Thanks to Elisa and Lauren Barnholdt for pointing this little gem out to me:
Ah, talking unicorns. Talking unicorns gentle enough to sit around in a hot tub with an innocent little mermaid. What will they think of next?
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It’s been four years almost to the day since I sold my first book, and three years to the day since I quit my job to write full time. Right now, I have all four books of the Secret Society Girl series stacked up across from me, their candy-colored covers a bright and cheery reminder on this gray day that I wrote four books and got them published! They are on bookstore shelves where total strangers can buy and read them! They were thoughts in my head and now they are packets of paper you can get all over the world! Sorry, had to geek out there for a minute. And then there’s a fifth book coming this fall!!!! Okay, now I’m done for real. Though it seriously never gets old. I get to make stuff up for a living. I get to make up stuff out of completely thin air and other people are entertained by it! It’s the most amazing feeling. I remember the first time I saw my work in print in something other than a school newspaper. I remember the first time I ever got a check for something I’d written. Had I been a restaurant, I’d had framed that money to hang over the bar, but since i don’t have a bar, it wasn’t a dollar, and I needed to pay my rent, I cashed it in instead. Every time I get one of my books, I do a little happy dance. Every time I get a check for something I have written, I do a slightly bigger happy dance (so do my mortgage lenders). This is the best job I’ve ever had. I hope I get to keep it. So I wanted to take this opportunity to say THANK YOU to everyone who has bought one of my books these past few years. Thank you so much for reading the things I’ve written. You have no idea what it means to me. Around the web, some folks are reading Tap & Gown. Here’s what they are saying: Alexandra of Not Enough Bookshelves: The search for taps means that quite a few new characters are introduced and some of my favourites got less page time than I’d have liked. Having said that, Diana does do a great job of tying up everyone’s loose ends and making the new characters interesting and well rounded. If she gets tired of killer Unicorns there’s definitely a place for the adventures of the new R&G knights. Amy is still a utterly engaging and likable narrator. I love her asides and her lists and her general attitude. The book is as fast paced as the previous three and the dialogue, especially between Amy and Jamie, sparkles. Tap & Gown is a great conclusion to the series. It’s a little darker than the pervious three books. t made me laugh and cry (twice) and took me back to my own final days at University. The sadness, the excitement and the sheer overwhelmingness of deciding what to do next are really captured here. Tiff, a blog reader and ARC winner, shared her thoughts on the PeterfreundFans LJ community: …the real meat of the story lies in the new characters, most of them Amy’s junior potential taps. What we learn with her is such an important message of female empowerment, of tenacity, and of being true to oneself. We learn about sacrifice and compromise. And most of all, we learn about change, both for better and for worse. It’s a little cliché to talk of change being the central theme of a book about graduation, but Peterfreund spins it in a way that doesn’t feel quite so obvious. Amy’s approach to change evolves so subtly, but so genuinely as to make us feel that no other approach could have worked. For me, the key to a good story is unpredictable characters in unpredictable circumstances. That is, the characters surprise us with their actions, yet those actions feel in character. At the same time, the plot must maintain some kind of unpredictability, throwing those characters into situations that are unexpected, but completely plausible. Peterfreund successfully achieves this balance with Tap & Gown—I was gripped by both the story and the characters’ development in a way that made this book the most masterful of the series, and affording closure while still allowing me to imagine Amy’s future. Which, thanks, guys. I got all teary eyed and felt tempted to play Green Day’s “Good Riddance” (in passing, how annoying is it when bands call their songs by names that are so obviously unsuited to the song that they have to include the title everyone else knows it as — in this case, “Time of Your Life”– in parentheses afterward?) and flip through some old college photo albums and stuff. And then I realized that I have to write, and if I don’t, I won’t get to keep this job that I love so much. Also, a new excerptlet is way more fun than that, don’t you think? So here goes: George stopped at his usual entryway. “See you guys later,” he said, and as the door closed, I noticed he went not up the stairs to his room, but rather cut to the right and headed into the basement. Huh? These are the things in the basement: 1) The laundry room. Chance that George was washing his whites at 3 a.m.: 0% I quickened my pace, took the stairs up to my entryway two at a time, yanked open the door, and sprinted down the basement passageway just in time to see George’s fabulous butt disappearing into the corridor toward the sophomore wing. Huh. I met a quizzical Josh in front of our suite door on the first floor. “What was that all about?” “Nothing.” I pushed past him and into the common room. Where was George going? At night? In secret? “I thought I’d forgotten to take my clothes out of the dryer earlier.” “But then you remembered?” Josh asked. Not that I cared what George did. I’d totally moved on. He could have as many three a.m. rendezvous as he wanted with as many sophomores as he cared to. No skin off my back. I had a boyfriend and I was over him. “Yep.” I tripped over the laundry bag of obviously dirty Spring Break clothes I’d dragged into the common room that afternoon and then promptly ignored. “Uh-huh.” Josh shook his head. “Night, Bugaboo.” First off, thanks for all the kind words about my new cover yesterday! Anyone who wants to snag the newly redesigned countdown clock, it’s right here:
