It’s cold. In some places, it’s freezing. OF COURSE WE NEED TO READ RIGHT NOW! Bundle ourselves up in fleece and wool and whatever else will do it, and sit for hours totally immersed in story.
Speaking of bundles … do I have a treat for you!
My novel BOOK OF EARTH is currently part of a terrific WOMEN IN FANTASY story bundle, along with nine other books, all guaranteed to transport you away from the cold and wind and snow to places and times … where there might also be cold and wind and snow, but at least there’s also magic and mysticism and other delights that make losing ourselves in fantasy so much fun.
The whole bundle is available for a $15 minimum (although you’re free to pay more, and might want to, since a portion of the proceeds go to The Pearl Foundation, a charity created by singer Janis Ian to promote education by providing scholarships to returning students who have been away from school for a while — a worthy cause!).
But here’s the catch: this bundle will only be available for a limited time. You’ll never find all these wonderful novels grouped together like this for such a low price anywhere else. So the time is now! Winter isn’t just coming, it’s here! Let’s go read our way through it!
Enjoy!
~Robin
I’m so excited by these books, I have to pass them along.
First of all, right now you can get for the incredibly low price of $20 this entire story bundle of writing books. I would have bought just one of the books on my own–the horse one by Judith Tarr, since I’m writing a lot of horse scenes these days for The Bradamante Saga and yes, I’d like to make sure I get them right–but then once I saw all the other awesome craft books in this bundle: SOLD. Because every writer can get better, and it’s such a pleasure to read a great craft book by authors who are experts in their field.
And speaking of authors who are experts in their field, the great young adult author Tom Leveen now has a new book out on writing dialogue. Before turning to novels, Tom spent many years in the theater as both an actor and director. I’ve taught writing workshops with him, and his tips for writing great dialogue are always FANTASTIC. Treat yourself to this book. You’ll learn a ton.
That’s it for now, gang. Happy Writing!
Some people say I’m a book pusher. I’m okay with that. I get impatient with friends when they still haven’t read that book I recommended at least A WEEK AGO, for heaven’s sake, so I just go online and send it to them. Pushy? Bossy? I will not apologize. People need to read certain books and yes, I do know what’s good for them.
Which is why I’m about to go full-on pushy once again, and not only recommend some books that you need to read RIGHT NOW to fulfill your need for kickass science fiction heroines, I’m also going to go the extra step of enforcing that by actually giving them away free to one lucky winner.
First, Diving Into the Wreck, part of the Diving Universe series by Hugo Award-winning science fiction author Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I’ve been a fan and student of Kris’s for about 13 years, and have always viewed her as a pretty badass woman and author in her own right. But she also writes amazingly complicated and strong women characters who are always so much fun to spend time with. Kris has generously offered to give the lucky winner a signed copy of the book. She also answered some interview questions for me that I’ll share below, so hang on. It’s always fun to hear how other writers think.
Second is Michael Crichton’s The Lost World, and if you were a fan of his Jurassic Park you may think you already know all there is to know about this sequel, but I think perhaps you don’t. Because the reason I’m pushing it is that it has one of my favorite heroines of all time, Sarah Harding, who is both scientist and never-say-die person-you-most-want-with-you-in-a-crisis, and I am so inspired by her intelligence and toughness I actually reread this book about twice a year just to pump myself up. I think once you’ve experienced Sarah Harding for yourself, you’ll be totally hooked, too.
Third is my own Parallelogram series. Why am I book-pushing my own series? Because I wrote it for a particular reason: to show two very different girls who are entirely kickass in their own separate ways. One is a scientific explorer, willing to try out all sorts of bizarre (and potentially hazardous) physics theories she’s come up with, and the other is a teen adventurer who has been raised by her very badass explorer grandmother to handle all sorts of physical risks with a cool head and a deep will to survive.
In my spare time I like to read a lot of true adventure books by real-life explorers, and I based the teenage adventurer Halli and her grandmother Ginny on two women explorers I really admire: Roz Savage, who rowed solo across the Atlantic (why not??), and Helen Thayer, who was the first person to ski solo and unsupported to the magnetic North Pole. When she was 50, by the way. So yeah, I think you should read Parallelogram for the same reason you should read the Rusch and Crichton books: because the girls and women in these books will entertain and inspire you.
I asked Kristine Kathryn Rusch a few questions about her own writing process and what inspires her to write the strong kinds of characters you’ll find in all of her work:
RB: What qualities do you admire in the heroine of your book Diving Into The Wreck? Did you write those qualities into her character on purpose, or did they develop over time on their own?
