Shaken & Stirred

Tuesday Hangovers

• We went away for the weekend (hashtag funfunfun), and I'm now behind on everything. So many links, so little time. Did you know it's Clockwork Angel day? A new Cassie Clare book is always cause for celebration.
• Soon, as in next week when I have more time, I'll be singing the praises of Meljean Brook's AWESOME forthcoming steampunk romance The Iron Duke. I love this book so much. Want. Sequel. Nao.
• If you're interested in reading Mockingjay discussion, check out the post below this one; I've been greatly enjoying the comments. You might also want to take a peek at JJ's post and comments too.
• "The Hidden Secrets of the Creative Mind" at Time: "In creativity research, we refer to the three Bs—for the bathtub, the bed and the bus—places where ideas have famously and suddenly emerged. When we take time off from working on a problem, we change what we're doing and our context, and that can activate different areas of our brain. If the answer wasn't in the part of the brain we were using, it might be in another. If we're lucky, in the next context we may hear or see something that relates—distantly—to the problem that we had temporarily put aside." So. True. Good stuff in the whole interview, especially at the end.
• The TV writers' revenge is sweet. I love this part: "Some love to tell the story of the time an actor uttered a familiar lament to Mr. Bochco, the producer: "My character would never say that."Says Mr. Bochco: "I told him, 'Maybe your character wouldn't say that, but he's not your character, he's my character, and he's saying it right here." He pointed to the script."
• Alexander Chee's very good post on blogging and the writing life, via Maud.
• "The Future of Books According to Science Fiction" at the Tor blog.
• Amazing color photos from Russia in the early 1900s.
• An interview with Andrea Seigel about her forthcoming YA novel The Kid Table. I've loved Andrea's books since forever and she'll be stopping by here closer to the release.
• Laura Lippman's take on the #franzenfreude thing. See also: Lizzie Skurnick at the Daily Beast.
• "Conversations with Ghosts: Margaret Wise Brown and Kevin Brockmeier."
• Most exciting of all, My Official Sweetie For Life aka Christopher Rowe has the cover for his novel Sandstorm. If you only read one Forgotten Realms novel this century, make it this one. Especially if you like circuses, gladiators, and AWESOME. Preorder! Wish list! Due in March! At your local bookseller of choice or via the dark Amazonian god. (The cover version on Amazon isn't color corrected, btw, but the one at C's is.) (I feel that Christopher's 14-year-old self would also approve greatly of this cover and of this being his first novel, and how often do we get to say that, as adults? It is deeply cool.) Yay.

Spoiler Space

So I'm reading Mockingjay now, and I'm figuring I'll want to say spoilery things verrry soon so feel free to do the same in the comments section below if you want. Which is where I'll put mine. Having trouble finding such discussions and this seems easiest. After all, the talktalktalk after is part of what makes communal reading experiences fun.

(Lovers, haters, skeptics and fools alike are welcome, as long as rules of polite conduct are observed.)

Miss Universe: The Live By Remote Experience

I'm going to attempt to liveblog the pageant (on the off chance that Ms. Sunshine can't find a good webcast on her portion of the globe) (webcast found! but I'll continue to hit the highlights). Please to join in the comments, if you like. I make no promises as to how long I can keep this up, but I'll try to get through to crowntime.

Updates will begin here in 39 minutes and counting. Behind the cut to avoid spoilers, OF COURSE.

Reprise National Costume

The Miss Universe pageant is on NBC tonight at 9 p.m., and this intergalactic strangefest should not be missed if you can help it.*

Psst: Refresher on the rules of the drinking game.

I'm always a Trinidad & Tobago girl, but I might branch out this year. And there are so many questions: Will America trip at some point? Can Venezuela lose? Who will be the saddest "celebrity" guest judge?

Predictions?

*Scoff if you must, but the Vietnam pageant was the first place I ever saw a little someone called Lady Gaga perform.

