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Saturday 30 September 2017

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September 2017 Recap


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Podcast Launch: How to Create, Grow & Monetize YOUR Podcast: 15... by John Lee Dumas https://t.co/s5jghwOKbe #InternationalPodcastDay


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Podcast: Starting a Podcast: 10 Proven Steps to Creating Your F... by Jerry Kershen https://t.co/OVp4wLwc82 #InternationalPodcastDay


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The Podcast Book 2017: Discover your next favorite podcast from... by Orlando Rios https://t.co/kvbMpRVHhz #InternationalPodcastDay


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Review: Archangel's Viper - Nalini Singh


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Coming up this week

Is there, we ask, just the first hints of autumn appearing here in Spain? There is a freshness in the air that seems to suggest that we can finally say … Continue reading →

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On Kickstarter and Independent Publishing: A Self-Reflection


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On Kickstarter and Independent Publishing: A Self-Reflection

Hello, brave readers! As you may have heard, we Book Smugglers have been in the midst of our very first Kickstarter Campaign. On Friday, we successfully hit our funding goal–and while there are still four days and change left in our campaign before the clock expires and anything could happen (including not making our funding goal), we wanted to take the time to reflect today. Thanks to your support and readership, we’ve been able to keep this website going for almost ten years. (Ten years! That’s an eternity in website-time. It’s like dog years, but at a higher multiplier.)

Yesterday, we asked two female entrepreneurs to talk about their path to making their business idea a reality and experience with Kickstarter. Today, we wanted to take the time to answer our own questions–a self-reflection of sorts, on why we do what we do, and why your support means everything to us.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

The Smugglers, circa 2010 at our first Book ExpoAmerica

What’s the underlying idea and mission? Why did we decide to take this idea into reality, and how did we get to launch?

We are readers. We are obsessed with the act of reading, of discussing books, and sharing new stories and voices with the rest of the world. We discovered, back in 2014, that we wanted to do more than just talk about books that others had published–we wanted to find, edit, and share new stories ourselves. That’s when we decided to enter the publishing game–the product of an annual State of the Union Book Smugglers meeting in which we simultaneously agreed that we should step up our game and start finding the new voices and nurturing them ourselves.

We launched our first cover reveal exactly three years ago today: Hunting Monsters by S.L. Huang. Our first season of short stories published fast and furious in the weeks that followed–we took our nascent publishing house from idea to reality in the span of months.

Hunting Monsters

As female independent business owners, what are some of the unique challenges and opportunities we face?

We are two business partners running an independent publisher and website online with the added challenge of being on different continents and different time zones. Physical distance is a hurdle, but not an insurmountable one! We find a way to make the time zones work in our favor (i.e. when one of us is asleep, the other is working). Like any small business owners, we are always working–we have 8am conference calls on weekends, we are always thinking about the next thing that we need to write, the next piece that requires editing, the next database update we need to implement to make sure our site is up and running smoothly.

More importantly, we are two women and best friends, running a business in a traditionally male and large-publisher dominated industry. Our biggest initial challenge, as publishers, was establishing legitimacy–why should anyone trust us with their stories and their work? With a lot of effort and time, we think we’ve been able to overcome that initial skepticism and have established ourselves as a discovery outlet for new, diverse voices. We’ve been very lucky to have acquired amazing authors who have trusted us with their words–and who have also gone on to write for larger publishers with traditional book deals, like Roshani Chokshi and S.L. Huang. That’s an amazing challenge–and opportunity–all in itself.

In book world, we often hear about the importance of finding your niche or community. Who is your community? Why is it so important to you?

This is the most important thing: community. We got our start as bloggers and book reviewers because of the community of readers we met online and in person over the years. Our community is you–our regular commenters and readers, the quiet lurkers, the folks that follow us on twitter. People who care passionately about books, about science fiction and fantasy fandom, about representation and diversity in SFF from around the world. You are important to us because your words and your thoughts are why we do any of this–you keep us accountable, you make us smarter, and stronger, and better. Your passion fuels our passion, and makes this fandom the best goddamn fandom in the galaxy.

What words of wisdom would you give to other women or entrepreneurs thinking about taking their product or business from ideation to reality? Specifically, what advice do you have for those who want to use crowdfunding platforms, like Kickstarter, to reach their goals?

Crowdfunding is an amazing tool and concept–it allows creators to connect with their community, and empowers the community to support with their wallets actual projects they care about. For female business owners and creators this is particularly important, as there is bias in the fundraising and startup world, and platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo remove some of that investor funding bias from the equation.

That said, Kickstarter ain’t easy. It’s a marathon of tension, of constant tweaking and repositioning, and awkward self-promotion. You have to carefully plan out your P&Ls to cover costs, you need to have an outreach campaign ready to roll, and you need to be flexible enough to completely change course if something isn’t working. Everyone’s path to funding is different–just keep calm and smuggle on. That’s our motto right now.

Are there any other independent businesses, female-owned or otherwise, that you particularly admire?

Oh, there are many. We admire other website owners and bloggers–from The Mary Sue, to Dear Author, from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, to Lady Business. We admire Bea and Leah Koch, sisters behind awesome romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice, the brilliant mastermind Dominique Raccah (CEO and founder of Sourcebooks). We are in awe of designers and business owners like Grace Bonney (Design Sponge), Anna Bond (Rifle Paper Co), and Miriam Brafman (Packlane). To name just a few!

