Babel Clash

It’s that time of the week again where we bid farewell to our current guest and welcome our new guests to the blog. 

Thanks for spending time with us Naomi and best of luck on your current projects (manga and child!).   Not sure if this is your first, but as a new Dad myself, enjoy the time as much as you can because it goes by too quickly!  Feel free to take a moment and plug any current or future project (your new manga series looks great!).

So, who’s next on the blog?

First, we have the author of Neverland, Douglas Clegg! 

Joining Douglas is the author of The Reincarnationist Series, M.J. Rose!

Please give them a big welcome to Babel Clash.  With it being Halloween season, who knows what they may have up their sleeves!

I have been run off my feet the last week (metaphorically speaking, as I am not actually very mobile right now since there are only 6.5 weeks to go before due date of my latest project, codenamed omgwtfbaby), and so have totally fallen down on posting interesting things!

BUT — I will make up for it by making an extra-large post? I finally got my act together today to put up the very first sneak-preview pages from my OTHER latest project, about which I am hugely excited: Will Supervillains Be On The Final? (Liberty Vocational, Vol 1), a manga done with the fabulous artist Yishan Li. This will be coming out next spring, in time for San Diego Comic-Con. \o/

(continue reading…)

Hello all! I am so excited to be back blogging here again, and thought I would start things off by sharing a little taste of this last weekend’s New York Comic-Con, where I was lucky enough to be on a hugely fun panel with Jim Butcher, Joe Abercrombie, Peter V. Brett, Deborah Harkness, and Brandon Sanderson that roamed all over the fantasy field. Shawn Speakman took video:

NYCC Panel Video: Fantasy Authors from Suvudu on Vimeo.

NYCC Panel Video: Fantasy Authors Part II from Suvudu on Vimeo.

If there were any bits of the panel you would like me to explore, or questions you would have asked if you were there, hit me with them!

And for my part, I have a question for all of you: our moderator Betsy Mitchell had asked us for questions, and one of mine we didn’t get to explore was, how do you engage with fans and invite them into your work/world, which is a topic near and dear to my heart, because it’s something I want to do since that leads to heaps of awesome things (like the spectacular entries I’ve received for the Temeraire fanart contest whose winners are going to be announced this week! watch this blog or my livejournal for some very very shiny examples. ♥)

So, since I didn’t get a chance to ask the other writers on the panel, I ask you guys! What do your favorite authors do that invites you in, what gets you engaged and passionate about your favorite books?

So it goes, as Vonnegut said.  Another fun-filled two weeks is coming to an end.  I really enjoyed having Lou, Ginjer, and Jeremy on the blog these past two weeks.  Their knowledge and insight into the publishing business was eye-opening and entertaining, to say the least.  I learned a lot from their posts and am really excited to see how the next few years look for the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres.  You’re all welcome to come back to the blog whenever you feel the urge chat books (or dish trade secrets).  Thanks again for taking time out from your schedules to blog with us.

Babel Clash readers, don’t forget to check out the many books from Pyr, Ace/Roc, and Night Shade, and help support the books these editors feel passionate about.  I know I will because I want to see what they’ve got coming next!

I know Lou has posted a farewell post, but Lou, Ginjer, and Jeremy - feel free to spend a few monents plugging anything you really want our readers to know about.  Thanks again for everything!

Then, starting tomorrow, we have the return of Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire Series, to the blog!  I know she spent her weekend at the New York Comic Con, so I’m sure she has plenty to tell us about it!  Naomi, welcome back!  We look forward to reading your blogs!

Morgan, thank you so much for inviting me, and Claudia for joining me! It’s been heaps of fun, and I hope entertaining for all of you out there. If you’re interested in hearing more, follow me on twitter and on livejournal for updates! ♥

In addition to the beautiful Temeraire omnibus that is out now, and Tongues of Serpents, which will be coming out July 13, I am currently finishing up an incredibly fun manga project with the super-talented Yishan Li: Liberty Vocational, about the adventures of the somewhat-hapless Leah Taymore, a new student at a vocational school for superheroes.

It has been very much a learning experience, writing a graphic novel — the hardest part is trying not to pile ten times the possible story into each frame, leaving room for the art to breathe and tell the story with you.

