Category Archives: Bloggery/Internetty Stuff

Plot disturbances

I should so not be writing this post. Too much to get done before we leave Monday. No time! Aaarggh.

However, Gwenda’s writing a quest novel and thinking out loud about whether she can skip the whole boring refusing-to-take-up-the-call part. Also known as “but I don’t want to be a vampire Slayer!”

In a fantasy novel the odds of the protagonist not taking up the call to destroy the one true ring or whatever are pretty non-existent. If they say “no” then book is over, or it becomes something else which is most definitely not a quest novel. So why should the writer spend too much time on that part?

I equate refusing the call with the passage of disbelief. And, indeed, the two often go together: the protag is told, “You were created to destroy this one true ring and in doing so you will save the world!” Protag’s response: “There’s a one-true ring? I’m the chosen one? What now?”

Passages of disbelief can also be really tedious. I pick up a book called, let’s say, Zombie Apocalypse from Hell and am faced with endless setup chapters where the character blithely go about their day squabbling with spouse/children/boss, engaging in other banal and boring activities just so the reader can get to know them. Meanwhile all signs point to the undead walking the streets and eating brains. But the stupid characters don’t recognise said signs, oh no, they keep coming up with lame so-called rational explanations. Yawn. Have they not seen the cover of the book? It’s called Zombie Apocalypse from Hell for Elvis’s sake! Wake up and smell the putrefying flesh! Can we get to the apocalypse already?

One of the things I loved about Buffy the Vampire Slayer was how quickly and wittily they got through the different characters’ disbelief, culminating with Oz discovering the true nature of Sunnydale and saying, “Actually it explains a lot.”

Do I think writers can skip the refusal of the quest/passage of disbelief? Absolutely! I love books that start media res. Whoosh—straight into the action. Good writers can build character and action at the same time. Funny that. They convey their protag’s ambivalence about the role they’ve been thrust into whilst the character is busying saving the world. Two birds, one stone.

On the other hand, sometimes the passage of disbelief/refusal of the quest is the best part. Shaun of the Dead becomes a lot less interesting after they realise that zombies are real. The opening where the two ambitionless, slacker Londoners get on with their stultifying everyday lives (drool in front of tellie, slouch off to work, buy crisps, fight with girlfriend and/or flatmate) in the midst of the spreading zombie apocalypse is the best pisstake of and homage to zombie movies I’ve ever seen. I laughed so hard I wept.

In Magic or Madness I set up the passage of disbelief scenario a little differently by giving the protag a mother who’s always specifically denied magic’s existence. Reason’s been brought up knowing about magic, but negatively. And although it’s almost a hundred pages before Reason is hit with solid evidence that magic is real, it’s only thirty pages later that she accepts the existence of magic.

I guess that adds up to 130 pages of disbelief, which should make any hardened fantasy reader completely ropeable (sorry!). Fortunately she’s the only deluded point-of-view character. I guess I’m saying it’s cool to take a long time with a disbelief pasage if there’s other stuff going on.

To tie this more closely to what Gwenda’s talking about: one of the main things the writer has to balance is the gap between the reader’s knowledge and that of the characters. Afterall, the protag can’t actually look up at the top of the page to the title of the book (Zombie Apocalypse from Hell ) or chapter (Eat more brains!). Unlike the reader they’re not privvy to the back-of-the-book blurb (“In this scintilating debut all hell breaks loose as Chandler Hammer does battle with hordes of zombies with only her pet dog, Misty, and son, Dopey, by her side”)—they have to figure stuff out for themselves, but in a way that doesn’t bore either writer or reader into a coma.

Nothing easier . . .

In praise of WisCon

In less than two weeks (gulp) me and Scott will be attending WisCon the feminist science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve been attending since 1996, I’ve read there, been on panels, been a part of the auction (mostly as a spender of money, but once as one of Ellen Klages’ lovely assistants) and have worked as part of the organising committee— I’m biased.

And yet strangely I’ve come to take it for granted. So much so that my not being able to attend next year (prior engagement to be part of something awesome in Australia) didn’t really phase me. Then I read Sheree Thomas’s eloquent explanation of why she loves WisCon and all of a sudden I’m miserable that I’m going to be missing next year’s WisCon even as I get ready for this year’s.

Sheree loves it so much she’s urging people to attend:

    What I really want to do is encourage you to check out WISCON, because if you don’t never go to but ONE science fiction conference in your big, beautiful life, then let it be, let it be WISCON 30, because this year is going to be amazing.WisCon takes place annually in downtown Madison, WI over Memorial Day weekend (May 25-30) at the Concourse Hotel. It’s considered “The World’s Leading Feminist Science Fiction Convention,” and is attended by a lot of cool and interesting women and yes, men (got to say that because some folk see ‘feminist’ and read ‘man hata’ and ‘crazy’) . Now, I ain’t saying there ain’t no crazy folk there (LOL!), I’m just saying that all kinda folk flow through and it is a celebration of science fiction work. This year, they invited back their previous Guest of Honors, including Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nalo Hopkinson, Jane Yolen, Pat Murphy, Pamela Sargent, Vonda McIntyre, chile, I could go on and on.

    And they got damned good child care, too! For real, with Legos and robots n’ shit! I mean really, what kinda feminist gathering would it be without an excellent program track for young readers?

The bad news is that this year’s WisCon is sold out. That’s right, you can put your name on the waiting list, but unless there’s a whole slew of last-minute dropouts you won’t be attending. But don’t let that stop you from going to next year’s. I’ve heard a little rumour about who the guests of honour will be and, well, let me tell you, stellar is the word.

This year’s is going to be unbelievablely fabulous. I was at WisCon 20 and I’ll never forget it. That weekend changed my life. But even the worst WisCon is a million times better than any other convention or conference I’ve ever been to. If you have any interest in genre or feminism or exploring new and old ideas WisCon is the place for you.

Plagiarism

I adore Meg Cabot, not only is she a fine writer who’s as witty and brilliant as Dorothy Parker, but she also has a heart as big as the ocean, and is wiser than any owl you care to name. I only read her books for the first time last year. I confess that I’d thought she wouldn’t be much chop because I was underwhelmed by the Princess Diaries movie. How stupid was I?

Anyway, on Lili‘s advice, I read her two All-American Girl books and loved them! Very smart, wryly funny, and subversive. My three favourite things. Then I discovered her blog and became even more obsessed. Meg Cabot is a genius. Case in point is a recent post that has been linked to all over the place because it is such a sensible response to some of the insanity that has been written about the recent plagiarism case.

All you need to know is that Meg Cabot is one of the writers that the author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life has been accused of stealing from.

Here’s my favourite bit:

    After I got over being mad at Carol—and her parents, and the art show committee, and the art teacher, and all the other Carol types and THEIR parents and promoters that I’ve encountered since—all I felt (and still feel, to this day) was sad.

    Not just because I’d lost a friend (which, of course, I had. When I got back to Bloomington, even though I felt super, duper sorry for Carol, on account of her being such a lost soul, I found I just couldn’t be friends with her anymore).

    No, I felt sad because none of those people—but most importantly, Carol–were ever going to understand that the coolest part of creating something–like a picture, or a story, or a song–isn’t how fast you do it, or how young you are when you created it, or how many art shows it’s put into, or how much money someone eventually pays for it.

