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 Here I am in Orlando, Florida at the annual RWA Conference. I spent yesterday evening with my roommate, Erica Ridley, as well as Team Castle-mate Jennifer Barnes and my new BFF Melissa de la Cruz (I kept the fangirllng to a minimum).
People keep saying to me, “Oh, what are you doing here at RWA?” Man, you skip a con for four years and this is what happens!
In other news, I was giddy with joy last night when I started seeing some reviews for my two upcoming books: Zombies Vs. Unicorns and Ascendant pop up on these here internets. The first is from Eve’s Fan Garden:
“Team Unicorn is Holly Black, Meg Cabot, Kathleen Duey, Margo Lanagan, Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, and Diana Peterfreund. Even if all you know about Unicorns is that they come in the form of shiny, sparkly stickers, you will love everyone of these stories. My favorite one was “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn”, by Diana Peterfreund. I blazed through this story and was left wanting more and more! The Unicorns in these stories will change the way you perceive unicorns from those shiny, sparkly sticker images to something entirely different!”
The second is not so much a review as an interview with the powers-that-be behind the anthology, Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier, for BWi:
BWI: If educators were asked to share one story to get teen readers interested in the debate, which one(s) would you recommend to lead off the discussion?
HB: Well, on the unicorn side, I would love to see people talk about Diana Peterfreund’s story with the baby killer unicorn, who is at once horrific and adorable; I would love to see people discuss Margo Lanagan’s reframing some of the traditional unicorn story elements; but mostly I’d like readers to pick the story they think they would like the best and read that.
The whole interview is fantastic, especially if you’re fans of these authors’ works. Check it out.
There have also been folks reading Ascendant. The first review comes care of Raila of Books out of the Bookshelves, a Brazilian reader who I believe discovered my work through Secret Society Girl (which is published in Brazil) and has now decided to try out killer unicorns (which is only published in North America so far). Can I just tell you how impressed and a little jealous I am that she can speak and read and write in Portuguese and English? I know I love writing these cosmopolitan characters who speak multiple languages (Gitta, in “Errant” speaks seven) and that is because I secretly wish that I was this amazing polyglot like Raila and the people in my books. About Rampant, she writes:
Two other different and amazing and creative aspects of Rampant that I sincerely liked and feel like I need to point out are: first, the story is nearly entirely settled in Rome, and we get to visit through the characters’ eyes and steps museums and places I would love to go someday; second, in Rampant, it’s not the guy who is the mysterious and dangerous, it’s the girl—and it’s such a sweet part of the story, something I could read again and again.
And about Ascendant:
Well, the whole story is basically written based on the surprises Astrid faces, therefore I can not tell much or I might (sorry about the language) screw it up for you—though I don’t even think it’s possible since I sincerely loved this sequel and now want more! Because the ending left me sad sitting on my bed, and wondering a LOT, period! Overall, Ascendant is brilliant. I had no idea I was going to enjoy it so much as I did, nor find what I found. Astrid keeps being such a strong female protagonist, who grows on me by every chapter. I’m sincerely super looking forward to see what comes next in the series, how everything is going to be solved… or not.
I know I have said this before, but one of the best parts of being a writer for me is the moment when you really feel like a reader has connected to precisely what you were trying to create — the kernel behind the words on the page. They may like it, they may not, they may be confused or hurt or inspired by it, but since the point of my job, beyond entertainment, is communication, it warms the cockles of my heart to get the sense that I really connected with the reader in the way I intended to.
Last, but not least, we have The Ravenous Bookshelf. I met this blogger at ALA, and gave her a copy of ASCENDANT. And here’s what she has to say (It begins with “Diana Peterfreund certainly doesn’t pull her punches” which I think I want on the cover of the book):
It is a tribute to Astrid as heroine that I felt compelled to stick with her throughout all this horrible mess, even as she screws up and gets lost and hurts people she cares about — I just couldn’t leave her. Because she was doing the best she could and being strong and smart and funny despite it all and let me tell you that is a kickass heroine.
