marthawells

So the work on the house to repair the plumbing disaster is finally finished. :knock on wood: That's one source of stress gone. Now I can concentrate on the other sources of stress. But at least last night I was able to get some real sleep. I still had an anxiety dream, but I did sleep past 4:00 am.

TV Rec:

The Bletchley Circle has been airing on Sunday night on PBS, and it's awesome. There are only three episodes, about a group of women who were counter-intelligence code-breakers in WWII, solving a serial killer mystery after the war. They had to sign the official secrets act, and can't tell anyone what they did, and have to say they just did clerical work.

Book rec:

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu
When out-of-shape IT technician Roen woke up and started hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumed he was losing it.

He wasn't.

He now has a passenger in his brain – an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans.

Links:

* This is going around on Tumblr and I thought it was enormously cool: Concept art for Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid by Chad Weatherford

* The Nation: My So-Called 'Post-Feminist' Life in Arts and Letters
It's career suicide, colleagues tell me, to speak out against the literary establishment; they'll smear you. But never mind. I'm too old and too invisible to said establishment to care.

* Sarah Rees Brennan: On writers getting paid to write
I think it is interesting that they *are* both guys, and they both got a lot of good press for saying: my work is worth something. Because when a woman says that, people argue with her.

* 20 of the world's most beautiful World Heritage Sites

* Bill Crider reviews Emilie and the Hollow World
Wells is excellent, as always, at world-building, and the societies that Emilie and the others encounter are interesting and believable. There's plenty of intrigue, danger, and action, too, and Emilie proves herself more than capable of dealing with just about any emergency. If you read YA fiction, this one is great fun and should be on your list.

Thanks to everyone for the great comments on the cover. I don't know that I'll be able to answer them individually. I'm still not feeling great due to my stress levels being through the roof for the past couple of months, basically. I'm also having a lot of allergy symptoms due to the weather and the long period where the wall/ceiling in the living room/hall/bathroom was cut open, which combined with the stress gives me asthma-like symptoms, so that's not fun. I have lost a little weight, due to having some meals that were basically toast, cereal, and benadryl. (It's a great diet except for the rickets.) So I haven't been very present online, or anywhere else, really.

The last of the plumbing disaster is almost dealt with. I finished the painting last week, except for one little bit of ceiling. Tomorrow we're having the ruined living room and dining room carpet replaced. At the moment most of the living room/dining room is crammed into my office, so I can only admire my printer and filing cabinet from a distance. Hopefully by Tuesday we'll be able to start putting everything back.

To new people who have friended me, hi! It's not normally this depressing here. I mirror this journal on Dreamwidth and Tumblr (I post a lot of random photos and art on Tumblr also) and if you want to buy any of my books or check out sample chapters, short stories, etc, there's a list with links on my web site here. My first four out-of-print fantasy novels are in ebook $2.99 (The Element of Fire, City of Bones, Wheel of the Infinite, and The Death of the Necromancer) and purchasing them helps pay for the above-mentioned plumbing repairs.

Other things that are going on:

* RisingShadow.net reviewed Emilie and the Hollow World.

* The Other Half of the Sky anthology (with my Raksura story) is out in ebook and trade paperback.

* I'm going to be teaching two classes at the DFW Writers Conference in Hurst next weekend. (Other appearances are listed here.)

* The Guys Lit Wire Book Fair for Ballou Senior High School Library has been going on for the past couple of weeks.

The school started out with only a handful of library books for over 1500 students, and the book drives over the past few years has started to get it up to a more reasonable number, but there's still a big book deficit and zero school budget money for books. Buying books for kids you don't know is restful and fun and somewhat addictive, so if you have spare money, you should definitely try it out. There's lots of YA and SF/F and non-fiction on the list, and a lot of sale or used books that are under $10.00.

If you want to participate, go to the wish list at Powell's, pick out the books you want to buy for the library, and ship them to:

Melissa Jackson, LIBRARIAN
Ballou Senior High School
3401 Fourth Street SE
Washington DC 20032
(202) 645-3400

Be sure you get the name and title in there, as it's a big school and you want to make sure the books go to the librarian. Also, during the buying process, a screen will show up asking you to check a box for each book so it will be marked as bought on the wish list.

