This Week on Subterranean

Children's Lit Fabulosity, Scientifiction / By /

This week's new story is Tobias Buckell's "Mirror, Mirror." I think you'll see why I was excited about this one–not only is it fabulous, it's science fiction, which I really wanted to include in the issue, but was afraid I wouldn't get from anyone.  (And actually Kelly Link's upcoming story is also SF. So that'll teach me.) Better yet, it has antique mirrorshades.

This is a nerdy writer thing, but I'd be remiss not to point out that Toby is doing something very, very interesting and cool with the use of tenses in this piece.

Go forth and read.

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More Subterranean YA Issue

Children's Lit Fabulosity, Scientifiction / By /

I know, I know, it seems like I only stop in here lately to post pointers to these, but I'll do better starting this week. My schedule's less crazycakes than it was in April and May, and I plan to just have my regular workload moving forward. The house of cards almost came falling down, my friends.

Anyway, more soon.

But first, check out this week's new Subterranean YA issue story, "Seek-No-Further" by the fabulous Tiffany Trent. I've said all along that I feel incredibly lucky about how many different kinds of stories I got for this project. Tiffany sent me this supercreepy historical piece set in Appalachia (and with the perfect feel of an Appalachian ballad, I think). Hope you love it as much as I do.

I've just been delighted with people's reactions to all these stories, by the way. You make me happy.

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More Subterranean YA

1 Comment / Children's Lit Fabulosity, Scientifiction / By /

And this week Alaya Dawn Johnson's "Their Changing Bodies" is added to the mix. I can guarantee you've never quite encountered a vampire story like this. (I particularly think you'll like this one, Justine.) I'd give a content warning, but that would ruin all the fun of this often hilarious, sometimes explicit, and ultimately sweet story of summer camp.

Enjoy!

(Back later with more nattering and talking about the loveliness of Wiscon.)

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All The (Well, Some Of The) Things

1 Comment / Books, By Me, Nattering / By /

Yes, MIA, I know. I know. May, you are the Enemy of Sanity. But you're almost over now, so ha. If I survive, I win.

At any rate, here are some things:

  • My latest Heroes & Heartbreakers post was about how much I love reading scenes in romances: "Readerly Kinks: A Closer Look at Characters, Well, Reading." (I'm surprised at the lack of examples of this in contemporaries, but there must be some out there, right?)
  • I reviewed Erin Morgenstern's (wonderful) The Night Circus for Publishers Marketplace's BEA Buzz Books coverage (account required). All the buzz books reviews were excerpted in the free daily lunch newsletter (which you should subscribe to, if you don't already). And I'm told that non-PM subscribers can access all the BEA content through their handy, dandy app. Go forth and appreciate the amazing Sarah Weinman's hard work (and her colleagues' too, of course).
  • Speaking of which, if you're attending BEA, I did many, many pieces for the Show Daily. I had some really fun assignments this year, including interviews with Anne Enright, Dava Sobel, Alma Katsu, and Charlaine Harris–all lovely to talk to. Whenever I have time during an interview , I ask what people have been reading. Charlaine Harris had just finished Pat Rothfuss's The Wise Man's Fear and Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News? So she obviously has great taste. Looks like the Show Daily content will be on the PW site this year.
  • There are still plenty of stories to come in the Subterranean issue; the schedule is more or less weekly, but with breaks so it's not over too quickly. There's a review posted this week. And catch up on any stories you've missed thus far.
  • Wiscon! Yes, it's here. Now I remember why I tend to skip actually attending BEA. Here's my Schedule of Things:
    • Reading: …And Other Circuses (Sat, 4:00–5:15 pm Conference 2) Richard Butner, Christopher Rowe, Genevieve Valentine, and moi. I will be the nervous one with the ink-barely-dry first pages of the circus book. (Unless I chicken out and read from the creepy island book instead. But the tradition is to read something new, and our reading has circus in the title, so I'll endeavor to be brave.)  
    • Panel: The Trials, Joys and Tribulations of Tiptree Jury Duty (Sat, 10:30–11:45 pm Senate A) Alexis Lothian, Gwenda Bond, Karen Joy Fowler, Geoff Ryman, Sheree Renée Thomas. (No, I actually can't explain what I was thinking when I agreed to a 10:30 PM panel, but it should be fun given the other participants.)
    • Panel: Fringe: How Is Olivia Dunham So Awesome? (Sun, 2:30–3:45 pm Senate B) Joanna Lowenstein, Gwenda Bond, Mely, Xakara, Amy Thompson.

     See you in Madison!

