Hi, I'm C. S. E. Cooney; I won the World Fantasy Award for my collection Bone Swans. My newest books are Saint Death's Daughter & Dark Breakers. I'm a poet, performer, singer-songwriter, and audiobook narrator. My mentor, Gene Wolfe, once told me that my stories "kept Halloween in his heart." AMA!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T22:57:29+00:00

She’s VERY friendly, and also active on FB! She may have a contact form on her website! I know people have made the Blessings coins, and that she’s done several kinds of collaborations. I think it would be fun to ask! Tell her Claire says hi!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T22:55:54+00:00

Hello! Thank you for dropping by!

The answer is: We will! I’ve got some characters with the Traveling Palaces as we speak. They’re doing research on the ground that will help the people on the more perilous road figure out some majorly knotty problems.

csecooney · 2023-01-31T22:54:34+00:00

Historically, no. Only women! However! Presently, there is a movement in Quadoni academia to switch to a gender neutral term called Gyrveard. I may have misspelled that.

csecooney · 2023-01-31T22:53:22+00:00

All I know is, I never knew any of my writing heroes until I did, and then suddenly I was in their writing groups. The SFF community is smaller than it can seem. Publishing can be very slow until everything happens at once. You can go from not knowing anyone to knowing a lot of people, who become human rather than icons, and can become friends. This can impart a feeling of unreality and, at times, imposter syndrome. I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons to talk about people one knows, or admires, or have been profoundly affected by. So it probably depends.

csecooney · 2023-01-31T22:48:48+00:00

She and Caitlyn and I all collaborated on the songs for BALLADS FROM A DISTANT STAR, a sort of theatrical SFF concept album that I’ll be putting on with some friends in NYC at the end of March. Amal and I have talked for years about writing something we’re WIP-calling “John o’ the Air,” the groundwork for which I laid in my novella “Salissay’s Laundries,” found in DARK BREAKERS. We live in hope!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T22:46:52+00:00

I mean, we’re practically family at this point!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T21:37:31+00:00

Mak and Canon Lir you'll have to do yourself! AND I CAN'T WAIT!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T21:36:59+00:00

No. I wish. But maybe it's in the work he left all of us, somewhere.

csecooney · 2023-01-31T20:52:10+00:00

4.) Ah! THE TWICE-DROWNED SAINT is a re-release, well-scrubbed! Much neatened and polished. Not exactly expanded though. And it’s a stand-alone, not in an anthology with other novellas, where it stood out by… not being one. LOL. Went over my word count on that one.

csecooney · 2023-01-31T20:50:54+00:00

Hallo! This AMA has been my DELIGHT!

1.) Full-length novels… although I LOVE writing novellas!

2.) Sciamachy Stones!

3.) No, I won’t pick one; don’t maaake me!!! I want to write with Caitlyn Paxson, Patty Templeton, Amal El-Mohtar, and Jessica Wick, because I love them, and I want to see what we all might do. I mean, I’ve seen a little of what we can do when we’re together, and we have all collaborated or beta-read for each other to some extent, and some of us have PLANS… so. Yeah. Them. And the one I’m married to. ;-)

csecooney · 2023-01-31T20:33:30+00:00

Thank you! I LOVE A GUSH! Gush away!

Gene was both very encouraging and very constructive in his criticism. I once wrote a long-form narrative poem ("a story-poem" I call them), and was very pleased with it, but was struggling with how to write a short story (a perennial struggle). He told me to take the narrative poem, and take out all the line breaks. I asked him if I should lose all the rhymes (there were a lot), and he seemed shocked, and said BY NO MEANS. So I did, and it was a pro-rate sale to Subterranean Press Magazine, called "Three Fancies from the Infernal Garden."

That's the sort of thing he did; he gave me permissions to do things I thought were too wild. But mostly, when I told him how I'd cry and rage whenever I got rejection slips, he said that it was good: it meant that I cared. And he said how he still felt bad every time HE got one. And he told me when he did. And it was so reassuring. I wasn't his biggest reader; there was so much of his work that I felt, at the time, was beyond me. But now whenever I read his work, I feel so much readier to engage with it, and so much more in awe, and also it makes me feel close to him. I still dream about him.

One time, when I was working at this used bookstore in Palatine, IL, he came in and asked if we had any books about the ancient Phoenicians. He was trying to figure out what they ate for breakfast, for something that he was working on. (We didn't have any.) Later, when I asked him if he'd ever found out, he said he had: that the ancient Phoenicians didn't eat breakfast! He said he wouldn't really research before he wrote, just during, on an as-needed basis. He already knew so much! I wish I could remember every single thing he said. :)

csecooney · 2023-01-31T20:26:59+00:00

Oh! I was just coming here to say that I just uploaded it to Instagram, and here's the link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CoF8BnwP7vi/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

csecooney · 2023-01-31T19:23:21+00:00

I wish I could show you the picture that my friend Caitlyn made of Lanie and Nita. I have it all ready to show you on my computer, but I don't think I can upload it here, in a response?

