#Author: Lucy Hounsom

[crackinthecup]

@mossquitoman cheers for the tag <3

An estimate of how many physical books I own:

Around 200, give or take.

Favorite author:

Good ol’ Jirt.

A popular book I've never read and never intend to read:

A series rather than one book but I’ve never read A Song of Ice and Fire.

A popular book I thought was just meh:

Not sure how popular it is but I read the Starborn series by Lucy Hounsom not too long ago and I enjoyed many things about it but some things also rubbed me up the wrong way.

Longest book I own:

I’ve got the three-book edition of The Histories of Middle-earth, and I’m assuming one of them is probably the longest book I own. Either that or maybe Perdido Street Station by China Miéville.

Longest series I own all the books to:

Definitely the Histories!

Prettiest book I own:

My LotR books! I’ve got a clothbound hardback edition of the trilogy with the spines slotting together into the White Tree of Gondor.

A book or series I wish more people knew about:

The Ketty Jay series by Chris Wooding is about space pirates and it’s very well written and very fun with an incredible cast of characters and not many people seem to have read it, sadly.

Book I'm reading now:

More like three books I’m reading now haha. Lirael by Garth Nix, The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher, and Phantom by Susan Kay (technically a re-read as I’ve had a resurgence of my teenage love for Phantom of the Opera).

Book that's been on my TBR list for a while but I still haven't got around to it:

My partner has been telling me I should read the Bartimaeus series for literal years now oops. I’ll get round to it eventually!

Do you have any books in a language other than English:

Not where I currently live, I don’t think.

And lastly, paperback, hardcover or ebook?

Ebooks, for the convenience. I like to read in bed at night and on the tube/train, and I find it a lot easier if I don’t have to wrangle a physical book.

Tagging @antares0606 @alackofghosts @andtheirlovewasrenewed @mirkwood-hr-department @elevenelvenswords (if you fancy!)

#meme things

[thedinosaurprince]

Lucy Hounsom Interview – Worldmaker

Lucy Hounsom Interview – Worldmaker

Lucy Hounsom Interview – Worldmaker

Our latest interview for the Writers of Fantasy podcast is with Lucy Houndsom. She is the author of the Worldmaker series as well as a co-host of the amazing podcast Breaking the Glass Slipper.

There were some technical difficulties with my microphone, but Lucy’s is fine and that’s what matters. We talked about representation of disabilities in fantasy,…

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#audio #author #authors #books #breaking the glass slipper #fantasy #feminism #interviews #lucy hounsom #podcast #publishing #writing

[seeingorange]

Review: Sistersong by Lucy Holland

One of the most anticipated books of 2021, Sistersong is the retelling of the folk ballad ‘The Twa Sisters’. However, author Lucy Holland (also known as Lucy Hounsom) doesn’t just give us a straightforward retelling of a simple folktale; she builds a complex ancient world laced with magic and mystery. The three siblings at the centre of the novel, and who’s alternating perspectives we see the…

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[phsolomon]

Author Spotlight – Lucy Holland (SISTERSONG)

Author Spotlight – Lucy Holland (SISTERSONG)

Lucy Hounsom is the author of The Worldmaker Trilogy. Her first book, STARBORN, was shortlisted in the 2016 Gemmell Awards for Best Fantasy Debut. Her fourth book, SISTERSONG, a reimagining of the folk tale ‘The Twa Sisters’ is set in Devon and is published by Pan Macmillan in 2021. She works for Waterstones Booksellers […]Author Spotlight – Lucy Holland (SISTERSONG) Interesting book..

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[bang2write]

I was lucky enough to meet fantasy author Lucy Hounsom at the recent Tiverton Literary Festival in my hometown in Devon. She spoke so well about the genre on her panel, I thought you Bang2writers would like hear some of her top tips as well. Enjoy! Over to you, Lucy … Although the same general… Read More »Writing Fantasy: 10 Dos And Don’ts

[howlsmovinglibrary]

It’s Research! (Or, why it’s totally ok to play Dragon Age for 100+ hours when you should be writing) - Nine Worlds Convention Panel Write Up

Ok, so I haven’t really done a post like this before, but this panel that I attended at Nine Worlds actually made me feel so much better as a writer, so I wanted to share it!

Basically, four successfully published authors - Taran Matharu (The Summoner series), Vic James (Gilded Cage), Jen Williams (The Copper Promise), and Lucy Hounsom (Starborn) - discussed how entirely unproductive and prone to procrastination they all were, even after becoming serious authors, and how it was *utterly fine* to not be churning out novels at the rate of Brandon Sanderson.

If you’ve ever failed a Nanowrimo goal, or ended up on tumblr rather than working on your WIP (not that that relates to me in *any way* at this exact moment in time), I promise you what you are about to read will make you feel a million times better!!

Basically, the panel began by explaining what their average work day and daily word counts were, which were as follows: 

Lucy Hounsom: starts work at around 10am and never works past 2pm, averages around 1,000 words a day, writes three days a week and works in a bookshop for the other four. On a work day, she doesn’t write *anything*.

Jen Williams: works a full 9-5, 5 day working week, and the only full day of writing happens on a Saturday. She spends most of Saturday on twitter and facebook. She will write on evenings for about 1.5 hrs a night.

Taran Matharu: was the only full time author on the panel - by which he means he doesn’t write anything until around 3 months before the deadline, where he panicks and somehow scrabbles a book together. Most days he falls down research holes or plays video games, and only actually writes for about 1-2 hours a day. He makes up for this by averaging around 1,000 words an hour.

