Uncategorized

I become very disgruntled when I click on what sounds like an interesting headline–"Zorn Establishes Himself"–thinking, "Zorn! Finally, our news begins to cover intergalactic politics! Or possibly dead Swedish artists! Maybe Zod* and Zorn will fight each other!" only to discover it’s about sports. Football even.** Stupid headlines.

See also: The real story on Zorn.

*"Kneel before Zod."
**And not the good World Cup kind.

And Mr. Hemingway too. Home soon, though, right?

I heart the semicolon:

Americans, in particular, prefer shorter sentences without, as style books advise, that distinct division between statements that are closely related but require a separation more prolonged than a conjunction and more emphatic than a comma.

“When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life,” Kurt Vonnegut once said. “Old age is more like a semicolon.”

Used judiciously, of course; the semicolon’s one of the few advantages of academic writing.

But when people are holidaysing and real-lifing and I am suddenly in the mood to read Web slapfights there are none to be witnessed, not even relatively recent ones with a couple of people still posting into the void. . .

Or am I missing something? ::she asked hopefully::

I write this from the Miami-Dade County Public Library’s main branch, which just happens to be across the street from the federal building, home of the passport office. If all goes according to the (new) plan, I’ll swing over there and grab my shiny new passport (less than 24 hours, babee, since we discovered it was expired*), then we’ll book back to the airport and get on the 7:25 flight to Montego Bay… arriving mere six hours or so after we were supposed to and after our compatriots.

Are we this lucky? I hope so.

I already miss these guys, who were supersad to see us go. (And this guy too–cat, not boy who’s sitting next to me.) And yes, I’ll be completely fried by the time we (crossed) get out to the villa around 11:30 or midnight. Fried, but tropical. Keep it crossed and send the good karma, mon.

*Christopher’s Automated Phone System Fu is second to none.

I’m choosing to ignore all this Kindle business (I don’t even really know what it is, that’s how much I’m ignoring it), until there’s a reason to do otherwise. If it’s your cuppa notice though, Ed seems to be staying on top of things.

Yes, that’s right, we KILLED at bar trivia. Specifically, we killed the hopes and dreams of that child in front of that weird bar video game in the picture, whose one-man (with assistance from Dad) trivia team was called Don’t Underestimate My Power (cute, huh? he went DOWN).

If it wasn’t for that pesky question about what two mammals are poisonous, he’d have been CRYING for sure. (The shrew and the platypus — really? Huh.)

After just a couple of hours, I’m a total Scrivener convert. My novel is handily broken into documents for each chapter, with a synopsis for each, and if that doesn’t sound exciting, it’s only because you aren’t looking at the complete and utter awesome that this enables.

This is a mostly complete if somewhat sporadically updated list of more official-type stuff by me that falls under the heading of Not Fiction. Most of it is available to read for free, but nonfiction publications in print  are at the end, if you want to check out those.

Academic
“Eye for a God’s Eye: The Bold Choice of the Ominiscient Point of View in Fiction for Young Adults” (Spring 2008, Vermont College of Fine Arts thesis)

Advicey (subscribe to LCRW for regular installments)
Dear Aunt Gwenda Vol. 3 from LCRW No. 15
Dear Aunt Gwenda Vol. 2 from LCRW No. 14
Dear Aunt Gwenda Vol. 1 from LCRW No. 13

Blackwood-Related Interviews and Guest Posts
Not A Blog Tour Giant Master List

Editor
Subterranean Online’s Special YA Issue (Summer 2011)

Essays/Roundtables
Dear Teen Me (Apr. 2012)
Panel on Speculative Fiction YA, coordinated by Charles Tan, with Malinda Lo, Tarie Sabido, Cheryl Morgan, and Tehani Wessely, SF Signal (Jan. 2012)
“The Future’s Not Bright” Tor.com (Apr. 2011)

