tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78693354149030679572024-03-05T18:14:57.501-08:00Ask NicolaNovelist Nicola Griffith's blog. Rants, ruminations and rhapsodies on literature, science, culture, and queers.Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comBlogger1889125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-49200107850039234222015-03-07T08:54:00.000-08:002016-03-13T18:04:04.836-07:00This blog has moved<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This blog has moved.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My blog now lives here:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://nicolagriffith.com/blog">http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Visit </span><a href="http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">any blog post</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> there</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, and in the sidebar sign up to get posts by email or subscribe to the feed:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://nicolagriffith.com/feed/<br /><br />If that doesn't work try:<br /><a href="http://nicolagriffith.com/?feed=atom">http://nicolagriffith.com/?feed=atom</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Subscribe to the comments:<br />http://nicolagriffith.com/comments/feed/</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-69496826943997027222015-03-02T07:00:00.000-08:002015-03-02T21:39:31.026-08:00New and shiny website<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://nicolagriffith.com/"><img alt="My new and shiny website" height="193" src="https://nicolagriffith.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/ngcom.png" title="http://nicolagriffith.com/blog" width="400" /></a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With any luck, this will one of the last* posts on Ask Nicola and the first new post of my <a href="http://nicolagriffith.com/">brand new web site</a>. The previous design went up 13 years ago, created before blogging software. It was the kind of thing one had to <strike>lick clean w’ tongue</strike> code by hand, definitely <strike>uphill both ways</strike> a pain in arse. It's why I started this blog here on Blogger in the first place—as a temporary solution. But, well, seven years later... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, I’ve been meaning to do this for years. There was always something more urgent in the queue. Last autumn, just before I embarked on the <i>Hild</i> tour, I'd had enough. I drew a dozen delicious wireframes for a site would do everything <i>exactly</i> the way I wanted it to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then it became clear to me just how much work it would be to actually make happen. For one, it would require a custom design and build for which I do not—have never had—the skills. I don't have the kind of money to pay market rate for someone good enough, either. And those friends I do have who could do this for me, well, it wouldn't be fair to even ask. (We're talking a <i>lot</i> of work.) Besides, even if a friend had been willing to labour over it for an age, it was so close to perfect (in my love-starred eyes) that I would have got completely lost in getting it <i>exactly</i> right. That kind of obsessive fussing can't co-exist with writing <i>Menewood</i>. And even if it could, that would be only the beginning; once the mad and beautiful site was built then the <i>real</i> hassle would begin. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">WordPress won't host custom-made themes (only its own themes, customised). Building the perfect site would have meant self-hosting, which, fine, I've done for years, only now with endless, thankless backend update drudgery on top. So I thought, <i>Ah, fuck it!</i> and chose a theme: <a href="https://theme.wordpress.com/themes/studio/">Studio</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That was three days ago. At which point a good friend </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">began to customise it for me. (All photos are, of course, by </span><a href="http://www.jenniferdurham.com/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jennifer Durham</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">.) </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And on Saturday night, after a lovely dinner (there might have been wine...) I looked at the dev site and thought, </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Even unfinished it's a billion times better than my lumbering Mondrian-esque monstrosity!</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> In other words, again, </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Fuck it!</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> And we went live. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mostly. (It won't propagate everywhere immediately.) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So here it is, still under construction. You will see changes over the next wee while; don’t be alarmed! Meanwhile, please point your feed readers, bookmarks etc to:</span><br />
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<a href="http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Soon I will discontinue Ask Nicola. It’s served me well. The Mondrian Monstrosity served me well, too. But, oof, it should have been retired a decade ago.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Questions? Comments? Leave them on <a href="http://nicolagriffith.com/blog">the new blog</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* I've imported all these Blogger posts to the new WordPress site, but all the links will, I assume, be screwed. So I'll keep this one up for a while, but as I'll be updating from the new site this could get a bit dusty...</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-21914658772348012522015-02-27T08:17:00.000-08:002015-02-27T08:17:00.690-08:00Saturday: Seattle, 1 pm, Search for Meaning Book Festival<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you're in Seattle or environs come to Seattle University tomorrow, Saturday, 28 February, where I'll be taking part in the day-long <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2015/01/search-for-meaning-festival-seattle.html">Search for Meaning Book Festival</a>. Room 103 in the Pigott building, 1 - 2 pm, with signing afterwards.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">See you there!</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-88713359057596410402015-02-24T12:03:00.002-08:002015-02-25T11:28:20.751-08:00Some thoughts occasioned by recent 1-star reviews<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every now and again I listen to a fellow writer ranting about bad reviews, or telling a funny story about bad reviews, or just rolling her eyes at the mention of same, depending on where they are on the recovery curve. Because all writers get bad reviews, and we're all stung by them.<sup>1</sup> Oh, perhaps not a high percentage of them, and perhaps not for long—it takes three or four minutes to get past my indignation, usually—but the more skilled the reviewer, or the more clearly they have laboured maliciously over their work, or the wider their audience, the more it stings.<sup>2</sup></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This recent 1-star reviews of <i>Hild</i> on amazon.com sent my blood pressure up for five whole minutes. It's very carefully constructed and only just (maybe) skirts <i>ad hominem</i> attack:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reading Hild is a lot like being cornered at a party by someone who has just finished listening to a bunch of educational podcasts, and they're going to tell you everything they know. Problem is, they refuse to make eye contact and thus never detect the increasingly panicked expression on your face as you wonder if a cocktail weenie is useful in a murder/suicide kind of situation.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The amount of research that went into this book had to have been staggering, but a good writer would have made that nearly invisible in service to the story. Instead, I spent the whole time cornered at that party, wishing Nicola Griffith would go away and let me enjoy myself. [amazon.com, no verified purchase]</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Note that he did not even have a verified purchase, a fact which added 30 seconds to my indignation: he didn't even <i>pay</i> for it! So then I couldn't resist taking a look at other 1-stars for comparison, and was struck by this one, which made me sigh for them:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This book, while based in historical fact, is laborious and dull. I slogged all the way through it, and have little more knowledge of early Irish history than I had before I began! [amazon.com, verified purchase]</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And then I was struck by how both stuck doggedly to the book: 124 pages and 535 respectively. That seems like a lot of leeway to give to a book you don't like. Far more than </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'd give. (I tend to abandon books that aren't working for me by page 2—whether I've paid for them or not—because life is short and the TBR list long.)</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Perhaps because of that both reviewers came across (to me) as readers yearning</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> for a particular kind of book and resent the author when she doesn't reward their persistence by giving them what they want.</span><sup style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">3</sup><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That made me wonder if this might be a cultural thing, so I checked amazon.co.uk:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'd love to read this book, but the price which its publisher/author have chosen for it has put it way outside my reach ... what's happened to the pricing of kindle books, Amazon? Very sad when money gets in the way of the accessibility of promising literature. [amazon.co.uk, no verified purchase]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hmmn, I thought (after I'd finished rolling my eyes). Here's a review of a book the customer didn't even <i>buy</i>: no dogged persistence in evidence (though evidence points to them not knowing much about the publishing industry). I pondered.<sup>4</sup> Is this a UK vs. US cultural response, or one based simply on the different signals sent by the book's packaging (which, of course, is itself based on publishers' knowledge of their book-buying culture)?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To answer this, I checked two other English-speaking countries, Australia (</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">selling the UK/Blackfriars version)</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> and Canada (</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">US/FSG and Picador editions</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">).</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333330154419px;"><sup>5</sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Australia, where sales until recently have been brisk, there are zero reviews. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Canada there are three reviews, all of them 5-star.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What does this means? Let me muse on this for a while. (In our house Kelley calls this telling myself a story: at it's best I think of it as serious play, a kind of exploration. Others might consider it spin and plain old bullshit. You've been warned.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The story I tell myself based on this flimsiest of evidence is that the 1-star review behaviour is all down to culture. Americans (don't forget I am one now) feel entitled to vent our spleen against a person we don't know. Why? Because we're used to space, and less diversity (I've never lived anywhere so segregated—in terms of class, colour, religion, age, sexuality etc), </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and less community, and </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">so fewer immediate consequences for antisocial behaviour. Also, those of a certain age attended schools where they were rewarded for things like attendance or tidiness, and, if they pestered their parents enough to make everyone's life (especially the teacher's) miserable, got themselves an inflated grade. They were raised to think everyone's opinion is of equal worth, especially theirs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Britons are willing to let rip, too, but only against the publisher or retailer: the faceless corporation whom the community finds acceptable to gang up against. Why? Because we're raised with an Us v. Them attitude that's rooted in class.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Canadians are apparently (I am not a citizen) willing to say only nice things. Why? I don't know. Perhaps because they're, well, nice (hey, all the Canadians I've met are lovely people). Hurtling up the ladder of assumption, this might be because it's a big country, sparsely populated, and you never know when you're going to need your neighbour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Australia is big, too. But there the citizens seem (again, I'm not one; I'm just making shit up) have either no time or no urge to discuss such things. Why? Well, maybe (if you believe their movies) they're too busy enjoying the great outdoors, or battling crocodiles and wildfires, to bother with anything less exciting. