karenhealey: My Strange Horizons article just got linked on ohnotheydidnt.
revena: OMG
revena Don't read the comments.

Naturally, it's there because I mentioned Breaking Dawn. I don't imagine many people will be clicking through to the article, but if the ONTD juggernaut crashes Strange Horizons, um, I'm sorry about that.

In more exciting news of me that is possibly less exciting, the FAQ has gone live at my website. Excluding the section that spoils large chunks of Guardian*, but including a story of something dorky I did this one time.

Some of these questions have actually been asked (and maybe not the ones you are thinking) but the others are more anticipatory. Should you have a question you think might be frequent, go ahead and ask it.

In fact, ask me a question and I'll answer it here!**


*Can I just say? I am so glad Justine has now read Guardian, because now I can talk about it with her without her eyes turning into pools of lava as a low, bubbling growl issues from her mouth and echoes in my ears like the screams of the uncounted damned: "DON'T SPOIL."

What I am saying is, the woman likes to approach texts clean.

** Unless I get bored or don't want to.

In exciting news of me, my next Strange Horizons article on YA SFF* is up.

Becoming New: Young Adult SFF and the Adolescent Body talks about the transformed adolescent body in SFF as a metaphor for the actual transformed adolescent body, and how reading about the threat of zombification can be a lot more fun than worrying about becoming a mindless drone adult.

It probably comes as no surprise that some of my favourite young adult reading, then and now, is that which deals metaphorically with the tumultuous changes of puberty and adolescence. It's not hard to divine the fears and hopes bound into a story about a girl changing herself into a new, magical being at the same time she becomes aware of her sexuality, or a boy trying to cope with superstrength, or a group of teenagers who discover that their parents are all supervillains. But such metaphors make those hopes and fears one step removed, allowing them to be sympathetically explored in all their complexity, without beating the reader over the head with ideas they may shy from if presented up front.

(Of course I talk about The Changeover. Shall I ever stop talking about The Changeover? I shan't!)


* Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. Pronounced yuh-skiftasy!

More in the series of Great Stuff I have read lately!

Faro's Daughter, Georgette Heyer.

Fair warning that I am about to just spoil the shit out of this book, but it's been out forever, so I don't think it counts. PS) Hamlet dies, Peter marries Harriet, and Snape kills Dumbledore.

Okay, where were we? Oh, yes: introducing the hero.

HERO: Hello, I'm Mr. Ravenscar.
ME: *laughs for twenty minutes*
HERO: RAVENSCAR IS A PERFECTLY APPROPRIATE NAME IN REGENCY TIMES. Ahem. Anyway, my puppy of a cousin is apparently enamoured of a young lady who helps her aunt run a gaming house and he may actually attempt to marry her! Of course such a marriage would scandalise Society and ruin him forever.

HEROINE: *is gay and charming and has no intention of trying to marry the puppy*
HERO: She seems so noble! Oh well, I had better accuse her of being a golddigger anyway and attempt to pay her off.
HEROINE: He seemed so noble! And yet he insinuates I am a whore! I had better pretend that I want to marry the puppy and won't accept ANY PRICE. That'll show him!
HERO: TWENTY THOUSAND POUNDS.
HEROINE: BITE ME.

HEROINE'S AUNT: We could really use that cash to pay for all our debts.
HEROINE: No!
HEROINE'S AUNT: Or you could at least marry the puppy!
HEROINE: Oh, aunt, you are joking! How dear and funny you are!
HEROINE'S AUNT: Ahahahahaha yes. By the way, the hero has bought all our debts and probably intends to pressure you into swearing off the puppy or he'll sell the house out from under us.
HEROINE: The CAD!

HEROINE'S CRIMINAL FRIEND: So you want me to kidnap him.
HEROINE: Yes.
HCF: Okay!
HEROINE: But don't trick him into coming somewhere alone by saying I want to talk to him! That would be dishonourable.

*HCF tricks HERO into coming somewhere alone by saying HEROINE wants to talk to him.*

HERO: Ow. Oh, great, I'm in a cellar. Tied to a chair.
ME: !!!
HERO: BONDAGE IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE IN REGENCY TIMES. Ah, Heroine. I shall never submit to you!
HEROINE: Oh, your poor head! I'm so sorry they tricked you! How dishonourable!
HERO: ... huh.
HEROINE: Anyway, sign those debts over to us right now or I'll leave you in this cellar.
HERO: Never, whore!
HEROINE: Then rot, assface!

