Just Frosting

You guys know what one of my very favorite parts of the whole publishing process is, right? It's getting foreign editions in the mail! It's been a daydream of mine since I was a wee sprout of a writer to have a shelf of foreign editions of my books (long before I had books, long before), and with the Daughter of Smoke & Bone series it has massively come true! Getting these parcels is such pure delight. It's far far after the angst part of the writing and publishing process, so it's not even like the frosting on the cake. The cake was eaten long ago. This is just frosting. A giant bowl of buttercream frosting, and a spoon. (Okay, a small bowl, because a giant bowl of buttercream frosting would not, in the long run, be a good thing to have. German chocolate cake frosting, however, I could eat for breakfast every day.)

(But I don't. I think that is important to note. I actually eat melted ice cream out of an antique silver soup tureen. With my monkey on my lap.)*

I LOOOOOOOOOVE this cover! This is the Dutch Daughter of Smoke & Bone, by De Boekerij:

Haunting and edgy and cool and beautiful. Love.

A couple using the US cover, also beautiful. On the left, Estonian. (Estonian!) 

On the right, Danish:

It's cool when a publisher puts their own spin on the blue mask image. This is the Slovenian edition:

And I've finally started to get some Days of Blood & Starlights! Here's the Italian one:

And ack! I don't know what this one is. Help me out guys. With Asian characters, I am at level 0 knowledge. It seems to be Chinese? Cool, no? 

YAY! So much fun! 

*(not really)

DREAMS OF GODS & MONSTERS!!!

Here it is, the title of book 3 in the DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE series!!!!

I hope you like it :-)

It was unveiled this morning at the Entertainment Weekly site, along with the winner --at last!-- of the book trailer contest! 

GO HERE TO SEE THE WINNERS

AND 

READ MORE ABOUT DREAMS OF GODS & MONSTERS!

(thank you!)

Sonoma and Twistrose

Again with the blogging lapse. Arg. There's just so much going on right now! The book, of course, and other things I can't really talk about (I am a secret agent), and in the midst of it all, the whole Life thing just keeps right on ploughing ahead. [Re: Trailer Contest: I am not ignoring this, and again I'm so sorry for the delay! Something came up with it at the last minute, and I will tell you what it is as soon as I can! I hate to keep the entrants waiting like this :-(]

Last weekend, Clementine and I took a little trip to California to visit friends of the 21st Century variety, which is to say: dear friends whom we had not yet met IN PERSON. Ha! You know how this goes. Below is me and Tone Almhjell, of Norway, about whom you will be hearing things in the publishing world this year:

Tone and I met via my blog some years ago. She would comment frequently, and her comments just really shone through as funny and smart and kindred, and over time we began emailing and skyping, and it turned out we were both pregnant at the same time, and Clementine and Magnus (in utero they were "Professor" and "Gameboy") were born three weeks apart, and on top of it all, Tone was writing a book. She was writing a book in Norwegian. So I tried not to get too excited about reading it, but she would tell me these tantalizing snippets, and her imagination and way with words (in English) would leave me making gimme hands in spite of myself. And then she would write these short pieces for Sunday Scribblings in English, and they were so, so good. Really, truly beautiful. Even if she were a native English speaker they'd be beautiful, and since she's not, they were kind of astonishing, and there was always this unexpected lilt that came of her non-nativeness that had a way of being magical and never awkward. So. Time passed.

And maybe she'll tell the story in more detail some time soon, but it came about that she started translating her in-progress Norwegian novel into English (yay!) and as expected, I fell deeply in love with it, and ... so did my agent, Jane Putch, who took Tone on as a client and sold the remarkable TWISTROSE KEY to Dial Books, and it's coming out this fall!!!

I will tell you more about in another post, and maybe get Tone on here too, if she agrees, but you can pre-order it now if you wish! It's a middle grade fantasy novel of the sort that will sweep all ages off their feet. My blurb on the back of the ARC reads: "This book is pure magic. I want to live in it." Really, I more want to vacation in it, but living there wouldn't be bad either! You'll see what I mean when you read it. But more later, since I'm in a rush and can't do it justice right now! This is just my first push :-)

So anyway, Tone's husband Peter lived in California as a boy, and they were in Sonoma to visit family, so I couldn't have them be so near and not go and visit. Jim couldn't come, due to deadline pressure (poo), so it was just me and Clementine, and we had a lovely couple of days.

The view from the porch. Sigh:

Professor and Gameboy hit it off in an instant, in spite of not speaking the same language -- how much language is really needed for wall-walking and hammock-swinging, anyway? It was such a delight to watch them run rampant over this beautiful Sonoma garden complete with a sloping hill of grape vines!

