In celebration of the release of THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS by Jane Yolen, Tachyon presents glimpses from the book that “explores an unexpected aspect of a beloved author and reminds us why Yolen’s writing means so much to us.” (The Fantasy Hive)
Tachyon authors Nancy Kress, James Morrow, and Carrie Vaughn will participate in the virtual Capclave 2020, October 17-18.
Sponsored by the Washington Science Fiction Association, Capclave is a small relaxed literary convention with a program that usually focuses on the short fiction form. Guests of Honor and other notable authors, editors, artists, and fans of the short fiction form will explore the creation and enjoyment of short fantasy and science fiction genre stories.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Due to the novel coronavirus, the Capclave team has made the decision to be virtual this year. We will be holding Capclave October 17-18. Yes, this is two days, but we will run longer on Sunday than is typical. We will be focused on presentations, panels, and small group activities such as author readings or discussions.
Bill Lawhorn
Going virtual does present the opportunity to include people who would likely not be able to participate in a normal year. Keep an eye on our website and social media for news regarding new participants.
We plan to use Zoom for most activities, but we are looking at adding a text chat area via Discord as well. We will be updating our Code of Conduct to reflect the online nature of the convention. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact chair@capclave.org.
As a special deal, if you purchase a full membership for $55, you will be able to attend both Virtual Capclave 2020 and next year’s Capclave, to be held October 1-3, 2021. For those of you who can’t attend in 2021, we are offering a $10 Capclave 2020 only membership as well. Memberships can be purchased on our registration page.
Capclave 2020 Chair
Capclave offers a large selection of readings, signings, and panels including several with the Tachyon authors.
Overused Mistakes in Hard SF (Ends at: 11:25 am)
Participants: Charles Gannon, Inge Heyer (M), Nancy Kress, Bud Sparhawk
Hard SF is all about accurate science. So why do authors frequently fall into clichés and outright errors. The same writer who works out elaborate orbits can have FTL drives, lag-free interstellar communications, temperatures below absolute zero, and so on. How can writers tell their story without without breaking the laws of physics along the way? Are some exceptions to scientific plausibility “grandfathered” into hard sf? What can be done to encourage greater plausibility?
Carrie Vaughn discussion with Connie Willis (Ends at: 12:55 pm)
Participants: Carrie Vaughn, Connie Willis
Two of Colorado’s finest authors, Carrie Vaughn and Connie Willis, discuss anything and everything.
Laughter with Bite: Satire and Other Funny Stuff (Ends at: 12:55 pm)
Participants: Charlotte Honigman, James Morrow, Alex Shvartsman (M), Michael Alan Ventrella
What is the difference between satire and other forms of humor? Is satire just humor with a purpose? Is all political humor satire? What is the difference between satire and mocking something? What can you do in satire that you cannot do in other humor? Is satire always funny (or at least trying to be funny)? Why or why not? What are some satires that worked and ones that have failed?
Connie Willis and Nancy Kress Discussion (Ends at: 2:25 pm)
Participants: Nancy Kress, Connie Willis
Past Guests of honor Connie Willis and Nancy Kress discuss a little bit of everything.
Magic – Obvious or Mysterious? (Ends at: 2:25 pm)
Participants: Sarah Beth Durst, Charlotte Honigman, Jon Skovron, Carrie Vaughn, Jean Marie Ward (M)
Some modern fantasy settings have the existence of magic and magical creatures known to the public – think True Blood, or Poul Anderson’s Operation Chaos. Others have the magic secret, such as Incryptid or Supernatural. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach? Why might an author choose one or the other? Are some authors better at one than the other?
Writing Time Travel and Paradoxes (Ends at: 3:55 pm)
Participants: Iver Cooper, Aliza Greenblatt, James Morrow, Ian Randal Strock
Time travel stories date to the 19th century. How can you make your type of time travel unique, or have all the twists already been mined? How do writers keep everything (relatively) straight for the writer and readers, even while the characters are facing convolutions? How can you explain worldbuilding challenges, such as why time travellers don’t mob every historical event? Panelists will discuss what makes some time travel stories work and which ones do not.
