From ericmarin: There's a review of The Lone Star Stories Reader up at The Fix.

I just found out that my story "Holy Places" in Black Gate #11 made the Honorable Mention list in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008 Yay! (Like my other two stories in Black Gate, it was about Giliead and Ilias, and set before the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy.)

The Lone Star Stories Reader got reviewed by Publishers Weekly and my story "Wolf Night" got a very nice mention: The western meets dark fantasy in Martha Wells's standout “Wolf Night,” when a group of people barricaded in a stockade are attacked by an otherworldly creature.

The book can be preordered here and the story is still online in the magazine here.

My day just got a whole hell of a lot better: There's a review of The Element of Fire on DearAuthor.com by Laura Florand. An awesome review, that makes me cry a little and feel good about my decision to keep going during that period when I was going to quit writing and become a personal trainer.

I read DearAuthor.com, so it was very surreal when I checked it this morning and there was my name. So I'll be over here, freaking out, but in a good way.

The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy made the "overlooked" section on Neil Walsh's "Overlooked or Overhyped" column.

After the hype (richly deserved, in my opinion) about Death of the Necromancer, I anticipated that The Fall of Ile-Rien series would do quite well. On the contrary, it seems to have come and gone with very little notice. It didn't even stay on the shelves long at my local bookstores. Before the third one was published, the second one had been remaindered. And I never did see The Gate of Gods on the shelves; I had to order it. What happened? The only thing I can think is that the series just wasn't well marketed. Because it's excellent fun reading. It's got plenty of action, adventure, espionage, and skin-of-the-teeth escapes. A gripping story. But ultimately it's the characters that will keep you reading. There's real development in some of the key players, especially Tremaine, and there are people you love to spend time with and people you love to spend time hating. It's exactly the kind of story that deserves to be read and reread. But instead, I suspect it will fall out of print and languish in the annals of the great overlooked.

I had no idea this was going to be on SF Site and it was absolutely lovely to see it, especially today, which up to this point has not been a winner.

Excellent reviews of the stories in Black Gate #10 here at Tangent by Sherwood Smith. On "Reflections" Good action, characterization, imagination, and resolution are part of Wells's toolkit, and this story is no exception. Yay!


hjpatience asked: Who killed Tremaine's mother? Was it any of Nicholas's enemies from D of the N?

It wasn't anyone mentioned in Death of the Necromancer. It was someone new, basically trying to make a name for himself, and he picked the wrong person to do it with.


Still taking writing questions, general or specific, here.

Found out that Rich Horton listed "Wolf Night" as one of his favorite short stories of the year, in his list here. Cool. "Wolf Night" is fantasy, and was published online by Lone Star Stories in August, and you can still read it here.

Couple of quick things:


The Polish cover for The Ships of Air. Thanks to Janusz Sz. for sending me that jpg. I've never gotten copies of any of my recent Polish editions, which is too bad, because they look great.

There's a very nice review of The Element of Fire here at Lynda Reads.

Just heard from ericmarin and Wolf Night got mentioned in Rich Horton's review of Lone Star Stories this year:

The top two stories were "Wolf Night" by Martha Wells (August), a murder mystery set at an isolated Old West inn, where a werewolf seems to be on a killing rampage; and "A Night in Electric Squidland" by Sarah Monette (June), about a psychic investigator looking at disappearances from a shady nightclub. Other very enjoyable stories included Jenn Reese's "Angst in D Minor", about the problems a siren has fitting in at a regular high school (if she sings in the choir, particularly!); Josh Rountree's "Can't Buy Me Faded Love" (February), in which John Lennon is a country singer; Sarah Prineas's "Hekaba's Demon" (April), a strange fantasy of a sailing ship and a demon and two young people; and Sherwood Smith's "Being Real" (October), a sharp take on reality TV, combined with a Homeland Security obsessed future.

Yay!

jonquil has a great post here, on the most recent fanfiction plagiarism issue. She says it better than I would, and I'm really getting way too tired of people using this issue as an excuse to bash fanfiction to be at all rational on this point.

My policy on fanfiction for my novels has always been: I can't say that I'll read it, but I'm enormously flattered whenever anyone does it. Putting that much work into something, because you enjoyed what I did, I take as a wonderful compliment.


***


I'm really busy finishing up the SGA book this week (or trying to, cross your fingers) and getting ready to leave for WorldCon on Sunday, so I'm not going to be around LJ much if at all. I'll try to do some catch up once I get back. And again, I wasn't given any programming slots at WorldCon, so most people probably aren't going to be able to catch me there unless by pure luck. I will be signing stock in the dealer's room.

Also, wanted to remind people about BenBella Books' Smart POP series. I'm in two of them, Farscape Forever (my article is "Don't Make Me Tongue You") and Mapping the World of Harry Potter.

And I am still going to put The Element of Fire online, probably starting in October, hopefully. City of Bones and The Death of the Necromancer are also out of print, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do about them yet.

Oh, and good news for once, Eric Marin just let me know that there's a nice review up of Wolf Night at Tangent Online.

ETA: wow, I screwed up that HTML. Should be fixed now.

Came back from the convention sick, but before that I had a great time. I got to be on two panels with Peter S. Beagle, which was fantastic.


Couple of things: The Gate of Gods, last book in the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy should be out in paperback at the end of this July. It came out in hardcover last November.


And Elemental got a great review from Library Journal, and my story got mentioned, yay!

From Stel Pavlou's Vonnegut-like "The Strange Case of Jared Spoon, Who Went to Pieces for Love" to Martha Wells' graceful tale of a young woman's struggle with her identity ("The Potter's Daughter"), this anthology features 23 original stories by some of SF and fantasy's greatest writers (others include Jacqueline Carey, Larry Niven, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson). All profits from the sale of this volume will go to the Save the Children Tsunami Relief Fund. With an introduction by SF Grandmaster Arthur C. Clarke, a resident of Sri Lanka...

The Publishers Weekly review for The Gate of Gods:

At the start of the final volume in Wells's imaginative and complex Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy (after 2004's The Ships of Air), her resourceful and witty heroine, Tremaine Valiarde, and a ragtag band of followers have the magic of the Viller spheres to help resist the almost invincible invading Gardier. Unfortunately, too many pieces of the puzzle remain missing for them to effectively defend what's left of the country of Ile-Rien, let alone liberate the rest of it. When the sphere-entrapped sorcerer Arisilde sends them a spell that eventually leads to "a train station for world-gates," Tremaine and her cohorts may have finally found a way to drive the Gardier out of Ile-Rien. New readers are advised to start with the first in the series, The Wizard Hunters (2003), as an acquaintance with numerous characters and previous action is essential.

Imaginative and complex, yay! Resourceful and witty, yay!

Also, and this feels very surreal to me, I got some more confirmation this morning that I'll have a Stargate: SG1 short story in an upcoming issue of Stargate Magazine to launch my Stargate Atlantis book Reliquary. We don't know why they want to launch a Stargate Atlantis book with a Stargate: SG1 short story, but hey, it's promoting the book, which is a concept that's sort of foreign to my experience, so I'm looking forward to it.


ETA: I didn't realize this was up for preorder yet, but I've also got an essay in the BenBella Harry Potter Smart Pop book: Mapping the World of Harry Potter. I've got an essay on the character of Neville Longbottom. It's coming out this January.