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I say, I'm just telling myself a story (having fun with cliché, basically). Gotta do something when I'm on break from the seventh century...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><sup>1</sup> If we read them. I have met writers who will not read, listen, or watch a single comment about their work, in person or via mass media. Sometimes I marvel--the time they must save!--but more often I shake my head: there are times when it's a real rush to read a review, times when the praise is heady, or I learn something about my work, or--joy of joys--both. I always read my reviews, as many as I can find.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><sup>2</sup> This stuff is not rational. The oddest things get through what (for me at least) is now a very thick skin. I don't review anymore because of that and the power differential. Relatively Famous Name dismembers Beginner's work is not a dynamic I want to involve myself in. It feels like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer: overkill, not to mention mean. (I would never set <i>out</i> to demolish another writer's work but, as I say, writers' response is not always rational, and some writers--not <i>me</i>, of course--are insanely touchy. There are writers whose work I admire but wouldn't write even an adulatory review of because they will find something in it to get angry about.) I'm just as uninterested in pissing off someone with seriously more heft than me. Once you're a published author with an established readership, you're between a rock and a hard place. So I just don't review. These days when I like something, I tend to mention it here.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">3</sup><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I am of course making myriad assumptions here, just so we're clear. S</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">omething like a Bernard Cornwell novel: historically accurate adventure fiction with predictable outcomes and straight-forward prose. I am not knocking Cornwell here--I've bought and read all his Uhtred books and enjoy them hugely. But if you're expecting Uhtred, Hild might be a bit of a shock.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">4</sup><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Why, yes, now that you mention it, this deliberation probably <i>is</i> avoidance behaviour; in my defence, a writer can't live in the 7th C <i>all</i> the time...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><sup>5</sup> I stuck to English because seemed less like comparing apples and oranges than, hmm, apples and pears.</span></div>
Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-10807275048638350372015-02-17T06:49:00.000-08:002015-02-17T16:29:15.746-08:00Character density in fiction<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In 1988 one of my teachers at Clarion was Samuel R Delany. One of the things he taught that week was the three kinds of actions performed by fictional characters: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. He explained which was which, but, frankly, I forget and I didn't keep notes. (I was too busy falling in love, surviving 105-degree heat and Midwestern humidity without air-conditioning, and starving half to death—you try being a vegetarian who is allergic to cheese on an 80s campus in Middle America). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However, with the hindsight and experience (and food, and air conditioning) of twenty-six years, I would guess (operative word: guess) that what he meant was, respectively, actions that are plot-oriented (doing something that moves the story along: the bad guy kidnaps the hero’s husband), characteristic (the hero has this habit of complaining just before she digs deep and does what must be done), and generic (endless scenes with characters pushing cups of coffee one way or another, nodding, tapping their fingers).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Let me repeat: I’m <i>guessing</i> what Delany means by this. My interpretation could be quite wrong. My apologies to Chip.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Clichéd fiction (often some variety of genre churned out too fast to meet terrible deadlines) traffics in clichéd characters; it leans heavily on a person's quirky characteristics or habits (they stutter, blink before they stab an innocent, or talk to their pampered cat in a girlish voice) and generic behaviours (they pout, or slam the door, or smirk—or grimace, or any of another twenty annoying and over-used to the point of meaninglessness verbs). So-called no-nonsense fiction, such as action-heavy thrillers, rely largely on purposeful actions: the hero kills the bad guys; the detective puts together the clues; the traveller survives the storm at sea. No time or motion is 'wasted'. Fiction that is stereotyped in some other way—treats a particular class of person as less than a whole human being—tends to use only one or two of the three behavioural modes. It dates fast. When the culture moves on, <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, or the <i>Gor</i> books are left behind; unless they become teaching tools, the same will be true of coming out stories and other We're Just Like You! fiction.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But a great story or novel—oh, a great story is <i>dense</i>. The characters' actions are plot-driving <i>and</i> characteristic <i>and</i> specific. These people are fully human, the kind of people we would recognise this year, last century, tomorrow. In this fiction, the writer is almost profligate in her generosity: we know a lot about the protagonist just by the <i>way</i> he flips his hair, just by the <i>speed</i> with which they blinks before they kill someone. No one in the book or story--protagonist, antagonist, or secondary character--flips or blinks the same way; you could never swap one character for another. (Even comic characters should be distinguished one from the other.) In a perfect world you wouldn’t need dialogue tags: the vocabulary would be so characteristic of whoever was speaking the reader would never get confused.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The protagonist's relationships with others are unique. And if the protagonist is unique, so is her story. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(This is always true. Even if you agree with one of the many arguments about the number of basic plots,* story and plot are different beasties.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Great fiction doesn't traffic in stereotype of any kind. In great fiction there are no generic queer people or women or people of colour or cripples; even the secondary characters and the antagonists are three-dimensional. And there are no cliched phrases, because in great fiction even the prose is alive. The people, their prose, place, and story are fresh <i>and</i> familiar, unexpected <i>and</i> inevitable—because everything that happens is set up early; the more subtly the better. Because great fiction is subtle, too.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the end, though, what carries a novel is it's cast. It doesn't matter how beautiful your prose is, if you can't bring your reader inside the people, you have failed. Make your characters alive, supple to the needs of their own situation rather than the exigencies of your plot, and make them dense.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">* There are as many opinions about this as there are writers. We could argue for years over whether, according Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, there are seven—and that the world revolves around Man; or we follow Joseph Campbell's assertion that there's only one, the Monomyth; or, more recently, agree with Christopher Booker, who also thinks there are seven, though they're different.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Quiller-Couch's are:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Man vs. Man</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Man vs. Nature</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Man vs. Himself</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Man vs. God</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Man vs. Society</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Man caught in the Middle</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Man & Woman</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Campbell's monomyth is:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Hero's Journey</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: #fcfcff; color: #141414; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 20.5333347320557px;">and Booker prefers:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Overcoming the Monster</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Rags to Riches</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Quest</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Voyage and Return</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Comedy</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Tragedy</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Rebirth</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span></li>
</ul>
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Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-76937007425591620002015-02-12T08:16:00.000-08:002015-02-12T08:16:00.119-08:00Third Place Books on Thursday, February 19, 7 pm <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you’re in the Seattle area on Thursday night, February 19, come to <a href="http://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/glittering-world-robert-levy">Third Place Books</a> (Lake Forest Park), and join me as I admire Kelley in conversation with author and playwright Robert Levy about his first novel <a href="http://www.therobertlevy.com/theglitteringworld/">The Glittering World</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As Kelley says:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It'll be fun! Robert is smart and charming, and his book has already garnered <a href="http://www.therobertlevy.com/theglitteringworld/">praise</a> from Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand, Christopher Barzak, and many more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What's the book about? I'm so glad you asked:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When Michael "Blue" Whitley — a former party boy turned up-and-coming Brooklyn chef — returns with three friends to the remote Canadian commune of his birth, he discovers that his entire life has been a carefully orchestrated lie. He is in fact someone else altogether, a replacement for a local child who disappeared twenty-five years earlier. He is something not quite human.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Only now it’s Blue's turn to vanish, leaving his friends to unravel the mystery of his abduction. Soon, psychology and skepticism collide with old-world folklore and superstition, revealing the secret history of the commune as well as that of an ancient race of beings that inhabits the hidden corners of the land.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Set among the artisans, burnouts, and New Age mystics of rural Cape Breton, The Glittering World is a dark and modern fairy tale, a novel of self-identity and supernatural suspense.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">New Yorkers can help Robert celebrate the launch of the book Tuesday, Feb 10 at the <a href="http://bookcourt.com/events/robert-levy">release party at BookCourt</a> in Brooklyn. Robert also has <a href="http://www.therobertlevy.com/events/">bookstore appearances</a> in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Westfield NJ, as well as an appearance at Seattle’s <a href="http://mythicworlds.net/?p=3510">Mythic Worlds</a> convention.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Kelley is very good at this, and Robert—a forensic psychologist in real life—has some interesting things to say. Join us.</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-20754224619657502122015-02-10T07:00:00.000-08:002015-02-10T11:31:44.338-08:00Writing a novel: where to enter<blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From: Jane</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the NYT today, I read a piece by Roger Cohen, quoting an Israeli author named Amos Oz. I thought you’d like it:<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">TEL AVIV — Here is Amos Oz on writing a novel: "It is like reconstructing the whole of Paris from Lego bricks. It’s about three-quarters-of-a-million small decisions. It’s not about who will live and who will die and who will go to bed with whom. Those are the easy ones. It’s about choosing adjectives and adverbs and punctuation. These are molecular decisions that you have to take and nobody will appreciate, for the same reason that nobody ever pays attention to a single note in a symphony in a concert hall, except when the note is false. So you have to work very hard in order for your readers not to note a single false note. That is the business of three-quarters-of-a-million decisions."