The past month has been filled with friends, tacos, and words, and a lot of new.
Before I do anything else, I want to say how grateful I am for you — whether you came out to say hi, left a review, or dropped me a private note. Writing’s a lonely job sometimes, and your letting me know how Updraft, or Cooking the Books, or any of my fiction, resonated? That’s such a huge thing. Thank you. If you interviewed me, hosted me on your blog, or encouraged me to post that dorky pic of myself on iO9? Thank you. And especially if you traveled with me for any part of this trip – had a meal with me, asked me if I knew what day it was, or made sure I got where I was supposed to go, thank you.
You may have noticed there were a lot of blog posts and interviews over the past month or so? I’m going to break them down with blurbs, so you can (and I can) find them again. And now I can tell you one of my secret goals for this past month: to have as much fun as possible. I tried to post as many different ways as I could so you wouldn’t turn the hose on me when you saw me coming, and hopefully they’d be amusing to read later.
Related Summer Posts
- Sketchpunks – a peek at my sketchbooks –Inkpunks Sketching lets me stand still and look. It helps me work out problems. It’s almost the exact opposite of writing. On those days when I’m bashing around a plot problem, I often pull out my pen and sketch. Sometimes drawing lines and hatch marks and focusing on light and shadow gives me an answer no amount of rough drafting could….
- Gravity’s Own Monster – A Dribble of Ink
When setting a story far above the ground, there are a number of extra worldbuilding issues to consider. These include natural versus man-made hazards, line of attack, line of supply, and necessity. Setting a story in the air is a great opportunity to put your characters in jeopardy… and leave them there…. - Five Books About The Monstrous – Tor.com From denizens of the deep to the bitey megafauna that cannot be reasoned with.
- An Intimidation of Shrimp: De Bodard, Cho, & Wilde – A Cooking the Books Roundtable An Intimidation of Shrimp isn’t a proper collective noun, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was? It snags the imagination, makes you wonder what strange, tiny danger is this?
- Fantasy Scroll Magazine – Interview
- A Fantasy Foodie’s Baker’s Dozen – A Dribble of Ink … Those Fantasy Foodies who get it right — and who make our mouths water in the process. Here are thirteen of my favorites (there are many more, but the list grew unmanageable), in alphabetical order, and I’ve given you some amuse-bouche quotes to go with them….
No Da Vinci Wasn’t The First Inventor to Dream About Human Flight – i09.com Leonardo DaVinci’s wing and glider designs have inspired literature, art, and cinema over the centuries. But plenty of other people have schemed to take to the air, long before the Wright Brothers. Here are just some of the inventors who devised methods of unpowered human flight…with mixed success….- The Event Horizon – Krypton Radio! Gene and Susan had their Lawsmarkers ready.
UPTEMBER Week 1
- Why Are All The Moms Gone? The Dangers of Parenting In Childrens’ Literature – The Washington Post “Conflict, right? It makes for easy conflict. And plot. Plot means drama. Parents make for lots of drama.” The last bit was presented to me with a Significant Look and an eyeroll….
- Not So Invisible Ninjas – Recent Debuts in Fantasy & Science Fiction… Antipope The problem seemed to be that there were so many of us who were otherwise hard to find! The entire list would crash the Internet out of pure hard-to-findness!
- Philly Weekly Interview The society in Updraft has long associated safety with upward movement, because what’s below is dangerous. But the higher they go, the more infrastructure they need to support the city, and …
- Bridging the Gap: Engineering Magic in “Updraft” – GeekDad … What I wanted to say: Yes, there’s plenty of magic in my book. And, yes, it’s all engineering.
- Geekadelphia Q&A
- Change the Language, Change the World – Tor.com – Sometimes we discover a simple change in linguistics that alters the structure of the worlds we’re writing, often for the better. And if we’re lucky, some of those changes can alter the world around us, too.
- SFSignal Interview with Kristin Centorcelli
Somewhat Questionable Answers to All Your Publishing Questions – Terrible Minds – When Chuck offered me the keys to his blog, I decided to do what you’d normally do with someone’s finest vehicle: fill it with bees and infographics. But What Bees. And Which Infographics. …- My Most Memorable Meal – Eating Authors … we cleared out all the furniture from the first floor of our nine-foot-wide rowhouse, lined up planks on sawhorses, and covered it all with bedsheets and borrowed flatware and china….
- Love At First Page – Interview
- The Heroine Thing – A.M. Dellamonica … that feeling of being encased — a brain in an uncomfortable container — rang so true.
- The Dreaded Middle – My Favorite Bit – … there are many warnings and touchstones. In particular, there’s this one: the middle of a draft sucks. It sags. It sometimes breaks down. That’s where the draft-goblins come out, and the weasels that whisper you’re no good and this is no good and give up. It’s totally totally true — all of it. Except when it isn’t….
