A lot of us are in lock-down or working from home right now, and cut off from our usual activities. I've been getting on with working on the follow-up to the Grass King's Concubine, but I've also been doing on-line readings from my Sekrit Projekt novel, which is a mystery with supernatural elements, set in 9th century Wales. You can find the first three installments here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhmAUZBnGSE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3o6Gn-aa9M
So an exciting thing happened while I was away at Worldcon: my novella Serpent Rose came out from NewCon Press. You can find the details on their website here: https://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=143&referer=Catalogue
I've always felt conflicted about the figure of Kign Arthur. As a historian of the early middle ages, he can be a problem, as the evidence for him is very thin, yet there are a lot of rather misleading books out there about him. As a writer, though, I find the whole canon of Arthurian works fascinating. We tend to tell the same story, these days, but in the 12th through 15th centuries, there were many many different stories told, with different heroes and different endings. Serpent Rose is one of those: I wrote it in an attempt to explore the characters of Lamorak de Galis, who is said to have been the third greatest of Arthur's knights, yet remains obscure in most retellings. The Prose Tristan contains elements of what may be lost stories about him, and I have used some of those. But his story wove its way into a story about the Orkney brothers, too, and particularly Gaheris. These days, he's one of the minor figures in the Arthur stories, but like his elder brother Gawain, he seems once to have been more significant, and, also like Gawain, his character has rather taken a beating from Sir Thomas Malory onwards. I've always rather liked him though, so...
Serpent Rose is high Arthuriana, set in the imaginary world of tournaments, heroic knights, quests and castles, rather than in a pseudo-early mediaeval context. It has a companion piece already written, which focuses on Gareth's wife (Lyonese/Llinos) and her story, and there are a couple more planned.
I shall be at the Dublin worldcon, having missed last year. You can find my schedule on the convention's programming App, Grenadine, via their website, which is here: https://dublin2019.com/whats-on/programming/
I will be reading from new work, as well as doing several panels. I hope to see some of you there.
Hi there!
You can find me on Facebook these days, for updates on what I'm writing and what I'm doing.
I'm one of the guests of honour at this year's Picocon (which is number 32), alongside three great writers -- Frances Hardinge, Ian MacDonald and Cory Doctorow., at Imperial College, London. I'm delighted to be asked -- it's the second time I'm been one of their guests and I'm glad I was interesting enough last time that they wanted me back. It's one of my favourite cons: it's run by the members of the Imperial College Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, who are mostly students and they put on wonderfully imaginative, entertaining programmes. I came up through student sf societies and university-based cons, and going to Picocon is like going back to my roots.
There's more information on their website here: https://www.union.ic.ac.uk/scc/icsf/picocon/
I'm been invited to be Guest of Honour at Novacon 44, in Nottingham on 14 - 16 November at the Park Inn Nottingham. It's a real honour and I'm delighted to have been asked.
You can find the details here: https://www.novacon.org.uk/n44/
This is not how the world should be.
You can find more of this discussion by looking for the #sffragette hashtag on twitter
You can see some of the responses and recommendations here. You can find more by going to twitter and hunting for the hashtag #womentoread.
You can share the idea. You can write a review of a book by a woman. You can blog about a woman writer you admire. You can post a list of links to the websites of women writers you love. It doesn't have to be ep;ic fantasy or even sff. It can be any genre. And then, please, go to twitter and tweet that link with the #womentoread hashtag. If you're not on twitter, post the link here in the comments and I will tweet it for you.Eastercon (EightSquared Con https://www.eightsquaredcon.org/web/Welcome.html) is almost upon us, and this year I'm on the organising committee. So I am expecting a very busy weekend. I will be around for all of it -- I'll be the blur of speed in black and white -- but hopefully there will also be time for catching up with people and even sleeping.
And to see our wonderful guests of honour, Walter Jon Williams, Freda Warrington, Anne Sudworth and Professor Edward James.
I hope to see some of you there.
Only one more week until worldcon! I am really looking forward to it. I don't get to worldcons very often and I always have a blast at them. And this year it's in Chicago, which is one of my favourite US cities.
Here's my schedule:
Fri Aug 31 9:00 --10:30am, Anarchism in Fantasy and Science Fiction
San Francisco Room
Eleanor Arnason (M), Farah Mendlesohn, Kari Sperring, Richard Dutcher
Fri Aug 31 1:30 -- 3:00:pm Magic and the Power of Language
San Francisco Room
Kari Sperring, Karin Rita Gastreich, Mary Frances Zambreno, (M) Saladin Ahmed, William S. Annis
Sat Sep 1 10:00 -- 10:30:am Writer Under Glass #29
Fan Lounge
Kari Sperring
Come and watch me write Sadly, there will be no cats helping.
Sat Sep 1 2:00 -- 2:30:pm Reading
Addams Room.
Kari Sperring.
Sun Sep 2 9:00 -- 10:30:am Kaffeeklatsche
Kaffeeklatsche 3
Kari Sperring
Come and have breakfast with me!
Mon Sep 3 1:30 -- 3:00:pm Autograph Session 19
Autograph Tables
Adam "The Shark" Selzer, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, Emma Newman, Fabio Fernandes, Gene Wolfe, George R. R. Martin, Kari Sperring.
Also, for the next ten days or so, I am guest blogging at Charles
Stross' blog. Charlie has very kindly let me loose on his readership.
Today, we're talking about the histories of the Celtic and Gaelic speaking peoples. Come by and join in!