Holy crap.
Holy crap. The FBI says they’ve identified the Gardner Museum thieves.
Those of you who’ve read Wild Hunt will know why this is such a big deal for me. I suppose it’s a risk when working with real-life situations and mysteries that one of them might be solved after the book comes out. Hard to regret it, though. (And hey, it’s not like I haven’t run into this before — I remember having to revise an early draft of Spiral Hunt after the Sox won the World Series, which till then had been a major plot point.)
I am so going to be following this story. And I really hope they get the paintings back, and that they’re in good condition. Those frames have been empty far too long.
Still here
In the meantime, there’s a very nice review of Wild Hunt on Tor.com. I had one of those “Oh God! The Internet found me!” moments discovering it — I clicked over to Tor.com just out of curiosity, saw the cover of Wild Hunt, made a sound audible only to bats, and shut down my browser before I could read any of it. Normally I don’t have that panicked a reaction to reviews, I swear, but this one caught me by surprise. But personal neurotic author reaction aside, it’s a great review, and I’m glad they saw fit to post it.
On an entirely unrelated note, I’ll be at the Danvers Literary Festival on Saturday, May 8, as part of a panel on fantasy. I’m not yet sure what we’ll be discussing within that topic — for all I know, the moderator will bring a stopwatch, point at each of us, and yell “FIVE PROFOUND THOUGHTS ON FANTASY! GO!” That might be entertaining in itself, even though my five profound thoughts would probably consist mostly of “wha?” and “do what now?”
Big Idea: The urban part of urban fantasy
John Scalzi has again been kind enough to let me post a Big Idea essay on the Whatever — this time, about Wild Hunt, cities, and the magic of new places. Go and take a look — or, if you’re coming here from that article, hello and welcome! I’m afraid I’m unlikely to have anything new for you for a little while, since I’m still stuck in a revision, but some of my fiction is linked in the sidebar, and some below — I’d particularly recommend “A Serpent in the Gears” just because I love it so (and because it’s not yet linked — I am terrible at updating my bibliography) or the novel writing text adventures. Or, if you’d like to read more authors talking about their work, take a look at The Magic District.
Interviews: Stealth nerd and difficult writing
Part of the problem with being stuck head down in novel revisions is that I miss the fun stuff. (The important stuff is harder to miss, and aside from repeatedly banging my head into a wall Tuesday night, I’m dealing with it.)
But belated as this is, I need to get off my hinder and post about two very kind bloggers who asked me to be interviewed on their sites. Two interviews are online: Sci-Fi Fan Letter (in which I talk about the difficult parts of writing and decide not to live in my made-up world) and Over the Edge (in which I confess my identity as a stealth nerd (okay, those of you who know me are now wondering how “stealth” plays any part in my nerdiness) and give some examples from the internal soundtrack for Wild Hunt).
I’m really grateful to both sites for inviting me to their interviews, and I’m really sorry it’s taken me so long to get around to posting about it. Funny, how the Internet can both keep me from the novel work and the novel can keep me from the Internet…or maybe it’s just about procrastinating no matter what.