Wednesday Hangovers

• I missed it the first time around, but a Studio 360 episode featuring Connie Willis, Janelle Monae and David Goldberg on time travel will rerun this weekend--or you can download it here. I already put it on le iPod. (Via Charlie Jane.)
• Timothy Williamson in the NYT on the nature of imagination and its intersections with science and philosophy.
• A wonderful short essay by Jessica Francis Kane, "Where We Write: The Merits of Making Do," about the author's penchant for writing in libraries. There is much, much too much excellence in this essay to capture with a quote, but a snippet: "I began to suspect I was too susceptible to the idea of the “writer’s desk” and decided it might be better to do without one. Somewhere along the way, I began to work in libraries. More important, I began to get work done in libraries. I acquired a laptop, a padded case for it, and a backpack. I carried pens, a notebook or two, a legal pad, and a few books. Very soon I felt like the academic equivalent of the college student backpacking abroad—I was entirely self-sufficient! I didn’t need a private desk and the talismanic power of special objects surrounding me."
• Marvelous post, including lots of photos, about literary pets. Worth a visit for the Edith Wharton shoulder puppies picture alone. (Via Austin.)
• We're going to NYC next weekend for a wedding (alas, we won't have time to see very many people, as it's a superquick trip), but dang! I'd have loved to catch the Met's exhibit on women's fashion that closed last weekend. The 1930s starlet gowns in the photo are to drool for.
• Smart Bitches has a nice wrap-up of the latest "We Must Protect the Children from ... BOOKS!" lunacy, happening down in Texas at the Humble Teen Lit Festival, which decided to disinvite Ellen Hopkins after a librarian raised concerns with the superintendent. All the other authors have dropped out, and there have been some excellent posts you can get to via SB. Make sure you catch Tera Lynn Childs' letter to the superintendent informing him of her own decision. Bravo, guys.
• Finally, the best vintage safety manual ever, entitled "It's Great to Be Alive!" Remember: "Don't play in abandoned ice boxes--they are death traps!" Also, if you do play in the ice box, don't expect any plums. I ate them. (Via Juliet.)

Clean Living

I wrote the category feature on health for this week's PW. There were some very interesting books in the crop, especially Melanie Thernstrom's The Pain Chronicles, a big literary mix of history, personal narrative, and research, and Harriet Brown's Brave Girl Eating, a mother's memoir about employing a somewhat controversial new approach to treating her daughter's anorexia.

Anyway, it's always fun learning about what's going on in a different part of the publishing sandbox. And my editor left a message this morning that me and a few other regular feature writers have been added to the masthead this week. Fancy.

Sunday Hangovers

• Anindita points to all the best places to get the lowdown on good SXSW panels to vote for.
• This is entirely awesome: Fantasy author Alma Alexander is enlisting the help of teens to rewrite a 500-page novel she wrote when she was 14 years old. The project will be chronicled here.
• Great post from Kiersten White about why she writes YA: "Everything is huge and new and important, but you still get to be silly, you still get to screw up, you still get to goof off. I love the raw emotions of adolescence, the slipperiness of self, the angst of trying to figure out where you fit and where you want to fit."
• The divine Andrea Seigel is running a giveaway competition for a copy of her new novel, The Kid Table, which will be out from Bloomsbury in September. (It's fabulous. And Andrea is one of my favorite, favorite writers working today.) All you have to do to win is write about what one of her tattoos means to you--it's a pear wearing a thong. You also win a personalized Perler figurine. Contest open until Aug. 24.
• Follow along as our favorite Colleen Lindsay vanquishes Murray, aka stage-one breast cancer. Leave sappy comments over there at your peril. What I want to know more about is her awesome new job at Penguin.
• The Washington Post has a piece on pseudonyms--which doesn't really go into the forced pseudonym to revive a career or ditch a bad sales record phenom, more and more common these days--from which I learned that JD Robb sometimes outsells Nora Roberts, and The Bell Jar was originally published under the name Victoria Lucas because Plath feared her mother's reaction.
• I really need to catch up on Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels. I haven't read one since Sarah picked Case Histories for the LitBlog Coop back in the day.
• Professor Nana linked to this list of starred review children's and YA titles up through July from PW, with how many stars each has received. Looking at this, I begin to understand the conventional wisdom that floats around regarding how many stars a book needs before it really starts to matter. (I have heard three bandied about often. --Obviously, any starred review is excellent, though; this is purely in crazy business terms.)
• I finally got around to YS Lee's A Spy in the House, the first in her YA series about Mary Quinn, a girl saved from the gallows, schooled and starting life as an operative in a secret women's detective agency in Victorian London. The second, A Body at the Tower, released last week, and Lee went on a great blog tour where she talked about should-be-more-famous ladies of the period and writery topics; you can find links to all the posts at the final Book Smugglers stop.

