Dear Yuletide Author
Dear Yuletide Author,
Hi! I'm so glad we've been matched. Thank you so much for writing for me! I can't wait to read your story!
I would be thrilled to get a story with romance, intimacy or porn - m/m, f/f, m/f and multi are all excellent! I would be every bit as excited to get a story that has none of those things. The 'Gen' umbrella covers an enormous range of wonderful things. While I don't need my reading to be all rainbows and sunshine, I'll always prefer an ending that's hopeful over one that's despair and misery.
I would be delighted to receive a story written around one of my suggestions below. I would absolutely love to receive a story that uses none of my suggestions, and is rather the story you feel is itching to be told. Most of all, I hope that writing the story is something that brings you joy. It will be certain to bring much to me!
Jaran by Kate Elliott
I first read this book in my teens, and I've re-read and loved it (and the next two books that follow it in the Jaran series) ever since.
It's a matter of wanting to spend more time with the characters. Especially the Jaran characters. But if you want to write about any of her other characters, I will love it: the marvellously enigmatic Chapalii, or a day in the life of someone in Jeds (one of Charles' people? Someone Ilya knew from his time there?). Or how about the few from future Earth: Charles' persistent but outmatched revolutionaries, or the Bharentous Repertory Company? If you have favourite characters in the Jaran series that I haven't mentioned, they're all welcome!
Nobody's Son by Sean Stewart
This is the first book I read that made me fall in love with Sean Stewart's writing, and it's the one I've recommended most to other people. I laughed when I read that he was reading Pride and Prejudice constantly while writing this. Because Mark, Gail, Lissa and Val are nothing like Elizabeth, Jane, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley. But the delightful mix of high spirits with an underlying seriousness is very similar. It's easy to care about the happiness and futures of the characters.
So I'm hoping to spend some more time with the Nobody's Son characters. I'm very fond of Mark, Gail, Lissa and Val. They're marvellous. But there's also many excellent minor characters I'd be delighted to hear about if you're leaning that way: Sir William, Richard, Deron, Janseni, Master Orrin, Husk, Jervis, and any number of very lively ghosts!
I also love the way that Mark stumbles and falls ass backwards into his Happily Ever After, and then discovers that it's bigger, richer, more dangerous, more exciting, way more terrifying, and far more rewarding than all the thrilling heroics it took to get there. Mark's the Everyman hero of folktales: the Jack or the Ivan. If you want to go on subverting folktale conventions, I'm right there with you!
The Night Watch by Sean Stewart
Mockingbird by Sean Stewart
I'm trying hard to make Sean Stewart happen this Yuletide. These two very different books, standalone novels that don't share any common characters, I think of as part of his 'Magic Realism In North America Quartet': Resurrection Man - The Night Watch - Mockingbird - Galveston. (Note: They're not an actual series, except in my head!). All four books are set in the same AU: Our world has magic in it, set off by a chain of events in the 20th and 21st centuries.
I would be so pleased to receive a story about any of his interesting characters, you have no idea! My biggest love for these books, and my suggestions for story ideas, all have to do with world-building. I want to read ALL THE STORIES which riff off of Sean Stewart's world-building while belonging entirely to their author. They'd start here:
Snowflakes drifted down out of a dark sky into the lamplight beyond Emily's window. Magic comes like this, she realized. At first it barely exists. At first you only see snow in the air; it disappears the instant it touches the ground, or your coat. You never notice the exact moment it starts to endure, a drift of white dust on a sidewalk, or along a tree branch. You go to bed with flakes still falling; when you wake up in the morning the snow is everywhere. Everything else has disappeared. Paths and roads have been erased, signs are buried or hard to read. Even trees look different and strange. The old landmarks are covered or lost, and the world you thought you knew is gone.
Now I understand why Grandfather took the name Winter, Emily thought.
Magic had started falling at the end of World War II, invisible at first, then gradually more obvious. By the time Emily's grandfather was a child, in the 1970's, little drifts of it were building into monsters or miracles often enough to make it clear that a great change was coming. The climate of the world was shifting away from the light of reason into a dusk where dreams put on flesh and the hungers of flesh. Finally, late in the winter of 2004, the rational, scientific world was entirely covered, as lost to memory as summer is in the cold grey days of December. That year, many things that had slept through the age of reason finally woke up. Forests woke up. Buildings woke up. Gods and ghosts and demons woke up everywhere.
