Author points: what are they, how do they work, and how can I get some?
Hello, all! Author points is a term I coined decades ago to describe the goodwill a reader has toward a writer’s work if they are already invested in that...
Chronic pain and other delights. Also, Ancestral Night is still on sale.
First things first! Ancestral Night is still on sale for $1.99 in North America! Get it while the getting is good! In unrelated news, I’ve been trying a...
The tiny personal hell of author's notes, cheap ebooks, and but also, a FOLDED SKY publication date!
auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhh wubwubwubwubwub
The Bite Sized Chunk
How do you deal with a project that’s just enormously, overwhelmingly big? You just do the next thing, is all. This applies whether the overwhelmingly big...
A happy ending depends on where you stop telling the story.
Sometimes I think that fiction is soothing because it posits there are solutions in this world, rather than just practices. You can do a thing and get to the...
They tell you to be here now but they don't unpack what that means, now do they?
Throwanotherbearinthecanoe Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid...
Social media does have its uses.
In my last email, I was talking about how social media and the unblinking Sauron-eye of the Internet can make creating good art very hard, because that sense...
It's hard to make art when you're guarded and the internet is a terrible place to be vulnerable.
The older and crankier (or maybe the older and wiser) I get, the more I think social media and being Extremely Online can be really bad for innovation and...
A few of the things that cancer taught me
Eat right, exercise, and die anyway.
We judge because we're scared
A little bit of housekeeping: I will most likely be moving this newsletter to a different platform in the New Year, but ideally that move will be seamless...
Publishing and marketing is sure a thing right now
Hey, folks, So I was mentioning in my last missive how anxieties and tensions are running high in the writer world, and how a seismic shift seems to be...
Substackers against Nazis
I am not one of the drafters of this open letter, but I endorse its message wholeheartedly. Dear Chris, Hamish & Jairaj: We’re asking a very simple question...
"Does any of this matter? Is this thing even on?"
When I was a kid, there used to be catalogues of text-only T-shirts with often off-color but sometimes profoundly philosophical sayings on them. This is a...
Unthrilled
I’ve realized in the past week or so that I’m really tired of thrillers. This is a weird place for me to be, as somebody who has at various points in her...
WRITE SCIENCE event at the MIT Museum
I should have posted about this before now, but the holidays and family stuff got away from me! So anyway…. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! I'll be at the MIT...
on the importance of fallow time*
*even when it pisses you off to be doing nothing. I finished my first draft of Angel Maker this week, which, because of the way I work in iterating passes,...
The City is the Forest
What follows is an essay I wrote over a decade ago or so for, if I remember correctly, Realms of Fantasy magazine, which I am posting because (a) I think...
Two anthologies and a WFC peopling hangover walk into a bar...
Hey everybody! I am not yet home from World Fantasy Convention and afterwards visiting family, so this will be brief as I am on the questionable hotel wifi...
The worst habits you learn in writing workshops and how to unlearn them
Scott and I just got home from teaching the Viable Paradise writer’s workshop, and boy am I tired. (I have a covid test cooking right now, as has become the...
Quiet on the northwestern front...
Hey folks, I’m just about to head off to teach Viable Paradise tomorrow, and things have been busy around here with preparations to travel for most of the...
Audiobook sale!
The audiobook of An Apprentice to Elves is on sale for 60% off! (An Apprentice to Elves is the third book in the Iskryne series, after A Companion to Wolves...
When you are afraid to jinx it, but for the first time in a long time, the writing is going really well.
For years, I’ve been struggling with brain fog, exhaustion, health challenges, and just being kind of burned out, honestly. I’d forgotten what it was like to...
Heads up about a very cool Ukrainian SFF Anthology!
“Embroidered Worlds presents a living snapshot of imaginative fiction in Ukrainian culture today, including stories that span and cross the speculative...
A poem for autumn
Grief Hard wings at the heart beat to beat to beat within: a buffet of feathers a buffet of flesh— the buffet of fire, of a rising wind. A cold wind redolent...
Happy cancerversary to me?
Hey, folks, So it’s two years ago today that I got my breast cancer diagnosis and began the scary and painful course of treatment that has, for now, left me...
On the edge of autumn
Greetings, fellow humans, I hope this missive finds you well and alive, or at least hanging in there. It’s the season of harvests, but I find myself in a bit...
