I kind of hate that we’ve decided that today marks the end of a decade, not least because I spent quite a lot of energy at the turn of 2000 trying to explain to people that it wasn’t, in fact, the first year of the decade at all. (There was no year zero, and decades start in the year with the last numeral of 1.) Given that, at the time, I was mostly surrounded by members of the college graduating class of 2001, this was an easy argument to make, as we’d all prefer to be the first graduating class of the new millennium than the second.
Apparently, in the intervening years, we’ve lost that argument. Seriously, I remember stopping my subscription to National Geographic because they made the argument that 2000 should start the millennium because — wait for it — it “sounded” better than 2001. Very scientific of you, NG.
So the prevailing opinion of the masses maintains the twenty-teens start tomorrow, and everyone is busy doing this whole “decade-in-review” thing. It’s made also very difficult for me, at least, because it’s tough to look back on this “decade” given that, for the first year of said “decade” I was still a college kid, and my life was extraordinarily different. If I was counting from 2001, as I should be (ahem!) and finishing up next year, as I should be, it would probably be even more notable and transformative.
Because, y’know, I expect 2010 to rock like a mountain.
So, what happened in the last decade of my life? (To keep this manageable, I’m focusing on personal and professional developments.)
in 2000: I began my first novel since I’d been a child. I didn’t get very far. It was an awkward, labored bit of category romance about a wedding coordinator who falls for one of her clients. My then boyfriend oh-so-helpfully pointed out the existence of the upcoming Matthew McConaghey/J-Lo vehicle, which pretty much killed any desire I had to keep working on that story. Also in 2000, I met Sailor Boy. Sailor Boy has been a massive influence on my writing life. I’m so lucky to have him.
In 2001: I took my one and only short story writing class in college, for which I wrote two short stories, both of which were entirely misunderstood by my rather short-sighted creative writing instructor. One was chick lit. The other was a ghost story. Both were overtly feminist. I’m sure it was a mix of the genre and the message that tripped him up. Sailor Boy loved them. I ended up with a B in the class. (Maybe a B+? I can’t remember.) I graduated from college. I started the first novel I was to ever finish, which was also an awkward, labored bit of category romance. I got on a New York City-bound plane the morning of September 11, 2001. I met Julie Leto. I got my first apartment, in Astoria (followed quickly by my second apartment in Astoria). I got my first full time post-college job.
In 2002: I lost my first full time job. I finished my first and second novel (also a category romance). I published my first feature article (a front page story about Julie Leto). I moved to Florida to write for a newspaper. I joined RWA. I sent out my first novel query letter and received my first request.
In 2003: I finalled in my first writing contest. I received my first (and second) rejection. I wrote a novella and my third novel (an action-adventure set in Europe). I started my fourth novel (as well as a bunch of other things). I attended my first RWA conference (care of a birthday present registration by Sailor Boy) and pitched to my first editors and agents. I got a request from the agent who would eventually come to represent me. I moved to Australia with Sailor Boy, and then to New Zealand.
In 2004: I returned to the United States. I got another job working for the newspaper. I won several writing contests. I got about 20 rejections for books I’d already written, including one from my now-agent. I worked on my fourth novel (a paranormal romance).
In 2005: I got the idea for Secret Society Girl. I moved with Sailor Boy to DC. I bought my first car. I finished my fourth novel. I wrote and submitted a proposal for Secret Society Girl. I got a job in DC. I got an agent and sold my first book, as well as a sequel, in an auction beyond my wildest dreams. I wrote my first published book. I stopped counting my rejections.
In 2006: I became a full time writer. My first book came out. I had my first (and so far only) New York launch party for my book. I got engaged. I wrote my sixth novel (second contracted). I wrote my first non-fic essay for publication in a book (Judy Blume).
In 2007: I sold my second contract (the third and fourth books in the secret society girl series). I sold my third contract (Rampant and its sequel), also at auction. (Sailor Boy had been in lvoe with the idea for several years.) I wrote my first critical essay for BenBella. I wrote my seventh novel (third contracted). My first and second book came out in paperback. I got married.
In 2008: I traveled to Europe to do research for Rampant, which I subsequently finished writing (#8). My third novel (seventh written) was published. I wrote my second and third critical essays on YA literature for BenBella. I bought a house. I got a dog, Rio. I wrote novel #9.
