GWENDA BOND

First Draft Island

So, earlier this evening, kvetching about revision on twitter As You Do, I tweeted:

Thing that always cracks me up in my own early drafts: characters meant to be likable, but who are vaguely sinister instead. #fixety

— Gwenda Bond (@Gwenda) July 8, 2012

I picture this whole Early Draft Island filled with unintentionally shady characters who are actually lovely, but can't trust each other.

— Gwenda Bond (@Gwenda) July 8, 2012

And:

@Gwenda On my corner of the island, they spend far too much time raising one or both eyebrows. Also using gerunds after dialogue tags.

— Sarah Rettger (@SarahRettger) July 8, 2012

Which, of course, yes, so familiar here too. And then the fabulous Sarah says she can do maps in Paint. And then a bit later BEHOLD, the first draft of First Draft Island (!):

@gwenda There's still space for more landmarks... twitter.com/SarahRettger/s…

— Sarah Rettger (@SarahRettger) July 8, 2012

I simply could not let this go unshared, lost to the ever-shifting twitter cocktail hour sands.

Larger image of Sarah's brilliant mapping behind the cut:

Effing Le Guin*

In which Ursula Le Guin posts at the Book View Cafe about the modern embrace of a certain F word.** Snippet:

I remember my brothers coming home on leave in the second world war and never once swearing in front of us homebodies: a remarkable achievement. Only later, when I was helping my brother Karl clean out the spring, in which a dead skunk had languished all winter, did I learn my first real cusswords, seven or eight of them in one magnificent, unforgettable lesson. Soldiers and sailors have always cursed, what else can they do? But Norman Mailer in The Naked and the Dead was forced to use the euphemistic invention “fugging,” giving Dorothy Parker the chance, which naturally she didn’t miss, of cooing at him, “Oh, are you the young man who doesn’t know how to spell ‘fuck?’”

More at the link, including some examples that raise questions about the use of the word as salt (or pepper). For rhythm in a sentence, I suggest we use the term The Heathers Effect. But, hey, how much do I love Le Guin for this post (and in general)? An effing lot.

And you really should read the whole thing, because agree or disagree, there are serious points being made about the nature of the words that become our chosen profanities, and their connotations.

That said, I'd be thrilled if she read Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist. A girl can dream.

Updated to add: So apparently there is some controversy about whether it was Parker or Tallulah Bankhead who said this to Mailer. Anyone have a sure-thing source? Or is this just an excellent fiction? I won't really be disappointed either way.

(Link via @Jonathan Strahan & @SFSignal.)

*I'm quoting Ursula Le Guin so I assume it's okay to use this language on a family blog, right? (Wait, this is my blog, not a family blog. Eff.) Insert smiley face. (Or similar emoticon, which I'm certain Dorothy Parker would agree is way more offensive than language will ever be.***)

**My mom (the principal) told me once that a common reason girls ended up in her office was calling each other 'the B word' and resulting disputes. She believed in making them specify which one. This is a purely an aside, thus the star.

***I use them too, but I don't have to like it. The real curse of the modern age.

(Was this all just an excuse to use this post title? Maybe.)

The Awl Gets Even Better

The delightful, wondrous, and amazing Carrie Frye starts today as the new managing editor at the Awl. Let there be much rejoicing.

Congrats, dearie. You're going to rock this.

Granny Fiction

Gavin Grant* has a tremendously excellent story up at Strange Horizons, "Widows in the World," which I waited to link to here until both parts were up. Part One and Part Two.

I remember hearing him read from this in a small, dark room in Glasgow** at a WorldCon years ago now and being dazzled all over again by the way he plays with language and the expected in his stories. Getting the whole of this one was well worth the wait. Happy Valentine's.

*Karen Joy Fowler has some guest entries up at the Small Beer blog, including one from today. Snippet: "A singing tree: Just west of the dog beach, along the clifftop is a Monterey pine. There are many Monterey pines along the cliff and one tries not to have favorites, but this is a very appealing tree. Today it was making a tremendous racket as I approached and I had to get quite close to understand that a congress of blackbirds was hidden among the needles, each of them shouting as loudly as possible. There were so many that if they’d all flapped their wings at once, the tree would have taken flight." Go read the rest of this too. And then read all her other entries; you will not be sorry.

**At least, I'm almost certain this is that story. I'm sure he'll let me know if I'm wrong.

I Know, I Know

You've probably already seen this, but it's just too good to only stick over at the tumblr-tron:

Should be shown at the beginning of writing classes everywhere.