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So there you have it–our self-reflected roundtable, as we think back on our own business. Our Kickstarter campaign is still going strong with just over four days to go until the project closes–we’ve still got some amazing rewards left, with stretch goals in sight. Thank you, to everyone, for supporting us!

We are, as always…
Ana and Thea

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

The post On Kickstarter and Independent Publishing: A Self-Reflection appeared first on The Book Smugglers.



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The latest The UK Books Daily! https://t.co/RoMy5b4GEL Thanks to @coopermj1988 @stuartbache @martincouzins #drseuss


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New post: "Marcel Theroux: ‘Keep the life normal, and keep the work weird’" https://t.co/ETdVdPJXuJ Justine Jordan The novelist on the pre…


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Best-selling fiction writers finding success with non-fiction - Times of India https://t.co/DZjA75eL0F


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The latest The UK Books Daily! https://t.co/RoMy5b4GEL Thanks to @DitmasLit @iamgcps @y_silverysnow #brexit #drseuss


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New post: "Badger or Bulbasaur - have children lost touch with nature?" https://t.co/vhTWRFK4Ry Robert Macfarlane Studies show that child…


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New post: "Fiona Mozley: I’m on the Man Booker shortlist and top of my fantasy football league" https://t.co/tDdkXn365d Fiona Mozley The d…


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New post: "Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense by Jenny Uglow review – owls, pussycats and wonder" https://t.co/hAN0qUR0RA Robert Douglas-…


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New post: "Howard Jacobson: ‘I’m in two minds about fish’" https://t.co/Ck08gTkvfN Howard Jacobson It’s an atavistic ritual. You take you…


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New post: "Dunbar by Edward St Aubyn review – intense updating of King Lear" https://t.co/7KoW2f3xNX Kate Clanchy Can Shakespeare’s blacke…


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Friday 29 September 2017

Cover Reveals: Hero at the Fall by Alwyn Hamilton, Rage by Cora Carmack & Legendary by Stephanie Garber


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New post: "Graphic Novel Friday: The Best Comics of September" https://t.co/ghb7I8PKlW


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New post: "Weekend Reading" https://t.co/pBMKn8a16B


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“Myers is, unusually among contemporary writers (perhaps), best read in his entirety” – These Darkening Days by Benjamin Myers

"These Darkening Days is a sequel to Benjamin Myers’ Turning Blue. Set in the Yorkshire Dales, which tests Myers’ ability to find new ways to describe rain: “Rain round here demands its own vocabulary”, it brings Roddy Mace (a journalist) and James Brindle (now a disgraced detective) together again to investigate attacks on women in a small town. As always, with Myers’ novels, this is an enclosed community where “the landscape and climate have shaped those that live here.”" - James Doyle reviews These Darkening Days by Benjamin Myers

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“Myers is, unusually among contemporary writers (perhaps), best read in his entirety” – These Darkening Days by Benjamin Myers


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The latest The UK Books Daily! https://t.co/TQWvdLnUKz Thanks to @AlmaAlexander @SellByBuild @thefeistywriter #books


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New post: "Melania Trump book donation rejected by school librarian" https://t.co/OMxnGR2ka5 Alison Flood Massachusetts librarian turns d…


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9 Book Characters You Would Want to Take a Road Trip With

Some of the most unforgettable fictional characters are fine right where they are—in fiction. After all, being fun to read about and being fun to hang out with are two very different things. (Do you want to spend the day with Gollum? Do you really?)



But then there are those characters who already feel like friends, like kindred spirits. With them, we'd endure the ultimate test in any friendship: a vacation. We asked on Facebook and Twitter: What book character would you want to go on a road trip with? Check out some of the top responses below!






HERMIONE
from the Harry Potter series
by J.K. Rowling

"She travels light, packs the essentials, and would research the heck out of a place before going there." -Stephanie




SHERLOCK HOLMES
from the Sherlock Holmes books
by Arthur Conan Doyle

"Look, man, whether you're going with the book Sherlock, Robert Downey Jr., or Benedict Cumberbatch, I'm going to be there." -Anaya




FORD PREFECT
from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books
by Douglas Adams

"I know this great restaurant at the end of the universe…." -JB




HARRY BOSCH
from the Harry Bosch series
by Michael Connelly

"He knows stuff, has great taste in music, I would be protected, and he doesn't talk too much." -Sherri





NANCY DREW
from the Nancy Drew books
by Carolyn Keene

"We'd have great adventures solving crimes, eating all the time, playing sports, and riding in Nancy's dreamy convertible!" -Diane




JO MARCH
from Title
by Louisa May Alcott

"It would be a bookish, museum-filled, intense tour with her—and we're very much alike." -Emma




KVOTHE
from The Kingkiller Chronicle
by Patrick Rothfuss

"Because he'll have some insane stories to tell." -Muhammad




JAMIE FRASER
from the Outlander series
by Diana Gabaldon

"Life is sure to be interesting as that man attracts trouble." -Tracey




THE LUGGAGE
from the Discworld series
by Terry Pratchett

"Oh shoot. How could I forget the Luggage? Of course that's the right answer." -Maria








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posted by Hayley on September, 29

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New post: "9 Book Characters You Would Want to Take a Road Trip With" https://t.co/CXEVTaFT6o


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New post: "‘Write no more’: 10 books that were banned" https://t.co/PRkla7nEoH Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis A classic by Zola, a …


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53 Indian Women Writers Millennials Must Read https://t.co/6cDHvtNPZQ


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The latest The UK Books Daily! https://t.co/TQWvdLnUKz Thanks to @TheMishaland @starbabyla @SelfPubForm #writing #books


