The two best teams in the league, Indiana and Phoenix are battling it out. Indiana is renowned for their defense and Phoenix for their offense. Though both teams have been proving in this series that they’re not exactly slouches at the other end.

They’ve won one game each both played in Phoenix. The first game was the highest scoring game in WNBA history 120 to 116 (Phoenix won). The second was every bit as exciting (Indiana got the win). The third game will have a crowd of at least 18,000. Last I heard they were just shy of a sellout.

I don’t have a favourite in this series. I like Indiana a lot. I’m a huge fan of Tamika Catchings and Tully Bevilaqua (an Aussie, don’t you know) and Ebony Hoffman has totally won me over, not just because of her awesome play, but also because of how smart and funny she is in post game interviews. And Briann January is a hell of a rookie.

But Phoenix also has an Aussie, Penny Taylor, who’s just astonishing. I think her absence in the second half of the second game is a big part of why Phoenix lost. Cappie Pondexter and Diana Taurasi are two of the best players in women’s basketball. Taurasi is the current Most Valuable Player of the WNBA. Then there’s Tangela Smith and Dewanna Bonner. I love Phoenix’s style of play. Run and gun, take no time outs, except for injury.

So, no, I don’t know who I’m going for. They’re both great teams. It would be gorgeous for Indiana to win it’s first championship, but I’ll be happy no matter what happens.

Is it 4PM yet?

I AM NOT FOLLOWING IT AT ALL.

Writing, working hard, ignoring the nail biting finish.

COME ON AUSTRALIA!!!

But it’s not nearly as tenuous and fraught as being a pro sportsperson.

As some of you may know I’m a fan of the New York Liberty, New York’s Womens National Basketball Association team, and I follow the entire WNBA closely. This year there’s one less team than last so those players were dispersed to the remaining teams. At the same time all the teams have to reduce their roster to 11 players. That means that the transactions page looks like this:

May 31
The Seattle Storm waived La’Tangela Atkinson and Kasha Terry.
The Atlanta Dream waived Chantelle Anderson.
The Phoenix Mercury waived Murriel Page.
The Chicago Sky waived Jennifer Risper.

May 30
The Minnesota Lynx waived Kamesha Hairston and Aisha Mohammed.

May 29
The Chicago Sky waived Liz Moeggenberg.
The Atlanta Dream waived Marlies Gipson.
The New York Liberty waived Abby Waner.

Those are all players being let go. They’ve had a couple of weeks in the pros and now it’s over.

There is a chance of being picked up by other WNBA teams. But there are fewer places—only 143—and more players than ever competing for them. Many talented amazing players are not going to make it. Some of them will find places on overseas teams, but most won’t.

Those are just the players who got picked up by a WNBA team in the first place. There are many many many college players who weren’t drafted in the first place. Some overseas players are also trying to break into those 143 spots available in the WNBA.

And if they do make it onto a team they can be traded at random to another team in another city. Often the press finds out that they’re now going to be living in San Antonio before they do.

Pro basketball players are lucky if their career lasts into their thirties and almost never into their forties. They rarely make it through without at least one serious injury resulting in surgery. When they’re older they wind up with arthritis.

I’m sure as with writing the rewards of doing what you love most for a living outweigh everything else, but, well it looks crazy hard to me and it makes me very glad I’m a writer not a basketball player.

I’ve been following the women’s world cup online, but apparently I don’t have much company online or offline where very few folks have been going to their games. I don’t get it. The NZ v Pakistan game sounds like it was amazing. Wish I’d been home to see it.¹ Games were $5 each or $35 for a pass to see all of them. Standards were high yet attendance was crap.

And then there’s the WNBA which I love passionately. But the only coverage it gets is all about Candace Parker, who isn’t even going to play this year. Don’t get me wrong, I think Parker’s phenomenal, but she’s not the only phenomenal player in the WNBA. Why do articles about female athletes always begin by disquisiting about how gorgeous they are? Yawn. Who cares how pretty she is when she can play like that?

It’s 2009 and I’m watching Mad Men and there are so many ways in which the world has changed not one iota. Having a women’s basketball league and a women’s world cup in cricket does not make the world cease to be sexist. Neither does having a black man in the white house end all racism.

But I am an optimist. Some day, I’m sure, all those isms will disappear. Some day . . . I just don’t think I’ll be alive to see it.

1. Here’s hoping the Kiwis can crush the Poms in the final. Guess, I’ll find out when I wake up.

Sadly, it does not have the weather for any women’s international matches. Including the current world’s cup where shockingly the English women are ahead at the moment. NOES!!! Also it gives the weather in both sensible Celsius and the other weird temperature measurement scale. Why? No one who follows cricket knows or cares what that F nonsense is about. Honestly.²

In even more important news (and not a total segue for cricket gets a passing mention in the first book of the trilogy) I now has six copies of the Japanese edition of Magic or Madness and Magic Lessons. They are tiny! I adores them. They are the smallest books ever to have my name on them. It is ridiculous how excited I am by their teeny tininess and yet I am.