And keep those crazy unicorn stories coming! We’ll beat the zombies yet.* This one, from Connie (hi, Connie!) is care of Holy Taco: 30 Awesomely Bad Unicorn Tattoos. My favorite:
You really can’t beat a killer unicorn fighting a robot T-rex. This reminds me of the art designer who once called my book “Jurassic Park, but with unicorns.” (Which, to be honest, describes the second book a little bit more, but whatever.) Strange tattoos, though. There’s an awful lot on that site which posit that a unicorn’s bodily fluids are rainbow-colored and/or sparkly. Bizarre. And then, from Ellen, who I met in New York last month, we have this little gem out of Overheard in New York: Six-year-old girl, with mace in hand: Look, mommy! A mace! Now I can hit unicorns and make them bleed. Death to unicorns! Mom: That’s great, honey. –8th Ave & Carroll St It’s so great to see that some parents are encouraging their daughters to start their training early. (Seriously, I got a lot of email about this one, wondering if the girl had read my book, etc.) Thank you so much for keeping me updated as to all the unicorn happenings around the internet! Go Team Unicorn! ____________________ * Except, zombies hack highway signs. Unicorns don’t even know how to use computers, stymied as they are by their cloven hooves. However, they can bash ‘em real good. Remember when I told you that this was the cover of RAMPANT?
How about this one? Or this one?
I fooled my own mother-in-law when I posted this one:
Which is why I’m pretty scared right now. You see, I feel like the Girl Who Cried Killer Unicorn. I feel like there’s no way you guys are going to trust me when I tell you that I finally do have the actual, real, honest-to-goodness cover of RAMPANT. And here it is:
Want to see the spine? the spine might be my favorite part. Now, naturally, all authors want their books to be face out on a bookshelf, but I think, even spine-out, this is seriously eye-catching! So, any of you out there who are currently featuring the old cover, please grab this jpeg. This is the new cover. No lying this time. (And any of you with the low res comp version that was leaked over the weekend on the Harper catalog, please switch to this one, if you please. It’s so much prettier and all-official.) Squee! Pretty! Pretty cover! And I’m so happy to have come out of what feels like the longest cover design process of all time with such a gorgeous result, so reflective of the book itself. I’ve been describing this cover concept to people as Uglies-meets-Graceling — two covers that I aboslutely adore, and which both share elements with this one. And the funny thing is, my book is a little bit like both those books, too. Like Katsa, Astrid struggles with a magical ability that allows her to kill things, and questions her right to use the ability. Like Tally, Astrid is a normal girl thrust into a world far beyond her preparation, and must struggle between her desire to have the normal life she intended for herself, and her growing awareness of her own potential. Pretty fitting, huh? Thank you, Harper Teen! You kick killer unicorn butt! It was warm and sunny this whole weekend in DC, and my family took full advantage of it. Sailor Boy threw himself into yard work, doing several hours of it on Saturday and Sunday. I did… decidedly fewer hours. I clipped the hedges, raked up the bare patches to prepare them for re-seeding (we have a very, very shady lawn, and grass is sometimes a pipe dream), and tended to my garden. The garden is going reasonably well. The radishes have sprouted (yay) and the tomato seedlings haven’t died yet. I’ve yet to see any sign of the herbs I planted or the marigolds, but… baby steps. (Also, Rio steps, as she trampled the garden the other day. Darn dog.) I really need a new camera so I can properly document this. Sailor Boy mowed the lawn, edged, removed stumps, trimmed all the hedges, and did some landscape design. Rio followed us around like — well, like a puppy, and looked baffled by all the changes we were making to her lawn. If we threw a stick into the compost pile, she helpfully dragged it out and began composting it herself. If we clipped the hedges, she made sure the pile of clippings were as evenly distributed across the lawn as possible. Oh, and she discovered the hose. That was fun. Like I said, I really need a new camera so as to document some of these discoveries. We also started a compost pile. Then, exhausted and warm, we left for a sushi dinner and a jaunt to the American FIlm Institute’s Silver Theater to see THE STING. I love THE STING. What a great flick. On Sunday, I was all set to have a lazy day, and then Sailor Boy climbed out the window onto the roof to clean out gutters. Which is when I discovered we pretty much already had a compost pile and didn’t even know it. Sunday afternoon, we hied ourselves over to some friends’ and had a barbecue. Real hamburgers, baked potatoes, grilled zucchini and strawberries. Yum! It was super hot by last night, and even Rio was feeling the heat. Since she spent the first eight weeks of her life in an air-conditioned kennel, and probably barely remembers August, she’s never really experienced heat like this. I didn’t know she could drink so much water. BUt she has been