Ask the Author: writing styles

Ask the Author – The Question: What makes an author’s style of writing unique? This will sound sort of trite, but: personal experience. Here’s the thing, and this, again, sounds trite, and indeed, it’s overused, but it’s also true: no one can write the story that *you* can write. Because everyone’s personal experience shapes them differently, and they approach stories differently. I have an exercise I do when I teach creative writing classes. I give everybody the same 5 sentences, the opening of a fairy tale type story written in…

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Recent Reads: Regency Dragons by Stephanie Burgis

I’ve had the first of Stephanie Burgis’s Regency Dragons books, SCALES & SENSIBILITY, on my shelf for over a year. I admit I’ve been kind of afraid to read it because I was afraid it would trigger an overwhelming urge to work on the sequel to MAGIC & MANNERS, and I haven’t had time to do that. But this summer she sent me the sequel, CLAWS & CONTRIVANCES, for an early read because I was having a very bad week, and she hoped it might cheer me up. So obviously…

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The blue cover of BABA YAGA'S DAUGHTER features aa beautiful Eastern European woman with dark hair with a stained glass image of Baba Yaga's chicken-legged hut in the background.

Ask the Author: favorite character

Ask the Author – the Question: Of all your books, do you have a favorite character? *looks into the camera again* Not to repeat myself from last week, but oh, come on! Honestly, this is sort of like a favorite child question. First, it’s hard to pick because of course I *do* love them all, and second, I actually feel guilty admitting that I *do* have some favorites, as if they might somehow be offended. And at the same time, well…I do have some favorites. :) I mean, my leads,…

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Recent Reads: Beyond the Hallowed Sky

Recent Reads: BEYOND THE HALLOWED SKY, by Ken MacLeod I have to confess I’m…’embarrassingly far behind’ on Ken’s books isn’t sufficient; this is the first one I’ve ever read. It is already not the last, as I bought the sequel immediately, and only after the fact realized it had JUST come out. (After I read the first two chapters I was like “KEN I NEED BOOK THREE” and he was like “I HAVE NOT WRITTEN IT YET, GIVE ME SOME TIME” and, oops. O.O) Like, I mean, he’s Ken MacLeod,…

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a silly dream :)

I did not sleep well, presumably due to stress, but there was a good dream interval there where I was on the SNW Enterprise and Ortegas had for some reason gotten hold of a manual typewriter and was in absolute hysterics over its ancient, single-purpose functionality. I was like “ooh ooh I know how to type on that!” and we typed back and forth at each other a little (“HI ORTEGAS THIS IS ME”) before she got the bright idea to launch the carriage like a torpedo and aimed it…

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