Working on a series over a lifetime makes finding an entry point complicated. More here on where to begin in the Sartorial-deles saga.
Sherwood Smith
I've been trying to trade biographies with someone rich, gorgeous, and charismatic, but until then have to stick with the, uh, less glamorous truth: I studied in Europe on a poor student budget (as in eating once a day) before earning a masters in history, afterward working as a governess, a bartender, and an electrical supply verifier—not all at the same time—until I capped quotations of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" with a screenwriter Harry Kleiner, who promptly offered me a job. I wore various hats in the film industry before I went back to writing for print.
To date I've published over fifty books, one of which was an Anne Lindbergh Honor Book; I've twice been a finalist for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and once a Nebula finalist. My romantasy Crown Duel has been continually in print since the early nineties. I'm an instructor at Viable Paradise Writing Workshop on Martha’s Vineyard, and I've got a Patreon, where future volumes are being posted in rough draft. I've been a reader as long as I've been a writer, and enjoy reviewing books I love both here at Bookbub and at Goodreads. My newsletter signup is here.
I belong to a writers' consortium at Book Vew Cafe--and really, really appreciate when readers buy my books there. We authors get 90% of the royalty, unlike everywhere else where publishers get the lion's share, and once you buy a book there, you own it. None of this "licensing as long as your account is good."
I've been trying to trade biographies with someone rich, gorgeous, and charismatic, but until then have to stick with the, uh, less glamorous truth: I studied in Europe on a poor student budget (as in eating once a day) before earning a masters in history, afterward working as a governess, a bartender, and an electrical supply verifier—not all at the same time—until I capped quotations of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" with a...
In this latest addition to the Dobrenica series, Ruli, a new vampire, is trying to adjust to this change in¿can you call it a life? She’s lost everything. But that including her old reputation for weakness and lack of direction, as she discovers the lure of badassery. At the same time, Kim and the crown prince of Dobrenica are on their honeymoon...
Sherwood Smith’s media happy place tends toward braided tales, with characters growing and changing in a world both breathtaking and strange, where striving to become the best one can be matters. She found that in Chinese and Korean historical dramas, which kicked off years of immersion in East Asian history, literature, art, and language.
In this third re-edited and amended edition, Kim is on the eve of her wedding. She’s still trying to get used to the idea of becoming a princess when she goes through the wrong door, and is caught Dobrenica’s liminal boundary.
It’s now 1795, the rise of Napoleon, and Kim finds herself a guardian spirit for a twelve-year-old kid who will either...
What's the Reading Order for the Sartorias-deles Series?
That seems a simple question, but it's not simple to answer when one has been writing a long, interconnected story all one's life. I started writing in this world as a child, so the early stories are kids' adventure stories from a kid's POV. But when I reached my teens, I began playing around with why this or that happened, or how things got the way they were, reaching for connections beyond the immediate, including back in history....
A counterblast to those fantasy-haters who use A Tough Guide as their stick to lambast
A few years back, in the Critters Writing Workshop Discussion newsgroup on SFF.NET, we were talking about fantasy, and what sells, and why, and what we want to write. Some fantasy writers are defensive after the excellent and very funny skewering Diana Wynne Jones gave the unthought cliches of the fantasy genre in her A TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASY. Heck, I have my own, much older, satire in my Henchminions story...