In 2009: I turned 30. I published my fourth book, which was the last book in my first series. I wrote and sold two short stories, my first ever for professional publication (they’ll both be out in 2010). My first YA/first fantasy was published. I finished writing my tenth book. I started work on a project unlike any I’ve ever done before.
Pretty good decade, no matter how you cut it. In my (mostly) twenties, I graduated from college, had a few random jobs, started my career, met a guy, got married, bought a house.
“Recently I’ve read a few books where a character is introduced a few chapters into the story and the narrator/main character describes her as “black” or “Asian” or “Hispanic.” It always jolts me because the rest of the characters in the book are not described as “white,” but it is assumed as a reader I know they are. Now if by saying a character has blue eyes and red hair the author figures I’ll know the character is white, why can’t he/she just say something like “her eyes were as brown as her skin” to describe someone who is black? It just comes across that the author assumes his/her readers are white. Does this bother anyone else? Am I being overly sensitive? For the record, I’m white.”
There have been several posts recently about the issue of describing race in novels, with the general complaint being that if a character is described as “black” or “Asian” or etc. then why aren’t white characters described as white?
“Doing good descriptions is hard, because you have to choose which facts are relevant to mention. How people *interpret* these facts–well, that’s another matter entirely. But when you write something, you have to have SOME sense of what impact your words are going to mean. That is pretty much the job description. Those descriptions are code–they should tell you something about the character, something aside from what’s there, flat, on the page.”
“When the characters, plot, or setting requires an author to define race, how does he or she accomplish this? Is there a “Korean kid” or a “black girl”? The problem is that socially constructed race words like African American, black, Asian American, and Latina are typically used only for characters who aren’t of European descent. North American authors conventionally don’t use “European American” or “white” to describe characters because to label every character’s race makes reading tedious. Why use any such labels at all, then? The best answer is because it made sense for a particular character or a first-person narrator to label people with those terms.
“If labels aren’t used, but you know a character is nonwhite, ask yourself and your students how the author communicated that fact. Check for tired food-related clichés about “coffee-colored” skin or “almond-shaped” eyes versus fresh, bold attempts to delineate race and culture in a story.”
And this is pretty much how I’ve gone about it. I’m sure it says something about me as a reader that despite living in a very multicultural world, I’m going to assume a character is white unless told otherwise (by the cover, the character themselves, or a description). Of course, there are exceptions — for instance, if I’m reading a novel about a prince in medieval Japan, I’m going to assume his ethnicity is, you know, Japanese. And it changes, too. If I’d picked up a novel a few years ago about the daughter of the President of the USA, I’d picture someone who looked like one of the Bush girls. Now, I’d picture one of the Obama girls. And that’s because my head goes to the “president’s daughter” file in my brain and the first picture that pops up is the REAL president’s daughters.
Or maybe Zoe Bartlett.
In SSG, the characters’ races/ethnicities/minority status were very much part of the story, as sometimes they were selected for the society to fulfill certain token spots. Rose & Grave needed the gay black member, the male Asian-American member, the Muslim Middle-Eastern member, the Jewish member. The narrator Amy, who is white, is also more likely to think of someone’s race if it’s a race different from her own.
In Rampant, the characters’ nationalities actually took precedence over their races, but it also didn’t make sense to me, knowing as I did that Alexander the Great started out from the eastern edge of Europe and moved east across the Middle East and Asia, and then the three thousand years of history that followed, that all the characters would be white. Most readers (rightly) assumed that Grace Bo, from Singapore (and an Asian hunting line), was of Asian descent. Funny story about Grace: in college, I wrote a short story about a girl named Grace (no last name) who was in medical school, and EVERY SINGLE PERSON who read it assumed (wrongly) that the short story Grace was Asian-American, probably because most of the people we knew who had names like Grace and were studying to be doctors were in fact Asian American. So maybe that contributed to my thought process when naming Grace Bo Grace. Well, that and the fact that Grace under pressure is the big discovery that character makes in Rampant. Readers also probably picked up on the fact that Ilesha, from India, was Southeast Asian, and knowing that Valerija comes from eastern Europe is enough to get a picture of her appearance in your head.
But this isn’t always the case. Despite quite explicitly describing the French hunter Zelda as having dark black skin, there were readers who translated that as “dark black hair” and I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake not being specific in my descriptions of Giovanni. Yes, he’s half-Italian, half-American. But when you picture Giovanni, do you see this?
