Other gift possibilities: a gift certificate to your local indy bookstore, pens (I like fountain pens a lot), and fuzzy socks to keep their toes warm while writing.Here’s five gifts for the writer on your list (even if it’s yourself).
A little history. One of my favorite reads this year was Bud Webster’s Past Masters: And Other Bookish Natterings. Bud’s book combines hearty doses of interesting history with some deliciously thorough reading lists, that will only lead you to more and more reading. Bud always managed to tell me something about the writers that I didn’t know but which shed more light (and interest) on the stories I already loved. Heartily recommended, particularly if you’re well-read in the SF field and want to know more about some of its greats.
A little inspiration.WonderBook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction is a fabulous, gorgeous book about writing created by Jeff VanderMeer and Jeremy Zerfoss that will inspire and amuse. There’s a lot of writing books produced each year – this is not only the nicest of this year’s, but one well worth dipping into over and over again.
A little fuel. Writers usually require coffee. This year, due to this blog post by Chuck Wendig, I’ve become a fan of the Chemex coffeemaker. It’s got a nice little ritual to coffee-making that helps start the day right. Or a pound of fancy weasel-butt process coffee, if you want to go all out. Uncaffeinated writer? Get them a gift certificate and let them pick their own liquid.
A little efficiency.Dragon Dictate is dictation software available for Windows and Mac (although check what OS you’re running, a version hasn’t been released yet for the latest Mac update.) I love Dragon Dictate and think it makes me significantly more productive. It does take a little getting used to, but once you’ve worked with it a while, writing by hand feels archaic. And slooooooow.
A little notebook. Though it may seem unoriginal, writers always need notebooks. There’s a reason Moleskines keep being popular. Toss in a few fancy pens like this or these for a coordinated gift.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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And So March Begins
Cover for Beasts of Tabat, first volume in the Tabat Quartet.Things are cranking away as we get ready for the book release. Here’s the cover – the typo that some of you will notice has been addressed. 😉
The book will be available at Emerald City Comicon — find me there at one of my panels, or stop by the Wordfire Press table, which is where I’ll be hanging out when not stalking John Barrowman.
Those panels will be:
Friday, March 27: Fueling Creativity: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Authors on Ideas
Room: Hall B (WSCC 602-603)
Time: 3:30PM – 4:20PM
Moderator: David Hulton
Guest(s): Cat Rambo, Greg Bear, Ramez Naam, Jason M. Hough, Myke Cole
Authors often dread the interview question “where did you get the idea for this book?” because the answer is never simple. There’s rarely a single moment where an entire plot or world comes to mind. This panel is an exploration of why that’s such a difficult question to answer. Our panel of novelists will discuss the many ways they find inspiration for their work. In addition, they’ll talk about the wonderful and often strange ways an idea will find its way into a novel.
Sunday, March 29: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
Room: Hall B (WSCC 602-603)
Time: 10:30AM – 11:20AM
Moderator: Anna Alexander
Guest(s): Cat Rambo, Garth Reasby
Diversity in entertainment is both vital and challenging. This panel of novelists will cover how to effectively write compelling characters who are different than you and how to deal with critics of who you are versus your work. Panelists include Anna Alexander, Jamie Ford, Cat Rambo, Aaron Duran, J.R. Terrel, Garth Reasby, and Sarah Remy.
I’ll also be appearing at ICFA March 18-22, and will be leading an informational meeting about SFWA there.
Plenty of stuff is lined up for the blog over the next two months, including:
Several giveaways
Lots of guest posts, including experts talking about writing for games and comic books, how to write more than one series at the same time, food and fantasy, writing collaboratively, and more!
Pieces of original fiction related to the book
Essays on the writers that influenced the book
Links to appearances elsewhere
Snippets from the sequel, Hearts of Tabat
I will not be teaching or taking on any new editing projects in March; I will be mailing out soon about April and May classes.
This is a piece of flash fiction written last year – I just got around to going through the notebook it was in lately and transcribing the fictional bits. This didn’t take too much cleaning up. For context, think of the hills of southern California, and a writing retreat with no other human beings around, and thinking a great deal about fantasy and epic fantasy at the time.
Is this a Tabat story? Naw. Just a little flash piece.
On the Nature of Gods and Magicians
The magician gestured. Out of the pool came musicians, the very first thing the tip of a flute, sounding, so it was as though the music pulled the musician forth, accompanied by others: grave-faced singers and merry drummers; guitarists and mandolinists with great dark eyes in which all the secrets of the moon were written; and one great brassy instrument made of others interlocked, so it took six to play it, all puffing away at their appointed mouthpiece. All of them bowed down to the priestess who stood watching, her sand-colored eyes impersonal and face stone-smooth.
