#writer: django wexler

[shadow-words]

Book Review: How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler

_Book Review: How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler_ In which Our Protagonist decides to join them since she can't beat them. #fantasy #bookreview

Our Protagonist is a woman named Davi. She has been conscripted via Portal Fantasy into becoming a Chosen Hero. Unfortunately for her, she has also been stuck in a All You Need Is Kill style timeloop which always ends with her horrible death at the hands of the Dark Lord (if she doesn’t do it first). She has suffered through a very high number of deaths for centuries and finally comes to the…

[wearethekat]

19, 10, 7, 2!

19. Favorite old(er) book you read this year

Borders of Infinity (1987) by Lois McMaster Bujold. Moderately cheating since this is a reread and a book club book, but Bujold is my all-time favorite writer and her prose is so good. This is a novella from her long-running Vorkosigan SF series which has won a much justified eight-odd Hugos.

10. Sleeper Hit: Not a book that you have to force into people's hands, but well-executed

The West Passage by Jared Pechacek. I'm obsessed with it and it seems like no one is talking about it. absolutely one of my favorite books of this year, and an utterly original gem of weirdness and monks. Reminded me strongly of Piranesi, also a very good book.

7. Wasted Potential: Great premise and/or characters but fell down on execution

I hate to say it, but Metal From Heaven. It was one of my anticipated new releases for this year (apocalyptic industrial butch revenge narrative, anyone?), but it just didn't work for me. The main character spends most of her time semi-hallucinating, and combined with the heavy, ornate prose, it made ME feel like I was trapped in one of those unpleasant sticky fever dreams. I wanted to like it so much but it was a very unpleasant reading experience.

2. Flops of the year

Escape Velocity by Victor Manibo had a cool concept (murder mystery in a luxury space hotel) but had an unconvincing ending that ruined it. How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying (Django Wexler) had, again, a cool concept (woman who's been trapped in a Chosen One time loop for like 500 years decides to choose evil this time around) but there was hardly any time looping, and the protagonist was one of those people who's constantly making tiresome cheap meme references at poor secondary world fantasy characters who have no idea. (and I say that as someone who enjoyed the memes in Gideon the Ninth).

send me end of the year book asks!

[ihernglass]

Is there a story behind your username?

i keep reading it as 'I hern glass'

Also how many replies to comments is enough? If i comment on your work, would you want me to reply to your comment ? would that be too much?

I found out people don't actually kudos everything they like and got sad, and saw that someone told their daughter to always leave comments after every chapter and noticed how many people actually don't respond to fics at all, so now I'm trying to get into it because I'm used to keeping lowkey (as obvious with the anon [always leaving kudos tho i love the stuff i read, keep lookin at that 'you already left kudos on this work :)' every time )

I don't know how else to show appreciation to all the writers there and yall seem so cool.

hello! thanks for your ask! it’s very thoughtful of you to think about the writers!

there is never “too much” when it comes to writers! any engagement is gobbled up very greedily (unless it’s rude). so long as you have something to say or share about the fic, i (and most writers) would love to hear it, whether it’s a comment or a reply on a comment. tbh even a comment can make my whole entire day, let alone more comments 😂

yeah, fandom has changed a lot in the last decade or so. people used to fight for the first spot to comment on every chapter of a fic (livejournal days), and now i find that even kudos are hard to come by, and comments even rarer. it can be disheartening seeing many subscriptions and private bookmarks and kudos and comments be a fraction of that. and esp. for a long fic, seeing hits go up significantly after each chap with little engagement. so i agree with the note that people (increasingly) do not respond to fics, esp on each chapter (unless you’re a super big author, which I am not!).

but people like you, who’re trying to engage more, and others who engage in whatever way they can, really make a huge difference! kudos’re always appreciated. i know people can feel pressured with the comments they write, but trust me when i say even a short statement like “loved the chap, can’t wait for the next!” is greedily gobbled. and a comment with what one liked (e.g., character, scene, writing style) abt the chap/story is like treasure. and a regular commenter (on each/most chaps) is thought about all the time. there’re times i’ve sat down to write and thought: “do it for xyz (regular commenter), they’re wanting to read the next chap!”