Author Reading – Carrie Vaughn (Ends at: 4:55 pm)
Participants: Carrie Vaughn (M)
Author Carrie Vaughn reads from their recent and upcoming work.
Sharing a Universe (Ends at: 8:25 pm)
Participants: Iver Cooper, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Carrie Vaughn, Jean Marie Ward
Shared universes have been around years. 1632 is its own cottage industry these days and WildCards has experienced rebirth. Panelists will discuss the advantage, disadvantages and what it take to work in this type of writing. What is the appeal to authors and readers? Why do some shared universes work while others produced a handful of volumes and vanished? What caused Thieves’ World to turn dark and toxic and how can other shared worlds escape this?
Biology – the other hard SF (Ends at: 11:25 am)
Participants: Charles Gannon, Nancy Kress, Seanan McGuire, Ted Weber (M)
It’s not all spaceships and physics. Where’s the love for the genetically altered and the killer viruses? Why is biology seen as less hard than FTL drives? Which stories rigorously explore the science of biology and its implications? Where can writers go to get good insights on using biology in their stories?
Book Launch – Carrie Vaughn (Ends at: 1:55 pm)
Participants: Carrie Vaughn
Join Carrie Vaughn to celebrate the launch of her collection KITTY’S MIX-TAPE from Tachyon Publications.
James Morrow Returning GoH Interview (Ends at: 12:55 pm)
Participants: Jim Freund, James Morrow
James Morrow interviewed by Jim Freund.
It’s the End of the World and I Feel Fine (Ends at: 12:55 pm)
Participants: Sarah Avery, Tom Doyle (M), Juliet Kemp, Nancy Kress
Alien invasions, giant meteors, nuclear war, global pandemics. The end of the world usually does not sound like a fun time. But in fiction, and real history too, there are frequently people who want to cause the Apocalypse or bring on the end of days. Others want anarchy so they can punish everyone who looks at them funny. What works does this the best and what falls short? What are some humorous approaches to the end of everything?
Kaffeeklatsch – Nancy Kress (Ends at: 2:25 pm)
Participants: Nancy Kress (M)
Join Nancy Kress for a small-group discussion on anything of interest. Limited spaces, advanced sign-up required.
Kaffeeklatsch – Carrie Vaughn (Ends at: 3:55 pm)
Participants: Carrie Vaughn (M)
Join Carrie Vaughn for a small-group discussion on anything of interest. Limited spaces, advanced sign-up required.
In celebration of the release of THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS by Jane Yolen, Tachyon presents glimpses from the book that “delights, confounds, and challenges.” (Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and A Wild Winter Swan).
by
Jane Yolen
Once, on the far side of yesterday, there lived a girl who wanted to know the future. She was not satisfied with knowing that the grass would come up each spring and that the sun would go down each night. The true knowledge she desired was each tick of tomorrow, each fall and each failure, each heartache and each pain, that would be the portion of every man. And because of this wish of hers, she was known as Vera, which is to say, True.
At first it was easy enough. She lived simply in a simple town, where little happened to change a day but a birth or a death that was always expected. And Vera awaited each event at the appointed bedside and, in this way, was always the first to know.
But as with many wishes of the heart, hers grew from a wish to a desire, from a desire to an obsession. And soon, knowing the simple futures of the simple people in that simple town was not enough for her.
“I wish to know what tomorrow holds for everyone,” said Vera. “For every man and woman in our country. For every man and woman in our world.”
“It is not good, this thing you wish,” said her father.
But Vera did not listen. Instead she said, “I wish to know which king will fall and what the battle, which queen will die and what the cause. I want to know how many mothers will cry for babies lost and how many wives will weep for husbands slain.”
And when she heard this, Vera’s mother made the sign against the Evil One, for it was said in their simple town that the future was the Devil’s dream.