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Words Are Stones. Impressions of Sicily, by Carlo Levi

I said earlier in the week that I picked up this book because I was short of sunshine and missing Sicily. I’m not sure now that this was the best … Continue reading →

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How to Not Drink, and Other Useful Suggestions – Abigail Conklin


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A Roundtable with Bea and Leah Koch of The Ripped Bodice


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New post: "Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan review – remarkable cinematic scope" https://t.co/X5wfgbA9aX Meghan O'Rourke The author of A V…


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A Roundtable with Bea and Leah Koch of The Ripped Bodice

Today we are delighted to host a roundtable–the first in a series, we hope–with two incredible female small business owners and entrepreneurs. Bea and Leah Koch are the cofounders and owners of The Ripped Bodice–the only exclusively romance bookstore in the United States. The Koch sisters raised $91,000 on Kickstarter to bring their business to life, and as we Smugglers are in the throes of our own Kickstarter campaign, we were eager to gain some insight from the experts.

The Ripped Bodice

Please give a warm welcome to Bea and Leah, everyone!

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The Book Smugglers: First, talk a little about your business. What is your underlying idea and mission? Why did you decide to take this idea into reality, and how did you get to launch?

Bea & Leah: We are the only romance only bookstore in the United States. Our underlying mission is to provide a safe, sex-positive, feminist space for all readers, but in particular, romance readers. As lifelong romance readers ourselves, we have faced all manner of reactions when hunting for romance novels in other bookstores. We wanted to create a store where you could shop or hang out free of judgement. We launched a Kickstarter in October of 2016 and opened in March of that year.

screen-shot-2017-02-12-at-1-31-22-pm

TBS: As female independent business owners, what are some of the unique challenges and opportunities you face?

B + L: Where to start? Our business is intrinsically linked to our womanhood. We cannot separate the two. And our job is 24 hours. We are almost always on social media engaging with our customers and fans. It becomes very difficult to take time off, to know when you need a break to recharge. But we also benefit from the advice and guidance of other amazing female business owners. It means so much to us when we can work together. A rising tide lifts all boats.

TBS: In book world, we often hear about the importance of finding your niche or community. Who is your community? Why is it so important to you?

B + L: Our community is everything. The readers and writers of romance are a passionate, engaged community. It’s important to us because it’s our customer base, but it’s also our passion and it’s special to share that with others who care as much.

Merchandising images for Ripped Bodice

Merchandising images for Ripped Bodice

TBS: What words of wisdom would you give to other women or entrepreneurs thinking about taking their product or business from ideation to reality? Specifically, what advice do you have for those who want to use crowdfunding platforms, like Kickstarter, to reach their goals?

B + L: Kickstarter is an incredible tool for female entrepreneurs. There are so many bureaucratic obstacles to getting startup funding, especially if you are a woman. To be able to go directly to your eventual customer base and ask them to help you open is such a valuable process. Make sure you don’t rush into your campaign. You want everything in place before you launch and expect to spend significant hours during the campaign promoting and answering questions on social media. Have a list of people before you launch who are going to promote you on the first day. You will make the bulk of your money on the first and last day.

General advice for female entrepreneurs: Never send an email to another business owner asking for general advice. We get about one of these a week. You always want to ask specific, targeted questions. What insurance company do you use? Would you recommend this distributor? What is your busiest day of the week?

Images by Jenn LeBlanc and Studio Smexy for Illustrated Romance

Images by Jenn LeBlanc and Studio Smexy for Illustrated Romance

TBS: Are there any other independent businesses, female-owned or otherwise, that you particularly admire?

B + L: Oh hells yes. Our favorite female owned bookstores are The Queens Bookshop in Queens, NY, Books are Magic in Brooklyn, Parnassus Books in Nashville and Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego. We love to talk with them over social media and cheer each other on.

We also stock our store’s gifts and cards almost exclusively from small, female owned businesses. Some of our favorites right now are Emily McDowell cards and Human is Human anti-trump accessories.

TBS: What books are you currently reading? Are there any new discoveries that you’re dying to share with the world?

Leah: I am currently reading Slouch Witch by Helen Harper, perfect with halloween coming up!

Bea: I am enjoying A Conspiracy in Belgravia by Sherry Thomas, the second in the Lady Sherlock series. It’s one of our customers absolute favorite series.

About The Ripped Bodice:

Images by Jenn LeBlanc and Studio Smexy for Illustrated Romance

Images by Jenn LeBlanc and Studio Smexy for Illustrated Romance

Bea and Leah Koch are sisters and the owners of The Ripped Bodice. They grew up in Chicago. Bea went on to attend Yale and NYU, where she wrote a graduate thesis titled, “Mending the Ripped Bodice.” Leah moved to Los Angeles to attend USC, graduating cum laude with a degree in visual and performing arts.

Follow The Ribbed Bodice online at http://ift.tt/23rFE2y, and @therippedbodice on twitter, facebook, and instagram.

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A Kickstarter Reward Made Of Awesome

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The Ripped Bodice has been gracious enough to offer us a hand-selected, curated box of awesomeness! Want this pile of goodies? It’s up for grabs over on our Kickstarter! We ship anywhere in the world, so take this as your chance to experience The Ripped Bodice firsthand!

The post A Roundtable with Bea and Leah Koch of The Ripped Bodice appeared first on The Book Smugglers.



