Dragaera

[OT] Most Promising New Author?

Gaertk at aol.com Gaertk at aol.com
Sat Mar 1 13:28:20 PST 2003

In a message dated 2/28/2003 8:34:25 PM Eastern Standard 
Time, David Goldfarb <goldfarb at OCF.Berkeley.EDU> writes:

> From: GaertK at aol.com:
>> In a message dated 2/28/2003 2:47:02 AM Eastern Standard 
>> Time, David Goldfarb <goldfarb at OCF.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
>>
>> [Jo Walton's great novels]
>
> As opposed to all of her terrible boring novels? :-)

Okay, the "great" was redundant. :)

You know, I think the quality of her novels is the first 
topic here that's received unanimous agreement.  At least, no 
one has disagreed, which is as close as we'll ever get.

I wonder if I can go 2 for 2 by reccommending Barry Hughart.

>>> According to Jo's LiveJournal,
>>
>> Link?  A quick Google turned up several other people's LJs
>> mentioning her, but not her own.  And Jo's old website 
>> ( www.bluejo.demon.co.uk ) is disappearing fast.
>
> Well, you can find her easily enough by going to 
> groups.google and finding her email address, and then going 
> to LiveJournal and searching on that, so I feel comfortable 
> in posting this: http://papersky.livejournal.com/

Well, I didn't know you could do searches like that.  (I've
never actually seen a LiveJournal before.)

Now where am I going to find time to read all this?

>>> (Quoth she: "If they want me to write a sequel to Prize 
>>> they can tell me so and give me some money.
>>
>> I'm surprised (borderline shocked) that Tor hasn't 
>> remedied this yet.  Don't even bad sequels make money? 
>> (Not that Jo would ever write a bad sequel.)
>
> Tor's attitude seems to be that they publish authors rather
> than books.  I.e., if Jo wants to write something 
> different, they won't push her to write in-series.

Okay, and good for them, but I don't understand why they'd
buy unrelated works and not buy a sequel.  (Unless they know
(or suspect) that she's more interested in the non-sequels
and don't want to pressure her.)

[still quoting Jo's LJ]
>>> Meanwhile, I want to fiddle about with the edges of 
>>> fantasy and perception.)
>>
>> What's wrong with doing both at the same time?
>
> I get the impression that she finds it hard to work on more 
> than one book at a time.

I meant fiddling with fantasy and perception in _BtW_.

>>> The thing she's currently doing doesn't have a title yet 
>>> so far as I know. 
>>
>> _Tooth and Claw_ is expected to be published this fall.  I
>> don't know if that's what you're talking about here.  She
>> described it as "a comedy of manners where all the 
>> characters are dragons" and I commented that I expect that 
>> description to match parts of _Lord of Castle Black_ as 
>> well.
>
> No, no -- _Tooth and Claw_ is done and delivered. 

I didn't know it's exact status (expecting it to be in the 
gray area between Submitted MS and Final Revision) and so it
might still be a work in progress.

> I might note that while many of the characters in _The Lord 
> of Castle Black_ will be Dragons, the characters in _Tooth 
> and Claw_ will be small-d dragons, with wings and scales 
> and fiery breath.

Of course, but that ruins the joke :P


--KG