Horror anthologies discounted deeply! One day only!
The fabulous Ellen Datlow-edited anthologies SUPERNATURAL NOIR and LOVECRAFT UNBOUND are on sale in ebook for a mere $1.99 each! Get them at the links above...
I'm off to Gencon next weekend. And an infinitely customizable cobbler recipe you can make with whatever fruit you have lying around.
does what it says on the tin
Art is scary and art is hard.
Hey, folks, I have been watching The Bear (no spoilers please, I'm about a third of the way through the second season and I'm not a binge watching type:...
You were meant to be here... from the beginning?
Hey, folks, My brain is still a little on the fritz from Readercon, which was great but also a lot for a pandemic-reinforced introvert such as myself....
Find me at Readercon!
Speculative Medicine: Thursday July 13 at 8 pm EDT in Salon B The Lure of the Heist: Friday July 14 at 7 pm EDT in Salon A Kaffeeklatsch: Saturday July 15 at...
Today was the kind of morning where you need coffee to make the coffee.
Good morning, folks, Wow, it’s been the kind of week that makes you wish you were in a position to put a frog in Mitch McConnell’s soup, hasn’t it? But at...
And though there's so much to do, there's only so many hours in the day, hey hey.
Hey, folks, Just a little check-in from the other side of 4th Street (survived! No covid reports!) to let you know that my next appearance will be at...
Invite your friends to read this somewhat random and usually good-natured newsletter
Thank you for reading Throwanotherbearinthecanoe — your support allows me to keep doing this work. If you enjoy this newsletter, it would be super helpful to...
The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.
Hey everybody, Greetings from the smoke-filled cozy apocalypse of the upper Midwest, where the sun rose orange and heavy this morning and Scott and I had an...
Another visit to cancerland, the world's worst vacation destination.
Hey, folks, Not going to bury the lede here, everything is big-picture fine and there’s no recurrence; don’t worry. I am however still having some post-...
We had some good machines, but they don't work no more.*
Lily-of-the-Valley was my grandmother’s favorite flower. When we moved into this house, I was thrilled to find a thriving plantation of it around the base of...
--30--
The Folded Sky draft is handed in. I’ve been working on this book for five year, with breaks to do other stuff along the way, and I am glad to have handed it...
If you can't achieve synthesis, how about an orgy of violence?
One of the most fascinating elements of modern speculative fiction, that descendant of scientifiction, of SFF, of sci-fi, of fantastical literature, of...
I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date--
oopsie
When you play more sports you're going to need more stadiums: the Rainbow Age of Speculative Fiction
Hey, folks, At worldcon, I was arguing (in the rhetorical barcon sense, not the having a fight sense) with a friend about the Rainbow Age of Science Fiction,...
To serve Mankind. I mean, to save $20.
I got my blood pressure taken by a marsh-wiggle last week. I went to see a podiatrist about my persistent recurring metatarsal pain, and discovered that his...
Spóla update
The trainer who is working with Scott's new horse sent this. Apparently she was sacked out completely for over an hour, which is a good sign with horses....
People jumping out of perfectly good spaceships, 30% off.
Hey everybody! Just wanted to let my UK/Commonwealth readers know that IN CELEBRATION OF THE DAY, the paperbacks of MACHINE and ANCESTRAL NIGHT are 30% off...
Fellas, it's been good to know you.
I was pretty sure Gordon Lightfoot was going to live forever, but I see on the slowly entropizing Twitter machine that he’s passed away. So this seems like a...
I'm sorry your mom blew up.
So the bird food I'm giving the birds? Has raisins in it. And I don't think birds like raisins. I am John Cusack's mom in BETTER OFF DEAD*. "It's got raisins...
Barnes & Noble pre-order sale!
Hey folks! Just a quick heads up that pre-orders are 25% off at B&N for the next three days, and The Origin of Storms trade paperback is on their list!...
Bonus cat photos for paid subscribers
You see the problem here:
We all like to think we'd resist the evil overlord's mind-control powers...
…when we can’t even force ourselves to move an inconvenient cat. Good morning, folks, and happy Monday to you all. We missed the aurora of a lifetime last...
Sekrit Projekt, and trying out this Notes thing.
Hey, folks, So I alluded to a project I was working on that involved an NDA. I can tell you that it’s a novelette for a shared world anthology, and that it’s...