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In Which A Girl Goes On A Journey

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Fairyland I'm sure you're aware of the launch of Catherynne Valente's magnificent new project, a YA-in-progress called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, which is mentioned and quoted from in her most recent novel for adults, Palimpsest. When I say in progress, I mean that it's being posted as she writes it, with a new chapter up each Monday. If you've been under a dark cloud and haven't heard the reasons why, here's the back story. The story story began today, and I'm very much excited to follow it.(There's even audio of her reading it.)

If you feel likewise, donate what you can, and do spread the word.

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SBBT Stop: Laurel Snyder

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Author-1 Laurel Snyder is my twitter soul-mate. By which I mean that we met on twitter and I know that one day, after about ten minutes in a bar somewhere random, it will feel as if we've known each other forever. Laurel has done and written a whole bunch of interesting stuff that you can read about here. Today, though, we're mostly going to talk about her most excellent and wonderful and fabulous new middle grade novel Any Which Wall, which she herself has described elsewhere as an attempt to pay tribute to Edward Eager in the way he paid tribute to E. Nesbit. And, reader, she does, and then some. Like the best conversations, this interview meanders a bit, but I don't think you'll mind.

GB: I am a process nerd, and the readers of S&S have sadly not had much process porn to witness lately. So, tell me about the writing process for Any Which Wall–was it different than any of your other work, special challenges, motivations, more drinking, etc.

LS: Well… in truth I wrote Any Which Wall because my husband lost his job. My older son was a year old at the time, and I was 6 months pregnant, and suddenly we had NO income, and NO healthcare! So I called my agent and said, "I need X dollars before this baby gets here! Is there any way for me to somehow earn some money fast?

And this is the reason I will forever, forever love my agent. Because she said, "You'll probably get a smaller advance if we do it like this, and it might not work, but if you can dream up a book, honey, we can try." So I sat down and cranked out the proposal, and we did sell it, and the money was enough to buy us a year of Blue Cross, and a few months of mortgage, and a pizza. And that (along with my husband's  temp job) was enough to get us through. Whew!

But by the time we signed the contract, there I was, with a newborn, and a toddler, and no clue how to finish this book. I couldn't afford childcare. So what'd I do? I went home to Momma. I took the most horrible plane ride ever, *wearing* both screaming kids (I'm not kidding), to Baltimore. And all day each day, while my mom babysat my older son, I wrote in the unairconditioned third floor bedroom of a  neighbor's house (thanks Marjean!). Nursing hourly (the baby slept in his carseat on the floor) and nibbling triscuits.

Then, after 6 hours of solid writing, sweat dripping off my nose, I'd walk home, and my mom would feed me and pour me a very large glass of white wine. And I somehow, somehow finished the draft. Miserable, but very grateful too.

Of course, it was so rushed it was a disaster, and I had to rewrite the whole damn thing in a coffeeshop 6 months later. But by then I could afford luxuries like the occasional sandwich, and a few hours of babysitting.

GB: Clearly this book is–in addition to being a wonderful middle grade novel on its own terms–aAnywhichwall  love letter to Edward Eager's books. Tell me about the impact those books had on you as a kid and how they influence your own creative work. 

LS: Eliot said something once that often gets shortened to "Bad poets borrow. Good poets steal." Well, whether I'm good or bad, I'm (first and last) a poet. I tend to read books over and over. I study them, process them–their cadences, tricks of speech, and dialogue patterns wiggle into my head. For the books I've been rereading or decades this is most true. So it's impossible for me not to be, on some level, always writing a love letter. To Eager and Nesbit, and to Dahl, and Enright, and Lewis, and McDonald, and so many others. I've probably read Eager's books more than 20 times over the years. If I didn't call my books "tributes" someone else would accuse me of plagiarism. I'm just beating my critics to the punch!

GB: I know you are a big fan of small southern towns. Why? And who are some of your favorite bands and musicians from the south?

LS: Sigh. Yeah. I spent 7 years in Chattanooga, and I miss it pretty perpetually. I also love Louisville and Asheville a lot. We haven't been able to find jobs anywhere that size, but I'm always hunting…

For me, the southeast is just a good fit. I grew up thinking I lived in the north (in Baltimore) but in fact, Maryland is a lot more like the south. The muggy summers and the mild winters and the green everywhere and the low mountains. I love other places too, Iowa especially, but the south has a lot of what the midwest has, only warmer. People making up their own kinds of lives. Cheap rent and beautiful landscapes and loud laughs and whiskey and falling-down barns are conducive to art, maybe. To me, the south feels very DIY, sloppy and forgiving, and I could go on forever about this.   