anyway, sorry for the essay 😂 but basically any engagement is showing appreciation. a kudo is already great, but def comments can really convey appreciation a whole lot more!

re: my user, one of my fave book series (shadow campaigns by django wexler) has a sapphic character named winter ihernglass who i loved very much. i think i read it about the same time i got back into fic writing hence the user change! I pronounce it I-hern-glass too lol! idk if it’s correct or not either 😂

thank you again for asking, i do appreciate the thoughts and questions ☺️

[english-mace]

Silk & Steel, aka Sapphics Who Stab

<deep breath>

Alright, friends. It’s been a whirlwind couple of days and I am beyond blown away, but let’s start at the top.

Hello. My name is Macey, and I’m real gay.

So, last July, I saw this picture by artist @al-norton​ on twitter. It was gorgeous. Two ladies, one in uniform threatening the be-gowned high femme with her sword. ‘Wow,’ I said to myself, and the internet, ‘I love them.’ And then, ‘but what if we did an anthology full of weapon sapphics and high femmes tho’.

What if indeed.

You gotta understand, I’ve said that before. ‘What if we did an anthology.’ Of tree ladies. Of bone sorcerers. Of airship pirate wizards. No one ever took me all that seriously, before. (Hello, I am your neighbourhood Type A disaster sapphic. Over-commitment is my middle name ^.^;)

But this time… people liked the idea. A lot.

So we decided to put together a kickstarter. We commissioned the cover art you can see up top, from @artbyalexis​, and checked if Al was okay with us citing her inspiration & buying rights to show her art. And then we asked all those writers who were so stoked on twitter whether they really meant it - figuring that some of them were probably, well, over-excited.

Nope. They meant it. Claire Eliza Bartlett. Aliette de Bodard. K.A. Doore. Jennifer Mace (yup, it’s me!). Freya Marske. Kelly Robson. Nibedita Sen. Django Wexler. JY Yang. All of them. We had a table of contents.

We posted our kickstarter on October 28th, with a modest goal of $6,000 to pay our authors, artists, and editors, and an ambitious $12,000 stretch goal to put on an open call for submissions and pay everyone professional rates. We figured if we started strong, we could maybe get to $6k in the first day or two, and slowly strive for $12k (which I particularly wanted, because we promised ourselves enamel pins at that point!) over the course of the month.

We funded to $12k in 12 hours.

As I write this, 37 hours in, we’re at $20,000. We’re in talks with authors whose names make me pinch myself. We’re working to bring in even more artists, and expand our open call to bring the book up closer to 100,000 words - which would allow for half our content to be from unsolicited writers. (Perhaps writers like you.)

I’m beyond words, I’m so happy. I never expected that stories about queer women - queer women having adventures, stabbing things, wrangling diplomatic missions or running space stations or falling in love over the bones of a dragon - could get this kind of response.

Thank you. All of you, thank you so much. And please consider joining us, and continuing to show the world: stories like this matter, and are wanted, and are beautiful.

[the-hopefulpenguin]

For the fanfic asks <3: Are there any writers that inspire you? / What’s your favorite genre to write for? / First fandom you ever wrote for? / A trope you’ll never, ever write for. / One-shots or multi-chaptered works?

Thanks for the ask! 

Are there any writers that inspire you?

For sure! @wishingforatypewriter does superb Kuvira content and I think they should join the Avatar Studios writing team. @cpericardium writes beautifully and is both exhortation towards and an exemplar of how just being really good at words – never mind a bunch of other stuff – makes for great fiction. maroon_sweater, who I don’t think is on Tumblr, is an inspiration in terms of asperity and crispness; each line hits home really effectively.

In the published book space, RF Kuang is an inspiration for sure – two Masters at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, and doing a PhD at Yale, and an award winning fantasy novelist? At the age of 24? If I was 1/10th as cool I’d be happy. Also, I just really like Django Wexler and everything he does, although not sure if that’s inspirational so much as just being a fanboy.

