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Posts in the "Giving Thanks" Category

Thanks for the Readers

Giving Thanks

If I started thanking all the people I owe thanks to, I could be here the rest of the day and y’all would stop reading around about page sixty-zillion, if not before.

So I want to instead write briefly about how much I appreciate the readers in my life.

In that, I don’t just mean just the people who read what I write now — who, yes, I am very thankful for. So, yeah, thanks to all of you who take a moment to read these ramblings, or my ramblings elsewhere, or my books.

But in the U.S., it’s the day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving week is a time that’s usually about family for those of us lucky enough to have family (which, incidentally, I like to remember that plenty of people don’t). So I’m going to take a moment to be thankful for the readers in my family who taught me, early in life, to love reading — by doing it themselves. (more…)
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The Book that Nearly Killed Me

Giving Thanks

On May 15th, 2006 I was about 3/4 of the way through writing a book called God’s War. I was drinking a lot of whiskey and writing a lot of disjointed dialogue and fight scenes. I was also slowly dying of an immune disorder, and didn’t even know it. All I knew was that for the first time in my life, I could eat whatever I wanted and continue to lose weight… despite the fact that I was becoming physically weaker day by day.

People are always asking writers where ideas come from. Though there are all sorts of influences that went into the creation of the Bel Dame Apocrypha, it’s worth pointing out how much of my experience during the year I was dying and the subsequent stay in the ICU – with its syringe-carrying nurses, hourly bloodletting, complete dependence on strangers, memories of fragmented consciousness, and the thin bearded Indian doctor who attended me post-ICU, went into a lot of the key scenes in these books.

It’s also an interesting example of how some of the worst experiences of your life can turn out to be some of the best… if you just know how to apply them.

Here’s what I wrote about that experience on May 20, 2006 just a day after getting out of the hospital: (more…)
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Happy Thanksgiving

Giving Thanks

John Hornor Jacobs, 1989

I give thanks for word processors and spell check. I give thanks for plumbing, electricity and truck farming. I give thanks for clean, potable water and supermarkets full of frozen turkey. I give thanks for agents and editors. I give thanks to my family, my wife and daughters, for putting up with my silly story-telling when I should be having tea-parties and reading to them. I give thanks for modern medicine and the doctor that set my daughter’s arm. (more…)
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Gettin’ All Thankful Up In Here

Giving Thanks

When reading a book, I like a terse cryptic Acknowledgement page, myself. Something like:

I’d like to thank Jim for cleaning up all that blood.

or

Here’s to Laura’s wooden leg.

or

This one is for Julia’s very touching husband, wherever he is. I hope he gets what he deserves.

When they asked me what to put on the Acknowledgement page for Revolution World, I totally blew my opportunity for a truly bizarre acknowledgement and just thanked Chris Roberson (Because My God that guy is nice.), my Mom (because having a retired English teacher edit your manuscript is the bomb) and my husband (because he puts out). I was tempted to go on, but I didn’t want to be like that chick who won the Miss Bay City Smog Awareness Pageant who got all weepy as she thanked everyone she ever met and all the starving children in Africa and generally yammered on because there was a microphone in her face and people might be listening to her for once.

I have some really great words I can use to describe myself. This last year has been the first one in which I could use the word “author” to describe myself and not feel like I should follow it up with “sort of.” Really, that’s been enough coolness for one year for me, but the awesome keeps on coming. Being a part of the Night Bazaar has been great, for starters. I have gotten great experience writing these weekly blog articles and meeting Courtney and the other folks was good clean fun. Two of the coolest writer things to happen for me this year are weird, but that’s never stopped me from sharing before. (more…)
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We get by with a little help…

Giving Thanks

From our friends.

When this subject came up, the initial urge was to thank everyone who’s ever had some sort of influence on my writing. I’ve done a lot of that already, though, here on this blog and posts on my own blog. I’ve done it in my acknowledgements. I’ve done it in person when I’ve seen them. And I made a point to email those that I felt deserved direct thanks once The Winds of Khalakovo was accepted for publication. I’m not going to cover that ground again. Not that those folks don’t deserve another round of thanks. It’s just that I want to focus on another aspect of coming up, as it were.

I’d like to give thanks to my peers, those who helped me in smaller ways, or perhaps in mutually beneficial ways, along my path toward publication. Who am I talking about here? Well, it’s no one group. It’s a variety of groups and people and individuals that were coming up themselves. Some were ahead of where I was, and some were not quite as far, but they all helped, and I hope that I helped them as well.

I’ll start with Critters. I never gravitated toward meet-and-greet type writing groups where people met in person and critiqued, largely because when I first got into writing, I was traveling for work and it just wasn’t very feasible for me to make meetings. Another issue was that with larger, online groups, you have a greater chance of finding those that work well with you, and vice versa. You hopefully find people that challenge your writing, and hopefully you challenge theirs. Critters was this way for me, at least at first. I did eventually find the system a bit rigid and slow for my liking, but I certainly advanced in my craft during my time there. (more…)
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A Little Help from My Friends

