This is just a brief post to draw your attention to a series of posts I wrote for Charlie Stross at his blog. I have been wanting to lay out some ideas about martial arts and fighting and their portrayal in fiction, and when Charlie offered me free use of the space I took advantage of his generosity and wrote four posts. Here they are:
Martial arts and the cycle of bullshit
The last post refers specifically to Shadowboxer, which is coming out in October. I will not be doing a ginormous blog tour, but I will be making the occasional guest post here and there over the course of the next several weeks. I also plan to run a few posts here at my own blog in celebration of the book’s release. My publisher have made this free excerpt available if you’d like a preview.
While I am about it, I will draw your attention to the review in Publisher’s Weekly that says: SF author Sullivan (Lightborn) spins a kinetic, violent, and magical tale that makes excellent use of Jade’s hard-edged voice. Sullivan brings to life the beauty of Thailand and the sweat and blood of the gym, infusing them with magic and danger.
I was looking around online and I noticed that someone used the word ‘hype’ with regard to my novel. I have heard this before, earlier in my career when I was young and perceived as an upstart I guess. ‘Hype’. It’s an odd word considering that most of my books have passed so far beneath the radar of popular notice that they faceplowed the sidewalk. If you saw my sales figures you would think me idiotic for continuing to write professionally.
Having poured so much of myself into my novels and then watched most of them attract no more than a glancing notice, it’s quite difficult to take an optimistic view about this one. I am trying. I’ve said before that in my opinion it’s the best thing I’ve written (apart from the book I’m writing now). I don’t know if that statement means anything to anybody but me, but there it is.
Tricia Sullivan 