This is My Secret: Pictures of a Book Being Made

I often try to explain to writing workshop classes the concept of the brouillon: That’s the French equivalent of the English “first draft,” except that the French term is related to the verb for “to disorder, to scramble.”  I am a brouillon writer, no question. But, you know, sometimes just seeing somebody’s naked process is worth a thousand abstractions.  So here, posted for the enrichment of all, are excerpts from Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue. Here is a process forged from the chaos of writing, longhand, in notebooks…and still arriving at a remarkable finished product.

http://kristincashore.blogspot.com/2012/12/pictures-of-book-being-made.html

-gf

The “Cooking the Books” Roundtable

Fran Wilde’s Cooking the Books Roundtable is now up at Strange Horizons. Along with yours truly there’s Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch, and Nalo Hopkinson. Now that you’ve made it through Thanksgiving, we can’t hurt you with food talk anyway. Right?
gf

The Pure Cold Light resurrects!

Nothing quite like stumbling upon a new and unexpected review of one’s long-retired (and rarely seen) novel.  The Pure Cold LightAvon published it way back then, did all they could to murder it, and succeeded fairly well (except for the Nebula nominations that slipped through anyway).  I do really need to get an ebook version of this baby out for Kindle and Nook.