    Because the truth is, if you’re patient, all of that–the art shows, and the money, and everything else–will come along eventually. Those things aren’t really what’s important.

    What’s important is that when you create something original (i.e. NOT TRACED), it’s something YOU made, that speaks from YOUR heart, and no one else’s. Even if it’s just a dumb drawing of a princess, it’s YOUR dumb drawing of a princess, NOT ANYONE ELSE’S.

    And there’s something totally great about that—way better than art shows. Even better than money.

    And what makes me sad is that that’s something Carol and everyone like her will never, ever understand.

How classy is that?

A couple of my writer friends (one in Australia and one in the US) have been deeply freaked by the plagiarism scandal because the writer’s defence is that she has a photographic memory and both of them have photographic memories. I don’t think either of them has a thing to worry about simply because

    1) they’re both really good writers who work at their craft
    2) they’re aware of the issue

Number one is key. As Meg Cabot says the way you get good at drawing princesses is by drawing lots and lots of princesses. Unsurprisingly that’s the way you get good at anything. You do it over and over and over again. When you’re a beginning writer your influences are right there on the surface; as you mature they sink deeper down and become harder to identify.

Any writer who is working at their craft is not going to wind up plagiarising. Only a small percentage of any good published book remains the same as the first draft. Any unconscious borrowings by those photographic memories will have been reworked so much that very little resemblance remains in the final product. She’ll be right. Honest.

In my experience the folks who are most worried about committing a writing and/or publishing sin are the ones least likely to do so. Whenever there’s a discussion about the need to discourage bad writers a whole slew of really good ones get discouraged.

The plagiarisers of this world, like the princess drawing tracers, are going to continue blithely on their path creating nothing new and so getting none of the rewards of creativity. My two friends may needlessly worry about plagiarism, but you know what? They create something new and delicious almost every day. I’m with Meg Cabot on who we should be feeling sorry for.

Not to distract

from the excellent convo going on below, but Cassandra Clare has posted a fascinating response to the animal violence thread.

Also Mely points to this fascinating discusson of romance in a Jennifer Crusie novel.

Philip Stanton has put up two pages of his sketches from Bologna. The folks who read this blog might recognise Barry Goldblatt and Lawrence Schimel among others.

Here’s one of me and Scott I posted awhile back:


©Philip Stantion

The fabulous Lili Wilkinson now blogs

Lili Wilkinson is one of the funniest people I know. Whenever I receive mail from her I make sure I’m not eating or drinking anything. You know, just in case. (This laptop’s already on its last legs . . . ) So I’m stoked that she’s finally started blogging. Yay!

Among many other talents, Lili’s one of the masterminds behind the insideadog website and has just published her very first book: Joan of Arc: The story of Jehanne Darc.

Go make her welcome to the blogsphere!

New YA website

Inside a dog is a brand new website promoting young adult literature. It launched today and has Nick Earls as its first writer-in-residence.

On top of the writer-in-residence blog, there are reviews, recommended booklists—I love the categories: such as pink books, bring the funny, things that go bump. Some of the recommended books are faves of mine, like Cecil Castellucci’s The Queen of Cool, Scott’s Peeps and Michael Wagner’s Dog Wars. There are lots of other goodies, including a contest to win an ipod.

Go check it out!

All About Me (Bugger Eve!)

There’s a fun profile I did up on Norm Geras’s blog (a blog I discovered via Rjurik. Thank you, Rjurik!). I went to read Norm’s words of wisdom on cricket and stayed cause it’s most excellent.

I’ve already been asked what I mean by giving the answer “passion” to the question of what’s a person’s worst fault as well as their best quality. I’m with W. B. Yeats on “passionate intensity”: every day someone somewhere is killed because of someone else’s passion. On the other hand every day someone somewhere is creating something beautiful because of that passion.

Marrije enjoys Magic Lessons and has many many questions for the final book in the trilogy, which although smart and interesting frankly filled this writer’s heart with dread. How am I going to please all the people waiting for Magic! Magic! Magic! Oi! Oi! Oi!? I’ve already seen the anguish that a not completely happy ending to a trilogy can bring. Aaarggh! No more trilogies for me!

Okay, better get back to rewriting the ending so that the heavens open and fairy dust is sprinkled over the land and everyone’s magic becomes happy fairy magic and all the badness melts away and everyone is happy forever and ever and ever. That, or have them all die on the bus.

Very quick

Anna Genoese explains P&Ls. I am eternally grateful to her. I have never understood these before. They were just this mysterious thing my editors would groan about. Anna Genoese is a goddess.

Thanks for all comments in previous post. You are all goddesses. My problem has been solved by reading Anna’s post: the thought of P&Ls has killed smelly monkey brain creativity and now I can focuss on task at hand.

Shana: cricket helmets are heavy!

Friday week is Oz speak for the Friday after next Friday. I.e. rewrites due next Friday not today.

Has anyone seen Daughters out in the wild yet?

Yay Jason Gillespie. Double century. Strewth.

Write now.

Stupid Smelly Brain

Magic! Magic! Magic! Oi! Oi! Oi! must be rewritten and the send button pressed by midnight Friday week. The writing is going just fine and dandy. However, my brain will not stop coming up with other ideas for the bestest, most brilliantest, most amazingest novels eva!

It’s driving me mad. There I am finally nailing a scene that has been allluding me for months and brain starts whispering sweet nothings about snowboarding werewolves, zombie cowboys, Australian ex-ballerina underwater police. If you don’t write them now, brain tells me, they will run away, never to return. They will die of starvation! In a gutter! It will be all your fault!

Aaaarrrggghhhhh!!!!!

What do you lot do when this happens? How do you make the brain shut up and focus on the urgent urgent urgent task at hand? Do I have to threaten it with the withdrawal of gold koala bear stamps? Make it stand in the corner on the naughty mat?

Help!

Newtown is, indeed, twelve kinds of awesome

Came across this completely randomly *cough* *cough*. (I mean would I waste time with the likes of google, blogpulse, technorati, ljseek, icerocket or feedster? Please!) It gave me twelve kinds of pleasure.

First up someone getting into the Magic or Madness trilogy enough to want to figure out their Sydney setting—Newtown—and look at maps and photos. How cool is that? And then linking me to the Whitlams, who are an ace Sydney band. Even cooler. (Though I don’t know them and I very much doubt whether they know me. So no cahoots at all.) The Newtown photos Purple Primate links to are fabulous. If I wasn’t already home I’d be so homesick. And they’re making me regret having shifted from Newtown to Surry Hills. What was I thinking?

Here are some of my faves:

    The cemetery as taken from the park that Tom piggybacks Reason across in the first book. The trees are in the cemetery. By the way that’s not an evil tower: it’s the spire of St Stephen’s Church.Here’s another view of the Moreton Bay fig tree on the front cover of Magic Lessons. It’s taken from the street so you can see the wrought iron gate and fencing.

    When we lived on Chelmsford St we used to walk through this tunnel all the time. Sadly, “Piss Tunnel” is a pretty accurate name. It’s very eerie and every time I walk through I’m not entirely sure what I’ll find on the other side.

I couldn’t find any photos that gave a sense of how narrow the streets are or of what Esmeralda’s house looks like. Maybe I’ll have to take ’em myself.