sitting on the vents of the air conditioner (which isn’t actually on right now), most likely becuase she remembers sitting on them as a puppy and how pleasant that was. Also, when I went down into the basement to retrieve our upright fan last night, she plopped herself down ont e basement floor and demurred moving. I almost left her there. It’s about 65 degrees down there and I’m sure much more pleasant for my furry little monster. It’s supposed to get up to 90 today. I hate to turn on the AC in April, though. I’ve got a busy week ahead of me. A short story due, some work on my website, a big mailing, and an exciting new announcement, all to come. By the way, if you have any camera suggestions — inexpensive, does movies as well as pictures, compact preferred to full body or SLR — leave ‘em here in comments. In the comments thread, Julie Leto (who was instrumental in my own path to publication) pointed out a great blog post up by Jennifer Ashley at the Plotmonkeys. Ashley’s latest book, The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, is getting stunning reviews. I just ordered it, myself. Aspiring and career-focused writers should definitely read her post. Check it out! C asks: For the past few years, I have been working on a novel of my mine. Just recently, I have successfully finished it. I was wondering what are the steps to get my novel published. Being a renowned author that you are, I am hoping that you can help me into starting my journey as an author. LOL! “Renowned author!” {{wipes tears from eyes}} Oh, that’s a good one. C, my dear, flattery will get you everywhere.Here you go: First of all, CONGRATULATIONS ON FINISHING YOUR FIRST BOOK! Yippee! That’s a huge accomplishment, and you should feel very, very proud of yourself. You know, a lot of people go aorund saying they want to write a book, but very few follow through. I’m in RWA, where the members are supposedly paying $85 a year to be career-focused writers, and you’d be surprised how many members never actually finish a manuscript. C, you are in rare company. Give yourself a round of applause. Okay. Your book is done. Now what? Now, you revise the heck out of it. Give your book to somebody else to read — someone who is not going to say, “oh it’s good,” and leave it at that, take their suggestions (if they make sense to you) and make your book better, faster, stronger tighter. You can find critique partners in any number of ways, I found my first critique partners by joining RWA (my local chapter had a critique partner matching service) and by joining eHarlequin.com (which in 2002 — I haven’t been there in years) also had one. There are probably a lot of good critique partner matching lists and forums and etc. out there. I recommend joining one where people are writing the kind of books you are writing. For instance, if you write children’s books or YA, go to Verla Kay’s Blue Boards and try the forum where they want to exchange work for critique. If you are writing romance or women’s fiction, go to eHarlequin, Romance Divas*, or etc.I know a writer who has a group of highly skilled friends who she trusts to read her work (one is an editor, another a playwright, etc.) but we can’t all be that lucky. My husband reads my books, and he’s best at telling me when my jokes fall flat. There was a lot of trial and error in those days. Getting a good critique partner is pretty much like dating. You go on a lot of crummy first dates in which you exchange chapters only to realize that this person can’t/won’t help you, either becuase they don’t have the skills to or they are more intersted in having their own work read or they are of the “oh, it’s good” variety. It is important to note that whether or not these critique partners are published is not really the point. The two critique partners I finally ended up with were not, at the time, published. In fact, we all ended up selling our first books around the same time, in 2005/2006 and now one, Marley Gibson, is working on her second series, and the other, C.L. Wilson, is a NYT bestseller. So don’t dismiss someone because they aren’t published. It’s also nice to get more than one critique partner, because they might focus on different things. One might be a whiz at finding structural problems whereas another might be really good at spotting technical issues or characterization. One of my current critique partners, Carrie Ryan (also not published when I started working with her, now currently taking over the YA world) likes to nail me whenever I slip out of my character’s true voice. I also know some people who don’t like to show their work to anyone before they submit it, and while this works for them, I think it’s a really hard row to hoe, especially when you are first starting out. If you do have this personality, give it a whirl, but if you find you aren’t getting anywhere with your submissions, it might be time to step back a bit and get a second pair of eyes on the work. For me, I know that very few people are going to be as hard on my work as I am, but when I would send stuff out to CPs and get back a few typos, I generally found a different CP for that project. Okay, so you’ve got your critique partner, your book is as polished as it can be, and you want to get it published! Now, you have to put the brakes on and read up on the industry. I know, I know, that sounds really dry and boring, especially when you want your book out there now now now, but trust me: you need to do this. It will save you a TON of heartache later if you take a stab at understanding the publishing industry first. I recommend setting aside a nice fat weekend afternoon or two, and read everything you can get your hands on. Find out what an agent is, what a publisher