Monthly Archives: October 2013

Convention Report: SteamCon 2013

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Cat

Lisa Mantchev described it best when she Tweeted: I’ve never actually been run over by a Zamboni full of glitter, but that’s what it feels like after a really great convention.
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Posted in conventions | Tagged cryptozoological expeditions, fairy tales, fairypunk, glue a gear on it, j.r. boyett, lisa mantchev, sandra m. odell, steamcon, steampunk, victorian expeditions | 9 Comments

About Writing: Coaxing a Seed into a Story

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Cat

Last night we had the final session of the Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction class, which is the session where we talk about everything except writing: stuff like going to conventions, and how to submit stories, and how to treat editors and what about audio markets and all that sort of thing. And I’d meant to include a section about plotting stories, because I’d taught a new class the day before, the Moving Your Story From Idea to Finished Draft class, and as often happens had come up with some new things to say about stories from thinking about one specific aspect, but there just wasn’t enough time. So I want to talk a little bit about it in a blog post.
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Posted in Writing | Tagged i'll gnaw your bones the manticore said, immortality game, jumbo the elephant, not waving but drowning, online workshop, pippa's smiles, plotting stories, starting stories, story seeds, swallowing ghosts, whose face this is i do not know, writing | 3 Comments

WIP Teaser: Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Cat

Here’s a snippet from what I’ve been working on today. Peeps who attended the Plotting class yesterday (which was AWESOME) – this is the story that I showed you the initial notes for.
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Posted in teasers | Tagged her windowed eyes her chambered heart, snippets, steampunk, wip | Leave a comment

Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Cat

I’ve been following Jeff’s posts about this book, which is a very VanderMeerian approach to writing theory, for a while, and so I danced around a bit when this arrived in yesterday’s mail.
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Posted in you should read this | Tagged catherynne m. valente, george r.r. martin, jeff vandermeer, karen joy fowler, lev grossman, michael moorcock, neil gaiman, recommended, wonderbook, writing books | 1 Comment

Tools For Writers: Recent Discoveries include AuthorGraph and Buffer

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Cat

I’ve finished up the first draft of the Building an Online Presence for Writers class, and am in the process of incorporating feedback from the first readers into the text. At the same time, I’ve been doing a lot of research and adding some new tools to my promotional toolbox. Here’s some of the new ones:
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Posted in blogging, Uncategorized | Tagged authorgraph, buffer, buffer app, reddit, SFWA, signing ebooks, tools for writers, wikis, wikis for writers | Leave a comment

Snippet from Hearts of Tabat

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Cat

I’m working on the sequel to recently-finished Beasts of Tabat, whose working title is Hearts of Tabat. Here’s a snippet I wrote this morning.

Adelina did something she’d mocked other people for doing. She consulted a Dream Reader.
Everyone sensible knew that Dream Readers were frauds, making up stories to suit the needs they could read in their clients. Everyone’s dreams were as individual as their minds, everyone had their own internal cartography leading to entirely different parts of their brains.

But the dream had come three mornings in a row. Three mornings when she woke up with a start, fear clamping its fingers, slender as reeds, strong as iron, around her throat, her hands clenched so hard that her nails bit into the heels of her hands.
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