It’s awfully risky to have your main character go through the wringer, mostly because as readers we want to identify with our protagonist and no one likes having Life kick the snot out of them. But Life Happens, and props to Diana Peterfreund for developing this story in the way it should happen even if it means a rougher ride.
This review put a major smile on my face. The choices I made in Ascendant won’t please everyone, I know. When I told Sailor Boy of my dire plans for Astrid, he was very scared for her. But it’s a matter of being honest with your story, even if it’s hard. And being a unicorn hunter is very, very, very hard.
The comment thread on last week’s post regarding submitting your work regardless of what some other writer might say about its chances at publication has spawned a lot of interesting side discussions: about revising on the advice of an agent (who is not your agent), about what to do with a manuscript that seems too out of the box for the market, about the advisability of writing something that has a good chance of being out of the box, and many more topics that, although beyond the scope of THAT particular subject, are things that writers are deeply concerned with. Most recently, there was a comment from Beth Smith that naturally led into a post of its own:
“I suppose the next question is: to what extent should you think about marketing BEFORE you start the novel? Where do you draw the line between ‘protecting the work’ and not embarking upon a ‘hard-sell/no-sell’ project?”
The first thing you need to ask yourself is how you know it’s a hard sell project. I have two friends who happen to be New York Times Bestselling writers. Both landed on the Times list with books that were, pre publication, deemed “hard sell projects.” Friend #1 had this opinion of her project because she’d been trying to sell it for 10 years without much luck. It fell rather neatly between two very different genres. The publishers of the one genre told her it was too much like the other, and vice versa. They always cautioned her to remove the other element, to make it more fully of the genre they published. But she was in LOVE with this project and the marriage of the two genres, and so was everyone else who read it. One editor who read it was so in love with it, in fact, that a year after she initially turned it down, she dreamed up an innovative way to make it work in their publishing program. The book became a beloved bestseller.
Friend #2 had the opinion that her project was a “hard sell” for lord only knows what reason. Maybe someone on an internet forum told her that, since she hadn’t submitted it, so she had no professional opinion to go on. I know I certainly didn’t agree with the assessment. I was watching the zeitgeist carefully, and this fit right in. To be perfectly honest, I think she was afraid because she knew this one was “the one.” And it was, because she got an agent and a book deal in no time flat, and the book was a huge hit.
The moral of this story is: We’re not always as good a judge as we think we are. Friend #1 believed in her book. Believed in it more than I think I would have the power to believe in any of my books. Believed in it for ten years of disappointment. Friend #2 had to have some manipulative bitch secretly start submitting the book behind her back to get her off her ass. (Don’t worry, she thanks me now.)
And then there’s Friend #3. Friend #3 is not a bestselling author. However, she had a project she really believed in. A “book of her heart.” She tried to sell it for years to no avail. But she so cared for this project that although she continued to write far more profitable books, she put this book of her heart out through a small press, where it found a rabid niche audience and received several writing awards.
So… where do I draw the line? It depends on the book. If I were to write a “book of my heart” (which Julie Leto and Jo Beverly define in the above-linked article to mean “a book that invaded an author’s psyche so deeply, that she is ravenously compelled to write it, even if she knows it will not sell because it is not marketable. The book actually blocks the writer’s more commercial work”) then I don’t think anything would stop me from getting it out. But it hasn’t happened.
I love that Leto article. It pretty much describes my approach to my writing career. I don’t view this as a dichotomy. It’s not “book of your heart” vs. “book of your wallet.” For me, I love all my projects and they have all been a marriage of my writer brain and my business brain — they have been books that I know I could love and books that I thought would be marketable. That has been my luck.
Have I always been right? No. The fourth manuscript I wrote (the last one I wrote before selling Secret Society Girl, in fact) was a single title paranormal romance. This ms won a Molly Award, finaled in a bunch of other RWA contests, got a bunch of full requests from agents and editors, and was rejected by over 20 different illustrious members of the publishing world. To this day I cherish the rejection letter I got from one agent that explains to me that though well-written, the book possessed specific issues which would make it a hard sell in the paranormal romance market, and that it was her professional opinion that I’d be better off trying something else. I was not Friend #1, and this book was not Friend #1’s magnum opus. I chose to move on. Since the next book I wrote got an agent and a book deal in no time flat, I guess I made the right choice THAT time.