is, how books work in bookstores. To get you started, check out my publishing primers, which are a quick and dirty glossary for some of the jargon you’re going to encounter when you start submitting. There are very few houses left where the publishers will accept material directly from authors. These are mostly smaller houses or niche genre houses (such as Harlequin). In most cases, it’s better to query agents. Writers like to get together in bars and argue this point until the cows come home, but, in my opinion, it’s better to query agents first, unless you are writing in a niche genre market, like Harlequin category romances. The reason agents are useless here is because Harlequin is the ONLY house that publishes category romances, so there’s only one choice if you’ve got a category romance on your hands. (And if you want to know what a category romance is, just google. There are folks that explain it way better than me.) Harlequin can offer you its standard deal (and trust me, with the number of books it publishes per year, they have a very strict hierarchy and ways they like to introduce authors to the market) your option is pretty much take it or don’t have your category romance published. The reason I recommend agents over editors is that agents are very wise and know many more editors than you do, so they are more likely to know which editor is going to be perfect for your book. They might even know an editor who has been looking for a book just like yours. And, ifyou submit to editors who are not right for your book and they reject it, and then you get an agent, the agent is just going to say “well, this book is all shopped out” (which means there is no place left to send it). Great, you say, but how do I know what agent to send to? The best thing to do, again, is research. You need to researcht eh kind of agents that are right for your book. Find the books most like yours in the bookstore and check out the acknowledgements page. Most authors thank their agents. Alternately go online and type in the name of the book/author and “literary agent” into Google. Go to a website like AgentQuery.com and look up agents by genre, then type their name into Google and see if you can find any books they’ve sold that you are familiar with. Google is your friend. My favorite resource is called Publisher’s Marketplace. I pay 20 bucks a month to be a member, but if you want to you can join for one month, then quit, but during that one month, you can read all these agent profiles where they list books that they’ve sold *and* (this is the best part, so pay attention) you can read through the “deal” archives. Pick a genre to search and you can read all the deals (which are a lot of them) that agents and editors report to find books like yours, and who sold them. I know you think that researching the agents sounds very dry and boring, but honestly, YOU NEED TO DO THIS. You can’t wake up one morning and say you are going to be a brain surgeon and pick up a scalpel, and you can’t wake up one mroning and say you want to be a writer and then send off a manuscript. This is your bootcamp. Your training period. Go to different agency websites and look up WHAT THEY’VE SOLD. I’m going to repeat this, just for emphasis. LOOK UP WHAT THEY’VE SOLD. It’s very in vogue these days to judge an agency based on how detailed their rejection letter are or how pretty their website is or how nice some agent was to you at a conference, but that’s pretty much bull. If the agency cannot report to you any books that they have sold that you can go to the store and find on the bookshelf, then they are a bad agency. Not necessarily a scam, but certainly ineffective. The bottom line of any agent is what books they have on a shelf. Now, a lot of agents don’t have websites, but the ones that do, if they are GOOD agents, have front and center the names of many of their clients and the sales they have made for them Here are a few examples of what I mean. You will notice that in most of these cases, whether the agency was a huge one or a tiny one, they listed their clients/books either on their home page or one click away. This is because a mark of a good agent is not how they write rejection letters, it’s how they deal with their ACTUAL clients — selling their books, maintaining their client’s relationship with the publisher, etc. I cannot stress this enough. I have seen far too many careers stall for YEARS because someone is staying with an ineffectual agent who has made very few or no sales. Agents are usually thrilled to talk about their clients’ books that are on the shelves or in production. It’s their record, their references, their job experience. If they are not willing or able to mention books they have sold, that is a HUGE red flag. Become familiar with Writer Beware. Read Theresa Nielsen Hayden’s Slushkiller article. Keep in mind the following: Money flows “toward” the writer in publishing. Never ever ever ever ever ever ever cut your agent a check for anything. I don’t care what they call it — reading fee, marketing fee, whatever. Don’t give your agent money. When your agent gets money for something of yours that they’ve sold, they take out their portion and give you the rest. (Some agents do what is called split checks, where they have the publisher send you your portion directly.) If they do charge for things like “copying and postage” (and very very very few agents do that in these days of electronic submissions) then it’s somehting they ONLY take money out of the CHECK THEY RECEIVE for selling your work. In addition, your contract with them should stipulate that there is a cap to these fees. Read the AAR rules. Any agent who charges you a reading fee or a marketing fee is an agent