HEROINE'S BROTHER: The richest man in town is locked in our cellar? GIVE ME THAT KEY.
HEROINE: You don't understand! He called me a whore!
HEROINE'S BROTHER: Terribly sorry about this, sir, I'll have you out of here in a jiffy...
HERO: Didn't your sister say I called her a whore?
HEROINE'S BROTHER: Oh, you know women. They say all sorts of things!
HERO: I did call her a whore. Don't you want to fight me for that insult?
HEROINE'S BROTHER: I'm sure you were provoked!
HERO: LOCK THAT DOOR IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN THE KEY TO YOUR SISTER WITH MY COMPLIMENTS, YOU PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A MAN.
HEROINE'S BROTHER: ...I'm not quite sure what just happened there.


*After many awesome misunderstandings that could totally be averted by a sensible conversation between sane people, plus a daring escape, a rescue, a horse race, an elopement, and a fistfight, HERO and HEROINE are UNITED AT LAST*


HEROINE: Wait, won't people care that I used to run a gaming house?
HERO: MARRYING WOMEN OF LOW REPUTE IS PERFECTLY ALLOWABLE IN REGENCY TIMES.
HEROINE: Then kiss me, you Regency fool!

*He does, and it is totally hot*

THE END.

ME: RAVENSCAR.

Everything Beautiful, Simmone Howell. Pan.

I am the maniac behind the wheel of a stolen dune buggy. Dylan Luck is at my side. We are tearing up the desert, searching for proof of God.

Riley Rose's mother died two years ago, when she was fourteen, and everything went to hell. Now her father and her new stepmother have sent her to a week-long camp at Sprit Ranch, AKA the Palace of Suckdom.

I decided I would pack only frivolous things: eyelash curlers and costume jewellery and little jars of antipasto. If I had to go to Christian camp then I would go as a plague. I would be more like Chloe: outrageous and obnoxious -- call me a plus-size glass of sin! It wasn't until Melbourne was wavering behind us like a bad watercolour that reality hit. As the kilometres ticked I sank into my seat and practiced holding my breath. On a silo just past Horsham someone had painted an escape button. ESC - ten feet high against a concrete sky. I almost asked Dad to stop the car so I could press it.

There, she meets Dylan, who used to be a bullying jackass before the accident that severed his spinal cord. Now he's just sort of a jackass, and his old Bible Camp friends don't seem to know how to act around him in the chair.

Craig came forward. "Here you go, dude." He clamped a hand on Dylan's shoulder and handed him a shiny bundle. Dylan was slow to unfold it, too slow for Craig, who moved across and shook it out, and held it up for display. It was a vest identical to his. Craig draped it over Dylan's shoulders and announced: "So this year there's two Youth Leaders!" ... I whistled and threw my lavender sprigs at the stage. A flower landed on Dylan's chest. He watched it fall to his lap and then he picked it up. I noticed his cross then: thick and silver, hanging on a thin leather string. As he held the sprig of lavender, his face changed and I had a sudden flash that he looked on the outside how I felt on the inside: Lost. Moody. Superior. Charged.

Dylan smelled the flower and stared straight at me. Then he put it in his mouth and ate it.

HIJINKS ENSUE. Hijinks include [minor spoilers!]Daring Escapes, Heartfelt Confessions, makeovers, loveable doped-up friends, the theft of a shroud, Mean (Christian) Girls who turn out to be real girls, and one of the sweetest, hottest, most beautiful love scenes I've read anywhere.

You guys, I LOVE this book. I love that the two main characters have bodies deemed unacceptable by Western standards - Dylan because he's a wheelchair user, Riley because she's fat - and yet are developed as a romantic and sexy pair. I love that Dylan is not a Ministering Angel Who Inspires Us All, but a complex person who's a moody dick a lot of the time, but charming and wickedly entertaining a lot of the rest. Howell manages to pack a good deal of wheelchair etiquette and disability awareness into the narrative, but not preachily; mostly it comes as Dylan sarcastically noting something that Riley's never had to consider before.

In fact, every person in this book, however quickly drawn, comes across as a portrait, not a caricature. Characterisation is Howell's great strength. No! It's dialogue. No! It's humour. No! It's pace.