Here they are with the US hardcovers for scale:

So. Adorable.

1. I have learned that the temperature in the world of cricket is much better than it is here. So. Not. Fair. Not that I didn’t already know that.
2. All comments from people claiming to follow cricket and the F nonsense will be deleted because you’re clearly lying.

Yes, it’s true. The Duxton did not have Fox 3, the Hyatt did. What else could I have done?

Update: Due to Cricket Australia’s bloodymindedness you can no longer see the truly fabulous catch by Adam Voges. I’m not sure what they think they’re achieving cause having a catch like that go viral increases the number of people round the world who get curious about the game. I don’t know about you, but I’d've thought that would be a good thing for cricket. How come institutions like Cricket Australia don’t get the intramanets?

Update the second: Narelle in the comments points out that the catch can be seen on the front page of www.3aw.com.au. This is no way lessens my anger with Cricket Australia’s stupidity. Having a few minutes footage of a genius catch go viral is what you want, you fools! It’s not like youtube was hosting the entire match. Gah!

But much much much worse is the abandonment of the second test between the West Indies and England after a mere ten balls. Cricket cannot be played on sand. It’s dangerous. I was pretty sure the West Indies authorities were aware of that, but apparently not. At the Gabba in Brisbane in 2002-2003 the sandy outfield led to Simon Jones buggering his knee as he slid to prevent a four.

Here’s the great Sir Vivian Richards on what happened at the ground named after him: “This is not shooting me in the foot. This is shooting me straight through the heart.”

Makes me want to cry.

The West Indies cricket team of the 1970s and 1980s made me fall in love with cricket. They were the best team in the world and even when they didn’t win every match, were clearly the most talented. They made playing cricket look joyful and fierce and like the most important thing in the world. I could not get enough of them. I watched every match I could. Pretty easy to do living as I was in a cricket lovely household. I miss the West Indies not being the best team in the world.

Clive Lloyd was the world’s best cricket captain. He’s yet to be surpassed. I have never seen a more elegant bowler than Michael Holding, or a better batsman than Viv Richards. Obviously, we’re not going to see their like again. But I will totally take Jerome Taylor’s 5/11 (!), Sulieman Benn’s 4/31, and Chris Gayle’s sensible century. Not to mention his steady captaincy. Could he be shaping up to be the West Indies’ next great captain? Hop so.

So far the twelve months or so have been awesome for cricket: rejuvenation in India and South Africa. Signs of strong improvement from Bangladesh, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka (Yes, they’re getting wiped in India right now. But I think India are the number one team in the world.) No, I don’t have a read on Pakistan at the moment. Inconsistency from Australia (not business as usual, thus interesting) and England (business as usual, therefore fun to laugh at).² The IPL and the ICL have added bizarre, but kind of cool dashes of, um, I’m not quite sure what yet.³

Adding a resurgent West Indies to the mix fills my heart with joy. So much great cricket ahead. YAY!!!

1. England all out for 51 in their second innings. Hahahahahah!
2. Bear in mind that except for cricket played in Australia this summer I’m going off what I’ve read not what I’ve seen. No, we does not have cable here in Sydney.
3. Am I the only one who’s fascinated by the IPL auctions? Lord, I’m glad the pro writing world doesn’t work like that.

We were there for day 3, which was splendid and full of pinkness (the shirt I wore was blinding) incident and event (how did those bloody bails not come off?), but nothing compared to the fifth day. That was mental! I can’t believe Graeme Smith batted with a broken hand. I’ve had a broken hand, I couldn’t have lifted up a bat, let alone wielded one. He totally deserved his man of the series award.

I can’t believe it came down to the last few overs. How about Ntini batting defensively? You rule, Ntini!

I rate this Australia v South Africa series almost as high as the Ashes series in England when those bastards won by, like, two runs. (I still think we was robbed.)

I’m ecstatic that South Africa and India are as good as (if not better than) Australia right now. True contests at last. And Sri Lanka and England aren’t far behind. I really hope that the West Indies, Pakistan and New Zealand start to get their shit together too.

I cannot wait until the next three tests in South Africa at the end of February. (So far away! Waaah!) But I’m stoked I’ll be in Australia to see the first two.

I am absolutely thrilled I was at the SCG for one of the days and that I got to watch every day of all three tests. Fifteen days of glorious cricket. Best game in the universe. Nothing could be better. (Well, if they sacked Ponting as captain that would be better. Though I’m not sure who to replace him with.)