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This Week’s Subterranean Story

1 Comment / Children's Lit Fabulosity, Scientifiction / By /

…is Richard Larson's fabulous "The Ghost Party," in which Charlee goes to an unusual party. I love how sharp this story is, and how fraught in that way YA does so well. I was delighted when I read it as a submission, and delighted anew reading it again today. Enjoy!

This also brings us to four stories live, almost half-way through the issue. The time, she does fly. Still, much wonderfulness left to come.

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Friday Five

4 Comments / Nattering / By /

1. Yeah, I know I said things were normalizing and that I'd be here more. That was tempting fate. Especially since I knowwww that pre-BEA season is always the slammedest-crazytown of my year. So, yeah, probably thin on the ground for a couple more weeks. But I'll continue to pop in when I can, and to point to new Subterranean issue stories.

2. Am feeling slightly less overwhelmed after taking all the deadlines I know I have (with awareness there are a couple of floating ones, and some that will likely still pop up) and making a detailed plan for the rest of the month. This weekend turns out to be all about reading (and visiting mom, of course, for Mother's Day), which doesn't seem stressful at all, really. And then I can get a couple of later-in-the-month deadlines out of the way, so as to focus on more pressing things. Voila. I had to take a week and a half off from working on the circus book, which is in a very fragile infancy, to juggle various freelance projects. Getting back into it was harrrrrd. That can not happen again. Thus, the planning. Which will allow me to do my morning writing time (by preventing the overtiredness that leads to oversleeping) and possibly even slip in some extra sessions during the week. One of the lessons we all have to learn is protecting the writing time and how hard that really can be sometimes.

3. Said circus book is terrifying me. See this Libba Bray post, which is brilliant, as usual. I finally printed out the first 30 pagesish and passed them off to Mr. Rowe so he can tell me if I'm just acting insane or if the book is insane. If it is something I should ever allow other people's eyeballs to see, or whether said pages would burn out people's eyeballs in one fell swoop of first-draft awful, and I should really abandon this project and learn the banjo instead. I could get a fancy hat, and perhaps people would toss in shiny coins. I have to have something new to read at Wiscon, though, and I get grumpy when I don't do the writing so*… Sometimes you just have to keep showing up.

4. My inbox. It's a little out of control. But I think I've whined enough.

5. The Vampire Diaries! Spoilery discussion welcome in the comments. I wasn't surprised by any of this week's penultimate episode of the season (SPOILER BUT ONLY IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN THE SHOW, SINCE THIS HAPPENS BASICALLY WEEKLY) deadings, and thought it was a nicely done, emotional episode. But I want to TALK about it, and I will do so in the comments. I definitely think TVD has managed to avoid the sophomore slump I feared early on in the season. Whew. And tonight FRINGE finale. Eek. Bites nails. Maybe spoilery comments section talk about that one too, after.

In the meantime: Happy weekend. Wherever you are, may there be sunny skies overhead.

*Okay, sometimes there is grumpiness at other times too, but only when strictly warranted.

**There is a lot of sometimesing in this post.

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More Summer Issue

Books, Children's Lit Fabulosity, Scientifiction / By /

And this week's new story in the special Subterranean YA issue is: Sarah Rees Brennan's "Queen of Atlantis."

As you probably already know, I adore Sarah's Demon's Lexicon series. So I was surprised when the story she sent me turned out to be this fabulous high fantasy story, instead of her usual fabulous contemporary urban fantasy. Surprised and thrilled, I should say. I do so love a writer with range. Check it out and enjoy.

ETA: Also, see Sarah's own post where she talks about this story.

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(Massive) Saturday Hangovers

