Mary Robinette Kowal

When I was starting out in puppetry, I went to my very first puppetry festival in Talequah, OK. I was bewildered by how many puppeteers were there. So many people, who all loved the same art form and loved it in all its varied forms. I was standing in line in the cafeteria, a little

If you are in the Chicago area, come out and hear some fiction while enjoying a nice, cold, beer. I’m reading at Tuesday Funk with five other authors. We’ve put together an April lineup for Tuesday Funk fit to melt your cold heart at the end of this long winter. The roster will feature Mary

And look! I have a whole new website design, by Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios. Shiny, eh? To celebrate, I’m having a little contest. What does the winner receive? A letter. Not just any letter though. I’ll mail you the letter that Jane and Vincent receive in Chapter Two of Without a Summer. After they

One of the questions I get asked most often is “How does Glamour work?” Since Without a Summer is launching tomorrow, I thought it probably made sense to answer that question in more detail than in my FAQ. The definition of glamour, according to the OED, is “Magic, enchantment, spell” and it was a word strongly associated

I recorded the audio book for Without a Summer and asked my engineer to save mistakes so I could make a blooper reel. I made a lot, but he only saved three. Still! It gives you an idea of what it’s like in the recording booth when you are recording your own work.  

I am delighted to announce that Writing Excuses Season 7 is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Related work. We are all excited and honored to be in this list of fellow nominees. • The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature Edited by Edward James & Farah Mendlesohn (Cambridge UP) • Chicks Dig Comics:

The next month will be busy, starting off with a reading here in Chicago, at Tuesday Funk, on the day that Without a Summer launches. [ai1ec tag_name=”without-a-summer-2″ view=”agenda”]

Last year, during the Month of Letters Challenge, Laura Christensen did some envelope art, including this picture of Jane in her work dress, which you might recall from yesterday’s post. I so love this.   The original is at: Lettermo Envelope Art – Jane Vincent by ~dremelf on deviantART.

There is a surprising amount of science in Without a Summer, considering that it’s a fantasy novel set in the Regency. Strangely, the scientific history was one of the hardest things to convey in the story. 1816 is often called The Year Without a Summer. In the U.S., it was also Eighteen Hundred and Froze

One of the interesting things about the Regency was that, even in the new middle class, people changed clothes several times a day. One would not wear a day dress to dinner, or a morning dress when going out to make calls. In Jane’s role as a professional glamourist, she have specific clothes that she

Today, we have Deb Taber in to talk about her newest book NECESSARY ILL. Jin is a designer and spreader of plagues intended to keep the human population in balance with the dwindling resources at hand. Jin is also a neuter, one of a clandestine group of naturally genderless humans whose lack of gender-specific hormones

One of the things about any big city is that it gets dirty. You know how much grime builds up in our own time, even with giant mechanical street sweepers. Now imagine living in London in the early 1800s. No giant mechanical street sweepers. There are carriages pulled by horses, cattle being driven through the