Picture Book
Cat in a hat in a box on a bench.
Tuesday Hangovers
- We went away for the weekend (hashtag funfunfun), and I'm now behind on everything. So many links, so little time. Did you know it's Clockwork Angel day? A new Cassie Clare book is always cause for celebration.
- Soon, as in next week when I have more time, I'll be singing the praises of Meljean Brook's AWESOME forthcoming steampunk romance The Iron Duke. I love this book so much. Want. Sequel. Nao.
- If you're interested in reading Mockingjay discussion, check out the post below this one; I've been greatly enjoying the comments. You might also want to take a peek at JJ's post and comments too.
- "The Hidden Secrets of the Creative Mind" at Time: "In creativity research, we refer to the three Bs—for the bathtub, the bed and the bus—places where ideas have famously and suddenly emerged. When we take time off from working on a problem, we change what we're doing and our context, and that can activate different areas of our brain. If the answer wasn't in the part of the brain we were using, it might be in another. If we're lucky, in the next context we may hear or see something that relates—distantly—to the problem that we had temporarily put aside." So. True. Good stuff in the whole interview, especially at the end.
- The TV writers' revenge is sweet. I love this part: "Some love to tell the story of the time an actor uttered a familiar lament to Mr. Bochco, the producer: "My character would never say that."Says Mr. Bochco: "I told him, 'Maybe your character wouldn't say that, but he's not your character, he's my character, and he's saying it right here." He pointed to the script."
- Alexander Chee's very good post on blogging and the writing life, via Maud.
- "The Future of Books According to Science Fiction" at the Tor blog.
- Amazing color photos from Russia in the early 1900s.
- An interview with Andrea Seigel about her forthcoming YA novel The Kid Table. I've loved Andrea's books since forever and she'll be stopping by here closer to the release.
- Laura Lippman's take on the #franzenfreude thing. See also: Lizzie Skurnick at the Daily Beast.
- "Conversations with Ghosts: Margaret Wise Brown and Kevin Brockmeier."
- Most exciting of all, My Official Sweetie For Life aka Christopher Rowe has the cover for his novel Sandstorm. If you only read one Forgotten Realms novel this century, make it this one. Especially if you like circuses, gladiators, and AWESOME. Preorder! Wish list! Due in March! At your local bookseller of choice or via the dark Amazonian god. (The cover version on Amazon isn't color corrected, btw, but the one at C's is.) (I feel that Christopher's 14-year-old self would also approve greatly of this cover and of this being his first novel, and how often do we get to say that, as adults? It is deeply cool.) Yay.
Spoiler Space
So I'm reading Mockingjay now, and I'm figuring I'll want to say spoilery things verrry soon so feel free to do the same in the comments section below if you want. Which is where I'll put mine. Having trouble finding such discussions and this seems easiest. After all, the talktalktalk after is part of what makes communal reading experiences fun.
(Lovers, haters, skeptics and fools alike are welcome, as long as rules of polite conduct are observed.)
Miss Universe: The Live By Remote Experience
I'm going to attempt to liveblog the pageant (on the off chance that Ms. Sunshine can't find a good webcast on her portion of the globe) (webcast found! but I'll continue to hit the highlights). Please to join in the comments, if you like. I make no promises as to how long I can keep this up, but I'll try to get through to crowntime.
Updates will begin here in 39 minutes and counting. Behind the cut to avoid spoilers, OF COURSE.
…
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Reprise National Costume
The Miss Universe pageant is on NBC tonight at 9 p.m., and this intergalactic strangefest should not be missed if you can help it.*
Psst: Refresher on the rules of the drinking game.
I'm always a Trinidad & Tobago girl, but I might branch out this year. And there are so many questions: Will America trip at some point? Can Venezuela lose? Who will be the saddest "celebrity" guest judge?
Predictions?
*Scoff if you must, but the Vietnam pageant was the first place I ever saw a little someone called Lady Gaga perform.
