Posts Tagged ‘prunella bogthistle’

Poetic Miscellany

23
July
2010

A few tidbits on a Friday…

I think Trix (the main char from my CIRCUS books) would be a fan of La Roux. Especially that green eyeshadow! This video in particular is getting me excited to plunge into revisions on book 2 next week! (And thanks to both Megan Frazer and Malindo Lo for making me aware of La Roux)

In the meantime, here are two things that I have tacked at the top of my virtual corkboard as inspiration for the new project (THE BROKEN SKY) that I’m brainstorming:

First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
It gives a lovely light!

~Edna St. Vincent Millay

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

~Mae West

The lovely Shveta has an interview with me up on her blog here where you can read about why I like the fiddle and what recent multicultural MG books I’ve enjoyed. Thank you Shveta!

And lastly, one quick reminder that I’ll be at the Toadstool Bookshop in Milford NH this Sunday, July 25, from 2-4 along with a bunch of other YA and MG fantasy writers for this. I’d love to see folks there if you’re in the area!

Stars

23
June
2010

I’m seeing stars. Well, not real ones, not right at this moment, since it is (A) morning and (B) gray and rainy out. But I got the page proofs (aka my-last-chance-to-fix-things) for Circus Galacticus, and the title page has stars on it! Nothing is final yet, but I hope the black starry background stays. I love it! I need to try to find out whether it’s a real image and if so of what.

CG Proofs

And for your potential amusement and interest, here are the last five links I starred in my Google Reader:

Shannon Hale’s post on the danger of excusing bullying boy behavior as “that’s how boys show they like you.” Very thought-provoking!

A gorgeous new Hubble shot of a star formation region.

New video from Zooborns of a playful baby elephant!

A post from Discover about a recent study on how America sees the future. 53% envision ordinary people traveling in space. But 58% expect another World War.

Liz B at A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy directs us all to a new READ poster featuring Nathan Fillion. Woohoo! I have recently been watching and really enjoying his new show Castle (and I was a big Firefly fan already). I was even more excited to see that the book he’s holding is YA scifi: The Softwire: Awakening on Orbis 4, by PJ Haarsma. Go scifi!

And in one last bit of starry news, I was delighted to find out that TeensReadToo posted a lovely review of The Magical Misadventures of Prunella Bogthistle, and gave it a Gold Star Award for Excellence. Thank you TeensReadToo!

I’ll meet you at the Toadstool

11
June
2010

I actually have toadstools growing in my garden, just under the roses. They aren’t fetching little white-spotted redcaps, but still, I like imagining the fairies that masquerade as columbine settling down there at night for a rose-scented snooze.

And isn’t Toadstool Bookshop a great name for a bookstore? Prunella would definitely approve. They’ve got a lovely little logo of a gnome sitting under a toadstool, too!

Why do I bring this up? Because on Sunday July 25th from 2-4PM I’ll be at the Toadstool Bookshop in Milford NH with all these other fine folks:

Ellen Booraem (The Unnameables)
Chris Brodien-Jones (The Owl Keeper)
Leah Cypess (Mistwood)
Marissa Doyle (Betraying Season)
Angie Frazier (Everlasting)
Kate Milford (The Boneshaker)

We’ll be presenting a panel called “Writing Fantasy for Children and Teens: Insights from Seven Authors” and also signing. I would love to see some familiar faces there, so if any of you all can make it please come out and say hi!

In other news, PRUNELLA has a couple new reviews. Here’s my favorite part of the BCCB review:

Hints of Southern folklore echo throughout Fagan’s fictionalized swamplands, making a setting that is at once eerily familiar and disarmingly tricky to navigate, as two-faced villains and creepy creatures jump into the mix at every turn. Fortunately, our plucky set of heroes manages to successfully dodge the more foul elements, albeit just narrowly at times, and their daring escapes will most certainly have young readers turning the pages to uncover their next foolish opponent.

And VOYA also thinks the heroes are plucky:

This is a delightful coming-of-age story about two plucky misfits who elicit readers’ chuckles with their escapades, while gently reminding us not to judge a person by appearances alone.

I’ll take plucky! Thank you BCCB and VOYA!

And now I am wondering: What is the opposite of plucky? Pluckless?

Happy Birthday Prunella Bogthistle!

25
May
2010

Today my second novel, THE MAGICAL MISADVENTURES OF PRUNELLA BOGTHISTLE, went out into the world. Yay!

It’s been a challenging journey — this book gave me a lot of ups and downs. Like Prunella herself, it was prickly and hard to get to know at first. I actually wrote an entire draft from the point of view of the secondary character, Barnaby, with an entirely different plot, only to toss it and start over. But (also like Prunella) it was also an incredibly fun book to write, once I got to know it better and understood its true heart. Plus, it gave me an excuse to write about all sorts of neat things: giant alligators, mist-veiled bogs, brightly-painted steamboats, ancient curses, lost grimoires, spectral stallions, lonely ghosts, blind artists, loyal bloodhounds, pumpkin-headed jacks, magical masks, and monocle-wearing villains.

