truepenny

truepenny

truepenny

And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.

And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. (Grail)

10) Mrs. Cornelius stalked into the mahogany-paneled reception room, a jacket matching her chocolate trousers slung over her shoulder like the mantle of a queen, tiny emerald studs glinting in her ears like the eyes of a snake. (Unsuitable Metal)

11) A lone einherjar stood alone on the narrow band of black sand under the curve of the volcano's flank and raised his head to the impossibly bright spill of stars filling the sky. (Between the Bones)

12) No first line (Untitled virtual reality novel)

13) No first line (Untitled Heroic Hookers of the Old West novel)


SHORT!

1) The dream is smoke.

Smoke. Not fire. Not yet.

But you know the fire is coming. ("Smoke & Mirrors," Shadow Unit)

2) One gray-blue eye emerged from under the zippered edge of the jacket, blearily squinched. "From Hell's heart I stab at thee," Todd grated. "Is it the end of the world?" ("The Unicorn Evils," Shadow Unit, with coffeeem)

3) Someone had left flowers again. ("Spell 81A," Shadow Unit, with stillsostrange)

4) The first word was meant to be spoken quietly, if it should ever be spoken at all. ("The Death of Terrestrial Radio")

5) "We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you'd flunked Algebra." ("On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera")


Good dog, I really am totally out of short stories. 0.0

Oh, and La Datlow took a cute photo of me losing a Locus award to Paolo Baciagalupi. With the much-requested Purple Hair.

The autopope/rolanni/suricattus pro-writer career path meme

Current Status as of this morning:

Chill: cooking away on the back burner and waiting for revisions
One-Eyed Jack And The Suicide King: cooking away on the back burner and waiting for revisions
The Sea thy Mistress: cooking away on the back burner and waiting for revisions

"Smile": stuck
"The Horrid Glory of its Wings": stuck
"Snow Dragons": stuck
Blind Cave Mermaid story: percolating ;-)

Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: 6 
Age when I wrote my first story: 6
Age when I got my hands on a typewriter: 9ish? It was an old Royal Portable
Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine: 16?
Thickness of file of rejection slips prior to first story sale: Oh, a few hundred.
Age when I sold my first short story: 25
Age when I killed my first market: 25 (Remember that first sale?)
Approximate number of short stories/novelettes/novellas sold for cash money: 67

Age when I first sold a poem: 11
Poems sold: 4

Age when I wrote my first novel: 9 or 10, longhand in cloth-bound notebooks
Age when I sold a first novel: 32
Novels written between age 6 and age 32: 9
Age when I wrote the first novel I sold: 30
Age when that novel was published: 33
Total number of novels written (discounting juvenilia, counting collaborations, counting fixups): 19
Books sold: 19 (17 novels, one fixup, one collection)
Books published or delivered and in the pipeline (including novellas published as independent books): 18
Number of titles in print: 15
Number of titles fallen out of print: 1

Age when a work was first shortlisted for a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy or Stoker award: 36
Age when I first won a Hugo award: 36
Age when I became a full-time novelist: 35
Age when I returned to the day-job because of economic implosion: not yet, but you never know. I contemplate health insurance.
Age now: 37

*Consider this an LJ-meme: if you write professionally, feel free to post your own equivalent of this list. (Obviously you'll need to customize it to track your career path -- but you get the idea.)*

Questions, part IIIII:

You can ask a question here.

Questions, part IV:

stillsostrange

You can ask a question here.

Questions, part the tree:

You're one of the bloodthirstier women writers I know. Can you talk some about the role of violence in your work, and also about whatever reactions you might've gotten to your being a *woman* writer who writes such violent material? (Yes, I'm assuming there've been some, but if not, then not.)

That's such an interesting question. I don't think of what I write as particularly bloodthirsty--I'm not writing splatterporn, after all, or anything that really revels in violence. When I use violence in my work, it generally is there because violence sometimes happens in the real world, and while I try not to flinch from it, I also generally don't make it the focal point of what I write. I'm not, you know, writing in the tradition of Chuck Palahniuk.

I do generally write what people would refer to as "noir" or "high-mud," fiction, I guess, which in this context I would mean that I try very hard not to glorify the violence or make it seem clean or pretty. (Which would be why I picked this particular icon for this post, actually, because you have a love a TV show that'll demonstrate a protagonist chocking on his own vomit and then crying while snot runs down his face. Well, I have to love it.)

As for being a woman writer who treats violence that way--well, I've heard my work called "castrated" (books have testicles?) and "squeamish," actually--both of which make me laugh. And I've been praised for the poetry of my violence, which--well, yeah, there ought to be a kind of poetry in it, in the sense that poetry is truth.

But I'm not sure anybody commenting on it has noticed that I'm a girl.

After ACtW, I now have a jones to see you (with or without truepenny) write a female ensemble cast. (Yeah, yeah, I know there's sorta one in parts of Carnival. Not the same.) What are my chances of seeing something of the sort?

Depends on if I have a book that warrants it. There's an awful lot of Blood & Iron that's woman-centric; the men, in general, are more in support roles (even the ones who have POV.) (Some readers have also commented on this, both in praise or dismay.)

I'd say, off the bat, that your chances are better with me than with truepenny.

Is there a book (or two or five?) by someone else that you wished YOU had written first?

I wish I'd written the ones I did write a little better. *g*

I generally like other people's books better than my own, actually. So if I had written any of my favorite books, well. Then they wouldn't be my favorite books.

How does the process of writing with a partner compare to writing alone?

Writing with a partner is just as much work, but more fun, because when you get stuck you get to send it to the other guy, and she writes the bit you were stuck on. And then elves come in the night and take out all your bad sentences. What's not to love?

Does the partnership generate the story, or does an existing story wave and say "write me with so-and-so?"

I'm not sure how the second of these would work. There is no existing story until it's written. Are you asking if one writer dictates the plot while the other does the work of actually putting the words on paper? Perhaps in some collaborations, but not the ones I've been involved in. The story--plot, characterization, worldbuilding, theme--arise from the creators jamming with each other, talking things over, and riffing on each other's ideas.

You can ask a question here.