{"id":2880,"date":"2015-06-07T08:03:47","date_gmt":"2015-06-07T15:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bestfantasynovel.com\/?p=2880"},"modified":"2015-06-07T08:03:47","modified_gmt":"2015-06-07T15:03:47","slug":"tara-mayas-quickie-check-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/2015\/06\/07\/tara-mayas-quickie-check-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Tara Maya’s Quickie Check In"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nice<\/a><\/p>\n

This week I’ve been working on Mirror, Book 8 in The Unfinished Song, and also on a section of Sworn, Book 10. (There’s a reason; technically the events of the storyline from Sworn antedate the events in Mirror. That’s one of the odd things that happens when the Story Order of events differs from the Chronological Order of events.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, relevant to this month’s theme about Fantasy Romance, check out this\u00a0fun interview<\/a> on fantasy in romance, romance in fantasy, blending genres, Beta heroes, pricing of ebooks and much more!<\/p>\n

Here’s a snippet where Rachel\u00a0discusses her appearance on a panel at the Romantic Times convention:<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 Exactly, and, and it\u2019s so funny, \u2018cause, like, I was sitting, I\u2019d be sitting on a panel, and it\u2019d be, like, you know, really badass-looking chick in tight leather and, like, a dude with abs, and, like, a clinch cover, and then there\u2019s me with powered armor.\u00a0 You know, I, I was, it was very kind of a strange situation, but I really, really loved it, because romance readers are, are some of my favorite readers, because the romance community is so welcoming of other genres, and, like, \u2018cause I, when I put kissing in my military sci-fi, I got a lot of are you sure you want to do this?<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Oh, no, kissing cooties, man!<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 \u2018Cause there\u2019s going to be cooties in your powered armor.<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 You cannot have kissing cooties.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 And, and, but you know what, \u2018cause my readership is about 50\/50 male\/female, and I had very few complaints about the actual romance.\u00a0 I had a couple of complaints from people who either didn\u2019t think it went far enough or thought there was too much, so it was like the amount of romance was in question, but the fact that there was a legitimate romance was just kind of accepted.\u00a0 Like, I didn\u2019t, I didn\u2019t get nearly \u2013 \u2018cause I was, I was girding my loins for, like, the true science fiction author brigade, but no, everyone, everyone was real happy with it.<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 No, it\u2019s, it\u2019s a total, it\u2019s a tonal difference, I think, between science fiction and fantasy communities \u2013<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 \u2013 and the romance community, especially at RT.\u00a0 I remember when John Scalzi was a guest because he was receiving an award, he came to RT \u2013 I want to say it was Kansas City, two years ago \u2013 and wrote a post on his blog about how he realized at some strange moment that he was the only dude in, like, a room of several thousand women.\u00a0 No one asked him for his credentials, no one wanted to quiz him on how much he knew about something.\u00a0 It was like, you\u2019re here, there\u2019s a bar, let\u2019s hang.\u00a0 It\u2019s a completely different kind of interaction from what I know of the two different communities.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 That, that is absolutely true, and, like, \u2018cause I\u2019ve done a lot of sci-fi and fantasy cons, and they are lovely, don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 They\u2019re really fun, they\u2019re really nerdy, and it\u2019s very exciting, \u2018cause I\u2019m also a big sci-fi\/fantasy fan and reader so, again, as a fan, it was very exciting, but there is definitely sort of a geekier-than-thou thing going on, where you\u2019ve got to constantly kind of one-up your geek cred \u2013<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Yep.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 \u2013 whereas at RT it was like, oh, my God, you\u2019re a writer?\u00a0 I\u2019m a writer!\u00a0 What do you write?\u00a0 That\u2019s amazing!\u00a0 Oh, you read romance?\u00a0 I love Regencies!\u00a0 Let\u2019s talk about our favorite Regencies!\u00a0 It was just this really, really warm, welcoming atmosphere, and every, and every interaction I\u2019ve had with the romance community has been like that.<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Yep.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 It\u2019s, it\u2019s just been fantastic, and I, I hang out on romance blogs just \u2018cause they\u2019re freaking fun places to be.\u00a0 I, that\u2019s how I found you!\u00a0 I was a giant reader of Smart Bitches.\u00a0 Back when I had my day job, y\u2019all were, like, my favorite thing to read at work \u2013<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 [Laughs]\n