Wait, maybe it's description:

The sun dipped. The sky became the near-night blue of shadows and stolen moments. Now the ground was firmer. The land had flattened out and Dylan's tracks were no longer visible. Here and there, I found little reflecting pools, and then at last I saw one great big one. The lake was a giant mirror reflecting a crazy-paving of tree and sky. Up ahead I saw a monster gum tree with wandering roots that looked like they'd waded right into the water and thought, fuck it, let's stop here. Dylan must have thought the same thing. He was in his chair, facing the water, a little way back from the edge.

Everything Beautiful is. Highly recommended. I don't know where it's available outside Australia, but the Book Depository has it here, although I have Thoughts on that particular cover.

Internet, I have read some damn good books lately, and I am here to share their joy with you. Some mild spoilers will ensue - if you're really spoiler-phobic, I advise hitting that good ol' scroll.

One Con Glory, Sarah Kuhn. Alert Nerd Press.

I started laughing two pages into this book, and did not stop, although by the end I was also interjecting adoring coos.

Spiky, anti-social Julie is a geek of the first order, with definite opinions on comics, Buffy, and Deep Space Nine. But her deepest love is reserved for Glory Gilmore, the heroine of a cancelled comic. Julie has owned four Glory Gilmore action figures, and they were all destroyed or given away - the last was stolen, by her appalling boyfriend of the time, who likes to tell people all about his "male feminism" and gasp "Oh goddess!" during sex - not because he's a Neo-Pagan, but because he's a total poser.

You have no idea how much I enjoyed hating this guy.

Anyway, Julie, in her role as a reporter on geekdom (I shit you not, she's a FEISTY GIRL REPORTER) hits a con where she will be able to bid on one of the few remaining Glory Gilmore dolls at a fan auction. She has to interview a hot TV star from the show based on the comic in which Glory appeared, but YAWN surely he is just a Hollywood pretty boy whose pretensions to geekdom are some agent's clever plan to get him to appeal to the proles, right?

Wrong. Jack Camden is so much of a geek that he bids against Julie and wins Glory Gilmore.

Hijinks ensue. Said hijinks involve, among other things, delightful drunkenness, morning-after amnesia, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, the beginnings of dealing with some inner demons, and me doubled up on the couch cackling to myself.

One Con Glory is sharp, witty, well-paced, feminist geek girl good times. My only criticism is that there isn't enough of it - it's a novella, not a novel. I'd really like to have more plot, and more character development of the awesome, but sketchy side characters, particularly Layla Lee, whose obliviousness to all geek happenings and devotion to fine art photography is intriguing.

But this book is a fun express, and it speaks my language. Sure, gorgeous-yet-geeky-and-famous Jack who never slept with any congoers before Julie is total wish fulfillment fantasy, but do you know how many wish fulfillment fantasies cater to me?* Hot geeky boys for angry geeky girls are not a dime a dozen in romantic fiction! I am taking this one for all he's got!

Totally recommended to het romance fans, particularly those with a geeky bent. Unrecommended to those who object to cussing and non-explicit sex scenes.

Oh, and for the record, Sarah? I'm a HUGE fan of Scott/Emma.

You can find out a little more about One Con Glory, or read Julie's blog for total frees.


*"Karen", you say, "you are a straight able-bodied educated cisgendered middle class white woman. Reflect." And certainly, I get more wish-fulfillment fantasy than many. But still.

Hey internets,

What was the name of that campaign to make Hal Jordan the Green Lantern again after he turned evil and then Spectre-tacular?

Yours,
Can Only Generalise From Three Or More Examples.

ETA: Internets, you are FAST! H.E.A.T

I am hella amused by this School Library Journal article, which highlights Little, Brown's upcoming books. Including mine, yay!

This is the write up of GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD:

In any case, this marked a trend that is slowly coming out on the YA side of things for whatever reason: Serial killers. Serial killers are definitely emerging in more YA fiction in 2010. This particular book takes place in New Zealand where a kick-ass strong female girl character and her Maori friend discover there's a serial killer out there (The Eye Slasher who's called that because... well, it's kind of self-explanatory).

Not... quite. I suspect there was some heavy spoiler avoidance going on here; there are indeed serial killings, but GUARDIAN is a paranormal novel, rather than a straight thriller.

However, apparently many people find the American cover totally creepy, which is awesome, although I agree that disintegrating doll heads have a definite edge!

Anyway, check the article out - there are a ton of really awesome books on their way, including the phenomenal looking SISTERS RED, SORTA LIKE A ROCK STAR, and THE PRINCE OF MIST.