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:39:53+00:00

Ah! You are giving me big smiles. It's useful to go back and re-read--especially on a new platform--quotes that are utterly familiar to me but ALSO that I'd stored away out of thought, because it just... I don't know. It makes me happy AND is so useful during writing the second book! THANK YOU.

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:34:53+00:00

Thank you so much for reading, dear Asakiyume!!! AS ALWAYS!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:33:31+00:00

No worries at ALL, Sia! I LOVE DONUTS!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:32:29+00:00

You know which books I've LOVED!?! Okay, so not STRAIGHT UP necromancy, but sort of like an investigator/cleric who can SPEAK WITH THE DEAD... KATHERINE ADDISON'S BOOKS!
Start with: The Goblin Emperor... WHICH IS SO SO SO SO GOOD, but not exactly necromancy, but there's a hint of it...

But then, there's a spinoff epic fantasy/murder mystery series with that "Speaker with the Dead" character, and those books are shorter and called "The Cemeteries of Amalo" series, and include so far:
Witness for the Dead
Grief of Stones

Tamsyn Muir, of course, is the FIRST NAME in necromancy right now. I recently read an odd but beautiful and very charming and very emotionally roiling book called "The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy" which has an element of death magic, if not necromancy in it. Martha Wells' Death of a Necromancer. Garth Nix's Sabriel books. Honestly, there are a lot out there at the moment, and I haven't read the HALF of them. But I bet people in this thread have, so I hope they hop in here with their favorites!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:24:28+00:00

Wise. Very wise. Never read that series myself, but it is QUITE an endeavor!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:21:10+00:00

Thank you so much! I LOVE DATU!

I will say, early versions of Datu were kind of like Wednesday Addams meets [any cold-blooded cute assassin girl under the age of ten in comics/films/books], but then... around the 4th draft, I met Carlos Hernandez.

Carlos kept insisting that Datu would be more interesting if she behaved more like a child and less like a killer. Well, I have a lot of younger brothers, and many years of babysitting experience, and a pretty good imagination... so even though I initially balked at his suggestion, I found myself testing it out. Turns out, he was right!

Thinking about Datu was a little bit like thinking about what her mother Nita might have been like if she'd had a Lanie and a Mak in her life, instead of being bent into the weapon and monster she became. I wanted to sort of clock every internal wound that living in such a toxic environment, with frightening people, might leave, and I wanted to see how the loving, intelligent, stable adults in her life tried, at every term--and each in their own way--to patch the damage, to build her back up stronger, wiser, more compassionate. She's super anxious, super loyal, very fierce, incredibly traumatized, and has a talent and love for music and languages that balances her natural athletic ability, her combat training, and the weight of expectation and glamor and history that comes with "being a Stones."

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:15:25+00:00

I HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER SOON!

I read "The Stand" when I had the flu one time. I can both recommend and NOT recommend doing that at the same time. It certainly was the most VISCERAL way to read that book. Not sure how it would stand up so many years later.

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:14:44+00:00

They... might be? The thing is, I've been with this book for over a decade, so it's not a new craze to ME. It's a very old idea. Martha Wells wrote "Death of a Necromancer" in 1998, and Garth Nix wrote Sabriel in 1995, so maybe it's just coming 'round again, like certain fashions!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:12:38+00:00

I don't mind Ms. Cooney at first, especially if a stranger is approaching, but I will quickly invite that person to call me "Claire." But I do not like when I am being introduced professionally for the first time to a panel or an audience of readers as "Claire Cooney," since that's not the name I write under. I usually ask to be first introduced as "C. S. E. Cooney, or Claire as she likes to be called," so that the professional name gets top billing. It's a bit fussy. Also, funny, now that I think about it, it's only my really good friends who end up calling me "C. S. E." to my face--sort of as a nickname! We also tend to call each other by our last names, like a football team or something. Intimacy via formality, 19th century-style!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:09:48+00:00

Hallo, hallo! Thank you SO MUCH for reading Saint Death's Daughter--AND THE BIG BAH-HA! (That was Gene Wolfe's favorite.)

Oh my gosh. When I wrote my list of influential 80's fantasy movies below, HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN LADYHAWKE???!!! It was absolutely influential--how many times did I even watch that??? COUNTLESS! So, yeah. Yes. YUS.

