As many of you know, my first sale was to one of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover anthologies, and that sale gave me my first glimmer of hope that I could build a professional writing career. I recently had a story appear in a second Darkover anthology, produced by MZB’s estate, and I tremendously enjoyed returning to one of the places where my career began.

As some you also know, this week Marion Zimmer Bradley’s daughter revealed in public that her mother abused her.

I read and reread her daughter’s words this week. I read, too, portions of MZB’s own court deposition (from her husband’s trial, also for child abuse) that I hadn’t read before. Then yesterday I took a deep breath, and I added up the advances from my two Darkover sales, my Darkover royalties, and (at his request) my husband Larry Hammer’s payment for his sale to MZB’s magazine.

And then we made a donation to the anti-abuse charity RAINN for that amount. I’ll donate any future Darkover royalties, as well.

I remain proud of the Darkover stories I’ve written, and I respect the many fellow writers who also got their start on the pages of MZB’s anthologies and in her magazine. MZB played a huge role in many of our careers, and it’s not my intention to deny that, or to deny how deeply many readers were touched–and in some cases saved–by MZB’s work.

But I also can’t deny the harm caused by the flawed creator of that work. What I can do is see to it that my having written in her worlds goes towards fighting those same hurts and abuses in the places they’re happening now.

So that’s what I’m doing.

And I’m posting about it here–though this feels more like a personal decision than a public one–because silence about abuse creates the illusion of acceptance, and illusions gain power over time, and so sometimes, speaking aloud is more important than staying comfortable.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

So on the livejournal version of last week’s post about the hard-to-define magic-y mythic-y lyrical fantasy genre, the subject of books that have this feeling without being fantastical came up.

Dacuteturtle talked about how some of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories have this feeling for her. Rachelmanija talked about how “secret garden” books do.

I realized that for me, this is a huge part of the appeal of, say, the Icelandic family sagas, which are often light on the magic (and vague about its nature), and which for lack of better terminology I’ve been describing as having the feel of Tolkien, with less magic and more lawsuits. Rymenhild talked about medieval myths and allegories on the livejournal post, which one could argue are either fantasy or a genre of their own. I’d add Beowulf to her list, once one adds the poetry of the Seamus Heaney translation. (Or, I’m guessing, the original old English.)

The contemporary examples that most readily come to mind for me are Deborah Noyes’ Plague in the Mirror (whose the timeslip is the only magical element) and Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal (which feels magical yet doesn’t have anything that’s inarguable magic, though it does have things that arguably are).

Anyway, this all got me to thinking. Lots of folks talk about whether fantasy can achieve the same things realism can, with the spoken or unspoken assumption that a fantasy work is somehow more worthy or literary if it does.

But we don’t talk nearly so much about whether realism can achieve the things fantasy does, and reach for those heights. And whether it might be more worthy on some level if it does so, too.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

So, there’s a certain kind of book I’m always on the lookout for. It’s not the only kind of book I’m on the lookout for, but it is the kind of book I adore when I find it.

I think of the genre as lyrical mythic fantasy. Books that can be spare, but not so spare as to lose that lyricism–this isn’t the genre of transparent prose. Books that can be dense, but not so dense that they lose a certain lightness and flow. Books that are deeply, richly immersive. Liminal perhaps. Transporting, but not only transporting. Books that make you believe the mythic is just through that veil over there, and that make you believe this as much or more through sheer language as through cleverness of worldbuilding.

You can see how this might be hard to describe. I’m not sure I’ve ever fully succeeded. When I mention what I’m looking for, I often get recs for straight up fantasy-adventure with a dash of interesting world-building. That’s not what I’m looking for (or not what I’m looking for when I talk about this kind of book–of course I like other kinds of books, too, and many books I adore don’t fit into this at all). I know what I do want when I see it, which of course is not very useful if one is looking for recommendations.

Examples include The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, The Underneath, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, maybe Moonheart and Mythago Wood (it’s been years since I read those last two, so they could have changed in memory). It almost, but not quite, includes The Blue Sword, but if I mention the Blue Sword, I get all the wrong sort of recommendations again. I just started Sorrow’s Knot, which looks like it might fit though I’m not far enough in to that yet to be sure. If Miyazaki wrote novels, it would include some but not all of his work.

Of course, all of this is highly subjective, and a book that fits this description in one reader’s mind won’t in another’s. That’s how reading works, after all.

But I thought I’d go ahead and ask, and see what I might discover. If any of the above resonates for you, and you think you might know the sort of book I’m talking about … any recommendations?

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Bones of Faerie is five years old this spring! I’d get all sentimental, only Liza isn’t really the sentimental sort, so instead here’s a Book Smugglers’ “Old School Wednesday” review.

“Bones of Faerie is an unexpectedly lyrical and beautifully written book – I am an immediate fan of Janni Lee Simner’s haunting prose, which captured me from the first eerie chapter. It’s a poignant, elegiac novel about a world ravaged by magic and the children who have grown up in its ruins. It is Liza’s world that is so captivating, that draws you in and defines Bones of Faerie …”

Also, the Zombies, Run! episode I wrote is now live! Specifically, it’s Season 3, Mission 6: Career Day: “Mysterious giant footprints have been spotted–could this be related to the Phantom of Abel?” I had a blast writing this, and of course, I jumped ahead and ran the mission out of order just so I could hear it. It was a blast, running to my own words–but of course, the real blast is thinking of other people running to my words.

Because, after all, we are all Runner 5.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

The birdbath is frozen,
There’s snow on the ground,
Anything worth saving
Will survive on its own.

Water flows along curbs and down drains,
Seeking anything that craved sunshine–
The flowers sagged with bees,
The pithy dead stems,
Wintering insects.

For the butterflies’ sake I can adapt,
But it’s going to take a lot of work.

Gardening for Climate Change

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

I talk to Naomi Alderman about writing for Zombies, Run.

The Zombies, Run! app chooses songs from whatever playlist you feed it, and in that post, I talk about how my favorite moments are the ones when something comes up that’s wildly inappropriate for the narrative.