I also have another project in the works, a YA trilogy loosely inspired by the Secret Garden, which I’ll be starting work on this February; I don’t have a date on that one yet, but am wildly excited about the concept.

I currently also have several other short stories out and forthcoming besides Araminta and Purity Test: Vici, in The Dragon Book (I recommend checking out the very spiffy UK publisher’s site, which is full of fantastic content and among other things a video of me reading the first part of the story), is set in the Temeraire universe and is the story of the taming of the first dragon in Western Europe, featuring a rather well known historical figure. *g*

I’m also very proud of Seven Years From Home, in the upcoming anthology Warriors also from Gardner Dozois, with George R. R. Martin, which will be out in March 2010, and further out, the story Priced To Sell in Ellen Datlow’s Naked City anthology coming in winter 2011, for which I don’t have a link yet but which is full of new stories of urban fantasy.

And for Temeraire fans, I am happy to report we have a new deal with Del Rey for three more books in the series, which will bring it to a close — I have felt for a while that it seemed like there were going to be nine volumes total, and while writing Tongues of Serpents, the general outline of seven through nine fell into my head, which was v exciting. (This happened at a cafe in Sydney while doing research, which was especially lovely. Am especially excited about the Incas. \o/ )

Thank you all again!

Naomi and Claudia, we still have a day or so to wrap up.  Thank you for the conversation.  It’s been fun.  Before you go, please share a little bit about your latest book or project.

Also, what would you say to those readers who’ve not read your work before?  What can they expect from your stories?

Did you know there’s a legend that the Titanic sank because there was a cursed mummy on board?  In reality: No mummy.  But still, you’d think someone would write that, wouldn’t you?  But mummies wait, forlorn, wrapped and forgotten, for their turn in the sun.   I take your point that mummies are not the easiest paranormal creature to situate in whatever location you choose — they tend not to show up much beyond their native lands or large museums — but even Titanic films and books have left them out.  Just sad.  (And I plead guilty too: I’ve got an as-yet-untitled Titanic-themed YA novel coming out from HarperTeen in late 2011, and there, also, mummies will be cruelly ignored.)

That was indeed the challenge: Asking how certain events would change history — and concentrating on smaller changes, like the sinking of the Titanic, which for all its fame was in the end just a very large cruise ship, and not even the sinking with the greatest number of fatalities.  There are already many books asking how bigger changes might have affected history, if, say, the Nazis won WWII (Fatherland), or if the South had won the U.S. Civil War, with help from time-traveling South African white supremacists, no less (Guns of the South).

Though of course, your books take that to a whole new level, don’t they?  How do you even begin reimagining something as vast as the Napoleonic Wars, with a change as huge — and off the beaten path — as the addition of dragons?  If I remember correctly, you began with the more general idea of the Age of Sail, but the Temeraire series ultimately deals with, and affects, that history far more intricate and political way.   When did you realize how wide-ranging the changes would be for your history — and how far back have you imagined the intersection of dragons and mankind in your universe?

The problem with mummies is the name, I think. It’s too mmm-y for the proper horror effect. We need a new name for what mummies are, and then there can be no barrier to their domination of the publishing airwaves. I am thinking of something along the lines of “Encrypted” which has the extra-special benefit that if someone didn’t like the initial proposal, it would be easy to turn it around on the spot. “What? You thought I meant embalmed corpses and action-adventure? No, no! It’s a sophisticated high-tech thriller instead!” With “mummies” your only plausible alternative is, “…would you like a turn-of-the-twentieth-century British childrens story instead…?”

Claudia and I were also talking this weekend about challenges — we know each other from fanfic land, where you can’t throw a rock without hitting a nifty story challenge going on — and came up with a really excellent original-fiction challenge, which we now can’t remember, except I *think* it might have been something about how history/technology would have developed differently if the Titanic and the Hindenberg disasters had never happened, which is an invitation to all sorts of fabulous steampunky alterations.

This was inspired by a visit to the Titanic exhibition at the Discovery center in NYC, which apart from some really nice room re-creations and a miniature iceberg also had the impressively gluttonous menus from the first-class dining cabin, and the information that a first-class cabin cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today’s currency. O________O (On the other hand, it got your odds of survival up over 50%, better than that if you were a woman.)