The other pleasure of this post was the speculation in the comments about who would wind up with Tom, Reason and Jay-Tee. That’s right they were shipping my book! Colour me very happy. But I’m not saying a word about what happens, except that one of those comments might possibly be right. Or not. I’ll never tell!

Questions about publishing (Updated)

Look at me! I have worked so hard that I’ve managed to get myself back on target for my Friday deadline! Yay me! And as a reward my tyrant husband is letting me have internet access this evening. How kind and good you are, dear sir.

There’s been some lively debate over this way. I confess that I was surprised by the force of Garth (author and ex agent), Patrick (editor) and Sharyn‘s (editor) response to what I thought was an innocuous post (stupid me). Fortunately Teresa (editor) explained the reaction (thank you).

In the end we all agreed: the writing is the most important part, as well as the second most important part, the third most, and so on. It is the day, the night, the morning, the evening; the dove, the crow, the sulphur-crested cockatoo, and every other bird in the sky, even the annoying myena bird.

It’s almost exactly three years since I became a full-time freelance writer. April Fool’s Day 2003 was the glorious first day of this new career. Ever since I’ve been trying to make sense of it and of the publishing industry generally. My post on a writer’s job was one such attempt. I’ve learned an awful lot in those three years. I’ve sold four books, published two, written four and a half, and edited one. I’ve found answers to many of my questions on various blogs around the interwebby. Patrick and Teresa’s Making Light is a fabulous resource (Slush Killer is probably my favourite post on any blog eva) and Anna Genoese‘s livejournal is fab as well. And there are many other excellent publishing blogs. And yet, I still have lots of questions about this industry:

  • Why is the returns system still in place?
  • Why does the wasteful stripping of paperbacks continue?
  • Is the fantasy middle grade market really about to implode?
  • Why is adult science fiction in such doldrums? Is it really?
  • Why don’t short story collections sell? (We learned that this is also true in Italy, Brazil, Sweden and France. Are short story collections hot anywhere in the world?)
  • Why do UK publishers consider it natural for Australian & New Zealand rights to be tucked in with UK rights? Are they unaware that the British Empire is over?
  • Do men really not read as much as women? Is this true everywhere? Or just in Australia and the USA?
  • Why do so many people who don’t actually read want to be writers?
  • Why does the best selling genre—romance—have the lowest average advances for its writers?

I could go on. If you have any questions of your own add them to the comments thread. And if you have any answers, please, please, please tell all!

stiff and stoof

I’m having such “discipline” issues (i.e. current book is flouting my authorial command and to punish it I go hang out with other novels and all the cool folks online) that my evil husband is going to change the airport password, burn all the books, and lock me in my study with nothing but a chamber pot and a bottle of water until I finish said book. This may be my last post for awhile . . .

Beloved google led me to this review:

    Justine Larbalestier’s Magic Lessons is the second in her YA Magic or Madness fantasy trilogy. Like the first, Magic or Madness, this has a freshness and vitality that made me inhale it and get anxious for the concluding volume—not that this didn’t feel like a complete volume in itself, because unlike the middle books in so many trilogies it did, but more that Larbalestier is so creative with her ideas about magic that I’m really looking forward to the experience of reading more of this story. I love the combination of New York and Australia, of young teens having to deal with adult situations, of the choices they keep having to make. And they’re nicely written as well. Recommended.—Neile Graham

And icerocket.com led me to these fascinating thoughts on the same. I’m especially pleased that Innle’s secret name for my book is Magic or Chunder. Tee hee. And, yes, Magic Lessons was a bugger to plot (except for when it wasn’t), but not as hard as the third book! Thanks for noticing all the stuff I worked hard to do!

Andrew Lang has excellent advice on how to completely stuff up a career in writing, via Literaticat. A particularly choice bit:

    If your book does, in spite of all, get itself published, send it with your compliments to critics and ask them for favourable reviews. It is the publisher’s business to send out books to the editors of critical papers, but never mind that. Go on telling critics that you know praise is only given by favour, that they are all more or less venal and corrupt and members of the Something Club, add that you are no member of a côterie nor clique, but that you hope an exception will be made, and that your volume will be applauded on its merits. You will thus have done what in you lies to secure silence from reviewers, and to make them request that your story may be sent to some other critic. This, again, gives trouble, and makes people detest you and your performance, and contributes to the end which you have steadily in view.

But really the whole thing is wonderful: Check it out! Ain’t nothing new since Homer . . .

Holly Black is insane and wants to try what could possibly be the most noxious liquid on the planet.

A Writer’s Job (Updated)

A while back I wrote about self-promotion which elicited much commentary, but then was too sick and/or too travelly to respond. There was one comment from the fabulous Patrick Nielsen Hayden which I’ve been wanting to reply to for some time:

My only quibble is with this: “Promoting your books is part of a writer’s job.” No it’s not. Writing is a writer’s job. The rest of it is optional and depends on your personality, aptitude, and energy.

As the equally fabulous Ellen Kushner said in the following comment: “Would that it were so!”

I mean how fab would that be? If all a writer had to do was write their novels? My brain is exploding with the blissful joy of it.

In my experience the job of writer includes many things, some of which can be outsourced (there are writers who outsource the writing), some of which can not. And some of which can be avoided at least for some of the time:

  • research
  • writing
  • rewriting
  • more rewriting
  • checking copy edits, proofs, final copies (of hardcover, paperback, and various other editions)
  • negotiating deals (though, thank Elvis, you can get your agent to do this)
  • checking contracts (again all praise to your agent)
  • checking royalties (agent)
  • publicising your books (if you can afford it—and seriously how many writers can?—you can hire a PR person, but tragically they tend to just come up with more stuff that you have to do, you could hire an actor to do said stuff, but sadly actors are notorious for not reading, and not being that bright)
  • answering fan mail and etc.
  • blurbing other writers

(I’m sure there’s more that’s escaping me right now and I’m leaving out the stuff that goes with any job: taxes etc.)

Mr Nielsen Hayden says the publicity is optional. Tell that to the writers who get heavy pressure from their publishers to do book tours etc. Sure they can say no, and so can their publishers reduce the budget for promoting them.

The more common flipside of this is all the writers who are desperate for their publishers to send them on any kind of an appearance, who are willing, ready and able to do whatever they can to promote their books, but who find their publicists more than a little, shall we say, elusive. When your publisher isn’t behind your book then it’s even more important that you do what you can to draw attention to it, in a desperate attempt to postpone the journey into remainderdom (sad truth: being remaindered is inevitable).

Yes, there are writers who are shy or otherwise temprementally unsuited to going on the road to promote their books. There are writers that publicists don’t want to send on tour because of their talent for turning lifelong fans into mortal enemies (no, I’m not going to name any of them). Not good. Fortunately publicity encompasses a wide variety of activities, many of which don’t involve leaving your abode. You can sign books and bookplates to be posted, run your website, your blog, do online chats, email interviews and etc. Some argue that online promotion is more effective than offline.

But there are very few writers who can get away without doing any self promotion. Just as there are very few writers who can get away with hiring ghosts to do the writing for them.

Update: To be crystal clear—writing is absolutely the most important part of a writer’s job by a factor of a gazillion brazillian zooadillion.

