C.S.E. Cooney

It is March 1st, and I am 420 pages into my new revisions. Out of 670. 250 left. I’d like to get through them in 20 days.

That’s 12 and a half pages a day, which doesn’t seem like much considering it’s revisions. Not, like, an entire rewrite. Right? Except for some chapters. A lot of them. And most sentences. You know.

I also have copyedits due for DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP . . . soon. Three days? Must look. Oh, and acknowledgements! Well! Today’s the day I print that MS out, just watch me. March crept on fast. I’ve been busy making lasagna, I guess.

We also have a launch party to plan. That’s next week. For Carlos Hernandez‘s SAL AND GABI BREAK THE UNIVERSE. The launch is on Thursday, March 7th. His book comes out on Tuesday.

Rick Riordan had the most FANTASTIC idea for the Sal and Gabi Book Birthday. He said everyone who has a copy should dress up as their ALTERNATE SELVES and take SELFIES! I’ve been thinking–who’s my alternate self (or one of them) and what would they wear and what would they even THINK of Sal and Gabi???

The whole thing’s got me thinking about my own book launch for DESDEMONA. Carlos and I had the idea of throwing a Gentry Moon Masquerade somewhere, and everyone can come dressed up as their Gentry/Goblin/or fabulous human haute-couture selves. When? We don’t know. Sometime in July, most likely. Book is out July 23rd. Where would we even hold such a thing?

!!! Hey, hey, hey–I JUST saw in the Twitterverse that Amal El-Mohtar got her advance copies of her and Max Gladstone‘s book, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR. That’s also out in July. CANNOT FRIKKIN WAIT! Have I pre-ordered yet?

Snowing outside today. Really pretty.

Somewhere in the other room, Carlos is playing with his new rubber chickens! Now he’s brought them in here and is jumping and dancing. Hold up–pics happening!

The email came the week before winter holidays last year. The subject line:

New Book (Co-Narration.)

Tantor’s casting director started out by writing:

Hi Claire,

I’ve got this Sci-Fi- short stories book I thought you might be interested in . . .

As soon as I saw the author, I flipped out.

JO WALTON! JO WALTON!

Hadn’t I just read Tooth and Claw last year on Jessica Wick’s recommendation?! Yes! AND LOVED IT!

The book was Starlings, a collection of short stories and poetry originally put out by Tachyon Publications.

The more I read the email, the more excited I grew. It included this NPR review first thing in the synopsis:

“Starlings isn’t really a short-story collection. It’s something better: a written showreel, illustrating yet again that [Walton’s] imagination stretches to the stars (or the starlings), and that she’s endlessly inventive in finding new methods to express it.”―NPR Books.

Believe you me, I lost no time in telling Tantor YES!

In fact I might have said, very solemnly, that it would be my honor, and that Jo Walton is one of the scions of our genre.

Yes, I said “scion” to the casting director. I don’t know what came over me. JO WALTON!

So, come the end of December 2018–the 26th to be exact–I commuted my usual three hours to the studio in Old Saybrook, and spent three intensely delicious days mouth-deep in Walton’s prose.

I stayed over in a local bed and breakfast. I looked forward to waking up every morning and getting right to work. It was like being handed a slice of Krampus cake! It was like discovering the Yule log was made of CHOCOLATE. So delicious.

One of my favorite things about Starlings is that it is less like your typical single-author short story collection and more like a writer’s workshop–tool box, wood shavings, concept art and all–spread out in front of you for your pleasure and perusal. Structure experiments, POV experiments, form poetry, a play, short stories that were more like extended jokes, short stories that might have been the seeds of novels, and some stories that cut so deep they are with me still.

I felt like the collection was an act of generosity on the author’s part, as if Walton were telling us: “Here are some things I made. Here’s a bit about how I made them. Hey, isn’t this poem fun? And yes, Cooney, I’m afraid you DO have to narrate a 90 minute play with GREAT DOZENS of mythic characters ALL by yourself, just as if you were Mel Blanc in a Looney Toons cartoon–have FUN!”

Okay, maybe she didn’t say that last bit. Maybe that was more what my brain said to me. Maybe a little TOO gleefully, truth be told.