Two things, one short and awesome, one long and thinky.

The first: GUARDIAN'S FIRST REVIEW, by Kiwi YA blogger Catherine Haines.

Or, really, review preview (with no spoilers).

I promise I won't link every review from here, but this is the FIRST REVIEW, you guys. I am excited! And it is a very nice one!

Okay, the second, ( with bonus writing process )

A meme! Goodness!

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity. (NB: until I get bored. ETA: Bored now.)
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

electrumqueen asked me:

1. What's your favourite thing about New Zealand?

That it's home. I like lots of other things - the landscape! The relative safety! The complete lack of snakes! - but really, it's home.


2. How far into Friday Night Lights are you/how awesome is it, omfg?!

I am currently nearing the end of the first season, watching I Think We Should Have Sex, which contains handsdown the best mother/daughter highly fraught sex conversation I have ever seen.

It is mostly extremely awesome! There are some issues though, like a particularly nauseating conclusion to a storyline where a coach says several incredibly racist things, to reporters, offers a "sorry if you were offended" nonapology, and instead of getting fired, stays on the team and later awkwardly reconciles by defending a black player against the threat of violence. AND EQUATES THE TWO THINGS BY SAYING "he made a mistake, son. Just like I did."


3. Who is your favourite musician and why?

Ani DiFranco. I admire her professional and personal ethics, her lyrics, and her stage presence. Woman's five foot two, and she can fill a stadium on pure charisma.


4. What was the inspiration for your novel?

Aha! I see what you're trying to do! This is "Where do you get your ideas from?" isn't it?

As it happens, the inspiration for GUARDIAN is fairly easy to trace - I like contemporary fantasy a lot, but I was continually reading about American protagonists interacting with the Western/European uncanny. I was living in Japan, and missing New Zealand, and explaining a very simplified version of New Zealand to Japanese schoolkids, and one day I went home and started writing about a Pākehā New Zealander who comes into contact with the Māori uncanny and who has to start refining her awareness of her stories and where she comes from.

Everything sort of shifted as I wrote, but that was the basic stimulus.


5. If the world was devastated by a zombie apocalypse and you had to rebuild the population, who would you choose to repopulate the planet with?

Since we'd need a pool of 5 000 survivors willing and able to procreate to even have a halfway shot at doing so, and I'm not one of the willing, I would nobly sacrifice myself to holding back the zombie hordes so that my best friend and her husband could make their way to Haven, the zombie-free zone. I think this would be best accomplished by diving into a pile of zombies from a cliff in slow motion, arms outstretched with a grenade in each fist, accompanied on the soundtrack by stirring and heroic strings.

But I'm willing to hear suggestions.

Y'all, I stopped being Catholic* more than a decade ago, and one of the characters in Summerton - Sione - is Roman Catholic, and let me tell you, it is hard to write about his faith sometimes.

Since becoming an atheist, I've written several practicing religious characters - one of the minor characters in Guardian is a Sunni Muslim, and the main character in a short story I might actually fiddle with again sometime is Free Methodist. But Sione is my first major fictional Catholic, and it's hitting a little too close to home.

For me, part of writing a character respectfully and truthfully involves, at least for the time that I am writing them, empathy for their beliefs and points of view. I don't believe, but Sione does, and his belief has to be sincere if he's to read true. So he prays, and feels the presence of God, and looks for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. And since I miss believing that, it's hard.

But hey, I never thought this gig would be easy all the time. I can dig in. I can do this.


*Technically, and this is one of the things I object to, I keep being Catholic, since I was baptised and confirmed. As closely as I can work out, I am an excommunicant by virtue of being an apostate, but according to the Church, I don't get to choose not to be Catholic anymore. I find that very annoying, since according to me, I totally do.

miggy: "Built in 1890 as a French Steam Laundry, this rustic two-story stone house is surrounded by a country garden planted with vintage roses, perennials and seasonal herbs. The French Laundry Restaurant has an intimate dining room with 15 tables. The dining time is 3-4 hours with two prix-fixe menus to choose from."
miggy: Current menu. $240 per person. http://www.tkrg.org/upload/fl_menu.pdf
karenhealey: Whoa.
karenhealey: And they couldn't get anyone to advise on the correct use of quotation marks?
miggy: Ha!
karenhealey: JUST SAYIN'

A few people left comments indicating ignorance of who Maureen and Joanne were in the poll. I could tell you, but they could do that themselves.

Through song!



