Archives
If you're in San Francisco, Seattle, or New York City you can find signed copies of my books here:
Borderlands
866 Valencia St
San Francisco
415.824.8203
They not only have the Magic or Madness trilogy but also Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction and Daughters of Earth
Books Inc Opera Plaza
601 Van Ness
San Francisco
415-776-1111
All For Kids
2900 N.E. Blakeley Street
Seattle
206.526.2768
Books of Wonder
18 West 18th Street
New York
212-989-3270
If you're hankering for a signed copy of one of my books but don't live anywhere near those shops---they all do mail order.
And because I'm curious how many of you like to have all your favourite books signed by the author? Do any of you collect signed books even if you've not read the book in question?
Posted by Justine at 13:12, October 28th, 2007 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Daughters of Earth, Magic or Madness trilogy |
In my previous life I was an academic. Not a very successful or prolific one. I spent four and a half years researching and writing my PhD thesis, while on a scholarship and doing paid-by-the-hour teaching (what's known in the US as being a TA) as well as IT support. After that I was awarded a three-year post-doctoral fellowship that my university extended for nine months. In that time I wrote and published one book,
The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, and edited a collection of stories and essays,
Daughters of Earth as well as writing a bunch of essays and papers (and on the sly I wrote
short stories and a ...
Posted by Justine at 11:10, August 27th, 2007 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Daughters of Earth, Excuses, How To Ditch Your Fairy, Magic or Madness trilogy |
Posted by Justine at 11:08, February 12th, 2007 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Bloggery, Fans & readers, Magic or Madness trilogy, Praising, Vainglory, Writing life |
Posted by Justine at 0:15, February 7th, 2007 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Bloggery, Daughters of Earth, Reading, Vainglory |
I'm a big believer in community. I'm convinced that it's very very very difficult to produce good art without some kind of a community behind you. I can date the turnaround in my own writing to my first showing it to other writers. Their critiques hurt like hell, but my writing got better in ways it never would have otherwise.
The communities of writers and other publishing folks I'm involved with share a wealth of information with each other. We tell each other about which editors we enjoy working with and why, which houses have the best publicity/sales/marketing departments. Who got paid what by which house. When third person is a better fit than first. What the differences are between writing ...
Posted by Justine at 15:24, September 3rd, 2006 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Bloggery, Cons & Other Gatherings, Excuses, State of the World, Writing life |
At long last
Julie Phillips' superlatively brilliant biography of
Alice Hastings Bradley Davies Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr./Raccoona Sheldon is out. Alli (as Alice was known) was endlessly fascinating. She was the child of adventurers who waltzed her around Africa and India as a child. She grew up to be an artist (before quitting cause she didn't think she was good enough), joined the military during World War 2, worked for the CIA, ran a chicken farm, became a Ph.d in psychology, as well as two different science fiction writers: James Tiptree, Jr. and Raccoona Sheldon. Quite the cv.
Julie's biography more than does justice to Alli Sheldon. It's
beautifully written and exhaustively researched. There's not ...
Posted by Justine at 3:04, August 4th, 2006 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Praising, Reading |
How's about that for a post title to put everyone off?
I've been hearing some complaints about writers who are too self promotery, who go on panels at cons waving their book around, saying,"Look at me! Look at me! I'm a published writer! Buy my book!" There are also complaints about certain writers' blogs which only talk about their books and their latest publishing news with links that only lead to places that sell their books. As well as whinges about the folks who relentlessly campaign for awards.
Accusations of being too self promotery make me a bit jittery. Promoting your books is part of a writer's job. If no one knows the book exists how is it going to sell? A ...
Posted by Justine at 1:53, March 1st, 2006 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Bloggery, Excuses, Feminism, Magic or Madness trilogy, Publishing business, Ranting, Writing life |
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 |
Posted by Justine at 23:10, December 8th, 2005 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Praising, Ranting, State of the World |
Posted by Justine at 6:48, November 16th, 2005 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Feminism, Ranting, Whingeing, Young Adult literature |
I'm endlessly fascinated by the search terms that lead people to my website. Today these desperate words typed into google led them to some
not-exactly-directly-related pearls of wisdom: inspire me to write my thesis.
Ouch.
I remember those days. I finished my PhD thesis in 1996, having started researching it in 1991 (and taken a year off due to some bone breakage), but it sure felt like it took a lot, lot, lot longer than that. At the time writing my thesis seemed by turns nightmarish, unendurable, hallucinegenic, boring, fun, hideous, never-ending and plain out-and-out pointless. I endlessly procrastinated until, faced with the prospect of no more scholarship, I buckled down and wrote day after day, night after night, barely sleeping, ...
Posted by Justine at 18:38, July 14th, 2005 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Bloggery, Search Terms |
Åka the proprietor of the blog, “läst och tänkt i annien,†dropped into translate:
“läst och tänkt i annien†means “read and thought in annienâ€, where annien is my “idioverseâ€, the universe as perceived through my eyes. It is mostly about fandom, books, physics and strange or peculiar things.
I was reflecting over the fact that annien seems to be inhabited by so many more men than women (i'm a physicist and sf fan), and that maybe the books i read are likewise unequally populated. at the same time I happened to see the link to you from mumpsimus, and threw it in together with the other things. i also liked the first letter, but quoted asimov because it tied in better ...
Posted by Justine at 10:53, July 10th, 2005 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Reading, State of the World |
Over the past few days there's been a remarkable jump in traffic to
this page of my website. The letters reproduced there are from the late 1930s and debate the role of women in science fiction. I adore them. They're funny, warm, silly and just plain gorgeous. A little investigation revealed links from
mumpsimus,
coalscent,
swisstone and
läst och tänkt i Annien (tragically, I don't read Swedish, so I have no idea what that means and I don't share my husband's love of
wacky google translations).
The commentators do seem to be remembering that Asimov was a kid at the time, just eighteen. And, by all accounts, he was a young eighteen with ...
Posted by Justine at 15:48, July 8th, 2005 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Reading, State of the World |
Hour of the Wolf interview postmortem
Posted by Justine at 22:18, September 13th, 2003 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Musings, New York City/USA |
a partial account of Justine's research into Judith Merril and co. in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s
Posted by Justine at 21:59, November 28th, 2002 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Musings, New York City/USA, Research |
all about the excellence of archives, libraries, librarians and archivists
Posted by Justine at 17:39, August 19th, 2002 under Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Musings, New York City/USA, Reading, Research, Sydney/Australia |