Also–BONUS!–I got to co-narrate Starlings with Rudy Sanda. We’ve been two voices on the same book before–a multi-POV piece of Canadian fiction called Republic of Dirt.

Just because we narrators happen to co-narrate a book doesn’t mean we ever get to see each other; a narrator’s life is solitary. We (happily) spend our days in a little black box, talking to ourselves. (BEST JOB!)

But we DO bump into each other in the halls. Rudy always seems to be the first narrator at the studio and the last one to leave. I find it very comforting to pass by his recording booth, and hear the wild, wide array of voices he has mastery over, and his relentless pursuit of perfection. Apparently, Rudy has some of the fewest pickups of all narrators, like, ever. In the whole history of ever. I am so excited to share voices on this book with him!

Today is Starlings‘ audiobook birthday. And I am just so proud to have been part of its realization in this world. I want to thank Jo Walton and thank Tantor and thank SCIENCE FICTION ITSELF for the opportunity.

I was at the tail-end of my illness at Boskone, and spent a lot of time napping and blowing my nose. However. By Saturday I felt so much better than I had in a fortnight, and by Sunday (today) really well!

I loved singing songs from my three Brimstone Rhine recordings with Faye Ringel and Carlos Hernandez. I perforce made Carlos a bit tardy for his Danes are Delicious playtest on the Gaming Track, having failed to inform ops initially that he’d be playing with me. I hope people forgive him his 15 minute tardiness and place all blame squarely on my head!

Anyone who came to the Brimstone Rhine concert who is interested in listening to MORE music and reading along with the lyrics can find everything I did here: BRIMSTONE RHINE ON BANDCAMP!

I adored reading with E. C. Ambrose, Ken Schneyer, Cerece Rennie Murphy, Clarence Young, and Carlos Hernandez in our Unlikely Imaginarium group reading. Here are some places you can find our work:

Zig Zag Claybourne, AKA Clarence Young, read from the sequel to his The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan.

Cerece Renee Murphy read from her book The Wolf Queen.

E. C. Ambrose read from an unpublished piece, but check out her Dark Apostle series!

Carlos read from Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, out from Disney Hyperion on March 5th. Preorder now!

And I read from my novella Desdemona and the Deep, forthcoming from Tor.com. Preorder now!

… Pardon my imperatives. I just get excited

I was on a panel about music in fantasy, and one on the future of audiobooks. The panelists and moderators on both pretty much blew my mind with the range and depth and force of their knowledge.

Carlos’s last panel today on Exploring Interactive Fiction 101 likewise. High point of my con! My brain was like SCUSE ME CANNOT KEEP SPLODING HOLP PLEEZ! And, honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever listened to five smarter panelists talk about ANYTHING than Carlos Hernandez, Max Gladstone, Erin Roberts, M. C. DeMarco–Moderator–and Andrea Corbin talking about coding, games, narrative, awareness, audience, text, visual arts, and the interactive fiction market. It was ELECTRIFYING!

Perhaps most special (and close to my heart) was the workshop that Carlos and I co-taught (I sort of wrangled him into teaching with me last minute, and I am so so so so GRATEFUL for his graciousness and generosity in doing so!) this morning. I’ve taught it with Caitlyn Paxson twice (and Amal El-Mohtar once), and once by myself at different Readercons, and this summer I’ll teach a variation of it with Martin Cahill at Readercon. I call it “From Page to Stage: Reading Aloud for Writers.”

I see such a need for so many writers who did not have the benefit of any theatre training or even drama class growing up, but who find themselves having to read in public without any tools. If I–and other performance-minded writers–can convey even a few tips and tricks to make this very difficult thing a LEEETLE easier for our fellow artists, I COUNT MY HOUR WELL-SPENT. Five people came, and I think we all benefited from a small, informal, friendly workshop size. So happy. Teaching is not me at my most comfortable–but that just makes me more empathetic towards my students!

Anyway, a concert, a reading, a workshop, two panels! Any time I do more “other stuff” than “panels,” I’m a pretty happy camper. Especially if “other stuff” means reading aloud and singing. Which, in this case, it did.

