I read Little Star
(I will note that Alex Brown was less impressed by this ambiguity.)
Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of Let the Right One In
This book, and the two by Christopher Beuhlman I’ve mentioned earlier, make me hope that straight-up horror, in the grand Eighties style of the books I reread last summer, might be making a comeback. What do you all think?
Here’s the cover:
But since I started reading a lot of e-books, I stopped posting a lot of text fragments. It has taken me this long to figure out that I can highlight the good bit, hit SHARE, choose Twitter, and DM myself the frickin’ text I want without having to retype it.
So here, the successful experiment, from Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl
I am not interested in being set up. I need to be ambushed, caught unawares, like some sort of feral love-jackal.
I chose it because it’s like the humor, and because it reminds me of the state a friend was in some years ago. She’s engaged now, so ha!
As I rebuild this prose-collecting habit, you’ll be seeing more of these. With longer notes. In the meantime, happy weekend.
Sometimes I can get through a book without ever having to print up a manuscript and make hard notes. Not so with the current book, though. I’ve run it off, divided it into five separate hundred-ish page segments, and am most of the way through a pink pen edit. This is not a sekrit publishing technical term. It just means that the next edit will be a green or blue or possibly orange pen edit. I am hoping to only read it this way twice, as the story came together pretty delightfully once the scribbling commenced.
And speaking of delightful, I am now about 70% of the way through my shiny advance copy of M.K. Hobson’s heartrending steampunk novel The Warlock’s Curse
I read Between Two Fires
The link to my Tor.com review of the novel is here.
The rest of this year’s reading list, so far…
2012 BOOKS
1. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
2. Among Others, by Jo Walton
3. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester
4. Stone Spring by Stephen Baxter
5. Kat, Incorrigible (Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson), by Stephanie Burgis
6. Remote, by Donn Cortez
7.The Pattern Scars by Caitlin Sweet
8. one awesome draft novel by a dear friend
9. Property of a Lady, by Sarah Rayne
10. Hark a Vagrant by Kate Beaton
11. Black Blade Blues, by J.A. Pitt
12. Redshirts, by John Scalzi
13. Broken Harbour, by Tana French
14. Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn
15. Are you My Mother? By Alison Bechdel
16. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
17. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
18. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
19. On Conan Doyle or The Whole Art of Storytelling, by Michael Dirda
20. Falling Angel, by William Hjortsberg
21. Between two Fires, by Christopher Buehlman
22. Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty by Catherine Bailey
23. (Reading now!) The Warlock’s Curse, by M.K. Hobson
Short Stories
“Men Who Would Drown,” by Elizabeth Fama
“Six Months, Three Days,” by Charlie Jane Anders
“Nell,” by Karen Hesse (http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/09/nell)
Rereads
Faithful Place, by Tana French
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer
In lieu of a writing lecture or an Off My Lawn essay, today, I give you this: the incomparable and fantastic Jessica Reisman has tagged me in the “Next Big Thing” meme. Here are her answers, about Deep Terrain. Which I’ve read, which means you may all now be jealous of me because it’s a furling diamond of a book, packed with sparkle and wonder.
1. What is the title of your Work in Progress?
I have a trilogy coming out from Tor Books, set in the same universe as my novelette “Among the Silvering Herd.” The first of these is (currently, tentatively) entitled Child of the Hidden Sea. The second one, which is the book I’m actually working on right this minute, is called Daughter of No Nation. I think it can fairly be said they’re still both in progress.
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
A few years ago, after the eighth or ninth family funeral, sometime after I had finished Blue Magic
I did a lot of thinking, then, about the things I always write, the things I find fun, the character traits I most admire in my loved ones, the books I like to read and basically everything I find cool, compelling, or adorable. I thought about writing books that would have adventure! And sex! And the ocean! And alternate worlds and serial killers (okay, slightly less upbeat there) and old lady spies and child geniuses and all the splendor of the natural world and nations of reformed pirates who claim to have gone legit and magical sailing ships and at least one character of jaw-dropping, unsurpassed, make-the-room gasp physical beauty. Those of you who’ve read “Among the Silvering Herd” already know who I’m talking about.
3. What genre does your book fall under?
I call it other world fantasy. Ecofantasy also, once again, does apply.
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Gale Feliachild would have to be Helen Mirren, with a very butch haircut and not a British accent.
Clydon Iblis Banning is Paul Gross. And by that I mean Paul Gross now, chewing scenery and looking lascivious but also waving a big sword around. Did anyone else see him in Eastwick? OMG. That.
Sophie Hansa? Dunno. I have yet to see a 24-ish actress with bigtime comedy chops, curly brown hair, the shoulders of a swimmer, and more cute than you can shake Paul Gross’s sword at.
As for Captain Parrish, I think we discussed this here, once. I will try to find the thread for you soon.
5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book?
When marine videographer Sophie Hansa goes in search of her birth parents, she finds herself on the world of Stormwrack, caught up in the attempted murder of a government operative who might also be her aunt, and hunted by pirates who think she may hold the key to breaking a hundred year old peace compact enforced by an immense magical warship known as Temperance.
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I am blessed and delighted to be able to say this is my next project for Tor Books, and that my agent Linn Prentis sold it to Jim Frenkel earlier this year.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Well! With the first book, I wrote a few chapters to give my editor an idea of what I was planning. And then I had created this fabulous universe to play in. But what if the book didn’t sell? So I wrote “Among the Silvering Herd.” And then another story. And then I couldn’t contain myself any longer, and I wrote a few more chapters of the first book. And then I wrote another story… A year later I had a novel and five stories, plus fragments of other things. So, really, who the hell knows?
With the second, sixteen weeks, with the help of the Clarion West Write-a-Thon. That’s the difference between waiting to find out you’ve sold something and suddenly having delivery dates.
8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?
Actually, I see overlaps with Jessica’s novel: ships and banditry and adventure are part of the picture in both series. M.K. Hobson and I also write about similar things, often, though the end result is nothing alike–magical goo and the intersection of science and magic and enchantment fueled disasters and now–I’m a chapter or so into the rocking and delightful The Warlock’s Curse
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Stormwrack is a world with two hundred and fifty island nations, each with their own microclimate and unique ecology. These nations are the Galápagos Islands on a world where there’s almost nothing but ocean. Those islands, the people who study and film them, and Darwin’s travels there were key sources of inspiration.
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
There will be humor! And romance! And people trying earnestly to do science that might explain a world (or possibly a future Earth) where you can raise the dead and magically ‘tame’ a volcano or turn someone into a giant. I am having an obscene amount of fun writing all of these Stormwrack pieces, and the idea is for all of you to have a blast reading them.
I am tagging Hobson on this. Here’s a link to her Goodreads giveaway, and the beautiful Warlock’s Curse cover:
