Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Miscellany

04
March
2011

First, a reminder: there’s still time to enter the giveaway for faery books here!

Second, some events: I’ll post more details later, but I’m attending an event here in my hometown of Hallowell on Saturday April 9th at the Harlow Gallery from 1-3PM, with other local artists of all sorts. And on Thursday May 12th I will be at the Cambridge Public Library at 7PM as part of the Diversity in YA tour, along with Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, Holly Black, Francisco X. Stork, and Sarah Rees Brennan. EEEEE! I would love to see some friendly faces in the crowd!

Third, a PSA: There’s been internet chatter about a YA Mafia. I, of course, belong to the MG Mafia, where we get together to drink butterbeer and exchange tips on how to train your dragon, but I did want to answer author Janni Lee Simner’s call for folks to stand up virtually and say “hey, go ahead an review my books, whether you like them or not.” So there it is. I generally try to avoid reading reviews of my books unless my editor sends them to me, but I’m grateful for every thoughtful review anyone does care to put out there. I don’t like every book published, so I don’t expect every reader to like mine either!

Fourth, food: I think that at least a third of the posts I have starred in my google reader are recipes. Here are two I am thinking of trying in the near future: salt-crusted chicken and lemon-meringue cupcakes.

Fifth, travel: Sadly there is no space or budget for a big trip this year, but next spring Bob and I are really hoping to travel to England & Wales (first time for me). Until then I content myself reading travel books and blogs like this. I must say I am very envious of the green… everything here is still covered in several feet of snow!

Sixth, writing: I just passed 50K words on my current project (of a projected 80-90). It is so strange to me now to remember starting it on January 1st of this year, struggling for hours to get down 600 words. The blank page is one of the scariest things in the world: the feeling that you have to strain and struggle to pull something out of nothing. But now that the book has some heft to it, though, it is starting to pull me along. Whew! It’s a nice reminder that the little steps really do add up…

Onward!

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…

There’s an owl in my tea

12
January
2011

Actually, there isn’t, yet, but there very soon could be… Aren’t these hidden animal teacups adorable?

Hidden Animal Teacups
(Found via My Owl Barn)

And that owl cup would make an excellent carrot for reaching 20K on the current project. (No, I am not above self-bribery when it comes to writing. Especially at the beginning.)

Because I am in a drafting fog, with not enough brain to put together something more coherent, here are a few other tidbits:

~Yesterday at my day job (I design software to turn globes into maps. Yes, it involves MATH. Fortunately I love geometry!) I misread something referring to the somethingtechnical methodology as the somethingtechnical mythology. Which would probably require something a lot stronger than an if/else statement to implement.

~Hey, don’t steal books! Saundra Mitchell lays out exactly how book piracy has hurt her, and other authors, personally. Remember, libraries are your friend!

~Here’s a nifty 12-point plan to be a creative badass, by author Justine Musk (thanks to Stephanie Burgis for the link!). I especially like #11, Get Open. A good reminder to open myself up to whatever the universe sends me. As a historically shy person who can be a closed-up creature of habit, I do need to actively *practice* being open to new experiences. This is probably worth an entire blog post, about Zumba and LARPing and finding ways to let oneself go deeper into one’s fictional world. Will have to ponder this more…

~Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pancake mix is delicious! But also, sadly, seasonal.

~We adopted our dog Charlie three years ago today. He’s the best dog! And he keeps us moving…
Charlie loves to run

Dogs make life look so fun, don’t they?

Small Steps

10
January
2011

I can forget, sometimes, how different the entire world feels when I’m writing regularly. How just making a tiny bit of forward progress every day can make everything feel full of promise and possibilities.

And yet I do forget, and I fritter my writing time away. Some of it on useful things (say, baking banana bread), some of it on fun things (look, someone built an Antikythera mechanism out of legos!) and some on pointless and/or self-destructive things (hello, Amazon rankings).

So on Jan 1 I did something slightly desperate and unplugged the wifi when I got up. Then I sat down and started my new project.

It was still tough. I hadn’t tried to write in a few weeks, and before that I’d been struggling with false starts. I wrestled with that blank screen for three hours, writing and deleting different openings. But finally, finally, I found a sentence I liked, and it led to another and another. And an hour after that I had a 600 word beginning. It didn’t feel anything like a book. It didn’t even feel like the dream of a possible one-day-maybe book. But it was a step forward.