Because that’s what he looks like. And though Astrid describes him in detail, she never specifically says he’s black. And a lot of readers have taken her descriptions of dark skin and curly, close cropped hair as being indicative of white Italians. I know many white Italians who have, for white people, “dark” skin and dark curly or wavy hair. My brother, for instance, who is practically as Italian as Giovanni.
I did not get the dark skin and hair in the genetic lottery. I REALLY did not get the curly hair. But I digress.
Anyway, I don’t know what the right answer is, and it’s one I’m going to revisit in every book, because I’m going to continue to write characters of many different ethnicities. In my experience, I think the possible danger of throwing a reader out of the story by explicitly describing a character’s race like the question on Daphne’s blog is probably a fair price to pay for making sure that your readers know the race of the character. YMMV.
Another challenge would be to describe the character’s race in a time when the words we use don’t mean anything. How would a character in, say, Carrie Ryan’s books describe people of different races? They don’t even believe in the ocean in that book. Do they believe in continents like Asia and Africa? You’re not Asian-American if there’s no America, if no one knows what happened to Asia.
The following post has spoilers for RAMPANT. If you haven’t read RAMPANT, consider yourself warned.
Yesterday, I discovered a review of Rampant online. Which pretty much makes it a day ending in -y, but this one had me on the verge of hysterics. I love reviews that make me look at my own work in a new way, and this one made me look at it in a way that was simultaneously off the wall and yet, made a lot of sense.
Here’s the part that had me and Sailor Boy laughing our butts off:
And oh yes, the tall mysterious stranger who regularly saves Astrid’s life, spouts meaningful broody comments about her destiny and is possibly flirting with her? The if-this-was-Buffy-he-would-be-Angel character? It’s a unicorn.
Now, my pal Sarah Rees Brennan has long advocated for an Astrid-hearts-Bucephalus love story, and I have long advocated that she should seek professional counseling on this matter, but I never put together the reason that she feels this is so right and true — and now I do. It’s because, in the story, Bucephalus’s role is the one usually filled by the wiser/more cynical/world-weary/advisor dude who totally has the hots (or vice versa, or mutual) for our naive heroine. Think Han Solo and the virginal, white-clad Leia. Think the Goblin King Jared and all the advantage he tries to take of the nubile Jennifer Connolly (man, that movie is disturbing. The more I think about it, the more disturbing it gets.) Aragorn and Eowyn. Buffy and Angel. Angel’s a few hundred years old and he spends the entirety of the first season ridiculing, reluctantly saving/assisting, advising, and blowing off Buffy (my favorite line of the series might be when Xander, by far a more noble character, is basically like, WTF, really?), and, also, he wants to get in her pants.
You see, boy heroes in fantasy get elderly wizard-types who are conveniently killed by the enemy. Girl heroes get sardonic older-but-sexy types who want to sleep with them.
So that’s interesting.
Ways that Bucephalus is like Angel:
Knows more about heroine’s powers than she does
Knows more about heroine’s enemies than she does
Has been secretly watching over heroine
Is older and more experienced than the heroine (bonus points for WAY older)
Possesses more than a little cynicism and world-weariness
Is not entirely trustworthy to heroine, not least because
Is someone that the heroine should, by rights, be killing.
Ways in which Bucephalus is nothing like Angel:
Does not want to have sex with the heroine.
Is not seeking redemption in any way.
And the redemption, to be honest, is pretty Angel-specific (or, hell, let’s say vampire specific, as another dozen examples pop into my head). Lord knows David Bowie’s not looking for any of that nonsense, and Han Solo is pretty much dragged kicking and screaming into the whole rebellion thing. So, aside from the sex, we’ve got ourselves a character type. A type that does not actually map to “large venomous bovid species” so much as “hot dude in tight pants.”
Sarah, everything makes so much more SENSE now!
And yet… no. There will be no hot hot hot Astrid/Bucephalus action in Ascendant.
Dmitri and Rose. Bill and Sookie. Eric and Sookie. Poor Sookie!
But I wonder how much our reactions as an audience are mapped out for us by these stock character roles. I remember watching Avatar: The Last Airbender (really hate that I have to specify lately) and waiting and waiting and waiting for the episode where Iroh dies. You know, because he’s the elderly wizard-like advisor who is coaxing Zuko back toward the side of good. And then, when he doesn’t (ironically, the actor voicing him did), being really shocked. Not really knowing what to make of it. You see, I’d had him written off as Merlin/Gandalf/Obi-Wan/Dumbledore. And he wasn’t.