Today’s episode was filled with those awesome moments.

First, just as a friend has gone gray (turned into a zombie) and I’m fleeing from them, my playlist urged me to “Let It Go.”

Then, just another character was revealed to have secret zombie blood inside them, I was told “Something has changed within me. Something is not the same.”

And then a traitor was unmasked to strains of, “Don’t bring me bad news, no bad news, I don’t need none of your bad news today.”

And this is why I run from zombies.

Along the way, I’m pondering the fact that said traitor’s unmasking was utterly expected, and yet nonetheless satisfying. The discovery isn’t the only thing that makes a reveal satisfying–this is a craft thing worth thinking about some more.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

So, you all know by now that I’m a huge fan of Zombies, Run! right? That app that’s been keeping me running (or, this month, getting me back to running) by (in theory) giving me something to run from while (actually) making me want to know what happens next so badly I have no choice but to run? That app that I first downloaded because I thought it was had clever gimmick but kept playing because it’s really well written and has all sorts of cool and compelling story things going on? That app I geek out about to pretty much anyone who will stand still long enough to listen?

Yeah, that app.

Well, season 3 starts up this month, and I can finally tell you that …

… I wrote a guest episode!

I had so much fun writing this, you have no idea. It turns out writing about running from zombies is as much fun as actually running from zombies. Who knew? And the thought of other Runner 5s getting to run to it just fills me with glee.

I won’t say anything else now, except that I was a Girl Scout for 12 years and a Girl Scout leader for 8 years and these things just might have had a … teeny tiny bit of influence on the episode.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

“Some people find this hard,” the rabbi warned us, as my brother and sister and I stood by my father’s grave.

He didn’t tell us, as he had at the funeral home, that this meant we didn’t have to do it. Not directly.

He’d told us a lot about the things we didn’t have to do. We didn’t have to follow the casket from the car to the grave. We didn’t have to watch that casket be lowered into the earth. And, yes, didn’t have to put the ritual shovelful of earth onto the casket once it lowered. All things, he explained, that many people found hard.

Through it all, my siblings and I stared at him dumbfounded. We were supposed to avoid doing things because they were hard? As if following, lowering, and shoveling were any harder than burying one’s father in the first place—a father who had never seen his children truly, who confused giving gifts with giving love, who I’d spent years trying to please and trying to reach until finally, in self-defense, I’d given up to protect myself?

As if we got to skip feeling the hard things if we skipped doing the hard things? Even then, we all knew better. We would have helped carry the casket, too, had we not been told that wasn’t allowed for liability reasons.

So after we assured the rabbi, yet again, that of course we wanted to perform this final ritual act, he went on to explain that putting dirt on a grave fell under its own special category of lovingkindness, because it was one of the few favors that could never be repaid.

Or even, I would think later, that we could hope might be repaid, because with my father, issues of reciprocity between parent and child, of the gap between how he thought he acted toward us and how he did act, had always been complicated.

But just then I waited, while my brother threw one shovelful into the grave, and then a second. I took the shovel in my hands in turn. The dirt was surprisingly light, and the tactile act of throwing it in, of hearing it thunk onto the wooden casket, was satisfying, necessary. I sent a second shovelful after the first. I could have kept going, could have lost myself in this deeply physical task and seen it through, but instead I stepped back, letting my sister take a turn as well.

And then I spent some time standing silent by that open grave, by that lowered casket, by all the things we were told we didn’t need to do, thinking about how while the rabbi had been right about other things that day, he’d been wrong about this, because I did need it. These rituals are here for a reason, after all.

I rode back to my father’s house in silence, too, but unlike the days before the burial, it wasn’t a turbulent sort of silence. It was a peaceful, grounded sort of silence, a transitional sort of silence, the sort of silence that let me know I was passing through something, into someplace new.

And now, a few days and a second plane ride later, I’m home.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Chelsea Mead Kirkpatrick’s film adaptation of my short story “Drawing the Moon” begins shooting in just a few weeks! “Drawing the Moon” first appeared in Bruce Coville’s Book of Nightmares and is the story of a boy who’s convinced the moon has stolen his dead parents away–and who will do anything to get them back.

The short clips of the actors in this video gave me shivers in places:

It’s pretty amazing seeing the first hints of how these characters will be brought to life.

If you want to help make this film happen (and to get your own DVD of the finished film), you can support the Drawing the Moon film funding campaign here.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

When I first heard that Amtrak was considering having writers-in-residence on its trains, I was pretty captivated by the idea. I find trains deeply evocative, liminal, even mythic. I loved the idea of hopping on board for a multi-day trip (instead of my previous several hour or single-day rides), of watching the landscape roll by, of chatting with my fellow passengers, and of, presumably, writing up a storm. So I figured I’d go ahead and apply. Why not? I knew the Amtrak Residency was a PR move from the very start, but I’ve worked in business communications and I actually thought it was a brilliant PR move. I’m in favor of train travel, so it wasn’t like I’d be promoting something I didn’t believe in.

Along the way I priced out some sleeper-class tickets for long-haul journeys, because if I really wanted to get in some train-writing time badly enough, there were of course ways to do that even without Amtrak awarding me a free ticket. I looked at the prices, for sleeper cars especially, and … realized that I actually didn’t want to do this badly enough. Not as badly, anyway, as the many other things I wanted more that I could also do for the cost of a long-haul train ticket. At this point I still planned to apply–a few days writing on a train would still of a heckuva lot of fun–but I’d clarified that this wasn’t some great life priority for me.

Then the Amtrak Residency application went live, and I saw that this wasn’t so much a writers’ residency as a writers’ contest–complete with the requirement, common to many contests, that entrants give over legal rights to the application. The rights Amtrak was demanding from writer-entrants were non-exclusive (cool), but they also included the up-to-10-page writing sample attached to the application (not cool) and, worse, those rights would be given up simply by applying, whether or not one was awarded a free ticket (even less cool). I stepped back and thought it through. A sleeper-car train ticket is actually reasonable compensation for a 2000-3000 word article, given the cost of a ticket and going freelance rates. But an entry in a contest for a possible train ticket is … not.