What’s your favorite genre to write for?

Absolutely SFF, but it gets a bit tricky beyond that because while ‘military’ or ‘war’ would be an easy summary I’ve not and hopefully never will be in a real battle, so I’m always aware when writing combat scenes of that distance from authorial experience. I guess I could be more specific and say ‘geopolitical’ fiction, or some varieties of historical fantasy?

To be honest, not that it’s a genre, but I love worldbuilding – particularly expanding and working within existing properties. If Bryke hit me up with and were like ‘Penguin, we need 300 pages on the history of the Hundred Year War’ I would be very happy.

First fandom you ever wrote for?

Worm/Warhammer 40k crossover! The fic is called ‘The Brockton Crusade’ and it is really bad.

A trope you’ll never, ever write for.

Answered this one in more detail for orange below – but in short; not really into NSFW stuff, and also unlikely to write – but will certainly read - Modern or College AU type stuff.

One-shots or multi-chaptered works?

Multi-chaptered until I die! I like the space to be able to tell a story in a ‘conventional’ first or third person style with lots of scenes and such; although I have admittedly come around to one shots a bit with AO3.

[paulsemel]

With "Siege Of Rage And Ruin," writer Django Wexler is concluding his "Wells Of Sorcery" fantasy trilogy. But this is not the end for Mr. Wexler, as you will see in this new Q&A.

📖⚔️

. . . . . . . . . . . .

[crimsonchaos]

Okay but for real, I know I never really get involved with shipping stuff a ton but Chandra and Nissa are absolutely great together, like they have such a wonderful dynamic. There is absolutely nothing you can tell me that would convince me that they shouldn’t wind up together. WotC needs to get their act together, maybe lock some of them and Greg Weisman in the Prison Realm and make Django Wexler and other better writers more involved with the story writing. Let’s actually start BEING more inclusive with the writing instead of just saying you are and then hiding it in the background or flat-out rejecting it in plain sight after the fact.

Seriously, not that I was particularly excited for the Forsaken novel after the train wreck the WAR novel was, but being told about what happened with Chandra and all the other awful things pretty much made me lose whatever interest I might have had to actually read the book. All the worse that they made people actually pay to read this, not that making it free like the story was for a while would justify the decisions that were apparently made with this one.

[hoard-smelter]

War of the Spark: Spoiler-Free Review

Overall, I really liked the novel and I definitely recommend it to any Vorthos who’s interested in seeing the connective tissue between the story cards. (Though Trusty Pegasus through Prison Realm are some of the BEST card-specific story-telling I’ve ever seen.) Weisman does a good job of getting us through a LOT of story in a way that doesn’t feel rushed or exposition-heavy. Though my personal expectations for the novel were high, compared to some of the novels we’ve dealt with in the past (Quest for Karn, cough cough) War of the Spark knocks it at least to the outfield. Still, there were some parts that I think got left by the wayside.

Good Things First:

All the new characters! I love Teyo and Rat! I love their dynamic together! Teyo’s shield magic is really interesting, and I enjoyed getting to see him grow so rapidly from the ‘worst apprentice’ his Abbot had ever seen to someone who survives the War.

The Gatewatch! I have always been a huge supporter of theirs, both from a narrative standpoint (Magic NEEDS a cast of main characters, and they’re it!!!) and because I love all of them individually. Nissa’s return is Good Shit.

Getting through the boring stuff. Writing a novel in an established setting can be a pain in the ass, especially from the POV of a newcomer like Teyo at least part of the time. Not knowing what to call things, or people, that the reader obviously recognizes can get annoying for both reader and writer, and Weisman knocks this out the window ASAP.

I almost never felt dragged down by the sheer AMOUNT of things that were happening in the story. Though this has its ups and downs, for the most part I understood what was happening in a fairly linear fashion, which clearly was not easy to do.