Truth & Beauty

Kate Elliott (whose new book Cold Magic is at the top of my TBR stack) has written an amazing and wise post about what it means to be a nation of immigrants, about prejudice and how it damages:

And yet a cycle repeats itself. Every generation seems to fixate on some “new” immigrant group as a threat that can’t or won’t assimilate itself properly, that is stubborn or ineducable or secretly under the thrall of the Pope or or or. You can fill in the blanks. It happens over and over again as meanwhile people who want to build a good life for themselves and their children, and their children who can conceive of nothing other than being Americans because, well, that is what they are--they are Americans just as I am, or you over there, or you, or you--get on with living a decent life . . . if they can, if they aren’t locked into internment camps or having their places of worship burned because they are this decade’s or this generation’s Threat to Our Way of Life.

Really, seriously, go read the whole thing.

Geek Love: Andrew Auseon's Freak Magnet

Around the end of chapter two of Andrew Auseon's latest YA novel, Freak Magnet (Amazon | Indiebound) I stopped to ask, Wait, why isn't everyone talking about this book?

Of course, I know the answer. It's because Freak Magnet is a book that might be lumped into the nebulous category of "small"--it's primarily character-focused, it's bereft of creatures of the night unless you count beginning astronomers, it's idiosyncratic, it's funny but also not afraid to be taken seriously... No, wait, I'm back to not understanding anymore. Because no one would call John Green's books "small"--at least not anymore--and I'm pretty well convinced that anyone who likes John Green's books will also respond to this one. Or fans of Sara Zarr (who contributes a lovely blurb) or Natalie Standiford, Barry Lyga or Cecil Castellucci, for that matter. I could keep going.

Freak Magnet follows Charlie Wyatt, aka the Freak, and Gloria Aboud, aka the Freak Magnet, during summer break. The book begins when Superman-obsessed stargazer Charlie first spots Gloria and decides he must tell her she's the most beautiful girl he's ever seen; a writer, she promptly records this encounter in her notebook, aka the Freak Folio. Sounds like a frothy set-up, doesn't it? But Auseon's too good a writer to be content with that, and what follows is a story that will truly keep you on the edge of your preferred reading furniture, turning pages, caring about each of these characters too much to stop.

This is the sort of contemporary realist fiction that I unabashedly love. Geeky, cool, honest, and absorbing. Focused on creating intimate character portraits and memorable casts (Gloria's sister is into cosplay every day--even for their mother's foundation benefits) without the handwringing of tea towels beside a window overlooking the English moors (or the professor someone just committed adultery with's backyard), but filled with no less emotional depth for that. Auseon's teens and adults feel as individual and as nuanced as any real people I've ever met and over the course of Gloria and Charlie's unconventional love story, I fell in love with both of them. I'm not overstating when I say this novel reminded me of all the things I love about YA realism done right (and there's plenty of appeal here for SFF readers, too). On a craft level, the book is quite an achievement--I haven't seen dual first person point of view done any better than this, with each voice absolutely distinct, or read many other novels able to balance true humor with true weight half so well.

I'd recommend this book to just about anyone. Freaks and freak magnets take note.

(Also, take note I'll have an interview with Andy Auseon as part of his whirlwind blog tour tomorrow.)

It Came From the Woods

A short movie for M.T. Anderson's* The Suburb Beyond the Stars. Complete hilarity ensues:

The Suburb Beyond the Stars from Sang Lee on Vimeo.

(Via Leda, a brave soul who lives in the land of Vermont.)

*That is one spiffy website.

Crush Your Enemies

Pure brilliance.

Via Karen Meisner.

Psst

I'm working on a hopefully-not-too-lengthy post about blogging (meta!), but in the meanwhile a reminder that I'm continuing to update links to Kelly Link's blog tour stops in this post. Yesterday she wrote about coming up with story ideas and a bit about her own process:

As well as useful ideas, there's a particular category of ideas that you, the writer, will never ever use, but which are pleasing, for whatever reason, to contemplate. I welcome these ideas even as I recognize them as ridiculous. They seem like but-wait-there's-more bonus! ideas that you get, for some reason, along with the useful ones -- and sometimes I like these bonus! ideas even better than the ones that become stories or projects. In this category are two titles for anthologies that I will never ever edit, but which I love to contemplate: Manthology is one; the other is Unicats!.

I still like Singularicats! better.