But Vera only laughed and said loudly, “And for that, I want to know what the Evil One himself is doing with his tomorrow.”
Since the Evil One himself could not have missed her speech, the people of the town visited the mayor and asked him to send Vera away.
The mayor took Vera and her mother and father, and they sought out theold man who lived in the mountain, who would answer one question a year. And they asked him what to do about Vera.
The old man who lived in the mountain, who ate the seeds that flowers dropped and the berries that God wrought, and who knew all about yesterdays and cared little about tomorrow, said, “She must be apprenticed to the Weaver.”
“A weaver!” said the mayor and Vera’s father and her mother all at once. They thought surely that the old man who lived in the mountain had at last gone mad.
But the old man shook his head. “Nor a weaver, but the Weaver, the Weaver of Tomorrow. She weaves with a golden thread and finishes each piece with a needle so fine that each minute of the unfolding day is woven into her work. They say that once every hundred years there is need for an apprentice, and it is just that many years since one has been found.”
“Where docs one find this Weaver?” asked the mayor.
“Ah, that I cannot say,” said the old man who lived in the mountain, “for I have answered one question already.” And he went back to hiscave and rolled a stone across the entrance, a stone small enough to let the animals in but large enough to keep the townspeople out.
“Never mind,” said Vera. “I would be apprenticed to this Weaver. And not even the Devil himself can keep me from finding her.”
And so saying, she left the simple town with nothing but the clothes upon her back. She wandered until the hills got no higher but the valleys got deeper. She searched from one cold moon until the next. And at last, without warning, she came upon a cave where an old woman in black stood waiting.
“You took the Devil’s own time coming,” said the old woman.
“It was not his time at all,” declared Vera.
“Oh, but it was,” said the old woman, as she led the girl into the cave.
And what a wondrous place the cave was. On one wall hung skeins of yarn of rainbow colors. On the other walls were tapestries of delicate design. In the center of the cave, where a single shaft of sunlight fell, was the loom of polished ebony, higher than a man and three times as broad, with a shuttle that flew like a captive blackbird through the golden threads of the warp.
At SFREVU, Sam Lubell enjoys Carrie Vaughn’s final Kitty Norville book KITTY’S MIX-TAPE.
This collection has seventeen stories with author notes and a music playlist for each. Fellow urban fantasy writer Emma Bull contributes a nice introduction. Four stories are original to this collection and two previously appeared on Vaughn’s website. The others originally appeared in magazines and anthologies. Six stories feature Kitty.
Fans of Kitty will welcome her reappearance here especially since the author had said the series was finished. Readers new to Kitty and her adventures will find this book a decent way to start their acquaintance, although they will miss some aspects of the stories if they do not know who these characters are and what their connection is to Kitty. Still, some of the stories are about the early history of the characters, before they meet Kitty, and Vaughn successfully provides information about the major characters in Kitty’s life.
[…]
Reading this book caused me to remember how much fun is in the Kitty books and I’ve started re-reading them, which considering the size of my to-be-read pile is a strong endorsement for this book.
Joe Sherry for NERDS OF A FEATHER, FLOCK TOGETHER is excited about the book.
One of my greatest discoveries was winning an online contest that I don’t remember entering and receiving copies of Kitty and the Midnight Hour and Kitty Goes to Washington in the mail. After giving them the side eye for no good reason, I started to read and Kitty Norville quickly became one of my favorite characters and I could not get enough of the series – and then it ended and Carrie Vaughn moved on. But wait! Here’s a story collection and even though I’ve likely read at least half of the stories in it, there are two brand new Kitty stories! I’m here for this!
As is Ashley Sapp, THE RUSTIC READING GAL.
This week I’m featuring KITTY’S MIX-TAPE by Carrie Vaughn releasing October 16. I love this series and am so happy to be getting some more stories set in this world!
On the Tachyon Publications Channel, Zeppo (with a little help from Jacob) unboxes the book.