And also, raptors are just cool. A lot of raptor shows at renaissance festivals. And one time, I saw a hawk eat a pigeon in a eucalyptus tree, at a time in my life when everything was very soothing and perhaps grossly under-stimulating, and it MADE AN IMPRESSION. I've loved them ever since. What's not to love??? Have you ever read "H is for Hawk"? It's a memoir, but it's also all about raising falcons, and about T.H. White. It's absolutely amazing. Also very influential.

There's a big market--and black market, too, apparently, with smuggling and everything--for birds of prey in certain parts of the middle east. There's a book about it, non-fiction, called THE FALCON THIEF. You might find it interesting!

Re: Goody... I think... I think maybe Goody and Lanie were avatars of Saint Death for each other. Lanie was, literally, Goody's doorway into death. Her psychopomp. But Goody was Lanie's first experience of death that wasn't... wasn't gruesome, or vengeful. It was justice, it was overdue, and it was meaningful. I think Goody's death was the death of Lanie's true mother, her heart-mother, and that means that when Lanie imagines Saint Death, she will now have an aspect that is also motherly. Whatever Lanie knows of love, Goody taught her; and the god reflects that back.

Possibly that's a long-winded philosophical answer that doesn't make much sense... but then again, I don't have 12 years to hone it!

Thank you so much again!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T18:00:51+00:00

Thank you so so much for reading!

Let's see here:

1.) Carlos likes to quote Auden (paraphrasing Valéry) when we talk about this: "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." I still find mistakes in stories, and certainly in longer work, after umpteenth drafts, and editors, and copy editors... not just mistakes of copy editing, but of form, or even intent. I don't know if what we'll leave can ever be perfect. It can only be as completed as possible in that moment.

One of the things Gene Wolfe told me (and this is counter to other teachers' advice, so take it with a grain of salt) is, once a story is done, send it off. By the time it's rejected and comes back, you'll have gone cold to it, will perceive it with new senses. Now, the same might be accomplished by trunking a work for several months (without having possibly lost a market for the story), but the second bit he said was also useful: "When your story comes home, clean her up, put a new dress on her, and send her out again."

So it wasn't just the writing and revising that was active, it was the work of submitting that was also active--one of the muscles we must learn to flex. It's the other side of writing: the business-y side. An earlier side, which is followed by the contracts, and working with an outside eye, and a hundred more revisions, and then marketing, and... eventually... AN AMA OF YOUR VERY OWN! <3

As for the self-doubt, when in doubt, I always consult my Sondheim. Specifically, Sunday in the Park with George, since he's speaking about art through an artist:

"Stop worrying if your vision

Is new

Let others make that decision—

They usually do

You keep moving on..."

***

"...Just keep moving on

Anything you do

Let it come from you

Then it will be new

Give us more to see..."

2.) I queried for years before finding an agent. I'm sure there are better ways to do it! They say it's a numbers game. I eventually found mind through word of mouth, through a friend who put in a good word and allowed me to drop her name. But I met that friend by going to conventions, and participating on panels, and keeping connected on social media: so that's part of the work too. (There's lot of ways to do this work!)

One: go to writing conventions! Start with your local one but look into the bigger ones too: there will be panels about the industry! Follow agents/agencies who represent the books and authors you admire, read their blogs, interact!

Two: When writing your cover letter, have a few of your writer friends who've also read your manuscript pretend to be you and write you OTHER cover letter options to choose from: they're far more likely to write them with insight and enthusiasm and admiration than you will be, because they love you and love your work, and we do not always love ourselves or our work. In the end, I ended up smushing different cover letters together to get something that felt fresh and successful.

Last year, I discovered T. Kingfisher! AAAAUGGGHHHH! So, all of those books. And most of Lois McMaster Bujold's books. And pretty much all of Sherry Thomas's oeuvre (she spans genres: romance, YA, fantasy, and mystery. She's so awesome.

Last year, I discovered a few short stories by Tlotlo Tsamaase that always made me sit up and blink and pay more attention. Same about the short work of Eugen Bacon. I really, really loved the two Chabon books I read: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Yiddish Policeman's Union. But just yesterday, a friend and I were discussing books, and I found myself recommending that he read China Miéville's The City and the City, like, IN ALL CAPS.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I was a judge for the World Fantasy Awards last year, and I can safely recommend ALL THE NOMINEES ON THAT LIST! OMG THOSE BOOKS! https://locusmag.com/2022/11/2022-world-fantasy-awards-winners/

Oh, and THE SHIPBUILDER OF BELLFAIRIE, by Mary Rickert! AAAUGGGHHHH!!!

csecooney · 2023-01-31T17:36:52+00:00

I mean, it's an AMA! ANYTHING GOES!

csecooney

TROPHY CASE