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Thursday 28 September 2017

New post: "Marcel Proust paid for reviews praising his work to go into newspapers" https://t.co/8VxFZRSyjD Agence France-Presse Novelist …


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New post: "Katherine Rundell: Three Books that Made Me a Writer" https://t.co/MaHX6gxGAp


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The Literary Lakes - A Place For Inspiration and Writers Infographic

The Lake District is well-known for its amazing scenery. It’s no surprise the region has formed an inspiration and backdrop to some of our most famous wordsmiths, with the likes of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge writing about the beauty of the area. Their legacy remains today, with countless visitors to the district looking to follow in their footsteps.

The region remains a huge inspiration for all visitors who put pen to paper. Enjoy our literary guide to the all-time greats and here’s to the next generation of Lakeland scribes and poets.

The































The Literary Lakes by Craig Manor.

This post is shared in conjunction with:- http://ift.tt/2wZSQA8 thank's Daisy. 

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Review: Of Flame and Fate - Cecy Robson


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The latest The UK Books Daily! https://t.co/w2H8b53Qry Thanks to @lissertations @atchopra #tips


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A Chat with Ann Leckie


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A Chat with Ann Leckie

Hello everybody! A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of sitting down with SF Master Ann Leckie whose new book Provenance is out now, to chat about her books, life, the universe and everything else.

Check it out!

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The Book Smugglers: First of all, thank you so much for chatting with us about your books and your career.

Ann Leckie: Thank you for having me.

Ann Leckie

The Book Smugglers: We’ll start with a few questions about Provenance, your new book that just came out. Before reading it I didn’t realize that it was actually set in the same world as the Ancillary books. It’s set far away from that story although you can still feel the repercussions of what’s happening with the artificial intelligence and with the Empire. In Provenance, you see a different set of people with a different set of traditions and a different use of language. Were you always planning to go back to that same world, but to tell different stories – how did this one came to be?

Ann Leckie: I absolutely always intended to come back to that universe because I spent so much time building it. And even before I started writing Ancillary Justice I had written a little bit of short fiction set in that universe, and so then I would build up more things, and so I spent so much time building that it seemed silly to just leave all of that behind. And it’s such a big universe, really, that I can do any kind of story in it, so I said “Well, I’ll just take advantage of the construction I’ve already done and kind of build a little addition off in this direction”. I started out thinking “Well, what’s my favorite space opera tropes?” right, and one of them is ancient alien archaeology, like that’s one of my favorites, the space opera stories where there’s the ancient artefacts. Of course, that doesn’t end up in the book. There’s hints of it, because the glass was meant to be much more important to the plot when I began, and it ends up not being important to the plot, it ends up being scenery, but it also kinda fits into the thematic.

But so I said alright, well, what do I do when I want to write about a thing, I go and read about the history of it and how it has worked in the real world, and how it’s affected the real world. And I started to read about, I said “Well, archaeology. When did archaeology start to be done? And who does archaeology and why?” And of course people have been digging up old things for a very long time, and then saying “Oh, this is historic,” or “Gee, this is mysterious,” but archaeology the way that we think of it is very much a sort of colonialist and imperialist project.

And anthropology’s very similar. Anthropologists were working because they were curious about these other cultures that were—

The Book Smugglers: So “different” and “other”, right?

Ann Leckie: Yes, and so “primitive”—they had this idea that, well, there’s this idea of “progress”, you become more “advanced”, and so they wanted to see less advanced cultures and what that told us about our own past, which is super interesting. But they are also a source of intelligence for colonial governments, who wanted to come in and take political and economic control of an area, if you’re gonna go in you need information about the places you’re going. Well, the anthropologists are just funneling all this back, right? And that’s a thing that I felt very conflicted about because archaeology and anthropology, how can those not be cool and interesting, and wow, do they have a problematic history that’s not cool? And I know that anthropologists, it’s something that they’ve been sort of discussing and dealing with for a while now. So I ended up becoming much more interested in the history of museums. I started to look at the way that artefacts have been taken from other places and put in museums and I said “Well, where did museums come from?” and that is where I ended up, with thinking about museums and artefacts rather than ancient alien archaeology, so the glass ended up being not an important thing.

The Book Smugglers: Would you go back to that later though?

Ann Leckie: I hope so, because I really love the ancient alien artefact trope, it’s awesome.

The Book Smugglers: Yeah, and there’s scope for that, there’s so many different worlds and so many different things and the set-up is already there, so…

provenance

Ann Leckie: I put in the glass bridges in Nilt, which you may have noticed. And this is not a spoiler per se but an easter egg – There’s a moment in Ancillary Justice when Breq says the tourists come to Nilt and they buy these rugs that they think are handmade by the nomads, but in fact they’re made in a factory and they’re overpriced in the giftshops. So there’s a moment in Provenance, where Ingray meets Zat, and Zat says that she went to Nilt, and she saved up extra to buy this wonderful handmade rug, that was in beautiful colors, that was made by the nomads on Nilt, and that’s a couple of people who got advanced copies. I got a direct message from one person like “Ohh she got cheated!” [laughs] I’m like that’s – that’s just a little tiny easter egg!

The Book Smugglers: That is so cool, I missed it, oh my god, I’m so sad I missed that. But it’s been a while since the last Ancillary novel.

Ann Leckie: Year before last.

The Book Smugglers: [gasp] SURELY NOT.

Ann Leckie: I went a year with no book out. On purpose. I wanted the extra time to work on the book because I was like “I can’t just spit out a totally new—”

The Book Smugglers: So this is really interesting what you said, that you inserted an easter egg here from the previous book and of course there are similarities as they are set in the same universe. What are the differences and similarities that you see between the two sets of books? Where do they meet, where do they diverge? Are there some things that it’s easier for you to see and to detail?