Vic James: when she worked full time, she got up at 5am and wrote for 1 hr every morning. She would average 1,000 words an hour. Now that she mostly writes full time, she still only gets 1,000 words done, in a day, because of how much she procrastinates.

TL;DR: all four authors didn’t do much more than 1,000 words, or 2 hours of writing, on an average day. 

That’s less than Nano asks you to do. I’ve done that on Nano days and felt worthless, because it falls just short of where you ‘need’ to be. It was really nice to here ‘real’ authors talk  about how they genuinely couldn’t write much more than that in a day of work, or about how they had to make do with just an hour or two of writing around a full time working day, and yet had still managed to finish and publish that first novel. A lot of talks about writing that I go to at conventions or writing groups always leave me feeling anxious, like I’m not doing enough - this panel did the exact opposite. I was doing just as much, if not, on a good day, technically more, than they were. I just wasn’t sustaining it, because Imposter Syndrome always hits around a month into ‘not writing enough’ each day.

The tips they had for fitting writing around full time work or study were:

Try to do a bit of work at lunch or on commutes, etc. This didn’t necessarily have to be actual writing, but you could work on planning and outlining what you were planning to write later, so that your writing time is explicitly *just* writing.

Jen Williams said she had to go to her desk straight away when she got home, otherwise she ran out of steam. If she felt like she was still ‘working’, rather than relaxing first and then having to build up the energy again, she just never got anything done (I’m writing this dangerously close to bed, so this may not be a hard or fast rule....)

You must give yourself permission to take your writing seriously. If you keep thinking your WIP is ‘not worth’ sitting down to do, or potentially sacrificing some of your social life for, you’ll never get it done.

Finish mid-sentence, or mid-scene. It forces you to keep up a rhythm of daily practice, because otherwise you’ll know for certain that you’ll forget where you were. Plus it stops you from staring at the blank page at a start of a chapter, utterly daunted and out of ideas. You just continue the obvious trajectory of the sentence.

I’ve already started planning at lunch times, and it feels awesome! I don’t like writing on my lunch break because I have a desk job, so it doesn’t feel like a break, but a few handwritten notes on what I’m planning to write is much more lowkey.

So yeah. They were a super interesting panel, and all just seemed really relatable and ‘normal’. I look at a writer like Brandon Sanderson, with his 3 books a year standard, or people like Marissa Meyer, who basically doubled her Nano goal when writing the first Lunar Chronicle, and it feels so unattainable. I’m out of the house from 8.30am-6pm standard, and that’s without taking any social events into account. I spend my entire day at a computer already, and have carpal tunnel, so my arms ache after an intense after-work writing sesh. Maybe one day I’ll be a full-time author (lol) and be able to write more than a couple of thousand words a day, but right now that’s just not something I can achieve. So it was nice to hear from authors who work with similar constraints, and procrastination problems.

But the title of the panel mentions video games! What about video games?

No fear! There was some video game chat.

Lucy Hounsom has sunk over 100+ hours into Skyrim. One of the scenes in the final book of her trilogy is based mostly on the Staff of Magnus dungeon quest in the Mage Faction plot line.

Taran Matharu’s magic system is based pretty heavily on video gaming (given all the ‘level’ and ‘mana’ stuff, this is not entirely surprising.)

Dragon Age was what got Jen Williams interested in fantasy, because it showed her that traditional fantasy settings could include diverse characters.

And, because I asked the question....

Lucy Hounsom’s favourite Bioware romance is Anders from Dragon Age II.

Jen Williams went through the standard break up conga line across the trilogy - she romanced Alistair in Origins (not as a human noble), then Fenris in II, and Solas in Inquisition.

Anyway, this is now over 1000 words, which means I’ve written just as much as four successfully published authors would’ve done in the same amount of time. To everyone who feels like they’ll never finish their WIP, whether it be because of work and procrastination, just remember that it *is* possible, even if you sink more hours into gaming than you do into your book.

#Nine Worlds #writing advice #nine worlds 2017 #panel write up #writing #writeblr #jen williams #lucy hounsom #taran matharu #vic james #procrastination #am writing #should be writing #dragon age #(sort of)

[pers-books]

#fallforbooksmugglers Day 24: YA SFF Pick It's not cheating if it's only 2 authors, right? 😉 Naomi Novik, after her immensely successful Temeraire series (alternate history featuring dragons fighting alongside humans during the Napoleonic Wars, for those who are unfamiliar), has written 2 YA novels inspired by the folk/fairytales of Eastern Europe. Both are compelling reading featuring engaging characters, led by determined young women. Then there's Lucy Hounsom's Worldmaker trilogy, a secondary world fantasy series featuring an equally determined young woman who also happens to be an untrained, but immensely powerful magic wielder such as her world hhas not seen for a very long time. Excellent worldbuilding, compelling characters, and edge-of-your-seat drama abound. #bookstagram #lucyhounsom #naominovik #yafantasy https://www.instagram.com/p/BpTdn2Rlyds/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=5li4gzhtm5kw

#fallforbooksmugglers #bookstagram #lucyhounsom #naominovik #yafantasy

[popverse]

Heartland: You won’t know you’re dead until you hit the ground

Heartland: You won’t know you’re dead until you hit the ground

Back in 2015 I came across a debut author, Lucy Hounsom. I loved Starborn – from its subversion of fantasy genre tropes, to its flawed protagonist and excellent prose. Since then, I befriended Lucy and she has been one of my co-hosts on Breaking the Glass Slipper for the last two years. You would be excused for thinking I might not be able to be objective when reviewing the second installment of…

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#Book Review #Fantasy #Heartland #Lucy Hounsom #Novel #Starborn #Tor #trilogy