Writers have been applying in tremendous numbers in spite of the rights issue and the low chance of compensation for same, eight thousand of them last I heard. With that many applicants and those terms, the whole business feels less and less like a group of professionals and would-be professionals applying for a residency, and more and more like a group of hopefuls buying rather expensive lottery tickets.

But what’s truly disconcerting is the way more and more applicants are talking about the residency, tossing around phrases like “this would be a dream come true for me.” Just this morning I saw one person claim he would just die if he were selected, and another claim she was salivating at the possibility of being one of the “Chosen,” and I couldn’t help feeling like somewhere along the way, realistic perspective about this whole business had been lost.

Either they’re (some of them) making all of this up to make their applications look better–because, really, of all the grand dreams in the world, how many thousands of people really put a domestic U.S. round trip train ticket at the very top?; or else this really is their (some of their) grand dream–because, okay, dreams are highly personal, and just because this isn’t at the very top of my list doesn’t mean it’s not at the top of a whole bunch of other writers’ lists.

But the thing is, if something really is your grand dream? Entering contests and buying a lottery tickets isn’t the usually way to obtain one’s dreams. (I dream of returning to Iceland, too, and so I’ve entered contests for free IcelandAir tickets, but I’ve never seriously believed that was the way I was really going to get back there.) A dream as grand as some Amtrak Residency applicants seem to believe this is calls for strategizing, and marshaling/saving one’s resources, and thinking through what else one can do if saving resources isn’t enough. (Maybe a shorter journey is required to make it happen, or sleeping in coach, or getting off the train at the end of the day and sleeping in hotel rooms or a tent in the towns one passes through.)

If the trip is truly that deeply, earth-shatteringly important to a writer, maybe it even calls for striving to sell one’s work at fair market price in order to put the profits towards making it happen, rather than blowing that work and those profits on lottery tickets.

The problem with wanting a dream this badly and thinking a lottery ticket is the only way to get it is … then you become desperate, and willing to pay too much for the lottery ticket you think is your only shot. I hear that desperation in other comments in that online discussion, comments along the lines of “don’t you want to be read?” and “it’s not like you don’t have other work” and “what’s the big deal, it’s only ten pages?”

That air of desperation may be what’s making me most uncomfortable, and what’s taken the luster away from something that was, initially, a nifty idea. Because train rides are a heckuva lot of fun. They’re just not worth selling my soul or even my words for a one-in-eight-thousand chance of getting one.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

So you all know that one of the best things about living in Tucson is ... well, that we're in a state that understands that changing our clocks doesn't actually change what time it is.

But one of the other best things is that we're the home of the Tucson Festival of Books. Which is this weekend, March 15-16.

And I'll be there! Here's where you can find me:

Saturday, 1:00-1:45 p.m.
Signing at Mostly Books Booth (#130-131 & #134-135)

Sunday, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
World Building: Creating Imaginary Worlds
Education Bldg, Kiva Auditorium
With Cornelia Funke, Aprilynne Pike, Janni Lee Simner, and Chuck Wendig (Nancy Brown moderating)
Half hour signing follows panel

Sunday, 4-5 p.m.
The Craft of Writing
Education Bldg, Room 353
Sun, Mar 16, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
With Nancy Farmer, Janni Lee Simner, and Suzanne Young (T. Gail Pritchard moderating)
Half hour signing follows panel

Children’s book veteran Kelly Bennett has been publishing picture books and children’s nonfiction for a quarter century. She joins the long haul series today to discuss something many writers think about: when (and how) to quit–and when (and why) not to.

ReTIRED and Better for It!

I’m honored Janni invited me to discuss Writing for the Long Haul. It’s an interesting topic, especially as I recently quit.

Someone asked me once. “What made you think anyone would want to read what you write?”

Snarky as the question sounds, it wasn’t intended to be an insult. It was posed as a query, more of a “Why did you become a writer?”

The idea that I could . . . should . . . must be a WRITER struck me like a tractor trailer on an empty New Mexico highway. I was driving Route 66 from California back to Oklahoma, in a metallic green Cadillac with my two children—then 2 and 4—when it smacked me upside the head. (We were listening to kiddie music on an 8 track.) Unlike many authors I know, I had never before considered becoming a writer. While I had earned high marks on school writing assignments, I was not a writer. I didn’t even keep grocery lists, let alone a journal. Nevertheless, I answered the call.

At the first opportunity, I enrolled in a writing class. Along with introducing me to the business of publishing, that first class also brought me together with Ronnie Davidson, a kindred spirit who soon became my writing partner. Within that first year we’d sold our first book. However, as our co-writing career took off, my personal life crashed.  Frankly, as passionate as I was about writing, if it had not been for Ronnie, and the support and accountability that comes from being part of a team, I probably would have quit.

By writing team, I mean Ronnie and I sat side-by-side every school day for as many hours as our schedules allowed, with Ronnie at the computer keyboard (one of the earliest home systems) and me scribbling on a legal pad, bouncing ideas, plotting, creating, and finishing each other’s sentences . . .  As a team we set goals—primarily to publish—and set our course of action. What we wrote—poems, puzzles, How-To, Travel, parenting magazine and newspaper articles, memoir, True Confessions, fiction, non-fiction—didn’t matter. The fun was writing and publishing, and being paid (no matter how small the check; every dollar was one less I had to make waitressing.)

Being part of a writing team came naturally to me. As a kid, I preferred team sports—volleyball, kick ball, badminton—over individual sports. Even in Tennis, I preferred doubles.  So, when after more than 12 years, 6 books and a binder-full of articles to our credit, we dissolved our writing partnership, I floundered. For the first time, I questioned the call. Was I really meant to be a writer? Or, was I only a writing partner? Could I even write by myself? Did I want to?

