It is hard to explain how a book begins. Writers have their own vocabularies to make sense of it, sets of metaphors that come close to describing what happens in the authorial brain when a book starts to take shape. When it lights off on a long journey from vague, unconnected ideas to something almost terrifyingly complex, real, and tangible. For some, a book is a child growing within, straining toward birth, for others it is a building painstakingly engineered, for others it is a seed that puts out strange and unpredictable shoots. And for many of us, it is all of those things and none of them, but when an interviewer asks, we have to come up with some image to describe a process that is part puzzle. part translation, and part highwire act, involving not a little bit of sympathetic magic.
May 16, 2012
Dress Your Marines in White
Murder in powdered form. What a life.
May 9, 2012
About Fairies
Some things happen whether or not you clap your hands.
May 3, 2012
At the Foot of the Lighthouse
I am American. We are all Americans.
April 25, 2012
Prophet
Some men are born monsters. Others made so.
May 11 2012 9:00am
Apr 29 2012 12:00pm
Tor.com is celebrating National Poetry Month by featuring science fiction and fantasy poetry from a variety of SFF authors. You’ll find classic works, hidden gems, and new commissions featured on the site throughout the month. Bookmark the Poetry Month index for easy reading.
On this Saturday we’re featuring a new composition from Catherynne M. Valente, “Aquaman and the Duality of Self/Other, America, 1985.”
Apr 21 2012 12:00pm
Tor.com is celebrating National Poetry Month by featuring science fiction and fantasy poetry from a variety of SFF authors. You’ll find classic works, hidden gems, and new commissions featured on the site throughout the month. Bookmark the Poetry Month index for easy reading.
On this Saturday we’re featuring a new composition from Catherynne M. Valente, “What the Dragon Said: A Love Story.”
Apr 2 2012 12:30pm
Tor.com is celebrating National Poetry Month by featuring science fiction and fantasy poetry from a variety of SFF authors. You’ll find classic works, hidden gems, and new commissions featured on the site throughout the month. Bookmark the Poetry Month index for easy reading.
Today we kick off Poetry Month with “Mouse Koan” by Catherynne M. Valente.
Jul 27 2011 9:00am
In which a young girl named Mallow leaves the country for the city, meets a number of Winds, Cats, and handsome folk, sees something dreadful, and engages, much against her will, in Politicks of the most muddled kind.
History is a funny little creature. Do you remember visiting your old Aunt that autumn when the trees shone so very yellow, and how she owned a striped and unsocial cat, quite old and fat and wounded about the ears and whiskers, with a crooked, broken tail? That cat would not come to you no matter how you coaxed and called; it had its own business, thank you, and no time for you. But as the evening wore on, it would come and show some affection or favor to your Aunt, or your Father, or the old end-table with the stack of green coasters on it. You couldn’t predict who that cat might decide to love, or who it might decide to bite. You couldn’t tell what it thought or felt, or how old it might really be, or whether it would one day, miraculously, decide to let you put one hand, very briefly, on its dusty head.
History is like that.
May 10 2011 2:31pm
A long while ago, someone emailed me to tell me that, as much as they wanted to like my work, they just couldn’t read another goddamned fairy tale. It was too much, they said. Everyone’s doing it. There’s no there there. It’s tired and trite and they just couldn’t be part of it anymore. Look at your life, look at your choices. That sort of thing.
Everyone has a right to cry uncle on a genre every once in awhile. I’ve done it myself. Sometimes you just can’t bear another gear or pair of wings or vampire teeth. You go on a fast and sometimes you come back and sometimes you don’t. I get that on a basic level. And there is less than zero chance that folks are going to stop retelling fairy tales any time soon. But I’ll never forget that moment. Not because of the sting of it—though of course it stung—but because I was still in the flush of fairy tale love, so surely everyone else found them as thorny and interesting and worthy as I did. Not everyone does. Which meant it was my responsibility to bring the awesome when I showed up on doorsteps with a retelling in tow. And not just the blue light special fair trade organic 2% milkfat awesome. The real stuff, the mountain to the prophet love it like you stole it cut-the-cream-off-the-top-of-the-glass-bottle awesome. I took it as a challenge.
Jan 20 2011 4:33pm
Deathless is the highly-anticipated new standalone novel by award-winning speculative fiction author Catherynne M. Valente, due out from Tor Books on March 29, 2011. Deathless re-envisions the story of Russian folk figures Koschei the Deathless and Marya Morevna: a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth to life in a stunning new incarnation.
This is a promotional comic Cat and artist Amy Houser did for Arisia 2011; it depicts Marya Morevna's encounter with the household domovoi from Chapter Three of the book, which you can read here (along with, and preceeded by, chapters one and two).
Jan 20 2011 11:06am
Deathless is the highly-anticipated new standalone novel by award-winning speculative fiction author Catherynne M. Valente, due out from Tor Books on March 29, 2011. Deathless re-envisions the story of Russian folk figures Koschei the Deathless and Marya Morevna: a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth to life in a stunning new incarnation.
You can read about the cover art here. Keep an eye on Tor.com for more special previews of this spectacular book.
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Prologue: Don’t Look Behind You
Woodsmoke hung heavy and golden on the shorn wheat, the earth bristling like an old, bald woman. The apple trees had long ago been stripped for kindling; the cherry roots long since dug up and boiled into meal. The sky sagged cold and wan, coughing spatters of phlegmatic sunlight onto the grey and empty farms. The birds had gone, arrows flung forth in invisible skirmishes, always south, always away. Yet three skinny, molting creatures clapped a withered pear branch in their claws, peering down with eyes like rosary beads: a gold-speckled plover, a sharp-billed shrike, and a bony, black-faced rook clutched the greenbark trunk. A wind picked up; it smelled of clover growing through the roof, rust, and old, dry marrow.
Dec 2 2010 8:30am
We hope you enjoy this excerpt of the first three chapters from Catherynne M. Valente’s latest book and the first in the A Dirge For Prester John series, The Habitation of the Blessed, out now from Night Shade Books.
John, priest by the almighty power of God and the might of our Lord Jesus Christ, king of kings and Lord of Lords, to his friend Emanuel, Prince of Constantinople: Greetings, wishing him health, prosperity, and the continuance of divine favor.
Our Majesty has been informed that you hold our Excellency in love and that the report of our greatness has reached you. Moreover, we have heard through our treasurer that you have been pleased to send to us some objects of art and interest that our Exaltedness might be gratified thereby. I have received it in good part, and we have ordered our treasurer to send you some of our articles in return…
Should you desire to learn the greatness and Excellency of our Exaltedness and of the land subject to our scepter, then hear and believe: I, Presbyter Johannes, the Lord of Lords, surpass all under heaven in virtue, in riches, and in power; seventy-two kings pay us tribute… In the three Indies our Magnificence rules, and our land extends beyond India, where rests the body of the holy apostle Thomas. It reaches towards the sunrise over the wastes, and it trends toward deserted Babylon near the Tower of Babel. Seventy-two provinces, of which only a few are Christian, serve us. Each has its own king, but all are tributary to us.
—The Letter of Prester John,
Delivered to Emperor Emanuel Comnenus
Constantinople, 1165
Author Unknown
