(Book) Skeletons in my Closet

I am not one of those people who feels they must finish every book they begin reading. I'm not even the sort of person who dutifully finishes every book they're assigned to read, if my college career is any indication. Shame on me, right? The thing is, there are just too many books I want to read that I know I'll never have the time for that sticking with something just because I've given it a chance seems silly. My to-read shelf on Goodreads is embarrassingly stuffed full of stories just waiting for a library loan or a Kindle sale. And I'm adding to it all the time, begging book recommendations from friends and stalking places like Epic Reads (and not just because their Instagram is delicious).

I've also given up books I'd wager some of you absolutely loved. I submit myself to your judgment and soon-to-be lower opinion of me.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

I think I tried to read this one three times, given the heaps of praise dumped upon it by so many trusted reader friends. But there was something about the prose that was so off-putting I just could never get very far. I tend to have trouble with period fantasy - is that a genre? - that takes itself too seriously, if only because all of my ungracious eye-rolling makes it difficult to follow the lines of text. I'm a bad person. I know.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

I can't even tell you how excited I was to read this after a recommendation from one of the coolest reader-types that I know, and how I slogged my way through about forty pages before drifting shamefully away. Is there such a thing as dude bro fantasy? Because, yeah. This one was not for me.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

See above. Same feels.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Ninety pages in and yet another character's perspective introduced, I returned this one to the library. Maybe I lack the focus for such a graceful novel right now, but I wanted more of a linear narrative given how rich the world Wecker had already established. I'm still intensely interested in what's to become of the golem and the jinni, but it felt like I was more willing to follow them to find out than Wecker was. I feel so dirty admitting what an impatient reader I am.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

My devotion to Atwood is serious business, such that failing to finish reading the MaddAddam trilogy - among a scant handful of books of hers I haven't read - haunts me. Especially now that I know I'm going to be dead or a head in a jar when her latest work becomes available for public consumption. But I've started and stopped this one several times to no avail. Oryx and Crake left me in a place I guess I'm not quite willing to leave.

So, please, alleviate my guilt. What book skeletons have you got in your closet?

I Don't Write in Costume, But if I Did...

I love costuming and cosplay, which is actually not the nerdiest thing there is to know about me, but still.

I am especially fond of book cosplay, which is perhaps why, though I rail against descriptions of mundane clothes in books - who cares how distressed your boyfriend's jeans are, YA heroine? - I love, love, love when a character's garb is unusual or symbolic in some way and the author takes some time to describe it in detail. Because these things make great costumes; specifically, great costumes I wish I had the time and resources to make, and the opportunity to squeal in delight when recognized at a con.

I've had a dream of cosplaying Sabriel from Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy for years and may yet, if I can connive a method of embroidering dozens of silver keys on a great swathe of surcoat fabric. And, you know, find seven bells of graduating sizes, because this cosplayer has not yet ventured into the realm of mold making, and probably should resist dumping money into yet another hobby.

What I love about Nix's descriptions isn't just that the clothes are beautiful, but that they have meaning in the world the characters occupy, that they're instantly recognizable, that their weight is both physical and figurative. I felt the same way when reading Leigh Bardugo's Grisha series, with the keftas. How freakin' cool are the keftas?! Likewise the stillsuits in Dune.

As a writer, I've had characters glancing in mirrors beaten out of me, so sneaking in the opportunity to dress somebody requires a bit of creativity. There was one passage, in particular, where I allowed myself to linger describing a garment that Eiren wears late in the book:

"Embroidered along the hood and sleeves were... detailed renderings, scenes and figures playing out the details of their lives.

But it was not any life, it was mine. My mother carried me as an infant from the birthing chair to my father’s arms, Jurnus and I raced through the streets and the sand. I bent my head in prayer, I burned ritual herbs, I braided Esbat’s hair and soothed Lista’s vanity. I went into exile with my parents, brother, and sisters. The figures were tiny and but a handful of knots each, but I recognized them all, and could see when Morainn and Gannet entered my life, crawling dark and glinting with gilded thread in the capitol tower.

We looked like figures of myth, all splashes of color and fine, spidery features. It was breathtaking, and I could hardly imagine wearing such a life for all I had lived it."