Vaughn contributes a guest post for Cat Rambo’s THE WORLD REMAINS MYSTERIOUS.
So, “voice” is the thing that makes us want to read the story. To spend time with the characters and their story. How, then, does one learn to write in a “voice” that makes readers want more?
Nobody’s quite figured that out, near as I can tell. But I can share how I finally started getting a handle on the concept: I wrote fourteen novels about the same character.
Kitty is a werewolf who hosts a talk radio advice show for supernatural creatures. She first appeared in a short story in Weird Tales in 2001. The final novel in her series, Kitty Saves the World, was published in 2015, and this year a collection, Kitty’s Mix-Tape, pulls together short stories set in the world, plus a few brand-new stories. So I’ve been writing this character for more than twenty years. “Voice” was key to getting her right.
Kitty’s identity as a radio DJ was instrumental in her development. In a very early (abandoned) draft, Kitty was passive. Other characters argued while she stood there observing and thinking snarky thoughts. This wasn’t going to work—as clever as her snark seemed at the time, she wasn’t an active participant in what was happening, which is sort of a requirement for the protagonist, yes? (There’s another lesson and blog post there, I think—you’d be surprised how often I tell people in critiques: your protagonist needs to do something.
Acclaimed writer, reviewer, editor, and essayist Jaymee Goh alongside fellow acclaimed authors Aliette de Bodard, Nibedita Sen, Michi Trota, and Anya Ow engage in fun discussion on food and culture on October 10, 9AM CT.
Food, sharing, cooking and eating is such an important part of many cultures – including survival, family, a sense of place. With over 60% of the world’s population, and a longer history of migration, colonization, empire – food has changed significantly as people have moved.
Carl Brandon Society
Join us for a brief foray with a diverse team of Asian authors with opinions about cooking, colonization, migration.
This panel will be livestreamed to YouTube on the 10th. To watch the event live (with the opportunity to ask questions!) or to get early access to the recording, make a donation by purchasing a ticket. All proceeds go to the Carl Brandon Society and support our major programs, including the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship for writers of color attending the Clarion and Clarion West writing workshops.
In celebration of the release of THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS by Jane Yolen, Tachyon presents glimpses from the book that feature “some of her best dark stories.” (Nonstop Reader)
by
Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris
It was never my ambition to be an explorer, let alone one who charted the new lands of Antarctica. I was but a simple seaman. However, when Sir Clements Markham singled me out for that first expedition, I saw an opportunity to rise above the humble circumstances of an undistinguished naval career. The benefits proved even greater than I had anticipated. The burdens, greater still.
Returning to London after three years in Antarctica, I found myself to be a much sought-after celebrity. I now moved in an exotic milieu of writers, actors, and artists, not just hardened seamen. It quite turned my head, as much as a girl at her first ball. Indeed it was through my celebrity that I met my beautiful Kathleen. It is the one truly good thing I have done in this life. But do not, I pray you, burden Kathleen with what I am about to impart. Let her think me dead a hero. Only you will know otherwise. And—in this wild waste where I stay—I will know it as well.
Now to get to the meat of the matter. My cursed disease. It began in London, of that I am sure. Having led a conventional, perhaps even dull, life before—even as a seaman I’d not resorted to low pubs and lower women—I found it difficult to resist the allures of a more Bohemian existence, especially with my dear wife newly pregnant and unable to go out with me even to the more staid parties. Time after time, after she had retired early to bed, I would frequent areas of London I might once have shunned for fear of embarrassment or scandal.
What precisely occurred on the night that altered my fate so completely I have never been able to recall. Was it an infection I contracted from some whore? A mania passed on by tainted meat? Was I bitten by a mad dog? Raked by a rusty blade? Poisoned by some foreign tincture? Your surgeon’s knife might have uncovered the seat of the infection. But five years on, discovering it would be like arguing First Causes with a Jesuit—fascinating but beside the point. Whatever it was that set me on this dark path is all lost in the miasma of those London rookeries. And confused by the great quantity of rum I had drunk with my low friends.
