About Me
| Display Name | Marie Brennan |
| Twitter Handle | @swan_tower |
| Website |
What's New
| My Progress | (6/29) One week down, and things are going well! I haven’t started revisions on Night Parade yet because that’s waiting on my editor, but Alyc and I have done a little over 8K so far on the second Rook and Rose book. And I’ve already completed one short story, “999 Swords”!
(7/6) Good news! I was about halfway through a second short story when a new idea mugged me out of nowhere; it went from concept to draft in about twenty-four hours flat. That’s “Oak Apple Night,” and it was followed very rapidly by me finishing the thing in progress, “This Living Hand.” Both of those are Onyx Court stories — and they put me up to three finished stories so far this write-a-thon, when my goal was only two! I’m not going to rest on my laurels, though; there’s at least one other story I’d very much like to finish this month, and I think that should be eminently possible. As for the other two goals, Alyc and I have done about 19K now on the second Rook and Rose book, but I’m still awaiting editorial notes on Night Parade.
(7/21) I’ve been failing to update here, but that’s because I’ve been chugging steadily along on my goals! Alyc and I have now passed the 40K I was aiming for during the write-a-thon (which was always a conservative goal, but because I’m working with someone else, I decided not to shoot for the moon). And I’ve received my edit letter for Night Parade; so far I’ve gone through the whole manuscript doing the smaller fixes. There are still some larger things to be done, but I have confidence they won’t take me too long.
(7/27) Home stretch . . . Alyc and I are up to nearly 55K for the second Rook and Rose book, and will probably hit 60K before the write-a-thon is done, nicely paralleling the three instead of two short stories I’ve written. I’m not at all sure I’ll finish the Night Parade revisions by the end of the month, though, because my edit letter came in much later than I expected (by about three to four weeks), leaving me much less time than I originally estimated. I will certainly have the bulk of it done, though! |
What I Write
| Writing Sample | The street opened up into the punishing brightness of a sunlit plaza. It was too near to noon for there to be much shade; she’d have to stand directly under a trader’s awning, and then they would want her to buy a hundred things she couldn’t afford. Linen dyed sky-blue, bangles for her wrists, fresh melon brought from the farms upriver. Yachay shaded her eyes with one hand and struck out across the dust-hard ground, murmuring apologies when her narrowed vision caused her to bump into someone. It was a relief to attain the dubious safety of the rickety wooden steps leading up to Ach Rikhu’s shop, perched on the flat roof above a potter’s. |
| What I Write | I’m a fantasy novelist and short story writer, and also a freelance game writer. |
| Publications | Marie Brennan is a former anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to the short novel Driftwood and Turning Darkness Into Light, a sequel to the Hugo Award-nominated Victorian adventure series The Memoirs of Lady Trent. She is the author of several other series, over sixty short stories, and the New Worlds series of worldbuilding guides; as half of M.A. Carrick, she has written The Mask of Mirrors, first in the Rook and Rose trilogy. For more information, visit Swan Tower, Twitter, or her Patreon. |
My Write-a-thon Goals
| Writing Goals | Novel drafting: 40,000 words on the second Rook and Rose book (co-writing with Alyc Helms) Novel revision: The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons Short stories: complete two |