Fast forwarding through the ensuing agonizing self-appraisal, I determined, partner or not, I was a writer. I plunged into a new writing life. Partly out of fear, partly loneliness, this included becoming active in writing organizations I had only been vaguely connected to while team writing, including a critique group. Through them I found the supportive community I craved and began realizing success in my solo career.

Odd as it sounds, publishing can wreak havoc on our writing lives. It did mine.  Having a “career” requires us to split ourselves in two: part creative writer, part business-minded author. Whether it’s true, or it’s just my excuse, the last few years I’ve been so busy moving, marrying off children, caring for aging parents, traveling, etc. etc., I haven’t had much time for anything else. Of necessity, what time I did have went to “must dos” and “should dos”—promotions &; marketing, presentations, social media—author stuff. As a result, the “want tos”—everything I enjoyed about writing, including writing and fellowship—went by the wayside.  I came to one day and realized my writing life was no longer a joy. It was a job. And, judging by my actions—splitting with my agent, neglecting revisions, not sitting my butt in the chair—a job I might not want.

I was wallowing somewhere between miserable and pathetic when it dawned on me that, called or not, I did not have to be a writer. There were a zillion other careers out there, a zillion other things I could be doing besides writing. So I quit. Being free from the publish-and-promote-or-perish pressure felt grrrrrreat! . . . Honest.

While on hiatus, I attended a retirement dinner for a colleague of my husband’s. After the dinner was over one of the young, non-native English speaking attendees approached him. “Mr. Michael,” he said. “After you get your new tires, what will you do?”

New tires! We all enjoyed his naiveté, and some among us filled him in on the “real” meaning of retirement. (Although I’m not sure we should have.) In a Chauncy Gardnerish way, he was correct. In retiring, Michael was replacing a worn set of work tires with a comfy new set for rolling into the sunset. Yes, retirement is an end. But it’s also an opportunity for new beginnings.

I didn’t want to quit. Writing is my chess, my Suduko, my Candy Crush.  Even when the writing isn’t going well, I’m happier writing than not writing. I had been called to writing. And not heeding that call was driving me from crazy to cranky. I wanted to retire so I could begin a new, fulfilling writing life.

Just as there are different kinds of tires—on road, off road, snow, etc.—there are different ways to approach our writing lives.  After deciding that I wanted—want—to be a writer, I visualized what I wanted that new writing life to be. Next, I set goals to ensure I don’t forget or ignore my “want tos” again! These include:

1. Staying connected to my team by attending one writing retreat, workshop or conference (as a participant, not a speaker) bi-annually chosen to inspire and energize me.
2. Interacting with my readers regularly (preschoolers and elementary students) at paid events, and as a volunteer.
3. Challenging myself to try new things (by taking classes and group study).
4. Scheduling quarterly check-ups to evaluate my professional life with an eye to maintaining balance between author duties and writing—with prime time going to writing.

Writing for the long haul is no different than other professions, harder perhaps considering the paychecks may not be as plump or regular. It’s easy to stay busy attending to the “must dos” and the “should dos” while ignoring the “want tos.” But, attending to those “want tos” is what brings us joy.  And while I don’t recommend doing anything as dramatic as calling it quits, I do suggest doing what I should have:  in the same way you take your car in for servicing, schedule regular career check-ups.  Ask and answer those defining questions:

• Why did you become a writer?
• What kind of writing life do you want?

Depending on your responses, make necessary adjustments to your writing life. Could be it’s time for you to re-tire, too. Oh, the places we can go on a brand new set of tires!

Kelly Bennett started telling stories when she was two, using her mother’s mascara to write on her neighbor’s car. She’s gone on to publish more than a dozen picture books and nonfiction children’s books under her name, as well as several books co-authored with Ronnie Davidson under the pen name Jill Max. Her most recent titles include Vampire Baby, the Writer’s League of Texas Book Award Winner One Day I Went Rambling, Your Mommy Was Just Like You, and Your Daddy Was Just Like You. She’s a graduate of the Vermont College Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program. Visit her online at Kelly’s Fishbowl.

Previous Writing for the Long Haul Posts

- Pete Hautman on the book that will save us
- Elena Acoba on touching reader lives
- Steve Miller on building a writing life
- Sharon Lee on remembering we’re not alone
- Betty G. Birney on always challenging ourselves
- Nora Raleigh Baskin on making deals with the writing gods
- Sean Williams on unpredictability and luck
- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

I was recently talking to a new writer in that scary, hopeful place of awaiting publication of their first book, and at some point in our conversation, they said to me:

"If you look at careers that crash and burn you can often trace it to a first book that failed to do well."

And I was all, what? Umm, no.

Never mind the absolutism of "crash and burn" as the opposite of runaway success--I know at least as many prominent working writers whose first book wasn't noticed much at all when it came out, maybe isn't known even now. I mean, how many urban fantasy fans have heard of Nightseer? How many lovers of children's books know Kenny's Window? How many epic fantasy readers have read Dying of the Light? And how many of those of you who do know these books discovered them before you discovered these writers' better known works and went looking to see what else they'd done?

Yet the myth of big-debut-or-nothing remains, and has grown alongside an increasing emphasis on first novels that can easily become one more tool writers at all stages of their careers use to beat themselves up with. So in the interest of providing a little balance, I've decided we need a list of little-known first works by now-bestselling and award-winning writers. Because it's lovely when your first book comes out to great fanfare, but it's not some sort of automatic death knell when it doesn't.

Here's the start of that my list. This is just a starting point, so I hope you'll help me expand it by mentioning other first books by now-bestselling or award-winning writers either in comments here or under the hashtag #unknownfirsts on twitter.