Maureen Johnson is a free-spirited and somewhat promiscuous performance artist who has trouble paying the rent (rent rent rent!). Joanne Jefferson is an Ivy League educated public interest lawyer.

In the Rent! stage show, they break up while planning a protest, but in the movie, which is where that video's from, they break up at their engagement party.

I'm procrastinating.

HOW HARD ARE YOU PROCRASTINATING?

So hard that in a minute I'm actually going to stick rollers in my hair!

But before that, a poll:

Poll #1481514
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 54

I am a:

I am a:

I am a:

I am an:

I am a:

I am a:

miggy: *tries to read these comments in German*
miggy: "bzw is das 2te lied auch ganz nice namen pl0x " YOU ARE NOT HELPING WITH MY COMPREHENSION
karenhealey: *headtilt* something something quite nice names?
miggy: "By the way [I think] is that ______ nice names please?" IT MAKES NO SENSE
karenhealey: lied is song, right?
karenhealey: And auch is also
karenhealey: Maybe it's a good song title!
karenhealey: (does not know)
miggy: Or complimenting the song choice, and their guild name?
miggy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5djKTiEqgns&NR=1
miggy: Source
karenhealey: Oooh!
karenhealey: Or asking for the name of the song!
miggy: That would make sense! It's not provided in the vid info!
karenhealey: We're translating geniuses!
miggy: hi5 pl0x

Sometimes people will tell you that it's hard to get a book published, that it takes effort and years of learning technique and craft to write a good and publishable book - and then more time to research the business of publishing. They might suggest reading agent blogs. They might suggest query letter workshops, or attending conferences and listening to agent panels.

They might even suggest that there IS no big secret, no surefire success strategy other than hard work, persistence, and talent. That no amount of quirky presentation or brilliant marketing schemes could make up for a weak book.

Don't listen to those people. They're trying to keep you down!

Razzle-dazzle 'em, as the inestimable Billy Flynn says, and they'll make you a star. And you can trust Billy Flynn. He's a lawyer!

You can also trust me, dear readers. I'm a debut author, and so I know everything there is to know about publishing. And I can exclusively reveal to you the following PERFECT, NO-LOSE submission, as composed via Twitter by author and YA expert Lili Wilkinson, Random House editor Zoe Walton, Allen and Unwin editor Susannah Chambers, author Penni Russon, and myself.

( The Secret of Sucess, Revealed at LAST! )

There are two holidays my culture doesn't celebrate that I sort of wish it did - Holi and Thanksgiving.

I love the idea of the first because a holiday revolving around dancing, singing, the triumph of good over evil, and making life more colourful is just awesome. The second is of course more problematic, because Thanksgiving pretty much exemplifies colonialist rewriting narratives of theft and genocide. So I don't actually want Thanksgiving as such. But I do like the idea of a holiday devoted to gratitude.

Today I am grateful that my Australian editor, who is currently de-Americanising the Guardian manuscript and shifting back to the New Zealand vernacular, sent me an email querying a word choice. The subject header was "dick versus munter".

I am also grateful for this poem: We manage most when we manage small.

ETA: Oh, ew, I just googled munter out of curiousity, and apparently in British slang it refers to "an ugly woman". In NZ, it refers to- well, obvs it's vaguely equivalent to dick. Also a verb. For ex, you can say of a broken arm, as I currently do in Summerton, "It's totally munted."

YOU GUYS.

NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WAS ALDIS HODGE.

You may have heard about last year's YA Zombie/Unicorn battles, which could only be amicably settled by the creation of an anthology that I am very eager to read.

However, inspired by catherinehaines' picture of all her books that deal with faeries, I thought I might take stock of my shelves. With pictures!

Two things to note preparatory to this SHOCKING EXPOSE:

1) These aren't by any means all the books I have read on these various topics; just the ones in my shelf right now.

2) Except for all my Laurell K. Hamilton, Terry Pratchett, and Robert Jordan titles (ETA: and Steven Brust!), which would certainly expand the vampire and magician piles, because I totally forgot about them.

( The Truth Reveal'd! )

In other, even more riveting news, Adele at Persnickety Snark got me watching Friday Night Lights through her FNL week posts and guest posts. You guys! No one told me there were cheerleaders!

Okay! Betty has been contacted by civiCRM smart people, and we can turn off the bat-signal.

Thanks to everybody who signal-boosted or signed up to help; you are part of why the internet is so often awesome.