My Viking relatives

During the pandemic when I signed up for a DNA service I was disappointed to find I wasn't largely an Elmet lass. But I've been matched to the aDNA of 2 Viking-age warriors, one buried in Tromsø, Norway and one in County Galway, Ireland. Now I'm happy!

During the pandemic one of Kelley’s relatives subscribed to Ancestry.com—and got a surprising result. So then Kelley, curious, subscribed to a different service—and got a shock. My curiosity was piqued. After a bit of research I decided on 23andMe, and it’s been interesting both from a medical and ancestry perspective. Today I want to talk about ancestry. My assumptions going into this were…

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Video talking about writing the Early Medieval

The lovely conversation I had with Kate Macdonald about writing the Early Medieval is now up on YouTube. Plus links to a great 5-part blog series on Rosemary Sutcliff, and her newly-republished memoir, Blue Remembered Hills.

Last month I had a conversation with Kate Macdonald of Handheld Press for London’s Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea, Libraries’ In Conversation series. The talk was billed as “Writing the Anglo-Saxons” but as I explain in the conversation, I prefer to use ‘Early Medieval’ or, if we’re referring specifically to a particular group of NW European migrants to Britain, ‘Anglisc.’ The term…

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How I remember International Women's Day

International Women's Day is a complicated anniversary for me: the debut of my band, Janes Plane; the publication of my first novel, AMMONITE, and my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. Today, though, let's just talk about the music...

Janes Plane live at the Ace, Brixton, 1982. Pictured, l to r, Nicola Griffith, Carol Holmes, Jane Lawrence. Once upon a time—42 years ago, on March 8, 1982 to be exact, International Women’s Day—I and four other women debuted our band, Janes Plane. (I’ve written about that many times so won’t rehash it here but do feel free to go down the search rabbit hole). It was early March, too, eleven…

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Beneath the Skin of the Earth

A couple of weeks ago I sat down with the crew of Breaking the Glass Slipper, to talk about everything from landscape as magic to putting women, queer folk, crips, and people of colour back into history that is always trying to delete us.

I keep meaning to post about this but then something happens—more parental emergencies, or contractors cutting the electricity, or a hand injury (more on that another time)—and I forget. A couple of weeks ago I sat down with the crew of Breaking the Glass Slipper, an intersectional feminist podcast that celebrates the contribution of women to speculative fiction. We talked back and forth for 38…

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Writing the 'Anglo-Saxons' — Wednesday, 28 February (virtual)

On Wednesday, 28 February, 9:00 AM PT/5:00 PM UK, I’m doing an event for Westminster Libraries, London. In “Writing the Anglo-Saxons” I’ll be discussing writing historical fiction set in Early Medieval Britain with Kate Macdonald. Registration is free!

On Wednesday, 28 February, 9:00 AM PT/5:00 PM UK, I’ll be doing an event for Westminster Libraries, London. In “Writing the Anglo-Saxons” I’ll be discussing writing historical fiction set in Early Medieval Britain with Kate Macdonald. Kate helped me out with a last-minute edit of Menewood and she’s a brilliant reader, book analyst, and friend. She is the mind (and muscle, and mover-and-shaker)…

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Me and Kelly Link, Feb 28, Seattle

I'll be at Elliott Bay Books with Kelly Link to talk about her fabulous new novel, THE BOOK OF LOVE, on Wednesday, 28 February, 7:00 pm. Join us for a delicious conversation about love, music, magic, and story.

On Wednesday February 28th, 2024 @ 7:00PM – 8:30 PM I’ll be at Elliott Bay Book Company talking with Kelly Link about her fabulous fantasy novel—her debut novel!—The Book of Love. Kelly is well know for her smart, sly and sideways stories, but she might perhaps be even better at full-length. Come find out! Lots of details here. And, yes, this does mean I’m doing two events in one day—London,…

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The cost of bathing when disabled

If you're a wheelchair user, everything—I mean *everything*—is more expensive: 3x, 5x, even 10x as pricey. So how much does it cost to install a bath in Seattle for a crip? More than a brand new Honda Odyssey. Let me explain why...

Weirdly, I couldn’t find a picture of the model we chose but this one is sort of similar How much does it cost to swap one bathtub for another? Guess. Imagine that all the plumbing will stay in the same place, you have a perfectly-working, almost-new hot water tank, and all parts are standard-size. Not much—or so you’d think. Obviously, here in Seattle, parts and (especially) labour and sales…

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Snippets—Women and autoimmune disease, the first wine, early Americans, and how cats purr

For Sunday: snippets of science news on some of my favourite things in life (well, the favourite things we can talk about in polite company): cats, wine, and humans in the Americas, plus one of my ongoing personal concerns, autoimmune disease. Some weight

Some of this stuff dates from late last year when I was too busy with Menewood stuff to comment. But as some of my favourite things in life (well, the favourite things we can talk about in polite company) are cats, wine, and history, and as one of my ongoing personal concerns is autoimmune disease, I thought, Eh, let’s combine them. We’ll start with the weighty stuff first then lighten up a…

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Talking about Ursula Le Guin for the British Library