The Big U, Neal Stephenson
Burgoo Stew, Susan Patron
Conan the Invincible, Robert Jordan (who also wrote The Fallon Blood a couple years earlier under a pseud)
Duran Duran: The First Four Years, Neil Gaiman
Dying of the Light, George R. R. Martin
Fire Proof (The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo #11), Suzanne Collins
First Light, Rebecca Stead
The Foolish Giant, Bruce Coville
The Gremlins, Roald Dahl
Just Morgan, Susan Beth Pfeffer
Kenny's Window, Maurice Sendak (his work as an illustrator goes back further)
The Lightning Time, Gregory Maguire
Nightseer, Laurell K. Hamilton
Outlaws of Sherwood Forest (Choose Your Own Adventure #47), Ellen Kushner
Pilgrims and Other Stories, Elizabeth Gilbert
Pirates in Petticoats, Jane Yolen
Restoree, Anne McCaffrey
The Small Rain, Madeleine L'Engle

There are many, many ways to build a career, and having a bestseller or award-winner right out of the gate is only one of them.

There's also the fact that one can have a viable career without ever publishing a high-profile book, not to mention the whole business how careers aren't things that are unequivocally made and just as unequivocally kept in the first place--but that second, I think, is a whole other discussion. (If you need reminders that it's true, though, the ongoing Writing for the Long Haul series is a good place to start.)

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Krawking, soaring, arguing, perching, looking about.

As if they’d all just gotten the same wake up call for half-past winter.

Or, perhaps, were simply looking for other ravens with which to do raven-y things in order to create more ravens.

It is, as always, hard to say. And the ravens, of course, aren’t telling.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

So this week Arizona’s governor vetoed SB1062, which would have allowed businesses to choose who to serve based on their personal beliefs, and which would especially have made it easy to refuse to deny service (in restaurants, in medical offices, in countless other places) based on sexual orientation, because of the lack of other anti-discrimination legislation that would have protected the LGBT community in the face of that bill.

As one does when one’s elected representative does the right thing–even if I didn’t personally elect her, and even if I disagree with most of her decisions–I thanked her, both on social media and with a call and letter to her office. (I’d also written and called, earlier in the week, to register my opposition to the bill.)

A few people suggested that thanking Governor Brewer was inappropriate, essentially because, they said, she only vetoed the bill at all because national pressures shamed her into it.

Well, actually, our governor did veto a similar bill about a year ago with far less national attention focused on the matter, but never mind that … national pressures did play a huge role in the veto of this bill, and we’re grateful for them. But local pressures played a huge role too. So did the fact that not only Arizona liberals but also many Arizona conservatives outside the state legislature–including both our U.S. senators–as well as Arizona interests such as the Phoenix economic council (hardly a liberal stronghold) urged her strongly to consider a veto. Pretty much everyone–well, not everyone, but huge huge numbers of people–in Arizona outside the legislature, with a few exceptions, was urging a veto.

I say this because I think there’s a tendency, when a conservative state does something deeply troubling, for the liberals in less conservative states to see it as their job to “save” us. And that’s both true and not true.

I’ve had liberal friends in other states offer to write editorials to my own papers for me and sign my name to them, under the assumption that this was something we, I don’t know, just couldn’t do this for ourselves. I’ve had them come here to monitor our polls, not asking whether there were those already here in sympathy with her views who might be perfectly capable of doing so. Just recently I had a friend in a liberal state actually tell me proudly how in her state, the Sanctuary movement was ever-so-much-better, because in her state, everyone supported it and there was no need for secrets. I managed to get my jaw up off the floor long enough to explain to her that actually, Sanctuary began in Arizona. And over and over again, I have friends who share my political views ask me, directly and indirectly, “How can you live there?”

I remember learning, as an adult, that during the civil rights protests of the 1960s, Mississippians and Alabamans had mixed feelings when northerners headed south to fight the injustices there–because national action did make a huge difference, but the south also had their own home-grown activist community already there protesting before the northerners arrived, and that got forgotten a little as outsiders came in and took over. I was startled at the time–being from a northeastern state, I’d been raised on stories of how we did save those less right-minded than us–but after a couple decades in Arizona, I get it.

We want your help. We need your help, and we value it. But we’re not incompetent children who are standing by idle waiting for you to swoop in and save us. (Did you know we were protesting the legislative shutdown of our Mexican studies program for months before the national media finally noticed?) We’re activists, too, and of course we’re working to change things. I’m not working nearly as hard as many … mostly I’m writing letters these days … but since moving to Arizona, I’ve regularly met people who through the years have put their lives and livelihoods and freedom on the line to do the right thing–far more than I ever met living in the northeast. When I’m asked by those who share my views how I can live here, more and more often I want to ask them how they can live their comfortable lives–lives where they don’t have to fight for or put anything on the line for their beliefs, or have them questioned by friends or neighbors or acquaintances, or even learn that most basic skill of how to get along with people who disagree with them–and then ask that question.

When I called my governor’s office to register my disapproval of SB1062 and my hopes for a veto, her staff asked me for my zip code. They were paying attention to who was calling from within the state and who was calling from outside. Had there truly been no protest at all from within, no way would that bill have been signed. The fact that I live here and registered my protest, in however small a way, mattered. If I left Arizona–if I left this gorgeous soul-filling desert and the fabulous community that live here–there’d would be one less local voice here to do so.

What I’m saying is this: National voices mattered for this battle. They matter for many of our battles. We need allies, and we couldn’t have defeated this bill without you. So thank you for that.

But you need to know that Arizona voices mattered too. And you couldn’t have done it without us, either.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

I was looking for my high school story notebook, and found my high school journal instead. This is from a rare typewritten page among the mostly handwritten ones:

“When I’m a serious writer, I plan to have a typewriter set up in my room all the time.”

Okay, yeah, so the future didn’t turn out quite the way I imagined.

“Right now, it [the typewriter] kind of gets in the way … it is hard to make corrections on a typewriter. In a strange way, it takes less effort to type.”

That girl-I-was wasn’t even sure what a word processor was, but she was so ready for one.

“That’s what I need to do–write a really good poem. I still can’t get all the connections among everything in the universe down on paper.”

I admire my younger self so much. She was trying, really trying, to figure everything out, and believed that if she kept at it, she’d get there eventually.

She’s still working on it, of course, but I like to think she’d mostly be okay with that.