Oh, and there's this:

And yet, wouldn't it be a blast to remake the movie "Bringing Up Baby" as a paranormal romance? I keep having this vision of the scene in which Cary Grant's character is wearing Katherine Hepburn's negligee. Doesn't the reason why seem obvious? He's just turned back from were-leopard into Cary Grant.

AMEN

The wonderful wonderful wonderful Maureen Johnson has a manifesto:

The internet is made of people. People matter. This includes you. Stop trying to sell everything about yourself to everyone. Don’t just hammer away and repeat and talk at people—talk TO people. It’s organic. Make stuff for the internet that matters to you, even if it seems stupid. Do it because it’s good and feels important. Put up more cat pictures. Make more songs. Show your doodles. Give things away and take things that are free. Look at what other people are doing, not to compete, imitate, or compare . . . but because you enjoy looking at the things other people make. Don’t shove yourself into that tiny, airless box called a brand—tiny, airless boxes are for trinkets and dead people.

There's lots of context, which you should go read, but, seriously, YES. YES. YES. YES. If you're arguing, I don't know, read Lewis Hyde's The Gift and see how you feel.

Relatedly: I would also like to ban the word networking--it's called Being Interested In Other People when done in the right spirit. Or, at the very least, should never ever be undertaken in the ungenerous spirit of What Can You Do For Me. Because that is boring and, also, awful.

The Internet *is* a conversation or, rather, many conversations. Like the rest of life. Don't break it.

Feeling the Love

Okay, so even though I am SLAMMED with pre-NYC stuff*, it is amazing to see everyone sharing their agent love for Agent Appreciation Day, and I am feeling especially grateful for my agent, the wonderful Jennifer Laughran at Andrea Brown Literary, this week anyway because she just sent me notes on my new project. (Yay, new project!) Here are five reasons why she's so great:

1. I have never waited more than an hour to hear back from her on any question or query, and usually it's within minutes.

2. I have told her this before, but she gives truly great notes--it's like getting the reaction of the smartest, best reader in the world. Invaluable. She is fiercely dedicated to her clients and is also incredibly timely at reading and responding to manuscripts.

3. She is always honest and direct. I know her enthusiasm is genuine. And she doesn't yell at me for not being very good at describing whatever project I'm working on.

4. In this one, I lump all the things I can't go into detail about here, but which she knows. Yeah, that stuff.

5. She is a great *person*. I thought Jenn was wonderful way before she ever became my agent or even an agent. She has great taste and she's basically a wunderkind dynamo and hilarious to boot.

OH, I could go on, but I will stop by saying that getting to know some of Jenn's other clients has been a real gift this year. May next year rock hard and often for us all.

---

*Internal Q&A from today:

How do we know so many people in NY? Um, publishing.

Why don't we live there? Because we like it here(?).

There is no way we will get to see everyone, not even close, WAH! So come to the reading, and we will see you there at least.

Free With Purchase

Introducing: Small Beer Press Horizons! Has Gavin got a deal for you!

5. In our super-premium “Booksellers” package—Usually $5 million, Today Only $2 million—we come to your town, open a bookshop, and stock your book. We will throw a launch party and have you do a reading and for a small additional fee we will throw in a couple of bottles of that sparkly Portuguese wine and some cubed cheese (which seem like such a good idea in the grocery store and look so sad on display) in the somewhat forlorn hope that people will come.

And oh so much more. I laughed so hard, I almost threw up. And it was FREE.

Poetry?

What do you think, Julie Larios? (And any other poets of my acquaintance who might like to weigh in?)

(Via Professor Nana.)

I Love That Song

Best early birthday present ever? Dana, aka D.E. Rasso, from the late, lamented Number One Hit Song has a new blog. Raise a glass in celebration if you're a sentient being and go add her to your feed reader (or bookmark, if you're hardcore old school). 

And if you're in NYC, you should also check out her reading this Sunday, July 12, at 8 p.m. at The Slipper Room (167 Orchard at Stanton). She'll be the featured author for the NYC stop of the Dollar Store Super Summer Tour. Be there or be a square.

News Agent

Christopher announces the excellent news that he's now represented by Shana Cohen at the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency. Go congratulate him some.

Bravery & Admin

First, the bravery...

Nicola has an excellent article on tasers and the taser party fad up at the Huffington Post:

Apparently, many women who go to these parties live in constant fear of violent sexual assault. And they believe that having a Taser will protect them. Perhaps they imagine a hooded stranger in their apartment or their parking lot. Perhaps they imagine that they will whip out the Taser, zap the bad guy, and a few minutes later watch as the cops march him off. Bloodless and neat. Her Taser is a "safety blanket," says Dana Shafman, the entrepreneur who started the parties; if she leaves the house without one she goes "into panic mode."