(The Night Watch, Sean Stewart)
-Geography/History/Local Culture. The Night Watch takes place in Vancouver and Edmonton, Mockingbird in Houston, Galveston in, of course, Galveston, and Resurrection Man by an unamed Prairie City. But there are all kinds of throwaway references to bits and pieces of altered American history, and to what's going on in other parts of the world. For example, the 'Permitted City' in China, or minotaurs in Harlem. The oracle who wasn't taken seriously enough to save JFK manages to to prevent the assassination of Robert Kennedy. So. Tell me about what's going on in other parts of the world! Maybe it's your part of the world, or a place you've been to, or a place you're interested in writing about. How has magic made this place different than the one we know in our world? What events specific to this place have altered it? What is everyday life like in this place in an age of angels and minotaurs and ghosts?
-People. Sean Stewart's books are populated with actuaries, artists, architects, detectives, psychics, mechanics, apothecaries, soldiers, bodyguards, socialites, governors, diplomats, politicians, car detailers, anthropologists, and independent traders. Angel is not a mythological being but a job description! Tell me about someone living and working in Sean Stewart's world. Maybe it's one of his characters, or your own OC. Maybe it's a historical figure like Bettie Brown in Galveston, a real life Galveston socialite and ghost, or a famous figure in World Events. What's life like with magic? How is their career and their personal relationships different or the same? What's it like to live in a world where when you put on your lucky socks in the morning, it makes a noticeable difference to the outcome of your day!
-Technology. The technology in The Night Watch is extremely cool - a fusion of engineering and magic. There's Raining's Art Companion. The Edmonton soldiers have their familiars: highly evolved portable computer programs that help make their wearers experts at being themselves. They can develop personalities, and Nick believes that Magpie, his familiar, has a soul. Tell me about other cool technologies that might be around! What about say, tractors, buses, radio, movies, the internet, clocks, musical instruments, or bank machines. Heck, I'd love to hear about a magical toaster!
Hi! I'm so glad we've been matched. Thank you so much for writing for me! I can't wait to read your story!
I would be thrilled to get a story with romance, intimacy or porn - m/m, f/f, m/f and multi are all excellent! I would be every bit as excited to get a story that has none of those things. The 'Gen' umbrella covers an enormous range of wonderful things. While I don't need my reading to be all rainbows and sunshine, I'll always prefer an ending that's hopeful over one that's despair and misery.
I would be delighted to receive a story written around one of my suggestions below. I would absolutely love to receive a story that uses none of my suggestions, and is rather the story you feel is itching to be told. Most of all, I hope that writing the story is something that brings you joy. It will be certain to bring much to me!
Jaran by Kate Elliott
I first read this book in my teens, and I've re-read and loved it (and the next two books that follow it in the Jaran series) ever since.
It's a matter of wanting to spend more time with the characters. Especially the Jaran characters. But if you want to write about any of her other characters, I will love it: the marvellously enigmatic Chapalii, or a day in the life of someone in Jeds (one of Charles' people? Someone Ilya knew from his time there?). Or how about the few from future Earth: Charles' persistent but outmatched revolutionaries, or the Bharentous Repertory Company? If you have favourite characters in the Jaran series that I haven't mentioned, they're all welcome!
Nobody's Son by Sean Stewart
This is the first book I read that made me fall in love with Sean Stewart's writing, and it's the one I've recommended most to other people. I laughed when I read that he was reading Pride and Prejudice constantly while writing this. Because Mark, Gail, Lissa and Val are nothing like Elizabeth, Jane, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley. But the delightful mix of high spirits with an underlying seriousness is very similar. It's easy to care about the happiness and futures of the characters.
So I'm hoping to spend some more time with the Nobody's Son characters. I'm very fond of Mark, Gail, Lissa and Val. They're marvellous. But there's also many excellent minor characters I'd be delighted to hear about if you're leaning that way: Sir William, Richard, Deron, Janseni, Master Orrin, Husk, Jervis, and any number of very lively ghosts!
