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Octavia E. Butler, one of the finest, most inventive writers I've ever read, has died at the age of 58 of a stoke.
This is unbelieveable. She will be missed.
Update: Butler stories available online:
The Book of Martha
Amnesty
Scott has now written about what
Butler meant to him. What Scott said.
Posted by Justine at 9:22, February 27th, 2006 under Fans & readers, Reading, State of the World |
Yup off to BrisVegas for Australian science fiction's
night of nights. Both Scott and me are up for an award---the same one. Wish us luck! (I hope Scott wins. If I win I'll have to come up with a speech. Blerk!)
I'm not taking my computer with me. You'll all have to suffer twenty-four hours without me. But keep the quessies coming! Will answer on my return.
Posted by Justine at 7:09, February 25th, 2006 under Cons & Other Gatherings, Scott's books, Sydney/Australia |
I'm in the middle of updating my website to accommodate the imminent arrival of my next two books,
Magic Lessons, the sequel to Magic or Madness, and
Daughters of Earth, an anthology of feminist science fiction stories and essays. The lovely
Deborah Biancotti is making it all look pretty.
Claire Light's brilliant
FAQ has reminded me that I need to update
my own. So anyone got any questions for me that aren't there already? About the books? About the writing life? About whatever. Fire away!
Posted by Justine at 6:49, February 24th, 2006 under Daughters of Earth, Magic or Madness trilogy |
I'm not sure I approve. How am I supposed to get any work done if all the cool kids are blogging? It ain't right.
So, Rjurik Davidson, the author of the
coolest minotaur story ever, which had the
coolest haiku appreciation of it ever, now
lives in blogland. He's not as tall as
Claire, but.
I hope you all go and say hi to both of them.
Posted by Justine at 8:07, February 23rd, 2006 under Bloggery |
I'm in Chinese! Complex character Chinese, no less. The Taiwanese edition of Magic or Madness just arrived. Thank you,
Whitney! The very first non-English edition of the book to appear anywhere in the world.
And yet another different cover for my first novel. While not as beautiful as the French cover, it does bear much more of a resemblance to the tale told within its covers. I adore seeing all these different versions of my book.
The other cool thing? It's so skinny. What was almost 280 pages in the Oz and US editions is a mere 220 pages in this edition. Chinese complex characters are mighty efficient.
Posted by Justine at 0:01, February 23rd, 2006 under Magic or Madness trilogy, Vainglory |
Yup, she's venturing from the
security of group blogs to
one of her very own. Check out her
frequently asked questions. It is to giggle. Also it will give you a teeny clue as to who Claire Light is.
Posted by Justine at 11:51, February 22nd, 2006 under Bloggery |
As usual
the pedant stickler people are losing. "Whom" is dying, so is the
bizarre notion of the split infinitive. Now all we need is for more folks to realise that subjunctive in English, she dead too. (If it ever truly existed.) Languages they evolve, they change. Deal with it, pedant stickler peoples!
via
Bookslut
Posted by Justine at 23:53, February 21st, 2006 under Praising, Ranting, Words & Language |
Posted by Justine at 11:02, February 20th, 2006 under Bloggery, Ideas, Magic or Madness trilogy, New York City/USA, Praising, Publishing business, Ranting, Reading, State of the World, Sydney/Australia |
Top ten searches that led to my site over the last 24 hours:
jill grinberg agent
bladder torture
strange color puce
batsmen losing balance and hitting wicket
what a boy looks like naked
best sledges
my sister naked
publishing, book, advances, average
is new york or sydney better
dumping someone
Is there no topic on which I'm not an authority? Nope, not one.
Update: Just so as you know, I cheated and left out all the obvious searches like my name, books I've written,
Elvis and
mangosteens.
Posted by Justine at 0:44, February 19th, 2006 under Bloggery, Search Terms, State of the World |
Interviews with
me and
Scott have gone up on Cynthia Leitich's fabbie blog,
Cynsations. The interviews were done because we're giving a couple of workshop thingies on writing synopses and on teen speak at
SCBWI's
Before-Bolonga Conference (which is why I answered the questions as if it was already March).
Via the
Lady Bond.
Posted by Justine at 7:50, February 18th, 2006 under Bloggery, Cons & Other Gatherings, Scott's books, Vainglory |
This is my first foreign language edition, published by
Editions du Panama. I'm stoked! And don't you think it looks like my name belongs there? With all those other French words? I've returned to my motherland! Or, okay, my great great great grandmother's land (give or take a few greats).
Very different to the
US cover, eh? I imagine the woman is meant to be Esmeralda, which fits with the title: In the Witch's Claws.
Posted by Justine at 21:02, February 15th, 2006 under Magic or Madness trilogy, Praising |
I'm on a discussion list for people who write novels for young adults. Right now we're talking about total strangers who ask authors to critique their unpublished novel without any sense that this is a big ask. One writer was asked to critique 25 short stories yet the person sending the stories admitted she'd never even read this writer's work. Ah, excuse me? Another said they were "the future of young adult literature" and would you crit the novel attached? Again without a hint that they'd even read the author's work. "You have published book, therefore you must want to read my unpublished book and make it published book, too."
Ah, in a word, no.
Every year my writer friends (pub'd and ...
Posted by Justine at 13:21, February 14th, 2006 under Publishing business, Ranting, Reading, Whingeing, Writing life, Young Adult literature |
Looks like 2006 is going to be the year of jetlag travelling for me and
Mr Westerfeld. I just updated our
appearances pages and it was quite a shock.