Hangovers / By /
  • Oh, the links, they have been piling up.
  • Lorrie Moore reviews some recent memoirs: "People are telling us their personal stories and speaking to us of their private lives and even if the structure is rickety and the prose has, to borrow Dick Cavett’s phrase, “all the sparkle of a second mortgage,” we are going to hang in there because it is true. That the facts and details of these jumbled confessions are occasionally fudged and embellished, however, seems inevitable, given the limits of memory and the demands of writing. (There are many things a storyteller must add and subtract to tell a good story.)" 
  • Julia Sweeney and her daughter have The Frogs and Tadpoles Conversation: But what do they do with their legs? 
  • George Saunders interviewed: "I’d make the case that the whole fictional thrill has to do with this idea of the reader and the writer closely tracking, if you will. Like one of those motorcycle sidecars: when the writer leans left, the reader does too. You don’t want your reader three blocks away, unaware that you are leaning. You want her right there with you, so that even an added comma makes a difference. And I think building that motorcycle has to do with that very odd moment when the writer “imagines” his reader—i.e., imagines where the reader “is” at that precise point in the story. This is more of a feeling thing than an analytical thing, but all that is good about fiction depends on this extrapolation. Which is pretty insane, when you think of it. The writer, in order to proceed, is theoretically trying to predict where his complex skein of language and image has left his reader, who he has likely never met and who is actually thousands of readers. Yikes! Better we should do something easier, like join the circus."
  • "Scientists Discover 657 Islands Sitting Under Our Noses."
  • Sarah Rees Brennan's great post about the importance of difference and diversity in our stories.
  • Elif Batuman asks Jonathan Franzen for weed and other amusing things.
  • Great post from the fabulous Toni McGee Causey on POV.
  • I gobbled up Cassie's City of Fallen Angels in one blissful day. She just keeps getting better and better, and really, writers, if you aren't reading her, you should be. I can't think of anyone better at continually raising the stakes for her characters, both internally and externally. Her spoiler/answer post is worth your time and is full of excellent thoughts: "Authors tend to torment the characters they love, not the characters they don't care about. Characters must want and love and suffer for them to feel real. Like real people, characters reveal themselves through suffering—it is under pressure that your true self comes to the forefront." (And, um, post is obviously full of spoilers, so don't read it if you haven't read the book and care about being spoiled.)
  • An absolute must-read wise post from Veronica Roth on fear, anxiety and how not to let it wreck your ability to work: "Writing is about decisions. Your characters make them, but more often, you make them. You decide what you are going to say and what you are not going to say; what you believe and what you do not believe; where you want the story to go and where you do not want it to go. And I don't want to be a writer who is ruled by fear. I want to be the one who says: they may not like it, but this story is as true as possible, so I don't mind."
  • So, I recently read Franny Billingsley's Chime (my review will be in an upcoming issue of Locus), and became obsessed with it (totally brilliant), and with reading all her interviews about it: Horn Book, Goodreads (by Libba Bray), and PW. You must read this book, and all these interviews are well worth reading too; I particularly liked what she had to say about geography informing mythology in the PW interview: "Once I found a geography, I could write it. I think that for some people geography is not so important, but for me, and for a lot of fantasy writers, the geography absolutely has to make sense in terms of the magical context or else you just can't go anyplace."
  • A short meditation in the Guardian on the second meeting scene in Bringing Up Baby, which I'm just about to rewatch.
  • What English sounds like to those who don't speak it. Wonderful.
  • Zadie Smith's rules for writers. Good stuff.
  • Is there anyone who doesn't adore Colson Whitehead and think he's brilliant and hilarious? Case in point: his recent essay for PW: "There are those who moan, oh, Shakespeare wouldn't have written all those wonderful plays for us to "modern update" if he'd had Angry Birds and Darklady.com. Is it so terrible, here in the 21st century? A sonnet is perfect Tumblr-length, and given the persistent debates over the authorship of his work, the bard would have benefited from modern, cutting-edge identity theft protection. The old masters didn't even have freaking penicillin. I think Nietzsche would have endured non-BCC'd e-mail dispatches in exchange for pills to de-spongify his syphilitic brain, and we can all agree Virginia Woolf could've used a scrip for serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I digress. The Internet is not to blame for your unfinished novel: you are." Read the whole thing. I'd share a lukewarm white wine in the throes of trade show despair with him anytime.
  • I love it when Genevieve posts about fashion; some thoughts on royal wedding dresses. (And a most enormous full circle skirt. Twenty-five feet. Wowza.)

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Summer Issue Continues

1 Comment / Children's Lit Fabulosity, Scientifiction / By /

The Subterranean special YA summer issue continues with Karen Joy Fowler's "Younger Women." Just thinking about this story makes me happy. Given that it's from the point-of-view of a teenage girl's mother, rather than a teenager, I'm sure someone could make an argument it's not YA at all. But, in typical and wonderful KJF style, it is undeniably about YA… or at least about a very common dating situation in YA and so I declare that it counts.

Plus, it's just a really great story. Check it out. (And read Malinda Lo's "The Fox" if you haven't yet.) And, as they say, much more to come.

p.s. I know, I know, I haven't been around these parts much lately. I'm about two days from having some breathing room back, and look forward to burbling about various things.

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Summer Is Here–Well, the Summer Issue!

Books, Children's Lit Fabulosity, Scientifiction / By /

  Summer-2011

Yes, yay! The issue content is beginning to roll out, starting with an introduction from me and the first story, Malinda Lo's "The Fox," which features characters from her just-released new novel Huntress. Can you beat it?

Malinda's was the very first story I got in, and I did a little dance of joy after I read it. It's beautiful and seductive and haunting; there's so much packed into this brief story.

Go forth and read it. New stories (full TOC here) will be posted weekly until the issue's complete, and I'll be posting here as they go live.

Enjoy!

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