Category: Writing

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft

Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft and Me

By:  TempestMe, Elsewhere

I knew this news was dropping today. What I didn’t know was that Polygon was gonna namecheck me as one of the contributors! EeeEEEeeEEeeeEEE

I’m super proud to be part of the team that created the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons 5E Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft book. I’m in such amazing company; Ajit George, The Strix, Molly Ostertag, Cassandra Khaw, Jessica Price, and many others contributed. Working with F. Wesley Schneider, the design lead, was a great experience. Everyone involved gave me support and wonderful feedback and I loved every minute.

I cannot wait for folks to start playing the adventures in this book (I wanna hear about it!). It comes out in May and is up for pre-order now. You can find more preview information over at Inverse as well as on the DnD site.

Deal Announcement Ruby

Now it can be told: How Ruby vs the Robo-Bug came to be

By:  TempestMy Fiction

I am beyond excited to finally announce my first book deal! From the notice in Publishers Marketplace:

Science fiction and fantasy writer and media critic K. Tempest Bradford’s [middle grade] RUBY VS. THE ROBO-BUG1, in which an 11-year-old Black girl passionate about entomology finds an alien bug in her backyard and has to rely on her friends, the scientific method, and her instincts to help the alien get home safely, to Grace Kendall at Farrar, Straus Children’s, in a very nice deal, at auction, in a two-book deal, for publication in fall 2022, by Larissa Melo Pienkowski at Jill Grinberg Literary Management (world English).

I’ve been sitting on this news for months as the slow wheels of publishing turned. I’m glad I can finally be public about it because I am so very excited for this book! I didn’t set out to write a middle grade novel or really any novel that wasn’t the one I’ve been working on for ages. How did we end up here? Settle in and I’ll tell you.

Continue reading “Now it can be told: How Ruby vs the Robo-Bug came to be” →

Footnotes

  1. A working title and slightly different from the draft title: Ruby vs. the Big, Red Bug. [⇧]
Authors K. Tempest Bradford and Aisha Matthews

I’m on the Science Friday Book Club talking about New Suns

By:  TempestMy Peers

Last week I had the great pleasure of being on WNYC’s Science Friday as part of the #SciFriBookClub. All this month they’re reading and talking about stories from New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction By Writers of Color edited by Nisi Shawl. I got to talk to editor Aisha Matthews and producer Christie Taylor about the story “Dumb House” written by Andrea Hairston.

Any time I get to discuss Andrea’s work with people I’m happy, so I knew going in that this would be fantastic. We ended up having a truly wonderful conversation that went a little over time, so some had to be cut. Still, what’s there captures the essence of what we talked about. You should buy the book, read the story, and listen in.

If you want to listen to the first segment where they talked to Darcie Little Badger about their story, or find the upcoming segments, head to the Science Friday book club website.

Standing Still

December Microfiction: Standing Still

By:  TempestMicrofiction

This month’s free fiction is in honor of the solstice.

In the hour before dawn a chariot climbed through the desert hills toward the Western mountains, the full moon above illuminating the way. The sky was not yet even the barest pink and every star embedded in the body of Nut winked down at the driver and passenger as they broke the night’s silence. They drove past the sealed tombs in the rock, the monuments to past kings, until the beating of the horses’ hooves echoed off the stone of the new monument ahead. Hatshepsut tapped her driver’s shoulder to indicate where they should stop, then squeezed it to keep balance once they did.

“Here, my king?” the driver asked. They were still many feet from the front of the first ramp.

“Yes, I’ll walk the rest of the way,” Hatshepsut said as she climbed down and dusted herself off. “I won’t need to return to the High House until the sun peaks, so you may return to the river to take part in the festival there.”

Even though they’d discussed this before leaving, the driver still looked uncomfortable leaving her king there all alone.

“I’ll be safe. Go.” She said firmly but with a smile.

Click here to read the rest.

The Initiate

November Microfiction: The Initiate

By:  TempestMicrofiction

Back to Egypt…

The halls of the temple were quiet; the dawn song sung, the morning light just beginning to peek between the columns. Maatkare passed between them as silently as possible, bare feet barely making a sound on the alabaster floor and just a gentle swish from the linen wrapped around her body. Only sacred sound was permitted here.

