I’m planning to attend this year’s World Science Fiction convention, aka Sasquan, in Spokane, Washington. If you’re going to be there too, do say hello! All my official activities are on Thursday or Friday. Here’s my schedule:

THURSDAY

Panel: Self-publishing — How To Do It
11:00 – 11:45, Conference Theater 110 (CC)
Once your book is written, what next? Successful self-published authors explain how to go from manuscript to completed book, or ebook. (This panel discusses the sources, processes and procedures. Marketing and promotion are covered in a separate panel.)
Panelists: Stu Segal (M), Doug Farren, Nick Mamatas, Linda Nagata, H.M. Jones

Panel: From Starship Troopers to Honor Harrington and Beyond: The Past, Present, and Future of Military SF
13:00 – 13:45, Bays 111A (CC)
Military SF has had its heyday. Is the topic done? Where do we go from here?
Panelists: Greg Bear, William Dietz, Linda Nagata, Toni Weisskopf

Kaffe Klatche
14:00 – 14:45, 202A-KK1 (CC)
Join a panelist and up to 9 other fans for a small discussion. Coffee and snacks available for sale on the 2nd floor.
(I’ve never done a “Kaffe Klatche” before. Come talk to me!)

Autographing
With Paolo Bacigalupi, Ellen Datlow, Molly Gloss, Frog Jones, and Louise Marley
16:00 – 16:45, Exhibit Hall B (CC)

FRIDAY

Panel: Self-publishing — When to do it, When to Publish Traditionally
11:00 – 11:45, 401C (CC)
A discussion of the whys and whens of self-publishing versus traditional publishing. Timing, royalties, promotion and more. Panel will consist of successful self-published authors, self-published authors who have been picked up by major publishers, and publishing industry professionals.
Panelists: Stephen Segal (M), Taiyo Fujii, H.M. Jones, Linda Nagata

Reading
Friday 15:30 – 16:00, 301 (CC)
(Come to my reading! And by the way, what should I read?)

I’m just back from ComicCon Honolulu, where I gave a talk on World Building. One of the questions posed at the end of the session was this:

How do you, a woman, feel that you can understand what it’s like to be a man, well enough to write from a man’s point of view?

I’m sure this question has come up many times among readers and writers. Here’s an expanded version of my answer:

It’s my job as a fiction writer to get inside the headspace of all sorts of characters. Writing other people is a job skill. If you feel you’re not empathetic enough to get inside the heads of characters not based on you, you’re not going to make a very good writer.

Beyond that, I think a question like this implies some flawed assumptions. First, that there is some universal trait, or complex of traits, that defines all men, and that this trait is more important than culture, age, sexual orientation, or anything else. Second, that only the fact of being a man gives you access to this knowledge. And third, that as a man you would automatically gain an empathetic ability to understand all other men well enough to write from their points of view no matter how different from you they might be—but presumably you will not be able to write successfully from the point of view of a woman!

That’s tremendously limiting, and I don’t think it’s true.

We are all human beings. We all share many aspects of existence, and those we don’t share, we can learn.

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The hermit is coming down from the mountain!

This Friday, July 24, from 6:30pm to 7:30pm, I’ll be giving a presentation at Comic Con Honolulu on the subject of “World Building and Sci-Fi Writing.”

If you’re attending the con, please show up and keep me company!

For the benefit of those who will attend, I want to list the books I hope to mention during my talk.

Fiction by me, Linda Nagata
• The Red — a near-future military thriller.
• “Nightside on Callisto” — a science fiction short story. Read it online at Lightspeed Magazine.

Fiction by Kate Elliott:
• Crown Of Stars series
• Cold Magic series

Fiction by Peter Singer and August Cole
• Ghost Fleet

Fiction by Martha Wells
• The Cloud Roads

One month until The Trials publishes!

The Trials is book 2 of The Red Trilogy and it’s due to publish on August 18. For those of you who read the self-published edition of The Red, it’s been a long wait. Thank you for sticking with me. I think you’ll find there’s a lot going on in book 2, and I hope it’s to your liking.

The Trials is available for preorder from most retailers, in simultaneous hardcover, paperback, and ebook editions, and there will also be an audiobook. So you can pick your favorite format.

I’ve seen no reviews yet. Fingers crossed and hoping for the best. Here’s the back-cover copy:

“No Way Out But Forward”

A new cycle of violence ignites when rumors of the elusive, rogue AI known as the Red go public and Shelley is, once again, pulled into the fray. Challenged by his enemies, driven by ideals, Shelley feels compelled to act. But are the harrowing choices he makes really his own, or are they made for him, by the Red? And with millions of lives at stake in a game of nuclear cat-and-mouse, does the answer even matter?

Order from your local bookstore, or find it online. Here are links to some US retailers:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Powell’s Books
Mysterious Galaxy
Tattered Cover

Stefan Raets is hosting a giveaway at his blog Far Beyond Reality.

It’s US only, but if you’re in the US you can enter to win a hardcover copy of THE RED or an Audible audiobook code.

Details at Stefan’s blog — and if you’re on Twitter, please give him a follow!

I picked up this book when it came out last fall, but didn’t read it until a few days ago. During the interim, I didn’t hear a lot about it, and what I did hear wasn’t all that enthusiastic, so I was a little ambivalent at the start — but that ambivalence quickly vanished.

War Dogs is told in first person, in the voice of Master Sergeant Venn, a “skyrine” — a marine delivered by orbital drop to the Martian battlefield. So why are humans fighting a war on Mars? Because an enigmatic alien race known as the Gurus insinuated themselves on Earth, got the planet addicted to their highly advanced technology, and then asked us to fight a war for them against another alien race engaged in setting up a beachhead on Mars.
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Stefan Raets, proprietor of the science fiction and fantasy blog, Far Beyond Reality, was one of the first reviewers — possibly the first — to take notice of The Red: First Light in its self-published edition. His review of it, first published at Tor.com, helped incredibly in bringing the book to the attention of many more readers.

Today I’ve got a guest post up at Stefan’s blog, talking about the differences between the original edition of The Red and the revised edition now out from Saga Press — and I answer the frequently asked question: Do I need to buy the new edition to continue with the story?

Find my guest post here…

And Stefan’s review, in an updated post, here…

And find Stefan on Twitter here…