from whom you should RUN. If they tell you that this is the way it’s done, they are lying. Find a different agent. Okay, you’ve researched agents and you now have a list of agents you think are right for you. Great. Now, find out what each agent is looking for in a submission. Some agents like snail mail. Others are okay with email. Some agents want to read the first five pages, or the first 50 pages, off the bat, some agents just want a query letter. DO EXACTLY WHAT EACH AGENT TELLS YOU. Send them EXACTLY WHAT THEY HAVE ASKED FOR, even if it’s different from what all the other agents have asked for, even if you think it would be easier to send all the agents the exact same thing, or that they really do want the first 50 pages, even if they only asked for a query. Don’t resist it. Don’t decide that you know better. Just follow directions. Is it really so hard? Query lots of agents. It’s more fun that way. It’s also harder to hung up on one rejection if you query lots. For tips on how to write a great query letter, check out this fabulous list of queries that worked from the members of Fangs, Fur, Fey (including my own). For my money, hte best thing to do is to query each agent with a letter tailored to them. Sinceyou did your research and have picked a list of agents to send to based on their interest, you automatically have soemthing to put in your letter that shows them that you did your homework and know why they’d be a good fit. For instance, if you have a zombie novel. you can query Jim McCarthy of Dystel and Goderich and say: Dear Mr. McCarthy, I hear you’re a zombie fan. After all, you represent Carrie Ryan of THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH and Mark Henry of HAPPY HOUR OF THE DAMNED. I have a 60,000 word zombie novel for teenagers entitled MY ZOMBIE DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK (AND MY BRAINS), that I think would be a perfect fit on your list. And so on. Agents like it when you do this, because they get dozens, if not hundreds of letters every week where it is obvious that the writer didn’t do any homework at all and are sending them something completely inappropriate. So when one comes across their desk where it is clear that the writer actually gave it some thought before typing their name in at the top, they pay more attention. The rest of the query letter should be you pretending you are writing the back cover copy of your book, were it published and sitting on the shelf. Just a paragraph or two saying what the book is about. make sure to include the title of the book, the approximate genre (e.g., young adult, fantasy, romance, mystery, etc.), and the word count. If you think that your bio has some kind of very special connection to the book, include that too. For instance, in my query, I pointed out that I went to yale, so am pretty familiar with the whole “girl at Yale” and “secret society” aspects of my book. If I’d been writing about a girl at Ohio State, I probably wouldn’t have said anything about where I went to school. So, send out a lot of queries, sit back, and say a prayer. And then — this is the most important part of all: WRITE THE NEXT BOOK. Good luck! _________ * In general, if I throw a name out in this post and you don’t know what it means, Google it. This is all about doing the research. Poke around. I was in a pretty strange mood yesterday (anyone who follows my Twitter feed can back me up on that one). And I was chatting with Justine about yesterday’s post, and specifically about our literary crushes. She mentioned she never really crushed on GIlbert, though she found him perfect for Anne. I found that interesting, because as far as I was concerned, Anne — whom I love, don’t get me wrong — barely lucked out not screwing that relationship up completely at every turn. (Which turned into a whole conversation about how Anne, having been raised in her formative years by folks who cared not at all for her, probably had deep-seated psychological issues about being worthy of love, etc.) Anyway, Justine mentioned that she hadn’t read the books in years. I then gave her a quick rundown of the Anne and Gilbert arc throughout the series. Here goes: [NOTE: I couldn't find *my* Anne of Green Gables, which was a blue illustrated hardcover with Anne pressing her face against the blossoms of The Great White Way of Delight, so just enjoy this still from the movie, which illustrates my point quite well, I think.]
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
Anne: I hate you! I hate you! You have humiliated me in the worst way possible! I shall not speak to you for years! [Years pass] Gilbert: Gosh. I really made you mad. Here, let me save your life when you quite recklessly choose to drown yourself in a leaky boat.. I’m really sorry about that whole “carrots” incident, can we be friends? Anne: No, I hate you! I shall never forgive you, Go Away! [More years pass] Gilbert: Gosh Anne, I’m so sorry to hear about your foster father. Here, have my teaching job. I’ll trek all the way across the island every day instead. Anne: Oh, wow. Guess you aren’t a jerk. Fine. We can be friends.
Gilbert: I’m so glad we’re friends. I think you’re grand. It’s too bad I don’t see you more often, on account of me trekking all over the island every day to go to that other teaching job I took so you could stay here in Avonlea. Gee, I’m noble. Also, have you noticed all our peers are getting married? Anne: Huh, how about that. Marilla and Mrs. Lynde: Gee, that Anne and Gilbert are hanging out a lot together — well, as much as they can considering how far away he works and all. Bet they’ll be getting married soon. Anne: Oh, you silly old biddies! Gilbert: Anne, don’t you think they’ve got a point? Anne: Huh?