So maybe Sarah’s theories about Bucephalus as tortured romantic hero weren’t — as I always accused her — a product of her unique and uncanny ability to latch on the most unlikely romantic pairing in any work of literature to great comic effect, but rather a reflection of our indoctrination into this trope of fantasy fiction — the sardonic older protector who takes the pretty young thing under his wing (or hoof, as the case may be) and is hella sexy to boot.
Poe and Amy. Yowza. And that’s not even fantasy.
And there’s a lot to be said here on the topic of why a (primarily female readership) is interested in this paradigm. Even if the women are strong, the men must be stronger? Does the girl have a special power? The men’s power has got to be bigger and better? He has to know more about it than she does? Is that true? I remember the guidelines for the old Silhouette Bombshell line of action-adventure romances. They were looking for strong heroines and heroes who were their match.
I wrote a book aimed at that market, about a very strong woman who owns a security company and hires an agent who doesn’t like to play by the rules. They fall in love. In the revision letter, I was told to cut her backstory (she started the company to avenge the kidnapping and death of her younger sister), make HIM the owner of the company, and have him hire her, who was to be reassigned a generic military background. Oh, and could I set it in South America instead of Europe? And dump the plot?
Suffice to say, I did not do those revisions. I’m not sure what kind of book they were looking for, but it clearly wasn’t the one I wrote. I offered to write them a different book. And what stuck with me most out of all the things they asked me to change was the way they wanted the power dynamic of the characters to switch. They didn’t want HER owning the company and hiring HIM (even though he was incredibly knowledgeable about both the business and the case they were on. (And therefore mapped pretty well to the paradigm.) He was as smart as she was, as good an agent as she was, as well trained in martial arts and use of weaponry as she was… (actually, he was an explosives expert).
It was many years later that I began writing Rampant, and from the beginning, I knew I had a very different romantic plan for Astrid. She’s strong, physically, and she’s very brave, and she has special powers, but the man for her is not the one who teaches her how to use a sword, or knows more about her magic than she does. Because I believe that strength can be complementary as well as corresponding. Giovanni strength is his normalcy. He’s a rock in her very unstable world. Which I suppose makes him the mirror of Bucephalus.
Seriously, this is all making sense to me now. I just thought that Irish dame was spouting nonsense.
I’m swamped with work right now, so you probably aren’t going to see much of me until after the new year.
But I did want to share with you two things. Thing the first is from my fan community, a highly amusing fan imagining of what would happen if Astrid Llewelyn joined Rose & Grave. (Which, obviously, she would first have to graduate from high school, then matriculate to Eli, then do really well there for four years, then decide that the only thing she wants to do, having escaped her nunnery, is tie herself to another old musty building filled with bones two days a week. Which is a stretch, but let’s just run with it.)
Speaking of secret society buildings, yes I have been pointed to this video of what they are calling “allegedly” Skull & Bones. I can tell you: nothing alleged about it. That is indeed the COURTYARD of the Skull & Bones* tomb on the Yale campus. Let’s give the dude a prize for hopping the fence with a video camera. Please note: you can actually see this courtyard for yourself by going to New Haven and peeking in down the alley between the tomb and one of the Art History buildings. (This is why, in Under the Rose, the knights lose that statue they have to break into Dragon’s Head to retrieve. It’s because it’s in the courtyard, and anyone who wants can just hop in and take it.) The “underground” portion in the video is a cistern/construction site, because, as they teach you in introductory Geology classes at Yale, the foundation of the Skull & Bones building was laid wrong, and is crumbling, and periodically needs to be reinforced. When I was at Yale, you would constantly see construction workers wandering in and out of the Skull & Bones tomb.
If anything, this video merely reinforces the message of the SSG books, which is thatthese places are not as mysterious and unreachable as you think.
Oh, and if you look there’s MUCH better footage of the tomb available on the internet. No, I won’t tell you where.
_________
* I have reached a point where I don’t know if I’m talking about real places or fake places anymore. I had to stop myself from typing Rose & Grave just then.
So I got up on the rightest side of the bed this morning. To start with, it’s a gorgeous day outside. Bright and clear, not too cold. And I was in a good mood already because I did some serious work yesterday, and I’m still buzzing from that.
And then I found out that Teenreads.com is recommending RAMPANT on it’s 2009 holiday gift buying guide, What To Give, What To Get.
