Hangovers

• A few quick links to close tabs.
• I always love Jennifer Crusie's writing chats with her friends–the latest one is about the difficulty of writing sex scenes in first person.
• Lisa Lutz in the Wall Street Journal on (the breaking of) writing rules: "Readers are a curious lot; they want answers. Give them a really good question and they'll keep turning the page."
• Deborah Biancotti on writing 80,000 words in a month…don't try this at home, unless you want to. If so, she has provided helpful tips.
• A great obituary of John Fairfax in the NYT: "At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle. At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate. To please his mother, who did not take kindly to his being a pirate, he briefly managed a mink farm, one of the few truly dull entries on his otherwise crackling résumé, which lately included a career as a professional gambler."
• Editor Amanda posts about the process of reading manuscripts over at the Strange Chemistry blog: "Because here’s the thing: we have to pick the novels that we are prepared to champion to the hilt. We can’t waver in our belief of them. These are novels that we will be closely working with for the foreseeable future – we will have to read them a number of times, to a great depth of detail, and we will have to shout about them to the whole world. We can’t take on a novel that we have any uncertainty about, because we can’t then do the best job for the author and their book. But another publisher might – what you’re uncertain about, another editor will have read and gone into raptures over. It’s all subjective." Good stuff.
  
• A friend just sent me a pointer to Scape, a YA SFF-focused webzine now on its third issue. It's a truly gorgeous site, and I look forward to checking out the stories. We need more YA short fiction markets.
• And last but most! exciting! of! all! What a great Nebula and Norton ballet this year. Congratulations to all the nominees–so excited to see many people (and works by those people!) that I adore on the ballot.

• Laura Miller and Maud Newton are combining forces at The Chimerist. Color me intrigued.
• The stories behind the animal logos for various publishers. (Love. Via Sarah Weinman.)
• Charles Tan interviews Delia Sherman about The Freedom Maze: "Now I come to think about it, probably one of the main reasons I needed to write this book was because I’ve never been comfortable with talking about politics.  I think the arguments of racism are stupid and short-sighted, that the justifications of the prejudiced are irrational, that oppression of any kind rots the souls of the oppressors, and that people are much stronger when they work together than when they work against each other.  But I don’t often say so, not in so many words.  I don’t actually say any of that in The Freedom Maze.  But I try to show it in every way I could think of."
• Sherman Alexie and Neko Case talking in The Believer. So much fabulous.
• An interesting post from Jordyn at Ten Cent Notes about book appeal, aka what makes her pick something up. I always find such discussions fascinating.
• Writing rules from various luminaries–Henry Miller's are far more charming than I expected.
• A look at Myrna Loy's career.

• Nova Ren Suma's fabulous Turning Points Blog series continues; today is Courtney Summers and there's a list of all the essays so far at the end of the entry.
• Cyn Leitich Smith has a fascinating summary of a talk by Canadian book wholesaler Maria Martella.
• Two interactive storytelling/enhanced ebook-related posts worth reading: Rachel Stark on Sleep No More and the potential of nonlinear narratives and Laura Miller on some of the issues with adding bells and whistles and music and video.
• Jennifer Paull at Book Riot on her genre kryptonite: Girls in Crumbling Estates. I second the ones mentioned and add We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
• Austin Grossman on the new Watchmen and the need for more innovation in the halls of DC.
• Two writing posts I endorse: the value of taking a walk to your writing (YES! I do it daily, unless prevented by weather–walk, then writing time) and Toby Buckell on productivity in bursts.
• The fully wonderful A.N. Devers interviewed about Writers Houses at the Big Read Blog. A snippet, in response to where she still wants to visit: "I’d say all of them, but it makes me sound like some kind of cheap writers’ houses floozy. It’s really a tie between The Bronte Parsonage and Virginia Woolf’s Monk House. Woolf visited The Bronte Parsonage and wrote an incredible essay about it called “Haworth, November 1904.” Rounding out the tipsy-top of my wish list: Dostoevsky’s house in Saint Petersburg and the Japanese horror and mystery writer Edogawa Rampo’s house in Tokyo. Oh, and that guy Shakespeare. Here’s a fun fact: P. T. Barnum actually tried to purchase Shakespeare’s birthplace and move it to America."
  
• The Boston Herald on the popularity of fantasy, particularly among younger readers, including comments from the lovely and wise Dora Goss, whose The Thorn and the Blossom is just out.
• The Astrobiology Magazine images of the day are GORGEOUS. (Thanks to Tiffany for the pointer.)
• "The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World."
• Interesting piece on The Power of Introverts.
• And, finally, if you don't read Kate Hart's Friday round-up of YA publishing wisdom and wit from twitter, why not? This week's is here.