But, I wrote that book and edited it and submitted it and THEN figured out that I was barking up the wrong tree. That was seven years ago. Since I’d like to not repeat that mistake, now I try to figure out where my book might fit into the market before I spend a year writing and editing it. To do this, you must not only look at the books on the shelf (which might have been bought 2 years ago), you must see what is selling now. Today. You must subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace and see what people are buying RIGHT NOW. Do you happen to have a book idea that fits into that spectrum? Good. Now’s the time to write THAT book. Not some other book. THAT one.
I have lots of ideas. I keep a whole file of them. Sometimes ideas live inside that file forever with nowhere to go. The words “a retelling of Persuasion” have been in my idea file for years and years. About two years ago, the word “post-apocalyptic” somehow got jumbled up next to that idea, and they stuck. Last year, while casting around for something to write that wasn’t killer unicorns, I thought about that, thought about how much the YA market was loving its post-apocalyptic books, and decided that the time had come. That’s how I choose what projects to write. I look at the things I want to write, and then I pick the one that I think has the best potential on the marketplace.
The truth of the matter is that if we really really REALLY love a project, if it’s a “book of our hearts,” then whether or not it’s a hard sell doesn’t matter. In fact, we probably will never see it as a hard sell. Friends #1 and #3 were always mystified that the publishing world was unable to see their books’ potentials. In their own way, they were each right.
For me, the “hard sell” alarm is going to temper my love for the project. But I also know that one day there may come a book where I’m deaf to the alarms, just as my friends were.
And that’s a “your mileage may vary” situation, too. Some writers would say that I’m missing something if I don’t have some book that consumes my soul to write. Other writers would say that I concentrate too much on what I really want to write (like “weird” killer unicorn books), when I should just write a paranormal boyfriend love triangle like what’s burning up the bestseller list.
It’s possible that there are orphaned ideas in my file that would be big hits. Because here’s the flip side of this oh-so-eternal question. For every writer that has a beloved book be deemed a “hard sell”, there is another writer looking at the bestseller list or a big deal posting and going, “Wow, I totally had that idea.” But here’s what I think — we didn’t write it because we DIDN’T feel the love. We said to ourselves, “yeah, were-mosquitoes might be cool, but I’m really feeling that whole sea monsters in space thing right now.” And then, five years later when the writer of the were-mosquito book is jetting to and from her private island to Hollywood where her were-mosquito movie is being filmed, we’re happy, because we still love our sea monsters from outer space.
In case you didn’t see me totally geeking out on Twitter yesterday, my pal Carrie Ryan discovered that the “sample” they are displaying of the Kiss Me Deadly audio book is a sample of my story, “Errant.”
Kiss Me Deadly Sample
I’m still giddy about it. I’ve never heard my work read professionally before, and I think I would have killed to be a fly on the wall in that production meeting, where they said, “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s read the narrative in an American accent, and then do French accents for the French characters, you know, because they are French.”
(Even though they are ostensibly speaking in French. I always think it’s weird that whenever they do historical pictures, no matter what country they are supposed to be in, everyone speaks in English accents. Although I suppose Tom Hulce didn’t. Right? Now I can’t remember. Mozart was not a unicorn hunter.)
The sample does not include a sample of Gitta’s dialogue, so I don’t know if they have decided to do a German accent for her, or if they’ve decided to do an accent that is a mix of German and French, since it’s made clear in the book that her French has a tinge of German accent in it. She speaks French throughout most of the story (a few lines of German when she’s speaking to the unicorn and once when she’s praying, which I know is unusual given that she’s a pre-Vatican II nun and should probably be speaking in Latin, but I decided that it illustrated Gitta’s emotional state as well as her own sense of spirituality). Gitta does, in fact, speak seven languages.
