Archive for February, 2011

Faery Reading and Giveaway

27
February
2011

When I was a little kid I used to love to play along the creek by my grandparents’ farmhouse. One of my favorite things to do was to build small houses on the rocks along the bank, filling them with clover blooms and rosehips and birch catkins for the faeries who lived there.

What is it, do you suppose, that is so enchanting about the idea of tiny people living alongside us, under toadstools or even in our walls, making stools out of spools and bathtubs out of gravy boats?

I’ve read two different books lately that both feature small folk, and I loved both of them for different reasons.

(I won’t bother with plot summaries, but you can click on the titles below for links to Goodreads, where you can find much better ones than I could provide.)


Can you see how much I loved them from that gleam in my eye? Unfortunately some faery children have apparently run off with my camera cord to use it as a jump-rope, no doubt, thus I must rely on my (inferior quality) laptop camera.

Small Persons with Wings by Ellen Booraem has a rare sort of humor that reviewers have rightfully (in my opinion) compared to Diana Wynne Jones. There’s a certain absurdity to the antics of Mellie and the Parvi (the “small persons with wings”), but yet it’s balanced a weight of real emotion and consequence. A “grandeur” (to use a term oft-mentioned within the book itself). I particularly loved Mellie as a main character — she’s gutsy, determined and snarky. This one just came out in January, so it you find that combination as appealing as I do, you can check it out for yourself!

(Full Disclosure: Ellen is a friend, a lovely person, and and a fellow Mainer, though sadly several hours away from me. I first read SPWW a few months ago, pre-publication, and was honored to be able to provide a blurb.)

Arrow by R. J. Anderson is the third book in the series that began with Knife(UK)/Spell Hunter(US) and continued with Rebel(UK)/Wayfarer(US). Each book has featured a new main character, but is part of an overarching story of several bands of faery folk and their human allies, of love and honor and bravery and magic.

I have loved them each in turn, but I think Rhosmari may be my favorite of the three protagonists. Not only is she, refreshingly, a “faery of color”, but she’s a pacifist. She’s the sort of character a lesser author might have turned into a preachy, insufferable bore, but in R. J. Anderson’s hands Rhosmari is anything but. She’s vivid and full of emotion and over the course of the story her beliefs are tested to the core. I can’t say much more about her personal arc without spoiling it, but I really loved it. And then there’s Martin. Ah, Martin. I can’t help it. I am a sucker for bad boys when there’s a possibility of redemption.

(Full Disclosure: R. J. is also a friend. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to meet such excellent and talented folks– it is one of the best parts of having been published! I bought my copy of Arrow from Amazon UK, as it is sadly not available from any US publisher at this time).

And now the giveaway, courtesy of the vagaries of international postal service!

I ordered myself copies of both Rebel and Arrow from Amazon UK earlier this year. And waited. And waited. 15 days after the expected arrival date I sent a note to customer service. They wrote back to say something must have gone awry, and that they would send another set. And that if, for some reason, I did end up getting the first batch, to keep them with their compliments, since returning them overseas would be silly.

So this week, of course, I got both packages, one after the other. So… I am going to give away the extras: one copy of Arrow, one copy of Rebel! And while I’m at it, I’ll also send out a copy of Small Persons with Wings!

If you would like to win a copy, please comment on this post and tell me which book you would like (ARROW, REBEL, or SMALL PERSONS WITH WINGS) and why! And please provide an email address so I can contact you if you win!

I will pick three winners (one for each book) randomly on March 14th.

US/Canada shipping addresses only, please!

Note: I will ONLY be tracking responses to the ur-post on my devafagan.com site, and the crosspost on livejournal. If you comment on Facebook or Goodreads I will not be able to count it. Thanks!

Apocalyptical Musings

22
February
2011

I’ve occasionally considered what I would do in the event of a global catastrophe. Not in the immediate aftermath (where presumably I’d be racing around fighting off zombies or escaping a new ice age or the spread of a death-plague) but in the long term, civilization-has-collapsed era. Assuming I survive the zombie-glacier-death-plague.

Because honestly, I don’t think most of my skills would be particularly useful. I can write software. I can do trigonometry. I can write novels. I can create latex monster masks and sew quasi-medieval costumes (using a sewing machine, of course).

I might end up as a gardener, I suppose. I could crochet scarves against the glacial chill and entertain people with my inexpert fiddling as we cluster around our campfires. If I had access to a library, I am pretty sure I could teach myself other things.

But still, I suspect I am woefully prepared for life after technology.

Which is why I found the Colony so fascinating. It’s a reality show in the vein of Frontier House or Manor House, except the participants are living in a post-apocalyptic future, after a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity. We recently watched the first season via Netflix and man, I am amazed by what these folks accomplished!