Ann Leckie: Not a hundred percent easier for me to put in as I have more distance on it I might be able to see it better. I know that this is a very different book from Ancillary Justice. Very much so. You were saying earlier and I think you’re right, it’s closer to Mercy. But I kind of feel like I’m going along and that’s the mood I’m in, well that was the mood I was in finishing Mercy, so I was still kind of in that mood, I wanted to have some fun, y’know. So, it’s definitely lighter, I think it’s much lighter than the trilogy, and it’s intentional. Although it does it have its things that are kind of serious. Once I set up the idea about Vestiges, which comes very directly out of “Why do we keep particular things in museums and why do we go to see them? And what makes these things important and valuable?” That’s started me thinking about family. And so that tied in, and the trilogy, but it’s very much like a found family. It’s a lot more about you didn’t pick your family, and maybe everybody’s doing the best they can, but sometimes even with the best of intentions, your parents are doing the best they can, but maybe they can still, like—

The Book Smugglers: Fuck you up

Ann Leckie: Yeah, fuck you up! They can still be toxic even though they love you and they mean well. Because parents are human, right? And so, that’s a very different set of… Concerns than a trilogy.

The Book Smugglers: It goes well with the theme, the title itself, Provenance, of course, then it feeds into that idea: where do you come from, where do things come from, who is your family and how do you relate to your family, and how difficult families can be. From my reading of it, the main thematic core is obviously “provenance” and the idea of identity and where does the main character, Ingray, comes from and where does she stand alongside her brother and her mother. And then the really cool idea of the Vestiges for these particular people, the Hwae – it is so ingrained in who they are and that they worship those Vestiges so much and it’s really interesting how it is done too. If a person touched something that becomes much more important, and then of course, for those that are outside the Hwae, they know that most of those Vestiges are actually fakes. So I thought that this whole thread is really well done in the book, so I was really interested in asking how did you thread all of this together?

Ann Leckie: Often when I write, I’ll throw a bunch of things in the first chapter, like throwing things in a box. And then as I go along, I got those materials to play with and I just kind of play with them until I get a thing that looks like I want it to look. The risk of that is that I don’t end up where I’ve planned to go. For instance, the ancient aliens artefacts never happened. But those pieces built another thing. That was how I ended up… Where I went, I just threw a bunch of people who had problems with their family, and the Vestiges, into the first chapter, and then just kind of built off of that.

The Book Smugglers: That is really interesting because all of the main characters have problems with their families.

Ann Leckie: All of them are messed up. All of them have been screwed over by their parents.

The Book Smugglers: Yes, including the guy that is supposed to be kind of like the villain, the brother?

Ann Leckie: Yes!

The Book Smugglers: But he’s not as screwed up as his sister, right?

Ann Leckie: He’s pretty screwed up, and he’s been screwed over by his mother just as much as she has, but he also, I mean, she’s come out like a decent human being. Mostly. He has not come out a decent human being.

The Book Smugglers: He’s an asshole, yeah.

Ann Leckie: He’s got his moments, but you know, siblings can be kinda like that, right? Where you’re fighting and fighting and there’ll be that moment where you’re “Oh! We’re all in this together. Oh! Now I hate you.” But he is not a hundred percent terrible, like, y’know, moustache twirling villain. He had the same mother that Ingray and—she meant really well. But she had her own problems.

The Book Smugglers: Yeah, because the mother also came out of a family and a mother that wasn’t particularly nice to her and she – according to Ingray’s nuncle—She tried to get away from it, but.

Ann Leckie: But she couldn’t.

The Book Smugglers: She couldn’t completely. I am actually very interested in those types of stories, right, so I love that it’s science fiction, it’s futuristic and it has maps and really weird things– but at the same time it focus on people. I kind of like all types of stories obviously but this is for me the one that I can relate the most.

Ancillary Justice

Ann Leckie: Exactly. And I’ve occasionally someone will say “How do you write such stories that are so epic but are so personal focused,” and – and I was surprised the first time someone asked me that because when I write I try and focus on the characters. If you put them in the situation and then treat the characters very carefully and honestly, you’re gonna have the story that’s that most readers are gonna find engaging because you’re looking at other people.

The Book Smugglers: Yes, exactly. And what you say about it being a personal story, like I was saying before, Ancillary Justice felt like this really huge book in scope, and it had a story that lasted hundred of years, right? And then it was a revenge story but also that had repercussions, it was big. In Ancillary Mercy,the scope felt like it was becoming… narrower and narrower with each book, and I don’t mean narrow in a bad way, but it’s like smaller and smaller, until you have like this really close nucleus of people and this found family. And even though what happened in Ancillary Mercy in the end had repercussions.

Ann Leckie: Has HUGE repercussions.

The Book Smugglers: HUGE repercussions, it still felt like the story was very personal, and I feel like Provenance is more to Ancillary Mercy than it is to Ancillary Justice in that way. And again you can still feel that some things that are happening here—

Ann Leckie: Are gonna have repercussions, yeah. It won’t be – it’s not quite the repercussions of Ancillary Mercy but of course the plot ties in to Ancillary Mercy, because the Geck are on their way to the Conclave. That’s gonna decide whether or not the Republic of Two Systems gets to keep its independence, right?