And there there’s this, written a few years later, by my college-self rather than my high school one, right around the time I was getting up the nerve to write seriously:

“Writing is what I care about most in the world. I may not be brilliant; but my style has some merit; at the very least I am capable of fashioning coherent, unawkward sentences. As I scientist I could not be happy unless I succeeded. I care enough about writing and literature that I can fail and be happy.”

My younger self, she really did know what she was doing, more often than not. I owe her so much. Especially I owe her for this:

“I want to read, to learn of other people’s inner worlds. And I want to write. I’m going to go for it, because if I don’t take chances now … I’ll always wonder what could have been.”

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

I’m starting a new email list for book news and updates. If you’d like in, you can join here.

Basically, it’s really easy to miss things on the Internet, so this list is for anyone who wants to be sure they don’t skip the important stuff. (Or at least, the important stuff as it relates to me and my books.)

I’ll keep posting more frequent updates here (along with a whole bunch of other stuff) here, too, of course!

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

First, Melissa Marr talks about emails that start by apologizing for asking questions: “Please don’t apologize for being inquisitive or for having opinions. Be proud that you’re curious and clever. It’s good to have thoughts & questions. It’s just one if the many ways that people can be awesome. Be assertive. Admit to yourselves that you do, in fact, kick ass.”

On her email page Tamora Pierce says the same thing, only differently: “Please don’t refer to yourself or what you say as ‘pathetic,’ ‘boring,’ ‘stupid,’ ‘ordinary,’ ‘insignificant,’ ‘weird,’ ‘strange’ … In this wonderful world, there will be people lining up to put you down, belittle you, and treat you badly. Please don’t give them a head start by talking that way about yourself.”

Then Idina Menzel talks more about why women tend to hide their power and retreat behind apologies: “… where Elsa and I meet, is wrestling with being a strong, powerful, extraordinary woman. Also, we worry about having to hide that, in fear of hurting other people. I understand and relate to that. I think as women, the smarter and more powerful we are, the more it can be threatening and alienating to other people … It’s not until now, and in the past 10 years, honestly, that I’m finally not apologizing for all the different things that I do.”

For many women, not apologizing for our opinions and our power doesn’t always come easily, what with the people on the one hand who tell us (directly or indirectly) that we’re getting above ourselves and those on the others who tell us that we’re hurting them by being too forceful. But being confident doesn’t make us unkind or uppity, and neither does owning the things we’re genuinely good at without apology.

I know too well that it takes work not to apologize for the many things that don’t require apology (existing and taking up space at all being not the least of them), what with all the training we get to apologize at every turn. But these habits can be unlearned. It takes work, and it’s an ongoing process. But I believe, strongly and without apology, that it’s worth doing.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

I’m doing an AMA on the YA subreddit from noon to 5 p.m. eastern time. Come on by and ask me anything!

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

National Book Award-winner Pete Hautman has written everything from science fiction to mystery to romance, for everyone from teens and pre-teens to adults. He joins the long haul series to talk about another of the reasons writers write, even if we only admit it to ourselves.

The Next Book I Write Will Save My Life

My bona fides: I’ve been a full-time professional novelist for twenty years. I’ve published twenty-eight books in various genres with four different publishers. Some of my novels have won prestigious national awards, while others have tanked so badly that my royalty statements show negative sales. I had a couple of years where I made more money than I could spend, and far too many years with an income that would have qualified me for food stamps. My books have been both praised and condemned by great intellects, and given a similar treatment by great fools.

I have hours and sometimes days in which I cannot imagine why anyone would want to read what I write, much less pay for the privilege, and other moments when I cannot imagine why anybody would want to read anything written by anyone other than me. I have written novels that will never see print, and novels that I wish hadn’t seen print.

What keeps me going? Why write when there are so many other things I could be doing with my one and only life? Why not become a savior, a saint, a martyr? Why not make a ton of money and surround myself with luxury? Why not raise a litter of children and disseminate my DNA far and wide? Why not watch TV and drink beer all day? Why not stop breathing and maybe find out that I’m wrong about what happens next?

A few years back I read a novel called This Book Will Save Your Life, by A.M. Homes. I picked it up in part because I’d recently heard a radio interview with Homes, and I liked what I heard. Mostly, though, I was attracted by the title. I enjoyed the book. It’s a funny, smart, magical-realistic tale about a lonely, dissociated man who discovers that he is not alone. I would recommend it to many people. But—and this is not intended as a negative—the title was my favorite part.

There is this writer thing that writers don’t often talk about, not even to each other in the dead of night. You see, we are all drowning, and that is the reason we keep writing, because every new book is the book that will float us above and away from (choose three) irrelevance, poverty, mediocrity, madness, obscurity, obloquy, ourselves.

I believe that at bottom this is true of all writers, be they poets, literary writers, genre hacks, ghost writers, memoirists, or diarists. It may be true of all artists, of all craftspeople, of anyone with the arrogance to attempt to create something that does not already exist.

The next book will change everything. The next book will make sense of all that I have experienced. The next book I write will save my life. And as pompous, as hubristic, as crazy as that sounds, I believe it to be true, and so I write.

Pete Hautman is the author of more than twenty novels for adults and teens, including the 2004 National Book Award winner Godless, Los Angeles Book Prize winner The Big Crunch, and three New York Times Notable Books: Drawing Dead, The Mortal Nuts, and Rash. His young adult novels range from science fiction (Rash, Mr. Was, Hole in the Sky, and The Obsidian Blade) to mystery (Blank Confession) to contemporary drama (Godless, Sweetblood) to romantic comedy (The Big Crunch, What Boys Really Want.) With novelist, poet, and occasional co-author Mary Logue, Hautman divides his time between Golden Valley, Minnesota, and Stockholm, Wisconsin. 

The next book that will save his life is The Klaatu Terminus, due out this April. His recent books include the first two books in the trilogy, The Obsidian Blade and The Cydonian Pyramid.