But it's not safety blankets that protect you.  You do that.

I wish every girl and woman in the wide world would read the whole piece. And the Aud novels.

(This also reminds me that she has another blog, about the writing of her next novel, which sounds AMAZING. AMAZING. Three times AMAZING.)

And now the admin...

I toggled a few new settings on Typepad. Now there's a Share This thingie under each post, which will let you easily save stuff to your various networking/bookmarky places or e-mail posts. There's also RSS feeds for the comments on individual posts. And some other stuff you shouldn't really see if it works right.

I'm sure this is all very unnecessary, but it makes me feel productive.

Me Have Troubles

Things never to do NUMBER ONE: Let your passport expire without noticing until the day before you need to use it.

If anyone has a fairy godmother who does emergency passports, please let me know. We're working on it, if we can just get to Miami in time, etc.

Updated: We think it'll work out and we'll just get there a day and a half or so later. Keep your fingers crossed for understanding airport agents (so far, so good) and passport people. Also, for passport cancellations at the Miami center tomorrow! (I have an appt. but Thursday, but we could go standby tomorrow evening if I managed to get in early.) Oh and HEY, if anyone lives in Miami and I've spaced and you want to grab dinner or something (or has a recommendation for a hotel), let me know.

Memo

to Dave Schwartz -- you need to watch this IMMEDIATELY. (The rest of you might like it too.)

Meanwhile

And while Micol and I were attending the conference, the boys visited a nearby Des Plaines gaming store (recommended by a local, natch) that just happened to be holding an elaborate auction. Noah documented the memorable experience on film, and describes it thus: The man, the myth, the passion and the triumph. In a world of demons and demi-gods, one man rose above and succesfully bought a board game....

Possibly my favorite thing that has ever been on YouTube.

Christopher asks that I add: What's going on at the end is that there were TWO copies of the game available, and that the second one had "box damage" but went for just three bucks less than what I paid for the mint condition one.

This Just In

Two extremely lovely little birdies gave me the heads up that the divine Dana (formerly of the much-lamented #1 Hit Song) is doing some bloggerino over at the Young Manhattanite. This makes me very happy, and I'm not even the one who had a birthday yesterday.

This Is Why

Maureen McHugh is a genius. A chart outlining her understanding of the novel:

Go read the whole post.

True Words

Jenny Davidson's been my fitness hero* this year, with all her triathlon training and fabulous posts about it. Today she has a wonderful post remembering a friend who died and talking about how she will remember him when she swims. In it, she says:

To earn the approval of a magically good teacher by hard work rather than by talent is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.

Yes.

(And, Jenny, I'm still terrified of clipping in; maybe someday. For now, I'm sticking with yoga, which often feels dangerous enough.)

*In addition to Christopher, that is, who's been pulling 200 mile weeks on the bike lately.

Oh, By the Way

Come visit us over at the Basement in Terra Haute. Her Pinkness is a genius.

Pretty Tape

Excellent clear tape art (via Karen and Cat Rambo, practically simultaneously).

In unrelated news, I moved all my RSS feed subs over to Google Reader yesterday, as part of an ongoing effort to have Google control every aspect of my life. (It just feels less creepy if I pretend it's intentional.) Bloglines has been superbuggy lately and not catching updates so quickly. Anyway, after a brief adjustment period, I'm really liking the Reader interface -- especially the ability to read all the new messages in one column, using the space bar to travel between entries. Sweet.

Two Things I Love

1. Brotherhood 2.0. So very, very funny. And you just don't know how far it will escalate: today Sutter Home, tomorrow _____. That is one scary blank to fill!

2. Jason Sizemore has put Christopher's story "The League of Last Girls" up as a zipped PDF. Go read it. (Some of the horror reviewers seem to be finding it confusing, but I actually think it's one of his funnier, more straightforward -- yet creeeeepy -- stories. So, penny for your thoughts.)

Two True Things

1. Maud rips Malcolm Gladwell for his apparently quite idiotic Enron piece. (I'm not sure I can stomach it, from the excerpts. And I'm more than willing to take her word for it, based on some of the other stuff he's peddled lately.) Brava, dah-link:

A friend points out that Gladwell’s piece is the inevitable result when a writer who has — literally — made a career out of hailing superficial first impressions and banal fads as the height of human endeavor tries to reckon with serious wrong-doing that has serious real-world consequences.

