The entire Tamír series has been acquired by Otherworld Verlag of Austria, and all three books are being put out in new translations. The Bone Doll's Twin, rechristened "The Cursed Twin", will be on the shelves in trade paperback in August.
Here's the new cover:

This is the final volume of the 6 book French edition. Pretty snazzy, eh? I love Brother!

Posed by mm511 Thought it might be of interest. The following answers are simply my own take on my own work, nothing more.

I'm writing a paper on the classification of authors and novels as "gay": you know, the idea that Michael Cunningham or Alan Hollinghust is a gay author or that SPECIMEN DAYS or THE LINE OF BEAUTY is a gay novel.

I am curious to know whether you consider yourself a gay author. I'm leaving the term ambiguous -- "author who writes gay characters" or "author who is a homosexual" (I know you're not the latter) -- because the term is ambiguous. I'm also curious as to whether you consider your novels -- any of them, all of them, whatever -- gay novels.

I guess I don't think of myself as a "gay writer", so much as one who has gay characters and issues in her books. I don't think of my books as "gay," either, because I see that as an element, and an important one, in the greater context of the overall story, but not the sum total of what the story is about. I'm straight, and I have straight characters. Does that make me a "straight" writer? I'm a woman and have women characters. Does that make Tamir's story a "woman's book"? Starts to sound rather limiting, doesn't it? In my mind, I'm just a writer who writes books.

If you do not consider yourself a gay author or your books gay novels, do you take offense at the term?

Offense? No, none at all! If people who like my books consider them—or me— as such, and that means something to them, then I have no problem with that whatsoever.

Would you be upset if people DO think of you and your work in that way?

My initial and honest gut reaction is "Of course not!", but I realize that this applies mostly to those who like my books because of, or regardless of, such content. On the other hand, if some people thought that this aspect was the only, main thrust of the stories (heh!) and refused to buy them, or would only shelve them as such, or they could only be sold in "gay" bookstores (or straight bookstores, or women's bookstores, etc), I wouldn't be happy about that. I'm not happy that books that are intended outright to be "gay" are treated that way, either.

The fact is, we all discriminate in some way about what we read. I don't generally like "romance novels". If someone told me that "Jane Eyre" (a personal favorite) was a romance novel and that's all I knew about it, I probably wouldn't have picked it up. Tell me it's a gothic romance and suddenly I'm interested: it gets docketed in my brain as "potentially spooky, with an exotic historical setting, and maybe a ghost or two!"

I don't gravitate to westerns, either, and am not a fan of Zane Grey. If someone had presented me with "Lonesome Dove" in that light, I'd have passed. But it was well marketed as a sweeping, epic story with a vivid cast against a magnificent backdrop of well-researched western history and I was hooked, and found another solid favorite.

It's the same as dismissing the entire, traditional Literary Canon as a bunch of boring books written by Dead White Guys. Or the work of Toni Morrison as "books for just black people." Heck, there are plenty of people who won't touch my books with a ten-foot library ladder because they're "just fantasy."

Does all this make any sense?

If NIGHTRUNNER were to receive the subject heading Gay Men -- Fiction in a library catalog, would you find it?

Find it? Not sure what you mean. I'd do a title search. Probably not what you meant.

How about THE BONE DOLL'S TWIN receiving Transgender people -- Fiction?

I don't think it would be accurate if they were given only those headings. I consider them first and foremost fantasy novels. As a subheading, though? No problem. They're reader-tagged that way on Amazon.com already.

I've probably belabored this enough, but I'm not much for pigeon holes. Would it be fair to reduce the work of writers like Jim Grimsley, Truman Capote, E.M Forster, Noel Coward, W. Somerset Maugham, or Daphne DuMaurier to one narrow label? Shakespeare was probably at least bi. Is that the sum total of his work? No. Is it a piece of the puzzle of who those writers are and where they were writing from? Absolutely.

All that being said, I do want my books docketed in such a way that gay readers in search of a good read can find them by more than word of mouth, especially those younger readers looking for a positive main character, who I hear from every now and then.

Here's a question for any queer readers: Do you enjoy finding queer content in a mainstream book written by a straight writer? Would you have picked up my books without knowing that? Did you pick them up without knowing that, just thinking they sounded like good stories?

I don't know if I've expressed this very well and hope I haven't given offense. Please ask for any clarifications needed!

talithakalagoI'd like to know about writing the first book--before you found a publisher. And the shortly thereafter--the months following the release.

I spent a lot of years learning to write as I worked on what became the first two books— close to ten. It began as "just for fun", then people started reading it and enjoying it, so I pressed on and got more and more obsessed—er, determined. I took the honking big manuscript I was working on to a writing workshop taught by a favorite novelist of mine, Cathie Pelletier (also known as K.C. McKinnon) who was very encouraging. Armed with this, I forged on and eventually had a finished manuscript.

