GWENDA BOND

Linky Business

Still on deadline(s) so just dropping in here with a few quick things.

First off, SFX has a great preview of the Strange Chemistry imprint today by way of a fab interview with editrix-in-chief Amanda Rutter. It includes some newsy-ness, including that the imprint will be going to two titles per month starting the second half of next year. Check it out.

My sadness at the news that Margaret Mahy has passed on is immense. What a brilliant, beautiful genius of a writer she was. I wrote about two of my favorites of her books a few years ago; I sense a reread coming on. (I actually just reread her Alchemy a week or so ago, and was reminded of the fabulous strangeness that permeates her work.) I also highly recommend Karen Healey's Strange Horizons column about her. I hate folding this into a post about other things, but I didn't want to let it go uncommented on. R.I.P.

And, finally, switching gears completely--I'm SO excited to be part of the Summer YA Scavenger Hunt, coming your way very soon. Like all the other authors, I'll be contributing a signed copy to the prize package. My special content will be some information about my next book, a reveal of the title (yes, it actually has one now!) and a little draft front matter. Behind the cut you can get a glimpse at the details on all the participating authors, courtesy of Colleen Houck. What company to be in!

R.I.P.

The great, cranky genius Maurice Sendak has died at age 83.

Excerpt from a letter by Sendak's editor Ursula Nordstrom to a writer at the New Yorker on Where the Wild Things Are in 1964:

You asked me how "revolutionary" Where the Wild Things Are is. There have been a good many fine picture books in the past. (Some by Margaret Wise Brown, and illustrated by one of two or three or four talented artists.) But I think Wild Things is the first complete work of art in the picture book field, conceived, written, illustrated, executed in entirety by one person of authentic genius. Most books are written from the outside in. But Wild Things comes from the inside out, if you know what I mean. And I think Maurice's book is the first picture book to recognize the fact that children have powerful emotions, anger and love and hate and only after all that passion, the wanting to be "where someone loved him best of all."

And another from her letter responding to a librarian angry about The Night Kitchen's nudity in 1972:

I am indeed distressed to hear that in the year 1972 you burned a copy of a book. We are truly distressed that you think it is not a book for elementary school children. I assume it is the little boy's nudity which bothers you. But truly, it does not disturb children! Mr. Sendak is a creative artist, a true genius, and he is able to speak to children directly. For children—at least up to the age of 12 or 13—are usually tremendously creative themselves. Should not those of us who stand between the creative artist and the child be very careful not to sift our reactions to such books through our own adult prejudices and neuroses? To me as editor and publisher of books for children, that is one of my greatest and most difficult duties. Believe me, we do not take our responsibilities lightly! I think young children will always react with delight to such a book as In the Night Kitchen, and that they will react creatively and wholesomely. It is only adults who ever feel threatened by Sendak's work.

And, finally, some words from Sendak himself in a 2011 NPR interview:

"I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more. ... What I dread is the isolation. ... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready."

May we all be so lucky.

R.I.P.

This time for Kage Baker, who won't get nearly the amount of ink of other writers who've passed away recently, and whose work I love more dearly than any of theirs. I first read her in 2004, it turns up through a little googling, and immediately became a devotee. It does not feel just that there won't be anything more, after her next book publishes in March. I can only hope her books continue to find the new readers they deserve, and she lives on in that way.

Her work will always be the best kind of alive for me. I expect I'll go back and reread the Company books sometime soon. I just ordered The Hotel Under the Sand, her only novel for children, from last summer, which I managed to not read yet somehow. 

I feel this frustratingly inexpressible sadness--for those who knew her, because she must have been amazing and I'm sure she will leave a large hole in their lives, and for all the books and stories we will not get now that she might have written, and for the fact she was not more feted while she was here. 

Discover her work, if you haven't.

R.I.P.

John Hughes. His influence lives on.

EW names his 20 key movies; Mark Kozelek remembers a phone conversation; and a long-time pen pal remembers her long-distance friend.

The Glove Is Off

Some of you who've been reading this blog so long you recall its previous homes on blogspot and journalscape might also remember a great number of "Glove Monster" posts during a certain time period. I find it hard to mourn such a problematic personality, but I certainly mourn the kid who gave us some great music, and then grew up too damaged and famous to quite be a whole person. 

Here's the longest post I ever did about MJ (that I can remember) from 2003, oddly and creepily about how he'd never believe he could die*, and here's my favorite related video:

 

R.I.P., kid. 

*Yes, I know. I used to be a much better blogger type. If only there'd been tags back then, it'd be a lot easier to find old posts.

RIP

Madeleine L'Engle has died. Her acceptance speech for the 1963 Newbery Award for A Wrinkle in Time is up at her official site; here's an excerpt:

So how do we do it? We can’t just sit down at our typewriters and turn out explosive material. I took a course in college on Chaucer, one of the most explosive, imaginative, and far-reaching in influence of all writers. And I’ll never forget going to the final exam and being asked why Chaucer used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote in a white heat of fury, “I don’t think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn’t the way people write.”