Annoyances:

On the flip side of that; it was very clear that we were jumping into the middle of a story that had already started. Though Weisman did a good job making sure I was never lost ONCE THIS NOVEL STARTED, I do think they should have release Django Wexler’s stories during or immediately after the Guilds and Allegiances sets. Like the did with Martha Wells during Dominaria!

That old hash aside, there an Avengers: Infinity War level of people to deal with. It’s impoosible to give good character NOTES to everyone visible in this story, let alone good character development. Everyone, even the Big Sacrfice at the end, feels like it happens because the plot needs it to happen, not from organic planning. We also skip most of the planning scenes, understandable when over 20 characters are involved in just dealing out said plans.

I feel that several characters were seriously mischaracterized, again purely in service to the plot. I’ll put some spoiler-y posts out later to discuss those, hopefully.

In short, this novel, though well written, was missing the Heart that brought me in to the Gatewatch’s first formation on Zendikar. Characters act and things happen to move the plot along, and for no other reason. It’s enough to keep me alive on Vorthos juice, for now, but I am going to need (at the VERY LEAST) a more sensible story release schedule going forward.

Closing note: I plan on continuing to play magic for their core characters, and I’m truly interested to see what happens next. I will NOT be pre-ordering the next novel, though. Probably won’t even buy it, but wait for it to come into the local library.

[puddlejumper38]

Book Recommendations?

I asked for recommendations for books by women writers six months ago? Maybe longer. Anyway, I’ve been through that list now. Thank you so much for it, sometimes its nice to get a variety that otherwise I wouldn’t have considered (and goodreads is my main recommendation source so its nice to get ones that aren’t, y’know, computer generated recommendations).

So, uh, the point is, does anyone have any fantasy book recommendations? Any writer, any sub-genre, but particularly books with well-developed characters. I’d really appreciate it :)

Also, I can’t remember who rec’ed The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls but they were both brilliant and I now own them.

And I’m going to stick some of my own recommendations under a cut for anyone who wants them.

- Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe (Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, Warbreaker, Elantris).... not that this is a surprise to anyone who follows me. - The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold - The Dagger and the Coin by Daniel Abraham (5 book series, starting with The Dragon’s Path). - Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (YA fantasy... and fair warning: I didn’t like the sequel. Doesn’t seem to be the popular opinion though) - The Shadow Campaigns by Django Wexler (5 books series, starting with The Thousand Names)

Also I’m reading Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series at the moment and its fantastic so far, but I haven’t read the third book yet.

[tommyshelbytrash]

Tagged Game 🎉✨

Tagged by @aranoburns Thanks darlin’!

Nicknames: Chris

Gender: female

Sign: Pisces 

Height: 5'5"

Time: 10:21pm

Birthday: February 28th

Favorite bands: The Goo Goo Dolls, The Offspring, Breaking Benjamin, The Stanfields, Lord Huron, Tonic

Favorite solo artists: John Rzeznik

Last movie I watched: Dunkirk I think? 

Last Show I watched: Strike Back

When did I create this blog: January 2018

What do I post: Tommy Shelby

What did I last google: images of Culzean castle in Scotland

Other blogs:  Elizadbraunismyguru (main)

Do I get asks: sometimes Nope, but I’m fairly new

Why did I choose this URL: Because I am. 

Following: sideblog so no one :( on my main one: 202

Followers: 151

Average hours of sleep: 8-9

Lucky number: 3

Instrument: I took guitar for about a year

What am I wearing: pajamies

Dream job: Photographer/writer

Favorite food: Don’t really have one

Last book I read: The Infernal Battalion by Django Wexler

favorite fandoms: Peaky Blinders, TOG

tagging: @peakersblindy @londoncharlotte88 @thepurpleandgold @ckare and anyone else who wants to!

[simuran]

And then I see a manic girl with her hair half dyed bright purple and half shaven, whose every other line made me open a dictionary and who is so madly in love with girlfriend, and all I can think about is “Oh god, I love her, I would die for her; I would also die to know why exactly she’s called Quick-Fingered Jack”

And then I see Meroe, who is so kind and compassionate and brave my heart is melting

And then I see...