Brisbane!
Bologna!
New Orleans! Barely two weeks goes by without us chooffing off somewhere and that's with only the rock-solid confirmed events listed.
Not that I'm complaining, it's fantabuloso being asked to do so many different events. And I've never been to
New Orleans before. How fascinating is that going to be? Very.
In other news: I continue to be very very glad that I am in Sydney, not New York City.
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
And Australia thrashes Sri Lanka in the ...
Posted by Justine at 9:26, February 13th, 2006 under Cons & Other Gatherings, Cricket, New York City/USA, Praising, Sport, Sydney/Australia, Travelling, Whingeing |
How about
that Dilshan, eh? I love me some runout action.
Getty Images
And how fabbie is it that the ODI finals are turning into an actual contest? I'm so very relieved that the explosive Sri Lankans made it rather than the dour South Africans. Plus Bandara is the dead spit of
Theo Black. It's eerie. (Though the resemblance isn't as clear from photos. If onlly I could get the Blacks to come to Sydney and see Bandara on the tellie. I swear he even moves like Theo.)
Swiped from
here
Also, what
Peter Roebuck said about Murali.
Oh, and
how about that Tuffers? He funny. Ponting? Not so much. You should really worry, Mr Ponting, ...
Posted by Justine at 7:28, February 11th, 2006 under Cricket, Sport, Sydney/Australia |
A few weeks back I was asking about who the feminist sf writers are now. I had an ulterior motive: I'd just been asked to put together
a panel for Madison's
Centre for the Humanities "Rooted Cosmopolitans" lecture series (if like me, you are Australian, you will find that title rather amusing). That panel is now a go:
"A Feminist Utopia in Madison? Global Communities, Science Fiction and Women"
24 May, 2006, 7:30 pm
Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium, 816 State Street.
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Open to the public, free of charge
Panelists:
Elizabeth Bear,
Karen Joy Fowler,
Nalo Hopkinson, Justine Larbalestier (moderator),
Meghan McCarron
I hope some of you can come to cheer us on (or heckle, whatever ...
Posted by Justine at 8:50, February 8th, 2006 under Cons & Other Gatherings, Feminism |
I went to drop off my dry cleaning at the really excellent dry cleaner on Pitt St that has been there since before I was born, long before, and it was closed, windows boarded up, with a little notice telling you to pick up your clothes at the shop next door. Not long after I went into town to buy a button---just one little button---I went to Lincraft which had a really crappy range and then I remembered Home yardage. Good old Home Yardage what's been in the city since the dawn of time. Home Yardage had no buttons. They had no nothing hardly because Saturday is their last day of trading. And just round the corner
Gowings is ...
Posted by Justine at 17:52, February 7th, 2006 under Ranting, Sydney/Australia |
I will never understand all the Melbournites who despise Sydney, some of them folks who've never even been here. Seriously, I've met Melbournites who sneer with disdain at the mere thought of stepping foot in Sydney. The horror they say!
Me, I'm from Sydney. I love it, but I also have a whole lot of time for Melbourne. Melbourne has better licensing laws and thus
better bars than Sydney, a better art and live music scene, and (mostly) better clothes shopping. Melbourne has
trams. And what is not to love about trams? But Melbourne has little of Sydney's
breath-taking physical beauty, doesn't have her
beaches, or
national parks, or
fairies, er, I mean
ferries, ...
Posted by Justine at 10:27, February 5th, 2006 under Cricket, Fashion, Food, Liquids, New York City/USA, Ranting, Sport, State of the World, Sydney/Australia, Whingeing |
Lesson no. 1: Be nice to booksellers ((I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to any booksellers or librarians I have ever offended. I was young and knew not what I did. And if it was more recent, well, then, um, that book that I ranted about and called the worse book ever, after you'd just told me you loved it so much you had to read it twice in a row? That book? Turns out it is a work of genius. Ooops! Sorry, Stephanie . . .))
If you're an author or wannabe author never do the following:
have a bookseller check on the availability and price of a book and then when they offer to order it for ...
Posted by Justine at 0:01, February 3rd, 2006 under Writing life |
Diana has an
excellent post today answering questions about the magic of being published. Can you get published without knowing anyone in the industry? If you're not married to a publisher? If you're not a celebrity? If you haven't been hit by the publishing charisma stick?
Here's the one thing that every single published writer I know has in common:
They write.
Yup, that's it: they write. They work at their craft. They write almost every day, and when they're not writing, they're thinking and talking about it. Even when they're procrastinating, they're thinking about it. (Procrastination is work, too, people!)
Yes, getting published is hard. Yes all those rejections are frustrating. Yes, it can take years to get published. (Look at ...
Posted by Justine at 8:45, February 2nd, 2006 under Bloggery, Publishing business |
Samuel R. Delany's book
About Writing will not get out of my brain. I keep thinking about his concept of the usefulness, no, the essentialness of doubt (good! I got plenty of that), about how slavishly following the rules and working hard leads to aesthetic banality (the rules of good writing, not the rules of how-to-get-an-agent/editor---
you have to follow those). And about being a hack.
Delany's book made me feel like one (in a good way). His description of his own writing process, of how to write the absolute best you can, is a recipe for books that go through many, many drafts and take a long, long time to write, books that delve down into every doubt or ...
Posted by Justine at 9:44, February 1st, 2006 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Daughters of Earth, Magic or Madness trilogy, Reading, Writing life, Writing process |