2. Callie on how much it sucks to go back to the grind after time for more writerly pursuits:

I am not alone, I suspect, in my loathing to leave this state behind and plunge back into the world of work and clients and deadlines and the required pacifism, patience and forced pleasantries that will ensue.  After two weeks of reading & writing, I've developed a routine that I'm loathe to change. I've begun writing in a way that has inspired more writing. I'm not eager to fiddle with the state of things.  But I've got no choice.

Drinking With Miss Universe

Mr. Cavin shares the rules for the Miss Universe Drinking Game:

In honor of tomorrow's popular intergalactic aesthetic talent event, the Miss Universe Pageant, here are the rules of the eponymous drinking game, a time-tested ritual. First, it is necessary for each player to choose a contestant from the outset (it is routine to either pick a woman representing a favored country or to just shout out "her!" during the national dress parade, the first televised event). This Miss will be your chess piece as the game advances, her performance dictates your scoring. It is important to have a contestant in play; you might need to pick another one if your first choice fails to make it into subsequent rounds. I would very much like to choose Miss Japan, whose costume is the traditional "Samurai Stripper Robot." Sunshine always takes Miss Venezuela, who will be dressed as "Spiegel Matador."

The actual rules follow.

We will be playing along here in Kentucky (home of the recently Project Runwayed Miss USA, who has not a chance in hell), and with champagne to boot.

All Dolled Up

This morning, our local paper has a big profile of the fabulous daredevil Sunshine Ison's amazing parents Cecil and Bet's place, specifically focusing on Cecil's fabulous dolls:

The first and most unsettling thing you notice about Cecil and Bet Ison's Rowan County yard is the baby dolls.

Lots of plastic dolls, or parts of dolls.

Oh, how many nights have I spent there cattily watching beauty pageants and eating ice cream? About a year ago, I realized Sunshine's probably my oldest friend; we met when we were 16ish at Governor's School for the Arts. (And now, Erin's in that category too, since I discovered she became Queen of Louisville and Poetry and we reconnected.)

So this article makes me very happy. There's a multimedia thing with Cecil talking even. And mention of Bet's unbelievably beautiful, complicated quilts (if no pictures). Check it. You won't be sorry.

OH, and related, Sunshine has two great poems in the latest LCRW, "The Posthumous Voyages of Christopher Columbus" and "And If They Are Not Dead, They May Be Living Still." Order now.

Just a Reminder

Of why Tod Goldberg rocks:

Moral decay of our culture. Let's examine that for just one moment, here on the day a crazed zombie with a taste for human flesh pushed itself from the earth to save our souls. Baldwin believes that porn is ruining our culture, whereas Bio-Dome did not? Whereas Half-Baked made the world safe for the children? Whereas The Flintstones Viva Rock Vegas edified God? (Of course, the Flintstones do make a persuasive argument that dinosaurs lived concurrently with modern man.)

That would be Stephen Baldwin by the way, otherwise known as Sleazy McBaldwin.

Yes

Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus?

AMAZING. More to follow.

This Thing Called Joy

Bookninja has an RSS feed. Finally.

And a spiffy new look. (Via the people's Champion.)

On Betty Friedan

I was going to post about this amazing woman and her legacy, but Lauren's said it all. Go read her.

See also: Bad Feminist's post, which has some good links.

Pretty Pretty

So Gavin pointed me in the direction of these beautiful photos by Christa Parravani. Some of them (including the photo of Mabel Osborne at left) will be in a hopefully book-length series of Spoon River photos. Just as delightful as the photo browsing is the assertion that the photographer is often mistaken for Louise Brooks -- judge for yourself.

Styx Takes Over the World

Did everybody already know about this? Dictionaraoke. What is it? "Audio clips from online dictionaries sing the hits of yesterday and today."

Best thing since forever.

Take a hint from Tito, from who I gacked this, and listen to Liz Phair's "Fuck and Run" first.

Jeff Ford Week Continues

Over at Jeff Ford's: Present From The Past. Do. Not. Miss:

After my mother finally quit drinking, she entered a brief epoch of peace in her life. Gone were the paranoia, the accusations, the belittlements, the bitter rage of judgment, her look of fear. For years, nearly every day a lost weekend, she had been possessed by the dark amber ghast of gag-sweet Taylor Cream Sherry. Living with her back then had been like living with a vampire whose bite drained but never conferred immortality. What eventually brought about her unexpected exorcism, I can now only guess, but when she resurfaced she was quiet and ready to laugh. She was watching and listening.