But how AWESOME is that? I called everyone I knew and made them listen to it right away. I can’t wait to hear the whole thing (apparently the audio isn’t releasing for another week — sad face). Given that this is an anthology, I am waaaaaaaaay down on the totem pole, so I had nothing to do with the making of this audio book. I am buying it when it comes out next week, just like everyone else. And then I’m putting it on my iPod, possibly on repeat.
There is an actress reading my short story. She was paid to do this. She was paid to give Elise an adorable little French accent that makes her sound like Jim Dale doing Fleur Delacour Weasely and though I have listened to this sample like ten times already, I don’t think it will ever make me stop giggling.
I don’t know if I’m just easily amused or what, but this is one of those cool authorial moments. My words, performed. With accents I never even imagined.
/geekout
Starting next week, I have a book (or two) out every month until November. Yikes! Four of these releases are about killer unicorns: “Errant” in Kiss Me Deadly next week, the Rampant paperback at the end of August (with new material! tell your friends!), “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” in Zombies vs. Unicorns at the end of September, and Ascendant on October 1st). I am currently recording a podcast to promote Ascendant. My promotional world is all killer unicorns all the time, which is funny, because my creative world is all about celestial navigation and genetic engineering and post-apocalyptic societal structures.
If I thought it was hard to write series and to perpetually be one book ahead of my readers, it’s REALLY hard to get my head inside Astrid’s and killer unicorns when I’m writing a character that’s so very different from her and lives in a world so phenomenally altered.
But it’s a good problem to have, so I can’t complain. I’m excited that there’s so many killer unicorns descending this fall. I’m also excited to be writing this new book and this new world and these new characters.
And I’m super-super excited that I’ve got two short stories coming out, and that people are responding to them. Today, I saw Ana the Booksmuggler’s review of Kiss Me Deadly, in which she had this to say about “Errant”:
Part of Peterfreund’s Unicorn Hunters series, Errant is set in the 18th century France when a nun , sister Gitta (a Unicorn Hunter) , accompanied by her unicorn, arrives at a chateau just before the wedding of a girl named Elise. As part of the celebration, a traditional Unicorn Hunt is to be enacted with Gitta’s help. This story is excellent as it develops, quite well these two characters. Starting with animosity from Gitta’s side – her frustration with these people and this girl who know nothing about tradition and sacrifice, except yes, yes she does and Gitta slowly realises that and the relationship that builds between the two girls is incredible. There is a communion of spirits between them (and the unicorn) and I would like to use the author’s own words to describe this story: “18th century French feminist killer unicorn story about a nun and a bride and a forest full of monsters.”
Perfect. 8 out of 10
She loved a lot of the other stories, too. so make sure to check it out next month. I’ve only read Carrie Ryan’s and Sarah Rees Brennan’s so far, and I definitely agree with Ana’s assessment on those, so I can highly recommend this collection.
I got a letter from an aspiring writer the other day with a question about the marketability of her work. Basically, she’d written a book that might be sold as an adult novel or as a YA novel. She’d written it as a YA novel, though, and was concerned when a bunch of other writers (who hadn’t read her book) told her they thought it would be a hard sell in that market. So she wrote to ask my opinion.
My opinion was, in short, that given that neither I nor these writers had read her work, and given that neither I nor these other writers were in any position to publish her work, that what we might say on the matter wasn’t worth a whole lot. The only person whose opinion actually matters is the editor who has received the book as a submission. And, given that the work was written and edited, there is absolutely nothing to lose than trying to get it to one of those editors.
The writer wrote back to me to say that her next step was to get a few more reads by critique partners so that she could get more opinions about how best to market it.
Not to get all Dean Wesley Smith here, but as great as I think critique partners are (and I do think they are great) they are helpful in an editorial way. NOT in a marketing way. They are writers. They are NOT in any position to buy your book, or to sell it to publishers. In the end, the only person whose opinion about the marketability of your book that matters is the one holding the checkbook.