I also love the way that Mark stumbles and falls ass backwards into his Happily Ever After, and then discovers that it's bigger, richer, more dangerous, more exciting, way more terrifying, and far more rewarding than all the thrilling heroics it took to get there. Mark's the Everyman hero of folktales: the Jack or the Ivan. If you want to go on subverting folktale conventions, I'm right there with you!
The Night Watch by Sean Stewart
Mockingbird by Sean Stewart
I'm trying hard to make Sean Stewart happen this Yuletide. These two very different books, standalone novels that don't share any common characters, I think of as part of his 'Magic Realism In North America Quartet': Resurrection Man - The Night Watch - Mockingbird - Galveston. (Note: They're not an actual series, except in my head!). All four books are set in the same AU: Our world has magic in it, set off by a chain of events in the 20th and 21st centuries.
I would be so pleased to receive a story about any of his interesting characters, you have no idea! My biggest love for these books, and my suggestions for story ideas, all have to do with world-building. I want to read ALL THE STORIES which riff off of Sean Stewart's world-building while belonging entirely to their author. They'd start here:
Snowflakes drifted down out of a dark sky into the lamplight beyond Emily's window. Magic comes like this, she realized. At first it barely exists. At first you only see snow in the air; it disappears the instant it touches the ground, or your coat. You never notice the exact moment it starts to endure, a drift of white dust on a sidewalk, or along a tree branch. You go to bed with flakes still falling; when you wake up in the morning the snow is everywhere. Everything else has disappeared. Paths and roads have been erased, signs are buried or hard to read. Even trees look different and strange. The old landmarks are covered or lost, and the world you thought you knew is gone.
Now I understand why Grandfather took the name Winter, Emily thought.
Magic had started falling at the end of World War II, invisible at first, then gradually more obvious. By the time Emily's grandfather was a child, in the 1970's, little drifts of it were building into monsters or miracles often enough to make it clear that a great change was coming. The climate of the world was shifting away from the light of reason into a dusk where dreams put on flesh and the hungers of flesh. Finally, late in the winter of 2004, the rational, scientific world was entirely covered, as lost to memory as summer is in the cold grey days of December. That year, many things that had slept through the age of reason finally woke up. Forests woke up. Buildings woke up. Gods and ghosts and demons woke up everywhere.
(The Night Watch, Sean Stewart)
-Geography/History/Local Culture. The Night Watch takes place in Vancouver and Edmonton, Mockingbird in Houston, Galveston in, of course, Galveston, and Resurrection Man by an unamed Prairie City. But there are all kinds of throwaway references to bits and pieces of altered American history, and to what's going on in other parts of the world. For example, the 'Permitted City' in China, or minotaurs in Harlem. The oracle who wasn't taken seriously enough to save JFK manages to to prevent the assassination of Robert Kennedy. So. Tell me about what's going on in other parts of the world! Maybe it's your part of the world, or a place you've been to, or a place you're interested in writing about. How has magic made this place different than the one we know in our world? What events specific to this place have altered it? What is everyday life like in this place in an age of angels and minotaurs and ghosts?
-People. Sean Stewart's books are populated with actuaries, artists, architects, detectives, psychics, mechanics, apothecaries, soldiers, bodyguards, socialites, governors, diplomats, politicians, car detailers, anthropologists, and independent traders. Angel is not a mythological being but a job description! Tell me about someone living and working in Sean Stewart's world. Maybe it's one of his characters, or your own OC. Maybe it's a historical figure like Bettie Brown in Galveston, a real life Galveston socialite and ghost, or a famous figure in World Events. What's life like with magic? How is their career and their personal relationships different or the same? What's it like to live in a world where when you put on your lucky socks in the morning, it makes a noticeable difference to the outcome of your day!
-Technology. The technology in The Night Watch is extremely cool - a fusion of engineering and magic. There's Raining's Art Companion. The Edmonton soldiers have their familiars: highly evolved portable computer programs that help make their wearers experts at being themselves. They can develop personalities, and Nick believes that Magpie, his familiar, has a soul. Tell me about other cool technologies that might be around! What about say, tractors, buses, radio, movies, the internet, clocks, musical instruments, or bank machines. Heck, I'd love to hear about a magical toaster!