Use this form to submit a question for the Journal. If you have a Live Journal account (they're free) you can add this Journal to your "Friends" list and read and comment to it from there. Martha has also discussed a number of writing topics and questions on her Live Journal. You can find those entries here.
Fictionwise, the ebook retailer, is having a 50% off everything rebate sale, so you can get the ebook editions of The Wizard Hunters and The Ships of Air for $3.39 (after the rebate). The list of my books on Fictionwise is here.
This LJ has been getting spammed with advertising comments, which I've been deleting. They're always by a new user with no friendlist, are vaguely relevant to one element of the post, and always contain a URL to a commercial site. The username is different each time, to make banning useless.
It's different from the Russian spam bots that are showing up all over the place, but also annoying. (Thanks to semyaza for the link, which explains what the bots are, how to report them, and lists known bots.)
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The new kitten likes to play fetch. You throw her stuffed toy mouse, and she will run after it, bring it back to you, and drop it for you to throw again. This is the only animal (including Spike the dog) we've ever had that would play fetch. It's really useful for tiring her out right before we go to bed.
Message from the Executive Director: The flood waters completely wrecked all of the departments & library functions on the first floor, including the children's department, the Wortham Auditorium, the Randall meeting room, circulation department, technical services office, operations department, and the Friends sorting room and book shelf. The library building also sustained some damage to the roof and one of the hurricane panels. Probably the most devastating blow we received from Hurricane Ike was the destruction of building systems located on the first floor, including the loss of major electrical panels, the telephone system, Internet routing equipment, firemen's service, components of the HVAC system, storm protection panels and parts of the fire & smoke detection system. The loss of these critical building systems has severely complicated recovery efforts and plans to reopen the library any time soon.
Contributions to assist with the recovery of the Rosenberg Library may be mailed to the following address: Rosenberg Library, 2310 Sealy Street, Galveston, TX 77550-2220.
If people were inclined to send them a check for $25 or more, and then let me know that you had done that, I would be happy to send you a signed and personalized hardcover copy of Wheel of the Infinite.
ETA: Or for a $10.00 donation you could choose a signed and personalized paperback copy of Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary or Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement. (Those and Wheel are the only ones I really have spare copies of at the moment.)
Just drop me an email at msw at charisat.com, and let me know what your donation was and when you sent it, which book you want, the name you want your book personalized with, and the address I should send it to.
I've been re-reading the Nero Wolfe books lately. I first started on them in 1998, when I was writing Wheel of the Infinite. Then my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimers, and I got blocked on the novel. (I finally finished it, but I've never been able to read it since it was published, and every time I look at it I think of my mother and the Alzheimers.) There were a few other major stressful things happening at that time, and they all seemed to feed into each other. Somewhere around then, The Death of the Necromancer was on the final Nebula ballot, but in all the haze of stress that seems like a dream sequence.
But as I've been re-reading the Wolfe books, I'm noticing something else. I don't remember any of them. I remember buying them, liking them, buying more of them. Some of them seem familiar, but that's because of the Timothy Hutton TV series, which I have the DVDs of and have watched several times. In a way it's good, because yay, new (to me) Nero Wolfe books. But I wonder what else dropped out of my memory back then.
Quote from The Father Hunt, which reminds me of how much I hate labels, stereotypes, and sweeping generalizations:
Wolfe was frowning at him. "If you please, Mr. Jarrett, no labels. Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled. Do you have one?"
"No, but I can label any man whose faculties are concentrated on a single purpose. I can label Charles de Gaulle or Robert Welch or Stokely Carmichael."
"If you do, don't glue them on, and have replacements handy."
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I was talking to someone last night about impostor syndrome, and thought I'd repeat it here. Impostor syndrome is that feeling that even after you succeed at something, you feel that somehow your success isn't legitimate, and that you will eventually be "found out" and hounded out of whatever it is you're doing. It doesn't make any sense and is totally irrational, but that doesn't stop tons of people from feeling that way, especially writers. One of the first people I remember talking about having impostor syndrome was Damon Knight, on the old GEnie bulletin board system, back in the early 90s. He still had it.
