Recently, SFsignal asked a bunch of authors about how they got introduced to fantasy. (Myself included.)
It was interesting to see what the other authors listed. Some mentioned old familiars, and I picked up a few new titles for me increasingly long “To Be read” list.
It’s an interesting collective interview. If you want to check it out, it’s over here.
Edit: A helpful fan found a link to the read-along record I talk about in the interview. It’s over here.
As for the raffle, there’s good news and bad news.
The good news is that things are going really well. We’ve already raised over 6000 dollars. Woo!
The bad news is that paypal doesn’t like me using my account for anything resembling gambling. I’ve sent them an e-mail to hopefully straighten things out, and make it clear that this is really just a charity fundraiser with an incentive that just *looks* like a raffle.
I’m waiting to hear back from them. But the moral of the story is that if you want to donate online with paypal, it might be better to do it sooner, rather than later. I might be forced to take the paypal link down, and if that happens, I’ll have to muddle my way through figuring out google checkout or some shit like that. And if it’s close to November 15th (the end of the name fundraiser) I might not bother.
Or you can take the safe and simple route and just mail your entry in. Easy peasy.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, but you’re interested in maybe getting your name in The Wise Man’s Fear, you can get all the details over here.
More news soon.
pat
Locus Magazine
I’ve been cutting back on conventions this year so I can focus on revisions and my pretty new baby.
I’d even decided to skip Wiscon this year, even though it’s in Madison, which means it’s practically in my backyard.
But then I found out my friend Nnedi was going to be Guest of Honor there this year. (Remember Nnedi? I interviewed her for Worldbuilders last year, and talked about her book a couple months ago.) Anyway, getting asked to be GOH at Wiscon is a pretty big deal, and I don’t see Nnedi nearly as much as I’d like, so I decided to go.
Then the people at Locus dropped me an e-mail, asking if I wanted to do an interview. I said, “Sure.” Because Locus is a pretty big deal in the Sci-Fi Fantasy publishing world. And I like doing interviews, especially when they’re in person. I spend enough time typing.
So I meet up with the lovely folks from Locus. The interview is fun. They ask good questions. We hang out. Then they say, “Do you mind if we take some pictures?”
And I’m like, “Sure, if you’re into that sort of thing.”
Then a couple weeks ago, this shows up in the mail:
My first thought? “If I’d known they were going to put me on the cover, I would have gotten a haircut….”
My second thought was, “I’m on the cover of Locus.”
My third thought was, “Shit. This is kind of a big deal. I hope I don’t sound like an idiot…”
Then I open up the magazine and burst out laughing. Here’s what I see:
Why don’t we zoom in on that a little?
Yeah. There you go. You can click that to embiggen it if you want, but you might want to be careful, lest the intensity of my sheer awesome reduce you to a quivering wreck.
For those of you who are curious. My t-shirt says: “My Marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.” It’s a very specialized sort of joke, and there really isn’t any point in me explaining it if you don’t get it. Suffice to say that Wiscon is a feminist Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention. It’s the only place I can wear the shirt where people think it’s funny.
Anyway, after I had a good laugh at this picture I was much more relaxed. I get very nervous when people take me too seriously.
I read the interview and was very pleased that I didn’t come off sounding like an idiot. It was a lot more wide-ranging than a lot of the interviews I do, and we talked about some stuff I don’t normally talk about.
If you want a taste of it, there’s a few excerpts over on Locus’ website.
Still revising. One week ’til deadline.
pat