Monday Question Answers

kjbooklog asked: It seems that Arbora are very curious about the outside world, but are almost never allowed to leave their court. Do they ever run away?

No, because they aren't human, and don't think/feel about it like humans would. They live in a very hostile environment, and they would find being alone outside a court terrifying and exhausting, partly because of their subliminal mental connections to the court and the queens. Living in tightly knit groups is part of their evolution and culture, even pre-Aeriat.


And now that they're trading with groundlings who make flying boats, will we start to see small groups of Raksura (Aeriat and Arbora) running around having adventures?

There were always small groups of Raksura who had adventures. The first contact with the Golden Isles was made by Solace and Sable, a queen and consort pair who led explorations for long distances around Indigo Cloud's eastern colony, which was how Stone knew to send Jade and the others there to get help. It's not uncommon, particularly in large healthy courts.



dranon asked: The probably silly one first. I love the Raksura (and will eventually figure out how to make a good costume wing), but I've never quite been able to get a feel for their size. Are the Raksura (and other races) more or less human sized, and the colony trees absolutely enormous, or are the colony trees about the size of large redwoods and the Raksura scaled to match?

Ooh, I hope you can make a costume because that would be awesome.

They're more or less human-sized, and the mountain-trees are that enormous. Think about an average big city skyscraper, but maybe three to four times as wide, and that's what the trunks are like.


The writing-related one, which I hope I haven't asked too badly. You've commented that Murderbot was rough going for you to write. Are you happy with the stories and the novel deal in spite of that? I, and many others, think the results were well worth it (and your Hugo looks very festive in the picture you posted the other day), but writing is hard enough already.

I'm actually very happy. When All Systems Red came out, I was completely not expecting my weird little robot novella would take off like this. At most I've hoping it would get some more attention and readers for the Raksura series. This has been a wild ride and I am dealing with some anxiety issues because I'm used to a certain level of attention as a writer and it's going to take some time to get used to more. But while the writing is hard, it's very rewarding in a lot of ways. I'm happy with the result, even when it's take two to three times the work to get there.


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If you have any questions, general questions about publishing (how it works, agents, etc), or a writing advice question, or a question about my writing, or my books, or cats, or anything else I've been doing, ask in this post and I'll try to answer it.

Wired Magazine

It's starting to ship now, so I can finally announce: I have a short (very short) story in the January issue of Wired Magazine! It's part of an SF feature and the other writers are Charlie Jane Anders, Ken Liu, Nisi Shawl, Laurie Penny, Charles Yu, and Adam Rodgers. It's sort of a short Murderbot Diaries prequel.

I'm pretty stoked about it. :)