The Book Smugglers: Yes, and whether or not Artificial Intelligence can participate or not. Are they people or not, and…

Ann Leckie: Yeah, and that’s never going to, I mean that’s not settled in this book, and it’s not an issue in this book, but it’s very clearly going on in the background. But the things that happen in this book aren’t quite as – as world changing as the things that happen in the trilogy. But, I mean I had done a big world-changing thing, I wanted to do a fun adventure heist story!

The Book Smugglers: It’s perfectly fine, I love it. The other thing I wanted to ask about is the mechs. Because they are so interesting, and in some ways I feel like, could they be alive and themselves, so we keep being told that no, they are being driven by other people, right?

Ann Leckie: Right, but they are – there’s a lot of biological – the spider mechs in particular, a lot of the Hwae mechs don’t necessarily have a lot of biological components to them. Because the Hwaes feel and focus in that area of space, feel very uncomfortable with the idea of a living artificial intelligence, they just, they don’t like that idea. But the spider mechs, are very biological, they’re almost entirely biological, they do have some mechanical and, I don’t go in detail in the book. They’re grown, they’re built, so they’re not, y’know like creatures. And they have some automated functions.

So Tic could set a spider mech to clean a hallway and it would be like a roomba, clean the hallway. But anything more complicated it needs to be remote controlled. I feel like that tech has – that’s Geck, right, it’s Geck technology, that has a lot of repercussions for the future of the Republic of Two Systems. Because although I’m not planning to write that book, one of the big issues going forward is gonna be Ancillaries. For ships. And biomechs are a really useful way of solving that problem.

Where for instance, Sphene, that really wants to have bodies, could have bodies, without killing people. So down the line, that’s meant to sort-of hook up, that would be a technology that the ships and stations could use. Without causing – because you know Breq’s never gonna let, Breq is gonna blow everything up before she lets anybody start using ancillaries, right?

Leckie_AncillarySword_TP

The Book Smugglers: And so the biomechs from the Geck could solve that problem, this is what I was wondering, whether you had an idea for them to develop into artificial intelligence themselves.

Ann Leckie: No. My thought is the other way around. The Republic of Two Systems will meet the Geck obviously at the Conclave and they’ll communicate, and the Geck who have been very isolationist until very recently are now more prepared to actually talk to other people.

I need to not get into spoiler territory. But nobody, nobody sees the Geck very much. Because they don’t like to leave their homeworld. At all. But by the end of the book, there’ll be sort of a change in outlook from the ambassador. She’ll be a little more willing to pay more attention to things going on. Out in the world.

The Book Smugglers: And it’s interesting because the ambassador is a “she” now, but—

Ann Leckie: She wasn’t necessarily at another time.

The Book Smugglers: Exactly, and so that kind of like feeds into our next topic of conversation, which is about gender. In the Ancillary books, you had a language topic that meant everybody was addressed as “she”, because of the language that was used and you don’t know what their biology is. And it didn’t matter. In this new book, you have a different society and a different language, and then you have three ways of looking at gender, more or less? More if you count kids?

Ann Leckie: Kids are their own gender, they’re ungendered.

The Book Smugglers: Exactly, yes, and then you have new uses of pronouns such as e/eir and how did it work for you, and how and why did you make this shift?

Ann Leckie: It was something I was sort of thinking about because I know a lot of people really liked the use of default feminine, in Ancillary Justice, and some folks even though they really enjoyed it, pointed out, and I thought they had a good point that using that erased a number of identities. So at the cost of what I accomplished by using all she, I erased any kind of masculine identities, non-binary identities, ignored the whole question of “Well, so we call it all this, but what’s a person’s personal identity like,” and what even is gender, right, which is not an easy question. And so I wanted to do something in the next book, but I don’t want to focus on it. I wanted to world-build and say “Yes there’s a bunch of different ways to approach gender, and this society’s going to approach it some other way.” And so I thought about it, and I said well, first of all, gender isn’t necessarily binary, even though that’s an assumption that we make as a culture, so I’ll just say, whoever this culture is they’re not going to have a binary approach to gender. I also wanted it to be one where gender was not linked to your physical form, so the focus on Hwae are entirely human, they aren’t really any different from us, although they have way more implants and stuff but I figured, so I said kids are genderless, when you get to your age of majority, you declare your gender, right? I also really wanted but there wasn’t really space for it, I wanted to also comment on, even so there are going to be people who feel like they don’t fit in this system but I didn’t really have the space to do that. I get to pick another pronoun, and I said I’ll use e, I know several people in real life who prefer e as a pronoun, and we could all stand to get used to using the neopronouns more than we do, and the more we use them, the more familiar they become, the easier they become to use in real life.

The Book Smugglers: Yeah, yeah, it’s so great and I love that it’s normalized, it’s just there. It’s not even in conversation, I think the only time that we have our attention directed to it is when we are told that it’s part of growing up when you choose your name, right?

Ann Leckie: When you choose your name, yeah.

The Book Smugglers: It’s just mentioned as Ingray’s friend recently chose to be a woman.

Ann Leckie: And she waited very late to do.

The Book Smugglers: And she waited very late to do it, and I actually really like that, I think there’s gonna be a romance there and I’m shipping them. Ingray just started to feel like “Oh, maybe she’s looking at me in a different way” and I was like “YES SHE IS!”

Ann Leckie: Oh yes, absolutely. I didn’t intend – I didn’t start out going “this’ll be a romance,” I just got there and there they were and I was like “Oh they’re so cute!”

The Book Smugglers: So are you prepared then, because this is a lighter novel, it has romance, and it’s funny. I love the voice, I love Ingray, she’s so like self-deprecating, but kind of like she doesn’t know how good she is but we’ll come back to this.