All I’m saying is that for a male writer Django Wexler sure knows how to write women in a way that targets me specifically.

 I cannot wait to see what new characters he introduces in the sequel!

On the one hand, the Butcher is an awful human being and did her best to kill the main character

On the other, every time she appears in the book my mind goes “bloodthirsty tall Viking lady, hot” and there’s nothing I can (or want to) do about it. Gods, I’m gonna miss her

[notinthenews]

Hidden Depths and Dangerous Waters: Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler

Hidden Depths and Dangerous Waters: Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler

Django Wexler is an accomplished fantasy writer, as evidenced by his epic fantasy series The Shadow Campaigns, as well as his middle grade series, The Forbidden Library. Between those two series, he’s shown that he can write complex, complicated characters of all ages while also tackling larger issues woven around weighty themes such as war, family, love, and more. With his newest novel, Ship of…

[something-ineffable]

A Publicists adventures in Worldcon

I’ve had the pleasure of working at Head of Zeus for coming up to two years now, and one of the things I have most enjoyed during my time at the company has been my induction into the world of science fiction and fantasy as I became at first familiar with, then eventually fan girl of, our science fiction and fantasy list curated by Nicolas Cheetham. In my time here I’ve toured the UK and witnessed J.K.Rowling-level fandom for Cixin Liu, author of The Three-Body Problem, marveled at the mind-blowing wisdom of Ken Liu, and raised one-too-many glasses with A.J. Smith at Fantasy in the Court. But nothing could have prepared me for the weird, wonderful, and incredibly welcoming community at Worldcon.

I’m lucky because I’m familiar with Finland as a country, so my culture shock was limited to the inside of the messekeskus (conference centre) where Worldcon 75 was being held in Helsinki. As I descended the stairs of the bridge the messekeskus faces, I was greeted with signs reading ’Welcome to Worldcon 75’ and flags fluttering in the brilliant August sunshine.

A band of not-so-merry men dressed in furs and smeared in oil, Mad-Max style, worked with smoldering irons creating and selling jewellery outside the entrance. Past me meandered groups of Pokémon, Sherlock and Game of Thrones cosplayers, grinning and giddily reveling in the atmosphere. I joined the registration queue behind a couple of Vulcans grinning ear to pointy ear and collected my pass and gift bag. In it contained two Worldcon ribbons - little did I know at this point in time that others would already be running through the conference centre, collecting numerous ribbons to attach to their lanyards and creating rich tapestries that would hang from their necks like hipster scarves. The atmosphere was electric.

Over the next 5 days I witnessed some brilliant cosplay - my favourite being Arthur Dent, closely followed by a scarily authentic looking Mulder and Scully - and had the pleasure of meeting some lovely, kind and fascinating people.

But, as always for me, the highlight was the absorbing the wisdom of our fascinating authors. Joining me at Worldcon were Ken Liu, author of The Dandelion Dynasty series, the multi award-winning The Paper Menagerie, and editor of Invisible Planets; the aforementioned Cixin Liu, author of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series and The Wandering Earth; Stanley Chen, whose debut novel, The Waste Tide, will be published in 2019 by Head of Zeus; Ada Palmer, author of the Terra Ignota series; Django Wexler, author of The Shadow Campaigns series; and Arthur C. Clarke award-winning writer, Adrian Tchaikovsky, whose novel Dogs of War is out in November.

Panel topics ranged from ‘SFF in Musical Theatre to Translating Science Fiction’, ‘The Cyborg Dog in the Science Fiction canon’ to debates on ‘Who Needs Gender Pronouns?’ As I rushed from talk to talk, my mind over-stimulated and desperately trying to snap enough pictures of our authors or film an Instagram story for our social media, I realised just how important science fiction is at reflecting the modern world. One panel on ‘The Future is Approaching Quickly: SF as an Alternative to Future-Oriented Thinktanks’ discussed the theory that science fiction is doing a better job of proposing solutions to issues that plague our time - climate change, antibiotic resistance, oligarchical power structures - than think tanks are. Name-checked numerous times was our very own Cory Doctorow, whose recent novel Walkaway is set some time in the next century and explores the idea that new Utopian societies can be built on the ashes of a world wrecked by climate change and economic disparity. That this end-game of our western consumer society feels so realistic, so near, is one of the great strengths of Cory’s writing and, although gaining eternal life by uploading ourselves as data to a server feels some way off, his speculations on alternative systems of governance and societal structures could be perceived as feasible and even aspirational.