(And, for those of you without agents, let me tell you: there will be times when you disagree with your agent. When you send them a project that you think is great and they tell you they don’t think they can sell it. And then it’s up to you to decide if you’re going to agree with them and try something else, get a new agent to sell it, or sell it on your own, or what. I’ve known folks who left agents over projects that the agent wouldn’t sell that went on to become NYT bestsellers. I also know writers who thank their agents every day for steering them away from projects that would have been a bad move for them.)
So if this is a book that is written and edited and polished, then stop asking other writers what their opinion is as to its marketability. Other writers can’t do anything for you. FIND AN AGENT who can sell your work to an editor. Agents can be much better than you at figuring out where your book best fits in the market. Maybe they had lunch with an editor the other day who said, “I’m looking for a book just like XYZ.”
When I sent the proposal to Secret Society Girl to my agent, I called it a YA novel. My agent in her infinite wisdom said, “Hey, I bet an adult house would really go for this.” And they did.One of the reasons writers need agents is that agents can sometimes see better ways to position a book than a writer can. It’s their job to do so. And sometimes, what is a YA novel in one market is not a YA novel in another. The Curious Instance of the Dog in the Night-time is a YA novel in the UK and an adult novel here. There are other books that are vice versa (like the Book Thief).
Here’s a short list of best selling, award winning, and critically acclaimed YA novels that have come out recently that, according to articles or blog entries I’ve read about their inception, either began life as adult novels in the writer’s brain or were originally marketed as adult novels before being sold or marketed as YA novels: The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare, Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert, Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr, Madapple by Christina Meldrun, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes (ETA: Shadowed Summer, by Saundra Mitchell)…. guys, the list goes on and on.
And what you take away from this is that sometimes, what “the market” is is only definable by what one particular editor at one particular house decides he or she wants to pay money for. We’ve all read books where we thought, “What brain donor paid money for THIS?” Heck, we’ve all read bestsellers where we thought that. But someone holding a checkbook thought it was marketable, and they were right. Which shows what I know.
I repeat: If you’ve written and polished the book, what a bunch of writers think about its marketability is not important. Submitting it is the only way you can get a real answer.
But, you may ask, how can I submit it without knowing where exactly it fits in the market? But that’s the best part! You can submit it to both places! You might be scared, because you’ve read agent blogs where they complain about having completely inappropriate work submitted to them (Vietnam-era sex memoirs to a YA agent) — but your situation doesn’t apply. In good faith you are submitting to a YA agent a book that you think is a YA novel. She might agree with you. She might not. In good faith you are submitting to an adult agent a book that you think is an adult novel. He might agree with you. He might not. It’s no different than you submitting this book believing that it’s the best book ever — they might agree with you, they might not. And what do you do if the agent reps both kinds of books?
“Dear Agent, I am seeking representation for my book TITLE, which is a blankety-blank thousand word novel about blah blah blah.”
Yes, if you are CERTAIN that you are writing a young adult contemporary fantasy adventure or a hard sci fi space book or a cookbook, or a memoir, or a memoir about a cookbook, then say that. But if you aren’t, there’s no rule saying you have to. To start with, an agent might disagree with you (mine did). Also, if you put yourself in a box from the beginning, an agent’s thought process might not even get so far as to disagree with you — he or she might just say, “Oh, I don’t think this works as a YA — reject.” But there’s no rule that says you have to check every single little box about your novel before you submit it. It’s okay to say “a novel” and let the agent decide that it’s a paranormal historical romance.
The important thing to remember is not to take yourself out of the game. Don’t avoid submitting a finished, polished novel because some writer who has no ability to pay you any money for said novel has told you a priori that it’s unmarketable. And if you get a bunch of rejections from YA agents or houses saying this isn’t a YA novel, then maybe look on the bright side of that — perhaps it’s an adult novel. Try submitting it there.
ETA: I’m bringing up Julie Leto’s comment here because it’s just so darn good:
“It kind of perplexes me when writers will come up with a thousand and one excuses for not actually submitting their work. Rejection doesn’t kill. All successful authors have had their share of rejections. If JK Rowling had worried about marketability, she never would have found a publisher for Harry Potter.