“It was the premise (in four words: “girls hunt killer unicorns”) that initially drew me in, but the fantastic, battle-strewn plotting and frantic pace that kept me there. For the first time in ages, I stayed up late–too late!–to read, consuming the entire book in two big night-time chunks.”
Also:
“Peterfreund puts a remarkable deal of care into crafting her urban-fantasy world, particularly the mythology behind the unicorns. We’re given a small handful of bloodthirsty species, and she even manages to make two unicorns into believable characters. Though one unicorn, Bonegrinder, is tame, she certainly isn’t a saccharine-Lisa-Frank-kind-of unicorn, but instead a gritty, feisty, and fiercely loyal killer.”
It’s possible Bonegrinder and Phil are going to have to have a cage match for “most popular character in Rampant.
And then, to my surprise, some reviews popped up of Secret Society Girl. Like Helgagrace’s:
“…an action-packed series opener that had me eagerly ordering the second book through ILL.”
“Usually when I read YA or chick-lit (of which this could be considered both), I find that I dislike the characters. This is an exception. I love Amy and her spunky, bold personality. I love that she has real problems (best friend in love with her, roommate issues, making the grade on that final paper, boy troubles) in addition to her heavy Rose & Grave issues. And the guys in the book—swoon. Oh, boys. I love a good male character who I can fall in love with and, honestly, these books have more than one! Sure, it might not be as problematic as the Team Edward v. Team Jacob debate, but I bet some arguments could ensue about just who is best for Amy.”
And, last but CERTAINLY NOT LEAST, Alexa Barry makes my day complete by naming Astrid & Giovanni #6 on her top 10 favorite literary couples of 2009. She shares one of their more… um, close scenes… then says, “Seriously, after this, I don’t know how you’re still a Unicorn Hunter, Astrid!” LOL
Okay then! And now I’m off to squander my good mood making the dogs and house look presentable again. It’s very muddy outside.
A lot of my crying is because I can see the loving and supportive potential in TempDog #5, who is still, ever so slowly, coming out of her shell (she spent yesterday cuddling at my feet and actually wrestled with Rio for about two minutes before she remembered she was supposed to be frightened and cowering behind the couch. And then, instead of cowering, she just lay down and thumped her tail at me while I petted her. Baby steps.) Of course, Ricki here had all the benefits of always being in a loving and supportive environment, whereas TempDog#5 was neglected and possibly abused for the first year of her life.
I would love to get her to the point where she comes out of her cage all by herself. She doesn’t need to be the friendliest dog in the world (cough, cough, Rio, I’m looking at you), but I think if I could get her to voluntarily join the society of my home, I’d consider her cured.
Today’s post can be found at Alexa’s Not Enough Bookshelves, where I’m talking about love stories and my favorite literary couples of the year. She’s also doing a giveaway.
Here I am on the Bolt Bus traveling back to DC. I love living in the future. I’m on the internet on the highway, y’all.
I had a truly wonderful time in New York City. Sunday, I hit up the “debs” signing at Books of Wonder, met a bunch of authors (like Megan Crewe and Jon Skovron) and took a picture of the fantabulous Sarah Cross which is currently trapped on my camera, unfortunately. But she was wearing a Santa hat and giving out candy canes.
The awesome never stops with Ms. Cross.
Then a friend and I went up to the Morgan Library to check out the Jane Austen exhibit, which was very interesting and mostly consisted of her letters to her sister. Since I’m a sucker for a good Austen letter (fictional or otherwise), I enjoyed it immensely. Though I have to say that one of my favorite items at the exhibit was Vladimir Nabokov’s lecture notes on Mansfield Park. Apparently, Nabokov was not much of a fan of Austen, and had been considering leaving her out of his class syllabus entirely until a friend of his told him to read MP and that won him over.
(Though a fan of Nabokov’s, I don’t agree with his opinion on these books.)
On Monday, I had a lovely and long overdue lunch with my Random House editor and we talked about all kinds of exciting new projects that will, sadly, remain a secret for now. Then I had a writing date with Maureen Johnson, and we ran into Coe Booth and Tayari Jones. Much writing was not accomplished — at least, not by me!
After that, I went to the Books of Wonder holiday party, where I saw Robin Wasserman, Sarah Beth Durst, Heidi Kling, Gayle Forman, Erin Downing and a ton of other people. Good times.
And then I bought a bus ticket to go from DC to NY instead of the other way ’round. Oops. But I managed to get on anyway. Now it’s back to the grind.