Ann Leckie: She has TERRIBLE imposter syndrome.

The Book Smugglers: We’ll go back to that point later, but are you prepared for the book to be called “not real science fiction”?

Ann Leckie: Oh yes!

The Book Smugglers: Do you know it’s gonna happen right? And it is bullshit.

Ann Leckie: Let me tell you! The people who call Ancillary Justice not real science fiction —

The Book Smugglers: Oh my god.

Ann Leckie: There were quite a few of them. Quite a few of them. And it – it, y’know at this point I’m like yeah, you know, I look over and there’s my shelf full of awards, I have the Arthur C. Clarke, and this is terrible because this is the kind of thing and it’d be like such an arrogant thing to say, right— but yeah, my shelf full of awards says this is science fiction. And I really don’t care what you think. You can have your opinion, everybody has a right to be wrong about my books. But sometimes the one – somebody, I forget who it was, said that they only looked at the first chapter, and they said well this is this is a terrible miscue if this is supposed to be science fiction, because it opens with a tavern in the snow and that’s like a signal for fantasy and so obviously—

A tavern in the snow, that means fantasy. And I was like y’know, once again, you get to be wrong about things. I’m sorry, if spaceships and artificial intelligences don’t qualify as science fiction, then whatever your definition of science fiction is is meaningless, and this new book even more so because, the tech is even less intrusive I guess, and because it’s funny. I meant for it to be funny.

And because it’s kind of lighter and there y’know people are gonna look at and “Oh it’s kind of girly,” y’know, it’s got a, a romance it, it’s an – y’know.

The Book Smugglers: I want to talk about Ingray and how she feels about herself. Her first actions in the book are the result of being brought up in a horrible household that foments competition between siblings and then there is this desperate attempt to prove herself. I find it interesting that as we read the novel, the more we realize that Ingray isn’t as incompetent, as inept, as she and her family think her to be, so imposter syndrome. And quite the contrary, actually, she proves to be really, really good at solving problems, even better than her brother, and so how is this about competition, or how much is internalized self-rejection, and how much would you say… Would you say this is to do with gender, as well?


Ann Leckie: Not gender so much in this culture, although there – there’d have to be some. I toyed with having people say “Well, obviously nemen are like this, and women are like this.” In SF I’m not gonna do that because it took attention away from where I was going, but I feel like Ingray’s situation is as much about where she came from before she was adopted. Because she and Danach are both adopted. But Ingray was adopted out of an orphanage, essentially. Danach wasn’t. Danach comes from another family that’s fairly wealthy and they’re fostering him out.

The Book Smugglers: A medieval kind of thing.

Ann Leckie: Yeah, there’s – I set up intentionally that this is a culture that has a strong culture of fosterage, so even if you don’t adopt a kid it’s not uncommon to raise a child, and send them back, y’know, to make connections between families. So Danach was adopted from a family that already has some wealth and standing in society.

The Book Smugglers: And Ingray is from a public creche, right?

Ann Leckie: She’s from a public creche, she’s from essentially an orphanage. And it sorta becomes more explicit later on, but even though Netano is saying “Oh I’m gonna give everybody an equal chance,” she’s looking at Danach and saying “Well he comes from this family, and he’s always had that certain something,” right? And of course Ingray does her best, and she does so very well, but she doesn’t shine the way that Danach does, and so it’s almost kind of about class more than about gender.

And it shouldn’t, you wouldn’t think it would affect a situation like that, because of course Ingray is very well educated and probably reads to anybody else in her culture, who picks up on it immediately, that she’s wealthy and raised in a high-status family, but her origins are still a problem. And the same for Pahlad, who similarly came from an orphanage, which is probably a spoiler but doesn’t last too long. And part of the reasons why e got treated the way e did in eir family was because e doesn’t have another family. Nobody cares if anybody does anything to Pahlad. The people who should’ve supported em were the people who were fucking em over.But Ingray’s not in that bad of a situation, Netano would not screw over Ingray that way, but she’s still screwing over Ingray. Partly because of course of where she’s come from.

And Ingray doesn’t have those other resources to back her up, and like Danach knows that if he gets if he doesn’t get what he’s after, he does have somewhere to go, he can go back to that family. It would upset him and he would really be unhappy and they would maybe be unhappy with him, but Ingray has literally no place else to go.

The Book Smugglers: Yeah. But I loved that even though that there is that element there, and she of course she has this self-rejection element, she’s still ambitious and she still wants to get there.

Ann Leckie: Yes, she does. She thinks “I’m never get there, but darn I’m gonna do my best.”

The Book Smugglers: Even in spite of the terrible, terrible plans and decisions that she makes—

Ann Leckie: Oh my goodness! She makes some really horrible decisions! The decision that starts off the story!

The Book Smugglers: It’s just so bad!

Ann Leckie: It’s such a monumentally bad choice!

The Book Smugglers: So bad! Where she goes through the plan inside, I was like “this sounds like a terrible plan, what a terrible idea.” She just loses all of her money, she just takes someone out of a prison! And she doesn’t have the documents to back it up, she goes to the ship without knowing what was gonna happen, it’s like “This is terribly thought through, girl.”

Ann Leckie: Yeah she did not think it all through! But she’s not bad in a pinch!Her plans are not necessarily good ones, but when it’s down to the wire—

Ancillary Mercy

The Book Smugglers: SO much fun!

Ann Leckie: All three main characters were really fun to write. The Geck ambassador was a huge amount of fun. I love her, she’s so hilarious.