I’m so glad I had the opportunity to write this book, and I hope you all will enjoy it!

As usual, I encourage you to buy books from your local independent bookseller, if you are fortunate enough to have a good one nearby. If you want to order online, I recommend Powells!

I also highly encourage readers to check out their local library! You can request that your local branch order a copy if they don’t have it, or you may be able to get a copy via interlibrary loan.

And if you do read it and enjoy it, I’d be tremendously grateful if you posted a review on Amazon, B&N, Borders, Goodreads, etc. Word of mouth is what keeps books alive!

To celebrate release day, I’m wearing my Wicked the Musical T-shirt, since Elphaba is another fantastic prickly-but-good witch (Prunella would doubtless admire her greatly, especially her intelligence and her lovely green skin). I also made pistachio cupcakes (aka purple-spotted toadstools).

Bogcakes

My webguru Lauren has given my website a sparkly new makeover in honor of the occasion. I love the new starry nebula header! There may be a few bugs lurking so if you happen to find any broken links, I’d be grateful to know about them.

I’ve added an excerpts of PRUNELLA and a sneak peek at my forthcoming 2011 scifi adventure CIRCUS GALACTICUS. Hope you enjoy them!

There are a whole lot of other great books coming out into the world right now. Here’s a bit about three of them I recommend!

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Miscellany, with moons and triangles…

22
April
2010

I’m sitting at my desk typing this and looking longingly (and a not without trepidation) out the window at my garden. I’m glad spring came early this year, but I wasn’t quite ready to start weeding. I still need my mornings and weekends for drafting! Hopefully I will get out there after work today and celebrate Earth Day by getting some actual earth under my fingernails.

I have emmerged victorious on the other side of the boggy bit I mentioned in my last post, although there was a 5K word casualty in the form of a chapter that just went in completely the wrong direction. And now my protag is breaking into an alien research base so things are zooming along again.

Some other miscellaneous things:

  • Author Beth Revis (who has an awesome sounding YA scifi series on the way starting next year! Go go scifi!) has a series of posts on love triangles up on her blog that I couldn’t help but comment on. If you want to discuss what works and what doesn’t, head over here and here! Oh, and RJ, if you are reading this — am I remembering correctly that you posted about actual three-sided triangles in your blog? I was pretty sure I first heard that from you but I can’t find the post now.
  • Speaking of love triangles, I just finished Maggie Stiefvater’s BALLAD, and really,really enjoyed it. I found it particularly interesting how a character I sympathized with in the first book could turn into a character I kinda loathed in the second. But it ended in a way that made me very happy!
  • I adore the Eleventh Doctor and new companion Amy. So. Very. Excited for the rest of this season! I turn into a squeeing fangirl just thinking about it.
  • I need a planet or moon to hide a spaceship behind. Any suggestions? Deimos is pretty nifty looking, isn””t it?

And in a last bit of miscellany, I got a package in the mail from my editor yesterday, and inside were…
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Color

20
January
2010

There’s a lot of talk going around right now about the white-washing of book covers, specifically YA and MG book covers. I encourage you to go read those posts, which discuss these issues and present a number of different opinions.

For now, I’m just going to say thank you:

To the folks who are making these conversations happen. I’m glad people are raising their voices and talking about this, even though it might not be a comfortable discussion. We need to talk about this.

To the people who are taking action: writing letters to publishers who put white faces on books that feature non-white characters. Or super-skinny models on the covers of books about normal or overweight characters.

To the writers from all backgrounds working on putting more diversity into their books. I’m grateful there are people willing to risk getting it wrong (no matter how hard they try), in the hopes of getting it right. I am grateful to the writers who are giving readers of all colors and backgrounds the message that it’s okay to be who they are. That they are not less than others.

To my editor, my publisher (Holt) and artist Brandon Dorman for creating a beautiful cover for my next novel that accurately depicts my brown-skinned main character.

To all these people for the positive steps they are taking to create change. I hope we can all keep it up.

Back from Vacation…

25
October
2009

You know what helps deal with post vacation let-down (say, after a lovely trip to Florence and Venice)? Coming home and finding a box containing these on your doorstep:

It also helps if you have one of these waiting for you:

and maybe a sky like this:

And it’s not like you don’t have a souvenir to remember it all by…

PRUNELLA Cover!