Thank you, Erin Underwood, Brenda Noiseux, and all the Boskone ops people for all the hard, intricate work you do.

It is my honor to appear in the BEST OF UNCANNY, along with many other fabulous fabulists. Go to Subterranean Press to preorder your copy today!

Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas have co-edited and co-published Uncanny Magazine since its launch in 2014. They brought readers stunning cover art, passionate science fiction and fantasy fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, and provocative nonfiction by writers from every conceivable background, including some of science fiction and fantasy’s most fabulous award-winning and bestselling authors. In its first four years, Uncanny Magazine won the Best Semiprozine Hugo Award three times (2016, 2017, 2018), Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas won the 2018 Best Editor—Short Form Hugo Award for their work on the magazine, and numerous stories from Uncanny Magazine have been finalists or winners of Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards– including the novelette “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang (translated by Ken Liu) which won the 2016 Best Novelette Hugo Award and the novelette “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay” by  Alyssa Wong which won the 2017 Best Novelette Locus Award.

When I was a teenager, forever devouring and re-devouring such books as, for example, Winter Rose, and The Riddle-Master Trilogy, I never, not even once–not even when I thought I’d grow up to be a famous author by age 30 (didn’t happen) and have a book out a year (ha!) or two in a good year (double ha!)–ever CONCEIVED of Patricia “A is for AAAAAUUGGGHHH!!!” McKillip blurbing any book of mine.

And since I never got that far, envisioning this gorgeous cover art was so utterly beyond me that teenage-me might have exploded like a confetti bazooka if she tried.

Kinda like I’m doing now.

THIS! COVER!

THIS!!! COVER!!!

With the ANTLER CROWN, my goblins! And the VINES! And the TINES! And the TYPEFACE!

Did not Alyssa Winans (artist) and Christine Foltzer (designer) rock this like a METEOR SHOWER???!!!

And PATRICIA AAAAAAUUGGGGHHH MCKILLIP BLURBED ME!!!

I am so excited, I am CENTER JUSTIFIED!

Er. So . . . Yeah.

Please see Tor.com for more information!

Dear Everyone who is going to Boskone, and SUNDRY!

I am excited about this year’s Boskone. I really had to train myself to like panels, because they make me feel VERY VERY NERVOUS, but I LOVE and ADORE giving readings and singing in public–both of which I get to do!

Not only that, but Carlos and Faye are both playing with me for the Brimstone Rhine Concert; we even rented a car to haul synthesizer and CAJON! Can we do Lysistrata chant-style, with a drum box? WE’LL SEE, WON’T WE?

I am particularly bouncy re: that first reading there, because look at that LINE-UP! Zig-Zag, Hernandez, Queen Cerece, E. C. Frikkin Ambrose, and my darling Ken–whose Hobbit party I once attended, colorful vest and all.

The workshop I’m teaching I’ve gotten to teach with both Caitlyn Paxson and Amal El-Mohtar before at Readercon–twice, I think? And maybe once on my own. It’s always been very fun and useful, I’ve felt, and I hope it will prove so to a few budding writers who are nervous speaking in public. It will meld really nicely with my audiobook panel.

. . . You know, I find being on panels about audiobooks so much EASIER than ones about writing, because my actor brain loves EVERYTHING and my writer brain is just SCARED. Why is that, Hivemind?!!!

So, here’s my schedule below. See you at the con.

The Unlikely Imaginarium: A Reading

Format: Reading
16 Feb 2019, Saturday 10:00 – 10:50, Griffin (Westin)

Authors E. C. Ambrose, C. S. E. Cooney, Zig Zag Claybourne, Carlos Hernandez, Cerece Rennie Murphy, and Kenneth Schneyer gather around the dark bonfire of their collective imagination to tell stories of women, wolves, woods, bones, enraged ninjas, AI toilets, the end of the world, and basically, the whole entire multiverse. Or maybe something completely different. Attend our wild and rambunctious reading to find out for yourselves!

Music in Science Fiction

Format: Panel
16 Feb 2019, Saturday 12:00 – 12:50, Marina 2 (Westin)

What part does music play in science fiction? We hear it in films, videos, and even games. What about fiction — how does music enhance the reading experience? Is there a special connection between music and SF that other genres lack, and that goes above and beyond mere sound effects? Let’s talk music and its special interplay with the SF genre.

