FAQ
The Who

Hello there, I'm the_red_shoes (AKA Moira), and your friendly community moderator. And there are people already here! ((waves)) Come in and make yourselves at home. You may notice an absolute paucity of decoration. I'm working on that. (OK, it's all new and shiny now! Tell me what you think.) (And if any of you wish to volunteer time and talent to make LJ icons, banners, backgrounds, color schemes and what have you, I'd love you forever. -- This still holds true.) This LiveJournal community is for the discussion of the fiction of Elizabeth Bear, AKA matociquala. Since all three volumes of the "Jenny Casey" trilogy -- Hammered, Scardown and Worldwired -- are now out, people started a spoiler-ridden discussion in a comment thread on Bear's journal, leading her to perhaps jokingly wonder if anyone wanted to start a community. I was unemployed (fiscally, metaphorically, lots of -llys). And so here we are.

You can find out more about Bear at her LiveJournal matociquala, FICTONS, her mostly-fiction LiveJournal at elizabethbear, and her official website.

Although people will probably want to start off with a discussion of the Jenny books, this comm is for discussing everything Bear has written so far -- short stories, novellas, novels. Just some of her upcoming novels are, according to her website copy:

Carnival (working title), an unrelated novel of Singularity, ecoterrorism, sexism, genocide, brinksmanship, art, intrigue--and spies! tentatively scheduled for Summer 2006.

Undertow (forthcoming in 2007): In the city of New Haven, on a planet known as Greene's World, André Deschênes puts a pistol in his mouth and pulls the trigger-
-and a revolution begins.

All Stories Are True: The Promethean Age
(historical and urban fantasy & secret histories forthcoming from ROC/ACE)
The first two novels in a projected sprawling same-world fantasy cycle: Blood & Iron and Whiskey & Water, starting in 2006, deal with the five-century-old silent war between Faerie and the iron world, and the lives altered and destroyed on either side.

People who read Bear's LiveJournal know there are still more novels in the works! In addition, Bear has published a number of stories -- flash fiction, long short stories, novellas, you name it -- and there are links to quite a few of them on her bibliography page (I'd put the links right on our sidebar, but alas, this is a free account, so there's a very limited number). Much of these will be collected in her upcoming The Chains That You Refuse.

The How

For now, membership is open, anyone (not just members of the community) may post comments, and posts aren't moderated (i.e. if you make a post it will show up immediately). This will change if we encounter trolls, spammers, flamewars, sockpuppets, and so on. I can maintain Memories for the comm (I think only moderators can do so, but I'm not sure) but you might want to tag your entries. Suggested tags are book titles, character names, and other information you think relevant. Since Worldwired has just been released, I'm instituting a spoiler policy. If you want to discuss parts of the books or series that would "spoil" the plots for people who haven't read them yet, please put them beneath an LJ-cut tag and put "spoiler" in both your post title and LJ tag. There is a difference between speculation and spoilage. A demonstration:

SPECULATION: If Jenny is a penguin, maybe she will go to Antarctica.
SPOILER: Since Chapter 37 reveals Jenny is a penguin, maybe she will go to Antarctica.

I'm thinking posts can be divided by topic/theme -- there could be a post for Hammered, and comment threads coming off that, a post for "Jenny," more posts as comment threads subdivide naturally, and so on. (Maybe even an "Ask Elizabeth" post! Heh.)

Feel free to suggest other FAQ topics, ideas, what have you that should be addressed in this post. For now, let's have fun, talk about Bear's books, and be excellent to one another. -- I'm thinking the post after this one will be titled "Introductions" and people can feel free to talk about how they know Bear, when they first read Bear's works, who they are, and so on in comments; what do other people think?

....and look, we've attracted notice already!