Magic or Madness is Boingled

I know you’ve all seen this already—cause, I mean, who doesn’t read boingboing?—but I was boingled. My very first! And what a blush-making boingle it was. And what an immediate impact it had. I woke up to my amazon numbers having zoomed from six figures to below 2,000 and my site getting hammered. Bless you, Cory Doctorow and bless you, boingboing. Here’s my fave thing Cory said about MorM:

Magic or Madness wonderfully mixes a genuinely creepy system of hereditary magic with Australian bush lore, sweet and canny details about New York’s East Village, daily life in Australia, fashion and mathematics, sneaking lectures into dialog and description so subtly you never know they’re there, only that you’re getting the charge of soaking up new knowledge about how the world works.

Tee hee. I am a sneaker of lectures (though not in a shoe way)! I have a major allergy to the infodump (unless it’s written by Kim Stanley Robinson who makes even infodumps sexy) and am always looking for ways to get the necessary info across without breaking the novel or the reader’s brain, so the above fills me with chuffage.

The last few weeks have been chock full of good news. I can’t tell you how bursting I am to tell you the embargoed stuff! Stupid embargo.

Self Promotion

How’s about that for a post title to put everyone off?

I’ve been hearing some complaints about writers who are too self promotery, who go on panels at cons waving their book around, saying,”Look at me! Look at me! I’m a published writer! Buy my book!” There are also complaints about certain writers’ blogs which only talk about their books and their latest publishing news with links that only lead to places that sell their books. As well as whinges about the folks who relentlessly campaign for awards.

Accusations of being too self promotery make me a bit jittery. Promoting your books is part of a writer’s job. If no one knows the book exists how is it going to sell? A writer should be out there lining up bookshop appearances, sending out postcards/business cards/tshoshkas of some kind. You should be attending cons/trade shows/schools/libraries or whatever will help get the word out about your work. It may not have that much effect (no one really knows how to get word of mouth going1), but it might, and besides, for your own peace of mind it helps to know that you’re doing something. No one cares how well your book does as much you what wrote it. Not your agent, your editor or your publicist. It seems mighty unfair to complain about a writer doing what they can to secure their livelihood.

I’m sensitive about such accusations because I was accused of it. My promotion of my first book (a non-fiction tome) at WisCon some years back got up some people’s noses. But it was WisCon: the feminist science fiction convention, the only place in the world where my book on, yes, feminist science fiction had a real shot at selling lots of copies. So I kind of overdid the whole “look at me! I have a book” thing. Yes, I did wave around my book on panels and trumpet its availability in the dealers’ room. I’m still sort of embarrassed, but also defensive about it. It was my first book! I was excited! And you know what? Every copy of the book sold out and my publisher was pleased with me. I was doing my job. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t done what I could to promote the book not as many copies would have sold.

On the other hand, I have seen writers relentlessly promoting themselves at various gatherings. (Hence my embarrassment when I think back on that WisCon.) Drowning out everyone else on their panels, continually using their own work as an example when it’s only tangentally relevant. On one occasion I was accosted by a writer at a party who interrupted my conversation with someone else to tell me all about his book, ply me with postcards of it, and information on how I could buy it. Not a good look.

Obviously a balance needs to be struck. Pissing people off is not actually very self promotery. Neither is being rude. (And really being polite should be the ground rule for all interactions.) But I wish the folks who complain about over-the-top self promotion would cut some slack to first- or second-time authors. You know, the way most of us make allowances for our friends with their brand new baby, who can’t shut up about it, and endlessly show you photos. Yes, it’s boring, but in most cases it will pass.

My third book is about to come out, but I’m too busy working on the fourth to put as much energy into promoting it as I did my first and second books. I’m no longer an enthusiastic first-time author. I’m dead proud of it and I’ll be doing signings and readings to promote it. But I will not be bouncing up and down, thrusting postcards into everyone’s hands, and talking it up at every opportunity. Been there, done that.

Do I not think this book is as good as my others? Magic Lessons is the best book I’ve published thus far. But I’m older and wiser and less energetic. I guess I’m well on my way to being a hardened old pro.

NYC, 12:12PM, 12 March 2006

  1. I’m convinced that the most useful thing you can do to promote your work is get copies into the hands of the opinion makers in your genre. The people who write the most read and discussed blogs, the librarians and booksellers who love to push their favourite titles. How to do that is a whole other question, but, obviously, writing the very best books you can is essential! Getting out and meeting said opinion makers comes in second. [↩]

Ideas, like butterflies, are free

I was out doing errands t’other day (including a visit to the Tax Office to get my German contracts stamped—thank you, Niki). At one of my stops the fact of my being a writer came up and the bloke behind the counter said, “Really? You know, I have this great idea. If I give it to you, and you write the book, you can keep half the profits.”

My mouth opened. My mouth closed. See, I’ve heard other writers talk about non-writers making that offer, but I’ve never actually had it made to me so I didn’t have an answered prepared. I stammered something about being grateful for the offer, but that I have a tonne of ideas of my own, thanks all the same.

Ideas are no big deal. I have a gazillion ideas every day. Oodles of the little buggers. But without labour an idea is nothing. Unless I sit down and type for several months and turn a bunch of ideas into a book, those ideas are worthless. Their only value is in what’s done with them. Lots of people have ideas for books; not that many write them.

Scott and me were talking about the inflated value many people give ideas. And Scott wondered if that was partly behind the ever-growing insane obsession with copyright (like the Canadian Red Cross trying to copyright the Red Cross symbol). And the notion so many people have that ideas can be stolen. That rewriting an earlier story is somehow plagiarism (that’s right, Shakespeare was a plaigarist, and James Joyce, Jean Rhys, and just about any other writer you care to name).

Some are unable to make a distinction between riffing on something and stealing. If someone were to write a book about a girl who a finds a door that leads from Sydney and New York City and has adventures. I would not be bothered. Not unless the characters bore an uncanny resemblance to Magic or Madness and large chunks of the book were word-for-word the same as mine. Plagiarising means to take some one else’s work and pass it off as your own. Taking credit for someone else’s labour is wrong; riffing on someone else’s ideas is what writers/comedians/artists/musicians etc. etc. do. That’s their job.

Which leads me to Cory Doctorow’s fabulous post on BoingBoing about the publishing industries ludicrous efforts to stop Google’s fabulous Book Search which would make said riffing so much easier. What he said.

I am easily amused (Updated)

Top ten searches that led to my site over the last 24 hours:

Is there no topic on which I’m not an authority? Nope, not one.

Update: Just so as you know, I cheated and left out all the obvious searches like my name, books I’ve written, Elvis and mangosteens.

Get Publish Need Magic?

Diana has an excellent post today answering questions about the magic of being published. Can you get published without knowing anyone in the industry? If you’re not married to a publisher? If you’re not a celebrity? If you haven’t been hit by the publishing charisma stick?

Here’s the one thing that every single published writer I know has in common:

They write.

Yup, that’s it: they write. They work at their craft. They write almost every day, and when they’re not writing, they’re thinking and talking about it. Even when they’re procrastinating, they’re thinking about it. (Procrastination is work, too, people!)

Yes, getting published is hard. Yes all those rejections are frustrating. Yes, it can take years to get published. (Look at me: first novel begun in 1988; first novel published in 2005.) But if you’re not putting the majority of your energy into writing, odds are you’re not going to get published.

Writing is the thing.

That is all.