Ten days later, my wordcount just hit 10019.

It’s finally starting to feel like it could really be a book. You know, if I can do this all over again, seven more times. Heh.

So good luck to anyone else out there taking small steps! You can do it!

On an only tangentially related note, here’s a quote I saw on twitter today that resonated very strongly:

The side of me which longs, not to write, but to be approved as a writer, is not the side of us that is really worth much. ~ C.S. Lewis

And last of all, hooray for all the winners of the ALA Youth Media Awards! I’m especially excited to see a sci fi book win the Printz (Ship Breaker by Bacigalupi)!

2011

31
December
2010

I’ve got one official goal for 2011: enjoy the journey. As in: don’t be in such a hurry to get to the destination. Strive to go farther, to see new things, to be brave and explore. Because there’s a lot of really fun stuff to look forward to in 2011! Such as…

  • CIRCUS GALACTICUS! My first science fiction novel will be coming out in November of 2011, and I am ridiculously excited about it. I feel like it’s a big step forward for me writing-wise, especially in terms of characters (I started experimenting with a bigger cast) and voice (a character who is the least like me of any I’ve written, I think). At the same time I’m a little nervous, since this book is so close to my heart, and soon it will be starting to go out to reviewers and bloggers and readers and I just hope that a few of them will love it like I do.
  • CIRCUS-related fun! Much of this is hopefully-cool extras and STUFF for my website. But I also have a bunch of things planned for my own amusement, including putting pink streaks in my hair (the main character has a pink bob, and I have a secret love of bright colored hair) and taking a trapeze lesson (because of the circus in the book, and because it sounds like such fun).
  • Events! I have plans afoot to participate in a couple book-related events, and I would love to attend a conference, but the specifics are still up in the air. Mostly I am excited about this because events give me the chance to meet other people who love books: authors, readers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, etc.
  • New Project! I have a three-day weekend starting tomorrow, and I mean to use a good chunk of it working on my new book, trying to enjoy the writing for its own sake. I am aiming to finish a draft of this in 2011, and hopefully revise it for submission.
  • Circus Sequel! I want to go back and finish revising this, for myself if not for publication (my publisher hasn’t actually bought it — and whether they will probably depends on how well the first book does). But I love the characters and the world too much not to finish at least one more part of their story.

Happy New Year! May it bring all of you joy, health, and new adventures!

[Housekeeping note: I have turned on comment moderation for the ur-blog on my website (but not LJ or any of the other xposts), due to a proliferation of spam on old entries. Cursed spammers!]

One Step Closer

29
December
2010

Circus Galacticus has a release date! At least according to my publisher’s website, it will be out around November 14, 2011!

It’s not available for pre-order anywhere yet that I can see, but still, yay! One step closer!

And since it’s out there on the website, I think it’s safe for me to add one other bit of news. Circus Galacticus was originally acquired by Henry Holt, who I will always be thankful to for publishing my first two books. This past summer, however, my wonderful editor took a new position at Harcourt. And happily she was able to take the book along with her. I’m so very excited to be able to continue to work with her! Plus, the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt symbol is a dolphin, one of my favorite animals, so I am taking that as a good omen!

Five Fives of 2010

28
December
2010

Here’s my 2010, in 5 x 5 list form…

Five Books I Loved:

  • PTOLEMY’S GATE by Jonathan Stroud. My favorite of the year. The ending blew me away. I couldn’t really enjoy reading anything else for the next few days.
  • REVOLUTION by Jennifer Donnelly. Not a flawless book, but one that made me think and twisted my heart and stayed in my brain. And it has the line that, of anything I’ve read this year, has most resonated with me: “The world goes on stupid and brutal, but I do not. Can’t you see? I do not.”
  • CHARLES AND EMMA: THE DARWIN’S LEAP OF FAITH by Deborah Heligman. This book truly brought these historical figures to life for me, from the big questions they grappled with, to the little details of their family life.
  • DOGSBODY by Diana Wynne Jones. A reread of a beloved childhood favorite, and it still held up marvelously. The ending still chokes me up, with sadness, hope, and love for the characters.
  • CITY DOG, COUNTRY FROG by Mo Willems and Jon J Muth. Okay, so part of the reason I loved this is that the dog in it reminds me of my dog Charlie. And I really don’t know how actual little kids would like it, especially as it’s a bit sad/bittersweet. But I loved it.