The Other Kind of Power Ballad

I've posted here before about the importance of playlists in my writing process. And I always love reading other people's playlist posts--it's one of the reasons I like largehearted boy's Book Notes feature so much. It's a particular look through another writer's window, slightly and enjoyably voyeuristic, even though limited to the book in question. Another way of understanding both writer and novel, or just of finding new bands or being reminded about old ones. For my own part, I know a project's taking on life when I feel the need to pause and make the big playlist that I'll listen to while writing, though that playlist evolves along the way. A new draft means a substantially tweaked playlist, usually.

Anyway, I realized this morning that I also tend to find a new song sometime along the way through the draft that I come to think of as the book's anthem. Typically, it shows up right before the last third of the story, and this morning the creepy island book's came blaring out of the car stereo muse-sent from my very own iPod,* a song I'm not even sure I'd ever listened to after I downloaded it. The song is "Kick In Your Heart" by Gliss (which can be heard here, if you like). I suspect I will listen to it a millionty times in the next few weeks.

The anthem is different than the playlist. First, it gets played on repeat over and over again, and usually when I'm consciously thinking about the story, instead of while actually writing. The song tends to conjure strong visualization of big scenes, call up emotion to match, and lead to lots and lots of plot nailing-down. It begins to represent the whole story I'm working toward having told. It becomes the song of the book that will soon be written.

The last book had, I'd say, three distinct anthems: "Golden" by Sister Suvi, "Splintering" by Arizona, and "Golden Children" by Black Feelings (the last was probably the anthem).

What about you guys? Do you do this, too?

*Good thing I haven't quite figured out how to manipulate the contents of my birthday present yet (it's fancier than my old one!), or I probably wouldn't have had the song on there in the first place. Autoload can sometimes be serendipitous.

Tuesday Hangovers

• Oldest university on earth being resurrected after 800 years. (via Nicola.)
• Another one courtesy of Nicola: Billy Wilder's top 10 writing tips.
• David Rawlings and Gillian Welch cover "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."
• Publishing Perspectives gives Lauren Cerand the adoration she deserves. (And look at her great new haircut.)
• Slate explores whether digital publishing evens the playing field for smaller publishers, including an appearance by Small Beer's new Weightless Books e-bookstore.
• Best news ever: Cassie is writing more books in The Mortal Instruments series. Yelps and w00ts.
• As of this morning, WriteOnCon was so popular it crashed its server, but I'm sure it'll be back up soon if it isn't already. Here's the schedule.
• L.K. Madigan offers thoughts on and pictures of writing spaces from various authors.
• Jami Attenberg's great story about getting her bike back.
• That NYT piece you probably already saw about how everyone is reading YA (it's true; my mom just told me she is rereading The Hunger Games and Catching Fire in preparation for the third book); and a counterpoint that sees some ghettoization in the tone. See also: Smart Bitches on the same article.
• I will always love saddle shoes.

Friday Five

I seem to be embracing this random Friday thing after all.