All over the place & a question

I have a question for sf/fantasy/horror etc readers. Who are the new feminist voices you’re most excited about? I’m hearing great things about Sarah Monette. And I know all about Lauren McLaughlin and Meghan McCarron. But who am I missing out on? Who now is writing books and stories that look at questions of identity, gender, sex, race, class in cool and interesting ways? Who talks about these issues in exciting ways on their blogs? Tell me!

I just heard that, Daughters of Earth, my feminist sf anthology will be out 1 May. Just in time for WisCon! Most excellent!

I’ve been working on a post for awhile now about all the fabby blogs about the publishing industry and the glories of Miss Snark et al. Fortunately for me Diana Peterfreund has beaten me to the punch so now I don’t have to bother. What she said.

I agree with Matt Cheney that Mister Boots is Carol Emshwiller‘s best novel and I can’t believe I forgot all about it when talking about the BBYAs. Why the hell wasn’t Mister Boots on that list? Why wasn’t it a Printz honoree? Everyone go buy a copy immediately. You’ll love it!

Weirdness Meme

Shana tagged me and I didn’t even know it.

It’s a tricky meme, I’m not saying I’m not weird and all, it’s just that pretty much all the weirdnesses I’d be willing to tell you about—how much I hate socks etc. a) have already appeared on many other people’s lists (and thus how weird can it really be?) and b) I just don’t think that’s weird. Frankly, it’s the people who like socks that I worry about.

So here are the weirdnesses I’m okay with you knowing about (oh, and family of mine and close friends—you do not have permission to post comments):

    1) I don’t like anything with caffeine in it. Not coffee, chocolate, coke, tea, not anything. This is not a health choice. They taste bad to me. Especially coffee and dark chocolate. Yuk! (Liquids should never be imbibed hot cause it’s just weird! And why would you drink soft drinks when you could have yummy water? Very weird indeed.)

    2) I love all food that wobbles. Yes, including tripe. (I am, however, very particular about how the tripe is cooked. Italian and Spanish tripe=good; English tripe=bleahh!)

    3) I love offal, even the stuff that doesn’t wobble. Mmmm foie gras . . . (and I live with a vegetarian!)

    4) My favourite joke is still “where did Napoleon keep his armies?” I’ve found it hilarious since I was five years old.

    5) I think about food all the time. I mean all the time (I was thinking about it while writing about the Napoleon joke). I do not think that’s weird.

I’m not tagging anyone else, it seems rude or something. But, you know, if you feel like doing this meme consider yourself tagged.

P.S. A belated thanks to Chris McLaren for helping me get recent comments showing up in the sidebar. You, sir, are a WordPress god!

Ooops!

Apparently, calling my first novel, Magic or Madness was a big fat mistake. It’s the “or” that’s the problem, with certain searches it brings up lots of results that get in between you and finding my book. That can’t be good. And of course no one can spell my surname . . .

I suspect the title Magic Lessons isn’t much of an improvement. There must be gazillions of books with that title. You know, ones that actually teach you how to do magic tricks. Thank Elvis the third book in the trilogy has an utterly unique title: Magic! Magic! Magic! Oi! Oi! Oi!.

Best go finish writing it so I’ll have at least one book in the catalogue punters can actually find!

More on the Art of the Synopsis

Diana Peterfreund who claims to love writing synopses is doing her very best to try and get out of writing one. Her methods include, well, actually you really have to see it. It’s very very funny, and I may steal it for our workshop on synopses in March, especially the interpretative dance!

C’mon, Diana, just write the damn thing!

Speaking of which I’ll be getting back to writing my own damn book . . .

Delany on Writers

A friend of mine, Deborah Biancotti, frequently posts cool quotes on her livejournal, often about writing. So, this one’s for you, Deb:

Writers are people who write. By and large, they are not happy people. They’re not good at relationships. Often they’re drunks. And writing—good writing—does not get easier and easier with practice. It gets harder and harder—so that eventually the writer must stall out into silence. The silence that waits for every writer and that, inevitably, if only with death (if we’re lucky, the two may happen at the same time: but they are still two, and their coincidence is rare), the writer must fall into is angst-ridden and terrifying—and often drives us mad. (In a letter to Allen Tate, the poet Hart Crane once described writing as “dancing on dynamite.”) So if you’re not a writer consider yourself fortunate.

Samuel R. Delany About Writing

First novel? Second novel?

There’s a lovely little article by Malcom Knox1 that appeared in last Thursday’s Sydney Morning Herald (I discovered it by way of the lovely Maud Newton). In it he discusses second-novel syndrome (SNS). The inability to write a second novel that can set in after your first novel’s been a success.

Of course, as Knox points out,

true SNS can only exist where the first novel has been hugely successful. All writers know that if you haven’t had a big bestseller, it’s harder to get published next time, no matter what you write; and if you have had a big bestseller, you will be published, no matter what you write.

And there’s the tricky matter of whether a first novel is truly a first novel:

Many novelists’ first published work is actually the third, fourth, seventh or 10th novel they have written. Another Australian author, Venero Armanno, estimated he had written a million words in unpublished novels before his “first book”.

The second published novel is often one that was started and even finished before the first. What the critic praises as the brilliant first book, long in gestation, inspired and innocent, may well be novel No. 8 by that writer; and the condemned second book, “pumped out too quickly”, “too conscious of an audience”, “a disappointing follow-up”, is in fact novel No. 4 that took several years longer. Unless you know the novelist’s working method intimately, you can’t make assumptions.

My first published novel, Magic or Madness, was my third written novel. My fourth, Magic Lessons, which will be my second published novel, was finished before Magic or Madness came out. So whatever (moderate) success MorM has had in no way affected the writing of its sequel. Got that? No, me neither.

Many of the published novelists I know had written more than one novel before they sold one. They kept on writing until the publishing gods at long last smiled. And then they were in the excellent position of having inventory (don’t you love that word? they’re not trunk novels, they’re inventory). Too many unpublished writers obsess about getting their first novel accepted and are so wounded by the failure of their beloved that they forget to write a second or a third one.

In the end Knox decides that if you’re suffering from second-novel syndrome you’re dead lucky—it means you’re a success. And if you’re not suffering from second-novel syndrome than it also means you’re dead lucky cause you’re not suffering from over-inflated expectations—you can work in peace. (It could also mean you’re not a novelist—in which case how smart are you? Very!) It’s all good.

  1. I first came across Knox’s writing when he was cricket correspondent for the SMH. He was excellent, not just smart about the game, but smart about its history, people and politics. (I miss him!) Recently, I read his second novel, A Private Man. Okay, when I say I read it, I’m kind of lying. it was more skimming than reading. One of my many failing is that I’m completely unable to concentrate on the non-cricket bits of a book if I know there’s going to be cricket in it. I wound up skipping all the non-cricket chapters. I can report that the cricket bits were really, really excellent. [↩]

YA Author Cafe

Next Tuesday at 8:30PM if you’re on the East Coast of the USA, or 3:30PM if you’re on the West Coast, or 12:30PM Wednesday if you’re in Sydney, or 2:30AM if you’re in Madrid, I’ll be doing the YA Author Cafe chat with Holly Black and Cassandra Claire. Our host will be the lovely Marlene Perez.

For those if you who don’t know—and I can’t imagine there are many of you—Holly Black is the author of the wonderful YA urban fantasies, Tithe and Valiant, not to mention the mega-selling Spiderwick books. Valiant, is one of the best reworkings of Beauty and the Beast I’ve ever read. It only came out last year yet I’ve already read it twice. If you haven’t read it then you really, really, really must.

