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Dec. 19th, 2009 06:17 pmI'm scatterbrained today. This post is going to go in all sorts of directions. I thought you might want to be warned.
Tessa is doing a series of ten minute reviews before she heads off into Patagonia. She has reviewed Illuminations. If I had to choose an effect I wanted to have on a reader, with that book, this would be it.
What's interesting* is how far removed her view of Illuminations is from my view of her writing. She takes no hostages in her fiction. The word that best describes it is 'kick-ass.' If you want to see how few hostages she takes, you will have to wait until Baggage is released, next year. Or you could read her Halo piece, co-written with Jeff VanderMeer. I need to get hold of that. Tessa Kum and Jeff VanderMeer, together - it's got to be special. It can't be anything but.
Canberra a few years ago had a little group of writers to watch. Kaaron Warren was one of them, and has just reached the international gaze. Tessa is another. There are more, too, writing wonders, quietly. How a tiny city can produce so many writers who are so very special is a happy mystery.
Most Canberra spec fic writers know each other. There's no getting round that. Tessa no longer lives in Canberra, but she's still a friend. But if Tessa hadn't liked my writing, she would tell me, privately. She's not the sort of person who writes nice things because she knows someone. That's why this review means so much. And instead of telling me "I read your book", she has written that lovely review, out of the blue. A difficult day suddenly glows (and not from those idiot bushfires, for a change).
Illuminations didn't get many reviews when it came out. Small press, new writer, off-beat work. It was reviewed in the oddest of places (my favourite will always be the major scholarly Arthurian journal). Most people I know bought it to support me or my publisher or small press. They read it later and discover they liked it for itself. This is why I am so dead-set against sales practises that assume a book has to prove itself within six months. Some books can and some books are going to grow into their audience. Or their audience is going to grow into them.
I don't have any clever ending today. I just want to stop and think for a bit.
*Yep, that word again
PS I just reread what I wrote. I'm not saying I'm one of the special writers. I'm the person who watches them emerge. Every special writer needs someone to celebrate when they are finally seen by the bigger world. If I were a different person, I would write their biographies, but it's far more likely, in this universe, that I feed them chocolate.
Tessa is doing a series of ten minute reviews before she heads off into Patagonia. She has reviewed Illuminations. If I had to choose an effect I wanted to have on a reader, with that book, this would be it.
What's interesting* is how far removed her view of Illuminations is from my view of her writing. She takes no hostages in her fiction. The word that best describes it is 'kick-ass.' If you want to see how few hostages she takes, you will have to wait until Baggage is released, next year. Or you could read her Halo piece, co-written with Jeff VanderMeer. I need to get hold of that. Tessa Kum and Jeff VanderMeer, together - it's got to be special. It can't be anything but.
Canberra a few years ago had a little group of writers to watch. Kaaron Warren was one of them, and has just reached the international gaze. Tessa is another. There are more, too, writing wonders, quietly. How a tiny city can produce so many writers who are so very special is a happy mystery.
Most Canberra spec fic writers know each other. There's no getting round that. Tessa no longer lives in Canberra, but she's still a friend. But if Tessa hadn't liked my writing, she would tell me, privately. She's not the sort of person who writes nice things because she knows someone. That's why this review means so much. And instead of telling me "I read your book", she has written that lovely review, out of the blue. A difficult day suddenly glows (and not from those idiot bushfires, for a change).
Illuminations didn't get many reviews when it came out. Small press, new writer, off-beat work. It was reviewed in the oddest of places (my favourite will always be the major scholarly Arthurian journal). Most people I know bought it to support me or my publisher or small press. They read it later and discover they liked it for itself. This is why I am so dead-set against sales practises that assume a book has to prove itself within six months. Some books can and some books are going to grow into their audience. Or their audience is going to grow into them.
I don't have any clever ending today. I just want to stop and think for a bit.
*Yep, that word again
PS I just reread what I wrote. I'm not saying I'm one of the special writers. I'm the person who watches them emerge. Every special writer needs someone to celebrate when they are finally seen by the bigger world. If I were a different person, I would write their biographies, but it's far more likely, in this universe, that I feed them chocolate.