“I think some writers become so obsessed with getting it all “right” (to that dreaded rejection) that they make elemental mistakes. There’s one thing to research the market…but it’s quite another to use the market as an excuse not to submit.”
This is so true. When it gets to the point that you’re just asking a bunch of other writers for their opinion about something you haven’t submitted — this is different than “can you crit my work, can you help me with my query” — then what you’re really doing is called stalling.
Accept the fact that you WILL get rejections. EVERYONE gets rejections. You have to learn to accept rejections, because let me tell you, the number of rejections you get before a book sells? NOTHING compared to the number you get after a book sells. Afterward, you get rejectiosn from: 1) foreign markets, 2) Hollywood, 3) Any media outlet who passes on doing a story on your book, 4) Bloggers 5) random people on the internet with Goodreads, Twitter, and Amazon accounts, 6) and every single person in the world who does not buy or read your book. Get used to it now. Accept the fact that every rejection is nothing more than one person’s opinion. There could be 99 agents who tell you your work isn’t marketable, and one agent who says, “I can sell this to an editor with a checkbook” and does. Whose opinion matters there?
ETA: Also, everyone read Saundra MItchell’s follow-up post on the subject, because she had a similar experience.
As part of the 2010 Romance Writers of America Conference, I will be participating in a book signing on Orlando, Florida next week. Pretty sure I’ll be signing RAMPANT, but you can bring your own books for signing as well.
The 2010 “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing takes place on Wednesday, July 28, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Walt Disney World® Dolphin Resort, Pacific Exhibit Hall, in Orlando, Florida. This event is open to the public; there is no admittance charge.
The list of authors who will be there is here.
Thanks to Twitter, I came across a blog post by one Racecar Brown referencing one of my earlier rants diatribes explorations of the topic of bad boys and nice guys in fiction. And, naturally, I was reminded that I never did finish that series. I suppose that’s a good thing, as now, in the midst of an entirely new book, with a very different sort of romantic pairing than I’ve ever written before, my thoughts have changed again.
Racecar Brown talks mainly about the intense fan reaction to two odious but popular characters: Chuck Bass of the Gossip Girl television show, and Draco Malfoy of Harry Potter. I am most of the way through the second season of Gossip Girl now, and I think Chuck falls on the “love to hate him” side of the spectrum. He’s awful, and he whores around, and etc., but leaving aside the pilot episode in which he tries to rape both Jenny and Serena, his “awfulness” is mostly posited as a sort of rich guy boredom. This is the dude that flies in high priced call girls from Asia — usually two at a time. He opens strip clubs, he takes dirty pictures of Skull & Bones members who try to get him to hurt his friend, and, in a total 180 from his behavior in the pilot, he drops off an underage girl who is throwing herself at him in his limo.
Sailor Boy says that you should usually take everything you see in the pilot of a television show with a grain of salt. The characters aren’t really set yet. How often have you gone back to see the pilot of a show you loved and been like — wait, who IS that person? So I’m willing to give the Gossip Girl people a pass with the whole Chuck Bass: Rapist thing — at least, as far as I’ve seen the show (I just watched the Snowflake Ball episode where Jenny puts Vanessa in the see-through dress.) So I agree with Racecar on that one. The pilot is the problem. He gets it together later on — which is not unlike what the Veronica Mars people do with Logan, though aside from the bum fights and the whole [spoiler spoiler spoiler] at Carrie Bishop’s party, most of what he does isn’t too heinous (and is in fact very similar to Veronica’s shenanigans, and even those two things are certainly no worse than what Weevil pulls. Remember, he and Veronica were actually friends before Lilly died.
(I actually started watching Gossip Girl because I got so many letters from readers saying that Chuck Bass reminds them of Poe and now, having seen it, I can honestly say — Whaaaaaaa? They are both manipulative and given to cruelty, but loyal to the people they love, I’ll grant you that. But Chuck’s every action and entire lifestyle comes from a place of enormous privilege — no one has ever said no to him, and he is depraved because he’s so rich that he’s bored. He is a modern day Valmont. Poe is…. none of those things. His cruelty and manipulation actually come from the fact that he was not born into privilege and he feels he constantly has to fight for it, prove it, and hold on to it by any means necessary. And he isn’t bored because he does have to work so hard ot get what he has — as well as to protect himself from any idea that he might not deserve it. So… I don’t really see it. George and Chuck have more in common, except George is too happy go lucky. A bit more like Nate, perhaps.)