There were excursions into town and to the Russian River. It all flashed past very quickly.

And then, as we were leaving, agent Jane was arriving to spend a few days, and we only passed each other in the airport long enough to hug.

So there was a little break from projects underway, and when we got home, we found ourselves in the middle of a fake summer of the sort that Oregon likes to throw out in the spring to tease us! Several days of pure summer weather, still ongoing. It goes on long enough that it feels permanent, and then BAM!, reverts to rainy Northwest spring and chill. Clementine is getting hooked on evening sprinkler runs, and will be bummed when they go away for another couple of months. Ah well, at least we won't have to water the lawn as much!

Happy weekend, all!

BOOK TRAILER ENTRIES!

Hi guys! There are some amayyyyyyyzing entries for the DAYS OF BLOOD & STARLIGHT book trailer competition! I am so overwhelmed by the work that competitors put into these. They are just SO GOOD.

I LOVE THEM!!! 

I apologize that the youtube channel was not behaving as it should. Such things are beyond me. So I wanted to pull the videos together into one space for easy viewing and admiration.

I find that I am not able to announce the winner quite yet, for a potentially intriguing reason, and I apologize to the entrants for the suspense, but please come back next week for updates! I promise, prizes are forthcoming. In the meantime, enjoy ...

Posted in the order in which they were submitted:

   

by TRIS KELSEY*

   

by CHYNA NGIE entry #1

   

by CHYNA NGIE entry #2

   

by THE BITTER PRODUCTIONS entry #1

   

by THE BITTER PRODUCTIONS entry #2

   

by KATANA LEIGH

   

by CHRISTINE TYLER

   

by KAYMARA

   

by REDnLYN entry #1 (serious)

  

by REDnLYN entry #2 (humor :-)

   

by LINDSAY EAGER entry #1 (serious)

   

by LINDSAY EAGER entry #2 (humor :-)

   

by DANIRA DAFNE

   

by CAITLYN ECHO

*I want to specify, that though the first trailer is beautiful, and wonderfully put together, it can't be considered for the prize because it makes use of professionally produced footage from the publishers' trailers. Sorry :-(

GLUB!

Oh hello. Remember me? I seem to have fallen into an ocean. Glub. I hate to neglect my blog. I miss it here! Life and writing have been zinging around like ... like ... hungry hummingbirds? Okay, yes. Like hungry hummingbirds. Zing flitter flash. Try to catch it, so sorry, not for you. 

Things are good, but holy smokes it's nearly May! Darn you, year! Slow down! I am shaking my fist at 2013 like it's a UPS truck barreling past a KIDS AT PLAY sign. Gosh darn you, what's the big idea!? 

Okay, enough. Clementine has just jaunted off for a grandparent date, and I have hours of time ahead in which to simultaneously attack several different projects. I am filling my lungs with air (I almost just said 'filling my air with lungs,' which is a very different thing) before popping back into the ocean of dear-god-are-you-serious, and I just wanted to say HI! And also: 

THE BOOK TRAILER CONTEST DEADLINE 

IS NEARLY UPON US! 

If you are participating, remember to link your video HERE. If that is not working, please leave a link in comments to this post. I don't want to miss any videos! Man, there are some great ones!!! I'm so excited!

Cheerio!

The world will end if you write the wrong scene

I am busy practicing the discipline that not every scene I write needs to end up in the book.

You write to find the story.

And that is how there is a story. Because you looked for it and found it.

But the looking can be scary. What if this isn't the right way? 

I'll tell you. If this scene you write turns out not to be the right scene, THE WORLD WILL END in a plague of hissing cockroaches. They will hiss scorn upon you as they swallow you up in a writhing oblivion, leaving only your shoelaces and eyelashes as evidence you even existed.

Except not really. Nothing will happen. You will write another scene. And another. And one of them will be right. 

That's all. Angst makes it feel very complicated, but it's not. 

ONWARD! WRITE! You will find stuff you weren't looking for. It's like sofa cushions. Yeah, there's money there, and the occasional diamond ring, but there's also a lot of lint, and probably a half-sucked Life Saver or a used Q-tip you'd rather not deal with. But would you let a used Q-tip stand between you and a diamond ring?! Plus which, who knows? You may well find a tiny, mystical medallion in ancient bronze, and have no idea how it came to be there, or what its powers are ... and it will light your brain on fire.