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was rather startled to find that by the time I got around to responding to this, the article is over a month old. My excuse? To use Oz's terminology, I've been lost in Legoland.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Except my Legoland is not the same as his. For me, choosing the right words is the easy part. When I'm in full flow, the words and their carriages—the punctuation—arrive without struggle or thought. Yes, it can all be tightened and tidied when I rewrite, but generally the words and sentences are the ones I want. The real work lies in getting to that state of flow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To begin, I need to start in the right place.* Where the protagonist begins helps determine where she ends, and that beginning-to-end is the emotional arc of the story. That emotional arc is all about how and why the main character changes; it's about her choices and their consequences. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For me, the ringing truth </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">of a novel rests on its people. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have to know my people. W</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">hat they do and how they think. How they feel and where they're from. Landscape is central; for me as a writer, people are their places. I have to understand what they notice about the world and how easily they move through it. I need to know, deep down, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">what metaphors they use to talk to others or to themselves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All this takes time and active work. A lot of that work looks like doing nothing in particular: lounging about eating chocolate, sitting in the pub drinking beer, surfing the web for interesting PhD theses or blog posts. Some of it looks remarkably like daydreaming over a cup of tea, and sometimes, I admit, I am just loafing about. But mostly I'm working: I'm feeding the <a href="http://www.fsgworkinprogress.com/2013/11/the-language-of-hild/">black box in my brain</a> the raw material to make magic.**</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some of the work is much more obvious: creating charts and spreadsheets and maps. (Making maps gives me vast pleasure, too, which means—inevitably—that it sometimes devolves into making pretties and not really progressing with the work at hand. But that's balanced out by the fact that I loathe and detest spreadsheets.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If this all sounds as though I'm one of those writers who sit around and wait for inspiration to strike then I'm doing a poor job of explaining. I work hard, many hours a day, it's just that I'm not always increasing word count. Sometimes I'm frantically researching climate, or trees—what species blossoms when, what fruits when, how tall do each grow, how easy is the wood to carve?—or tides or trying to work out travel times which means figuring out what state of repair the Roman roads or Iron Age tracks would be in, which in turn depends on how they were getting there, which of course rests on what time of year is it...and what trees are blossoming in what weather.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But all that, believe it or not, is secondary. They are the container in which I put the people and then watch. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The question I ask myself most often is: Yes, it's very cool, but, really, would she </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">do</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> that? You wouldn't believe how many gorgeous, gorgeous scenes I threw away in the writing of <i>Hild</i> because, really, she wouldn't <i>do</i> that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And now I'm working on <i>Hild II</i>. Which is more complicated in some ways but which I am determined will be shorter, even though it covers as much narrative time (about fifteen years). In every single scene I aim to cut to the heart: begin as late as humanly possible and end as early as possible—while appearing unhurried.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The false notes I've hit always come when I don't <i>know, </i>when I'm thinking with my fingers instead of coming to the desk with a bone-deep certainty of who, what, where, when, why, how: the smells and sounds, the dreams and disappointments. And, most importantly, where and when to enter. And in this I agree with Oz: readers always hear a false note. If you don't <i>know</i>, they will notice. But if you do know they won't even see the words, only your people, only your place. They will live in the world you built alongside the people you brought to life. It's worth a little work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* For more on this see </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hauser and Reich's, </span><cite style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/notes-on-directing-9780802717085/">Notes on Directing</a>.</cite><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It is very short, and in the form of numbered rules for directing a stage play ("Never, never, never bully actors," "movement will always draw an audience's eye.") The book began as twelve pages of notes handed by Hauser (an English director who has directed the royalty of the stage: Judy Dench, Ian McKellan, Lawrence Olivier) to Reich (at the time an American neophyte) with the murmured words, "You might find these helpful." In addition to being a fascinating window onto a world I'm not familiar with, it is wickedly funny in places, and thought-provoking for anyone whose business is narrative. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What I took away from it has been very useful: if a scene is going wrong, you entered in the wrong place. Too early, too late, or just the wrong scene at the wrong time. Then, of course, you have to figure why...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">** <a href="http://www.fsgworkinprogress.com/2013/11/the-language-of-hild/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Language of </a></span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.fsgworkinprogress.com/2013/11/the-language-of-hild/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hild</a>,</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> an essay for Farrar, Straus and Giroux's <i>Work in Progress</i>. I'm only talking about one aspect of the work in this piece but it's relevant to the discussion at hand.</span></span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-71350306491246154612015-02-05T07:49:00.000-08:002015-02-05T07:49:00.146-08:00Generosity economy, feudalism in Hild, women's agency, and more<blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From: Robert<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Just wanted to email you and let you know that I just finished reading <i>Hild</i> and I absolutely loved it. Just to give credit for the recommendation, I went to an event at Kepler’s in Menlo Park, CA and watched a panel discussion with several science fiction/fantasy authors, and two of them had read <i>Hild</i> and raved about it, so I bought it rather than any of their books. Personally, I blame them - they made your book sound so good, I really didn’t have an option. If they had wanted to sell their own books they should have hyped their own books, rather than yours. One of the panelists said it wasn’t just the best fantasy (if that’s what it is) book they read in 2014, but the best book period, and now that I’ve finished it, I have to agree.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The research you did was evident, but it was immersive rather than intrusive. I also think you did a great job balancing how much and when you explicitly described major plot points and how much you left to the reader to figure out through context and later events. In my experience as a reader that is a difficult balance to achieve, but you handled it perfectly. I also really appreciated getting what seems to me a more accurate and balanced view of the role that women had in feudal (if that’s the right word) society. It is all too common for fantasy authors to pretend that women in those types of societies were oppressed and largely powerless, and so it’s a sign of authenticity when they replicate that oppression and lack of agency in their own worlds. I’ve never agreed with that view. It always struck me, at best, as a lack of imagination and research, and at worst as a justification for their own biases and ignorance. I was really pleased to see that you handled things differently. In a sense you kind of had too, given the subject of the book, but you didn’t have to pick Hild as the subject, and you could have written a bad novel. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’m holding out hope that you will be traveling for some book signings or other events when the sequel is published so I can get my copy signed. It seems like publishers don’t send authors out on traditional book signing tours too much anymore, I guess that’s just one of the many ways the industry has changed, but I do see other kinds of events like the panel discussion I attended at Kepler’s in San Mateo. Borderlands in San Francisco also holds similar events, just in case you were wondering. (Feel free to take that as a polite and hopeful suggestion.) Maybe I will be able to say hi and thanks in person one of these days. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thanks for writing such a compelling novel; I can’t wait to read the sequel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, bless those authors! Art is a precarious existence, sometimes, and what makes it work is mutual generosity--the generosity economy; it sounds as though they were generous. If you feel so inclined I'd love to hear their names so I can thank them in person.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I haven't had much opportunity for that kind of generosity--recommending others' work--lately because I haven't had time to read much fiction. And then, sadly, the fiction I do read is distorted by my focus on <i>Hild II</i>: I'm finding fault with everything. It makes appreciation difficult. For the last year or so my generosity has mostly been geared towards practical help for other writers--joint appearances to boost attendance, sharing behind-the-scenes contacts, advising on cover letters, that sort of thing. My own reading has been largely <i>Hild</i>-related research, and poetry. (Which, unhappily, I also seem to be unable to properly appreciate at the moment. Huh.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some old fiction standbys have helped: listening to <i>Lord of the Rings</i>, reading <i>Watership Down</i> aloud, and spending many happy hours talking about what worked, and why, and how.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, anyway, I'm delighted you liked <i>Hild</i> but, no, <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/p/appearances.html" style="color: #1155cc;">I won't be travelling for a while</a>. However, given that I haven't a clue when Hild II will be out, it's entirely possible I'll be travelling by then. I wrote a recent blog post about <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-goes-into-accepting-or-declining.html" style="color: #1155cc;">what goes into accepting/declining invitations</a>, and how people might best go about it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I wouldn't call Hild's age feudal. As there are more definitions of feudal than you can shake a stick at, I'm not going to parse it too closely. But--if we accept the term at all--it seems to me to be an institution requiring a certain level of literacy, clarity of legal roles and responsibilities, and social stratification--not to mentlon size of the state, and stability at the top. The early seventh century in the north of Britiain fails on all counts. There were groups living under different world views, using different languages, with zero literacy. Might was right: law was the edge of a blade. Kings were ousted with extreme prejudice sometimes on an annual basis. No king of Hild's youth (or none I can think of offhand) died of old age.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That will have started to change by the end of Hild's life. But the operative phrase here is <i>started to</i>... </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Women and agency in fiction. Ah, yes. One day I really will write an essay about this. But today is not that day. Let me just say that it infuriates me when writers treat women as chattel. Women, as I've said a hundred times before, as I've been saying since my very first novel, are human, <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2015/01/were-all-people-first.html" style="color: #1155cc;">we are people first</a> and always have been, in every era.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps it's a conversation we'll continue one day when we meet in person at some bookshop or other when there's another <i>Hild</i> book in the world.</span></div>
Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-23939122282303337832015-02-02T15:37:00.003-08:002015-02-02T15:37:33.303-08:00Hild one of ALA's "Best Reads" of 2014, and Clarkesworld<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Two things.
