'Welcome' post

[lizwilliams]

New people on the f-list, I note, and do feel free to introduce yourselves, re-introduce yourselves, or simply lurk, as you wish.

This LJ is a mix of writing, witchcraft, cats, horses and dogs, occasional rants, gardening, digital radio, and weird shit. My life, in short.

You're most welcome.

Comments

[cyphomandra.livejournal.com]

My lj is supposed to act as a writing record/aid, although at the moment it's largely being used to log the vast number of books I seem unable to stop reading. I hoped linking to writers I like would inspire me or, at worst, keep me updated on new publications...

I read Ghost Sister some years ago and really liked the world-building, but hadn't read anything else of yours until I picked up Snake Agent fairly recently (on the rather shallow basis that the concept sounded interesting and the cover was gorgeous!). Anyway, I loved the story, the world and the characters (especially Chen - I'm very fond of low-key, competent heroes with a inconvenient sense of morality - but also, predictably, the badger-teakettle), and have since been working through your backlist as well as developing a rather expensive relationship with Night Shade Books.

I do hope this isn't too impertinent a question. I really loved the humour in your Inspector Chen books, but it's a broadening in tone from your other novels (I think someone in Darkland describes Vali as "serious-minded", which fits a lot of the other protagonists in the ones I've read). The tone in the Chen books, though, seems to fit better with the way you come across in this lj, for example in the stories about Sid (and, not to leave them out, the other nonhuman household members). I wondered to what degree the lack of comedy in the other books was a deliberate choice.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

(Sorry to take so long to reply to this!)

The lack of comedy is usually a deliberate choice in that I tend to be addressing fairly serious themes (some writers - Iain Banks, for instance - can do both at the same time but it doesn't quite fit with my style of writing). The Chen books are written in a way that is closer to (I think!) my basic personality - I'm not a particularly sombre person!

Sometimes things do creep in - I intended some of BANNER OF SOULS to be amusing, ditto EMPIRE OF BONES, and this prompted some reviewers to wonder whether I realised I was being funny (!). I have quite a dry, British sense of humour sometimes and I think this throws people.