The Florida Writers Foundation is having a fundraising auction, with the online action kicking off this weekend. I donated a 50-page manuscript critique, which you can read more about here, and see what else is up for the taking. (I'll probably be a cheap date for your novel.)
The auction bidding opens Saturday and closes Tuesday at 10 p.m. Eastern.
For the NBA noms, which are all really interesting this year (I always love it when everyone is WTFing the adult fiction category–it's a tradition). And the young readers category is great:
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown & Co.)
Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
(Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group)
Laura McNeal, Dark Water (Alfred A. Knopf)
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
(Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer
(Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Paolo's and Rita's are two of my very favorite books of the year and I'm so glad to see them both up for this. And I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Mockingbird, and look forward to tracking down Lockdown and Dark Water. (Also note: Way to go Amistad imprint.)
Stop playing Fallen London (effing nightmares!) or whatever productive activities you're engaged in immediately. It's time for Dear Aunt G to answer some more questions for the upcoming ish of LCRW. Entrust your burning inquiries to Gavin within the strictest of confidences.
Note: There has been a rash–an outbreak, really–of questions of the, shall we say, meta variety. We can only handle so many of these. Surely you've got a few more specific conundrums to feed the advice-o-tron.
Everyone's favorite weekday (besides Friday, obvs) is here, and not a moment too soon:
Kill or Be Killed. While Stefan and Damon argue over how to handle the Lockwoods, Tyler learns more about his Uncle Mason and the family curse. Despite Elena's wishes, Jeremy gets closer to the Lockwood mystery by hanging out with Tyler. Sheriff Forbes receives some shocking information from Mason, leading to a chaotic night.
I love it when the boys bicker. Plus, chaos!
Vamp Talk Thursday Read More »
Michael Cunningham has a fabulous essay at the NYT about the ways in which all acts of writing and reading are translations:
Here’s a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they’d intended to write. It’s one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, and in your mind it’s transcendent, it’s brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic, it contains everything you know, and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire.
And another snippet (Helen is a waitress, and devoted leisure reader):
I began to think of myself as trying to write a book that would matter to Helen. And, I have to tell you, it changed my writing. I’d seen, rather suddenly, that writing is not only an exercise in self-expression, it is also, more important, a gift we as writers are trying to give to readers. Writing a book for Helen, or for someone like Helen, is a manageable goal.
It also helped me to realize that the reader represents the final step in a book’s life of translation.
Well worth the time. (I'm at the stage of my current draft where I feel like I'm trapped inside the cathedral of fire, but there are worse places to be.)
Edited to add: See also the wonderful Tiffany's related post.
Acts of Translation Read More »
And tonight's ep is:
Memory Lane. Stefan takes more dramatic actions as he tries to discover the truth behind why Katherine has returned to Mystic Falls, and he is stunned when Katherine reveals some new information about the events that unfolded in 1864. Damon tries using a new method to resolve his issues with Mason, but his decision has serious consequences. Tyler pressures Mason to tell him the truth about the Lockwood family. Stefan and Elena are faced with limited options when Katherine gives them an ultimatum.
Last week was a return to form, so surely there's cracktastic hijincks of rollicking reveals in store for us tonight.
Vamp Talk Thursday Read More »
Kate Elliott (whose new book Cold Magic is at the top of my TBR stack) has written an amazing and wise post about what it means to be a nation of immigrants, about prejudice and how it damages:
And yet a cycle repeats itself. Every generation seems to fixate on some “new” immigrant group as a threat that can’t or won’t assimilate itself properly, that is stubborn or ineducable or secretly under the thrall of the Pope or or or. You can fill in the blanks. It happens over and over again as meanwhile people who want to build a good life for themselves and their children, and their children who can conceive of nothing other than being Americans because, well, that is what they are–they are Americans just as I am, or you over there, or you, or you–get on with living a decent life . . . if they can, if they aren’t locked into internment camps or having their places of worship burned because they are this decade’s or this generation’s Threat to Our Way of Life.
Really, seriously, go read the whole thing.
The fabulous Jo Knowles has started a meme in honor of Banned Books Week and #speakloudly, which goes a little something like this:
1. Go find your favorite banned book.
2. Take a picture of yourself with said book.
3. Give that book some love by explaining why you think it is an important book.
4. Post it to your blog.
5. Spread the word!
I have too many favorites to have a favorite, and I'm not situated to take a picture at the moment… so we'll sort of skip 1 and 2. However, one of my favorite challenged books when I was in high school was also one of the first true YA books I ever fell in love with: Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat (and the rest of the series–Witch Baby and Missing Angel Juan are my faves).
Block's books were wildly inventive and delicious, especially for a girl living in extremely small town Kentucky. I found out about them from my beloved Sassy magazine, and our wonderful, brave school librarian–who frequently asked me for suggestions on things to order–got the whole set. They stayed checked out. These were books girls told each other about, that so many people in that small town high school fell in love with. And why?
Because they didn't hold back. Because Block's world was a free one, where gay people weren't stigmatized, where families could be odd but still work, where there was room to screw up and make mistakes without ruining all life forever. You can't fool teenagers, and we knew these books were honest. Plus? They were stylistic fireworks. Block's voice was a whole new thing; she was telling flamboyantly fabulist stories about the emotionally real.
The idea of someone banning these effervescent parables of acceptance and individuality? Is ludicrous. There's not a hateful, negative thing in them, though there are characters dealing with hateful, tough, negative life stuff. And I'm truly grateful we had access to these books, not a little because my amazing mother–our principal–was against blocking and removing books and never allowed it to happen during her tenure. There's a reason they were always checked out: We needed them.
And it makes me angry beyond reason to think about teens anywhere being denied access to these, or any other books, because an adult has decided it's better to steal them off the shelves. I think these would-be banners know that the enclosed worlds they're trying to construct really are that fragile–fragile enough to be destroyed by one honest book. Keep reading what scares them.
p.s. I kind of love this tumblr.