Rachel:\u00a0 \u2013 and, and I got a bunch of book recommendations from you when I was first getting into romance, \u2018cause I didn\u2019t even read romance until I was out of college.\u00a0 I\u2019d never even \u2013<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Oh, no kidding!<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 Yeah, well, I\u2019d never, I\u2019d \u2013 my parents were big sci-fi\/fantasy nerds, and they didn\u2019t read a lot of romance, and I\u2019d read, like, some Anne McCaffrey, which kind of blurs the line, \u2018cause she\u2019s got a lot of romance in her sci-fi, but I\u2019d never read, like, a Regency, and then one day, I\u2019m like, that sounds really cool, and I picked up, I can\u2019t even remember what the first one was now, but it was, like, a free book, and I just kind of picked it up, and oh, that was the rabbit hole \u2013<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Yep.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 \u2013 let me tell you.\u00a0 Like, couple hundred books later, and, and I love it.\u00a0 I do.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/a><\/p>\n

And don’t forget to check out Rachel Aaron’s latest books, Nice Dragons Finish Last<\/a> and One Good Dragon Deserves Another<\/a>, which are Urban Fantasy:<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Cool!\u00a0 So you mentioned earlier that you were working on dragons \u2013<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 \u2013 which of course is the thing that I like most.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 Yay!<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 What are, what are you working on, book two?<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 I\u2019m working on, I just, I finished the, the second book about a month ago, which is called\u00a0One Good Dragon Deserves Another<\/i>, and \u2013 \u2018cause we got a theme here \u2013<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0\u00a0Nice Dragons Finish Last<\/i>,\u00a0One Good Dragon Deserves Another<\/i>\u00a0\u2013<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Of course.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 Dragon theme, and this book is really fun.\u00a0 It was kind of a bear for me to write because I, I would just, I just had a, I just had a wrong-headed idea about the series and I kept trying to make it work, and it didn\u2019t work, and I can be very stubborn.\u00a0 I kept trying to make it work, and eventually I just had to say, okay, this plot is clearly not working.\u00a0 Let\u2019s back it up and try something totally different \u2013<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0\u00a0 \u2013 and that\u2019s when I fixed it, but it took me a lot longer than it should have because of that.\u00a0 But we\u2019re on, we\u2019re on track now, and I\u2019m very excited about the book.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about sort of \u2013 you know, in the first book, it was all about Julius gets kicked out \u2013 Julius is my nice dragon \u2013 gets kicked out in the middle of Detroit, in the DFZ, which is the Detroit Free Zone, which is ruled by a, by a spirit who has ordered all dragons kill on sight, and his dragon form has been sealed, so he\u2019s stuck as a human without all his powers, and he\u2019s really just \u2013he spends the whole book just desperately trying to survive and keep his head above water \u2013<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 \u2013 and in the second book, he\u2019s really got his feet under him more, and you really start seeing him kind of come into his own, and it\u2019s, the books are, you know, Julius is twenty-four, so he\u2019s, he\u2019s definitely an adult in these books, but they\u2019re really almost a coming-of-age story, \u2018cause Julius was this big slacker.\u00a0 He was, you know, he lived in his, he lived in his mom\u2019s basement of her mountain, basically, and hiding from all of his more powerful siblings, and it\u2019s the story of how this dragon whose motto used to be keep your head down, don\u2019t draw attention, shut up, and hope they go away, started, becomes, starts really coming into his own and standing up for what he believes in, and he is a very nice, nice dragon.\u00a0 He\u2019s a very good person in a world where niceness and goodness are seen as unforgivable weaknesses to be exploited, and so he has to kind of be almost, almost aggressively nice, if that makes sense, and I have a lot of fun with that, \u2018cause I really love, I really love the idea of compassion as a, compassion as a strength, because it gets shown as a weakness so much.<\/p>\n

Sarah:\u00a0 Yep.<\/p>\n

Rachel:\u00a0 And so I loved, I love working with that.\u00a0 And also in this book, the secondary character, Marci, who\u2019s the love interest, \u2018cause there\u2019s a little romance between Julius and Marci, and she\u2019s a mage, she really comes into her own in this book.\u00a0 Marci is just amazing, and she is so too short for this ride, but makes it work.\u00a0 Oh, it was so fun.\u00a0 Her stuff is so fun to write, but this, I mean, it just goes crazy, and, yeah.\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe in, like, small stories.\u00a0 All my stories always get enormous, and, like, not in terms of word count, but in, just in terms of the scale and the scope.\u00a0 I like to go big or go home, and that definitely happened in this novel, Sarah.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to be really fun.<\/p>\n

You can\u00a0listen to the podcast<\/a> or read the transcript<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Buy\u00a0Nice Dragons Finish Last<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0One Good Dragon Deserves Another<\/a>\u00a0by Rachel Aaron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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