The quiet faded the closer she came to the outer courtyard, punctuated by the quacking chirps of the flock waiting for her. She smiled at the sound–it was one reason why she enjoyed this duty above all others. The ibis roamed the courtyard, disturbed by nothing, patient and steady. This flock took a specific path around the upriver end of the city, passing each resting spot with the regularity of the sun. They knew that she, or someone like her, would appear before the heat got intense bearing their favorite food. They also knew – or so she assumed – that she always brought enough for all of them, so they never fought or crowded or menaced her the way geese would. This is why she loved them.

Click here to read the whole story.

Even When We Don't Want to be Ourselves

October Microfiction: Even When We Don’t Want to be Ourselves

By:  TempestMicrofiction

The stories in this series are based on the artwork of Chiara Bautista which is amazing and gorgeous and you should look at all of it.

Wolf and Bunny artwork by Chiara Bautista

She discarded the rabbit face in the water where the moon self still cast some light. Now that she was here on the earth she wanted a single identity. To be one of the persons.

No matter. The Earth’s rabbits found her, anyway. In the swamplands they approached her in uncharacteristically untimid ways. They knew her for one of them. And she loved them for that.

She wandered the swamps in a funk. She had detached herself from the night sky and dropped here to get some perspective, yet she still wasn’t happy. Or fulfilled. Or even sure what she wanted. To feel. To be. Nothing got solved.

She came upon the skull, half sunk in the mud and grass. She washed it, pressed a bright red flower to the place where an ear would be. That was enough.

Hello. That was the voice of what was left. A girl. No, a fish girl.

“How did you get here? This isn’t your place.”

This isn’t yours, either.

Click here to continue reading.

Wolf and Bunny 1

September Microfiction: The Moon Fell Off The Night Sky And He Went Looking For Her

By:  TempestMicrofiction

This story is based on the artwork of Chiara Bautista.

Wolf and Bunny artwork by Chiara Bautista

She didn’t so much fall off the night sky as she allowed herself to detach, come away, to drift. She wanted, just for a little while, to see things from a different perspective. So much time above the little blue and green planet, watching over it, playing her part in the push pull of water and energy. Acting as a light in the darkness.

Sometimes she would look down and see herself reflected in the waters. The big ones as well as the small. But it wouldn’t be her whole self, her true self. And who was that, anyway?

Click here to continue the story.

Can We Talk About Pronoun Declaration Best Practices?

By:  TempestWriter Brain

I want to have a conversation about pronoun declaration and best practices around it sparked by this aspect of the issue coming up 3 times in the past month: that asking or semi-requiring people to declare their pronouns in public can be harmful to non-cisgender people.

This is not an aspect of the issue I’d come across before. In all other discussions of declaring pronouns (usually in the context of convention badges) the general idea I got was that non-cis folks declared so that people wouldn’t accidentally misgender them and folks who are cis or cis-passing were encouraged to declare to normalize the practice and not put all the work and markers on the marginalized group in this equation. This all seemed reasonable to me.

I don’t remember how long ago we started, but for at least a year I’ve been asking Writing the Other students to declare their pronouns where their name appears in discussion areas or video chats. Just before the last class I got an email from a student concerned about this practice because they’d had discussions with nonbinary and trans friends about how pronoun declaration made them uncomfortable in situations where they might not want to be out to people about their gender. At the time, I wasn’t sure what to do with that (my initial thought was that students didn’t have to put pronouns that matched their gender if they didn’t want to, but then realized that’s not an actual solution), so I kept it in the back of my mind and decided to discuss the issue with smart folks I know in person.

About two weeks ago the issue came up again in a private forum that’s mostly cisgender people, so the discussion wasn’t as useful as I hoped.

And then this week a friend on Facebook posted a status saying that all people should put their pronouns in their email sig and social media profiles. I happened to check in on that discussion a little while ago and the issue of pronoun declaration making some trans and nonbinary folks uncomfortable came up again. This made me think it was time to have the discussion about it, even if it happens online, because it keeps coming up. Plus, there’s a Writing the Other class starting at the end of this month and I want to have a firm understanding of the issue so I can craft our policy for that and future classes.