Giving Thanks

Okay, I’m a big fan of the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” (Go ahead and groan. It’s all right.) I’m one of those saps that watches it every year during the holidays. The central concept — that each of us was part of a bigger whole and that we each have an effect on one another that ripples throughout the world — was an epiphany. I believe in that concept with all my heart. While I enjoy the myth of the self-made person, the truth of the matter is that none of us makes it in this world alone. Being successful requires a combination of factors. Take out even one, and it won’t matter how hard you work. It simply won’t. Dumb luck is undeniably a big element to success. Of course, so is self-discipline and hard work. But at some point, someone somewhere must cut you a break — that break could be in the form of a boss that is fine with you taking time off to write or do research. It could be a spouse that is emotionally and financially supportive. It could be as big as race track owner providing racing lessons for research. But then it could be as small as an introduction that doesn’t pay off until years and years later. Me, I like to remember those things because it keeps me honest. It reminds me that it’s important to give back and part of that giving back is saying thank you. That’s why the acknowledgements section is so huge in my books. It doesn’t matter to me if readers skip it because it’s too long and dull or whatever. It’s there because it’s vital to note all the help one received in the process of making that book. Too many people think that all that is needed is the author. They’re dead wrong. A good book is produced as the result of a whole community. Readers should be clear on that point. I feel having that two page list demonstrates the point well even if readers don’t read it.

I had the help of friends from the very beginning. My husband gave me emotional and financial support. He even serves as my idea wall. (That is, I bounce ideas off him all the time.) I met my best friend Melissa Tyler at a beginner writers’ group meeting. She keeps my spirits up, and not only that, she’s an amazing first reader. Carrie Richerson was the first professional to be truly supportive. Jim Minz introduced me to Charles de Lint. Charles has been fantastically generous, I owe him so much. In addition to blurbing Of Blood and Honey and being a fabulous mentor, he provided musical knowledge of the seventies and sent me mix cds! Sharon Shinn was another mentor, and let’s not forget Holly Black without whom I wouldn’t have an agent. There’s Scott Lynch too. Those are big names. Sure. But those you wouldn’t know were just as helpful. The staff at BookPeople for a start. My good friend Jennifer Danvers too. The point is, sure, I worked very, very hard and still do, but I wouldn’t be anywhere without the support of a long list of friends, acquaintances, mentors, and family members. Readers are a big part too. Without the support of readers, writers are nowhere. At the same time, had I not worked as hard as I did to be the best writer I can be — to sit down in front of the computer and write, all the support in the world would’ve gone nowhere fast. So, it’s not one or the other. The real answer is e) all the above.

So, thanks for being part of that equation.
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Worth More Than Gold

Giving Thanks

I was terrified when writing the acknowledgements section for The Whitefire Crossing that I would accidentally leave someone out. So many people were so generous with support, critique, and advice, and I’m terribly grateful for each and every one of them. But there are two people in particular I can’t thank enough, because without them, I guarantee you I would not be sitting here now as a published author with The Whitefire Crossing in readers’ hands.

The first is my good friend Jeanne. I’ve mentioned before that while I always liked writing, I spent years futzing around with little bits of scenes, never moving beyond a couple pages. Aside from my issues with perfectionism, I was just too damn scared to try writing an entire book. (Or maybe too damn lazy.) I was content to tell myself I’d try it someday. You know, one of these years. Maybe after my knees gave out from double jumps and pounding down moguls.

Jeanne is far braver than I am. (And she doesn’t even know what the word “lazy” means. She gets more done in a day than I can manage in a month.) When she wanted to get better at writing, she asked around among her friends, discovered which of us harbored interest in writing, organized us into a little writing group, and convinced us all to try NaNoWriMo together. During NaNo, she invited us over to write-ins and provided both cheerful encouragement and the occasional kick in the ass; as result, all of us managed to finish 50K worth of words in that month.

In my case, NaNo lit a fire inside me that hasn’t gone out to this day. I discovered I LOVED writing a novel. Yeah, it’s hard work, but *satisfying* hard work, just like climbing a precipitous peak or hiking a long distance trail. Without Jeanne, I might never have had the guts to discover that joy. (more…)
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Genevieve Valentine: With Thanks

Giving Thanks

Genevieve Valentine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and others, and the anthologies The Living Dead 2, Teeth, After, and more. Her nonfiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Tor.com, and Fantasy Magazine, and she’s a co-author of Geek Wisdom, a book of pop-culture philosophy from Quirk Books.

Her first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, is out now from Prime; you can learn more at http://circus-tresaulti.com. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog [http://genevievevalentine.com].

She is very thankful to The Night Bazaar for the invitation to blog.

When my novel Mechanique came out earlier this year, I spent a week on a four-hundred word Acknowledgments page, trying to balance brevity with judicious thanks to all those who made the book possible. It was all that was required (very few people like to curl up with 20 pages of acknowledgments), but it also didn’t encompass the full scope of thanks I knew were due.

When the Night Bazaar asked me to write about things I am thankful for, I decided that, despite my general allergy to sincerity, it was the perfect time to thank some of those who enrich my life, make my writing possible, and brighten the entire world (results pending).

I’d like to begin with my parents, who (when as a child I made the announcement that I wanted to write professionally) proposed not to look at my writing pre-publication, in case it would make me too self-conscious. As it turns out, I was the world’s most self-conscious teenager, but never about that, so, mission accomplished! I appreciate that my parents trusted I knew what I wanted and let me go about it how I chose, though even today I have occasionally described a story I’m working on, and there’s a little pause before my mom says, “I’m sure it will be very nice,” in a tone that suggests she’s trying to decide what to tell her family and friends if they call up asking her what the hell is going on with me, which I assure her repeatedly will never happen.

Related: Thanks to all family and family friends who have called my mom to ask what the hell is going on with me. It’s good to keep her on her toes!

(more…)
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