I also learnt the origin story of our wonderful Chinese science fiction list, whose roots lie with Lu Xun, before the mantle was taken up by Ruhan Zhao and Cixin Liu (both in attendence) whose success now influences the new generation of writers bursting onto the scene - Summer Xia Jia, Qiufan (Stanley) Chen and Hao Jingfang - the latter two of whom are joining the Head of Zeus list in 2019.

The highlight, for me, was a panel on ‘Portrayals of Scientist and Science in SF’, which mercilessly mocked the archetypal scientist characters speckled through the SF canon, including the mad, obsessive Frankenstein, the egotistical and prophetic Ian Malcolm, or the engineer type, played by Bruce Willis, whom Hollywood decides ‘it is easier to teach to become an astronaut, than to teach an astronaut to use a drill’ (my favourite quote of Worldcon, from Adrian Tchaikovsky himself).

But the highlight of this wonderful week of events, networking, meetings and rapidly shovelled-down voileipä, was the Hugo Awards Ceremony. The support from the crowd, peers and fans, for each award-winner was spectacular and heart-warming.

This was not an awards ceremony that had the air of competitiveness or gritted teeth, but one of genuine delight, whooping cheers of celebration and overjoyed speeches full of humour, gratitude and over and over again the appreciation for the support of the ‘community’. The icing on the cake was to be there to see Ada Palmer collect the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer for her debut novel Too Like the Lightning, and to hear her incredibly moving speech about invisible disability. You can watch the video of Ada collecting the award here (apologies for the shaky camera, I was very excited) and read more about her experience of living with invisible disability and collecting the John W. Campbell Award here. It was the perfect climax to an incredible week, the final step of my indoctrination into the SFF community, and a wonderful moment to witness. I can’t wait for Dublin 2019!

[Originally Published on the Head of Zeus website: http://headofzeus.com/article/worldcon-2017-publicists-adventures]

[con-or-bust]

Press Start to Play, ed. Wilson & Adams, signed by Charlie Jane Anders (ARC)

Item Name and Description: an advance reading copy of Press Start to Play, edited by Daniel H. Wilson and John Joseph Adams, donated by Charlie Jane Anders and signed at her story “Rat Catcher’s Yellows.”

Starting Bid: $5.

Shipping: Donated by the author, but being shipped by the poster; I will ship worldwide, but if shipping costs will exceed $10, I will ask for a donation of the difference. Please let me know if you’d like me to estimate costs.

Other Notes:  Description after the cut.

IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS.

You are standing in a room filled with books, faced with a difficult decision. Suddenly, one with a distinctive cover catches your eye. It is a groundbreaking anthology of short stories from award-winning writers and game-industry titans who have embarked on a quest to explore what happens when video games and science fiction collide.

From text-based adventures to first-person shooters, dungeon crawlers to horror games, these twenty-six stories play with our notion of what video games can be—and what they can become—in smart and singular ways. With a foreword from Ernest Cline, bestselling author of Ready Player One, Press Start to Play includes work from: Daniel H. Wilson, Charles Yu, Hiroshi Sakurazaka, S.R. Mastrantone, Charlie Jane Anders, Holly Black, Seanan McGuire, Django Wexler, Nicole Feldringer, Chris Avellone, David Barr Kirtley,T.C. Boyle, Marc Laidlaw, Robin Wasserman, Micky Neilson, Cory Doctorow, Jessica Barber, Chris Kluwe, Marguerite K. Bennett, Rhianna Pratchett, Austin Grossman,  Yoon Ha Lee, Ken Liu, Catherynne M. Valente, Andy Weir, and Hugh Howey.

