To the blog of speculative fiction author Karen Miller, who also writes as K E Mills.

First of all, thanks for dropping by. If you can remember to, please sign in or at least sign your post if you don't have a regular LJ account. I do allow anon comments but I like to know who to say hello and thanks to!

I do try to stay current and up to date here, but my workload remains off the charts el stupido and sometimes I get a bit behind. So please bear with me -- I mostly manage to catch up! And in the meantime, please don't be shy in chatting to each other.

My friending policy is simple: friend away! No need to ask if it's okay.

But here's an important note: vigorous, respectful debate is welcome. Name-calling, vilification, aggression, hostility or any kind of trollish behaviour isn't. There's  a reason they give us a delete key, you know.

And having said that ...

Back from Worldcon. Brought home a cold as a souvenir. Will be vanishing worse than ever to get Blight of Mages finished. Oh, what a saga. Sigh.  I had a great time catching up with a bunch of people and making a fool of myself on panels. We have some seriously cool people in our business. Everyone stay safe and well, and if I owe you mail or an LJ reply please know I'll get back to you asap.

So I'm off to Worldcon tomorrow. Just caught up with reader mail, then after I've finished packing it's back to Blight of Mages, which continues to kick my arse black and blue. If I could just stop getting sick, that would help. Sigh.  Have spent the most wonderful couple of days with Kate Elliott as a guest. She is the bees' knees, everyone. I loved her work before ever I met her, and it's so exciting to know that she's as fabulous in person as are her stories. I'm reading Cold Magic at the moment, in too-brief snatches, and it's wonderful. I can highly recommend it.

Can't wait to catch up with many wonderful people down in Melbourne. Of course, as has been my fate for a few years now, I'll have to take the laptop and work while I'm there. But I'll be on some panels and making sure to catch a few I'm not on, in between ploughing my way through to the end of Blight. Which is coming along well, don't get me wrong -- it's just the writing of it has turned into a saga all its own. One of these days I'll explicate!

In the meantime, everyone stay safe and well.

Still working on Blight of Mages. This has turned into a serious adventure, well and truly complicated by a major health issue that kind of halted me in my tracks. I seem to have sorted the problem, and work continues, but I'll be exceedingly scarce till after Worldcon next month as I bust a gut to hit deadline.

In the meantime, sad news yesterday with the passing of a truly great and gracious woman. Anyone, particularly in the US, who was around for media fandom pre the internet, and/or who regularly went to MediaWest con in Michigan, knew or at least knew of Susan M Garrett. She's probably best known for her Forever Knight work, but she was active in a lot of media fandoms, writing and publishing zines,  -- plus a professional FK novel -- and nurturing other writers. We crossed paths because of Forever Knight, and she ended up publishing the print version of my FK novel 'Lizard in the Grass' -- first novel I ever wrote! We kind of lost touch, as is wont to happen, but there are some people you never forget, who when you think of them make you smile and laugh. Susan was one of those people.

Apparently not too many people knew she was ill, and she died yesterday, just a couple of days past her birthday.

The world's a poorer place today because she's left us. There is so much nastiness in fandom now, largely because of the internet, where people can be and often are unspeakably, immeasurably hateful while hiding behind a cybername, facing no consequences for their cruelties. Susan stood for a time when fandom was more personal, more generous, and infinitely more pleasant ... for me, at least. She personified everything that was great about being a fan -- passion and enthusiasm and generosity and wit and the willingness to work and work hard, for the sheer love of writing. It was about doing it well, not getting instant kudos via the press of a computer button.

Thanks for the memories, Susan. You were a shining light here, and wherever you are now, you'll be shining brighter than ever.

I recently did another interview with the fabulous team from Star Wars action news. Arnie is a great interviewer, asking really interesting questions that give an author the chance to explore all kinds of issues. It was a pleasure talking with him, and I hope if you have a listen you'll enjoy, and continue to support this site.

You can listen to the podcast here.

 And if you're not tired of hearing me blather, you can go read the guest post I did recently for the lovely Michael of Mad Hatter review.

 If you'd like to win a hardcover copy of The Reluctant Mage, you can find competition details here. My thanks to Fantasy Cafe and Orbit  for the generosity!

I have some prizes up my sleeve too, but can't think about organising details until Blight of Mages is done. It's kicking my arse right now, so that'll be a few weeks.

 This time with my good friend and fellow storyteller, Glenda Larke. You can read her words of wisdom here.

 Tobias Buckell has penned a brave and thought-provoking piece on the pleasures and pitfalls of talking about the writing life. You can read it here. Thanks to Lilith Saintcrow for the heads up.