08
October
2009

Woohoo! I just got a peek at the cover art for my second book THE MAGICAL MISADVENTURES OF PRUNELLA BOGTHISTLE, due out in the spring of 2010. The cover is not finalized and may still change a bit, but I have the okay to share it here:

I love it! The artwork is by Brandon Dorman, which I find particularly thrilling as he is also responsible for the covers of several books by one of my all time favorite authors, Diana Wynne Jones. Check out his beautiful website for dozens of other gorgeous and magical art. You can also read Betsy Bird’s interview with him over on her Fuse #8 blog (he’s doing the art for her own forthcoming picture book).

Things that particularly delight me about the PRUNELLA cover: the jewel-like colors, the fireflies glittering among the trees, that Barnaby and Prunella are wearing the sort of clothing I envisioned (I particularly like Prunella’s shoes and socks), that the scene depicted is full of action and adventure (because I like to think there’s a good helping of that in the book), and most of all that there’s a GIANT ALLIGATOR on it (there is a giant alligator in the book too, by the way).

In other less bogwitchly news, I am happy to report I had a lovely visit at the Prince Memorial Library in Cumberland Maine earlier this week. It was a very small crowd, but all the adults were librarians, and since librarians are my heroes, I was perfectly happy chatting with them. Many thanks to the fabulous Jan Hamilton for inviting me!

And in addition to some other upcoming library visits, I am also now very excited to have joined in on the Debs of 2009 Holiday Tour Stop in New York City! If you are in the area, please come to Books of Wonder between 1 and 3PM on Sunday, December 6th to say hello! I will be posting more details when I have them, but we’ve already got quite a crowd of debs who will be in attendance. Thank you Michelle Zink for setting it up!

And last of all — I have officially signed up to do NaNoWriMo this year. If you are doing it too, feel free to add me to your buddy list. My handle there is “devafagan”. I am excited and a little scared, but eager for the chance to dive into drafting the second CIRCUS book and live and breath writing for a month. Whee!

Tidbits

06
August
2009

I am currently immersed in a revision of CIRCUS GALACTICUS, almost to the point of obsession. I can see the shape of the book I want in my mind so clearly all I want to do is workworkwork until I can make it reality. Fun, but kind of exhausting! And not conducive to coherent blog entries. So instead, here are some tidbits:

I received an email from my lovely editor with a sketch by the cover artist for THE MAGICAL MISADVENTURES OF PRUNELLA BOGTHISTLE and I love it! It has a giant alligator on it! And the swamp looks deliciously swampy already! And the little details are there, like Prunella’s braids and Barnaby’s frilly cuffs. I can’t wait to see the final result!

I just posted an interview with Indie Bookseller Melissa Posten of Pudd’nHead Books on The Enchanted Inkpot. Go read about why Independent Bookstores matter, hear about some of Melissa’s recent favorites, and much more!

And FORTUNE’S FOLLY is featured in Grand Magazine this month. Thank you Grand Magazine!

State of the Writer

17
July
2009

I’m currently enjoying a “refilling the well” episode, while the folks who volunteered to read my CIRCUS GALACTICUS draft do so. I’ve been reading, mostly, and puttering around with several different ideas for new projects.

I also received the page proofs for PRUNELLA, which I’ve now gone over. This was one of those times when it was a bit hard for me to re-read the book for the umpteenth time. It wasn’t that I disliked it, but I really wanted to be working on something new (aka CIRCUS). Thankfully I made myself do it, though, as I found a handful of typos that would have embarrassed me if they made it to the final book! So I am calling that a victory!

My reward is that I’ve printed out the draft of CIRCUS and will be diving back into that soon. I’m really (unusually) excited! It may just be a weirdly long-lasting writer’s high, but I feel like I reached a different sort of level with CIRCUS than I have with my previous books. With FF, the action centered very much around a single driving plot and small set of characters. With PRUNELLA, the world got richer, but the story still focuses very much on the two main characters.

Then in CIRCUS the world kind of exploded with details and for the first time I found myself tempted to write little vignettes about what the side characters are doing when they are “off screen”. I want to keep exploring the lives of my characters and their world. In some way, the book just feels “bigger” in my brain. Sometimes it can be easy to get so wrapped up in worrying about marketability and second-guessing yourself that you lose the part of writing that is fun. But CIRCUS was really, really fun for me to work on. Hopefully that means it will be fun for other people too.

Oh, and last but not least, I spent an excellent evening earlier this week talking with some of the students in the Upward Bound program at the University of Maine at Farmington. It seems like an excellent program (to assist promising kids in preparing for college) and both the students and the staff were great. I mostly talked about my “journey to publication”, complete with props. But then during BOTH question and answer sessions, I got a question I hadn’t expected: a request to read a little of the book. OUT LOUD. Yes, in front of real people.

I had (somewhat stupidly) never thought to practice for such an occasion, but I think it went reasonably well. I didn’t fall over or cluck like a chicken, and I tried to keep it lively. Thankfully there were no recordings so I can happily imagine it was a stunning performance without proof to the contrary. But I guess I had better start practicing!