(Also: have a nice day :-)

P.S. This discipline is the thing that gives me courage and freedom to write the scenes instead of just fretting about them, and more often than not, they are right, or at least right-ish. YAY!

Black Marks on a Page

Good morning! For you, happy typewriter art from my writing room.

Something about typewriters just makes me happy. Not using them though, just looking at them. My perfectionist brain is ill-equipped to deal with the intransigent nature of their black marks on the page. I need to be able to move those marks around like scrabble tiles until my brain says OKAY ENOUGH ALREADY. 

Speaking of "black marks on a page," I will be teaching a workshop in May called "It's All Just Black Marks on a Page." It's something I think about a lot, but have never attempted to teach, and what I want to deal with is wordcraft. Basically: how we use words not merely to "tell a story" but to attempt to craft an experience for the brain that induces in the reader the total experience of the characters. How to use words to pull the reader in as completely as possible, and hopefully make them forget they're reading. You know the whole "I laughed I cried"? How do you do that? And how do you scare readers, and set them on edge, and make their hand fly to their mouth in astonishment? How do you actually alter their heartbeat? It's not just by stating what's happening. 

I am in unending awe of the power of words to set our brains on fire, and I would say that easily 80% of my own writing time is spent toying with these black marks on the page in order to sharpen as much as possible the experience I am attempting to induce. I am trying to sink my fingers into your brain. By way of words. Hope that's okay with you.

So that's the workshop. It's going to be at the Oregon SCBWI spring conference, and I'm doing a talk on "writing as creating experience" too, which will be related but different (not a workshop). The rest of the conference looks great too. Come and join us!

And, oh, this, just because my camera happened to point at it and it makes me smile too :-)

Happy Easter Eve!

Happy Easter Eve! All the work is done, and now it is time to sleep and awaken to sunshine and chocolate, friends and family. YAY!  

I hope you have a wonderful day, be it Easter for you, or simply Sunday. Cheers!

BOOK TRAILER CONTEST REMINDER!!!

Just a quick reminder!

GO HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR ENTRIES!

More details and FAQs HERE.

I thought I'd share this fan video (way pre-contest) as a little inspiration. Remember this?

I just love it.

(Thank you, Christine Dengel :-)

For more inspiration, go HERE and scroll to the bottom to see the publisher trailers. These are pro and polished; that's not key. But it's fun to see the totally different look and feel between the US and UK versions. Love them both!

I hope you will play with us!

XO

The Wizard's Tale (Clementine's current favorite book)

Hi there! I haven't posted about Clementine's favorite books in a while. There hasn't been a really clear favorite in a while, but this one is up for its third consecutive read (at 144 pp), and she's quoting it at random, so I think it qualifies. It's The Wizard's Tale by Kurt Busiek, illustrated by David T. Wenzel. It's a kid-appropriate, gorgeously painted graphic novel, and it is wonderful.

(from the flap):

Welcome to the Land of Ever-Night. Bafflerog Rumplewhisker is an evil wizard, from a long line of evil wizards. It's his job to maintain the darkness spells that keep his corner of Ever-Night as dark and gloomy as the rest of it, and to find the long lost BOOK OF WORSE, which holds magical spells that can crush the forces of good forever.

There's only one problem: his heart's just not in it.

So what's a kind-hearted evil wizard to do, when he has to go on a quest to end all hope and light and freedom, for everyone in the world? 

Master storytellers Kurt Busiek and David T. Wenzel invite you to join Bafflerog and his companions -- Gumpwort, an enchanted toad who was once a wizard himself, and Muddle, the third son of a woodcutter who's convinced he'll one day be king -- as they make a journey that may mean the end of everything.

Or maybe, just maybe .... it could mean something else. 

* * *

We weren't sure if it would be Clementine-appropriate, but all the quotes on the back seemed promising, calling it "sweet" and "light" and "warm" and "heartwarming," and it really is just fine, content-wise. It's a high fantasy about evil wizards and the struggle between good and evil, and there's no killing in it, which is awesome. It's a bit tricky trying to find books that have meatier stories for a lengthening attention span and an increasingly sophisticated mind, but that are still age-appropriate for a very young child. This one is! It is a little tense on the first read, when a young reader won't be sure how scary it's going to get. A couple of parts seem to be gearing up to get scary, but they're never over-the-top. It's funny, silly, and cute, with a lovely, unlikely friendship at its center. Also, it's beautiful, with page after page of detailed paintings like these: 

Highly recommended for kids of all ages. Buy it HERE -- or better yet at your local comic book store, and if you're interested in reading more about it, including how it came to be, see HERE. Really interesting piece.

And with that, good night!