1. If someone nice at St. Martin's wanted to send me an ARC of Jennifer Crusie's Maybe This Time, I'd be very happy about it. It's a take on The Turn of the Screw. I know I could just ask, but this way is better. And it's out at the end of the month, anyway, and it's not like I lack a massive stack of books I can't wait to read. But it'd make me happy to have it NOW and I'd do the post office dance. (In my stack, an ARC of Karen Joy Fowler's short story collection from Small Beer. Major dancing.)

2. We just finished season one of Fringe, a show that I've taken way more of a shine to than I thought I would at first. Which just goes to show something about tastes and assumptions not always being predictable, even when they're your own. I wonder if some of it is Brad Anderson's hand, since most of my favorite episodes are the ones directed by him--in fact, the science fiction of Fringe seems to share a lot in common with the science fiction of Happy Accidents, albeit with a bit more of an overt genre take coloring it. The gonzo humanity of it strikes me as similar though; audaciously, outrageously posited, but narrowed down on individual lives in a way that makes it compelling to go along with, to care about. Also, I am President and Treasurer of the Nina Sharp Fan Club. I don't care if she turns out to be good or evil or sit somewhere in between--I'll still love her. I cheer when she comes on screen. She makes me want to write an essay. Season two doesn't come out on DVD until next month. Boo.

3. Pulling a link to a fascinating story from the comments on the last post since I probably won't do hangovers until next week: Crop Circles on Wall Street, a story about what mapping out traffic at certain times on Wall Street in a certain way shows (nefarious activity). The guy whose spotting the trends names the patterns, which are maybe my favorite part of the story: "Castle Wall, The Waste Pool, Depth Ping, Boston Shuffle, BOTvsBOT, etc." Very science fictional, no? And, hey, if I'm including links, here's one to famous literary last words at the Guardian.

4. Am still playing catch up, but turned in another PW piece this morning, and will do some proofing and reviewing this weekend. I also owe emails, maybe even to you. Maybe you don't even know I owe you an email. But I do. And you will get it soon, maybe?

5. The creepy island novel proceeds apace, which is to say it's clicked back into place and I'm moving ahead. Running seems so hard to me that it must be an apt metaphor for novel writing. My last novel was pretty much a sprint--it never slowed down, just kept coming and I tried to gallop along and keep up with it. (Until revision started, of course.) This one is a marathon, even though it's theoretically simpler than the last (it's a standalone, for one), and I basically paused to take a big breath at the first third mark and--more recently--at the two thirds mark. I'm hoping to finish a draft this month, and am relieved that it suddenly seems doable. For the record, I would much rather write a novel than undertake a sprint or a marathon. I was the girl who faked running the mile to the cheerleading coach, and loathed that the basketball coach actually watched us the whole time to prevent cheating. Plus, after I finish, I get to go down to the place it's set for a last dose of research before revision. And we all know that island means BEACH.

It's All True

Herein, my RWA diary aka the post about the Romance Writers of America conference in Orlando. I'll say up front that I didn't attend any Actual Programming except the big signing and the awards luncheon (for one, I didn't want to be taking too much advantage of the fact I got to go sans registration fee and for two, I've been working too hard and needed some major downtime). This means I've now discovered my ideal conference schedule: Days at the pool and resting, evenings being social*. (Note: This also means there will be a surplus of other-people-mentioning, so if that annoys you be forewarned. Blue skies at night, namedropping in sight, etc.)

Day One: Wednesday

We had one of those insanely early flights, requiring a 4 a.m. wake-up and much bickering to get out of the house on time. But! We made it! Arriving mid-afternoon for shuttle eavesdropping of someone describing the steampunk party they were throwing and another describing a heated debate with her editor over taking a pseudonym or not, and finally arriving at le Dolphin, where we had terrible and overpriced burgers (the overpriced was to be a theme, but the food was just fine after this). A quick recovery was made by a visit to the pool for pina coladas; fortified by the booze I intrepidly followed children up a small mountain and braved the water slide. It was heroic. We watched two staff people try to catch a rogue duck for half an hour. Things were looking up.