Concert: Brimstone Rhine (C.S.E. Cooney)

Format: Concert
16 Feb 2019, Saturday 16:00 – 16:25, Lewis (Westin)

Reading Your Fiction Aloud: From Page to Stage

Format: Workshop
17 Feb 2019, Sunday 10:00 – 10:50, Lewis (Westin)

Award-winning author and performer C.S.E. Cooney leads a workshop for writers with little to no public performance training in reading their own work aloud. To people! In public! You’ll learn tips and tricks to captivate your audiences. (Aimed at writers who have had little or no public performance training.)

The Future of Audiobooks

Format: Panel
17 Feb 2019, Sunday 11:00 – 11:50, Marina 2 (Westin)

Audiobooks are a hot-and-getting-hotter way of enjoying stories. Join our panelists to discuss audiobook ups and downs, tips for listening, how to choose the ones that are right for you — and what the future holds for the new (and very old) experience of reading by ear.

Dear Readers,

I am excited to present to you my very first EVER interview on my BLOG! I would like to do LOTS MORE! I have IDEAS! But what a great start!

Today I have Andrea Johnson, an avid reader and reviewer of Science Fiction and Fantasy. She keeps a blog at The Little Red Reviewer, and we all wait SLAVERINGLY to hear what she says about our stories.

(Now, you may be THINKING we’re using our Royal Plural HERE, but you can’t be sure, can you? WE MIGHT BE SPEAKING FOR THE HIVEMIND!)

Now Andrea has collected the best of eight years of reviews into a book for our shelfish pleasure (not SHELLFISH, autocorrect!), and she’s running a Kickstarter in the month of January to fund it!

She’s fascinating and lovely and she has books in her TBR pile that haven’t even been INVENTED yet! But I’m getting ahead of myself! Read this interview, and get to know her a bit for yourself.

And then, if you have a few bucks to spare, send them her way at her The Best of the Little Red Reviewer Kickstarter!

C. S. E. COONEY: Have you always written about the books you’ve read? Do you read differently when you are reading to review a book than when you are reading for pleasure? Are they one and the same? How are the experiences alike or different?

ANDREA JOHNSON: I’ve always enjoyed talking about the books I’m reading. Why am I reading it, am I enjoying it, that sort of thing. Writing about books I’m reading didn’t start until the internet and “blogging” was becoming a thing. Would you believe some of my first pseudo-reviews were on MySpace?

CSEC: MYSPACE! I HAD A MYSPACE!!!

AJ: Through a bulletin board, I’d gotten connected with someone who was started a review journal on MySpace, he mailed me a few novellas, I read them and posted my thoughts. It was way fun! I posted reviews on a few now defunct bulletin boards and e-zines, and many years later, Little Red Reviewer is a happy eight year old book blog.

I do read differently when I’m reading for review, I’m much more focused when I know I’m going to review the book. I like using a blank piece of paper as a bookmark, so I can take notes as I’m reading, even if it’s just a page number where something funny or interesting happened. If I have any guesses about what’s going to happen at the end of the book, I write that down too.

CSEC: (Gosh, that piece of paper thing’s a good idea. I have historically scribbled in the book itself. A big no-no for collectors, but . . . )

AJ: I recently pulled a book off my bookshelf to reread it, and found my old notes still tucked inside! (The whole writing notes on a bookmark thing doesn’t work so well with e-books, I’ve found)

If I’m reading a book with no plans for reviewing it, I might skim portions of it, I don’t mind if I fall asleep while reading and lose my place. If I’m not going to review it, I just enjoy the ride and treat the book like a perfect lazy summer afternoon. If I have no plans to review the book . . . I may not even finish it. When I want something breezy and satisfying with no pressure to review, I’ll pick up an anthology and read just one or two stories. It’s very relaxing!

CSEC: Why do you think reviewing, critiquing, just talking about books is so important—now, and throughout history? What are some reviews you are the proudest of? What would be your ideal reviewing job—if one exists?