- Interview with A.C. Wise
- Magister Dix Charges New Flight Instructors – Dark Faerie Tales I tell you now, Flight is also our first line of defense against those citizens who might not be prepared to take part in city life….
When Book Research Means 250MPH Winds, A Crash Helmet, And Goggles – iO9.com You know that moment where you feel like a good breeze could lift your feet from the ground? You lean into it a little. You might even unbutton your coat to let the wind fill the cloth….- Bone Towers and Sky Cows – an Interview with Barnes & Noble’s SFF Blog “When I read chapter 1 to an audience, I explain that when we were going through the process of choosing a title—because quite often, a book doesn’t get to keep its title, and mine certainly didn’t; we went through lots—for a while I was calling it Bob Gets Eaten on Page Two. because that is exactly what happens.”
UPTEMBER Week 2
- Torpedia Entry: Skymouth – Tor Books Blog The skymouth (/sky*mouth/ or /skaɪ-mauʊð/)[2] is a creature of traditional song and legend featuring unusually large proportions and appetite. Skymouths travel in packs within and above the clouds.
Upwards! Tribble Nation – The Fabulous Black Tribbles interviewed me about … well, pretty much everything. I didn’t sing, but I did get my Tribble Name!- Voice – The Big Idea – Whatever At its heart, Updraft is about speaking, about being heard, and — in turn — about hearing others; it is about challenging, vocally, secrets, assumptions, and established beliefs. It is about singing and memory; about argument and politics.
- We Mostly Didn’t Talk About Poop This Time – The Skiffy & Fanty Show #283 – Wherein Julia, Shaun, and I try to keep things on the up and up, this time, and Julia makes no promises…
The Novel As Landscape – Choosing What to See and What To Hear In literature and film, we find ourselves captivated by the chase, the plummet. We are hunters at heart: we focus on motion by default. And so as Captain America speeds past Sam Wilson, the audience shifts interest to the faster figure.- Civilian Reader Interview
- I Should Be Writing – Believing In Yourself – Interview – Mur Lafferty (and some random dude) interviewed me back in February about “what happens when no one believes in you but you? You go to freaking work, that’s what you do.”
- The Quillery Interview
UPTEMBER Week Three
A Literary Family Tree When the fabulous Book Smugglers ask about inspirations and influences for your first novel, you either dig deep, or you run. Me? I ran for my sketchpad.- Functional Nerds – Patrick Hester interviews me at Sasquan about food (BBQ especially), and batteries.
- Rocket Talk! Justin and I square off about banquets, Neal Stephenson, and ontological pulses.
- That Initial Spark of Inspiration – Liz Carlie and One-on-One ‘Like these bone towers, Kirit herself seems to fall into that class of “defiantly organic” as you define it: relentlessly evolving.’
- Earworms and You: Memory, Laws, and Singing – Fantasy Book Critic I didn’t Rickroll anyone, but it was a close thing.
- Favorite Literary Friendships – Live to Read from Calvin & Hobbes to Kittyhawk & Verity
- Looking at Things Upside-down – Vampire Book Club A long time ago, one of my poetry teachers suggested I go hang upside-down from a jungle gym. She wasn’t trying to get rid of me….
- About That Wingtest – On Starships & Dragonwings There are many great tests in genre fiction… And then there are tests to see if a character can abide by or achieve certain community standards — a driving test is a common one.
- A Small Cartography of Maps – Arched Doorway Maps do things to stories. They ground them (literally) and allow the reader’s imagination to play against the guide. They help the writer too. …
- Superstitions and Flying Bighorn Sheep: Elizabeth Bear interviews Fran Wilde – Cooking the Books … a few folks asked me if I was going to put myself in the hot seat. They seemed… overly interested in seeing me there, in fact.So, to make the seat even hotter, I knew there was one person who could grill me properly in the spirit of Cooking the Books… Elizabeth Bear.
UPTEMBER Week Four
- What I’d Give Up Writing For – Bibliotropic … Those were the good reasons why I set my writing aside. The bad reasons why I set writing aside were something else entirely…
- Urban Fantasy Investigations Interview
- Categorizations in Genre Fiction – The Expanded Universe If there’s no magic, is a story fantasy or science fiction? If the protagonist is a teen (or a child), and the story is told from first person POV, must the book be children’s literature or YA? If there’s technology, is this science fiction or fantasy?
- Also I made some Airport Haiku
@%#(*@!!. What did I do? You guys have got a bunch of reading to do before the quiz. (just kidding. There’s no quiz. Well, not yet.)
But wait, there’s more… There are a few more upcoming interviews and posts … plus the Flights of Fantasy Tour begins in just a few short weeks…
FRAN WILDE 