Note: Yes, there’ll be more writing advice shortly. I just need a little time to recover from the edge-of-my-seat tension of that last day’s play.

Um, no, Mr Greig. South African cricket has always had a quota system. It’s just that prior to the end of apartheid that quota was 100% white.

This year was exceptional. I’m still pinching myself. My first Bloomsbury USA book, How To Ditch Your Fairy, was published and seems to be doing well. I was sent on my first book tour, which was fabulous. It’s insane how much fun I had and how many fabulous schools, book shops and libraries I visited in California, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Thank you to everyone who came to see me while I was on the road. It was a blast getting to meet you all! I loved hearing what fairies you all have!

Now this is going to sound like the acknowledgments page but bear with me cause I thanked my fabulous editor, Melanie Cecka in print, but not the wonderful publicity and sales and marketing folks because, well, I didn’t know them back then. Deb Shapiro is the best and funniest publicist I’ve ever worked with, Beth Eller is a genius of marketing, and all the sales reps who’ve been flogging the fairy book mercilessly across the USA are too fabulous for words. Extra special thanks to Anne Hellman, Kevin Peters, and Melissa Weisberg.

HTDYF also sold (along with the liar book) to Allen & Unwin in Australia. This is a huge deal because it’s the first time I’ve had a multi-book deal in Australia and A&U publishes many of the best writers in Australia, including Margo Lanagan, Garth Nix, Penni Russon and Lili Wilkinson. My editor and publisher, Jodie Webster, is a joy to work with. So’s Sarah Tran and Erica Wagner and Hilary Reynolds and everyone else on the Alien Onion team. Bless!

Both Bloomsbury and A&U seem even more excited about the liar book than they were about HTDYF. Which is a huge relief to me because, um, it is not the most obvious follow-up to the fairy book. Older, darker, scarier, completely different. Stuff like that. Here’s hoping that not too long into the new year I’ll be sharing the title, the cover, a sneak preview, and other such fabulous things.

The fairy book also sold in Germany to Bertelsmann, who published the Magic or Madness trilogy there and gave it the best covers ever. It was awesome getting to meet the two Suzannes: Krebs and Stark in Bologna. Thank you for believing in my book so strongly that you bought it when it was still in manuscript. I still can’t quite believe it.

Speaking of the trilogy it sold in Indonesia to PT Gramedia and in Korea to Chungeorahm Publishing, which means it’s now published in ten different countries and eight different languages. All of it Whitney Lee’s doing. It’s astonishing to me how well the trilogy is doing more than three years after first publication. Fingers crossed that will continue.

I also had two short stories published. A rarity for me. My last short story was published back in 2004. These two were the first I’d written since then. Short stories are not my thing. They’re so much harder to write than a novel. ““Pashin’ or The Worst Kiss Ever” appeared in First Kiss (Then Tell): A Collection of True Lip-Locked Moments edited by Cylin Busby and was universally declared to be the grossest story ever. “Thinner Than Water” is in Love is Hell edited by Farrin Jacobs. I’m proud of them both for very different reasons. But don’t expect any more. Writing short stories hurt my brain.

Last year I was wise and only aimed to write one novel in 2008. Just as well because that’s all I did this year no stories, no articles, nothing else. I wrote the liar book and began the 1930s book. It’s very clear that I’m a one-book-a-year girl.

I also mentioned in that one-year-ago post that I had three sekrit projects. The first is no longer a secret: the Zombie Versus Unicorn anthology that I’m editing with Holly Black, which marks the first time I’ve edited original fiction. Am I excited? Why, yes, I am. It will be out from Simon & Schuster in 2010 and we’ll be announcing our insanely excellent line up of authors in the new year. Truly, you will die at how great our writers are.

One of the other sekrit projects morphed into a solo project (the 1930s book) and I’m still hoping that the last of the sekrit projects will go ahead some time next year. Here’s looking at you co-conspirator of my last remaining sekrit project! You know who you are.

Next year will be taken up with writing the 1930s book and editing the Zombie v Unicorn antho. The 1930s book is the biggest most ambitious book I’ve tried to write since my very first novel set in ancient Cambodia. I’m loving the researching and writing. Immersing myself in another era is the most fun ever! I think my next ten books will all be set in the 1930s.

My 2009 publications. This is a WAY shorter list than last year:

Update: Possibly September: paperback of How To Ditch Your Fairy

September: the liar novel for Bloomsbury USA.

October: the liar novel for Allen & Unwin.