Oh, and music. I have to give it to Kentucky for that. I remember being into "progressive music" until discovering Palace Brothers and Freakwater, and that was just IT! Music changed forever for me. Right now I'm obsessed with a local band here, based in Rome, The Little Country Giants. And my friend Pieta Brown, who lives in Iowa, but is really from Birmingham.

GB: You recently published an essay about how a lot of Jewish books for kids are very serious and traditional, when taken as a whole. What was the response to that essay like? Did it surprise you? It seems like there was an instant groundswell of writers saying YES, WHAT SHE JUST SAID.

LS: It was insane and crazy and the ripples are echoing through my life right now. Typically, when I rant online, people yell at me and spank me, but that was different. Everyone just seemed to be on the same page. I got a *huge* number of emails from all kinds of people, doing all sorts of  things that excited me when I heard about them. There's an incredible Jewish illustration show being put together by the Skirball Center (in conjunction with the Carle Museum), and the PJ Library is just an amazing initiative that everyone needs to know about. It's very exciting. Really, there's a market ready to eat new books up, and writers and artists eager to make the books. We just have to get everyone together. I'm trying to dream up a conference, and an anthology. Everything just needs a point of connection. Ask m e again in a  year!

GB: What have you been reading/watching/listening to lately that you would like to recommend?
 
LS: I'd embarass myself if I told you what I watch on TV. (*Ed. note)

No, really. It's bad. Like, hair-band bad. I mean, I love the Flight of the Conchords and The Wire and Mad Men, like everyone… but most nights, I'm watching BAD TV!

For books– I  read Island of the Aunts not too long ago, and it's a really wonderful book that I'd somehow missed. And I fell in LOVE with My One Hundred Adventures and The Girl Who Could Fly last year.


*This is not possible–I keep a stockpile of Numb7rs episodes Just In Case. Also, yay Island of the Aunts!

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SBBT Stop: Greg van Eekhout

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Vaneekhout_bw-small-1 Greg van Eekhout has been writing excellent short stories for years now, which is why I'm so glad to host him here to discuss his debut novel–welcome to the dark side, Greg. Watching the caffeine-fueled, coffee shop-enabled birth process for Norse Code on Greg's blog was so much fun that I was almost afraid it wouldn't live up to my expectations. I picked up my copy Saturday at our local indie bookshop and have already finished–I say without reservation that you should all run out and buy your copy IMMEDIATELY (or just click the handy link to Indiebound). It's a crazy fun and witty read, just the brew of the modern and the mythological I love best.

GB: You know I love the process porn and my blog's readers have not been getting a lot of that recently. So, let's start with process. Tell me about Norse Code–how was it written? Did your process change for this book, different motivations, challenges, typewriter, etc.? I also want to know how you came up with such a great title.

GVE: I like to write in coffee houses, with my laptop and a big Americano. That's pretty much my process. Other than that, it's just a matter of grinding it out. I had a 9 to 5 for about half the time I worked on the book, so I was at the coffee house before work for at least an hour a day. After I left the day job, I taught college English composition part time and did contract work, so my schedule became less structured, but I try to treat writing as much like a day job as I can.

Norse Code was written on the skeletons of two short stories. The first, "Wolves Till the World Goes Down," (in Starlight 3) is about what the gods do when Ragnarok arrives. The second story, which I never finished, was about a valkyrie who works for a genomics firm. Her job is to track down blood descendants of Odin and recruit them to serve in Odin's army. For the longest time, the book was called "Greg's Damn Norse Novel," so I needed a real title before sending it out. I'd had a lot of suggestions from friends: Valhalla Boulevard, A Norse is a Norse of Course of Course, A World Tree Grows in Reseda … My friends are special. I settled on Norse Code, which was the working title of the unfinished short story, at the last minute. I'm not sure I made the right choice.

GB: You did! It's a great title. So, what attracts you to Norse mythology? It does seem like a way underused mythos. What were the strangest things you found out while researching?