ANNE OF THE ISLAND Random Dude #1’s sister: Anne, will you marry my brother? Anne: LOL! I mean, huh? I mean, no. I, um, need a real romance. Random Dude #2: Anne, will you marry me? Anne: LOL! I mean, huh? Oh, come now. Don’t be silly. I need a real romance. Gilbert: Okay, Anne. Enough is enough. I think I’m in love with you. Anne: What? No! We’re friends! And haven’t you been listening about all that real romance stuff? Gilbert: But that’s the best kind of marriage! We’re so alike, and we get along so well, and why are you being so strangely obstinate about all this? Anne: Hell no! Go away! Never speak to me again! Gilbert: Fine, you’re an idiot. I’m going to date this rich beautiful girl over here. Anne: Hmmm, whenever I see Gilbert with that rich beautiful girl, I feel odd. Wonder why that is? [Years pass] Philippa: Hi, I have nothing to do with this, really, I just wanted to pop in and point out that I’m totally awesome, and I’m in this book, too. And I also have a pretty rocking love story in this book, which one sould not ignore for the sake of Anne and Gilbert’s little drama. (Oh, and I lent my name to a character in Rampant.) As you were. Romantic Dude: Why, hello there, Anne. I’m dashing and rich. Anne: Now this is what I’m talking about. Swoon! Everyone Else Anne Knows: Sure. Fine. Whatever. Anne: I’m so happy with my Romantic Dude. Except his taste in flowers is deplorable. Also, I really wish people would stop telling me that Gilbert is engaged to his rich, beautiful girlfriend. Not that I care. I totally don’t. Still, feel a strange urge to wear the flowers that Gilbert, to whom I have not spoken in ages, randomly sent me this evening, rather than the flowers my boyfriend sent me. It has nothing to do with anything except for my boyfriend’s aforementioned deplorable taste in flowers, I assure you of that. Everyone says that roses are more becoming to me than orchids. Everyone Else Anne Knows: Riiiiiiight. Romantic Dude: Oh, Anne: Thou art more fair and lovely still. Will thoust marry me? (I totally know you’re going to say yes.) Anne: Wait a second, I can’t marry this stick. I’ve been such a fool. Everyone Else Anne Knows: {forehead slap} Gilbert: Oops, I studied too hard and am dying. And Anne is engaged to someone else. Oh, woe is me. Anne: I love Gilbert! Alas, he is dying! Woe is me! Gilbert: Wait, psych. I’m totally alive. And you’renot engaged! Anne: Why, hi there, big boy. Gilbert: We should get married. LIKE I SAID YEARS AGO. Anne: Yes. I capitulate to your superior understanding in this matter.
Anne: While you are in medical school and we are participating in the longest engagement known to mankind, I shall write you endless, chatty love letters that the author will mysteriously cut from the manuscript. Gilbert: My fiancee is awesome. Anne: And since I’m all set up, romantically, I will spend the bulk of this book fixing other people’s problems with my clever and winsome ways. Gilbert: See? Awesome.
Anne: We’re married and deliriously happy. Gilbert: Rather. Leslie: Hi, I’m unutterably miserable and feel a sort of perverse joy that one time that Anne has a miscarriage. But we end up being friends and I get a love story too.
Anne: We’ve been married for years and have a house full of rugrats. Gilbert: You know it, baby. Anne and Gilbert’s Rugrats: Hi. The book is really all about us and our misadventures. The title is a misnomer. [At the very end of the book] Anne: But wait, one evening Gilbert looks kind of distracted about something — coudln’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that he had two patients die last week — it must be that HE NO LONGER LOVES ME! Gilbert: Huh? Anne: In fact, when we go to this party that your rich and beautiful ex-girlfriend will be attending ON OUR ANNIVERSARY, I shall make a point to look as awful and dowdy as possible to prove it. Gilbert: I’m sorry my dear, did you say something? Anne: See? I was right! You don’t love me! Gilbert: Hey, Anne, I got us tickets to Europe. Anne: What? OMG, I was totally WRONG! THE END Go there now. Enter for a chance to win all four books! I saw this over at The Book Smugglers the other day and it looked like great fun! 1. What author do you own the most books by? Hmmm, a quick glance at my bookshelves reveals quite a bit of: L.M. Montgomery, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling (several copies of each, actually), Julie Leto, and Scott Westerfeld.
2. What book do you own the most copies of? I collect the old, un-re-edited (no, Aslan does NOT destroy The Island Where Dreams Come True), un-re-ordered (#3, baybee!) copies of THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER. Also, my husband and I have an embarrassingly large number of copies of Aristotle left over from school. 3. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? In high school I had the biggest crush on Finny from A SEPARATE PEACE. I also kinda fall for all the boys in my own books. I also discuss my unrequited love for Edmund Pevensie in Through the Wardrobe. I also swoon over Captain Wentworth in Persuasion. And everyone has heard me talk about my adoration for Logan Echolls (though that’s not books, it’s TV — and lately I was totally into Sokka from Avatar). Recently, I’ve developed crushes on: Ravus, from Holly Black’s Valiant, Po, from Kristin Cashore’s Graceling, and Peeta, from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. Oh, and there’s a guy in Carrie Ryan’s Dead-Tossed Waves that I’m totally into, but I can’t tell you about that yet. 4. What book have you read more than any other? That might also be The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Or possibly Anne of the Island. In college, it was definitely Frankenstein. I studied that baby in three different classes. Judging from the state of the paperback on my shelf (being held together with a rubber band), it’s A Girl of the Limberlost, in which I had zero crush on Philip, but was totally in love with Elnora. 5. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? I think we’re still going to go with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. By the time I was fourteen I was obsessed with The Mists of Avalon, but amusingly, it has not held its charm for me over the years the way Voyage has. 6. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year? I actually didn’t finish it, so I don’t know if it counts as “reading.” But it was baaaaaaaad. I’m kinda shocked that it’s published, to tell the truth. But I think that’s how most people feel whenever they read a book which combines such crass lowest-common-denominator attempts at hitting commercial hot buttons with pedantic writing, flat characters, zero interest in realism and completely tone-deaf plotting. No, I will not tell you the name. 7. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year? It’s not out yet, but it’s called LIAR, by Justine Larbalestier. Books that are out: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, and Watchmen, by Alan Moore.