While I would never cosplay one of my own characters, it is perhaps a not-so-secret and ridiculously vain writerly hope of mine that somebody else someday might want to. I've got some very particular notions about Gannet's mask that defy description, if anyone's interested.

My Writing Process: Like the Borg, I Adapt

The delightful Bill Blume was kind enough to think of me to join him in participating in a chain letter blog tour where writers have the opportunity to discuss their writing process. I think it says quite a lot about mine that I was supposed to post this yesterday, but am only just getting to it now because I put off packing for a trip to San Francisco to watch Knights of Badassdom, and thus arrived in the other windy city on four hours sleep, contemplating a hilariously terrible - or a terribly hilarious, I haven't decided yet - film. So, writing. Sleep deprivation. Life.

There are some questions I'm meant to answer, firstly, what am I working on? Presently, I'm slogging through a draft of the sequel to - and likely conclusion of the series begun in The Hidden Icon. While I wrote the first book without an outline, and then rewrote it without an outline, and then finally decided that whole chapters full of people doing nothing but talking really needed addressing... I have major plot points for this one appropriately plotted out, and lots of really useful notes that say things like, "Do this!" and "Don't do that!" I'm halfway through the writing, which is to say, I haven't even gotten to the hard stuff yet.

Am I supposed to be honest, too? I should probably lie. Real writers lie.

Secondly, I'm to consider how my work differs from others writing in the genre. One of the things that I feel really sets The Hidden Icon apart from other high fantasy novels is the richness of the mythology of the world, and the double-and-sometimes-triple storytelling that goes on when Eiren, or occasionally other characters, spin a tale. It's part of the charm of writing in her world, for me, and I hope part of the charm of reading, too.

Which segues rather nicely into why I write what I do. As a girl I remember visiting the library in my grade school and meticulously working my way through the two shelves of fairy tales - and let's be real, I checked out Princess Furball loads of times; someday I need to write something with moonbeam dresses folded neatly into nutshells - because there's just something about folklore and fairy stories that appeals immensely to me. Fairy tales can be dark and delightful, as we can be dark and delightful. I've got lots of ideas for lots of things, but little tales that blossom into big ones, stories with whimsy but gravity, too, are where I'm living now.

And now I must tell you how my writing process works, which suggests, perhaps unfairly, that it does (or at least, always does). Perhaps it was something she said when I swooned over her at Kenyon a few years ago or something that I read, but Margaret Atwood, apparently, used to and maybe still does write lying down on the floor on her belly. No desk for the prolific. That's the first thing I always think about when I think of writing processes, and how specific a detail I feel like I need to provide when considering mine. But I can't.

I've touched on this before, but my process is all about adaptation. I do what I can, when I can, where I can, and I don't let myself think too much about it. Doing is what's important, not how or how much. In the past Cory Doctorow's recommendations to write for twenty minutes a day, and especially leaving off mid-sentence, have been tremendously fruitful for me, and when I adhere to anything like a process, it's to that. It's not always easy, but it's certainly easier than pinning myself to a word count and berating myself when I don't meet it - or worse still, not starting writing because I know I can't. It's writing, every day, that I can feel good about.

Next week be sure to pop in and see what Melissa Long (also writing as Missy Lynn Ryan) has to say on the subject, and hound her for her supernatural match maker novel I've been dying to read for years. The inimitable Laura Bickle of salamander and Amish vampire fame will also be writing next week, and Megan Orsini of The Great Noveling Adventure is sure to have some sassy and sage-like things to describe her process.

Charisma is a Class Skill

I've leveled up as a writer.

Or, if you're more of a classic console type, I've punched my head into a brick, blinking with promise, and stumbled over the great fungal accolade that is an invitation to a writer's conference.

I was recently accepted to the Ohioana Book Festival, and I've been haunting their website in hopes of seeing whose company I won't be worthy of keeping (not to mention the many readers of my forever-home state). There will be books. There will be food trucks. There will be many readers licking greasy fingers before lovingly turning the pages of their latest acquisitions from the book fair. Who knows, maybe I'll even sign a book or two and my chicken scratch will seem enigmatic rather than the academic handicap it has been since high school. At the very least, all festival authors are asked to participate in at least one panel, and as I expect lame video game references won't be welcome, I'll keep you posted about my schedule on the events page.

