Every June, Locus Magazine descends on Seattle for a weekend celebrating science fiction and fantasy.
Last year, in addition to getting to hang out with some pretty amazing authors: Corry L. Lee (Weave the Lightning), Tiffany Trent (Underwater Ballroom Society), and Amal El-Motar (This is How You Lose the Time War, with Max Gladstone) I got to be on a really great panel on the mechanics of magical systems with, Tiffany, C.L. Polk (Witchmark), Tina Connolly (Ironskin) and Mary Robinette Kowal (The Lady Astronauts).
I’ve always thought of myself as someone who outlines pretty religiously, but I realized that when it comes to magic, I’m definitely a “pantser”: I make a lot of it up as I go along, and fix the rules in revisions.
“I plot my plot and pants my magic….”
Things that tumbled out of my mouth on the “Mechanics of Magic” panel during the 2019 Locus Awards weekend.
The magic underlying the world of Death’s Dancer was built on a single idea: that humans could use dance to communicate with gods. Everything else–werewolves, witches, shifters, grace blood, came as I started developing the characters and the rest of the plot.
The winners were announced at the luncheon. For the full list see Locus Magazine.
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*summertime is here, and since I’ll be doing a lot less travel, I thought it would be fun to look back over some last summer adventures that I neglected to post!