I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn’t done deliberately.

Do I mean, then, that an author should sit around like a phony Zen Buddhist in his pad, drinking endless cups of espresso coffee and waiting for inspiration to descend upon him? That isn’t the way the writer works, either. I heard a famous author say once that the hardest part of writing a book was making yourself sit down at the typewriter. I know what he meant. Unless a writer works constantly to improve and refine the tools of his trade they will be useless instruments if and when the moment of inspiration, of revelation, does come. This is the moment when a writer is spoken through, the moment that a writer must accept with gratitude and humility, and then attempt, as best he can, to communicate to others.

A writer of fantasy, fairy tale, or myth must inevitably discover that he is not writing out of his own knowledge or experience, but out of something both deeper and wider. I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him. I know that this is true of A Wrinkle in Time. I can’t possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. And it was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.

R.I.P.

Theresa Duncan is dead. This is so strange; I didn't know her, except through the occasional e-mail and through her blog, The Wit of the Staircase. I always expected we'd meet someday IRL and become great friends.

What a terrible, terrible thing. (Via Ed.) My condolences to those who did know her, and to those grieving over her boyfriend, Jeremy Blake, who is missing.

Sadness (updated)

And now word is starting to spread that one of the victims of this terrible, unthinkable tragedy may be SF writer Michael Bishop's son, who apparently teaches/taught German at Virginia Tech. I hope it's not true. I don't know Michael Bishop at all, but E Bear is right: the field is small and we're a family in some odd, real way. And my heart goes out to the Bishops'--if it's not true, for believing that it was, even for a little while--and to all those who are hurting tonight because they lost someone important to them.

I always have nightmares after a school shooting and I can't imagine tonight will be different.

Updated: And Locus has now confirmed that Jamie Bishop was among the victims. There is really nothing to say in the face of such senseless tragedy. If you visit the site at that link, you can see some of his beautiful artwork.

R.I.P.

On NPR this morning, Gore Vidal was suddenly there, calling Kurt Vonnegut a "good science fiction writer," and so I knew he was dead. His work was very important to me growing up and I got to see him read once. I'm grateful for the work, and the reading, and his life. But, boy, does his dying suck.

Here he is on The Long View, judging the state of modern society.

Updated: Christopher's Vonnegut stories -- that's the same reading I went to that he describes in part 2.

And see Karen Meisner's post too.

And Ed has a ton of good links.

As does Maud.

R.I.P. Molly Ivins

My hero. I can't quite deal with this one yet.

When Ann Richards shook off this mortal coil last year, the only way I could quite find to deal with it was by calling on the words of Molly Ivins.

It makes me angry that she's gone, and sad beyond reckoning. A real remembrance to come when I can be a bit less maudlin.

What a lady.

Here's a bit from her last column in mid-January:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.

Raise hell. Now that's a legacy.

Updated: Some memorable quotes here.

AND how lame is it that the NYT apparently still refuses to run "gang pluck"? You've got to be kidding!

Best tributes, of course, to be found at The Observer.

Sharp-Tongued Devil

I didn't hear about Ann Richards until late afternoon. I'm not surprised I'm sad because she's gone -- I'm surprised at how sad I am because she's gone. I learned who Ann Richards was reading Molly Ivins columns in high school. Ivins immediately became my columnist hero; Richards quickly became my politician hero (not political hero, but one of them). Not to mention, I was comforted to find out that there was another state with politics at least as screwed up as Kentucky's.

So, yeah, I'm sad. And I have none of my favorite Ivins' columns at hand here to quote -- the collections are all still on my childhood bookshelves back home -- all I've got is Shrub. So here's the best I can do, a short excerpt about Ann Richards campaign against W from that book by Ivins and Lou Dubose (but Ivins' name's a lot bigger on the cover):

Of Bush, she says, "We didn't underestimate Bush, but we underestimated the Christian right, which probably reached its zenith that year. We underestimated the NRA (National Rifle Association) and its money. That cost me the male union vote, the good ole boy vote. I lost that over guns. Bush was very firm on the concealed weapons legislation, that he would sign it. I could not do it, in my conscience I could not cross that line. He is governor today because of guns."

And:

She said all along she would veto it (concealed weapons bill passed by the Texas lege in 1993), but the NRA put up a helluva campaign to convince her to sign it; one of their more innovative tactics was to try to persuade the feminist guv that Texas women would feel ever so much safer if they could only carry guns in their purses. When Richards vetoed the bill, she observed wryly, "You know that I am not a sexist, but there's not a woman in this state who could find a gun in her handbag."

We need more Ann Richardse; sadly, they're in short supply. I'm raising a glass to her tonight, a woman I always thought of as the Dorothy Parker of politics.

Requiem (Updated)

Last week, news filtered out that Mike Simanoff, the blogger behind Little Toy Robot (and other sites over the years), had died. Jeff Bryant wrote about him more eloquently than I'm able to. I only "knew" Mike through our respective sites and exchanging comments over the years; which is to say I knew him enough to be very, very sad for his friends, family and the world that he's no longer here with us.