And Cassandra Claire is the queen of Harry Potter fandom and the author of the very very funny Lord of the Rings Secret Diaries that went zooming around the internet a while back:“Still not king . . . “. She’s also just written a really fabby original YA novel, City of Bones, which, sad for you, doesn’t come out from Simon and Schuster until March 2007. Trust me, you have to read it! And when you do you’ll be screaming for the sequel. Not because it doesn’t standalone—it does—but because you’ll want more more more!

Anyways, to follow our chat and join in head here on Tuesday/Wednesday (don’t you all love timezones?).

Bookshops and the Signing thing

Wow, thanks to everyone for sharing all their writers’ humiliations. Apparently I’m not alone!

This post is for the bookseller who wrote to tell me that if I went to her bookshop I could sign whatever books I wanted.

On the same day I had my less than stellar experience at a chain I also visited Galaxy, Kinokuniya, Gleebooks and Better Read than Dead. All of them had many copies of Scott’s books and all told me that Uglies in particular is flying off the shelves. And they all had the Oz version of Magic or Madness and were very keen on me signing them. At Galaxy I didn’t even have to ask. Bless Galaxy. They rolled out the books, handed me a pen, and told me how well MorM‘d been doing for them. There was also mention of the possibility of Scott and me doing events for all of these shops. Way to make you feel wanted. Lovely!

I also figured out that I’ve been shopping at Galaxy for at least fourteen years! Oh my Elvis! That’s longer than some of my readers have been alive! And I’ve been a regular customer at Gleebooks for even longer . . . They’re two of my fave bookshops in all the world and have been incredibly good to me as both customer and now as author.

I have to admit though, that the whole signing thing is weird. I always feel like a loon asking people in bookshops if they want me to scribble on their books. It seems such an odd thing to do: “Deface your stock, Ma’am?” Though, of course, I’m very happy to have books by my favourite writers defaced, and treasure my two signed Dorothy Dunnett’s (Caprice and Rondo and Gemini).

Other than that initial awkwardness—“Hi, I’m Justine Larbalestier and, er, you seem to have some of my books. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind if I, um, signed them for you”—other than that I really like going into bookshops and chatting with the staff. For one thing, they’re mostly really into books. Surprising that, eh? And once I’ve gotten the self-promotery thing over and done with (quick as poss) I can ask about their favourite YAs and rave about mine (I talked up Haitani’s A Rabbit’s Eyes big time at Kinokuniya). Alliyx at Kinokuniya is a huge Scott Westerfeld and Holly Black fan so it was quite a treat to goss about their books. Interesting how much easier it is to push someone else’s work than it is your own.

I’d never been to Kinokuniya before. It’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve seen that much manga in one place. And the design and architecture section is huge! So’s the young adult section. In fact the whole bookstore is vast and full of bubbly helpful staff and way too many books that I lust after. And, yeah, they had my book, too. I wonder if I’ll ever stop being thrilled by seeing my book in shops? I hope not.

So, yes, Ms Bookseller-who-wrote-me, my chain bookshop experience was an anomaly.

Last Day of 2005

Woo hoo! Another year gone! A fridge full of champagne and yummy food! Who could ask for anything more? (Well, it would be nice if we didn’t both have books due 3 Jan . . . )

I see that many in blogland (and elsewhere) are summing up their year, taking stock, making resolutions for 2006 and etc. I’ve already skited enough about my achievements this year. It’s been a bloody brilliant year personally. I just want it all to keep on keeping on.

I’m aiming to write two books (both of which I’ve already started) in 2006 and sell one (two would be nice, but I don’t want to jinx myself). I also plan to spend the majority of the year in Sydney, cause now that I’m home I just want to stay. And I really, really, really want to get tickets for the Sydney Ashes test. Ideally for every day of play. If anyone has a cunning method of getting said tickets, or is a member of the SCG—I’m am so up for offering you huge bribes! Whatever you want you got it!

Best book I read this year: Walter Mosley’s The Man in My Basement. I just made my parents read it too and they were also blown away. It’s the most powerful, moving examination of evil, of race and gender, and what it is to be human I’ve ever read. But rest assured this ain’t just philosophy and ethics; it’s a scary arse story that’s completely unputtdownable.

Books I’m most looking forward to: The Night Watch by Sarah Waters and Elizabeth Knox’s Dreamquake the sequel to Dreamhunter, and frankly it just can’t get into my hands soon enough!

Hope you lot have a fabby new year, too. And achieve everything you want to achieve. I’m going to get started on the champers now. Happy new year!

Things I Don’t Understand

1. Why the exact same brand toothpaste has radically different packaging in different countries.

2. Why everyone thinks King Kong is the best movie ever.

3. Why no one told me that Lost is excellent genre TV.

4. Why whenever you buy chips in an Oz pub they always come served in a plastic fake-wood bowl.

5. Why cricket isn’t the dominant sport in every country in the world.

6. How anyone could wear gold sandals and not be ironic.

Off to Byron, Whingeing about Deadlines, Boasting about My Sister, and Some Lovely News (updated)

Sorry about the not blogging of late, especially with you lot being all interesting in the comments (I’ve finally gone through and responded, bless you all). I was kept from it by boring, boring non-internets stuff and the looming deadline. Or rather, panic about the looming deadline. Corey asked of my deadline how soon “scary soon” is: 2 January, which is 17 days away, and I’m about 15-20 thou words short of the end. Also, I’d like to, you know, revise and rewrite before I send it off.

Ordinarily I leave myself a month or more for that, and while I’m revising I send it out to my first readers for comments. There won’t be none of that this time, which worries me deeply. Maybe I can send to first readers at the same time as sending to my editors? Hmmm. Don’t mind my panicking out loud here. Any suggestions for creating time pockets or outsourcing some of the writing are very welcome.

Today we’re off to Byron Bay for almost a week courtesy of my hard-working and very talented sister, Niki Bern, who is so very cool that one of her shots is the current front cover of Cinefex magazine. How amazing is that? Here’s a better look at her shot:

For Niki making the front cover of Cinefex is even better than if I got the front cover and a rave review in The New York Times Book Review. It’s beyond cool! My sister is ubercool! And she’s just hired a house in Byron on the beach for us all to hang out and relax. I ask you: does anyone have a better sister than I do? I didn’t think so. Now, if only I didn’t have to work the whole time I’m there . . .

The lovely news is that Magic or Madness is a finalist for the Aurealis Award for Young Adult novel and so are two (!) of Scott’s books: Peeps and Uglies! Between us we make up three quarters [update: three fifths] of the short list. Most excellent, eh? The other quarter [update: one fifth] is Anthony Eaton for Nightpeople [update: and Isobel Carmody’s Alyzon Whitestar] both of which we’ll be grabbing copies of asap. To make the lovely news even lovelier many our friends are also nominated in other categories: Cat, Sean, Rjurik, and Garth, as well as Rob (stories he edited).

Oh, and one last thing: First Test against South Africa starts at the WACA today. Kill ’em, boys! Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Settling in

Slowly, very, very slowly, and not that surely, I’m settling back into life in Sydney. I have some bookshelves, though no where near enough to cope with all my many, many books. But for the first time in almost three years I can sit and gaze at my first editions of Geek Love, Wide Sargasso Sea, Fireworks, Black Glass and The King Hereafter and all my other beloveds and try to figure out which to re-read first. I’m very, very tempted to start with the Lymond books.