• The wondrous Meghan McCarron has an *excellent* new story up at Tor.com, "Swift, Brutal Retaliation." You won't read another ghost story like this one anytime soon.
• Dept. of I Love This Kind of Thing: Maggie Stiefvater compares and contrasts the draft of a chapter, taking it from first version to last.
• Laini Taylor offers some questions to ask when a scene is giving you fits.
• I can't remember where I first saw this, but it's kind of amazing: "The Power of the Witch," a British documentary from 1971.
• There could have been no more perfect name for this bird than Muppet.
• A good piece on acknowledgements at the Millions; I heart acks.
• Just in case you haven't yet swooned at the beauty of Tiffany Trent's cover for The Unnaturalists: Go do so.
• The delightful Nova Ren Suma is hosting a new blog series starting tomorrow, this one on turning points. (I'll be contributing an essay for this one; just started working on it, actually.)

Some links! And some of these have been sitting in my "links to post" file for awhile, so clearing them out. Also, I'm behind on email but hoping to catch up tonight or tomorrow. So there you have it.

• "For a Better Brain, Sleep Well": "While an awake brain is more stimulated, our thinking organ cannot handle unbridled activity. Neurons have a threshold past which the communication of information is inhibited. This is why, after a restless night, people say they are unable to concentrate on the day's tasks. By restoring the brain to a restful state, neurons are more prepared to activate the following day and learn from the surrounding environment. The brain's daily rejuvenation process is known as 'synaptic homeostasis." The key to everything, really.
• Great list: 5 Timeless Books of Insight on Fear and the Creative Process. 
• The science of kissing.
• "Alejandro Jodorowsky and His Tarot de Marseille": "In Paris, where he has lived for the last 20 years, he lectures on the tarot and does readings for strangers once a week. And he vividly remembers how, at 20, he first saw an old (and, he said, naked) woman in his native Chile give a tarot reading, and was instantly intrigued. He soon moved to Paris, where he joined the mime company of Marcel Marceau and began traveling with him. It was in Tokyo, Mr. Jodorowsky said, that he first bought a tarot deck. This became a habit. Every place they went, he would figure out where and how to buy a new deck; before long, he had a vast collection."
• Hannah Tepper conducts a fascinating interview about the science of free will with researcher Michael Gazzaniga at Salon: "There is something in our left hemisphere, a system, a module, a capacity that is constantly trying to see the meaning in the patterns of activity in the brain. It’s trying to interpret emotional changes and behaviors. It’s trying to put this into a story line. It’s the thing that builds our story. It’s also, I think, responsible for why we can talk about determinism and a lack of free will until we’re blue in the face, but none of us actually believes it. Because we feel we are unified and we have this sense of self. I think this is highly related to the interpreter."
• The difficulties of authors with hard-to-pronounce names.
• Everybody's favorite stealth library artist: link one and link two.
• Laura Miller interviews Jonathan Lethem, and many interesting things are said.
• Annalee makes a list of ten themes shared by historical and science fiction over at io9.
• Colleen visits The Big Idea to talk about The Map of My Dead Pilots, and the issues around writing about real people.
• The fabulous Kat Howard writes about fencing and its fictional versions (delightfully!) at Fantasy.
• Two wonderful and smart women talking: Malinda Lo interviews Cassandra Clare for Diversity in YA.
• I absolutely adored the series of posts Nova Ren Suma hosted on inspiration last month, and her own final post on the subject was no exception. Highly recommended.

• Sara Zarr contributes to Nova Ren Suma's series on inspiration, with a post about failure that's essential reading for all writers. Speaking of things that are not failures, I can't recommend Sara's new novel How to Save a Life highly enough; both first-person narrators are completely authentic and beautifully developed, and I just loved it. See also: an interview about the book at Matthew Quirk's site.
• An excellent post from Junot Díaz on character voice: "You want to write good characters with an unforgettable voice? In my experience it won't kill you if you first figure out the character's relationship with the telling, with the story, before you even think about what kind of words, what kind of languages, what kind of attitude these folks will be slinging."
• Jaw-dropping art from Alenka Sottler.
• Department of Huh: 'The Easter Island “Heads” Have Bodies."
• At the NYT, "Computer Experts Building 1830s Babbage Analytical Engine": "The Lovelace notes are remarkable both for her algorithm for calculating the sequence known as Bernoulli numbers and for what would become known as the “Lovelace objection.” In passing, she commented that the Babbage computer would not originate anything, but rather could do only what it had been instructed. The implication was that machines would not be creative, and thus not intelligent."
• Maud posts some thoughts about astrology and extras from her talk with Susan Miller.
• An interesting look at Amazon as publisher thus far by Laura Hazard Owen at Paid Content. Amazon is making some smart hires–like Ed Park—who are making some smart, interesting acquisitions. Yay Jenny D; the new book sounds fabulous.
• Laura Miller has a very smart piece on epic fantasy focusing on Nora Jemisin and David Anthony Durham. See also: Thoughtful follow-up at Nora's blog, and a good discussion in the comments (including an interesting contribution from Laura about the coziness of good vs. evil, which seems spot on).
• Some love from the NYT for Laurel Snyder's Bigger Than a Breadbox, which I'll recommend here again. And, as Monica points out, the children's special section as a whole is filled with wonderful things.