John Klima has posted his short story "Morris, His Self," which was in Electric Velocipede #6. There's also a memorial site. R.I.P.

Updated from Michael's brother (thanks, Colleen):

"Many people have asked about flowers and memorial donations. We are asking people to make donations in Michael's memory to the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression." ( http://www.narsad.org/ )

Oh, Black Day

Dana announces she's vamoosing the much-beloved Number One Hit Song. Wah.

That is all.

Planning Wisely

Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities and many other books about economics and how to have sensible cities, died this week in Toronto just shy of her 90th birthday. I'm sad to say I've never read any of her work and had only a passing familiarity with the name, but it makes me incredibly happy reading all the obits to know that she existed. It seems like many, if not most, of our culture's best, common sense, rarely-employed urban planning concepts stem from her work. And unlike many who can write persuasively on such issues, she seems to have had a tangible, noticeable effect by stopping unnecessary, bad-idea projects from occurring in the cities where she lived. Sometimes by force, as the NYT obit recounts:

Ms. Jacobs did not limit her impact to words. In 1961, she and other screaming protesters were removed by the police from a City Planning Commission hearing after they had leapt from their seats and rushed the podium. In 1968, she was arrested on charges of second-degree riot and criminal mischief in disrupting a public meeting on the construction of an expressway, which would have sliced across Lower Manhattan and displaced hundreds of families and businesses. The police said she had tried to tear up the stenographer's transcript tape.

Her personality seems to have been one of her biggest assets. How can you not be won over by this? Also from the NYT:

In an interview in Azure magazine in 1997, Ms. Jacobs recounted her habit of carrying on imaginary conversations with Thomas Jefferson while running errands. When she could think of nothing more to tell Jefferson, she replaced him with Benjamin Franklin.

"Like Jefferson, he was interested in lofty things, but also in nitty-gritty, down-to-earth details," she said, "such as why the alley we were walking through wasn't paved, and who would pave it if it were paved. He was interested in everything, so he was a very satisfying companion."

Years later, she realized that she had developed her talent of working through difficult ideas in simple terms by practicing them on her imaginary Franklin. She also acquired another inner companion through Alfred Duggan, an English historical novelist. He was Cerdic, a Saxon chieftain. Years later, she continued to chat with him while doing housework.

"There were only two things in the entire house that were familiar to him," she wrote, "the fire (although he didn't understand the chimney), and the sword," a Civil War souvenir. "Everything else had to be explained to him."

The Toronto Star's obituary says:

She believed that residential and commercial activity should be in the same place, that the safest neighbourhoods teem with life, short winding streets are better than long straight ones, lowrise housing is better than impersonal towers, that a neighbourhood is where people talk to one another. She liked the small-scale.

Former Toronto mayor David Crombie said that while people see her as a city builder, affecting the city form, her impact was much bigger and deeper.

"The most important thing she did for me and us was remind us that ideas matter, and the ideas that were most important are the ones that mattered to us," Crombie said. "She also believed you take action. You don't have ideas and go away. There is a direct connection of thought and action."

That's some kind of legacy. Raise a glass for Jane Jacobs tonight.

See also:

Duncan Murrell at Maud Newton's
The Vancouver Sun
The Globe and Mail
More in the Star
Bloomberg
Tributes in the Globe and Mail

The Truth About George

There were a lot of things George Rowe the Dog, Poster Boy for American Values, My Attorney, did that made him different than most dogs. Things that made him extra-special. Here's ten:

1. Became world-famous. One of George's most often-used nicknames is "The World Famous George Rowe the Dog" (always followed by a cheer of some sort, usually "Yay!"). There's a reason.

2. Started a political movement.

3. Was used by CNN as the Poster Boy for American Values in cut-aways from the Supreme Court building during the deliberations on the 2000 election.

4. Was an honorary member of the U.S. Capital security force. George likely had top secret clearance.

5. Pioneered the world-famous passive-passive defense against things he didn't like, such as baths.

6. Could fly laying flat on the floor. And shake hands with the best. He almost never barked. He had a huge heart and spirit. And everyone loved him instantly.

7. Ate only Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes. (It was in his contract rider.)

8. Did everything Christopher Rowe ever told him to do and meant.

9.  Was always a good boy.

10. Made us happy when we were sad.

R.I.P.

David Stemple passed away yesterday. Jane Yolen talks about it in her journal.

I didn't know David nearly as well as I'd have liked to, but every moment I was around him was a joy. I always thought of David as Indiana Jones, because that was what he was like. On a trip to Mexico, he and Adam braved the wilds of the countryside birding and he looked perfectly like he was on safari. You can see some pictures and listen to some of his bird recordings here. It feels strange to post about this, but it'd feel stranger to have the day pass and not mention it at all.

The world is less without him in it. My thoughts are with his family.