And there will be ZenCha. Because a visit to Columbus without a visit to the Short North to guzzle tea would be unheard of. Don't make me drink alone?

The festival is on 10 May, which also seems like rather a good deadline to finish the draft of book two. It hounds me day and night as relentlessly as my toddler daughter but would, if books had the equivalent of child protective services, be seized for neglect. I suppose it's a good thing books don't have rights.

Yet.

Five Favorite Reads of 2013

I've not done too shabby of a job reading this year, even with a demanding little person to care for and, whenever possible, read in front of. Ironically enough, I also have my daughter to thank for some of the gems I've read this year, and my mom's group book club whose members believe as heartily as I do that reading > housekeeping. Julianna Baggott's Pure was weird and thrilling and unexpectedly brilliant. I remember her name bandied about when I was in graduate school, so I hardly expected to love a speculative novel from her (not because she's not awesome, but because my graduate school experience was not what I would call genre-fiction friendly). But I totally did. If you like your post-apocalyptic futures a little, okay, a lot on the creepy side, your heroines complex and vulnerable, read this book. You will not be disappointed.

I don't need to tell you why Veronica Roth's Divergent was amazing, because you've probably read it already. I don't know why I didn't read it sooner and wish I had, especially since the reaction I've gathered from the internet in regards to Allegiant has scared me off of continuing the series (for now). Also, I have so many feels, none of them good, about the upcoming film adaptation.

Alif the Unseen was hands-down the most imaginative book I read all year, possibly in years, a novel so rich in imagination I was left wanting for fanfiction at the end. But really good, depthy fanfiction full of capricious djinn. The characters are dynamic and a few of them unexpectedly endearing, and Wilson's hackers look nothing like this. Thank goodness. (I do love Jonny Lee Miller and Fisher Stevens, though; have you heard Fisher Stevens read Christopher Moore? Fantastic.)

You may want to throw Eli Brown's Cinnamon and Gunpowder against the wall when you get to the end, but don't let that stop you from devouring it anyway. Because with pirates and food porn what else, really, can you do? It's probably the most literary of these, but only in the best of ways. Except for that damned ending.

While the rest of these really aren't in any sort of order, my favorite novel of the year is the one I finished most recently, and literally lost days of my life daydreaming over once I had done. Yangsze Choo's The Ghost Bride was likened in a couple of reviews to a grown-up version of Spirited Away, and it's so, so true (though I've always immensely enjoyed Spirited Away as a grown-up, and I think the themes are timeless). The world of the dead was more vivid and compelling than the narrator's reality, the romance surprising, and the unexpected humor! I just can't even get into all of the things that I loved without giving some of the best bits away. Just read it.

And an honorable mention because I was so pleased with this little gem and would not have picked it up were it not for the fact that it's from my publisher, but Winona Kent's Persistence of Memory is a really delightful little romp into Regency England. Accidental time travel and intrigue and romance? Yes, please. I only wish the cover did it better justice. Get a girl and a clock and a frock on there, already.

Have Yourself a Bookish Little Christmas

Free stories on Christmas? Yes, please. While the only book I've had the opportunity to cuddle up with today features more talking animals than I care for, for you I have something completely different. My distrust of talking animals is another blog alltogether. The Two Sisters is an itty bitty companion piece to The Hidden Icon, and it is, I hope, a treat for folks who've already read the novel and those who haven't yet. It's relatively spoiler-free - if you've read the back cover you're safe, seriously - and offers a vignette-like introduction to two of the novel's main characters. Step (just a little) outside the narrative of The Hidden Icon for a story within a story, a tale of sisters in spirit and flesh, of haunts and unexpected sacrifices.

I wasted I don't want to tell you how much time formatting it for the Kindle, only to find I can't offer it for free in that format, so, I've only got a .pdf for you. You can download it here. The .pdf also includes the first two chapters of The Hidden Icon because, as my most excellent publisher recommended, why not? If you spend half as much time salivating over the cover as I did - Mara Stokke does absolutely beautiful work - and maybe half as much time over again reading, I'll consider this venture a win.

Enjoy and happiest of holidays!

I Love (Fictional) People

Of all the times to come to a realization about one’s own reading and writing preferences, today it was a Facebook meme that just stumbled me.