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The American Library Association has announced its official list of <a href="http://rusa.ala.org/blog/2015/02/01/2015-notable-books-announced-years-best-in-fiction-nonfiction-and-poetry/">Notable Books 2014</a>, selected by the Reading List Council. They picked a winner and four runners up in each category. <i><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/p/hild.html">Hild</a></i> is on the list for Historical Fiction. The winner is <i>Bitter Greens</i> by Kate Forsyth (Thomas Dunne), and the four runners up are:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Flight of the Sparrow</i> by Amy Belding Brown (NAL)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Hild</i> by Nicola Griffith (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Wayfaring Stranger</i> by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress</i> by Ariel Lawhon (Doubleday)
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The whole list is worth looking at; you'll see many names you recognise. And you could do a lot, lot worse than use it as a basis for ordering books from the library or your friendly independent bookseller.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Also "It Takes Two" has been reprinted again, this time in <a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue_101/">Clarkesworld</a>. Go take a look.</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-72263200524369665532015-01-31T09:37:00.001-08:002015-02-02T15:50:22.050-08:00Dog-whistle flap copy<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In politics there are half a hundred phrases meant as rousing calls to action which only the faithful (of whatever stripe) can hear. It's known pejoratively as dog-whistle politics and designed to alert as many voters as possible while offending few. The phrases usually relate hot-button issues of race, religion, and values (often revolutionary and/or regressive, depending on the country). They are designed to trigger Us v. Them attitudes. See, for example, terms such as one of Reagan's favourites, "welfare queens," or homophobic English-speaking politicians harping on about the "mainstream" (that is, straight white people) or, currently in several countries that fear military juntas and/or populist leaders, talk of "corruption" (which means different things depending who's listening). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Books, though, are not politics. The publisher's blurb about a novel, the flap copy and/or back copy, is designed to entice rather than alarm. Sometimes it must attract its desired audience without scaring off, or even alerting, those who might get it banned. And so was born dog-whistle flap-copy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Because flap-copy is all about intriguing potential readers, dog-whistle flap-copy seems to be mostly about sex:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Forbidden love (50s): </i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">lesbian sex. Featuring a cover illustration of two women (a well-lit, anguished-looking blonde, and a brunette with very red lips lingering seductively in the shadow). Sometimes the women were referred to as leading </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">twilight lives</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Forbidden love (60s and 70s)</i>: interracial sex. Paired with a picture of a Tara-like antebellum house.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Forbidden love</i> (lately): interspecies sex (paranormal: vampires and werewolves, etc.) or star-crossed lovers from different clans/cultures (the classic is <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>;<i> </i>lately, a woman from a strict religious culture meeting a man from another—usually but not always—that's more liberal.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Unexplored pathways of love</i>: anal sex between straight people.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Dark desires</i>: BDSM.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Singular erotic taste</i>: general kink.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And half a hundred more; have fun making your own lists. But I'm drawing a blank when it comes to dog-whistle flap-copy for novels* about anything other than sex. Anyone?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course, all this refers to paper books. I suspect ebooks can be much more straightforward because specialist presses have excellent niche marketing, so finely focused on their audience that few outside that audience know about it. Also, they don't see these books "flaunting" themselves on the shelves and so are not "provoked" by them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But I'd love to hear others' thoughts on this.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">* I suspect non-fiction, especially the crackpot variety, is rife with non-sexual dog-whistlery.</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-53554087640165724432015-01-29T07:48:00.000-08:002015-01-29T07:48:00.044-08:00The ending of Hild: not a romance<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>* This post contains spoilers for <i>Hild</i> and <i>Hild II</i> *</b></div>
<blockquote>
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From: Diane<br />
<br />
My book club just had a discussion about <i><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/p/hild.html">Hild</a></i>. It was a lively exchange. I enjoyed the book very much, but several of us had issues with the ending. Our question is why do you have Hild and Cian end up together? It seemed like throughout the book Hild (and everyone else except Cian) knew or guessed that they were half siblings and of the clear taboo that this posed. We didn't want to see the book ending on a typical romantic novel story arc. </blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It might seem like a romantic ending but it isn't. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">It was a selfish move on the part of Edwin, Paulinus, Æthelburh, and Breguswith—a move Hild had to accept. It's also the springboard into the next part of the story.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">What follows contains spoilers for the beginning of Book II so skip everything between the lines if that's something you want to avoid.</span><br />
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Hild knows that the Yffing dynasty—certainly Edwin—will fall soon. Given that 'fall' in the 7th C means 'die horribly', she's looking for a way to keep herself and her loved ones safe. Being married to Cian does that.<br />
<ul>
<li>It keeps Cian safe because:<br />
(a) He's no longer regarded as a contender for the throne—he's now officially Ceredig's son, not Hereric's, and therefore not an Yffing and therefore not a rival to any dynasty.<br />
(b) If he's no longer Edwin's chief gesith, he's much less likely to die in any upcoming battle.</li>
<li>It keeps Hild safe, because she's no longer the seer, no longer linked the king as his political advisor, she's a wife</li>
<li>If Hild is safe, her gemæcce is safe.</li>
</ul>
And that doesn't include all the people of Elmet whom Hild frankly thinks she can protect better than anyone else. Bottom line, though: she has no choice.</div>
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Also, I wanted to create a serious break with Hild's previous way of life. She has to change; this is one way to do it. But don't imagine she's going to live a long, peaceful life as Mrs. Boldcloak. For one thing, Mr Boldcloak, wilfully ignorant in Book I, can't remain remain so forever—and he's not going to be happy when he finds he's been lied to. And, y'know, the 7th C is a bloody and dangerous place. Plus, well, Hild is Hild; she's not the stay-at-home type.</div>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">
Rest assured there's much change ahead. The arc of Book I is a small part of the whole, and the ending is a tiny part of that. So I hope you stick with it through the remaining two books. It's going to get interesting...</div>
Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-6586931355521033772015-01-27T10:45:00.000-08:002015-01-28T10:19:59.444-08:00Want to be a character in HILD II?<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I said yesterday, I'm going to be <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2015/01/readercon-2015-july-9-12.html">Guest of Honour at this year's Readercon</a>, July 9-12, Burlington MA. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you donate $250 to the <a href="http://books.thoughtstream.com/?p=16">Readercon Indiegogo campaign</a> to raise money for a convention sound system, I will use the name of your choice (yours or someone else who has given permission) as a character in my next published fiction. If you're willing to wait a while, that will be <i><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2014/12/hild-ii-and-iii.html">Menewood</a> </i>(the working title of Hild II). Otherwise probably the character will appear in a novella I'm thinking about.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There's only one, and this will be the last time I offer this particular perk for any cause, no matter how worthy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>ETA</b>: My wee offering is taken. But go <a href="http://books.thoughtstream.com/?p=16">get something else</a>: a manuscript critique, a monster, a mug...</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-1506437499509893542015-01-26T07:22:00.000-08:002015-01-26T16:00:36.181-08:00Readercon 2015, July 9-12<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you're wondering what to do July 9-12, wonder no more. Come to <a href="http://www.readercon.org/index.htm">Readercon</a> in Burlington, Massachusetts. I'll be the Guest of Honour, along with the fabulous <a href="http://sites.roosevelt.edu/gwolfe/">Gary Wolfe</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Russ">Joanna Russ</a> is the Memorial GoH. Seriously, you should come. It's <a href="http://readercon.org/registration.htm">$60 to register</a> for four days and four nights of incomparable social and intellectual brilliance.<br /><br />What is Readercon?</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Readercon is an annual conference or convention devoted to "imaginative literature" — literary science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the unclassifiable works often called "slipstream." </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A typical Readercon features over 150 writers, editors, publishers, and critics, attracting prominent figures from across the U.S., and from Canada, the U.K., and occasionally even Australia and Japan. They are joined by some 600 of their most passionate and articulate readers for a long weekend of intense conversation. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Readercon is the only convention ever to be honored by a World Fantasy Award nomination (Special Award, Non-Professional, 2010) for its organizers.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gary and I both like to take the written word apart and look at it. We do it from slightly different perspectives—he's primarily a critic, I'm primarily a novelist—but have many overlapping interests. And we both like to hang out in the bar...<br /><br />From this point I'm going to stick to my own point-of-view because frankly it's tacky to speak on someone else's behalf—but I wouldn't be surprised if much of what I'm about to say applies to Gary, too.<br /><br />One of the things I want to do—and to encourage others towards—is to is approach the convention from the stance of radical hospitality. I talked about this on a post about <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2013/07/westercon-wild-and-wonderful-big-tent.html">my most recent GoH experience</a>, but here's the gist: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">What's important to me is that people transform the approach to accessibility, accommodation, pluralism and welcoming that is frequently standard: "If you need something, just ask." While that approach is meant to be inclusive and affirming it often ends up putting the onus of arranging accessibility and educating hosts/venues on the marginalized or newcomers. Worse, I sometimes see it used as a justification for what is clearly just bad planning: "We didn't make our panel rooms accessible because no one asked." Or "We don't have a harassment policy because no one has ever reported harassment."</span><br style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">For me, radical hospitality is about making welcoming the norm, not an exception that must be requested. </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">— </span><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2013/07/westercon-wild-and-wonderful-big-tent.html?showComment=1373592788048#c5386234358806096054">Leigh Anne Hildebrand</a></span></blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Making welcoming the norm. Yes. To me this means to anticipate the needs of others and provide for them. In advance. Obviously we can't anticipate everything but we should do our best to put ourselves in others' shoes. In other words, don't make anyone ask for help; make sure there's already chair at the table, in every sense. Basically, not only <i>Don't be a dick</i> but be actively kind. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So to take one example dear to my heart, physical ability: if you see someone looking tired ask if they need a chair—or anything else (a glass of water? a fan? a quiet room?)—and make sure you find one. Even better, make sure there are plenty of chairs (and water) there already. Make sure the bathrooms are accessible. Make sure there are handrails on the steps to the dais or the ramp. Really go there. Imagine what people will need and then provide it, beforehand and on the spot. Make everyone feel equally welcome.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />This applies to sex, gender presentation, race, orientation, physical ability, religion, diet and half a hundred things I haven't listed here. Making welcome the norm applies as much to informal events as programming: if someone looks like a newcomer, talk to them. (Do make sure they <i>want</i> you to talk to them. If in doubt, ask. And heed their response.)</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />So: radical hospitality, my phrase of the convention.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But Readercon is not <i>about</i> radical hospitality, it's about li</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">terary fantastic fiction. It is about the story, the craft, the criticism, the business, the community, the ideas, and the people of the genre. It will be about discovering new stories and ways to tell the old ones to old friends and new. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Also, if Kelley has anything to do with it, it will be about dancing. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Kelley is a big fan of dancing. You could say </span><a href="http://kelleyeskridge.com/my-new-job/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">she's a professional</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. So if you fancy shaking it in July with friends of like mind, well, you know what to do. (We can't guarantee the dance, but we're agitating for it.) </span><a href="http://readercon.org/registration.htm" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Register here</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. It will be a blast!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>ETA</b>: Also, <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/readercon-sound">Readercon are running an Indiegogo campaign</a> to raise money for better sound. Better sound = better experience. Go give them something!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>ETA2</b>: And I'm going to donate something, a Tuckerization perhaps. Stay tuned.</span><br />
<br /></div>
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Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-77056813710572118442015-01-23T15:05:00.002-08:002015-01-23T15:05:15.328-08:00Search for Meaning Festival, Seattle University, Saturday Feb 28, 1 pm<center>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you're in or near Seattle at the end of next month you might want to hear me talk at <a href="http://www.seattleu.edu/">Seattle University</a>'s <a href="http://www.seattleu.edu/searchformeaning/">Search For Meaning Festival</a> about how Hild changed the world. <a href="https://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1656840">Tickets</a> are $10. Details below.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> </span><b>NICOLA GRIFFITH </b></div>
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<i>"Hild: The Woman Who Changed the World 1400 Years Ago" </i></div>
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</div>
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<b>Location: Pigott 103 </b></div>
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<b>Time: 1:00pm-2:00pm </b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<span class="s2"><u>Description of Presentation</u>:</span></div>
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<span class="s2"></span>Hild, born 1400 years ago, in what used to be called the Dark Ages, changed history. She is now known as St Hilda of Whitby. In a time when kings were petty warlords and might was right, how did she make such a difference? By being exactly herself. Extraordinary, yes, but very, very human. Because women have always been, above all, human beings: people. Even so long ago... </div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="s2"><u>Biography</u>: </span></div>
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Nicola Griffith is an English novelist (now dual UK/US citizen) living in Seattle. She is the author of six novels, most recently <i>Hild</i>, and a multi-media memoir. She is the co-editor of the <i>Bending the Landscape</i> series of original queer f/sf/h stories. Her shorter work has appeared in venues ranging from NPR and <i>New Scientist</i> to BBC Radio 4 and <i>Nature</i>. Until her diagnosis with MS, she taught women’s self-defense (for groups as varied as the Union of Catholic Mothers and the Equal Opportunities Unit in the UK, and the Girl Scouts in the US) but then switched her attention to writing. She now teaches workshops for writers, focused mostly on creative writing but occasionally more practical issues such as live performance and social media best practices.</div>
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Her work has won two dozen awards (national, international, and regional), been shortlisted for many more, and translated in a dozen languages. She is married to writer Kelley Eskridge. They co-founded Sterling Editing and now live in Broadview. Although these days mostly lost in the 7th century, working on the second novel about Hild of Whitby, she emerges to drink just the right amount of beer and take enormous delight in everything.Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-75244239598317526372015-01-22T10:59:00.002-08:002015-01-22T10:59:34.472-08:00What goes into accepting or declining invitations<blockquote>
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From: Wendy<br />
<br />
Forgive my ignorance on such matters, but with all these appearances and interviews, are they required by your publisher? I'm also sure they are fun to do, but are you allowed to pick and choose and then finally just say "Hey, I need to go home and write."</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Short answer: I get to choose, to a degree. I get to refuse but I don't always get to initiate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Longer answer: it's a multi-level conversation. First of all, in terms of travel, I ask myself: </span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Does my schedule permit?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Do I like the city? This makes a big difference: the kind of food, and hotels, and general stance to the world. The weather is significant: if I'm doing a multi-centre gig, then some conditions can make life impossible. Ice, for example (crutches and icy pavement do not mix) or extreme heat (MS and heat really don't mix). However, a conference or convention in a decent, large hotel or resort is fine in almost any weather, because if it's vile outside I can stay inside and use the facility's bars and restaurants and room service.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Do I like the </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">university, bookshop, or library that's invited me? This in itself is a nuanced conversation. Has the bookshop sold a lot of my books in the past? Do they consistently move my backlist? Have they done me favours? Do I just plain <i>like</i> the people there? Do they have any media reach, i.e. can they publicise the event effectively? And—vital—is it accessible?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Will the time/energy expenditure be worth the goodwill/sales? This is always a tricky one, with many variables.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then I ask Kelley (because she travels with me):</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Pretty much all the above questions, though the emphasis and concerns are not identical. </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then, if the publisher will be paying*, I ask them:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In terms of previous, continuing, and projected sales, is it worth it for the to spend the time/staff hours and money getting me to a particular venue?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If not, is keeping the author happy worth the time and expense?</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All the answers go into the mix. Mostly, sadly, the answer is No.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If I had all the money and energy on the planet I'd go to a lot more places. I have many readers, and in a perfect world I'd get to meet most of them. I love reading from and talking about my work, and I learn a vast great deal from listening to readers' response to it. But travel and work and MS present competing priorities. I have to make choices. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So if you're set on inviting me somewhere, ask early (what I need is <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/p/appearances.html">here</a>). Talk to both me and the publisher. Be prepared to be specific: How many readers can you bring? And how? (</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What kind of publicity/media reach do you have, and how many people will encounter your promos? It's good to be super-specific here: show? posters? newsletter? paid advert? social media promo?)</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How many books do you think you could sell—at the event and over the next month or two? And, if it's a teaching gig, or you represent a for-profit event series, what's my fee?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For interviews, some of the same considerations go into the mix: How long will it take? How many will it reach? What format is it?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bear in mind that I'm a lot more generous when I've just finished a stage in the publication process: first draft, or rewrite, or copyedit. I'm freer, I have more energy, I generally not yet engaged on the next thing. Right now I am not free but hope towards the end of the year I might be.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* For tour-type stuff, the publisher pays. For university things, it's generally the institution. For genre conventions, it depends—if I'm GoH, they pay; if it coincides with a book release, the publisher pays; if it's just to party and/or show up at an awards ceremony, we pay for ourselves.</span></span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-30204447369138706992015-01-20T07:34:00.000-08:002015-01-21T16:08:40.951-08:00The long tail: not the author's friend<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioJt300o1A6sf11RN7MBFR-WdOyuMaS0o3zXWx9RGANCHFoVims5mcSx4pHv8zc4MSnulqIspLyz64YnAFb3F0FFaS-xOihgVTUpuU-zCwVCLANAx6rQ_IBzesCKe5aBIxX3pb2Zg-vrw0/s1600/330px-Long_tail.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioJt300o1A6sf11RN7MBFR-WdOyuMaS0o3zXWx9RGANCHFoVims5mcSx4pHv8zc4MSnulqIspLyz64YnAFb3F0FFaS-xOihgVTUpuU-zCwVCLANAx6rQ_IBzesCKe5aBIxX3pb2Zg-vrw0/s1600/330px-Long_tail.svg.png" height="207" width="400" /></a></div>