GVE: What Norse mythology has going for it is Ragnarok, and I love the idea of Ragnarok because INorsecode  grew up in Los Angeles, which is sort of a natural disaster in progress. Some of my earliest memories involve earthquakes, the house next door burning down and singeing our place, a gas main explosion during recess near my elementary school, stuff like that. And the thing that makes Ragnarok really interesting is that some gods know exactly how they're going to die, some gods know they're destined to survive and preside over the re-booted universe, and some gods aren't mentioned in the Ragnarok prophecy at all and have no idea what's going to happen to them. Right there, you've got all these questions about predestiny and free will and making the most of your numbered days. These are very human issues, which means the gods and the mortals in my book are dealing with the same stuff.

I have to admit, I'm not a great researcher. I do just enough to get by. With Norse mythology, however, the primary sources are limited, short, and readable. What I failed to find in my research was an analog for Beta Ray Bill, from the Walt Simonson issues of The Mighty Thor. I would have loved to have gotten Beta Ray Bill in there, but it would have been shoe horning.

GB: You also write excellent short stories and have for years. Do you approach a story differently than a novel? Or is every piece its own different thing? I know you write a lot in coffee shops–is caffeine your secret?

GVE: Aw, thanks for saying that nice thing you just said about my short stories! I usually don't have very much to go on when I start a story: a bit of an idea, maybe some language. Then I sketch in some parts, a scene here, a passage there, and just keep adding to it until I've got a beginning, something like a middle, and an end. When I've got that, I go back and sculpt it into something that has a proper shape, with a character arc and rising tension and a resolution. I can't work the same way with novels. Those little bits I'd be sketching in would be too far apart from one another, and the connective tissue would be stretched too thin. So for novels, I need a much more developed vision. Honestly, I'd love to get to a point where writing novels is more like writing short stories, and I can be more relaxed and spontaneous. I've written dozens of short stories and only three novels so far, so maybe I'll get there.

And, yes, caffeine is essential. When coffee beans go extinct, there will be no more stories from me.

GB: What are you working on now/what's next?

GVE: I've got a middle-grade contemporary fantasy being shopped around right now, and I've got a good chunk written of a contemporary fantasy for adults based on my short story, "The Osteomancer's Son," which is about a California run by masters of osteomancy, or bone magic. Imagine an Eastern herbal medicine, based on consuming exotic animal parts, with the addition of Pleistocene megafauna and extinct hippogriffs and unicorns and such. It would be so groovy if both books sold, because I'd love to have a career in both categories, and also I could use some money.

GB: Tell me what you've been reading/watching/listening to lately that you'd like to pimp? (OR, alternately, what you've been hating on.)

GVE: I've maintained a lifelong interest in comics, but lately the bug has bitten me big. The Immortal Iron Fist (Brubaker/Fraction/Aja) stands out as a recent favorite. And Kazu Kibuishi's one-page Copper stories are sublime (http://www.boltcity.com/copper/). Most of the prose fiction I'm reading these days comes from my friends. T.A. Pratt's Spell Games is a terrifically fun book with a breath-taking ending, and Magic Thief: Lost by Sa rah Prineas is a terrific read with a great cast of characters that expands, complicates, and improves upon the first volume in the series. I've got some really talented friends.


Visit today's other SBBT sites (links to come):


And a quick reminder that the Guys Lit Wire Book Fair for Boys to build a library for boys incarcerated in the LA County Juvenile Justice System is still going on.

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Ooh

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From the Publishers Lunch Weekly deal report list:

Founder of indie rock band Throwing Muses Kristin Hersh's RAT GIRL, about a particularly pivotal year when, as a teenager, the author's band signed their first record deal, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and she found out she was pregnant, to Alexis Washam at Penguin, for publication in 2010, by Jason Anthony at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin (NA).

I know Doselle and Elizabeth will be interested in this one too.

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A Thousand Miles

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Cover-60 No Dollhouse Discussion because no new Dollhouse, and sorry my presence has been so spotty here this week. It's spring, and I'm completely absorbed by a new project that I didn't expect to catch fire quite so quickly. Scary, very scary, but fun, too. We'll see. 