I'd made plans to meet up with the lovely and local-to-Orlando Jackie Dolamore (fellow member of the LiteratiCoven) and Larissa Hardesty (whose book sounds amazing) at the literacy signing. (The literacy signing was huge and awe-inspiring and you should watch the video at Smart Bitches if you haven't; 500 authors raised $62,000 for charity in two hours. Wowza.) So we all wandered around and waved hello to various people--I met Diana Peterfreund for the first time, only to find out later that she was taken aback when I turned out to be southern because she'd thought I was Australian**--and then we ignored Larissa's GPS and magically found a dinner place off the resort. After dinner, Christopher abandoned us and we went off to see if the RWA Blogger Bar Bash was still going on, but it wasn't. So instead we hung out by the pool for a few hours more of talktalktalk, during which I was mooned by a swimming child's dad (unbeknownst to the dad) and we were menaced by a cute bunny***. It was tremendously fun.

Day Two: Thursday

It's possible that we slept until almost noon on this day. Then we trundled around the elaborately confusing grounds to the pool again. I did a swimming check to see what everyone around the pool was reading, and then perched on a set of stairs in the water and read Cherie Priest's Dreadnought for a bit. More slide! The threat of sunburn! Christopher had a short story draft to finish, so we headed back up to the room and he worked while I visited the hotel boutique to correct a packing mistake (wrong black top, horrors!).

One of my Veritas Award Winner perks was an invitation to a private reception early that evening, so I stopped by that in a moderately nervous state. Of course, as was the case throughout the entire event, there was no need for nerves. RWA really is full of the nicest writers and professionals you'll ever meet. I've never been to a conference more welcoming. I ended up chatting with Jo Beverley for some time, and also met Heather Graham and her posse. Then Allison Brennan showed up--we share a good friend in common (the fabulous Toni McGee Causey--Allison and Toni are part of the really excellent group blog, Murder She Writes)--and we had a wonderful, wide-ranging conversation and it turns out her teen daughter reviews YA and has the best taste in YA fantasy ever (which is to say she loves all the same books I do).

I tore myself away to dash off for dinner with the amazing Alisa Kwitney****, who I hadn't seen in almost a decade, when a common friend introduced us and we hit it off gangbusters. Alisa's seriously cool daughter (reading The Princess Bride) and the seriously cool Liz Edelstein (aka Liz Maverick) were joining us too, and we had a great time. I let Alisa kidnap me back to the Yacht Club where she was staying after dinner and we stayed up for an age gabbing and having a fabulous time in the lobby, long enough for Liz (who'd gone off for parties and seeing people) to return with the supernice and funny agent Miriam Kriss. Seeing Alisa alone would have been worth the trip. Eventually, I braved the hundreds of leaping bunnies in the bushes to get back to the hotel. Heroically.

Day Three: Friday

No pool managed this day, alas. Although only because I had to accept the Veritas, so that's a tradeoff I'll take. We sat at a table with a bunch of really interesting Australian writers, including Joanne Lockyer, who was nice enough to use her fancy camera to take photographs, which will keep me and Christopher from being bludgeoned by my mother. Always appreciated.

People kept telling me how cute I was afterward, on into the evening, and I hardly ever get cute--so I think this means I must have seemed incredibly nervous once I got up there, which I wasn't, really, but I was BLINDED by the seriously bright lights. I've been in front of a fair amount of crowds for this reason or that reason--day job or Tiptree jury or etc.--and it doesn't bother me all that much, but I had a mini-freakout when I realized I couldn't see anyone in the ballroom. At any rate, the set-up was great to watch from the audience (big screens are nice when there's a massive crowd), and I'm hugely impressed at how well all the other award winners--and especially keynoter Jayne Ann Krentz (aka Amanda Quick)--hid their blindness, if they experienced this phenomenon. Maybe what I had was a case of HYSTERICAL LUNCHEON BLINDNESS. Anyway, it was a lovely time and the acceptance speech of the day definitely went to RWA Librarian of the Year Jennifer Lohmann from Durham, who we got to chat with a bit afterward in the hall. (Turns out she ran a book club with one of Kelly Link's collections.*****)