Previous Writing for the Long Haul Posts

- Elena Acoba on touching reader lives
- Steve Miller on building a writing life
- Sharon Lee on remembering we’re not alone
- Betty G. Birney on always challenging ourselves
- Nora Raleigh Baskin on making deals with the writing gods
- Sean Williams on unpredictability and luck
- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

After a stop in Phoenix for YAllapalooza, I’m on my way to climes eastern and cold. Lnhammer and the tuxedo kitty gang are holding down the fort for the duration.

The northeast is rather cold this week, isn’t it?

One thing about traveling (and even not-traveling) is, you stumble upon fragments of other people’s stories. So here’s today’s:

A mom and teen on the rental car shuttle beside me, daughter holding a slim instrument case.

Mom asks quietly, “You ready for this?”

Daughter answers, more quietly, “Yeah.”

Writing for the Long Haul will be on hold until my return. Why not catch up on earlier posts in the series while I’m gone?

- Elena Acoba on touching reader lives
- Steve Miller on building a writing life
- Sharon Lee on remembering we’re not alone
- Betty G. Birney on always challenging ourselves
- Nora Raleigh Baskin on making deals with the writing gods
- Sean Williams on unpredictability and luck
- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

(I’m behind on actually sharing my reading thoughts here, but do post more regularly on Goodreads as I read.)

I first read Pen Pal on the author’s blog, where it was primarily a series of letters between the main characters. When I started reading the final version, I initially was uncertain about the addition of other epistolary elements: journals, newspaper clippings, government files, letters from other characters, worried they would change the story I’d loved.

And they did … into something richer and deeper.

Em is a child of water, living in a floating community on the Gulf coast. Kaya is a child of fire, imprisoned half a world away above a volcano.

They need each other, though they don’t at first know it.

Em believes in the Seafather who watches over her people. Kaya isn’t sure whether she believes in the Ruby Lady, but she was arrested for holding a ceremony for her, just the same.

When Em’s wistful message in a bottle reaches Kaya, their two stories become entwined, and the result is a numinous story about stories and how they wind their way through lives and through communities.

This book isn’t a fantasy, not really. But it hits a particular immersive mythic-y button for me that I don’t know how to describe–I only know it when I see it, and know as well that it’s hard to find.

And it gave me exactly the right sort of happy sigh when I turned the last page, as well.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Elena Acoba has been writing and editing newspaper articles, marketing pieces, web copy, and other business communications for more than three decades. She joins us today with a non-fiction writer’s perspective on what it means to write for the long haul, and on something writers in all genres seek to do: touch readers’ lives.

When I tell people I’m a writer, often their first impression is that I author books. I don’t.

As a writer and editor of business communications, I craft the messages that companies want to present to their employees, customers and communities. I tell the stories that already exist.

From information comes power. That’s the motto I’ve lived by for decades as I’ve told stories that spur people to action.

Inspired by journalists of the 1960s and 1970s who revealed the truth about the Vietnam War and a corrupt president, I decided to get into the news business. Here I could make a big difference.

Once I got into the newsroom, however, I discovered that I didn’t have the stamina to stick with long-form investigative journalism. Instead, I was drawn to the breaking story—controversial city council meetings, campaign speeches, jury decisions—and features that focus on trends.

Journalism didn’t have to be complex to be impactful. I saw that I touched people’s lives in big and, more often, small ways.

• My story about a monopoly on selling fireworks opened the way for a Boy Scout troop to run a stand to raise money.
• Adults comforted kids after reading my article about how children watched on television as the Challenger shuttle exploded.
• Spectators cheered a couple riding in the Tucson Rodeo Parade on their 50th wedding anniversary because of the feature I wrote on how the couple watched the procession on their honeymoon.

I moved to corporate communications in 1989. The focus is different; now I write about the stories of companies and organizations. But my personal mission is the same: Let people know something that will touch their lives.

Based on comments I’ve heard, I know that my work has saved a household money on its phone bill, convinced a Chicagoan to ditch the Illinois winter for a warm Arizona vacation and assured an employee that a company expansion wouldn’t affect his job.

This kind of feedback over the decades confirms that as a writer I am making a difference in my work as messenger, revealer, teacher.

Elena Acoba has been a professional writer since 1978 after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from California State University, Long Beach. Her award-winning work has appeared for the Coast Media chain of community newspapers (Los Angeles area), the Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Arizona Daily Star, Pima Community College, and the Arizona Office of Tourism in partnership with Madden Media Inc.

Previous Writing for the Long Haul Posts

- Steve Miller on building a writing life
- Sharon Lee on remembering we’re not alone
- Betty G. Birney on always challenging ourselves
- Nora Raleigh Baskin on making deals with the writing gods
- Sean Williams on unpredictability and luck
- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Largest known Jurassic spiders

Largest known spiders today

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Steve Miller sold his first story in the 1970s and, with his wife and collaborator Sharon Lee, has been building a career around words ever since. Today he joins the long haul series to talk about the many threads that can go into a writing life and about centering that life around the work we most want to do.

To make a long story short, I’m a professional writer. I’m in this for the long haul.

I’ve always intended to be a professional writer, that is, once I got over my childhood ambition to make a living as a chauffeur polishing and driving fancy Cadillacs. In high school I bought writing magazines and my grandmother sent me books on writing – including a fateful Writer’s Market, full of dozens, nay, hundreds, nay, thousands of places willing to pay me to write, if only I wrote what they wanted.

I started out as a poet; my first few publications were poetry and for some time I made a semi-life by writing poetry, doing coffee houses, guesting at parties as a poet, and covering (as a substitute teacher) the dreaded “poetry sections” for beaten-down English teachers. I made very little money from the writing (you’ve got to sell a lot of poems at $3 or $5 each to cover the rent!) and I made not much more as a substitute, and eventually I put the poetry aside.

But wait. There’s another thread. You see, in college I wrote for the college paper – a paying gig! – starting off as Chess Reporter and moving rapidly into a News Editor slot. I made decent money in that part-time job, learned a lot, and started writing reviews of books and movies and reporting. I made more money as a reporter and editor than I did as a poet, yessir! Just before I dropped out of college following the Kent State shootings one of my articles on the protests was syndicated across the country. I started working then as a freelancer for the local community tabloids, paid by the inch.

