I've been playing around on the internet this afternoon instead of writing like I told myself I would do (or even reading...that half-read copy of Gene Wolfe's Pirate Freedom is giving me heartbroken puppy-dog eyes from my bedside table...), but I suppose something good came of it- I found a Bat Segundo Show podcast interviewing Catherynne M. Valente, the author of The Orphan's Tales and Palimpsest (I've read the first volume of the first and can't wait to get my hands on the others). It's 45 minutes long, but she's extraordinarily well-spoken and engaging and the interview is totally worth sitting down for. I found myself nodding in assent with most of her points, and her descriptions of her new book Palimpsest have me positively drooling with excitement. If her uncanny ability to structure her stories in fascinating, captivating ways holds true (and by all accounts, it does) then her new book is going to be absolutely amazing. I don't know how long I'll be able to hold out before I order one...maybe after I'm finished with Wolfe.
Valente's interview isn't the only treasure I dug up today, either. Neil Gaiman offers a collection of essays on his website, and I found one- on the 'genders' of various books and the development of his very 'male' novel American Gods- to be particularly interesting.
It must be a Gene Wolfe kind of day, because Gaiman closes out his essay with a quote from Wolfe on how writers really write- "You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing."
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