The other example of excessive fan-love Racecar points to is Draco Malfoy. Now, though a fan of Harry Potter, I’ve never participated in the vast, vast world of Harry Potter fandom. I’ve never read the fanfic that some of my writer friends are actually famous for. I don’t know what people like in Harry Potter fandom. I’ve read the books, I’ve watched the movies, I have a Griffindor t-shirt and a sorting hat keychain. That’s it. The nearest brush I ever came to was when a writer friend of mine were at Dragon*Con last year and she went to a panel with Tom Felton on it. Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy in the movies, is I’m sure a very nice young man, and he’s certainly an excellent actor. He was apparently discussing on the panel how a lot of times, the actors visit children’s hospitals and the like on goodwill tours, and he feels bad because the children always want to see the folks who play the “good guys” but never him.
However, this is not the case with the fandom. They love Draco Malfoy. Sometimes they may love him a little too much, as my friend who attended the panel told me that someone came up to him and asked him to autograph a photo she had, which was an erotic photo with his and Daniel Radcliffe’s heads photoshopped onto the bodies of naked men. Understandably, this 22 year old young man refused to do so, which apparently made the fan very upset. But I don’t blame Tom Felton at all. That was not a picture of him and why should he “legitimize” a fake naked photo of himself by signing it? Draco Malfoy may be a fictional being that you can do whatever you want with, but Tom Felton is a real person.
Apparently, even JK Rowling is of the opinion that people’s obsession with Draco is a product of their confusing Felton, who imbues his character with pathos (and good looks) with the very bad person that Rowling created in the book.
“People have been waxing lyrical [in letters] about Draco Malfoy, and I think that’s the only time when [pulling for a certain relationship] stopped amusing me and started almost worrying me. I’m trying to clearly distinguish between Tom Felton, who is a good-looking young boy, and Draco, who, whatever he looks like, is not a nice man. It’s a romantic, but unhealthy, and unfortunately all too common delusion of girls that they are going to change someone.”
(And yet, Malfoy gets off scot-free in the books. I never understood that.)
As I said in my previous post, I was never into the fantasy of the bad boy. I don’t buy that we can really change someone. There’s a part in Pride & Prejudice where Elizabeth explains to Mr. Wickham that Mr. Darcy improves upon acquaintance, but not in “essentials.” She is saying to him that she now understands that Darcy is prickly, closed-off, etc. but essentially, he’s a stand-up guy. (Also that she knows Wickham is lying about Darcy, but that’s a whole other thing.) But that is pretty much where I draw the line, too. I’m okay with bad boys who are essentially okay.
Darcy is not changed by Elizabeth, except in the minor way that he realizes he needs to stop being such a snob. His changing is not from cruelty to kindness, but from impoliteness toward people of a lesser social station to politeness. Still, this is not a major change in who he is. Yes, now he can be friends with Mr. Gardiner. But one imagines that, had he met Mr. Gardiner before, he would not have been cruel to him, but perfectly cordial and distant.
I think we can all agree that getting a snob to lighten up is on a whole different scale than getting an accessory to murder/attempted murderer (which Draco Malfoy is) to “change.”
Jane Austen loved writing about the bad boy/nice guy dichtomy. There’s one in almost all of her books. Yes, even Persuasion. But enough about that for now.