AJ: It will always be important to talk about books. It can be any kind of discussion–chatting at bookclub, reviewing, or critiquing. Readers take it for granted because we are used it–books we read change our worldview, they inspire us, they help us understand the world, and different people will experience the same book in a completely different way.   We talk about politics non-stop, right? Why should talking about books be any different?

I’m part of a local sci-fi book club, and my favorite part of our discussions is that everyone gets something different out of the books that we read and discuss. Think about ice cream.

CSEC: Mmmnnn. Ice cream.

AJ: If it’s chocolate ice cream, just about everyone who tastes it will say, “Yep, tastes like chocolate!” With books, one person says it tastes like chocolate, two people say it tastes like cherry, another person says it tastes like mango. They all read the same book, but came away from it with completely different feelings and experiences. Talking about our different experiences reading the same book, it’s a window into how we all experience life in a different way. And I just love that!

My Kickstarter, The Best of Little Red Reviewer, will feature the reviews I’m most proud of. The reviews I’m most proud of seem to be when I didn’t just read a book, I experienced it.  These are books that shocked me, floored me, scared me, bewildered me, amused me. Instead of just reading them, I somehow got the IMAX experience. My review ended up being a reflection of my experience of reading the book. I’ve found that the more I enjoy a book, the less I talk about the plot in the book review. Because when the book is that good, the plot is the often the least interesting part.

CSEC: I love that.

AJ: The writing of those reviews can be an enjoyable intense experience unto itself, and the writing of the review often helps me remember the book even more vividly.

My dream reviewing job? I used to think being a professional reviewer was a dream job. Other than getting some free books, I do not make a penny on writing book reviews. No one pays me for my time or effort, my blog is not monetized, this is not a business, I don’t do this for money. If I did do it for money, I worry it would stop being fun and would just feel like a job. And jobs are a drag! You do them because you need to pay your bills, not because they are fun. I think right now, I have my dream reviewing job. It’s a hobby, I review fun books that I choose, and I don’t have to worry about meeting any style guidelines or deadlines.

CSEC: What are some books either in your To Be Read pile, or that you wish WERE in your To Be Read pile, that you are very much looking forward to—and why?

AJ: My To Be Read pile is completely unorganized with no rhyme or reason with books randomly floating in and out of it on a whim, so I’m going to make this a list of books I wish were in my TBR pile. Books that don’t exist yet, and some that will never exist.

I’d love to read a ton of Culture short stores by Iain M Banks. A sort of “State of the Art” type volume, but all the stories take place in the Culture.

Once upon a time, Catherynne Valente talked about self publishing the third book in her Prester John series (publisher went under after book 2, much disaster all around), or maybe Kickstarting it. She got sidetracked with her Fairyland series and other more marketable and profitable novels, so who knows when or if the Prester John book will happen. In the meantime, I’ll just read the first book over and over and over again.

I hope Steven Brust and Skyler White write a million more Incrementalists books, because I want to read all of them. Every time another side character gets the spotlight, I realize how little I know about that person and their past and that I want to know way more than could ever fit in one book.

THANK YOU, ANDREA!

Now, dear Readers. Go Ye Forth and Help Kickstart THE BEST OF THE LITTLE RED REVIEWER!

I found this in my notes, and I think it’s worth working on. But I may have to re-read the books.

Verse 1

Lucy, I would give my arm to comb your hair again

Peter, what I’d pay to play our checker game

Edmund, I’d move mountains just to hear you strum guitar

And I’d never let you near another train

Refrain

I’ll be just like Nellie Bly

Or Ehrhart in the sky

Lion-hearted, valiant, and bold

And I won’t forget our wars

Neither one, forever more

But I think I’ll always fear the cold

V2 something

V3 something even better

Bridge (sometime later)

And Lucy, my Lucy, my Lucy

my Lucy my Lucy!

Every door that I open

Every song I sing true

Every portrait I hang

Is a gateway to you

My sister, my phantom, my empress,

My dream

my emptiness, temperance, trickster, my queen

I long for you!

The illustrious author Ysabeau Wilce quoted something on Slack the other day that’s been haunting me ever since.