Yup, just the one two novels from me and one a reprint. Sorry! You should also get hold of Cassandra Clare’s City of Glass when it comes out. It’s the final book of the City of Bones trilogy and the best of the three. I read it in one sitting on my computer.² Then later in the year there’s Robin Wasserman’s sequel to Skinned. You know you want it! Yet another book I read in one go. Also on my computer. Think how much better it will be between actual covers.

Then there’s the three YA debuts I’ve been talking about by Peterfreund, Rees Brennan and Ryan. If you read no other books in 2009 make sure you read those three. I’m also dying to read the sequel to Kathleen Duey’s Skin Hunger, which was my favourite book of 2007.

Last, but not least, the old man has his first novel in two years, Leviathan, coming out in September. Fully illustrated by the fabulous artist Keith Thompson and better than anything else Scott’s ever written. I’m so proud of him and of this book. You’ll all love it. Seriously, it’s worth the price just for the endpapers!

I travelled way too much this year. Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the UK, France, Canada, all over the USA, and home to Australia. Again. Looks like the same for next year. I have no idea what to do about that. I guess when you try to live in two different countries at the same time that’s the price. Oh, and lots and lots of offsets. We try to be good.

This is where I usually say that I think the coming year’s going to be fabulous. But this year I’m not sure. The economic news back in the United States has been dire. Friends have lost their jobs, their editor, their imprint. It’s scary in publishing right now and it’s even scarier in many other industries. I really hope good governance in the USA will make a difference world wide. But I just don’t know. I had great hopes for the Rudd government and here he is botching the fight against climate change and trying to put up a filter for the internet in Australia. Ridiculous. Surely Obama’s government will not be so stupid.

Here’s hoping 2009 will see a return to sanity all around the world, but especially here in Australia.

Happy new year!

1. I would if I were you.
2. Actually I was lying in bed. Whatever.

South Africa and India have both beaten Australia in a series this year. Convincingly. It’s good to see more than one strong test side in the world. It’s good for cricket not to have Australia winning everything. Really, there’s only one nation that we must always destroy—England. If we keep doing that I’m good.

I’m hoping, though, that the third test will be a little closer. Not just because I’ll be going but because three strong test sides is brilliant for cricket. I want to see Australia fight back. I want to see them strong. I think they need to drop Hayden and have Phil Hughes in his stead. And we really really really need a new captain. Ponting is lost without Warnie setting his fields for him. And how about giving that Bollinger lad a go? There’s a lot of talent out there. Let’s see them get a go at test level.

Another reason it’s so awesome to be home. I have now watched ten days of cricket some of it astonishingly good: Mitchell’s bowling in Perth, Duminy’s fightbacks with the South African tail, Ponting’s almost century. And I’ve been really enjoying Shane Warne’s commentary. I wonder if I can get tickets to the musical? Bless you, Warnie.

And, yay, South Africa!

If you’ve written to me this year and not heard back from me, that means I either didn’t get your email, or you did not get my response. Either way best thing to do is to write me again.

I received more fan mail this year than all previous years added together. (Which, admittedly, was not hard as I received very few until this year.) Of all the fabulous things that have happened to me in 2008¹ those letters are by far the best. The majority were about posts and essays on this website—especially requesting writing advice. The next biggest group of letters were about the trilogy, and lastly about How To Ditch Your Fairy. Though to put that in perspective HTDYF has already attracted more letters in the few months since it was published than Magic or Madness did in its first 18 months of publication. Yay, fairy book!

Thank you so much for the wonderful letters. Each one gave me a tremendous lift. Even if I was already in a good mood they made me happier still. While I’ve always wanted to be a writer, until my first book came out, it had never really occurred to me to think about what that would actually mean, about what it would be like to have readers. I know that sounds a bit bizarre, but I was so focussed on my writing, and on getting published, that I just hadn’t considered that part of the equation: that being published means being read by people I’ve never met. I’m glad that part didn’t occur to me ahead of time. I think it would have spooked me. But it turns out to be fabulous.

Thank you for all the letters pointing out the typos and errors in my books and my blog. I really appreciate them and do what I can to fix future editions. Keep ‘em coming!

Thanks to everyone who wrote and begged for more books in the Magic or Madness and HTDYF universes. I’m pretty sure that HTDYF is a standalone and the MorM series a trilogy, but I’m thrilled my books left you wanting more. The best way to get more is to write it yourself. There are gazillions of wonderful fanfic sites out there. You could add your own stories about the further adventures of Tom and Charlie. Go forth and create more fanfic! Mash up MorM with Buffy or Nana. Or HTDYF with Naruto! What would be cooler than that?

Thanks for all the tips on quokkas and mangosteens and cricket and 1930s fashions and photo sites. Much appreciated! Though I’m horrified that any of you are settling for dried mangosteen or mangosteen juice. Ewww. There are no substitutes for the actual fresh fruit!