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Picture by <a href="http://www.haykranen.nl/">Hay Kranen</a>/ PD. </div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24.6399993896484px;">The long tail is that of the demand curve of products versus sales. The best-sellers are all at one end, but as we move to the other sales drop off in a long slow curve that never quite hits zero. Traditional retailers draw a line only part-way along this curve, because slow-moving items return less profit than the cost of stocking them. But online retailers backed by huge warehouses and fast stock deliveries can easily afford to keep them permanently available. Helped by clever search engines that can suggest possibilities for customers with special interests, these niche items suddenly become profitable. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24.6399993896484px;">(</span><a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-lon1.htm" style="line-height: 24.6399993896484px;">World Wide Words</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24.6399993896484px;">)</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Chris Anderson popularised the concept of the long tail in his 2004 <i>Wired</i> article, <a href="http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html">The Long Tail</a>. He was talking mainly about cultural products—books and music—and he believed that digital supply and demand would turn the retail landscape upside down.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Almost ten years on, it's clear that the metamorphosis does not help writers much. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(ETA: By 'writers' I mean those who write fiction, novelists in particular.)</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For sellers, Anderson's theory works. With digital products, words or music, it doesn't matter to retailer or a publisher whether a million writers sell one novel or song each, or if one writers sells a million. With no cost (or very little) to store and ship the story or song, the aggregator makes money. Lots of money. They aggregate the payments on an essentially limitless supply of product and walk off with a goodly chunk of change.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For consumers, it works. Imagine you live in a neighbourhood of Denver where there's no book or music store. If you're okay with reading or listening digitally you have millions or perhaps tens of millions of products to choose from, to suit any mood, mode, or model. And those products—that album, that book—are as pristine today as they were when they were first available. One keyword search and, boom, you've got what you need. You listen to a song in five minutes or gobble an ebook in four hours. You find another. There's an essentially limitless supply to meet your almost endless demand—almost endless demand for music, that is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A music consumer can listen almost anywhere, almost anytime. She multi-tasks: listens to music while she drives to work, or has sex, or washes the dishes, or reads email. I'm guessing some people listen to music 18 hours a day. However, while I can imagine (if I must) a reader who can drive or have sex or wash the dishes while reading, I'm guessing if they're doing both at the same time, they're doing neither well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For creators—especially writers*—it's different again. If you live in that neighbourhood of Denver and have spent a year writing a novel that sells only 3,000 copies, you can't survive on the proceeds. Readers might be able to discover and buy your novel for the next fifty years but it won't do you much good. Why? Because your book will be competing with an ever-expanding numbers of blockbusters—new ones, every week, with decent-to-massive publicity budgets. Reader hours are not a limitless resource. The limiting factor is time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every day we feel as though there's less time to read, even for those of us who love books. We are easily distracted: That lyric, that conversation, that TV show, that article snags our attention. And because skimming an article or vegging out in front of the screen demands less attention, less energy, less focus, we take the path of least resistance; the book lies unread. And next time we want a book to read, we'll pick up the novel we just saw reviewed, or heard/saw talked about; we won't try recall the title of that other book we <i>were</i> interested in.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In other words, for books, supply overwhelms demand. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The long tail works in favour of publishers and retailers but not writers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On balance, I think publishers make a greater percentage on sales of digital books than on hardcover books**. No returns, no shipping, no cost of production after initial costs—which are only a small add-on to the fixed costs of the print development: plant, overhead (editorial and design), marketing, and so on. Writers make less—about half on a digital sale of what they get on hardcover.</span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">***</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> So the long tail works brilliantly for publishers that have an enormous back list and for online retailers with listings for millions of individual items. It does not help authors.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The long tail will always work for retailers. It will continue to work for publishers—for a while. But publishers need a supply of fresh product in addition to their long tail income and if authors are dying of starvation, that supply line will fail.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My conclusion? It's time for the author to get a higher royalty rate for ebooks. Both online retailers and publishers who rely on the long tail can afford it. For starters, I'm thinking 40% of net...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">* Musicians at most levels can derive income from ancillary products—t-shirts, posters—and performance. Writers rely on the writing itself—except mega-authors who can earn (comparatively) low appearance fees.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">** It's hard to be sure because retailer and wholesaler terms are a moving target. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>***ETA</b>: I don't know what terms my US publisher has with each retailer and my royalty statement doesn't list royalty per unit for ebooks. So I divided Net Earnings by Net Units and came up with $2.32. That comes to about 57% of what I earn on hardcovers.</span></div>
Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-28340188392135881522015-01-19T10:15:00.002-08:002015-01-19T10:15:34.229-08:00The Year's Best SF and F<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jonathan Strahan has released the table of contents for his upcoming <i>The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Vol 9</i>, to be published by Solaris in May. It looks like a big book: 28 stories, including "Cold Wind." Over 200,000 words. The full table of contents is <a href="http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/2015/01/15/the-best-science-fiction-and-fantasy-of-the-year-vol-9-toc-revealed/">here</a>. I'm guessing it will be worth $16 or whatever the list price ends up being.</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-26324176004526932332015-01-17T10:24:00.001-08:002015-01-17T10:24:22.507-08:00National marriage equality<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So. The Supreme Court will hear four same-sex marriage appeal cases in (probably) April and issue their ruling in (most likely) late June*. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The situation right now: same-sex marriage is legal in 36 states and the District of Columbia—in total, home to about 70% of the US population. The federal government supports immigration, tax, healthcare, and pensions for same-sex spouses. Most federal appeals courts have struck down bans on same-sex marriage, deciding that the <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">14th Amendment</a> requires states to recognise same-sex marriage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However, in November the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals (a federal court that covers four states, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee) decided that Amendment 14 does <i>not</i> require states to recognise—either in terms of issuing licences and recognising licences issued in other states—the marriage of same-sex couples. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's pretty clear you can't have a nation state whose courts interpret its constitution so differently on such a vital issue. So the Supreme Court will have to decide which interpretation should apply to the whole country moving forward. They've agreed to hear appeals from all four states affected by the 6th Circuit's decision.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is one of those history-making decisions. Chief Justice Roberts would, I suspect, I hate to be on the wrong side of history—and given the speed of change in the last couple of years it's clear which way history is going. So he'll vote for the national legalisation of same-sex marriage. So, of course, will the four traditionally liberal justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor. Justice Kennedy is a big fan of states rights but on this one I think he'll opt for human dignity and vote with the majority. Thomas and Alito will not. Scalia... Well, I don't know to be honest. He might. He just might. It's possible we could end up with 7-2 which would make me very happy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It would also make the Republican Party very happy. Most of them know same-sex marriage is not a vote-winning issue. A Supreme Court decision for marriage equality would render the radical conservative wing's agitations moot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In my opinion, there's only one way for this to go. Prepare to party.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* Their term ends at the end of June. <span style="font-size: x-small;">SCOTUS</span> likes reserving their big ticket items for the end. As when they announced the decision that struck down <span style="font-size: x-small;">DOMA</span> and so legalised marriage in many states—on the <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2013/06/then-and-now-i-met-and-fell-in-love.html">25th anniversary of the day Kelley and I met</a>. </span></i></div>
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Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-89484802536021859012015-01-15T08:29:00.003-08:002015-01-15T08:29:44.424-08:00Bookscan numbers vs. real world<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEOlc-9C2EK4HHotDAtc5aYklW4sWWV0lRj7Wgpkm4ZyjH9ORItI3mwvgHTlYMu9uwienVWEcICuKMFR69pFs635Lb0GhTkL1_PuEedQbW2tOA90Q6Dp0DTOdkLvLPNO0wTw1HjGatYjY1/s1600/nielsen_logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEOlc-9C2EK4HHotDAtc5aYklW4sWWV0lRj7Wgpkm4ZyjH9ORItI3mwvgHTlYMu9uwienVWEcICuKMFR69pFs635Lb0GhTkL1_PuEedQbW2tOA90Q6Dp0DTOdkLvLPNO0wTw1HjGatYjY1/s1600/nielsen_logo.png" height="160" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nielsen </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_BookScan" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bookscan</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">numbers are not always a good indicator of real-world sales.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The other day my paperback publisher told me they'd sold a total of <i>n</i> copies of <i><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/p/hild.html">Hild</a></i>. On the other hand, for the same period Bookscan </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">shows sales of 0.6 <i>n</i>. I have less exact figures for the hardcover but I think they're roughly comparable. This surprised me because reports I've seen indicate Bookscan captures 75-80% of points-of-sale.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you factor in digital sales, which Bookscan doesn't report*, then the figure reflects less than half my market. I knew that </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hild</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> was doing well via channels that often don't report to Bookscan (smaller independents mostly) but, still, I was surprised.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In a year or so, when the final print and digital picture is clear to me, I'll revisit this, complete with pretty graphs. For now here's my back-of-the-envelope estimate: for <i>Hild,</i> Bookscan gets 46.5% of real-world sales.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">* I'm sure it would love to, but Amazon owns a big chunk of the market (65% in the US and far more in the UK) and it won't share that data.</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-5054933634274674312015-01-13T12:00:00.001-08:002015-01-13T12:00:34.364-08:00Right now: No<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We are only 13 days into 2015 and emails are pouring in asking me for things and the pace seems to be picking up. (Well over a dozen; three just this morning.) This is a post I can link to to save myself many emails in which I regretfully say no.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, plainly: <b>Right now, no</b>. No, I will not read your book with a view to blurbing it or introducing it or appearing with you when you come through town on your book tour. I will not join your organisation, judge your competition, or blog about your cause, no matter how worthy. I will not signal boost your initiative or organisation, despite it's urgency or importance. I cannot come to your school or book club or library. I am sorry for it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I recognise that there are many people out there I could help, that I would like to help, especially those who are climbing uphill—women, people of colour, quiltbag folk, people with MS. It turns out that readers in many different rooms might recognise my name and that has some value. So I am lucky, I understand that. But still, no.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have helped. I do help. I will help again. But right now I'm taking a break.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am focused on <i>Hild II</i>. I will allow nothing to get in my way. Over the last year I've spent so long <i>talking</i> about my work that I'm a bit out of practise at <i>doing</i> it. Even something that seems simple—responding to a request by email—pulls me out of the seventh-century long enough that it takes hours to get back. So, no, <b>right now I will not help</b>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How long will this state of affairs last? I don't know. A few months.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But as I've said, I am not averse to helping, generally-speaking, so here are my criteria for </span><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/p/appearances.html" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">travel requests</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/p/criteria-for-book-blurb.html" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">book blurbs</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. I'll put together something addressing other requests another time. Right now the seventh-century beckons...</span><br />