If you can't afford a book, you can help enormously by passing on the link http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com/2013/04/its-time-for-annual-spring-book-fair.html on LJ, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.

The Star Wars novel has a title and cover. It'll be out on October 15.

Just posted some new fan music by petercline for the Books of the Raksura on the Three Worlds Compendium.

The Compendium section has extras for the Raksura books, including short stories, fan art, and other fun stuff. There is Raksura fanfic out there, though I don't link to it on the Compendium. You can find some of it by searching on Archive of Our Own.

The Other Half of the Sky SF/F anthology is officially out today, which means the ebooks as well as trade paperbacks are now available. I have a Raksura story in it, starring Jade.

You can see reviews, contributors, samples etc here.

Challenging the predominance of male protagonists in sf, each of the 16 stories in this collection features strong, independent female characters and attempts a reconstruction of the genre itself. Freed from many of the male-oriented clichés, the selections present vividly depicted male and female, human and alien characters as fully fleshed individuals coping with a wide variety of issues. Contributors include Alexander Jablokov, Joan Slonczewski, Vandana Singh, Martha Wells, and Jack McDevitt. VERDICT: Fearless writing and a broad selection of topics makes this a good choice for fans of woman-centered sf and excellent storytelling. Library Journal

You can get both the ebook and the trade paperback from the publisher here, and from Barnes and Noble, and the ebook is also at Kobo. The trade paperback is at Amazon and they should have the Kindle version up at some point.

***

* There's an interview with me here, by Evan Ramspott.

Fic rec:

* Black Gate: The Cremator's Tale by Steven H. Silver

West is the little town about an hour and a half north of where I live where the fertilizer factory explosion happened last week. At least 14 people were killed and over 160 injured. A school, a nursing home, and an apartment complex plus a number of houses were hit by the blast and mostly destroyed. The middle school and the high school were also damaged and may have to be knocked down.

It's a small town that was settled in the late 1800s by Czech and German immigrants. Here, it's mostly famous for Czech pastries, and Lillian13 talks about that here.

The Houston Chronicle has this report on some of the firefighters and first responders who were killed here.

The West disaster relief fund is taking donations here.

So among the miasma of bad news, this happened:

EMILIE & THE HOLLOW WORLD [STARRED REVIEW!]
Author: Martha Wells

Running away from home never sounded so good, especially when it involves stowing away on a ritzy, cloaked-in-magic ship.

Under the conservative tyranny of guardians who are convinced she’ll become a harlot, 16-year-old Emilie decides it’s time to run away. Inspired by her cherished serial adventure books, she delights in the romance of escape—until she forms blisters, gets hungry and, after spending too much on snacks, can’t afford the ferry ticket to reach her cousin’s home. There’s only one logical thing to do: jump off the docks, swim to the nearest boat and hope for the best. After boarding what she hopes is the right ship, she witnesses a pirate attack, saves a scaled man and watches as a merging of magic and science transports the ship to a legendary world within a world. Competing explorers, a cunning mer-queen regnant, more than one dirigible and plenty of well-aimed punches make for an adventure that would titillate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Though Emilie’s homeland of Menea is fictional, it has all the makings of Victorian England. As in the Victorian era, sexism is prevalent, but that doesn’t stop a roster of ripsnorting female characters (first among them Emilie) from wielding pistols, captaining ships and slyly defeating enemies. At one point, after escaping a prison cell, Emilie thinks, "If I’d known it was going to be that hard, I’d never have tried," a phrase that embodies the honesty and humor that make this read worthwhile.

A swashbuckling escape for avid readers that trades buttoned-up boundaries for unbridled adventure. (Fantasy. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

ETA: Emilie and the Hollow World first chapter sample.

I signed the first two copies of Emilie and the Hollow World today, for my husband's supervisor's daughters, India and Tysyn. So it was neat for the first signed copies of my YA to do to YA-age people.