Good luck with your writing. Yes, sometimes it can be hard and you don’t know what’s going to happen next. That happens to the professionals too. The only thing you can do is keep pushing through. Don’t give up. But remember to have fun with it too. One of the best things about not being published yet is that you have heaps of time to experiment. Write the same story in all the different points of view. See which one works best. Try writing a story backwards. Starting at the end and working your way towards the beginning. Write in lots of different genres. Muck around! Have fun!

Thanks for your letters, your comments, and all your support. It means the world to me.

xo

Justine

1. Of which more on the last day of the year.

I have high hopes for this series between Australia and South Africa. The first test was splendid. Every day (except the last) was full of reversals and much excitement. I didn’t see the series in India so this is the first time I’ve seen the Aussies up against a team that can beat them in ages. It’s most excellent. If only we had a better captain. Ponting’s a great cricketer but I’m deeply unimpressed by his captaincy skills.

Mmmm. Boxing Day, cricket, mangoes, laziness. I’m home, aren’t I? If it were up to me I’d never leave.

Hope you’re all having a marvellous day wherever you are and whatever day it is. Hope you are having as much relaxing fun as I am!

1. I know the date stamp for this post says Xmas Day, but it’s not. I was too lazy to change to east coat aussie time from east coast usian time.

In the course of reading Diana Peterfreund and Carrie Ryan’s lovely posts about all the ways in which YA is dismissed by people who know nothing about it and have read at most two YA novels, and the New Yorker blog post that set Carrie off, I realised that I, in fact, wasn’t particularly annoyed or outraged by it. There are a few reasons for that:

1. The post in question, while declaring that it is the exception that proves that YA is not worth reading, raves about a novel by a truly wonderful writer: Kathe Koja’s Headlong. I’ve not yet read it. (Tragically, it is not set in the 1930s.) But I have heard great things and I’ve read several of Koja’s other novels. She’s a genius. Pure and simple. Anyone spending time praising her work in a public forum is okay by me. Continue!
2. I’ve seen that kind of dismissal of the genre many times before—not just YA, but also sf and fantasy. It’s boring and I’m bored by it. Yawn. Been there done that. The more you hear an erroneous set of assumptions, the less they bother you. I’ve also mounted the counterarguments and had them largely fall on deaf ears so I can’t be bothered saying it all again. I’l leave it to those more able and willing. Like Diana and Carrie and Maureen Johnson and John Green and Jennifer Lynn Barnes.
3. We’re doing better than they are. I don’t want to skite about my genre, but . . . Oh, who am I kidding. I totally want to skite! I don’t care that there are adults who will never read YA because there are heaps of adults who are reading it. Not to mention the gazillions of teenagers. YA totally outsells adult litfic. Our audience is bigger than theirs. Our books earn out; theirs mostly don’t. Many of the YA writers I know can make a living writing; most of the litfic writers I know can’t. Many YA writers sell in multiple territories. We have books in Korean and Russian and Indonesian and Turkish and Estonian as well as English. We get fan letters from our readers all the time. We’re doing just fine; it’s adult litfic that’s in trouble.

Now that last skiteful point may turn out to be an historical aberration. Horror as a genre was riding very very high in the eighties and look at it now! Exactly. There are very few “horror” sections left in book shops and Stephen King’s pretty much the only one still doing fabulously well. Best to take that point with a grain of salt. I imagine that when the genre dries ups and my books stop selling¹ I’ll be annoyed all over again at those mean litfic types peeing on YA. But I hope not. On both counts. But, yes, especially in the US, this has been a very scary year in publishing.

In the meantime, yay for Koja praise. Yawn to ignorant dismissals of any genre. And yay for all us YA writers doing just fine, thank you very much, while the rest of the publishing world collapses. Some of you astute followers of publishing in the US may have noticed that there were way more job losses and other slash-and-burns in the adult publishing world than there were in children’s/YA. Maybe the current spate of litfic sniping at YA is sour grapes?²

Oops, seems that I’m still skiting³ Look away, pretend you saw nothing! And read whatever damn books you want to read: litfic, YA, romance, fantasy, manga, airplane manuals, cricket books. It’s all good.

I’ll get out of your way now . . .

1. Those two events may or may not be concurrent.
2. Well, except that as I pointed out t’other day many of them haven’t even heard of us.
3. Which is dangerous given how precarious publishing feels right now, even though book sales are actually up in the USA on what they were the year before.