The unabridged version of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas (the Penguin Classics version, translated by Robin Buss). 9. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read? I slogged my way through quite a lot of crap in college, but I found that if it was actually “difficult” I tended not to read it. I found The Brother’s Karamazov unutterably painful and stopped reading it, which is too bad, since I positively loved Crime and Punishment. I have a very low tolerance for this whole “reading books should be like having a root canal” theory of modern literature. I’m fine with “books should be like vegetables” because I love vegetables, but if people tell me that something is difficult to read, I’m like, okay, let’s find something that’s really FUN to read, even if it’s challenging or etc. For instance, I know a lot of people who are intimidated by Clarissa because it’s so massive, but I adored all 1700 pages. That book consumed me. Also, though Borges is a really really “dense” writer and it takes a long time to wrap your brain around the concepts and words and language, I love reading him, too. 10. Do you prefer the French or the Russians? I suppose the French, because of the aforementioned love of Dumas and hatred for The Brothers K, but I don’t think I’m particularly familiar with the panoply of French Literature (the only other French novels I can think of having read right now are Candide and The Red and the Black), whereas I have taken a class called The Russian Novel. So maybe the Russians, just based on familiarity? I don’t know. this question makes me embarrassed of my degree. Oh. Wait. I also read The Princess of Cleves. yeah, French. Unless we’re counting Nabokov as Russian and not American, in which case, I think Russian. Clear as mud? Oui? Da? 11. Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer? Shakespeare is better performed than read. I loved Chaucer in high school, but that was 13 years ago. I’ve recently rediscovered Milton, though, and am loving it! Why isn’t Dante on this list? After all that French/Russian stuff in the last question, I’m finding this one very English-centric. Discounting Shakespeare (who was a playwright and not an epic poet, like the others), I’m going to say my favorite epic poet is Homer, and my favorite epic poem is the Odyssey. I guess, though, if I”m going to be a purist about this question, I’m going with the order they are listed: Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer.
Austen. Weird question — you usually see it written “Austen or the Brontes” — and I must admit, I’ve never read any Eliot. Which book do you suggest I start with? (Persuasion is my favorite Austen, btw.) 13. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? Modern literature. When that 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die book came out, I realized that I’d read almost all the pre-1700s works, most of the pre-1800, and a good segment of the pre 1900 — but almost none of the ones from the 20th century, and zero from the 21st. Though I found that list really unbalanced, and very biased towards Ian McEwan in general. 14. What is your favorite novel? The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. But for sheer comfort reading, I find myself turning time and again to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Anne of the Island, The Girl of the LImberlost, The Phantom Tollbooth, Pride and Prejudice, and (for a good cathartic cry) Persuasion. 15. Play? I’m a huge musicals fan. I love any musical, but specifically Les Miserables, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Guys and Dolls… the list goes on and on. As for straight plays, I’m pretty partial to A Winter’s Tale. My husband tells me I’d love Lear if I saw it. 16. Poem? I think we already covered The Odyssey, right? Catullus 101 is awesome, too. And 85. And Horace’s “To Chloe” (Most of my poetry study took place in Latin class). English poems, I like Poe. That’s no secret. My favorite of his poems is “The Bells.” I also like Donne. 17. Essay? I’m sure I’m forgetting some absolutely smashing essays, but the one that comes immediately to mind is David Foster Wallace’s F/X Porn. Seriously, go read it now. Brilliance. I think DFW’s true strength as a writer was his essays. “Consider the Lobster” and “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” are regularly quoted from in my house. 19. Non Fiction How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman. Though judging from the timing he gives on his roast chicken, it’s not entirely non-fiction. 20. Graphic Novel? In college, I loved Maus. Does Transmetropolitan count as a novel or a series? I should really read more graphic novels. People tell me Sandman is great.