– and discover that it used to be an S&M club in lower Manhattan — wait, no, that was Naomi Novik and I last Saturday night.  Naomi has kindly invited me to visit the blog and ramble back and forth with her over the next couple of days, but first I ought to introduce myself.   I’m Claudia Gray, the author of the EVERNIGHT series from HarperTeen, which so far includes the books EVERNIGHT, STARGAZER and (coming March 9) HOURGLASS.

My personal vote for most-overlooked-genre creature right now: Mummies.  If you ask me, mummies are at least as good as the currently hot zombies: They’re both undead, they both tend to shuffle a lot, they’re both extremely set on killing you.  But mummies are a lot sexier, right?  They have tombs in exotic places, filled with gemstones and statuary.  They have death masks of gold, scimitars, jewelry and other priceless, cursed bling.  They’re better preserved than your average zombie (at least, after the first couple of days), and also often have the power of illusion to make themselves young and hot again, whereas it’s hard to get turned on by a drooling, gray-fleshed zombie, where any clinch would probably result in some body part being snapped off.

Granted, you can write about swarms of zombies, and mummy media suggest that those guys are mostly loners.  Maybe one undead shuffling thing seems naturally less scary than hordes of undead shuffling things.  However, mummies can usually summon all sorts of things to do their bidding, from scarabs to jackals to mysterious bluish winds that suck the life out of people.  Mummies bring it all.   But where is “The Mummy Diaries” on the CW?  Naomi, how long can this prejudice against mummies last?

Oh, ninjas!!

I was just having almost this same conversation with my husband (mystery writer extraordinaire Charles Ardai). There is little I adore more than a good cliche reinterpreted fresh — I love what Sharon Shinn has done with angels in the Samaria books, I was just re-reading those the other day — and my contender for the “next” one was unicorns. I feel they are ripe for re-imagining. It would be a challenge because of the potential for twee, but come on — unicorns!

– NO, WAIT.

I HAVE IT.

NINJAS ON UNICORNS.

It will be my next proposal.

Actually, I will totally take this opportunity to pimp a forthcoming anthology of great awesome, Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black, in which I decidedly come down on the side of unicorns. Here’s a quick taste!

Purity Test

“Oh, stop whining,” the unicorn said. “I didn’t poke you that hard.”

“Excuse me, I have a hangover, I think I’m bleeding, and I’m seeing unicorns,” Alison said, rubbing her shoulder. “I have grounds.”

She groggily swung her legs over the side and sat up the rest of the way on the park bench. It was still dark, except for the big old wrought-iron street lamp down the path that was stabbing at her eyes. Alison was really not ready to be awake again. Blowing the last of her money on a fake ID from Times Square and two six-packs of supermarket beer instead of a bus ticket back to the group home had seemed like a good idea at the time. She wasn’t even completely ready to give up on it yet, although the unicorn was making a pretty good case.

The unicorn was extremely pretty, all long flowy silver hair and shiny hooves, indescribable grace, and a massive and improbable spiraling horn about four feet long. Also, it looked kind of annoyed.

“Why a unicorn?” Alison wondered at her subconscious. “I mean, dragons are so much cooler.”

“Excuse me?” the unicorn said indignantly. “Unicorns kill dragons all the time.”

“Really?” she said skeptically.

The unicorn pawed the ground a little with a forehoof. “Okay, usually only when they’re still small. But Zanzibar the Magnificent did kill Galphagor the Black in 1014.”

Zombies vs. Unicorns will come out in September 2010.

And speaking of awesome cliches done fresh, tomorrow (or possibly the day after depending on technical issues), I will soon be joined on here by my good friend the fabulous Claudia Gray, author of the Evernight series — vampires and boarding school! It is heaps of fun! — to ramble back and forth with me for a bit.

This plan was hatched on her recently completed visit to NYC, as a result of which we spent last Saturday night in an S&M dungeon — okay, FINE, 675 Bar is actually a trendy NYC joint now, but I have it on excellent authority that it until recently was an S&M dungeon, and it looks the part, barring the incongruous new foosball table. (Unless the foosball table is actually standard issue for S&M dungeons? Actually, there’s that bit in the (strange and creepy and oddly brilliant) movie of The Revenger’s Tragedy where Eddie Izzard and Christopher Eccleston are randomly playing foosball in a sort of S&M-y post-apocalyptic universe, so maybe!)