• I can never resist stories about things like aerial photos revealing strange circular designs all over our planet.
• A wonderful, wide-ranging (the Moomin books, Jack London, and on and on) essay by Matthew Battles about what being feral means. I'll filch only an aside for here, and encourage you to read the whole thing: "(A few years ago I was looking at one of Caldecott’s books in the company of Maurice Sendak; we were examining the concluding illustration in a tale about a little boy lost in the woods, a towhead fetally curled in a clearing while animals regard him beneficently from amidst the trees. The forest creatures came to wish him a good night’s sleep, the caption read. “Yes,” muttered Sendak. “Or perhaps they were ready for dinner.” Part of what makes Sendak one of our great artists of the feral is his ability to hold sentiment and nutriment in equal regard.)" See also: Maurice Sendak interviewed at NPR.
  
• Edward Gorey's letters and illustrated envelopes. Must get a copy of Floating Worlds, stat.
• This essay by Norman Sunshine about not being able to take his partner to the Emmys in 1976 made me tear right up.
• The NYT talks to André Leon Talley: "The downside of being around all this nature is that twice I have had a bat fly into my bedroom, having slipped in through the cracks of the screened window. I do not wish this experience on anyone. Nothing is more unpleasant than running screaming down the stairs, lying awake until dawn on the sofa, waiting for pest control to show up, only to hear, “Oh, it could be in your blanket or sheets, or behind a mirror.” (Once, a bat was found snoozing in the bathtub.)"
• Malinda Lo asks, "What does authentic mean anyway?"
• The brilliant Elizabeth Knox talks about why she writes fantasy (and has some perceptive things to say about Ms. Holly Black's Curse Workers trilogy, too): "But if I’m asked the question ‘Why do your books have to have angels and vampires etc…’ when I’m in a happy and expansive mood, I might just point out that, for human beings, the real world is made of facts, and stories. The world is how it is, and it’s how it feels; and how it feels is as interesting as how it is. Then, for myself, I’ll say I write fantasy because 1) I love writing fantasy, and because 2) Fantasy gives me freedom." (Also, huge and loud YAY to another Southland book; if you haven't read the Dreamhunter Duet, well, DO. And all her books, really. They're all wonderful. I just especially want more people in YA to read the Dreamhunter books. Oh, and there's a great new story set in the same world in Kelly and Gavin's Steampunk! anthology, which'll be out soonsoonsoon.)
• Finally, I love this sentiment that Ellen Kushner shares from Delia Sherman: "I hate to whine . . . but whining is an important part of my process." Me too, Delia. Me too.

• If you want to change your life, read Kim O'Donnel's newest column at USA Today and make some sofrito: "Inebriated by the sofrito perfume, my human dinner companions gathered around the stove like hungry dogs. They lapped up every last bit and begged for more the next day. I couldn't argue with them; The sofrito turned the ordinary into the extraordinary. It was the ultimate flavor zipper-upper, and I started to understand the possibilities for soups, stews and sauces, just like I learned how to use mirepoix (a combination of onions, carrots, and celery) in cooking school." I admit to being one of the humans in question, but, seriously, this is the most delicious thing ever.
• Gavin posts the cover for the next in Lydia Millet's middle grade series (which I still need to read the first of). It be gorgeous.
• Oh, and because I keep forgetting, there's a new issue of LCRW out–I'm still making my way through it, but LOVE the Carol Emshwiller and Joan Aiken stories (and it also has a new installment of Dear Aunt G, of course).
• J.L. Bell points to and comments on a discussion of why monachies are so popular in children's fantasy (and, well, I'd say broaden that to high fantasy as a whole, really). He adds an interesting thought I can't remember seeing as part of this conversation before (and which wouldn't apply to fantasies written for adults): "That’s because those fantasies don’t replicate the larger democratic society in which most of their readers are living. They reflect the smaller, more dictatorial societies of family and school, with rules set by “self-selected group of elites, often with special powers,” called adults." Check it out.
• Speaking of conversations, the one about GLBTQ characters in YA fiction centered around a guest essay at Genreville has turned into a bit of a hot mess. Regardless, I highly recommend reading the posts it sparked by Scott Tracey (one and two), Malinda Lo (who did a hero's work putting together those pie charts), and Sara Ryan. These are discussions we should be having.
• "The Dark Side of the Placebo Effect: When Intense Belief Kills" at the Atlantic.
• At Slate, Kara Jesella writes about Tavi Gevinson's new online mag for teen girls Rookie (which I have intense love for thus far) and how feminism and teen fashion have become more comfortable bedfellows. While at the NYT, Marisa Meltzer writes about girls embracing "grandma chic." (For reference: Y'all will remember how I feel about Sassy, and Jesella and Meltzer's fab book about it .)
• Laura Lippman talks about her new book, The Most Dangerous Thing, at Omnivoracious; found this bit especially intriguing: "I’m married to a writer, a good one, David Simon. We don’t talk about writing as much as people might think, but we have often discussed how to take an initial idea, the obvious idea — angry father compounds son’s tragedy through his senseless rage — and “flip it.” When I wrote the 4th of July chapter for The Most Dangerous Thing, I flipped it – and found myself staring into the tragic heart of the book."