For that specific scenario, I would like to craft the pronoun declaration statement in a way that does not isolate people or force them to out themselves in ways they find uncomfortable. I still want it to be clear that I don’t only want non-cis students to declare. Maybe the classes aren’t the right space for this, anyway, and I should drop the ask. I’m not sure.

For scenarios outside of this, I’d like to be able to speak knowledgeably about why pronoun declaration might be a problem and ways to mitigate it or, at the least, understand the objections to it.

Before I open this up to discussion I want to stress that this is absolutely not about cisgender people feeling uncomfortable or resistant to the idea of declaring pronouns. That’s a separate issue and discussion altogether. And one I’m frankly not here for.

I welcome all ideas and thoughts and even disagreements on this topic as long as you follow the rules of constructive discourse. No using slurs, no bigoted language or attitudes, no punching down. Also, the way I have comments set up on this blog, the first time you comment it automatically gets sent to moderation. Once I release the first comment from the queue others will post immediately. It may take me a while to go through all comments in the queue, please be patient. Thank you.

February Microfiction The Locket

February Microfiction: The Locket

By:  TempestMicrofiction

“This makes no sense,” Tulla said. She’d said about five times up to that point, as if repeating the statement would manifest someone who would then make it make sense. But that wasn’t going to happen because it did not make sense.

The locket on the sidewalk was not a picture. It also wasn’t a mirror, yet it was a reflection. Just of someplace that didn’t exist. Click here to read the rest of the story

Mette Harrison On Revising The Right Way

By:  TempestWriting Wisdom

Posts in the Writing Wisdom category are primarily for my creative writing students. Most consist of quotes from others that I want to pass along and sometimes I offer up the things I’ve learned as well.

In a Facebook post titled “You’ve Got Revision All Wrong” author Mette Harrison breaks down where many writers go wrong with thinking about revision.

When I was in high school and college, teachers would talk to us about revising papers and focus us on fixing sentences, rearranging paragraphs, and choosing better words. Which is definitely revising on one level. The problem was that when I became a professional writer, I realized that this was the very last stage of revision, basically the copy-editing level.

…

The revisions that I do before I get to copy-editing are massive. MASSIVE. Like, every single word of the manuscript changes. Sometimes all the scenes are in the right order (Ha–this is never true, but we’ll pretend it is for a little while). It’s just that I have the voice wrong. Or the point of view. Or I change the rules of magic. Or I have to tweak a character’s motivations. Or the setting is now historical–or isn’t historical anymore. Or I’m now writing a series instead of a standalone. Or a thousand different changes that probably sound like they’re small in terms of scope, but in fact change every single word of the book. Because my descriptions are going to change based on how my character changes. And how I introduce the magic or offer setting details changes if the point of view is different.

…

I know that some writers manage to figure out these kinds of problems before they start writing a first draft, but I’ll tell you honestly, not many do. Even writers who outline extensively find a ton of problems that require massive, massive revisions. And the writers who aren’t finding their problems by writing drafts are spending just as much time (IMHO) figuring out the problems in their heads.

Almost always, when I see a writer who isn’t making progress from draft to draft it’s because they aren’t either willing or able to make these kinds of revisions. They hold tight to their original vision of a project because they think that’s what people mean when they say to “write the book of your heart.” Or they honestly don’t know how to reimagine everything from the bottom up and let everything go in order to rebuild something that’s even better. And do it again and again and again in order to get a manuscript that’s ready for publication.

Read the whole post, as she goes on to say many brilliant things.

Years ago a writer (can’t remember who) said that her revision process went like this:

  1. Print out first draft of novel
  2. Delete the file
  3. Start a new file
  4. Write the novel again using the paper draft (with corrections!) as your guide

I have not gotten to the point where I’m willing to delete old versions. However, I do take a blank slate approach to revision, especially with short stories. Sometimes the fiction needs that much of an overhaul, and so I sit with my marked up manuscript and maybe notes from my beta readers and I start typing. Maybe not every single word changes (I now have a DARLINGS file, though). But I’m not beholden to anything I wrote before if it doesn’t fit.

How do you go about revising? And how extensive are your revisions?

image credit: woodleywonderworks on Flickr