Unless you hear someone talk about it, you think you're the only one who has it, but I've got it, too. Even now, knowing about it, you probably think everyone else who feels this way just has impostor syndrome while you really are an impostor and will someday be found out, etc. It's insidious, but common.
A friend sent these Galveston-related links this morning:
Blogging on the Island: I'd almost forgotten how that felt, until I drove off the island last Thursday into exile. My home, like so many others, is unlivable. My husband and I and the menagerie have moved to my in-law's house in Deer Park. The commute is certainly demoralizing, but it was the realization that just 50 miles north of the island life is going on as though Hurricane Ike never happened that crushed my spirit. I felt like I was driving into another world, and I almost turned around and came back to the island. Debris piles, dust masks and faces etched with pain are reality to me. Brightly lit stores that stay open until 10 p.m. feel like a slap in the face, knowing how many people in Galveston are still suffering.
The biggest complaint in Houston is power outages. How can they complain about anything when so many people in Galveston are still trying to figure out where they’re going to sleep tonight? They’ve forgotten all about us.
And some good news: The Rosenberg Library survived intact: I am head of the Library’s Galveston and Texas History Center and the Museum. Hurricane Ike did not affect these two areas, which are on the Rosenberg Library’s third floor. The historical collections suffered no wind or water damage. Further, I spent 21⁄2 hours examining the Galveston and Texas History Center’s archives, which shows no signs of mold infestation. Before the storm made landfall, my staff made extensive preparations to protect and secure our artifacts and historical documents. The Museum staff removed valuable paintings, as well as the shadow box from the first floor Children’s Department, to the third floor. The Galveston and Texas History Center staff moved all archival materials to the vault and secured valuable documents by covering shelves with tarpaulins. Staff accomplished these tasks in a narrow time window. They completed preparations late Thursday morning, when the Mayor of Galveston had already ordered a mandatory evacuation.
ETA: forgot to add, the Galveston webcams are starting to come back. The Spot, which is kind of a touristy biker bar, is still open for business, though it looks like they lost most of their sign. I've heard they're serving alcohol but haven't been able to get the kitchen (or the bathroom) running yet.
I just found out that my story "Holy Places" in Black Gate #11 made the Honorable Mention list in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008 Yay! (Like my other two stories in Black Gate, it was about Giliead and Ilias, and set before the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy.)
Link for people who are as ready to start Halloween as I am: 7 Scary Ghost Towns. These are all classic ghost towns in the US, so there's not too much variety. And I think Tombstone doesn't count anymore, since there are tourist attractions there now.
And this one: 7 Abandoned Places in Modern Asia. Some of these appeared on the previous list of international ghost towns, but there are links to more abandoned places at the bottom of the page.
Our friends in Houston finally have power back after more than two weeks without. And there are still more than 100,000 customers without it. And that's just in Houston, and doesn't count all the coastal and surrounding communities or Galveston.
Finished Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost, and enjoyed it. The three characters are all stuck in situations where there is no easy way out, and the world just gets more strange and detailed and fascinating the more you find out about it. I've got the second part, Lord Tophet, but haven't started reading it yet.
Now I'm reading The Laughter of Dead Kings, the new Vicky Bliss novel by Elizabeth Peters. They're art and/or archeology related mysteries, but set in modern day rather than the Victorian period, like her Amelia Peabody mysteries.
The Vorkosigan Companion co-edited by Lillian Stewart Carl is coming out in December, so I'll have to get it for Christmas. (And you should check out Lillian's fiction. She's currently doing wonderful ghost stories/historical mysteries with romantic elements, like Blackness Tower.)
We saw Tuna Does Vegas last night at A&M, with the two writers performing it. It was really good, though I still like the first one (Greater Tuna) best.
The Lone Star Stories Reader got reviewed by Publishers Weekly and my story "Wolf Night" got a very nice mention: The western meets dark fantasy in Martha Wells's standout “Wolf Night,” when a group of people barricaded in a stockade are attacked by an otherworldly creature.