C and I took in the Excavating Egypt exhibit tonight, where I stared at a statue of Anubis until I got chills. One of the little corners of the exhibit, tucked away opposite the elevators of an upstairs hallway where most people probably miss it, featured an oversized picture of Amelia Edwards and an absolutely gorgeous display of her books about Egypt.*

Edwards is a fascinating character–a close friend of Charles Dickens, a suffragette, and, of course, a prominent Egyptologist. Her writings about her travels in Egypt reflected a prescient fear for the destruction of its archeological treasures, one she acted on by encouraging more measured exploration. Here's an excerpt from the excellent biographical note at the University of Pennsylvania's celebration of women writers:

Anyone who has lost themselves in one of Elizabeth Peters' "Amelia Peabody" mysteries, daydreaming of high adventure amid the pyramids of Egypt, will be intrigued by the writings of her real-life contemporary Amelia Edwards. Edwards enjoyed three separate careers: as an journalist, a novelist, and an egyptologist. She was also an active supporter of the suffrage movement, serving at one time as Vice-President of the Society for Promoting Women's Suffrage. Unlike the fictional Amelia Peabody, Amelia Edwards never married, but lived and travelled for much of her life with a female companion.

When she died at the age of 61, she left her collection of Egyptian artifacts to and endowed a chairship at University College, London, because it was the "only university in Britain offering degrees for women at that time." William Matthew Flinders Petrie–who according to the exhibit sometimes performed his archeology in underwear to discourage tourists–was the first holder of the chair and, obviously, who the Petrie Museum is named after. 

The Penn site has the full text of A Thousand Miles up the Nile, as do several other sites, including Google Books. Or, like I plan to, you can check out some of her ghost and supernatural-themed stories here, including those published in Dickens' magazines.

*Stopped here to howl because Emma heard a doorbell on television and started barking. We do not have a doorbell, but someone in Emma's past did.

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A Golden Age

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Forgot to mention that I got my contributor's copy of the Nebula Awards Showcase 2009, edited by the one and only Ellen Datlow. My contribution is an essay about the incredibly excellent work being produced under the umbrella of YA science fiction and fantasy*. And, aside from the essays, the selection of stories is truly exceptional. Ellen talks about what's included here.


*It's a pretty cool umbrella.

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Killer Serials

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As y'all know, there's nothing I like more than a good process discussion. So for the past few days I've been reading with great interest the posts at the Fangs, Fur, & Fey livejournal community, where a bunch of authors have been posting their responses to the question of the month, "How did you plan the last novel you wrote (and successfully finished)? Outline? Synopsis? Summary? Divination Rod? Nuthin' at all?" (Here's links to a few, and you can seek them all out using the link above: Laura Anne Gilman's, Maggie Stiefvater's, Janni Simner's, and Megan Crewe's.)

This all falls under the category of when you're thinking about something, suddenly you see it everywhere. One thing I'm trying to do as I approach my next book (or what I'm fairly certain is my next book) is give it a little more cooking on the front end. My process seems to be shifting over time to allow more planning, with the caveat that the story still sometimes manages to jump tracks and end up somewhere completely different. I have no expectation that I'll ever completely eliminate that track-jumping, at least not in the smaller sense, and I don't really want to. What I do want to try to do is get more of a feel for the story, the world, and the characters before I start actually constructing them on the page.

So I've been thinking about that–stopping myself from actually starting the book, as is my usual modus operandi–and slowing down and letting the pieces come together a bit more first. I'm sure this won't actually turn out to be that slow a process, since I also believe that too much planning can be useless or, worse, detrimental. Witness all the research I did on Aztecs and the Romani in the earliest of early drafts of what was to eventually become a book that uses only Greek mythology (the book I just finished). Now, that stuff will come in handy–in fact, I expect some of it will come in handy on the project I'm doing all the thinking about. But I certainly didn't end up needing it for the last book, so I'll be doing my researching as I go this time. Because despite all this front-end work, I still thoroughly expect that I won't know exactly what I might need to research until I get into the placing of one word after another.

Which brings me to the second thing I've been thinking about–what are the elements that seem to be common to successful series? By series here I mean both open-ended series with lots of books and the more traditional trilogy; for my purposes, the key elements would likely be the same. I'm thinking the next thing I write might be such a trilogy, and that also necessitates more planning up front, at least in theory. Here's what I've come up with so far, and then you smartypants can (hopefully) add or comment on things I missed.

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