You know the one going around, about the nine books you’ve read that’ve just stuck with you for whatever reason. They’re not necessarily books you’d recommend for the Pulitzer or the Nebula or the Newberry, but they might be. Mostly they’re the stories that work their way into your bloodstream and your muscles and your bones. No matter how many Great Works of Literature you’ve read, these books are the books that really flipped your switch, as my pal Patrick Donovan would say.

In thinking on my nine, I recalled a book my best friend and I each acquired at a school book fair. (How those were the greatest thing in the universe, next perhaps to the school days where we got to wear our pajamas and read in the library all day, is another blog post.) The book was Sherryl Jordan’s Winter of Fire. It consumed us. We read it multiple times that year and the year after, and at least once a year every year until we’d graduated high school, I’d wager. Now I’m wondering how it is that twelve, thirteen, fourteen years have gone by and I haven’t read it again, and how in thinking on what it was I loved so much about it, I’m realizing something about the other books I’ve chosen to love, the sorts of books I’ve chosen to write.

Despite being a science fiction/fantasy novel, Winter of Fire was character-driven. The protagonists’ feelings, her relationships with the other characters in the novel, these are the things that I remember. The scenes that are most vivid in my mind are the quiet, contemplative ones, where Jordan isn’t exploring the curious world she’s created but instead the curiouser world of the human heart.

I love unicorns and magic and the surreal, spectacular realms created by many a beloved speculative fiction writer, but what really keeps me in these worlds are the people who populate them. This is why I struggled with The Lord of the Rings and can’t read most books with overtly complicated space travel mechanisms. Unless you’re Mrs. Whatsit I probably don’t care as much about how you get from point A to point B in your starship as I do about the crew, the captain, the conflict. I want the thrill of familiar emotions in an unfamiliar environment. I want those places to be believable and rich, mind, but they’re not the whole of why I’m reading.

What about you?

Coffee and Books: BFFs

A few weeks ago I thought of the best New Year's resolution ever, and also one I am actually like to follow through on. Don't ask me how my year of not complaining about insignificant things went, because the answer is badly. And it was also more like two weeks instead of twelve months. But it seems silly to wait for 2014 to start doing something that makes so much sense to me now, so, I'm not going to.

I was privy to a writer's rant a few weeks ago over the cost of eBooks, and while I certainly felt for the fella, I've also benefited tremendously as a reader from having access to such a bounty of fiction at such a low cost. I've purchased books I might never have read otherwise because they were a buck or two instead of twenty, and gone on to rave over those books and recommend them to friends (when they've been good). Most of my life I've only ever bought books for class, or after checking them out from the library enough times that I've paid for the book already in late fines. A book is an investment, something I'm going to be adding to a carefully curated library, and not something I've ever considered buying on a whim.

Until I got my Kindle.

And now I can read so much more, occupy so many more worlds, and frankly, it's dirt cheap. Criminally so. Do I think this is a bad thing? Sometimes. But the sheer amount of published material available to the contemporary reader is staggering. Finding something you can really connect with is even more of a challenge. It only makes sense that with greater supply, there is diminished demand. I've enjoyed taking advantage of a system that allows me to take a risk on an unknown author, or follow up on a recommendation from a friend before I have the chance to forget about it.

So here's where the resolution comes in. There's often the joke that a cup of coffee costs more than an eBook. And given my complete lack of hesitation in dropping four bucks on the good stuff (a friend has accused me of rubbing ground coffee on my gums; I really do have a problem), I'm going to promise myself that every time I do I'll commit to buying a book, too. I'm not in the habit of issuing challenges, but I feel like this is a good one. So consider yourself challenged to do the same. Wouldn't you rather be reading when you're drinking liquid creativity, anyway?

This week it was an iced dark roast and Winona Kent's Persistence of Memory. What'll yours be?

A Little Perspective

So, tomorrow is release day for The Hidden Icon. I've had so many people, more than I deserve, offer their support and congratulations. I've been asked a lot as the day grows near, "Are you so excited?" And of course I am, absolutely. It's all too unreal to me. I've held the paperback in my hands, opened it and recognized every single word I edited and agonized over (and over and over), scrawled my illegible signature in a couple of advance copies. But overwhelmingly, do you want to know what I'm feeling?

Fear.