Note: this was such a good reading year, and thus harder than ever to narrow this down. Nothing makes me feel more truly rich than a big pile of excellent books, and this year I was wealthy beyond measure. There were many other books I read that I absolutely adored, and still more that I admired even if they weren’t exactly my kind of book. Here’s my full reading list for the year on goodreads.

Five Experiences:

  • Seeing the Cirque du Soleil’s OVO in Boston. Phenomenal!
  • Driving along the Slea Head Drive in Dingle Ireland. So gorgeous.
  • Meeting my friend in the cold, dark, snowy morning for our scheduled run. We’re both getting back to it sloooowly via the Couch-to-5K plan, and we felt so good about actually making ourselves get out there that day!
  • Seeing Natalie MacMaster perform live, with truly boundless and inspiring energy (especially considering she was 8 months pregnant).
  • Hearing Dr Maya Angelou speak. What a remarkable human being she is.

Five Foods:

  • The BBB (brown sugar, brown butter, brownie bit) Ice cream from Toscanini’s. I almost considered trying to convince Bob to stop in Boston on our drive back from NY through the blizzard the Monday after Christmas, just to get some more!
  • Dried Mango (unsulphered, unsweetened) from Trader Joe’s (I ate an entire bag of this as my dinner one day and I don’t regret it one bit).
  • The freshfreshfresh open-faced roasted chicken sandwich on brown bread from the Stone House in Ventry, Ireland. Best thing I ate on that trip. Nomnomnom.
  • The ice cream sandwiches from Slate’s Bakery: homemade vanilla ice cream + homemade chocolate chip cookies.
  • The grilled turkey, gruyere, arugula sandwich with blueberry chutney from North Creek Farm that we proceeded to recreate at home for at least six days running until we overdosed!

Five New Things:

  • Zumba. The first exercise I have honest-to-goodness enjoyed while actually doing it (as opposed to, say, running, which I mostly enjoy after the fact). I love the music, I love the cargo pants, I love that everyone in my class seems to be having so much FUN.
  • Merlin. Love the relationship between Merlin and Arthur, love Guinevere, love seeing how they’ve mixed up the mythology. I am so looking forward to season 2, coming to DVD in just a few weeks!
  • Vampire Diaries. Our most recent household tv obsession. Complicated characters, family relationships, supernatural hijinks, and more. Addictive!
  • Prophecy 3: Into the Mists. When Bob and I ran the first Prophecy LARP we never ever thought we’d see a third campaign. I am so pleased and proud that folks have embraced the philosophy and style, and so excited to see the ideas and directions being brought by the new directors, and the new players who have joined the community. Also, I am ridiculously happy to be running a plot that involves a magical library and story-telling magic.
  • Bob’s new job! I was so so proud of and happy for him when he finally quit his soul-killing, time-devouring previous job and took a new part-time position at our city library, doing something he can feel good about.

Five Writing Highlights

  • The publication of my second middle grade fantasy, THE MAGICAL MISADVENTURES OF PRUNELLA BOGTHISTLE. I went through some serious challenges writing this book: throwing out the entire first draft, rewriting it from a different character’s POV, completely changing the plot, etc. So it was a real thrill to see Prunella finally out in the world!
  • Going to ALA Midwinter. Wow. It’s probably a good thing I went to the “smaller” one first, because I expect the full summer conference would blow my mind. So many books! So many book-lovers! So many awesome authors!
  • My new (as of March) lovely purple writing space. Also my new MacBook — I have never really warmed to Scrivener, but I do love having a laptop. And wifi!
  • Meeting more amazing, inspiring writers online, and even getting to meet a few of them in person. It’s such a solitary endeavor… so having connections to other folks who understand that is truly invaluable.
  • Seeing a proto-cover for my third book, CIRCUS GALACTICUS (coming in Fall 2011) and also the art I commissioned personally for my website (sketches of ten of the characters). I am SO EXCITED about this book. But that’s a story for 2011!

Thank you, 2010!