All I do know is that I found myself staggering down a deserted, muck-covered street in the early hours of the morning, my head pounding and my eyes curiously unfocused. I was also plagued by a peculiar thirst so intense that my throat was actually aching with it.
It was here that I was approached by a drunken vagrant begging for money. I tried to push my way past him, for he was a noxious, smelly brute, but he persisted in blocking my path.
“Guv’nor?” he said, his hand in my face.
It enraged me. Enraged me.
I do not speak here, Atkinson, of anger, or even a momentary spasm of annoyance, but of a pure, unreasoning rage.
Now as a very young man I had been known for my quick temper, but in later years I had mastered such outbursts. Now, however I was possessed by a rage such as I had never before experienced. I trembled with it, like a tree in a fierce storm. Seizing hold of the raggedy man by the front of his filthy shirt I hauled him down onto the pavement with a speed and savagery he was powerless to resist. Before I could understand what was happening, I found myself with my teeth at his throat, sucking away his life’s blood.
My horrible thirst quenched by this ghastly infusion, my head was finally cleared sufficiently for me to recoil in horror. The man lay under me, the side of his throat torn as if a wild beast had ravened there. Instinctively I wiped a hand across my mouth in an effort to erase the taste. My childhood squeamishness at the sight of blood briefly reasserted itself and, for a moment, I thought I was going to vomit right then and there.
I was sure I had killed the man and wondered what I was to do. With the corpse. I knew no one would miss him. He was but a piece of filth. And there was no one else on the street to decry my deed. But to take him in my arms, to drag him to some smaller back alley—I did not know if I had the strength for it.
While I was thinking what to do, the man moaned piteously and I reeled back, more shocked than before. His eyelids began to flutter, like a girl at her first assignation. It appeared that he had merely swooned and was even now beginning to recover. I turned and ran from the scene as fast as my legs would carry me.
This Halloween season, dare to curl up with some of Tachyon’s spookiest books, now at 50% off! Selected by our own Scary Rhino, here are truly (well, mostly) terrifying tales: horror movie survivors in group therapy; a tyrant with hypnosis rallying the troops; a vampire who stalks famous poets; and of course, fast, slow, and even kinda smart zombies — because who doesn’t love zombies? Authors in the Scare Package include Joe R. Lansdale, Peter Straub, Carrie Vaughn, Kelly Link, Daryl Gregory, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Peter Straub, Lisa Goldstein, Neil Gaiman, and many more.
$7.50 for shipping and handling
This pack includes:
2017 Shirley Jackson Award nominee
B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog: The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of June 2017
Amazon Best Books of the Month: Editor’s Picks (June 2017)
io9 Summer Reading List Best Summer Books,
Campus Circle Feature,
Barnes & Noble.com Week’s New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
If you think today’s profiteers are diabolical, blink again. In this witty, satiric tour de force, James Morrow (The Last Witchfinder) offers a provocative take on a film classic.
1990 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award winner
1990 World Fantasy Award nominee
1990 Locus Award runner-up
“Good serious fantasy doesn’t come much better than The Stress of Her Regard.”
—Oxford Times
Michael Crawford is forced to flee when he discovers his bride brutally murdered in their wedding bed, trapped by the embrace of the malignant spirit claiming him as her bridegroom. Telling a secret history of passion and terror, Tim Powers masterfully recasts the tragic lives of the Romantic poets.
2012 Mythopoeic Award Winner
“An exquisitely beautiful, eerily compelling modern fairy tale.”
—Library Journal, starred review
This haunting tale of an ages-old family secret breaches the boundaries between reality and magic, revealing the places between them. It is the story of the Feierabend women, whose luck is so good that it is as though they are living in a fairy tale without a dark side.
World Fantasy Award Winner
Shirley Jackson Award Winner
Nebula Award, Locus Award, and Theodore Sturgeon Award Nominees
“[Gregory’s] plotting, characterisations, and yes, the writing itself, is all that good. In short, this one completely blew me away.”