Right now a whole bunch of LJers are reading The Tale of Genji. Having just unearthed my never-read copy I’m very tempted to read along with them. So very tempted . . .

Sadly, the third Magic or Madness book is due scary soon and I’m not exactly on top of it. I have fifty thousand words. Remember? Pretty much the same fifty thousand words I had at the end of my San Miguel sojourn. Not good. But maybe The Tale of Genji will be inspiring . . .

Fashion = good, complex, interesting

Lauren McLaughlin in praise of fashion. Sing it, Lauren!

Regarding fashion being shallow. This is a prejudice I find maddeningly overrepresented in the spec fic community. Fashion is an art form and the wearing of fashion is something everyone does every day (unless you’re a nudist). Even people who think they don’t care about fashion make choices about what they wear. Fashionistas (a term often used derogatorily) are merely people who take pleasure in the clothing choices that others skim over, much as foodies take a greater interest in what they eat.

This reminds me of a friend of mine being (verbally) attacked by an earnest young man (e.y.m.) at a party. She was (and is) gorgeous and has always enjoyed playing with fashion, is always well attired, with fabulous make-up and hair. He accused her of dressing to please men. How long, he wanted to know did she spend on such a high-maintenance look? Shouldn’t she be doing better things with her time? Why was it so important to her to have men admire her? Weren’t there more important things in life?

Reader, my friend demolished him. She smiled and pointed out to the e.y.m. that his look wasn’t exactly low maintenance. How long did it take him to shave his head? He opened his mouth, goggled, closed it again. If he cared so little about fashion, she continued, why was he wearing fashionable jeans and a black T-shirt? And trendy workman’s boots? Clearly he was dressing to pick up inner-city chicks. He stammered some more, claimed he chose them because they were comfortable. She countered that if he truly gave no thought to clothes or his appearance he would simply buy whatever was closest and cheapest. She happened to know the jeans he was wearing were only availlable at two different shops and were not exactly cheap. Why not wear no-name brand jeans?

As Lauren says most everyone thinks about clothes and what they’re wearing and what other people will think of them because of their choices. Fashion is a very big deal. Often people can tell how rich or poor you are from what you wear, they form an opinion of your education and politics (though they can be very very wrong), they can decide not to let you into a club, or talk to you, or give you a job because of what you’re wearing. Fashion is a deadly serious (and excellently entertaining) and far-reaching part of all our lives. It is definitely not a trivial matter to write or think about.

ASIF! hits PW

The newly-minted organisation ASIF! (Authors Supporting Intellectual Freedom) has just gotten coverage in the source of all publishing news , Publishers Weekly.

We also now have our mission statement:

AS IF! champions those who stand against censorship, especially of books for and about teens.

I’ve never had a mission statement before. I feel very superhero-y all of a sudden. Yay us! Maybe we need capes?

Lovely Texas and other matters

A few things:

1) I got my intramanet back!! In my very own home. My excitement is beyond words: email! dictionaries! blogs! posts! The whole world at my fingertips!

2) Magic or Madness made its third best books of the year list, the Tayshas reading list put together by the Young Adult Round Table of the Texas Library Association. I’m particularly chuffed about this one on account of I got family in Texas—that’s where my in-laws hail from and my uncle-in-law is the principal of a high school in Houston. Also there are many very cool books on the list. Not just Scott’s Uglies, but the work of at least two other Aussies: Fiona McIntosh’s Myrren’s Gift and Marcus Zusak’s I Am the Messenger. Very pleasing.

3) In our new flat we can go out onto the balcony and watch the nightly exodus of flying foxes from the Tannie gardens. I love them.

4) The nothing changes convo continues (so fab to see the nattering continue without me—I love youse guys!) and is taken up by David Moles and a cast of thousands on his blog. All fascinating stuff. Oh, and Claire & Lauren? I’m so with you on Ghost World. I was double plus unthrilled by that movie. Especially cause the Bollywood music opening sequence was luverly.

Quick this and thating

Still no interwebby thing in our new home (I’m at my parents), but at least we can watch the cricket!

There’ve been some comments from actual editors on the gender balance question thing I posted about a while back. Confirming once again that there is no vast conspiracy—it’s all much more complicated than that.

I’m loving our new neighbourhood, Surry Hills, but am less than thrilled about the whole unpacking, organising, cleaning, not finding necessary things etc. Turns out that our flat while fab, lacks certain essentials. There’s hardly any storage, making unpacking really hard cause there’s no where to put anything. And a lack of hooks and railings for the hanging of towels in the bathroom is driving me nuts. Hanging the hand towel from one of the drawers is not the best solution. Also what is it with modern built-in wardrobes being narrower than most coathangers? I mean how did anyone think that was going to work out?! Aren’t wardrobes meant to protect clothes, not squish them?

I’m in love with Dwayne Bravo. What a miracle worker he is. And how much better has this third test been than the first two? So very good to be home in the land of cricket and wry understatment and really really good Thai food. Green mango salad . . .

Oh my! Oh no! (updated)

I swore to myself that I wouldn’t do it, that I would resist, that to give in and look at the trailer for the latest version of Pride and Prejudice would just make me ropeable at worst, sad at best. Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett? Ack! Yeah, I know there are worse actors out there, who’d be even more ludicrously miscast, but it doesn’t make her any less of a crap choice.

I’m not a Knightley fan. I know it’s not her fault, but I’ve never forgiven her for becoming the famous one after Bend it Like Beckham, when it was the luminous Parminder Nagra who stole that movie, not Knightley. Now Nagra’s on ER and Knightley’s everywhere. Where’s the justice?

And let’s just say I didn’t have high hopes that the folks what made Love, Actually were going to do right by Miss Austen. But watch the trailer I did, only to discover that it’s more shockingly awful than the one for the 1940 Greer Garson Pride and Prejudice. At least that one (and the film) can be excused because of its camp value. This one, well. Is the film a satire of bad historical adaptations? I really hope so. Throughout Darcy looks incapable of keeping his shirt on, Elizabeth Bennett is shrill, and in two of the scenes it looks like the two are about to go the tongue! Bloody hell! Did the film makers even read the book?

And you know what? Elizabeth Bennett was not a woman ahead of her time. She was very much of it, shocked by sex before marriage, with no ambitions for herself other than becoming the wife of a good man. I could go on but it’s been said much better here.

Still, seeing the trailer was a very good thing—my loins are now well girded against seeing the actual movie. The thought of it goes well beyond shudder territory.

Update: Just to make it clear—I am no Jane Austen purist. My favourite adaptions of her work are Amy Hackerling’s Clueless (1995), Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park (1999), and Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice (2004). Hah, all directed by women. I never noticed that before.

Cool links (Updated)

1. Me and Scott just joined a most excellent group called AS IF! Authors supporting intellectual freedom. It’s a bunch of writers of young adult fiction, including folks like Holly Black and a host of other amazing writers, who’re fighting the good fight against book banning and other attempts to control the content of books for young adults. The blog lists all the members and our first action. Yay us!

2. Novelist Nicole Galland is following the path of the fourth crusade (which never reached the holy land) as research for her third novel and she’s blogging it in a most entertaining manner.