Generators, water filtration systems, communication devices, solar-powered vehicles. And beyond that, it’s eye-opening to see how their society evolves, as the show tests them with maurauders, nomads begging for food, diminished resources, and more.

There were many times I wished I could have seen more than the final edited program. Frex, early on there’s a scene where the female colonists all end up washing (apparently) everyone’s clothing, and some of the male colonists say some kind of offensive things about this (on a different camera). And I wonder — did the women take on this work, because of the societal norms they were familiar with? Did the men encourage it? Did any of the women actually question it?

It was a hard show to watch at times, because there is a lot of strife and yelling and just plain mean behavior among the colonists, but it is still (imo) worth checking out. Especially for my favorite two colonists, John C aka “the Professor” and Leilani the self-defense specialist/personal trainer.

What about you all? Do you have any practical skills to apply in the event of an apocalypse?

Now I am off to see if my local continuing education facility offers classes in living off the land and building solar power stations. Or fighting zombies.

Squash as Procrastination

18
February
2011

My morning routine is fairly straightforward and unchanging. I wake up around 4 or 5 (no alarm, I’m an early bird. Or a crazy bird, depending on your feelings toward morning) and shuffle into my purple writing library and turn on the computer. I pet my sleepy dog, who has managed to compact himself into half he apparant size in order to sleep on the comfy reading armchair. I go make the first of many cups of hot black tea with milk. I look out the window at the one bright star that hovers over my neighbor’s single tall pine tree.

And then I get to work. Sometimes I unplug the wifi. Sometimes I evict Charlie from the armchair and write curled up under a blanket.

Today I roasted a squash.

Just a small one — an organic Delicata squash I picked up at the natural food store last weekend. [Sidenote: I highly recommend this variety to any fellow winter squash-lovers out there, especially those living in a household otherwise inhospitable to squash. They are the perfect size for one person, and you can easily slice them into "fries" and bake them, skin on, with a few sprays of olive oil and sprinkle of salt. Yum!]

I was procrastinating, you see. I’d just gotten to a scene in the book I’m drafting that needs to be a sort of turning point where one character makes a hard decision. I know what I want her to do. But a story needs more than just authorial intent. I needed to understand why she would do what she did.

One of the dangers of being a more plot-first type of writer (as I am) is that you can easily fall into the trap of treating your characters like puppets, dancing them through the motions of the plot points you want them to follow.

But that’s not a story (to use my personal terminology). Story requires character as well as plot — the characters need to have believable reasons for doing what they do. Motivations. They need to be protagonists, not puppets.

And I could tell that even though I knew what I wanted to have happen, I wasn’t as sure about why. So I baked a squash, and petted my dog, and drank tea (not all at once. Well, the tea-drinking was relatively continuous).

I also read this post by the wise and talented R L LaFevers on the value of time for thinking, stewing and fermenting, when pursuing creative work.

I’m still stewing on this particular scene, but hopefully I will find my way to the guts of the character motivations if I keep searching.

And in the meantime, I have some crispy, sweet, salty delicious squash to eat. Nom!

How about you all? Do you need breaks for thinking time? How do you distinguish between procrastination and necessary stewing time?

My Wish

15
February
2011

My wish on this post-Valentine morning is that you all have someone to love, and someone to be loved by, whatever shape or form that love comes in, be it romantic, platonic, etc. And that you continue to celebrate it, whether the calender says February 14 or not.

Bob and I spurned the overcrowded restaurants ourselves, and instead went to the bookstore (really, any holiday is just another excuse to buy books around here). I picked up The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff on a whim (because the random paragraph I read had such lovely language and because I’d just seen the movie) and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (because I’ve heard such excellent things about it).

Then we went home to eat takeaway sushi and watch Chak De India! which was delightful. It’s the story of a disgraced male field hockey player who returns to train the underdog woman’s team to go after the World Cup. So excellent to see all the strong ladies, and kind of refreshing that the focus was on fellowship and friendship, not romance. Especially on Valentine’s day! I love a good romance, but it’s not the only type of strong, important relationship we have in our lives.

Okay, enough philosophizing. Here, have some links:

If you are a writer (or pursuing any sort of creative life) and have not already read this, check out the summary of Sara Zarr’s keynote address from the SCWBI winter conference. As the blogger, Candy Gourlay, summarizes: “it’s not just about a book deal, a good review, a big advance. It’s about a life.”

And this awesome workshop makes ME wish I was still a teenager. Check out the amazing faculty! (Tamora Pierce! Ellen Kushner!) If you know any 14-19 year olds who love writing spec fic, please let them know about it. The application deadline is March 1.

And now I am going to go write a very un-romantic but hopefully exciting and tense fight scene…