Then I had to teach myself how to sell a book. (see: "The Complete Nobody's Guide to Query Letters" http://www.sfwa.org/writing/query.htm) That took a while, too, but I learned how to prepare a submission packet and started sending them out. And getting rejections, the most useful of which was from an agent who liked the story, but pointed out that the manuscript, at 200,000 words, was too long to sell, especially as a first novel. She suggested I split it and add a new story arc to fill out the end of the first book. So I did. And sent that query out, and got some more rejections, then finally got an enthusiastic response from a woman who has been my agent ever since. It took her less than four months to sell it to Bantam. And there was much rejoicing! And then I went through my first revision cycle, and felt like a Real Writer at last. And then the book came out and there was more rejoicing.

I'd like to know how being published affected your life.

Heh. To paraphrase an old Zen saying: "Before you get published, chop wood, carry water. After getting published, chop wood, carry water." It changes your life less than you expect. No instant world fame. No instant wealth. Years away from establishing a lasting reputation. And now you have to do it all again. Not a career for the faint of heart or short of attention span.


buffysquirrelMight be useful for new readers to know which book(s) you'd suggest they start with :). Me, I started with Bone Doll's Twin--I think that was a good one to start with! lol

You can start with the first book of either series. For those who read Nightrunner first, it's fun to go back and see the roots of history. For those who start with Tamir, you get to find out what the hell that stupid bowl thingy was about. One series informs the other interchangeably.

I got the inked contracts with Russian publisher EXMO Licence Limited for all six existing novels. Which means fresh new editions will appear, hopefully within the next three years.

From the Rhinoceros Times from Greensboro, North Carolina:

Uncle Orson's List of Emergency Christmas Gifts

by Orson Scott Card

December 20, 2007
It's the day before Christmas and you realized that you didn't get a gift for your sister's kid. Or your sister.

Or maybe a friend comes by and gives you a "little something" and you don't have anything for them. The stores are only open for a few more hours. What do you do? What do you buy?

BOOKS



Fantasy

Lynn Flewelling: The Tamir Triad, starting with The Bone Doll's Twin and continuing with Hidden Warrior and The Oracle's Queen. Perhaps the deepest psychological novel I've ever read — the fantasy makes the unconscious issues real. Gorgeous but dark.

Kate Elliott: The Crown of Stars series. Just pick up the first volume, King's Dragon. Not the book entitled Crown of Stars — that's volume seven. You might worry that your fantasy-reader friend might not be glad to get volume one of seven — but I promise you, they'll be grateful once they've read this extraordinarily powerful opening volume. But this, like Lynn Flewelling's, is not for the faint of heart.

David Gemmell: Anything. I recently discovered this British author and was dismayed to learn he died just a few years ago. I've read all of the beautiful and moving Rigante series, but so far I've picked up nothing of his that wasn't excellent and compulsively readable for the fantasy fan.

A while back OSC posted a wonderful review of Bone Doll.

Today Alert Reader Aaron Hirtler pointed me back to OSC's site, Hatrack River, where the following review is to be found: (Whole article at
http://hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2006-11-26.shtml)

Excerpt

"Best Adult Fantasy Series

Lynn Flewelling's The Bone Doll's Twin, Hidden Warrior, and The Oracle's Queen are brilliantly original and moving. This story still haunts me, months after reading the books. There's plenty of gritty realism to make this a book for adults and mature teenagers, but what it definitely is not is "escapist." This book drags you through so much emotionally painful territory that you're almost relieved when it's done and you can escape to your safe regular life.

And if you're buying a gift for someone who reads far too fast for three volumes to be enough, then you have to go on to Kate Elliott's "Crown of Stars" series: King's Dragons, Prince of Dogs, The Burning Stone, Child of Flame, The Gathering Storm, In the Ruins, and Crown of Stars. This series has the sprawl -- and the realistic level of detail, and the extravagant invention -- of George R.R. Martin's ongoing (and unfinished, curse him!) series (most recent volume: A Feast for Crows). It also has a metaphysical layer all its own.

Both the Flewelling and the Elliott books have female protagonists. Usually this means you can't give them to males to read. All I can say is: I'm male. I loved these books. So if you give them as a gift to a (mature) teenage boy, and he balks ("You gave me books about a girl?"), you can say, "Orson Scott Card told me that these books work brilliantly for men and women readers."

And if he still doesn't believe you, bring out the big guns: "Card said that this book was perfect for men who are secure in their sexual identity."



Whoo Hoo! Kinda makes up for being ignored by the various awards, don't it? (Yeah, Tiptree, I'm talkin' to you!)

Yep, it does. Congrats to Kate, too!

Off to write a nice thank you note.