—Horror After Dark
What happens when five seemingly-insane outcasts—survivors of horror movie scenarios—form a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within…and which are lurking in plain sight.
“Deadman’s Road is a delightfully pulpy, wickedly funny, satisfying read. Saddle up, because you are in for one helluva ride!”
—The Grimdragon
When renegade author Kameron Hurley (The Light Brigade; The Stars Are Legion) takes you to the future, be prepared for the unexpected. It will be dangerous, frequently brutal, and often devastating. But also, savagely funny and deliciously strange. In these edgy, unexpected tales, a body-hopping mercenary avenges his pet elephant, an orphan falls in love with a sentient starship, and a swamp-dwelling introvert tries to save the world—from her plague-casting former wife.
“Datlow once again proves herself as a master editor. Her mission to broaden readers’ concepts of what a haunting can be is nothing short of a success, and the twenty-four stories on display run the gamut from explicitly terrifying to eerily familiar. Readers who wish to be haunted themselves should not miss this one. Highly recommended.”
—Arkham Digest
This spine-tingling anthology—complied by the horror genre’s most acclaimed editor—collects a chilling array of ghost stories from the past twenty-five years. Authors include Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, Peter Straub, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Connie Willis, Jeffrey Ford, and more.
“A must-have for Kitty Norville fans, but also an excellent standalone for readers new to Vaughn’s worlds.”
—Kelley Armstrong
From the author of the beloved Kitty Norville werewolf talk-show host series, comes the vampire origin story of Kitty’s famed ally, Rick—and his sudden turn to darkness in the seventeenth century. More than 500 years before his friendship with Kitty, noble Ricardo de Avila’s life met a fate-changing twist, and his morally-complex, blood-soaked existence as an immortal began.
“De Lint returns to Newford and Jilly Coppercorn’s youth . . . de Lint presents Jilly’s choices, the memories impelling them, and the solution to the riddle of Donna in his characteristic powerful yet intimate style. Jilly’s reader friends, including those first meeting her, will be more than delighted.”
—Booklist
Jilly Coppercorn of Newford is back. With the help of a mentor and an anonymous benefactor, the talented young artist has overcome her troubled past and is enrolled in art school. The future is full of bright promise.
Suddenly, when a tempting opportunity roars into town, Jilly’s life takes a turn for the supernatural.
Review copies of ROBOT ARTISTS AND BLACK SWANS: THE ITALIAN FANTASCIENZA STORIES by Bruce Sterling’s alter ego Bruno Argento, the preeminent writer of fantascienza, are now available via EDELWEISS and NETGALLEY.
ISBN: Print ISBN: 9781616963293; Digital ISBN: 9781616963309
Published: March 2021
Available Format(s): Hardcover and Digital
The Godfather of Cyberpunk has emerged in this new collection of Italian-themed fantasy and science fiction stories. Bruce Sterling introduces us to his alter-ego: Bruno Argento, the preeminent writer of fantascienza. As always, Sterling is a speculative innovator, skillfully combining technology with art, mythology, and history.
It’s as if Sterling is the only writer paying attention.
—Locus
In the Esoteric City, a Turinese businessman’s act of necromancy is catching up with him. The Black Swan, a rogue hacker, programs his way into into alternate versions of Italy. A Parthenonpean assassin awaits his destiny while he nestles in the arms of a two-headed noblewoman. Infuriating artists and scientists alike, the wandering robot-wheelchair confounds all with his uncategorizable creations.
Bruno Argento is the acknowledged master of Italian science fiction. Yet that same popular fantascienza author also exists in America. English-speaking readers are familiar with Bruno Argento as Bruce Sterling, and Italians are acquainted with Bruce Sterling as Bruno Argento. In Robot Artists and Black Swans, we have their visionary short stories, including fiction never before published in English.
“[H]is highly caffeinated energy is hard to resist.”
—Publishers Weekly