The book can be preordered here and the story is still online in the magazine here.
kythiaranos had asked about The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, which I finished reading the other day. The writing was very good, and it carried me along, though the plot was slow to develop and not complicated enough for the length. The influences were a little transparent at times for me. Unlike Sorcery and Cecelia and other fantasies set in Regency or Georgian-style worlds, I kept seeing the underpinnings instead of the world. (Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Lovecraft, Turn of the Screw, Rebecca etc. This may just be me and YMMV) The structure is unusual, with three parts, the first told in third person from the viewpoints of the three main characters, then the second told in first person from the female main character's viewpoint, and the third goes back to the style of the first. The second part was actually the strongest part of the book, and the one I enjoyed the most. (It's like Jane Eyre with magic, and if Mr. Rochester wasn't a dick.) With all those caveats, I still enjoyed it, and I'll probably read the next one.
I've started Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost and am really enjoying it so far. It takes place in a fantasy world set on these endless bridges, with different cultures on the different spans. I think I need to buy Lord Tophet, the sequel, ASAP.
(I've been trying to note more about what I'm reading, and I've got a book rec tag now.)
mahoni asked Do you go for somewhat constant feedback from, for example, your husband or friends, as you work on a novel, or do you sort of prefer to work in a vacuum until it's essentially finished?
It's varied over time. For The Element of Fire, which was the first novel I wrote as well as the first one that got published, I wrote most of it in a small local writers' workshop, bringing the chapters in as I finished them. (Some of the other people in the workshop were Rory Harper, Laura Mixon, and Steve Gould.) Since then, I've usually let friends read the books I was working on. With the most recent one (The Cloud Roads, the one that hasn't sold anywhere yet) I don't think I let anyone read it until it was at least halfway finished.
Neil Gaiman has talked about this on his blog (so long ago that I have no idea when it was and can't find the link) about how when he's getting the first draft down, he doesn't really want intense criticism so much as encouragement, that it's better to get the critical analysis after the book is finished and he's ready to revise. That's pretty much how I felt with my last couple books.
Still taking writing questions, about my writing or just writing and/or publishing topics in general.
Trying to teach the kitten that the laptop screen is not full of little moving things to play with, it just looks like it is. She also managed to seize control of the bed last night from the two older and bigger cats.
texanfan asked When you do the worldbuilding as you go, do you find you have to go back and tweak the early portions, or has your subconscious fit everything together along the way?
I do have to go back and tweak it, when I realize something isn't going to work like I thought, or I think of something I like better, think of some new cool thing to add, or change my mind about something. The most fun is when you drop something in on impulse and then realize later that it's actually important to the story.
New Stargate Atlantis tonight, which will add to the tape we're keeping for friends still with no power.
jonquil asked: You do gorgeous worldbuilding. How much of it do you work out in advance, and how much of it do you discover along the way and retrofit as necessary?
Thanks! I usually do a lot of discovery along the way, depending on the book. I don't plot out much of the story in advance, so I don't usually know what parts of the world I'm going to need until I get there, basically. Also, for me, how the characters develop and what kind of people they are is very dependent on the world and how it shaped them. So character, plot, and worldbuilding are all wrapped up together and hard to separate out as I'm writing the story. I usually start with an idea of how I want the world to look and feel, and work toward that.
The Element of Fire is probably the one exception, because I worked a lot of it out in advance, since I had a very clear picture of what I wanted to do, who the characters were, what I needed to research, and so on, before I started it. For City of Bones and Wheel of the Infinite I was making up the world as I went along (which I think is the more fun way to do it) so I was continually coming up with new things and realizing I needed to do research to figure out how it would work. The Death of the Necromancer and the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy were different, since I was starting with worlds that were already built and trying to figure out how they would have aged over time.
I used to play with worldbuilding even when I was a kid, assembling giant maps out of multiple sheets of typing or drawing paper, and mapping out lost islands with dinosaurs, secret temples and cities, etc. One of my favorite books when I was in junior high was An Atlas of Fantasy by J.B. Post, which I checked out of the Fort Worth public library a million times. I found a copy of it several years ago and still get it out every so often.
Still taking writing questions, about my writing or just writing and/or publishing topics in general.
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