I almost didn't even want to write that word and I won't tell you how long I waffled over posting this, but I feel like it's important to be honest. I'm no Wesley Crusher but I do believe that Wil Wheaton provides humans an excellent standard to live by.

"Be honest. Be kind. Be honorable. Work hard. And always be awesome."

This book, come tomorrow, it's not mine anymore. Every word I've written becomes the province of the reader's imagination. The shape of Eiren's nose, the sound of Gannet's voice, their smiles and scars and tracks in the sand will venture, with luck, very far away from me. And there's nothing I can do to stop it (nor would I want to).  I don't expect big or even little success, but I do expect that I will have to learn to share my secret friends, which is what these characters, this world, has been for me for years. I am elated to share them, of course, but I'm terrified, too. How could I not be?

Here's what I hope for: a bigger, badder, grander version of the hyper-eager phone conversations I shared with my best friend when we were teenagers, when we called each other to read passages aloud from the things that we were working on and the the things we were reading, to talk about characters, about adventure, about love. What would send me absolutely over the moon is if we aren't the only ones talking, this time.

Five Favorite Book Characters of All Time

The gals at The Great Noveling Adventure have been a delightful distraction from my writing lately (and they've got some swell stuff for writing, too, for when you're feeling responsible and crafty). In a recent post, one of the writers talked up her five favorite book characters of the year, and it made me want to do the same thing. I only wish I'd read enough this year to have more than a handful of characters to choose from. So instead I'm going to take the easy way out and share my five favorite book characters of all time. Because what isn't fun about all time? These aren't in any particular order, and while some of these books are certainly among my favorites, these characters transcend the page, making me wish for short stories and artist renderings and, gasp, fanfiction.

"I dig American movies. I dig Negroes, particularly Michael Jackson. I dig to disseminate very much currency at famous nightclubs in Odessa... many girls want to be carnal with me in many good arrangements, notwithstanding the Inebriated Kangaroo, the Gorky Tickle, and the Unyielding Zookeeper."

Alex Perchov from Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated is irresistible from the very start. As far as I'm concerned, he's the "hero" of this novel. Never has a character misused so many words so spectacularly.

 ∞

"Remember that while the Clayr can See the future, others make it. I feel that you will be a maker, not a seer. You must promise me that it will be so. Promise me that you will not give in. Promise me that you will never give up hope. Make your future, Lirael!"

Lirael from Garth Nix's Lirael and Abhorsen manages a balance of strength and vulnerability on the page that makes me wonder if perhaps Nix was a teenage girl in another life. She's the rare heroine who can make enormous, childish mistakes, cry about them, and challenge herself to overcome them without ever distancing her reader (at least not this reader).

  ∞

"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice demands a place in my esteem forever, and the esteem of most women, I think, of my generation and temperament. She is confident, intelligent, and refuses to compromise who she is despite every expectation that she must.

  ∞

"Curiosity killed the cat,” Fesgao remarked, his dark eyes unreadable. Aly rolled her eyes. Why did everyone say that to her? 

“People always forget the rest of the saying,” she complained. “‘And satisfaction brought it back.” 

Aly Cooper from Tamora Pierce's Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen is indomitable. And so funny. I feel like I don't read enough traditional fantasy with a good sense of humor, but Aly really carried me into this series after many failed attempts to read Pierce's other works.

  ∞

"You show the man you are when you insult me thus," I said very quietly.

"And what sort of man is that?"

"A man with no sense of right or wrong. A man who cannot laugh and who rules by fear. A -- a man with no respect for women."

There was a moment's silence.

"And on what do you base this judgment?" he asked eventually. "You have spent but the briefest time in my company. Already you believe me some kind of monster. You are indeed quick to assess a man's character."

"As are you to judge a woman," I said straightaway.

So, I lied and saved the best for last, and I'm cheating because it's actually two characters. Bran and Liadan from Juliet Marillier's Son of the Shadows are whole and real within minutes of meeting them on the page, but together they make me weep. Marillier has gone on to write a number of Sevenwaters novels, and most of them have been highly enjoyable, but still. All I want is more of these two, forever.

... I can't promise I won't do this again with my biggest fictional crushes. Or favorite fictional worlds, because, nobody from Harry Potter even made this list because I'm really just in love with Rowling's world building. But for now, who's on your list?