Features
“Breaking Out” Publishers Weekly (Apr. 13, 2012)
“Child Care Has a Growth Spurt” Publishers Weekly (Mar. 9, 2012)
“Firsts in Fiction: Debut Novels 2012” Publishers Weekly (Feb. 10, 2012)
“Equal Opportunity Electioneering” Publishers Weekly (Jan. 12 2012)
“RX for Wellness” Publishers Weekly (Aug. 12, 2011)
“Crafting the Future” Publishers Weekly (Jul. 22, 2011)
“Large As Life” Publishers Weekly (Apr. 4, 2011)
“Going for Broke,” Publishers Weekly (Dec. 20, 2010)
“It’s Easy Being Green,” Publishers Weekly (Nov. 22, 2010)
“Healing Words,” Publishers Weekly (Aug. 16, 2010)
“Tightly Knit,” Publishers Weekly (July 26, 2010)
“Seeing the Big Picture,” Publishers Weekly (May 10, 2010)
“Parenting Grows Up,” Publishers Weekly (March 15, 2010)
“Payback: Revenge, Recoup, Reassess,” Publishers Weekly (Dec. 21, 2009)
“Romancing the Recession,” Publishers Weekly (Nov. 16, 2009)
“When Love is Strange,” Publishers Weekly (May 25, 2009)
“Bailouts of the Self-Help Kind,” Publishers Weekly (April 6, 2009)
“A Nation of Crafters,” Publishers Weekly (Aug. 11, 2008)
“Fighting Facts and Figures,” Publishers Weekly (May 12, 2008)
“Secrets for a New Age,” Publishers Weekly (Sept. 3, 2007)
“Seriously Gay and Lesbian,” Publishers Weekly (May 7, 2007)
“Getting There From Here,” Publishers Weekly (Sept. 11, 2006)
“Fantasy Goes Literary,” Publishers Weekly (April 3, 2006)

Fictional
“Cassie Says,” Journal of Mythic Arts Summer 2007
“Unflappable,” Going Twice Blogthology 2006

Interviews @ Shaken & Stirred
Genevieve Valentine (July 2011)
Ted Chiang (Dec. 2010)
Andrea Seigel (Dec. 2010)
Andrew Auseon (July 2010)
Tara Kelly (May 2010)
Paolo Bacigalupi (May 2010)
Jessica Leader (May 2010)
Libba Bray (Sept. 2009)
Laurel Snyder (May 2009)
Greg van Eekhout (May 2009)
Jincy Willett (May 2008)
David J. Schwartz (May 2008)
Joshua Henkin (March 2008)
Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple (Nov. 2007)
Elizabeth Knox (Nov. 2007)
Micol Ostow (Nov. 2007)
Chris Barzak (Nov. 2007)
Bennett Madison (June 2007)
Holly Black (June 2007)
Cecil Castellucci (June 2007)
Ysabeau Wilce (June 2007)
Tara Ison (March 2007)

Interviews Elsewhere
Beth Revis, Lightspeed (Oct. 2011)
Greg Pak, Strange Horizons (Nov. 2005)
Kelly Link, Ed Champion’s Return of the Reluctant (Sept. 2004)
Scott Westerfeld, the old Shaken & Stirred (Sept. 2004)

Reviews
The Book of Blood and Shadow Locus (May 2012)
Daughter of Smoke and Bone Locus (Nov. 2011)
The Girl of Fire and Thorns Locus (Sept. 2011)
The Boy at the End of the World (Apr. 2011)
Top Ten for 2010 LocusMag.com (Jan. 2011)
“What I Didn’t See and Other Stories,” Subterranean Online (Winter 2011)
Ship Breaker, Subterranean Online (Summer 2010)
Boneshaker, Subterranean Online (Fall 2009)
Pretty Monsters, Subterranean Online (Summer 2009)
The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Subterranean Online (Spring 2009)
Science Fiction and Fantasy, Washington Post Book World (Feb. 2007)
Robot Stories and More Screenplays by Greg Pak, Strange Horizons (Nov. 2005)

Other Stuff in Print

Official in-actual-book nonfiction(ish) publications, with handy links for purchasing (if you click through to goodreads, you’ll find indiebound, B&N, Powells and Amazon links). 

“Asking for a Friend” essay offering my take on the importance of friendship in The Mortal Instruments series, plus fabulous essays by many amazing authors in Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader edited by Cassandra Clare (Smart Pop), coming in 2013.

 

 

 

 “Dear Aunt Gwenda” columns times two reprinted in The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant (Del Rey).

 

 

 

“Never Sleep Again” essay revealing deep, dark insomniac, childhood secrets in Awake! A Reader for the Sleepless, edited by Steven Lee Beeber (Soft Skull).

The wonderful Jedediah Berry has posted an enthusiastic recommendation for Scrivener over at the LCRW blog. Color me convinced; the snapshot feature alone seems worth its weight in gold.