“Very pretty,” she said, and yawned with a feline grace, perhaps even accentuating the similarity in a knowing way with a head tilt.
The magician smiled, just as catlike, just as calm. “You can do better, I am sure,” he said.
She shrugged, her manner diffident, but rather than reply, she pursed her lips and whistled. Birds formed, swooping down, and wherever they flew, they erased a swathe of the musicians, left great arcs of nothingness hanging as the seemingly oblivious players continued, their music slowly diminishing as they vanished, the instruments going one by one. The last thing to hang, trembling in the air, was an unaccompanied hand, holding up a triangle that emitted not a sound.
Landing, the birds began to sing. Though the music was not particularly sweet, there was a naturalness about it that somehow rebuked the mechanical precision of the song theirs succeeded. As they sang, more and more birds appeared, and the music swelled, washing like a river over the pair where they stood.
The priestess patted the air with the flat of her hand and the birds winked out of existence, leaving the two of them in a great white room, the antechamber of her temple.
“Will you go further in, then?” she said, her voice still casual.
The magician’s eyes were green as new grass and the black beard on his chin, which grew to a double point, was oiled and smelled of attar-of-roses. He considered her as though this was the smallest of debates, and finally stepped forward.
“We are still evenly matched,” he said.
She inclined her head and replied, “But my strength will only swell as we go deeper, and we have far to go before we reach the center of My Lady’s temple.”
His grin spread, as though encouraged by her lack of smile. As though he had some secret hidden about himself and was unafraid to admit it. She forced an expression to match it, and they stood there smiling at each other in hostility for some moments before she stepped aside and gestured him on.
The tunnels were made of adamant and alabaster, concentric rings that shrank then grew larger, then shrank and grew again and again until it was as though they walked inside an immense, undulating worm.
As they walked, they cast spells at each other, dueling lightly, a magical clash and flicker of blades with a deadly energy at its heart. This was a long quarrel between them, the strength of his magic and the might of her goddess, from whom all her power was borrowed. He maintained that while they might be well-matched, the fact was that she, a conduit, could never resonate to the degree of cosmic energy that he, a producer of such energy, could.
She had at one point asked him why it mattered. They’d been drinking in a tavern, an ordinary tavern where adventurers came. They both liked to come and watch those parties, scarred by magic and monsters, assemble and spin stories a thousand times more dangerous than any foe they had to face.
“It matters because there must always be an answer to such questions,” he said with decisiveness, not pausing a moment to think. “If there are no answers, then all in life is random.”
“Could not some of it be random?” she asked, wistfully.
He shook his head. “Randomness is the refuge of the feebleminded who cannot handle answers.” He paused when he saw her flinch. “Not you of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed.
Now they paced along and she put that conversation from her mind.
In the end they came out in a vast courtyard, in a cavern that stretched so far overhead that it would have swallowed a cathedral. The image of the goddess was carved into that ceiling, her arms outstretched, seeming to encompass everything, her serene face beaming down.
The priestess stepped aside, looking to the magician, for he had defeated her every effort along the way. Now they had come to the confrontation he desired.
He stared upward, and for a moment his face seemed daunted. Then he sneered and tugged at the necklace around his throat.
“Face me in direct challenge, you sham,” he said. “The gods are nothing but those with more power than ourselves, and this artefact will amplify mine till I can throw you down unhindered.”
“Indeed you can,” the stone lips said, in a voice sweet and merry and powerful. “For I am less than my handmaiden, much less indeed.”
He frowned. “She is your channel.”
“Ah, no,” said the Goddess. One great hand stretched itself from the ceiling and began to descend towards him. “You have misunderstood the nature of gods entirely.”
Sparks danced from his fingers, formed shining columns all around him, but the massive fingers disregarded them.
“They are not our channels,” she said as the hand closed around him. “Rather, we are theirs.”
And across the world, every worshipper lifted their head, and every priestess stopped, as the Goddess swallowed the magician whole, and then gave him to them, disassembled into fuel for their own magic, and then smiled, and began the climb back towards the ceiling and her accustomed position there.
But the priestess sighed, looking at the spot where the magician had been, and only his shadow remained. He had been good company, now and again, and now he was only embers in her heart.
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In my experience, uncaffeinated writers can often be lured by high-quality hot chocolate.