Tomorrow I’ll be doing an appearance right here in Manhattan with many fantabulous authors. I did my very first YA author appearance at Books of Wonder. Way back in the olden days with Eoin Colfer and Scott. It was incredible. Peter Glassman (Books of Wonder’s proprietor) has been very good to me and Scott in the ensuing years. It’s always a pleasure to do a Books of Wonder event:

Saturday, 15 November, 12:00PM-2:00PM
with William Boniface, P.W. Catanese,
Suzanne Collins, Joanne Dahme,
Daniel Kirk, Dean Lorey, Amanda Marrone,
Ketaki Shriram and Robin Wasserman
Books of Wonder
18 West 18th Street
New York, NY

Do please join us! Also if you attend would you do me the favour of asking every author there to declare their allegiance on the zombies versus uni***n front? We have a right to know!

Then next Wednesday I will be in Austin, Texas, city of amazing food and people and music. Yum! This is my only event of the How To Ditch Your Fairy tour that includes Scott. I think we shall have fun. Not least because BookPeople is one of my fave bookshops in the entire US of A:

Wednesday, 19 November 2008, 7:30PM
With Scott Westerfeld
BookPeople
603 N. Lamar
Austin, Texas

And then my last event of the tour will be in gorgeous San Antonio. Land of great boots and wondrous food:

Thursday, 20 November 2008, 7:00PM
Barnes & Noble
San Antonio, Texas

And thus will end my HTDYF tour.

Or will it?

Stay tuned those of you who live in Sydney and Melbourne and possibly even Perth. There’s a very good chance that in February and March I will be doing a few events at home for my fabulous Australian publisher, Allen & Unwin. Actually the Melbourne event is not a possibility anymore—it’s an actuality! More info as I gets it.

Really looking forward to meeting some more of you in the next few days and weeks! Zombie power!

Holly Black: The coffee fairy—a fairy that would make sure I always find the most delicious cup of coffee (free-trade, with milk) wheresoever I am.

Cecil Castellucci: I’d like a fairy of perfect timing.

I mean that in every way, from timing everything perfectly, to everything being on time, to it being the right time for things, and to telling a good story/ joke with perfect timing.

Cassandra Clare: I have an umbrella fairy. Umbrella fairy tells me to take my umbrella, then it doesn’t rain. But I wish I had a typing fairy. Typing fairy could teach me to type with all fingers.

Jenny Davidson: My fairy is a sense of time fairy—I always know when it is, it is easy for me to be punctual and I have a good sense of how to pace a class (use of 75 mins) or a project (use of 3 months). But I wish I could trade it in for a sense of direction fairy! Because I can get lost at the drop of a hat, it is utterly absurd, I never know where I am or how to get anywhere, I am often finding myself (though less in age of Google Maps, where foresight can largely compensate for sense of direction) on the verge of tears and not at all sure which direction I’m pointing in!

Cory Doctorow: I wish I had an email answering fairy who knew exactly what I wanted to say to every email and took care of them all!

Cory really needs that fairy. I have seen how much email he gets: nine hundred bajillion katrillion pieces in a single day. It’s insane.

Maureen Johnson: Right now I wish I had a Book-Finishing Fairy. Or, at the very least, a That Section Clearly Adds Nothing to the Plot Fairy. Or a Make this Suck Less Fairy. Failing that, I would accept an Answer My E-Mail Fairy or a I Will Make You the Next Doctor on Doctor Who Fairy . . . because that last one sounds kind of fun.

Ellen Kushner: My fairy seems to be the Find Your Friends Fairy. I run into people I know on the street in foreign countries, in airports, and in restaurants.

David Levithan: I’ll go for a Wakefulness Fairy. You know, one who would whisper something really funny or (barring that) really loud in my ears whenever my eyelids started to flutter shut in the middle of the day.

E. Lockhart: I have a “finding things that belong to other people” fairy. If someone I live with has lost something, I can put my hands on it in a minute or two.

Sadly, my fairy won’t actually work for me. My postal scale went missing in my house 6 months ago and hasn’t turned up yet.

I wish for an anti-clutter fairy. Clutter is cluttering up my cluttered life.

Jaclyn Moriarty: I think I have the fairy of relentlessly excited expectations. Every time I hear an e-mail arrive, or the telephone ring, I think something amazing is about to happen. At the moment I have a letter by my front door, to remind myself to post it, but every time I walk by the door I notice it there and get a rush of excitement. I think: ‘Somebody has slipped a mystery letter under my door! How fantastic! Who could it be?!’

If there was a fairy that could meet my excited expectations, such as a fairy of
regular yet surprising news of good fortune, that would be my choice.

If not, I’d like the fairy of decisiveness.

Ooooh! I want a fairy of met expectations, too. Frabjous!