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Wednesday Hangovers
- I missed it the first time around, but a Studio 360 episode featuring Connie Willis, Janelle Monae and David Goldberg on time travel will rerun this weekend–or you can download it here. I already put it on le iPod. (Via Charlie Jane.)
- Timothy Williamson in the NYT on the nature of imagination and its intersections with science and philosophy.
- A wonderful short essay by Jessica Francis Kane, "Where We Write: The Merits of Making Do," about the author's penchant for writing in libraries. There is much, much too much excellence in this essay to capture with a quote, but a snippet: "I began to suspect I was too susceptible to the idea of the “writer’s desk” and decided it might be better to do without one. Somewhere along the way, I began to work in libraries. More important, I began to get work done in libraries. I acquired a laptop, a padded case for it, and a backpack. I carried pens, a notebook or two, a legal pad, and a few books. Very soon I felt like the academic equivalent of the college student backpacking abroad—I was entirely self-sufficient! I didn’t need a private desk and the talismanic power of special objects surrounding me."
- Marvelous post, including lots of photos, about literary pets. Worth a visit for the Edith Wharton shoulder puppies picture alone. (Via Austin.)
- We're going to NYC next weekend for a wedding (alas, we won't have time to see very many people, as it's a superquick trip), but dang! I'd have loved to catch the Met's exhibit on women's fashion that closed last weekend. The 1930s starlet gowns in the photo are to drool for.
- Smart Bitches has a nice wrap-up of the latest "We Must Protect the Children from … BOOKS!" lunacy, happening down in Texas at the Humble Teen Lit Festival, which decided to disinvite Ellen Hopkins after a librarian raised concerns with the superintendent. All the other authors have dropped out, and there have been some excellent posts you can get to via SB. Make sure you catch Tera Lynn Childs' letter to the superintendent informing him of her own decision. Bravo, guys.
- Finally, the best vintage safety manual ever, entitled "It's Great to Be Alive!" Remember: "Don't play in abandoned ice boxes–they are death traps!" Also, if you do play in the ice box, don't expect any plums. I ate them. (Via Juliet.)
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Clean Living
I wrote the category feature on health for this week's PW. There were some very interesting books in the crop, especially Melanie Thernstrom's The Pain Chronicles, a big literary mix of history, personal narrative, and research, and Harriet Brown's Brave Girl Eating, a mother's memoir about employing a somewhat controversial new approach to treating her daughter's anorexia.
Anyway, it's always fun learning about what's going on in a different part of the publishing sandbox. And my editor left a message this morning that me and a few other regular feature writers have been added to the masthead this week. Fancy.
Sunday Hangovers
- Anindita points to all the best places to get the lowdown on good SXSW panels to vote for.
- This is entirely awesome: Fantasy author Alma Alexander is enlisting the help of teens to rewrite a 500-page novel she wrote when she was 14 years old. The project will be chronicled here.
- Great post from Kiersten White about why she writes YA: "Everything is huge and new and important, but you still get to be silly, you still get to screw up, you still get to goof off. I love the raw emotions of adolescence, the slipperiness of self, the angst of trying to figure out where you fit and where you want to fit."
- The divine Andrea Seigel is running a giveaway competition for a copy of her new novel, The Kid Table, which will be out from Bloomsbury in September. (It's fabulous. And Andrea is one of my favorite, favorite writers working today.) All you have to do to win is write about what one of her tattoos means to you–it's a pear wearing a thong. You also win a personalized Perler figurine. Contest open until Aug. 24.
- Follow along as our favorite Colleen Lindsay vanquishes Murray, aka stage-one breast cancer. Leave sappy comments over there at your peril. What I want to know more about is her awesome new job at Penguin.