After the luncheon, we FINALLY found the most excellent Victoria Janssen after two days of exchanging messages and texts. Then Diana came by and introduced us to Patrick Alan, who has the best con reports ever, and then Victoria, Diana and we decamped to the bar area to hang for a good while. I'm posting Victoria's pic of us below, since I took none, even though I look incredibly shiny. Proof that I survived giving my tiny awards' speech blind, and was practically glowing from my brush with doom:

Later it was on to the Avon party, where we'd been invited by Pam Jaffee, one of the best publicists in the business. After taking the bus ride through the backstage of Epcot to get there (trailers, trailers, everywhere), we were excited to see actual living sea creatures in the aquarium at the party. Also, the agent-in-chief at Christopher's agent's agency in a pirate hat (okay, we didn't actually witness that, but we did get to say hello sometime pre- or post- hat). And Diana's next project will involve wererays. (You heard it here second.) While taking advantage of the free cocktails (the Dolphin could run into some serious tab), we met scads of wonderful people who I hope to encounter again soon, including Sarah MacLean (who was awesome and later took us to see the Michael Jackson made of candy), Lavinia Kent (who has some seriously A-game cocktail facts from her historical research), Tera Lynn Childs (whose books I can't wait to read, as we are fascinated with all the same stuff), Colleen Gleason and lots of others I'm blanking on. You were all lovely. Go, Avon, with your fab authors.

We didn't even attempt to crash the Harlequin party, on sheer principle. Also, we'd been told it would be hard. So we loitered around the lobby, where Sarah introduced me to the beautifully steampunk-dressed, newly-minted dual Prism winner Leanna Renee Hieber (whose The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker I'm now reading and loving--very cross-over to YA readers so far, too). I had champagne, met many more people (I believe Katharine Ashe gave me a pep talk), ran into Liz again, and briefly chatted with the gorgeous Roxanne St. Claire, who told me her lunch table had liked my haircut. At some point, they decided to close the lobby bar and, shocked it was so late, I zombied off to bed knowing that with such a great evening, heroic pain was sure to follow in the morning.

Too true, but we were leaving anyway. What a fabulous, fabulous trip. Thanks to everyone who made it so. (And a special thank you to Erin Fry and Allison Kelley of RWA for answering last-minute questions and being so helpful.)******

And, despite not attending any of the actual writing programming, three days worth of excellent conversations with supersmart writers has left me thoroughly energized to tackle the last third of my novel-in-progress. This is a good thing.

*As opposed to being social all day long and doing too much programming--not that I'm going to stop going to readings at Wiscon or anything, but seriously, SF, let's choose some tropical-type locations with excellent pools for conferences STAT.

**Because of Justine.

***When the bunnies rise up and overthrow their oppressors, you do not want to be at the Swan/Dolphin. I'm just saying. #thebunniesarerising

****If you haven't read Alisa's books, both as Alisa Kwitney and as Alisa Sheckley, you're missing out. I love them.

*****I forget why exactly this came up. Possibly because Kelly's name came up lots, since I discovered while packing that I was nearly out of real business cards (they just have my email address on them anyway), so I had to dip into the stash of novelty non-business cards Kelly made for me (and others) years ago. Sample messages: This is not a business card; Gwenda Bond: Innocent Villager; Gwenda Bond: I don't care; Gwenda Bond: Member of The A-Team since 1982. I just wrote my email address on the back when I started giving these out.

******My only regret is that I didn't get to meet Sarah from Smart Bitches. I'm thinking of hitting RT next year though, so maybe there? Also, I can't wait to read books by people I met or was recommended books by (that I haven't already read, natch), because I know they will be awesome.