The Book Smugglers: SO hilarious….I just want to want ask you a couple of other questions. We are almost done, I swear. Can we talk about, a little bit about expectations, you know that your previous series is multiple award winning, do you feel like that is weighing you?

Ann Leckie: Oh yes, oh yes. Absolutely. It’s pretty terrifying in fact. But at a certain point you have to, you know people who write fiction very often, you’ve got a little voice in the back of your head all the time, not everyone, but many people, just telling you you shouldn’t be writing this, it’s stupid, if anybody reads it they’ll know you’re stupid, don’t do this, and you have to learn to put it aside. It never shuts up. But – and it’s constantly, but you have to learn to just say yeah, I’m just gonna do it anyway, and so it’s the same with the – there’s no possible way people will like this as much as your trilogy, they’re gonna – there’s the imposter syndrome again – they’re gonna look at this and go “Oh yeah, she’s a fraud, it was an accident that first trilogy”. And so there’s that little voice saying all that and I’m like “Yep, I already learned what to do about this, I’m just gonna write anyway.”

So yes, that is definitely a thing. I mean the imposter syndrome is definitely a thing, when Ancillary Justice came out, I didn’t expect it to be received the way it was, and I was working on Sword, and then I became immediately super terrified because how could I live up to Ancillary Justice? Well I can’t. And at some point you just have to accept you’re not going to surpass that, you’re not going to live up to that, so just write the next book and turn it in.

The Book Smugglers: That does seem very wise, because it just literally won all of the awards possible.

Ann Leckie: How is that gonna happen again? That is not gonna happen again.

The Book Smugglers: It could!

Ann Leckie: It could, I could also be struck by lightning. Y’know. It could happen, but it probably won’t, and due to the nature of the way that people see things, is “oh how disappointing.” Well it’s not disappointing, it’s just that my first one was really unusual.

The Book Smugglers: – okay. So, Provenance is a standalone.

Ann Leckie:> Yes.

The Book Smugglers: I am super looking forward to whatever you write next after this. Okay, to wrap it up: for the people that love your books, what would you recommend they read? Like if you like X—

Ann Leckie: Oh, if you liked my books, try C. J. Cherryh. Try The Foreigner novels. Or an old fashioned and maybe not the best place to find great women characters, but awesome books? Jack Vance.

Ana Grilo: Okay, cool, fantastic. Thank you very much for this interview!

Ann Leckie: Thank you!

Ann Leckie is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award winning novel Ancillary Justice. She has also published short stories inSubterranean Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Realms of Fantasy. Her story “Hesperia and Glory” was reprinted in Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition edited by Rich Horton.

Ann has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Provenance is out now.

The post A Chat with Ann Leckie appeared first on The Book Smugglers.



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“There’s real honesty in the mongrel voices that Lynn Gaspard, the editor, has put together” – Don’t Panic I’m Islamic, ed. Lynn Gaspard

"‘Brave’ and ‘timely’ are, I’d imagine, descriptors that will commonly get tagged to Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic. But ‘honest’ is, I think, most apt – there’s real honesty in the mongrel voices that Lynn Gaspard, the editor, has put together. As much as some would like to pretend, the world is no longer binary. And Oscars Wilde’s observation, quoted at the very start of the book, is thus a firestarter – a spark for the whole project. And Saqi have pulled it off with aplomb..." - Tamim Sadikali reviews Don't Panic I'm Islamic, ed by Lynn Gaspard

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Blog Tour: of Flame and Fate - Cecy Robson (Excerpt & Giveaway)


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“There’s real honesty in the mongrel voices that Lynn Gaspard, the editor, has put together” – Don’t Panic I’m Islamic, ed. Lynn Gaspard


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Wednesday 27 September 2017

Review: The Language of Thorns - Leigh Bardugo


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Bread and Circuses (circumlunar version)


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Kickstarter Updates and Goodies!


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Kickstarter Updates and Goodies!

Hello everybody!!!

We have 7 days (!!!) left in our Kickstarter and we are just under 85% and starting to think this is GOING TO HAPPEN OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH!

We had a few updates to our campaign, interviews done elsewhere and new rewards added recently:

Personal Essay:

Hunting Monsters

S.L. Huang – author of Hunting Monsters, Fighting Demons and The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist – wrote a lovely piece about her career and what happened after publishing Hunting Monsters.

Us, Elsewhere :

Ana was interviewed by both Jenny at Reading the End and Renay at Lady Business. Go over to their places to check the interviews and for a look behind the scenes.

New Rewards:

We have a bunch of awesome new rewards added, including:

* A brand-new “I am a book smuggler” tote bag for all of your bookish needs!

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* A signed copy of the limited San Diego Comic Con hardcover edition of STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT II by Christie Golden

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* A copy of the upcoming hardcover, beautifully illustrated, interactive ALIEN: AUGMENTED REALITY SURVIVAL MANUAL, courtesy of Carlton Books UK. (I have a copy of this and it is THE COOLEST. It’s written for new recruits of the U.S. Colonial Marines to impart knowledge of identification and combat of Xenomorphs. If you are an Alien fan, this is a must-have).

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* A signed copy of Chuck Wendig’s upcoming book DAMN FINE STORY

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* A signed copy of WANT by Cindy Pon

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* A signed map from The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner

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PHEW! And one of the coolest rewards – if I may say so myself – is the one where you get to pick a book for us to read for Old School Wednesdays. GO ON, IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES!

The post Kickstarter Updates and Goodies! appeared first on The Book Smugglers.



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