Neat news:

* Liz Bourke in her Sleeps with Monsters column on Tor.com said very nice things about The Element of Fire.

* The Other Half of the Sky anthology (I have a Raksura story in it) got a great Library Journal review: Fearless writing and a broad selection of topics makes this a good choice for fans of woman-centered SF and excellent storytelling. The official release date is April 23 and that's when the ebook version will be available.

Fic recs on Black Gate Magazine:

* Truck Stop Luck by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
“Someone made statues of your family, you’re hauling them around, and you don’t know why,” Mike asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” said Keith.

* The Sorrowless Thief by Ryan Harvey

* Disciple by Emily Mah

My thoughts and condolences and worries are with everyone in Boston. Everyone I know who might have been around there checked in pretty quickly, which was a huge relief. If you want to keep up with the news there without being overwhelmed by wrong information and videos of the explosions on continuous loop, the WBUR NPR liveblog has been pretty good so far.

* On to something positive:

The Guys Lit Wire Book Fair for Ballou Senior High School Library started yesterday.

Ballou is still operating at a serious literary deficit and so we are staying with them until they are busting that minimum standard and knee deep in all the reading these students could ever want or need.

The most exciting news for Ballou is that a new structure is in the works for the school and should be completed by January 2015. As the existing building dates to the late 1950s and is in disrepair, to say the project is overdue would be a vast understatement. But while the new Ballou is going to be a great and wonderful thing, it is not the answer to all its students' problems. The bright and shiny 2015 Library and Media Center will be 5,800 square feet of awesomeness but there is no money in the budget - nothing from the DC public school system - to actually provide books for its shelves.

Wrap your head around that fact for a moment, please. The library space will be grand, the library contents...not so much.

Buying books for kids you don't know is restful and fun and somewhat addictive, so if you have spare money, you should definitely try it out.

If you want to participate, go to the wish list at Powell's, pick out the books you want to buy for the library, and ship them to:

Melissa Jackson, LIBRARIAN
Ballou Senior High School
3401 Fourth Street SE
Washington DC 20032
(202) 645-3400

Be sure you get the name and title in there, as it's a big school and you want to make sure the books go to the librarian. Also, during the buying process, a screen will show up asking you to check a box for each book so it will be marked as bought on the wish list.

There are lots of books on the wishlist at or under $10.00. Even one book helps. If you can't afford a book, you can help enormously by passing on the link http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com/2013/04/its-time-for-annual-spring-book-fair.html on LJ, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.

* And if you need a kitten today, here's some pictures of Jack when we first got him.

Last night I think I had a combo of almost every anxiety dream possible. I had to take care of a large group of small animals accidentally dumped into where I was staying, important files were about to be deleted from a computer system, two people were stalking me while pretending to be looking at an apartment for sale that I was in charge of and had to clean up, I was wearing a bathing suit and needed to find my shirt, I was late/had missed a book promotional thing I was supposed to be doing with other writers, I was supposed to be guarding Robert Downey Jr. and a small child for Pepper Potts and accidentally left the door open to the room we were staying in. Because of the way my brain works on OCD, some of this happened pretty much simultaneously. While Jack the cat was awake early and gnawing on my feet.

And something's wrong with my left ear. That's real, not part of the dream. I think it's allergies but it feels like I got water in it several days ago and it's still in there.

* If you can’t make it to the Deeper Than Swords George R. R. Martin/Game of Thrones exhibit at Cushing Library at Texas A&M University, some of the Game of Thrones broadsides that are on exhibit there for sale from Anise Press.

* For all the women I have loved who were dragged through the mud

* Information on the pesticides that are killing bees

* Nathan Long: Love Will Tear Us Apart love in fiction

Book I'm looking forward to:

The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney. It's a historical fantasy set in Portugal, due out in November.
For two years, Oriana Paredes has been a spy among the social elite of the Golden City, reporting back to her people, the sereia, sea folk banned from the city’s shores....