As I may have mentioned, I have my first professionally-published short story coming out next month. It’s called “Errant” and it is part of Trisha Telep’s KISS ME DEADLY anthology. It’s also the subject of what may be the best Kirkus review I’ve ever received:
Can true love die if you’re already dead? This tantalizing collection of 13 short stories by some of the best writers of paranormal fiction in the United States and Great Britain explores “the other side of love.” Whether it’s an old-fashioned ghost story, as in Caitlin Kittredge’s “Behind the Red Door,” in which Jo wonders about the dashing resident of an abandoned house and a string of mysterious murders; a story with a twist, as in Michelle Rowen’s “Familiar,” in which a reluctant witch discovers that her chosen pet is a shapeshifter in disguise; or a story with dark humor, as in Sarah Rees Brennan’s “The Spy Who Never Grew Up,” in which a slightly older Peter Pan connects with Wendy’s granddaughter to fight evil in Her Majesty’s Secret Service, each story features a paranormal kiss. Fans who can’t get enough of their favorite authors will also be thrilled to find a back story to Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth, a Generation Dead companion by Daniel Waters and more killer unicorns from Diana Peterfreund.
I was reading my pal Sarah Rees Brennan’s blog the other day, and she mentioned that her story was a “very weird story in a super-romantic anthology” (she neglected to mention that it was fourteen varieties of awesome), which is funny, because I wonder sometimes how “Errant” will come across to people in terms of the anthology as a whole and especially to those who have never read my books before.
“Errant” is actually a bit of an outlier in terms of my fiction. It is written in dueling third person narrative, and it’s a historical, unlike all five of my published novels (or the sixth that’s coming out this fall). Though it’s set in the same world as Rampant and Ascendant, it stands alone and takes place almost three hundred years ago. Since I often read reviews of Rampant whereby the readers express initial surprise that the book is NOT set in historical times (My favorite line in that review: “Though now I have to reflect – why is it that werewolves and vampires have become normal, but killer unicorns make me hesitate?“), I wonder if readers who come to my unicorn books after having read only “Errant” are going to be more likely to startle at see Astrid using a cell phone in chapter one.
I am fortunate in that I’ve been given two opportunities to write for anthologies this year where I could write stories set in the killer unicorn world. With Zombies vs. Unicorns, which is the one I wrote first (even though it’s coming out a month later), it was a no-brainer. Since I was definitely writing about unicorns, it only made sense to write about my unicorns. With Kiss Me Deadly, my editor asked if I wanted to write about unicorns, because she was trying to compile a range of paranormal creatures in the antho. Since I talk so much about the historical hunters in my full-length books, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to showcase one of their stories.
Some writers in the antho (like the aforementioned Sarah), wrote utterly stand-alone short stories, while others (like Carrie Ryan) set their anthology stories in their respective full-length worlds. Carrie, I think, has an easier time presenting relatively “historical” stories — a few of hers are set hundreds of years before the setting in her books — because of the post-apocalyptic nature of her world. Her historicals are really contemporaries, or near-futuristics, while her regular books are “far-futuristic.” Additionally, most folks who read apocalyptic or “dystopian” novels are reading specifically to draw comparisons between our world and the world in the book — to figure out how they got there. My “historicals” are exactly that — “Errant” is set in 18th century France. However, a running theme in Rampant and Ascendant is the idea of lost knowledge and how the actions and philosophies of the historical unicorn hunters have left a legacy on the modern world and the characters in it. I want readers to be curious about the old hunters, and in “Errant” I get to present someone who has lived the life that Astrid and her friends are questioning, and show how, as times change, the acceptability and even desirability of that lifestyle can also change.
We recently received our first blog review for Kiss Me Deadly, from Lexie at Poisoned Rationality. About “Errant” she writes:
“This is set in her Unicorn Hunters Universe, which I haven’t read. Gitta arrives at the chateau for the traditional Unicorn Hunt to celebrate Elise’s upcoming marriage, but in a household of secrets no one wants what they say they want. This didn’t read like a short story to me, it read more like a novel. The pacing wasn’t rushed, the two characters who meant something–Gitta and Elise–were both well developed and quite a bit happened in the relatively few pages. The ‘love’ in this story is less of a romantic nature and more of kindred spirits I think.”
I really liked this. One of the big complaints i often read about short stories is that the writers tried to do too much with too little space, so the fact that this reader thought my story was very full and rich without being rushed makes me very happy. This whole short story thing is a new medium for me.
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