3. Claire Light just wrote a very fine piece on Rosa Parks and how her story has been distorted over and over again.

4. Magic or Madness got a B for morality! Joking aside, I really like this review, especially the third paragraph. That’s exactly what I hoped I was doing. It’s always a lovely feeling to be understood. I think the trilogy is very moral (and in that site’s scheme of things a B is a good grade), but no one else is going to be able to see that until they’ve read all three, which is one of the many problems with trilogies: you don’t know the whole story until you’ve read all the books. Things that may seem one way in the first book could well be totally transformed by the last book.

The review is on Refracted Light: A Christian perspective on fantasy. I was impressed by the site. The reviews are thoughtful and include warnings about content Christians might find offensive (Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, for example, gets an F for morality, but an A- for writing). I think people should be warned about books they might be offended by (I can think of a tonne of books I wish I’d been warned about!), but like the other members of AS IF! I don’t believe books should be banned. Sites like this are a smart alternative to the book-banning strategy; rather than trying to suppress information they’re trying to provide it. Yay them!

Update: Coalescent posts about the site and there’s much discussion. Though, not enough people seem to be noticing that most of the reviews are pretty smart.

A Lack of Musings

A friend just asked if I’m ever going to write another musing again. She wonders if this blog has destroyed them for all time.

Tis true that I didn’t write a single one in September or October, but then I hardly wrote an email in that time either. But just as I will write emails again, so too will I muse again. I’ve even got a bunch of half-written ones: about podcasts, the artist who’s back to being known as prince again, about city hatred, being Australian, travelling, and about the nightmare of writing a mathematically gifted character (Reason in the Magic or Madness books when I am so not and how it gets harder with each book—not doing that again!).

It’s mostly not the blog what ate them. It’s trying to write two novels a year, plus Daughters of Earth, plus the various other ideas I’m turning into proposals and like that. I’m crap at multi-tasking. To be honest, I’m not even that good at single-tasking. Working on five different writing projects at once breaks my brain.

But blogging ain’t like that. It’s easy, relaxing, instant-gratification writing. I don’t slave over my posts the way I do over my musings, I don’t try to make them structured or particulary coherent. Thus they never take much time to write. And I love the response I get from the people what reads me posts. I was particuarly thrilled by the really cool discussion of translating in response to this post. (I’ve been meaning to ask David Moles for ages about his suggestion that the Australian and USian sections of Magic or Madness could be translated into Mexican and Argentinian Spanish, which way he was suggesting. Mexican=Australian; Argentinia=USian? On account of Mexicans are known for being laid back as are Australians—yeah, yeah, I’m an exception, okay?—and Argentinians like USians are known for, um, how do I put this delicately? their confidence.)

The conversations are the coolest part of blogging. I’m much less interested in blogs that don’t have a comments section.

And, er, um, to sum up: there’ll be more musings when I finish another one. In the future.

Writers are the Best Whingers

Just read and giggled all over this post by Diana Peterfreund in which she wittily whinges about all the work she has to do (and skewers Star Wars). It struck a chord cause I was just about to whinge about the pageproofs of Daughters of Earth which just landed in my life with a very heavy thunk.

Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

Diana (I’m taking liberties referring to her by first name, I don’t actually know her, but I read her fabbie blog, so I feel like I know her) starts by referring to a harder working writer who has family on top of it all, whereas Diana just has her sailor boy and a full-time job. I’m going to lower the bar still further: I have neither children nor pets nor a job (other than writing).

And yet I feel my case is worse than either of theirs because I am suffering (horribly) from post-paradise-adjustment syndrome (or ppas). Just days ago I was in Mexico living an admin-free existence: no shopping, no housecleaning, no dishwashing, no cooking, no laundry, no paying bills, no nothing—except writing. Luz Barron did all that for me, not to mention telling me excellent stories, mending my clothes (!), and taking me out to all the best fun bars in San Miguel. Luz made me food like this:


Mushroom-stuffed chillies on tomatoes & onions served with plantain & pomegranate & garlic rice.

Now I’m back in reality, but where is the counselling and social services team to help me through my ppas? No where! How am I supposed to cope without Luz? How am I supposed to live in the real world where I have to finish Magic! Magic! Magic! Oi! Oi! Oi, the third Magic or Madness book, go through the staggeringly long Daughters proofs, finish the great Australian mangosteen cricket Elvis fairy book, write the proposal for this jaw-droppingly brilliant idea I just had and do all that adminy stuff!? How is that possible?!

You know I used to have no sympathy for rich folk like Paris Hilton et al, what with their silver spoons wedged firmly down their throats. Rich bastards, I used to think, but now I know the truth: without their staff they’re helpless. Look what happens when someone like Paris takes dressing into her own hands. Not pretty, is it? Imagine her trying to get it together to make her own coffee. Or figure out how a washing machine works. Wow. Her life is really, really hard. Not quite as hard as mine given that she’s still in paradise and not in the land of ppas. But how much worse will it be for poor old Paris when her fall comes? How hideous will her ppas be?

Makes ya think, don’t it?

Back in the US of A (briefly)

After a month of no motorised transport there was a vast deal today. Cars, planes, taxis. We went from San Miguel to Mexico City to New York City. We are tired. Tomorrow there will be trains: to Brooklyn and back (see previous post). The day after that buses to Atlantic City. It’ll be broom broom broom all the time. I will pine for walks on cobble-stoned streets.

Since I promised Cherie that I’d blog every day once I left Mexico. I’m blogging at this late hour despite fatigue. How good am I? Say thank you, Cherie. Also tomorrow seems to be too chockers for blogging so I thought I’d sneak it in early.

Things that i achieved in San Miguel:

photos of hummingbirds
grew actual fingernails
50 thousand words of final Magic or Madness book
Scott and me arranged mercy killing of one tiny, tiny, very hungry, very lame kitten (I’d tell you more but I’d start crying)

Things that have happened in the world in my absence that aren’t horrible and tear-inducing:

Australia thrashed the World XI in one-day fixtures and look well placed in one-off six-day test, mostly on account of the glories of the spin twins Warne and MacGill

My sister had her time working on King Kong extended—Yay!!!

I’m sure there were other things but I’m too tired to think.

Sleep now.

This is writ ironical

In the olden days, some newspapers got so fed up with folks going off in high dudgeon about certain articles which proposed, say, that the rich eat the poor, that they took to ending such pieces with the following line, This is writ ironical. (Think of it as ye olde smiley face.)

Which is to say that a tin ear for irony while depressingly widespread nowadays, alas, is not a new development. Long before the intramanets, certain early readers of Jane Austen did not notice her tongue placed firmly in her cheek.

I know I don’t need to say this to the esteemed and learned readers of this blog, but for newer readers please to imagine those words—This is writ ironical—at the end of most posts.

I.e. Margo Lanagan is not Satan she’s just a very naughty Aussie girl.

That is all.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodnight . . .

In a few short hours, we’re off to Mexico. First Mexico City, where I’ve never been before, and hope to have a wee spot of amusement, and then San Miguel de Allende where we will be checking into writers’ boot camp and churning out zillions a word of day while being whipped and fed nothing but gruel and water. But at the end of the horror, there will be two new Larbalestier and Westerfeld novels. So it’ll be worth it . . .

If I can escape and get somewhere internety, I’ll blog. If not, you’ll know that I’ll be writing the good write!

Wish me luck.