muse. They weren’t quite human. You couldn’t talk to them, because their minds were on such a different level that they might open up a rip in the fabric of space from the sheer force of imagination.
Yeah. I didn’t quite consciously believe that, but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that there was some special quality that Real Writers had. I think some of this came from a form of magical thinking about the writing process, the belief that instead of sitting and working and writing to get something in print, some benevolent Spirit of Publication would visit the worthy. It doesn’t make sense, but it was on that level of thought where sense doesn’t matter.
So I fussed. Even after I knew writers and could recognize that yes, they were human (or at least kept their alien faces in another drawer), I still had this half-submerged idea of What Real Writers Do. Did Real Writers talk about their writing? Did they do the little “I wrote a good story” dance after a good revision? Did their bad revisions have “NO! WRONG! AND YOU SMELL!” written in the margin? What could I do or imitate or learn in order to be a Real Writer?
The answer’s simple — write — but the traces of that way of thinking linger.
The reason I’m thinking about this now is that over the last few months, I’d almost forgotten that I had a book coming out. I’d been working on the new book, getting it critiqued by BRAWL (who found all the weak points and then offered some excellent solutions), and if I thought of Spiral Hunt it was in the form of “what’s the next step”. Friends had told me that I must be just permanently gleeful that I was getting published and, well, I wasn’t, just because it had faded to the back of my mind.
Yesterday I got a package.
Book!
I haven’t stopped grinning since I opened it. I think I managed to tell the resident organist something along the lines of “it’s a book! And there are words in it! Words that I put there! And it’s a book!” I’m pretty sure I called my family too, but it’s a bit of a blur.
But now I know that Real Writers do indeed dance around the apartment waving their books around and yelling “Book! Book! Book!” Or at least one real writer does.
Good news and bad news
Bad news: I won’t be able to make it to Readercon this year, and it’s my own damn fault. Because I took so long on the new draft, I’m having to cram all my revisions in before the deadline. I’ll be lucky if I make it out of the house this weekend, let alone to a con.
Good news: I have cover art!
Ooooo. So pretty.
That’s the Longfellow Bridge near the top – if you ride the Red Line in Boston, that’s where it goes over the Charles River. I cross it twice every weekday, on my way to and from work. And ever since I saw this cover, I’ve been smiling as we cross it. (Well, until the train grinds to a halt and then sits there for five minutes. But that’s not the cover’s fault.)
I believe the appropriate phrase is “yee-haw!”
Well, I have the counter-signed contract in hand, so I think I can probably announce this without fear that it’ll all turn out to be a dream.
My agent Shana Cohen has sold SPIRAL HUNT to Kate Nintzel at Eos as part of a three-book deal. SPIRAL HUNT is an urban fantasy set in the undercurrents of Boston, tracing the intersections of myth and power and everyday life from Southie to Fenway Park and back again. The two books to follow will continue in that vein.
To say I’m thrilled would be understating matters by several orders of magnitude. (Jumping up and down on Commonwealth Pier yelling and startling the seagulls was only a small part of my initial reaction.) I’m working on the second book now, readying myself for the edits to the first, and occasionally making little “woo!” noises.
The first book is tentatively scheduled to come out next spring. I’ll have more posts as I learn more details.
Woo!
Margaret Ronald 