Event: 7:00 pm UK/11:00 am Pacific “The Realms of Ursula K Le Guin,” a public conversation between me, Julie Phillips (Ursula’s biographer) and Theo Downes-Le Guin (her son), moderated by Sarah Shin, held as part of the British Library's Fantasy exhibit.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024 — London, UK and Virtual — The British Library Event: 7:00 pm UK/11:00 am Pacific “The Realms of Ursula K Le Guin,” a public conversation between me, Julie Phillips (Ursula’s biographer) and Theo Downes-Le Guin (her son), moderated by Sarah Shin (editor of Space Crone). Held as part of the British Library’s flagship exhibition on Fantasy Tickets are £6.50, or £3.25…

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Snippets—sex-chromosome syndromes in history

What can the atypical autosomal and sex chromosome karyotypes—beyond the XX XY binary—of 5 people buried in Britain over the last 3,000 years teach us about humanity, difference, and kindness? Quite a lot

Recently, in Communications Biology, Kyriaki Anastasiadou (Francis Crick Institute, London) et al report they have identified aneuploidies (atypical autosomal and sex chromosome karyotypes—that is, something other than XX or XY) in five people buried in Britain over the last 3,000 years, including:1 the oldest known instance of mosaic Turner syndrome dating to the Early Iron Age, three…

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Stay warm, Seattle!

Here in Seattle temperatures are plummeting. We could be heading for -11°C this weekend. A blog post in which I use Galaxy Quest and Kenneth the Emu to demonstrate why I'm a fan of 'Hope for the best and plan for the worst.' Stay warm, people!

Temperatures in Seattle this weekend could be heading as low as 11° F ( -11.5°C). Even if it doesn’t go quite that low (there’s still wiggle room in the forecasting models) it’s going to be *cold*. On the plus side, it seems that we’ll avoid Snowpocalypse—Portland’s going to get that. Again. I know folks in the Midwest and Northeast laugh at Seattle people and think we’re like Kenneth the…

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Author Bios: Saying the quiet part out loud

Writers talk about their headshots sometimes, but no one talks about writing Author Bios. Here I say the quiet part out loud—complete with examples. They're important, and they're easy to get wrong.

On Monday I posted a photo and talked briefly about portraits. Today I’m thinking about word portraits—author bios. Two days before Christmas, an interviewer used my rather cavalier (lively? light-hearted?) website bio to introduce a lengthy and serious conversation about prose style and the nature of literary creativity—not light or careless in any way. The dissonance between the bio and the…

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In the Stacks—a conversation with Curve

I'm doing an online event for the Curve Foundation, Tuesday, Jan 16, 5:00 PM PST. It's free, and you can join from anywhere in the world. Come listen to me and Franco Stevens talk, and ask your questions, about queer lit, dyke culture, Hild & history.

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be doing an online event for the Curve Foundation next week, on Tuesday, Jan 16, at 5:00 PM PST. It’s free, and you can join from anywhere in the world. Sign up here. What is the Curve Foundation, you ask? Launched in 1991 as Deneuve magazine, Curve has been America’s best-selling lesbian magazine for nearly three decades. As Curve’s 30th anniversary…

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Portraits

Sometimes it takes a beat to really see the truth in a portrait. We're so used to wanting to look good—younger! richer! smarter!—we sometimes forget that it matters to look real. This is the real me—hair at least as grey as fair.

Mark Tiedemann, a writer and friend we’ve known for many years, posted this photo at the weekend. It was taken in November in Kansas City, at the mass autographing session at World Fantasy Con. It took me by surprise—I hadn’t known he was taking it; I hadn’t seen the photo before he posted it—and for a split second I didn’t like it. I thought I looked old and tired in an old and ugly hotel…

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2024: Refilling the aquifer

There are plenty of things I should be doing—stories and essays I've promised—and plenty I could be doing—at least three books I'm eager to write. But for once I have nothing planned. It's a deliberate choice. It's necessary.

Image description: Black and white photo of a short-haired white woman (Nicola) holding a tabby cat (Charlie) blissing out in mutual regard. Photo by Kelley Eskridge. Usually at this time of year I have a reasonably full calendar for the year ahead: books coming out, book-related travel, family visits, holidays, talks, panels, teaching, conferences, and, of course, books in progress. Not this…

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Bombed With Aplomb

Christmas trees are lovely when decorated. Even better? Blowing them to pieces!

Every year we get a Christmas tree. Every year, Kelley spends hours making it pretty. I help with the sheer force of my admiration (and adoration). And then I blow it to smithereens. As the holidays are a family affair, this year I tried to include the cats. It turns out, though, that cats don’t take well to direction. Who knew? After a few tries I got something reasonable—Charlie sitting…

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2023 Blog Stats

This year saw the highest number of visitors to my blog for five years. Here are the Top 10 new posts and the Top 15 overall. Plus an explanation of why blogging beats newsletters—and, of course, why all creators should own their own platform.

Headlines Like last year, the number of people who came to read something increased—the highest number in five years. (More about this in Looking Ahead.) I posted more often—86 posts so far, including this one—though a number of these were brief and informational: notices of appearances, links to new reviews, and so on. For the first time in a while, I did a handful of Snippets posts. I did…

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