KKR: Boss is her own person. She only lets people call her Boss, and she won’t tell anyone her name, because it’s her business. What I love about Boss is that she is so secure in who she is. She knows what she can and cannot do, and she knows just how much she’s willing to tell/give in any situation. She admits when she’s wrong, and she analyzes everything. She’s very strong, but she also can be vulnerable.
My characters come fully formed, but they do reveal parts of themselves over time. Boss & I share a love of history, but she’s so much more adventurous than I am. She would go crazy in a room writing all day. I love it. I never add traits consciously. Subconsiously, who knows? I assume so. But the characters are real people to me, with their flaws and strengths, and that includes Boss.
RB: Who are some of your favorite kickass heroines in other people’s science fiction books and movies? What about them inspires you as a person and/or as a writer? (I’m a big fan of Ripley’s in the Alien series. When she’s rescuing the little girl Newt from the breeding area in Aliens and fighting off the queen alien and her posse–you’d better believe Ripley makes me want to be braver in real life.)
KKR: Favorite SF women. Honestly, that’s a tough one for me. Most of the sf I read is short fiction, and the characters are one-offs. None of the women in the stories I read rise to the level of favorite. I like Ripley–and she was inspiring to me–but is not someone who comes to mind easily.
In SF, my examples were always negative. For example, in Trek, I was so happy that Kathryn Janeway had her own ship. Then I saw the dang first episode, and when she was faced with a big issue that James T. Kirk could have solved in 45 minutes, she gave in, and made her crew suffer for **years** I think most of the sf films/TV suffer from stupid women problems.
The strong women I read about appear in the mystery genre. I adore Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski. I used to love Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Malone, especially when I encountered her in the 1980s. The female lead detectives were unusual women, who did their own thing in a man’s world. They’re the inspiration for my sf heroines.
RB: This is a chicken-or-the-egg question: Do you give your characters some of your own kickass qualities of bravery, wisdom, compassion, etc.–or do you feel inspired as you write their stories to be more like them yourself?
KKR: LOL, Robin. I love that you think I have kickass qualities. I think my characters are more articulate than I am, smarter than I am, more adventurous than I am, and more courageous than I am. I am blunt and stubborn and difficult, and in my fiction, those qualities are virtues, so there’s some of me there. But these folks are not people I want to be: they’re people I want to meet.
RB: Which character of yours has changed you the most as a person? Why?
KKR: The character of mine who has changed me the most as a person is Smokey Dalton, from my Kris Nelscott mysteries. He’s an African-American detective in the late 1960s. He’s a true hero, in my opinion. But his situations are beyond difficult. I always put him in the middle of a historical situation, and then ask him to respond. Some of those historical situations–I keep thinking, if I were there, would I have had the courage to do what he did? Would I have known what to do? And the thing I admire most about Smokey: His world, horrid as it is, doesn’t break him. It makes him stronger. That has had a huge impact on me and my thinking and my writing.
RB: What do you prefer in your favorite heroines, whether it’s the ones you write, read, or watch: More stoic than compassionate, vice versa,or a particular ratio of both? (For me, 80% stoic, 20% compassionate.)
KKR: Compassion first. I quit reading a mystery series set in the Middle Ages because our heroine–a smart and active woman–had a baby, and then abandoned that baby to go on a crusade. Well, this is the Middle Ages, and yes, she might have done that historically, but it would take 2-3 years to return to that child, and there would be no guarantee that the child was safe or well cared for. So I quit reading right there. The woman was too selfish for me to read about. Stoic, yes. But willing to sacrifice someone she loved for her own ends. Not someone I want to read about.
RB: Bonus question: I know you’re a big fan of the time travel series OUTLANDER, as am I. (I just finished the fourth book. What a ride!) If you were in Claire’s position, catapulted back to 1745 Scotland, what skills would you want to bring to the mix? I love her medical knowledge–it’s such a huge asset. But is there some skill you’d find just as valuable?
KKR: Great question. I have a wide variety of historical knowledge and weird trivia. I know how to make a match for example, and I know how to sterilize a room (even back then) and I know what’ll happen when in most of the English-speaking world. So I like to think all of that will be beneficial. Knowing outspoken me, though, I’d probably be jailed as a witch and executed. 
I also know that I’d be panicked as hell about dying of something preventable, like the cold that has felled me this week in 2015. If it became an infection in 1745, I could die. And I’d probably worry about that more than anything (except the food, which–yuck!) So as you can tell, I’m probably too much of a worrier to time travel safely.
SPEAKING OF TIME TRAVEL …
Kris and I both have novels in the Time Travel Story Bundle, which is on sale for just two more weeks. Here’s your chance to score a whole bunch of great fiction at an incredibly low price. Don’t miss it!
