Mary Robinette Kowal

I have returned from the Steampunk Cruise, and it was amazing. I’ll tell you that I was a little nervous about this, having never been on a cruise before. I expected it to be a sort of floating shopping mall, but it’s basically a high end resort on water. They call it a floating city

Robison Wells joins us again, this time to help us with a discussion of writing characters with abnormal psychology. What are our resources for describing these characters in compelling, believable ways? What are the tricks, the pitfalls, and the landmines. Brandon frames the discussion with some terms from his abnormal psych class, but let’s lay

For the next week, I’ll be radio silent as I set sail on a Steampunk Cruise. Okay… not actual sail. Maybe diesel. STILL, it’s a cruise and it’ll be full of lots of people in pretty, pretty clothes. Yes. I’ll take photos. This will be my first cruise. Have you gone on one before?

In this episode Brandon, Mary, and Dan help Howard brainstorm a story for a comic! Howard begins with an uplift-related setting, and a couple of characters, and then the group takes off on a delightful demonstration of brainstorming within very specific constraints. The constraints in this case: existing setting and canon, existing characters, and (Howard’s favorite

Having just remembered that tomorrow is the Hugo ballot deadline, I’m off to fill out my ballot.  Since I’m having trouble remembering who is eligible for what, I’m going to figure that other folks are having the same problem. Here’s my list. Remind me of work that you think I should be considering for the

I find hand-sewing to be soothing, because it allows me to make something tangible. It also lets my story brain chew on problems in privacy while the rest of me is preoccupied. This is a bib-front dress in progress, which I will probably wear to my launch party and Without a Summer events.  My plan is to

There are times, as a writer, when you screw up in a story. Sometimes that means getting an emotional beat wrong. Sometimes it means writing something racist or colonialist, or both. When I wrote “Weaving Dreams” last year, I was annoyed by all the stories in which the European Faerie Queen rules in North America

If you were curious about the music in 1816, I have a playlist for you for Without a Summer. Go ahead, I’ll wait here while you start that going. Got it? As they walked toward the front of the house, the sound of a pianoforte led them to the music room. The tune was a simple one,

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at the Art Institute because, well, because it’s got lots of pretty stuff in it. I’ve been going through slowly, picking galleries that I wouldn’t gravitate to if I were in town for a day. This led me downstairs to the Textiles exhibit where some of the random

In this episode Howard pitches three story ideas to the group, and they pick one to brainstorm. The selection process is itself educational (which is good, because it runs for a third of the ‘cast…) The story selected is near-future science-fiction with extra-dimensional, magical elements. As the brainstorming continues, we grab some fun secret-history elements,

Today, I have a dress for you. This is an extant dress that’s in the Nordic Museum. You can see the sides, back and details at the museum’s site. While there were differences in fashion from country to country, this is something that would have been at home in an English parlour during the day. Here’s

Where possible, I like to use real places. I stumbled upon Schomberg House when I was trying to figure out how much a glamourist like Vincent would make and what sort of housing he could afford. Schomberg served as the home of several members of the Royal Academy of Arts during its lifetime. It also