Oh, another thread! When I was in college I also was writing for science fiction fanzines, back in the days that they weren’t crowded with fanfic but were discussing fannishness and interpreting the field, and were filled with reviews and commentary. Sometimes they paid in copies, more often in egoboo, but they also led me to the semi-pro zines paying 1/4 or 1/2 cent a word (this was many years ago, I assure you!) for features and, yes — for original fiction. I started submitting to the semi-pro magazines and the first real success I had was with a story that won a $25 prize … and which has since been anthologized multiple times, earning far more than that original prize.

There’s something else: in high school I helped with the literary magazine, and in my senior year, I was Editor. I learned a lot, including how to make chapbooks.

What all of these disparate things say about that busily confused period in my life is that 1) I centered my life on writing, and 2) I was writing for money. Writing was always my way forward.

By the time I met Sharon Lee — now my partner, wife, and frequent co-author — I’d had bylines in dozens of publications in this country and abroad, was a regular chess columnist in several papers, had been translated, and had unexpectedly blossomed into one of the Baltimore-Washington area’s premier — um, music reviewers. It was an accident, I swear.

What happened next is a very mixed history of desperate times mediated by short-term successes and then longer term success, one that over and over again fell back on the understanding that this house is a house centered on, and yes, even powered by, word work.

We traveled in SF art and books for awhile — even starting a bookstore — while our stories started earning attention and a little cash. When the bookstore lost its lease I ended up managing editor of a short-lived SF-oriented newspaper, Sharon went to work for an ad agency as a secretary but leveraged that into a copy writing job. The newspaper folded and I got a job as assistant manager in a rapidly expanding game store chain — and when that died, I took my last $35 and started a monthly newspaper. Sharon started a copy writing service and ad agency.

We never stopped writing and we started selling more frequently, and when we sold three books to Del Rey we were set — we thought — and moved to a small town in Maine, where I had landed a newspaper job that turned out to be vaporware.

Then, Del Rey’s sudden new editor was a disaster for us, halting the Liaden series in its tracks, and we got by for awhile as writing instructors. I taught a local adult ed class and we both taught correspondence students for the British American School of Writing. We got a well-paying gig writing a novella for a game company (a project which was never published, though) and Sharon got a job editing night-side news for the local daily paper while I did columns and computer articles for the same paper. I also was picking up part-time hours as children’s librarian for a nearby library, and when that proved a dead-end I moved to managing a computer store — where I ran the newsletter, wrote the TV ads.

When the local paper went though a series of layoffs Sharon found herself freelancing for a weekly, turning out features like mad. I was working with a dotcom by then

Suddenly, and without warning, after eight years or more of being “former novelists” we got a phone call — an offer to reprint the three Liaden novels — but that turned into a sale of those three books and four more – seven in one fell swoop! Because we’d continued to write we had four new Liaden books to offer as well as the standalone The Tomorrow Log, and we had a publisher who suddenly wanted whatever we could turn out for him — including an anthology. We were invited to be Guests of Honor at a convention, and then at another … So we worked with that company until they were caught in an over-expansion just when the market was contracting.

In the meantime, though, we’d diversified somewhat, starting our own small press and selling chapbooks and t-shirts to the burgeoning Liaden fandom.  With our publisher suddenly gone we then finagled our mortgage and such with our chapbooks for another few months while Sharon went to work as a secretary at a local college and we also went direct to the internet, doing an early private crowdsourcing arrangement to write Fledgling, and then Saltation, online.

A publisher came to us for ebooks, and then for all our books; Sharon stayed at the college for awhile, where she single-handedly out-published the English department for several years.

And so it goes. We’ve got a five book contract in hand now, which means we’ve sold more than twenty five books together, and we’re doing what we’ve always done — we’re focusing on the words. We’ve had agents along the way, and friends and fans who’ve helped us tremendously. We didn’t do this alone, yes, that’s true. But the core of our experience, the key to being here as writers now, is that we kept looking to the word work whenever things got tough, and when they weren’t tough, we were doing the words.

Advice? Center your life around what you want to do. Immerse yourself in the culture but continue to keep your own visions — and to make them central to your work. If you’re writing a series make sure there are multiple ways in for new readers, so they won’t be overwhelmed by the weight of what’s gone before. Vary your protagonists. Write a book without a villain. Keep an eye out for side-work of short stories or articles, but maintain a clear sight of what your aim is — to pay the bills while enjoying the heck out of life.

So let me make a point. I got my first check for writing in 1969. My byline’s been on fiction, reviews, features, news, poetry, how-to articles, and columns. I’ve also done radio and TV ads, greeting card verse, and store openings. I don’t disdain any of my work, and some of my earliest fiction continues to earn money for me going on forty years after it was written.

To make a long story short, I’m a professional writer. I’m in this for the long haul.

Ebook pioneer Steve Miller is a lapsed reporter, book reviewer, publisher, con-running fan, poet, and librarian who writes Science Fiction and Fantasy, most frequently in the Liaden Universe® he shares with Sharon Lee. He attended Clarion West, was Founding Curator at the UMBC SF Research Library and has been a Guest of Honor, Special Guest, and panelist at SF conventions across North America. Steve sold his first professional fiction to Amazing in the mid 1970s and since then his byline has appeared on dozens of books and dozens more chapbooks and short works of fiction as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles.

Steve and Sharon shared NESFA’s Skylark Award in 2012 to go along with various individual and joint accolades over the years. Trade Secret, the latest Liaden novel, was published November 5 by Baen in paper and electronically and by Audible for the audiobook market. Steve and Sharon have just started on their latest five book contract for Baen.

Previous Writing for the Long Haul Posts

- Sharon Lee on remembering we’re not alone
- Betty G. Birney on always challenging ourselves
- Nora Raleigh Baskin on making deals with the writing gods
- Sean Williams on unpredictability and luck
- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.