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<br />Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-5724242102327872862015-01-11T12:07:00.000-08:002015-01-11T12:07:00.394-08:00Map of Hild's journeys?<blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5UnTDIUciEg33HHBqUJVshqtytVruVP_3xz7A-3yUhmnKzofZKO_pBjDvg1fGVraUf_Iw52FiPAMhDdndkfClmdyBjI2TI62QXjI0369puKzYz8ylWuOPHXLU1ygcBia2nVzqggUsKOgC/s1600/question.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5UnTDIUciEg33HHBqUJVshqtytVruVP_3xz7A-3yUhmnKzofZKO_pBjDvg1fGVraUf_Iw52FiPAMhDdndkfClmdyBjI2TI62QXjI0369puKzYz8ylWuOPHXLU1ygcBia2nVzqggUsKOgC/s1600/question.gif" /></a></div>
From: Jean<br />
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I heard you speak at Elliott Bay. Bought <i>Hild</i> and have been gone "back to Yorkshire" while reading it. I am the family historian for my extended Penrose family. Yes, we are Yorkshire Penroses from small places such as Skipwith, Foxholes, Langtoft, Burton Agnes, Huntington, Bainton, Hutton Cranswick. I have good documentation from 1731 to 1830s when the landless sons of Foxholes butcher decided to emigrate to America. <br />
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Over past 45 years I've traveled to these small Yorks places, and always launched myself by bus, train or car from York, Leeds, Beverley, Hull, Scarborough, Filey. Whitby I have a memory of climbing from waterfront of a town on the east coast up to an abbey ruin. I think.<br />
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All this is to say that I kept my Ordnance Survey maps of Yorks in my chair as I read <i>Hild</i>. Was forever matching place names in the book with those on your map in the book and with the Ordnance maps. <br />
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I wonder if you or any of your readers have ever created a map of the route journeys made by Hild. I keep wondering, where is Menewood? What would it be near today? Would a Yorkshire reader be better able to identify specific wolds, valleys, monuments while reading <i>Hild</i>?<br />
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I am now using Seattle Public Library and internet sources to get better informed about Bede, Celtic vs Roman religion, and so many more subjects. My pagan/Unitarian/Universalist spirituality has always urged me to learn and experience feminist spirituality and sources.<br />
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Thanks for writing <i>Hild</i>.</blockquote>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Menewood is real: Meanwood Valley, in Leeds. Specifically, the bits I describe are absolutely real. If you visit Meanwood Park you might recognise things here and there. Caer Loid is, in my imagination, the site of Kirkstall Abbey, also in Leeds. I'm deeply familiar with both places and for the book imagined how they might have looked 1400 years ago... You might enjoy </span><a href="http://gemaecca.blogspot.com/2012/05/where-hild-walked.html" style="color: #1155cc; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">this post</a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> I did a while ago on my research blog, which includes these two photos I took on one of my recent trips to the UK: Kirkstall Abbey/Caer Loid and Menewood Beck/Meanwood Park in February 2013.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caer Loid, and ducks on the Aire</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_o4r6FWfFYQxeR7BCsHraMHU2vSjNTMh9RIvxNny-ENYc5kdAtYSYTLU6uAaeZaM1B-c7zNARe5DaLzTpS15sx5dnv2H-7syhNB7w5HlwpAea0nCJWWk-QTOB6iSSOwxdqCOx8owUnkgl/s1600/menewoodbeck_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_o4r6FWfFYQxeR7BCsHraMHU2vSjNTMh9RIvxNny-ENYc5kdAtYSYTLU6uAaeZaM1B-c7zNARe5DaLzTpS15sx5dnv2H-7syhNB7w5HlwpAea0nCJWWk-QTOB6iSSOwxdqCOx8owUnkgl/s1600/menewoodbeck_crop.jpg" height="227" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Menewood beck</td></tr>
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Some valleys, rivers, folds, cliffs etc in the book will be instantly recognisable to natives. But some might not; so much has changed. (In the first photo, for example, I had to edit out signs of the 21st century, and both depict nature that's entirely too tidy for Hild's time.) But I tried to make sure that the flora and fauna, the weather, the kinds of dirt and rock, are plausibly those that might have been there. Every now and again I fudge a bit (I need Hild to be able to climb a substantial tree at the age of seven, say, and the trees that definitely would have been there would be impossible, so I import a less likely candidate--not impossible, just less likely), or make a mistake (sigh). But I've done my level best to keep things as real as possible.</div>
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But no, no one has created a map of Hild's journeys. I'd love to see it, if anyone did.</div>
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One more thing. You might be interested in Seattle University's <a href="http://www.seattleu.edu/searchformeaning/" style="color: #1155cc;">Search for Meaning Book Festival</a>, Saturday February 28. It runs all day but I'll be talking about <i>Hild</i> at 1 pm.</div>
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Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-87039591877059074912015-01-09T12:47:00.001-08:002015-01-10T14:58:42.690-08:00Colder Wind<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_0UC4mZIgFGZ8DgcHy7GruZvrptn6MdmL6QL5H0gncH2sllTl2fUlx8WvaZG1eVvw5AInrsU2WaTA4AJk3AGy7v3fkYa1kWObJrV9ihWCtV_XMHy_hDyd73pAl82E7Yqr22cbiN5INUDV/s1600/WylieBeckert-coldwind.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_0UC4mZIgFGZ8DgcHy7GruZvrptn6MdmL6QL5H0gncH2sllTl2fUlx8WvaZG1eVvw5AInrsU2WaTA4AJk3AGy7v3fkYa1kWObJrV9ihWCtV_XMHy_hDyd73pAl82E7Yqr22cbiN5INUDV/s1600/WylieBeckert-coldwind.jpg" height="307" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"<a href="http://the-artorder-store.myshopify.com/products/colder_wind-limited-edition-wylie-beckert">Colder Wind</a>" by Wylie Beckert.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A few months ago I did a post about <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2014/06/all-different-art-of-cold-wind.html">all the different art of "Cold Wind</a>," my short story about snow, and sex, and shape-changing. It was full of pictures of the various pieces that inspired it—a print of Terri Windling's Deer Woman; Riva Lehrer's marvellous multi-media, multi-dimensional portrait of me as a snow leopard; Hedningarna's haunting "Viima"*—and my discovery of some art, by Rovina Cai, inspired by it. All art, I concluded, influences all other art.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And then yesterday I got a message from the inestimable Henry Lien, the new art director of <i>Lightspeed Magazine</i>, wondering if I'd seen the long and interesting process post on <a href="http://www.wyliebeckert.com/process.php?show=process-colderwind">how Wylie Beckert put together <i>Colder Wind</i></a>, her illustration based on my story.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's radically different in mood and tone from <a href="http://www.rovinacai.com/portfolio/cold-wind/">Rovina's piece</a>, though it's interesting that both use flowing/floating clothing accessories to add interest and fill space, quite unlike Sam Worthington's original illustration for Tor. I loved seeing <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/p/these-first-two-are-pictures-of-hild-by.html">different artists' take on <i>Hild</i></a>, too (there's more I haven't got around to posting). It tells me so much about the different approaches readers must take to a text.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm curious, though, about which of the three pieces—Sam Wolfe Connelly's <a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/04/cold-wind-nicola-griffith">cover illustration</a>, Wylie Beckert's painting (above), <a href="http://www.rovinacai.com/portfolio/cold-wind/">Rovina Cai's interpretation</a>—comes closest to matching the pictures "Cold Wind" put in your head (if it did). Or which you think enhances the story in some way. I'd love to hear your thoughts, any thoughts on the subject, really.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">* I played that song on repeat for hours and find it has snuck into the playlist for <i>Menewood</i>...</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-55102408129689221342015-01-08T10:45:00.001-08:002015-01-08T10:45:36.627-08:00We're all people first<blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRBhFdbV5XhDbBGVOG94IuKGfbEJ8qP8m0t6qPYteFWt0Jq3LhZkTWiQh1Rt6Jqo1WXR-2G0QZHIOFCQ3kgKgKmrZkSRAI48DmxyrTNxBjZs2Z8R4SDnVm1sUpSHR4Pm6bmbzTAmEeLFlw/s1600/question.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRBhFdbV5XhDbBGVOG94IuKGfbEJ8qP8m0t6qPYteFWt0Jq3LhZkTWiQh1Rt6Jqo1WXR-2G0QZHIOFCQ3kgKgKmrZkSRAI48DmxyrTNxBjZs2Z8R4SDnVm1sUpSHR4Pm6bmbzTAmEeLFlw/s1600/question.gif" /></a></div>
From: Kelly<br />
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I enjoyed the reading you did in DC. I loved reading <i>Hild</i> and was happy to hear you talk about it. <br />
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What I'd also hoped to say in some way was just how much your books mean to me. But I'm dysfunctionally shy on a good day, so I'm generally incapable of normal conversation with, well, anybody. So I'll write it instead -- your books were the first I ever read with strong lesbian characters who were portrayed as unashamed and (is this the right word?) normal. Not victims or sad freaks. I came out a few years ago in my late 20s and struggled with it. Reading your books was life-changing because they offered an alternative to the way I thought I was confined to be. They helped me through the process in a way. If that makes any sense. So for what it's worth, thank you. Thank you for not writing gloomy women who sit around sewing all day, hating themselves, and getting the shit kicked out of them by men. <br />
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I look forward to the sequels to <i>Hild</i>. And I love Kelley's writing as well. Can't wait to see the movie version of <i>Solitaire</i>. I feel like I hit the jackpot when I discovered your writing and Kelley's.</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Women loving whoever they want is a huge part of my work. Actually, women being who they are—in whatever way—is part of my fundamental approach to the world. We are people. It's that simple. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Long ago, today, and in the future people, groups and individuals, have been, are, and will be constrained by the rules of society. Rich or poor, male or female, person of colour or white, young or old, differently abled or not, we're all constrained. Constrained differently, and to different degrees. And it's the degree that matters. A slave is going to be subject to an utterly different level of constraint than a member of the elite of any sex, race, ability, and so on. In this case it's the slavery that has the most profound impact, not the sex or sexual orientation or gender presentation. But slaves—and to be clear here I'm talking about the institution from a long historical perspective, not just the iteration of it that made millions of lives in the US so terrible for so long—were and are people. And people will always find a way around some constraints because that what we do. It's what we've always done. We find a way. If you squint, you could say that's what <i>Hild</i> is about.</span><br />
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I got tired a very long time ago of women, and lesbians, being seen as Other. Not fully human. Not human <i>first</i>. Have we always been regarded this way? I doubt it. Will it always be this way? No. As I've said before, <a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2014/06/wife_23.html">I think it's changing</a>. And that's what I write towards.<br />