Your inventory includes keys, a cell phone, and a wallet. What would you like to do?

[yukinojou]

Yuletide letter 2017

Fandoms: Shadow Campaigns, When Christ and His Saints Slept, Machineries of the Empire, Imperial Radch series, Silk (TV).

Dear Yuletide writer,

I like character-driven stories. I’d rather avoid darkfic this year, the world is dark enough.  The things that prevent me from reading a story are animal harm (very triggering for me) and humiliation. I’d also prefer no mutilation, no D/s / alpha/omega / etc dynamics and no non-consent scenarios.

The Shadow Campaigns - Django Wexler (Janus bet Vhalnich)

I love the neuro-atypical parts of Janus's mind - the way he can't quite figure out at times how people work unless it's particular people he knows very well (like Winter). I'd love to see him in everyday situations, distracted by botany or geography or an irritating button after he loses Augustin. If that doesn't suit you, then I'll be happy with anything with Janus, though I'd rather avoid romance.

Plantagenet Cycle - Sharon Kay Penman (Matilda de Boulogne and Willem de Ypres)

Matilda and Willem's unlikely historical teamup was my favourite part of When Christ And His Saints Slept. I'll be happy with anything featuring those two and just about anyone else (though I'd rather avoid Eustace). Some ideas to get you started:

Matilda and Willem teaming up to talk Stephen into something (or out of something)

Willem opening up - he does have so much history to share

Matilda's doubts over taking an active role in the Anarchy, especially since Stephen's claim rested on the inability of a woman to rule and lead armies

I'd actually love any AU - some modern ideas would be corporate takeovers, mafia AU, spy agencies, anything that makes allies out of a mild-mannered lady and a battle-hardened mercenary...

Machineries of the Empire - Yoon Ha Lee (Garach Jedao Shkan, Ajewan Cheris)

I love Jedao's twisted mind to tiny little carrion-glass pieces, and the way Cheris analyses and assimilates and subsumes him while undergoing her own transformation. If you could focus on the interaction between those two, it would be brilliant. The route to the Fortress of Scattered Needles, possibly, with Cheris catching Jedao up on cultural and military developments since the last time he went walkies? Or post-Gambit, Cheris sorting out those pieces in the privacy of her own mind.

Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie (Breq, Seivarden Vendaai)

I'd love some everyday chaos - either missing scenes or post-series. Breq dealing with the absolute headache that is the Conclave would be favourite, because while I suspect she'll try to leave the Republic of Two Systems to some kind of democratic process, she's definitely the public face of the sentient AIs and thus the target for any diplomatic ouvertures from outside Raadchai space. I requested Breq and Seivarden, but apart from maybe Raughd there's not one character I dislike in the whole lot, so any additional appearances welcome.

Silk (TV) (Clive Reader, Martha Costello)

What if Martha didn't lose the baby? (Or if that's not your style, anything else with those two and their complicated relationship...)

Combinations and crossovers:Yes please! 

If you reach for a non-Yuletide fandom, you can check my Tumblr to see if I'm familiar with it. (Out of major fandoms, I've fallen out of Marvel and never got into Stephen Universe or Stargate, for example.)

And if you happen to be familiar with more than one of my requested fandoms, I'd love to see the martial masterminds meet. Jedao complaining to Breq about Remembrances, or Breq enlisting Janus in outthinking Anaander Mianaai - yes please. Mind you, those three in a bar would probably burn down the bar... (Or Matilda enlisting the help of other battle-scarred generals in the Anarchy or an AU equivalent. That would be brilliant.) Mind you, if you have Clive and Martha prosecuting/defending any of this lot, Clive's little blond brain may explode...

[paulsemel]

Looking for some “Star Wars”-infused fantasy? In my new interview with writer Django Wexler, he explains how Darth and co. influenced his new novel, "Ashes Of The Sun."

📖🧙🏻‍♂️

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