Hey there Internets! One of the fun things about being a Carina author is the very strong community I’ve joined–and in particular, the community of Carina authors who write fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance. We’re all on an author blog called Here Be Magic, and I’d like to start introducing you to my fellow writers who post there. Starting today with Tia Nevitt! So y’all grab a chair, raise a jar, and give Tia a listen, won’t you? — Anna
Hi, there. I’m usurping Angela’s blog for a day. With her permission. She actually gave me an account here so I can write up my own blog right here in her site dashboard. I don’t know if that was uber-cool or uber-lazy, but I’ll be returning the favor for her about when her latest book, Valor of the Healer, arrives on my Kindle in April.
In trying to think about what y’all would want to read about, I thought about what Angela and I have in common. Quite a bit, actually:
- we both know our way around webservices, a linux command prompt, and general geek tech.
- we know what muds, mushes and moos are, and how Diablo was a ripoff of a game called nethack.
- we both write.
- we both like fantasies and romances all mashed up together.
- we both have a lot of writer friends.
So I thought I’d write a geeky writer post.
To be a geek is to be somewhat eccentric, and to be just fine with that. Geeks are nerds with aplomb. Nerds were ostracized. Geeks are celebrated.
To be a writer is also to be somewhat eccentric. After all, writers are kind of rare. If you’re not a writer, how many writer friends do you have? Hmm? If you are a writer, how many writer friends do you have, who you did not meet through a writer group of some kind? I can count the number on one hand, and several of those are wannabes who don’t actually write.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Even if you do have writer friends, you probably don’t know it. Writing is very much a closet activity. It’s kind of like being a geek without the cool.
Oh, you think being a writer must be cool? Well, maybe once you’ve been published, but not until then. Here’s how it goes.
Acquaintance: “Oh, you are a writer? Well, what have you published?”
You: “Well, nothing yet.”
Acquaintance: “Oh …”
And the conversation fizzles. And once you’re published? Well then, you’re just trying to sell people something.
I did write a book (or two), but instead of trying to sell you something, I’ll assume you guys are writerly geeks too, and I’ll share some of my favorite writer geeks from history.
Mark Twain
OMG, was he ever a geek. He not only write A Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court, which was a very geeky book to write, but he wrote the steampunky Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective. Plus he wrote an autobiography with strict instructions that they were not to be published until a hundred years after his death, and he actually managed to pull that off. Plus he was born and he died while Halley’s Comet was in the sky.
What a geeky way to go!
Jane Austen
Jane was a bookworm who tested out her novels by reading them aloud to her family. I think most of Jane’s personality shines through in Northanger Abbey, where she puts a spirited defense of the reading of novels into the mouth of her hero, Henry Tilney. It is easy to imagine that Jane’s contemporaries saw the reading of novels as something slightly disreputable in a geeky kind of way, like the playing of role playing games.
Louisa May Alcott
Young Louisa was a writer geek among writer geeks. I had the opportunity to tour one of the Alcott family homes once while in Concord, Massachusetts, which is a literary town that also included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. If you’ve read her book, Little Women, you probably know that she is basically Jo. She was raised by transcendentalists and they lived in a commune for a few years while she was growing up.
Groovy, man.
~*~
I always love to chat with other writerly types, so consider this an invitation to stop by my blog. You’ll find some other geeky writers there as well.
Till then, a question for you. I tend to think that every girl’s got a little geek. What is your geeky proclivity? I’ll be by after work tonight to read and share as well.