Sarah Mlynowski: I am a hypochondriac. So the fairy I wish I had is one who would point out germs. Such as: Sarah, do not eat that chicken! It is not well cooked and is riddled with salmonella. Or, Do not shake that guy’s hand, he just went to the bathroom and did not wash it. Or, Do not sit next to that girl on the subway because she will sneeze on you and give you Diphtheria.

I have a perky fairy. I can usually cheer friends up when they are depressed.

Garth Nix: I have a slightly warped Punctuality Fairy. He/She/It forces me to be on time, the twist being that if I am actually late, the Punctuality Fairy will make everyone else late too, or delay my plane, or cloud my mind so that I’ve thought the meeting is earlier than it should be, so that any meeting, engagement or booking that I would have been late for by the original schedule, suddenly becomes on time.

I have been asked many times over the years by Sydney’s State Rail to sell them my punctuality fairy so that all their late trains will suddenly become on time, but the fairy just won’t leave me. I’m hoping that HOW TO DITCH YOUR FAIRY will give me some ideas.

Diana Peterfreund: I think I have a hat wearing fairy. I tend to look good in hats, and I never lose, sit on, or have hats blow off my head. I also don’t get hat
head.

I don’t know if I feed her often enough, though.

John Scalzi: I did have a “know who is calling on the phone as soon as it rings” fairy for a while, which used to freak people out when I would pick up the phone and call them by their name without saying hello first. However, in the age of call waiting, this fairy has become far less useful than it was back in the day. Stupid advances in technology.

I wish I had a fairy that would make bacon double cheeseburgers a slimming health food. Because that would rock.

Robin Wasserman: My fairy is a last minute fairy, that lets me start anything at the last minute and still get it done on time. That works out rather nicely, but I suppose if I had my pick, I’d take a say the right thing fairy — which, as you might guess from the name, means that in any and every situation I’d always know exactly the right thing to say. (Perhaps this fairy would first have to kill the say the wrong thing fairy who often stops by for a visit.)

Scott Westerfeld: I have the simile fairy. Whenever I need a cool simile to nail a dramatic moment, my fairy comes and hits me on the head like a pillowcase full of naked mole rats. Or, if I come up with a lame one like that, I pick a book from the shelf and open it at random. And, lo and behold, there’s a great simile to steal right on that page. So it’s a simile-stealing fairy as well.

But I want a good-night’s-sleep fairy.

You can find more fairies here. And, as usual, feel free to share your own fairies.

I would like to wish everyone in the US over 18 a good voting fairy.

1. I’m in Canada! They have their own election! Why are we still talking about the US one? Um, because it’s really important?

I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate Bill Laimbeer more than I do. But his performance tonight pushed my hate a few notches upward. How he managed not to get a delay of game call or a technical I will never understand. Sit down, Bill!

Later today I will be in Larchmont, which is a mere twenty minutes from Grand Central:

Saturday, 27 September 2008, 1:00PM
Voracious Reader
1997 Palmer Ave
Larchmont, NY

I am wondering if this is the Larchmont that the term Larchmont lockjaw comes from. I hope I get to meet some of you there.

My editor loves my new book, work is going great on the even newer book—how much fun is it researching NYC in the thirties? VERY FUN—and HTDYF keeps getting lovely reviews. In my world everything is fabulous.¹

How about youse lot? I had to shut down the old Good News post on account of evil spam so why not tell me your good news and sources of happiness here instead?

Me, I’m turning the computer off and going out to enjoy the glorious, glorious day!

xo

Justine

1. *Cough* It helps to not read newspapers or news blogs.

At the time I thought it was excellent that I could get away with it. In class I read novels under the desk. I never studied and finished my maths exams quicker than anyone else cause I guessed all the answers. Thus giving me more time to read novels.

Now I regret it. My regret is very very very big. Because now I don’t have the underpinnings to understand even the most basic mathematics and science. (I also stopped studying science very early.) Writing the Magic or Madness trilogy was a nightmare. It’s very difficult to write a character who is a mathematical prodigy when you yourself are a mathematical moron.

My current regret, however, is fuelled by the Rethinking Basketball blog. Quentin who writes it is a numbers boy. He has all sorts of fancy formulas and statistics to map the performances of different WNBA players and teams. Like how to take defence into account when figuring out who the Most Valuable Player should be.

I understand almost none of it and that fact fills me with despair. If I could go back in time I would tell the bored and cranky twelve-year-old me that maths would come in handy later on and I should really pay attention to the nice man. (My Year 7 maths teacher was a sweetie, who did not deserve me as a student.)

But plenty of people—including my parents—were telling me that at the time and I ignored them. I probably would have ignored the adult me as well. Sigh.

So it’s now more than a little bit ironic that I am in the position of telling twelve year olds that they should pay attention in maths class. But you really really should. Who knows when or where it will come in handy. But trust me, it will. Don’t be as stupid as I was.

