#WritersCoffeeClub Feb 22—Are there types of settings you avoid writing?
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#WritersCoffeeClub Feb 22—Are there types of settings you avoid writing? Why?
I used to avoid writing truly grimdark settings (I couldn't do more than a couple of stories for Warhammer 40K) but then 50 years of Tories and Brexit happened and I lost my shit completely and the result is the way the Laundry Files went, where death does not necessarily bring escape!
But sympathetic protaonists need at least the illusion of hope, or many of your readers will be too depressed to press on to the end.
@cstross I dislike too much research, so that's historical out of the question unless I heavily fantasy it up.
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#WritersCoffeeClub Feb 22—Are there types of settings you avoid writing? Why?
I used to avoid writing truly grimdark settings (I couldn't do more than a couple of stories for Warhammer 40K) but then 50 years of Tories and Brexit happened and I lost my shit completely and the result is the way the Laundry Files went, where death does not necessarily bring escape!
But sympathetic protaonists need at least the illusion of hope, or many of your readers will be too depressed to press on to the end.
@cstross there are at least two books in the Laundry Files that I haven't re-read for this exact reason, even though I really enjoyed them. I suspect some of it may be to do with when I read them in terms of personal things - maybe I should give them another go...
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#WritersCoffeeClub Feb 22—Are there types of settings you avoid writing? Why?
I used to avoid writing truly grimdark settings (I couldn't do more than a couple of stories for Warhammer 40K) but then 50 years of Tories and Brexit happened and I lost my shit completely and the result is the way the Laundry Files went, where death does not necessarily bring escape!
But sympathetic protaonists need at least the illusion of hope, or many of your readers will be too depressed to press on to the end.
@cstross You wrote stories for 40k?
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@emag It's complete (for now!) and runs to 14 books. Might be a short story collection too, in a couple of years. Spoiler: Bob and Mo survive, but are not unchanged.
@cstross I'm gonna have to get the whole collection. The few books I had were casualties of smoke/water damage back in 2018. And the few were Science Fiction Book Club versions. I did greatly enjoy them, so knowing there are many more, I'm pretty enthusiastic about getting reacquainted with them. I loved the themes especially wrt Eldritch horrors (barely outside my job at the time...)
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@emag It's complete (for now!) and runs to 14 books. Might be a short story collection too, in a couple of years. Spoiler: Bob and Mo survive, but are not unchanged.
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@starchturrets
Same question!
@cstross -
@starchturrets Once. In the late 1980s. Couldn't really stomach it, then got to meet Brian Ansell and had a bad "hell, no!" reaction to all things GW thereafter.
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J Jürgen Hubert shared this topic
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@emag It's complete (for now!) and runs to 14 books. Might be a short story collection too, in a couple of years. Spoiler: Bob and Mo survive, but are not unchanged.
@cstross I now have a decent queue of reading, once I finish the last Elizabeth Bear novel I've been reading. And talking it up, I probably got my wife interested as well. I was low-grade worried I'd be going back to random stuff, after a lot of great reviewed stories that drive my reading habits that have fallen off, so I'm glad there's *so* *much* of the Laundry Files I'd somehow missed.
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@cstross I now have a decent queue of reading, once I finish the last Elizabeth Bear novel I've been reading. And talking it up, I probably got my wife interested as well. I was low-grade worried I'd be going back to random stuff, after a lot of great reviewed stories that drive my reading habits that have fallen off, so I'm glad there's *so* *much* of the Laundry Files I'd somehow missed.
@emag If you missed books after number 7, blame Penguin Random House (they did a ludicrously-bad stack-ranking exercise, looked at the wrong figures, concluded the USA Today bestselling series *wasn't selling*, and shitcanned it). Tor picked it up and continued to publish them, but the break in marketing continuity in 2016 didn't help.