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In our house we have a saying: Act as if. In other words, behave as though the world is treating you with the respect you deserve. I can't speak to the experience of others but from my perspective as a white woman of a certain age*, it almost always works. This means assuming good intent, and not feeling and so behaving as though you're on the defensive. I've always behaved this way, always assumed I'm a human first and deserve treatment as such, and often those around me respond to that. Obviously, there are times when it would be ridiculous, even dangerous, to assume good intent, and situations where it's impossible. Generally speaking, though, it works surprisingly well.<br />
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As I say, I write from that position. I write towards a day when we are only seen as other because of something we choose: team colours, if you like. Team colours we can change anytime we want. Today you're Red and I'm Blue; tomorrow we swap shirts. If my writing has a purpose beyond the fact that I love telling stories, love earning my living by making shit up, it's that I write towards people being people first. In that sense, as I've said before**, I write to change the world.</div>
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And regarding <i>Solitaire</i> as a film, well, stay tuned...<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">* But I have, of course, been other ages. My gender presentation is...eccentric. I've been very physically fit and now am a cripple. I've been—to some degree am—both a foreigner with a funny accent and a native. I'm a dyke. A woman. I've been all over the map economically—from years of grinding poverty to a few years of delicious bounty—but grew up lower middle-class in a family that could (almost) always afford rent and clothes and food but not going out to eat and not great clothes.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">** I couldn't find the post I was looking for but I found my response to the question, "<a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2010/11/can-queer-authors-write-straight.html">Can queer authors write straight characters</a>?" I'd completely forgotten about this. It says everything I've said here, but from a slightly different perspective.</span></div>
Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-38392692965346423582015-01-07T10:00:00.001-08:002015-01-07T10:00:36.086-08:00Songs in HILD<blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOm3Y7el2F0M1k5qtmWikkhg0NT-S7pmC8qrySah7QhbFsbie6xMSHFRj1pa7tE1UZixU9W8rM2_d0d0TgFGVxwOj2eaJLRYXITQEBsUyRm2cJQMaLHRX-J4E2OiVEpucE-E5lFiJ0h8eX/s1600/question.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOm3Y7el2F0M1k5qtmWikkhg0NT-S7pmC8qrySah7QhbFsbie6xMSHFRj1pa7tE1UZixU9W8rM2_d0d0TgFGVxwOj2eaJLRYXITQEBsUyRm2cJQMaLHRX-J4E2OiVEpucE-E5lFiJ0h8eX/s1600/question.gif" /></a>
From: Kiffi
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I am reading <i>Hild</i>, having heard of it through my friend <a href="http://criticalflame.org/the-previous-everyday-nicola-griffiths-hild/">Rob Hardy’s review</a>, and enjoying it immensely. The mix of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ cultural details works wonderfully well, and creates a world the reader can begin to understand, rather than just observe.<br />
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But I have a question re: the song on page 211… Edwin’s gesiths are singing a drinking song beginning “Do your ears hang low…” etc.<br />
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When my now husband and I met, in Wisconsin summer stock, 1955, we were just a couple of theatre struck kids, and prone to acting out all sorts of things… At one maybe slightly drunken moment, Victor sang all his Delta Tau Delta (Univ. of Missouri at Columbia) fraternity drinking songs to me…<br />
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(What could he possibly have been thinking was the attraction ???)<br />
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But the point is, he sang that song, virtually word for word, with the substitution of a ‘continental’ soldier, and optional body parts!<br />
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My question then… is the use of that song: was it actually traced somehow, or was it something you had heard and found exactly appropriate for the scene?</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rob's review is one I particularly enjoyed. So please thank him from me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The song is one I heard, long ago, from rugby union players in the UK—probably exactly the way your husband-to-be sang it, that is, not with <i>ears</i>. It's an idiotic song that conveys the all-male, privileged upbringing of how I imagined gesiths. No, there's no evidence that men were singing this 1400 years ago, but to me it conveys the essential boyness of gesith culture, and I thought it would convey that to readers, too.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">I wrote a lot of song and poems </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">for <i>Hild</i> but didn't include most of them in the finished text. I didn't want it to remind readers of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> and all that tedious elvish poetry. (I love many things about <i>LotR</i> but the poetry and songs are not among them.)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">If you want to read an example of the not-used songs and poetry, you can find them here and </span><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2010/02/battle-taunts-and-psas.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">here</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2008/07/hypnagogic-2-killed-by-swan.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">here</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> respectively.</span>Nicola Griffithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00401940329164370169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869335414903067957.post-64276607321600128742015-01-06T10:39:00.000-08:002015-01-20T13:20:05.328-08:00"Cold Wind" in Tor's "Some of the Best" anthology<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Available for free download, Tor's anthology of their best short fiction of 2014, complete with the original illustrations. (The cover is from the one used for my story, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"</span><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/04/cold-wind-nicola-griffith" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Cold Wind</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">," 4,000 words of snow, mounting creepitude, and a hint of sex.)</span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXLseUh9Tz9e4iVEdXZMUXe7JfX3pujS5jPluO5kCI-x5HHGZaeIOfcDMIV69AoEtRuevvmexeYckbeinvNQOo3l4y-ApLRdvazyV1PDFNDvECczKKtJTpPXWlGZzQup_fHbQDfpkKjkUx/s1600/bestof2014-final.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXLseUh9Tz9e4iVEdXZMUXe7JfX3pujS5jPluO5kCI-x5HHGZaeIOfcDMIV69AoEtRuevvmexeYckbeinvNQOo3l4y-ApLRdvazyV1PDFNDvECczKKtJTpPXWlGZzQup_fHbQDfpkKjkUx/s1600/bestof2014-final.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here's the full table of contents if you want to read them as individual pieces:</span></div>
<ul>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/09/as-good-as-new-charlie-jane-anders" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“As Good As New”</a> by Charlie Jane Anders (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/04/the-end-of-the-end-of-everything-dale-bailey" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“The End of the End of Everything”</a> by Dale Bailey (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/10/mrs-sorensen-and-the-sasquatch-kelly-barnhill" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch”</a> by Kelly Barnhill (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/07/sleep-walking-now-and-then-richard-bowes" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Sleep Walking Now and Then”</a> by Richard Bowes (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/10/daughter-of-necessity-marie-brennan" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Daughter of Necessity”</a> by Marie Brennan (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/07/brisk-money-adam-christopher" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Brisk Money”</a> by Adam Christopher (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/07/a-cost-benefit-analysis-of-the-proposed-trade-offs-for-the-overhaul-of-the-barricade" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Proposed Trade-Offs for the Overhaul of the Barricade”</a> by John Chu (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/06/the-color-of-paradox-am-dellamonica" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“The Color of Paradox”</a> by A.M. Dellamonica (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/05/the-litany-of-earth-ruthanna-emrys" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“The Litany of Earth”</a> by Ruthanna Emrys (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/10/a-kiss-with-teeth-max-gladstone" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“A Kiss With Teeth”</a> by Max Gladstone (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/07/a-short-history-of-the-twentieth-century-or-when-you-wish-upon-a-star" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon a Star”</a> by Kathleen Ann Goonan (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/04/cold-wind-nicola-griffith" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Cold Wind”</a> by Nicola Griffith (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/02/the-tallest-doll-in-new-york-city-maria-dahvana-headley" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“The Tallest Doll in New York City”</a> by Maria Dahvana Headley (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/11/where-the-trains-turn" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;">“Where the Trains Turn”</a> by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Novella)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/06/combustion-hour" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Combustion Hour”</a> by Yoon Ha Lee (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/01/reborn-ken-liu" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Reborn”</a> by Ken Liu (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/09/midway-relics-and-dying-breeds-seanan-mcguire" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Midway Relics and Dying Breeds”</a> by Seanan McGuire (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/03/anyway-angie-daniel-jose-older" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Anyway: Angie”</a> by Daniel José Older (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/04/the-mothers-of-voorhisville-mary-rickert" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“The Mothers of Voorhisville”</a> by Mary Rickert (Novella)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/05/unlocked-an-oral-history-of-hadens-syndrome-john-scalzi" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome”</a> by John Scalzi (Novella)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/05/among-the-thorns-veronica-schanoes" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Among the Thorns”</a> by Veronica Schanoes (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/05/the-insects-of-love-genevieve-valentine" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“The Insects of Love”</a> by Genevieve Valentine (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/08/sleeper-jo-walton" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“Sleeper”</a> by Jo Walton (Short Story)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/04/the-devil-in-america-kai-ashante-wilson" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“The Devil in America”</a> by Kai Ashante Wilson (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/08/in-the-sight-of-akresa-ray-wood" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“In the Sight of Akresa”</a> by Ray Wood (Novelette)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/08/in-the-sight-of-akresa-ray-wood" style="color: #448aae; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“A Cup of Salt Tears”</a> by Isabel Yap (Short Story)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Or you could just download the whole thing, for free, right now, for your <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Some-Best-Tor-com-Tor-Com-Original-ebook/dp/B00P5JNNBE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415129476&sr=8-1&keywords=some+of+the+best+from+tor.com+2014">Kindle</a> or <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/some-of-the-best-from-torcom-various-authors/1120679416?ean=9781466885875">Nook</a>. (It will be available soon on iTunes and other retailers.) </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Enjoy!</span>
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