This has been a public service announcement. You are most welcome.

Justine, I was wondering what you would do in a situation like this:

“As some of you may have heard, my partial draft of Midnight Sun was illegally posted on the Internet and has since been virally distributed without my knowledge or permission or the knowledge or permission of my publisher.”—Stephenie Meyer

Since I don’t really write or anything I don’t know what I would do. Would it bum you out to where you couldn’t write it anymore or would you just ignore it and keep going?

I’d be very unhappy and hurt that someone had betrayed my trust like that. I recently sent my most recent novel, Why Do I Lie?, to a bunch of people for comments—if they’d passed it on to other people to read I would be furious. That’s an enormous violation of trust.

As for what I’d do in that situation? It’s very difficult for me to say. I’m not Stephenie Meyer. It’s really unlikely an unfinished ms. of mine would wind up online and widely circulated. I don’t have anywhere near her fan base. I can definitely imagine the whole thing souring me on the book. On the other hand, I really like to finish what I’ve started. Not to mention that my manuscripts tend to change a lot after I’ve finished the first draft. So what was distributed would not bear much resemblance to the final book.

I certainly feel a great deal of sympathy towards Meyer. That situation sucks.

If you use the first method Australia came sixth; if you use the second we came fifth.

Personally I think the most revealing way to look at the total is in terms of population and GDP. Both of which you can find at this handy site.¹

Population

1. Jamaica

2. Bahrain

3. Dominica Republic

4. Mongolia

5. Estonia

6. New Zealand

7. Georgia

8. Australia

9. Norway

10. Slovakia

(USA comes 33rd and China 47th out of the 87 who won medals.)

Australia remains a top ten nation but the truly outstanding effort of places like Jamaica are underlined. They won 6 gold medals with a population of less than 3 million. That’s less than the population of Sydney. Pretty amazing, eh?

GDP

1. North Korea

2. Jamaica

3. Mongolia

4. Georgia

5. Ethiopia

6. Kenya

7. Belarus

8. Zimbabwe

9. Bahrain

10. Panama

(Australia comes in 29th, China 30th and the USA 47th.)

I like this table a lot because it illustrates just how much money it takes to be a top-ten Olympic nation. The US and China and Australia and the other top ten nations in the official list have much bigger GDPs than many of the other medal winners. Winning medals without massive amounts of funding and Insititutes of Sports is an amazing achievement.

I am much more proud that the one openly gay male participant in the Olympics, gold-medal winning diver Matthew Mitcham, is Australian than I am of how many medals we won. Watching him win live was my highlight of the Lymps. The Australian coverage of his win was fabulous. I loved that a photo of him kissing his partner was printed in the Sydney Morning Herald. Ten years ago I doubt that would have happened. Here’s hoping in another ten years it will be so ordinary it won’t occur to me to blog about it.

1. Their figures are taken from wikipedia so I suspect there are some inaccuracies.

Seriously, there’s all the primal track stuff: run, throw, jump, jump with giant pole. I loves ‘em all. Plus Usian Bolt is a legend. I could watch the replay of his hundred metre relaxed stroll all day long. And how about Jamaica? Jamaicans are finally winning lots of medals for Jamaica, rather than GB or Canada or the USA. Lovely to see.

But how primal is weightlifting? Very. I love the grunt, scream, growl, popping veins. Weightlifting is the best sport ever. There should be a weightlifting channel.

On the other hand, I do love my team sports. In fact, the only team sport I haven’t been able to fall in love with is water polo. Handball is much better. And I adore the beach volley ball. Not to mention regular volley ball.

I’m also into all the judged sports. They’re such an excellent rage outlet: “ARE YOU JUDGES BLIND?! STUPID?! OR JUST OUT AND OUT CORRUPT?!” It’s good to have a bit of a yell. It’s the synchronised swimming judges who are most demented. I have no idea what they’re thinking ever. Are they using i ching to make their decisions?

I am not looking forward to the Lymps ending. Why can’t it be once a year and not every four years? Or even better why can’t there be a never-ending Olympics? Twenty-four/seven/three-sixty-five? That would be the best thing ever.

Though my favourite Olympic sport of all time? BMX racing. Best. Sport. Ever.

What do youse lot love most about the Lymps?

Note: Yes, I am still without regular internets and thus am massively behind with email etc. Hope to catch up when we return to NYC in Sept.

He notes that in the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, translated into Armenian in the 6th century from a much older lost Syriac original, a passage tells of Jesus playing what may well be the precursor of cricket, with a club and ball. (Via Lili.)

Sounds like a hundred per cent conclusive evidence of Jesus playing cricket to me.