And as soon as you buy the bundle, head on over to my GIVEAWAY PAGE and enter to win those three fabulous science fiction books! I push them because I love–the heroines in those books and you, Dear Readers. Enjoy!
Long, long ago, back when I’d been rewriting the same novel for EIGHT YEARS, I took a class from bestselling and award-winning writers Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
And when they talked about writing multiple books a year–sometimes four books a year, sometimes double that–the scales fell from my eyes. No one had ever told me you could write more than one book a year, or that you could stop endlessly reworking the one novel you had and move on to something else.
I was cured. And thereafter became a happy writer.
Since then I’ve found my own personal pace and figured out how many novels my body and my brain like me to write every year. I’m not going to tell you, because as Dean says in this wonderful post about finding your own speed, people sometimes get mad when you talk about your method and your output, and it’s best to keep it to yourself.
If you’re currently stuck in the endless whirlpool of rewriting your one book, I encourage you to try the same experiment I did when I got home from that seminar: Just sit down and write a novel (or a short story, or whatever your favorite medium is) from start to finish, no stopping to rewrite those first three chapters again and again, and just see how quickly you can do it. For me that first time it was five weeks for a complete novel. I know a lot of people love to participate in NaNoWriMo every November because they have to finish a novel in one month.
Find your pace, but first be willing to see that it could be much, much faster than what you’ve always thought. Writing is fun. Fast writing is SUPERfun.
Onward!
Technorati Tags: Advice for Writers, Authors, Dean Wesley Smith, Kris Rusch, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Novel Writing, Novels, Publishing, Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Seminars, Writing Workshops
I love it when I have time to sit down and read some of the business-of-writing blog posts by award-winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I’ve just caught up on a few more, and wanted to pass them along to you, just in case you, too, have gotten a little behind.
Here’s the first part of her latest installment about the skills a modern writer will need to prosper in this new age of publishing, and here’s the continuation. I especially like her take on fast writing–both in terms of learning our craft and getting more of our work out there.
Speaking of which, I’ve just turned in one revised manuscript this week, and I’m already working on the next new one. Why not? When your work is play and your play is work, there’s not really a reason to keep yourself from doing it. That is my hope for all of you writers out there, that you will be able to make this your day job, your night job, and your hobby, all rolled into one. That’s one of the reasons I keep posting all these business-of-writing blogs–I want you to be informed.
And now, off to work!
Technorati Tags: Advice for Writers, Authors, Kris Rusch, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Publishing, Writers, Writing, Writing Advice
I can’t emphasize this enough. If you want to make a living out of writing–not just have it as a hobby you love, but as something that will eventually support you and your family–then it pays to be as well-informed about the business side as you can. The days of being “taken care of” by others or having the attitude “I can’t handle the business side–I’m an artist!” are over, and have been for a long time.
So as part of that education, take the time to read this latest post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch on how the changes in the publishing industry will affect beginning writers. This is the first in a 3-parter, and I’ll try to remember to link all three parts as the weeks come up, but this is a first step for you anyway in taking care of yourselves: bookmark the blog and keep checking back, and also reread all the business posts you’ve missed. I promise you, this is an important part of your education. I link to these because I care about you!
Okay, back to my own work now. Later!
Technorati Tags: Advice for Authors, Advice for Writers, Kris Rusch, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kristine Rusch, Publishing, Writing, Writing Advice
Hey! Yes, I’m here! Working on a big hairy deadline at the moment, but this new blog post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is so important, I’m taking a break to give it to you.
No matter where you are in your writing career–hoping for it, working on it, already have it–it always pays to keep yourself educated about the business side. Writing is your business, whether or not you’re making any money at it yet. Take yourself seriously and treat yourself like the business owner you are.
So read Kris’s current post, then take the time to read some of her earlier posts in this series–knowledge is power!
Okay, back to the book. Bye!
Technorati Tags: Advice for Authors, Advice for Writers, Authors, Business of Writing, Kris Rusch, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kristine Rusch, Publishing, Writers, Writing
For the second time this year, Colleen Hoover has topped our 
Thanks… I’m in the whirlpool. Needed to hear this again.
Good. Glad to pass along this valuable service to other writers. We all need to hear it sometimes!
Thank you for saying this!! I feel exactly the same way. My last novel got written in four weeks and very little has had to be changed. It can be done!
Yes! It’s so easy to forget that we’re storytellers, and that it’s not that different from sitting around a campfire with people and telling them a great story from start to finish. You don’t keep going back and saying, “Wait, in that first five minutes? I meant to say ‘whispering like a willow,’ not ‘creeping like a vine.’” Whatever! Move on! Tell us the rest of the story!