- The Washington Post has a piece on pseudonyms–which doesn't really go into the forced pseudonym to revive a career or ditch a bad sales record phenom, more and more common these days–from which I learned that JD Robb sometimes outsells Nora Roberts, and The Bell Jar was originally published under the name Victoria Lucas because Plath feared her mother's reaction.
- I really need to catch up on Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels. I haven't read one since Sarah picked Case Histories for the LitBlog Coop back in the day.
- Professor Nana linked to this list of starred review children's and YA titles up through July from PW, with how many stars each has received. Looking at this, I begin to understand the conventional wisdom that floats around regarding how many stars a book needs before it really starts to matter. (I have heard three bandied about often. –Obviously, any starred review is excellent, though; this is purely in crazy business terms.)
- I finally got around to YS Lee's A Spy in the House, the first in her YA series about Mary Quinn, a girl saved from the gallows, schooled and starting life as an operative in a secret women's detective agency in Victorian London. The second, A Body at the Tower, released last week, and Lee went on a great blog tour where she talked about should-be-more-famous ladies of the period and writery topics; you can find links to all the posts at the final Book Smugglers stop.
The Other Kind of Power Ballad
I've posted here before about the importance of playlists in my writing process. And I always love reading other people's playlist posts–it's one of the reasons I like largehearted boy's Book Notes feature so much. It's a particular look through another writer's window, slightly and enjoyably voyeuristic, even though limited to the book in question. Another way of understanding both writer and novel, or just of finding new bands or being reminded about old ones. For my own part, I know a project's taking on life when I feel the need to pause and make the big playlist that I'll listen to while writing, though that playlist evolves along the way. A new draft means a substantially tweaked playlist, usually.
Anyway, I realized this morning that I also tend to find a new song sometime along the way through the draft that I come to think of as the book's anthem. Typically, it shows up right before the last third of the story, and this morning the creepy island book's came blaring out of the car stereo muse-sent from my very own iPod,* a song I'm not even sure I'd ever listened to after I downloaded it. The song is "Kick In Your Heart" by Gliss (which can be heard here, if you like). I suspect I will listen to it a millionty times in the next few weeks.
The anthem is different than the playlist. First, it gets played on repeat over and over again, and usually when I'm consciously thinking about the story, instead of while actually writing. The song tends to conjure strong visualization of big scenes, call up emotion to match, and lead to lots and lots of plot nailing-down. It begins to represent the whole story I'm working toward having told. It becomes the song of the book that will soon be written.
The last book had, I'd say, three distinct anthems: "Golden" by Sister Suvi, "Splintering" by Arizona, and "Golden Children" by Black Feelings (the last was probably the anthem).
What about you guys? Do you do this, too?
*Good thing I haven't quite figured out how to manipulate the contents of my birthday present yet (it's fancier than my old one!), or I probably wouldn't have had the song on there in the first place. Autoload can sometimes be serendipitous.
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Tuesday Hangovers
- Oldest university on earth being resurrected after 800 years. (via Nicola.)
- Another one courtesy of Nicola: Billy Wilder's top 10 writing tips.
- David Rawlings and Gillian Welch cover "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."
- Publishing Perspectives gives Lauren Cerand the adoration she deserves. (And look at her great new haircut.)
- Slate explores whether digital publishing evens the playing field for smaller publishers, including an appearance by Small Beer's new Weightless Books e-bookstore.
- Best news ever: Cassie is writing more books in The Mortal Instruments series. Yelps and w00ts.
- As of this morning, WriteOnCon was so popular it crashed its server, but I'm sure it'll be back up soon if it isn't already. Here's the schedule.
- L.K. Madigan offers thoughts on and pictures of writing spaces from various authors.
- Jami Attenberg's great story about getting her bike back.
- That NYT piece you probably already saw about how everyone is reading YA (it's true; my mom just told me she is rereading The Hunger Games and Catching Fire in preparation for the third book); and a counterpoint that sees some ghettoization in the tone. See also: Smart Bitches on the same article.
- I will always love saddle shoes.