“HAVE NINE IDEAS ON YOU AT ALL TIMES.” — Gustavo Arellano, reporter and author of ¡Ask a Mexican!

She went on to expound on the quote, or perhaps summarize what she remembered: “This is the advice I would give my writers . . . I always told them to have nine ideas on them: three they could do immediately, three that would take a couple of days to gather, and three long-term projects.”

I really liked the idea of having several projects in line and on the burner, ready for when I am ready for them. So I thought I’d do a little mental housekeeping. A little list making. I make them for groceries, after all. And for taxes. And prep scripts. And chores. I get ALL OF THOSE THINGS DONE. So why not writing?

My three for the present all have to do with my novel revisions. Markus (my agent) got back to me in November, and I’m more than a third of the way through them now. My whole goal is to be faster on these revisions than I was on last year’s. (Took me ten months. Count ’em. Ten.)

They won’t necessarily make sense to anyone reading them, unless they have also read one of the COUNTLESS DRAFTS of Miscellaneous Stones: Necromancer, but here they are anyway, for me.

3 NOW

1. More dark underpinnings in middle.
2. More of a conscious plan on protagonist’s part, even if these fail.
3. That thing with the ghost. Fix it.

As for the next bit of planning, I have several projects I want to be working on–including some Brimstone Rhine stuff. And so:

3 NEAR

1. Ballads from a Distant Star
   1. a.) Send package of Distant Star lyrics and concept to Patty Templeton and Brett Massé for illustrations and graphic design of lyric ebook.
   2. b.) Send same to Jeremy Cooney, Stefan Dollak, Carlos Hernandez (possible other musicians? Tim Rodriguez? Faye Ringel?) for instrumentation ideas.
   3. c.) Collaborate with Amal on a few more song ideas to round out the album.
2. Dragon poem for upcoming anthology, loosely titled “The Wyrm of Lirr.”
3. “The Twice-Drowned Saint” novella re-drafted and submitted. (TIME TO TRY AND CRACK THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION MARKET!!! Or, really, anyone who’ll take me is good.)

Meanwhile, we have ambitions for the future, and these are:

3 FAR

1. Well, you see, Miscellaneous Stones: Necromancer is the first of a trilogy. The second one being called Miscellaneous Stones: Justiciar. (Which word I will have to learn how to pronounce.) Not to mention Miscellaneous Stones: Psychopomp. BOOM!
2. Possibly collect all three Dark Breaker novellas into novel-shape and try to sell it. And/or put together a new collection of short stories and poems. Mmn. The two Witch’s Garden pieces could go in there. And all kinds of secret, interesting, weird little uncollected things. In fact, wouldn’t THE WITCH’S GARDEN be a WONDERFUL title for a short story collection??? I’d finally get to write “Silver and Bone” for it–my sequel to “The Bone Swans of Amandale” in which Nicolas gets nicked by the Faerie Queen and Greenpea et al have to save him. With MUSIC. TRA-LA!
3. Also, there’s that not-so-little matter of SHADOWSTALKERS. Possible MAGNUM OPUS, or at least my opinions on graduate schools and what they do to my BEST FRIENDS. In a fantasy setting. With spies and shapeshifters. Right now I am happily collecting, buying, and reading ALL THE BOOKS about the HISTORY of SPIES, so if you know of any good ones (pre-20th century, or even pre-19th, if possible) LEMME KNOW! Especially non-European histories. I have several of those, and two about the United States. One about Washington’s spy networks, and one about THE PINKS–the lady detectives of the Pinkerton Agency–fascinating stuff.

And here we are. I just got freshly excited about the future. So thank you, Ysabeau Wilce (read her books, not joking, just do it), and thank you, Gustavo Arellano–now I want to read your column, among other things!

In the meantime, keeping hopeful is the hardest bit. But that’s my concern for the new year. To remember that the act of sitting and writing is . . . play! It’s the thing I want. The thing I yearn for when I’m not doing it. So I’m gonna stop treating it as a headache and a chore and start WRIGGLING LIKE PAVLOV’S PUPPY every time someone says, “Let’s write!” including me. Wriggling is an instant mood-changer, I’ve found. Wriggling and lots and lots of lightbulbs.

Farewell for now.