Writer

Reconciliation is a part of the healing process, but how can there be healing when the wounds are still being inflicted?

I read a lot of history for fun.

As a black woman, I have no particular interest in maintaining the status quo. Why would I? The status quo is harmful; the status quo is significantly racist and sexist and a whole bunch of other things that I think need to change.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

I was raised to be very wary of the police. I was raised to stay away from them unless you absolutely have to. Because they're dangerous.

I've been very happy with Orbit and am thrilled that they're giving me more chances to explore my creative visions.

I tend to write society as I see and understand it.

If you can imagine something, it will be.

I tend to like writing characters that are not typical heroes.

I think the people who believe that works can and always should be divorced from the context are people who have the privilege to do so.

Reconciliations are for after the violence has ended.

I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history.

Any writer kind of who knows what they're doing goes forth and grabs a copy of an issue of something that they want to be published in, or they skim it online. They read what that market has been doing. They see a particular flavor of fiction.

There's a tendency in American thought - maybe elsewhere, but that's the culture I know best - to default to social Darwinism, even though even Darwin noted that's a misapplication of his ideas.

Knowing about authors' beliefs helps you understand how those beliefs influence their writing, and things you thought meant one thing, once you've got enough information about that writer, you suddenly realize mean an entirely different thing. That makes a difference.

Readers seem to really like the fact that what I'm writing is not traditional fantasy.

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period, in writing, practice doing anything unique in writing.

It's human nature that we come in our own flavours, and it doesn't make any sense to write a monochromatic or monocultural story unless you're doing something extremely small - a locked room-style story.

I am a linear thinker in a lot of ways.