Honestly? “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” by Jorge Luis Borges. Though I’m not entirely sure that counts as SF. Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem does, and when I was in college, I wrote one of my favorite papers comparing the two stories. So I suppose you could make the argument. I also really enjoyed Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. And A Stranger in a Strange Land. And Brightness Falls from the Air. And Frankenstein. And the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. Pretty much anything by Susan Squires. Feed by M.T. Anderson. Wow, this list can go on and on… I’d really love to write a science fiction novel one day. There are some science fiction elements in Rampant, but it’s rooted in fantasy/mythology/magic. (In passing, I’m kinda obsessed with finding images of “my” copies of these books. I can’t find a picture of “my” Solaris on the internet, so instead, you get “my” Ficciones, which holds “my” copy of Tlon.) 22. Who is your favorite writer? L.M. Montgomery. I can always sit down with one of her books or short stories and get swept away. 23. Who is the most over rated writer alive today? Cormac McCarthy. Sorry, but there it is. I think my least favorite book of all time is All the Pretty Horses, and the way he was such a jerk about The Road and insisting that it wasn’t spec fic really pissed me off. That English dude they fawn over who is an admitted plagiarist of a romance novelist but-gosh-it-doesn’t-count-because-he-writes-lit-ur-a-ture-and-she’s-just-a-romance-novelist counts too. Wait, is that Ian McEwan again? Curious. 24. What are you reading right now? Shadowed Summer, by Saundra Mitchell, The Raw Shark Texts, by Steven Hall, and an ARC of The Teashop Girls, by Laura Schaffer. 25. Best Memoir? Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane. That was one of the best books I read in high school. 26. Best History? Gosh, you know? I don’t think I’ve read a history since Thucydides freshman year of college. Sad, huh? 27. Best Mystery or Noir? I am finding these questions rather odd. They ask about mystery and SF but not fantasy or romance? Also, I realize that I don’t really read mystery. Thrillers, yes, but not mysteries. And though approximately 75% of the television shows are mystery, I don’t watch any of them. I watch no CSI or L&O or Bones or House or Monk anything that can be characterized as a procedural or mystery. Which is weird, since I loved loved loved loved loved Veronica Mars, which was, ostensibly, a mystery show. I mean, it was about a detective. I wonder why I loved that one so much when mystery usually leaves me cold? Like, right now, I’m trying to watch Psych. I love Dule Hill, and it came highly recommended to me by Cassandra Clare when we were in Ireland. But I am just so bored by the mysteries. Every week, la-di-dah, where’s the dead body? Maybe that’s why I liked Veronica Mars so much — because the mystery-of-the-week was never really the focus. Not like the class struggles and her life falling apart and her relationship with her dead best friend and her father and her mother — and why, after all that was solved, I was never really as drawn to the show as I had been before. (Also, Veronica’s adversaries were usually moderately to very clever, and Sean and Gus’s adversaries are always displayed as being appallingly dumb.) I am thus always surprised when someone characterizes one of my books as a mystery. To me, “whodunnit” — which is the central focus of any mystery — is never really the point as much as what they are doing, or why, or how knowing doesn’t really prevent the good guys from being able to stop them (again, thriller elements). Sometimes the POV characters know the identity of the bad guy, sometimes they don’t — but it doesn’t mean that they can solve the problem. For instance, (whited out for Under the Rose spoilers) Amy suspects from very early on that Jenny is behind the problems in Under the Rose. She just can’t get anyone else on her side, because it’s so inconceivable to most of the other Diggers that one of their own might betray them. So the fact that it is, in fact, Jenny, is not supposed to be much of a surprise to the reader. After all, Amy’s been banging that drum for a hundred pages. What I was interested in talking about –alongside Amy’s growth as a person and a Rose & Grave member — is what led Jenny to that point, why she made the decisions she did, and how, underneath it all, she was really kind of a double agent, and actually helped uncover a bigger mystery that she didn’t know how to tell anyone about. What I discovered when the book came out is that the people who were reading for those things enjoyed the book, and the people who were reading it like a mystery novel, like the point of the book was to find out who was behind everything — well, they weren’t satisfied, because it was obvious it was Jenny. Which is something I’m learning as a writer, that sometimes, people who don’t like a book don’t like it because they expected it to be a different book entirely, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Like, did anyone else notice that by the end of the run of Harry Potter, there were a lot of people who seemed to think that the sole purpose of each book was to kill someone off? And it was all, “Who dies in this one?” And then got all pissed off when the person or persons they expected to die in the last one didn’t die? And there were these roving bands of spoilers who would do drive bys of the lines outside bookshops and shout out the name of the dead person, or would go into chat on World of Warcraft and scream it? What was up with those guys? Weren’t they reading for the cool fantasy world and the funny candies and the relationship between Harry and his friends and the epic storytelling? But I digress. All of which is to say, I’m not very familiar with mysteries, and, as a genre, it’s not my cup of tea. I didn’t even read Nancy Drew or similar growing up. I was too busy memorizing The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, apparently.
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Gilbert: I think you’re adorable, but I’m young and cannot properly flirt.
ANNE OF AVONLEA
ANNE OF WINDY POPLARS
ANNE’S HOUSE OF DREAMS
ANNE OF INGLESIDE
8. If you could tell everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
12. Austen or Eliot?
21. Science Fiction?
