Today marks the release of my SIXTH novel, ASCENDANT!
Unless this is your first time at my site (why, hello there!) you already know ASCENDANT is the sequel to RAMPANT, a young adult contemporary fantasy about killer unicorns. Perhaps you’ve even read it.(If not, you totally should — it’s out in paperback now.)
I can’t believe I have six novels out. Six pretty, pretty novels. I pet them. Here is a picture of me petting them.
And here’s a picture of them with my pet.
See what I did there?
Anyway, in honor of the release of my new book, ASCENDANT, I’m giving it away. Right here, right now.
Leave your name in the comments section to be entered.
Meanwhile, I’m announcing the winner of last week’s ZOMBIES VS UNICORNS giveaway, and that winner is SARAH MAE AT COMMENT #12. Sarah Mae, email me with your address to receive your prize.
As previously mentioned, tonight I will be appearing at a Zombies vs. Unicorns panel at the Baltimore Book Festival alongside editors Holly Black and Justine Larbelestier, and fellow contributors Kathleen Duey, Carrie Ryan, and Scott Westerfeld (a little birdie told me Sarah Rees Brennan might be in the audience. I’m just saying…) Click on the link above for all the info about where and when.
Come see the zombies go DOWN!
There will be copies of Zombies vs. Unicorns on hand for your purchasing and having-autographed pleasure, as well as — and hold on to your hats, folks: EARLY COPIES OF ASCENDANT. I know! It’s not even out until next week, and I have managed to arrange for COPIES FOR YOU.*
And why do you want to read Ascendant? Well, take a gander at what some of hte bloggers who got their hands on the ARCs have had to say:
Ascendant blew me away. I didn’t think it could be any better than the first, but wow. Everything was heightened and way more intense- the sexual tension, the action, the emotion. I finished this book with a heavy breath…Ascendant is a mind-blowing sequel and I applaud Diana for hooking me so deeply. I devoured the entire book in only a few short hours because I literally could not put it down. If you’re a fan of the first, do not waste any time reading this when it comes out. I absolutely loved it!
After reading Rampant, I was so pumped for Ascendant. Astrid came back just as awesome. She was just as brave and strong as the first book, but now she has a fraction of doubt about what she is doing…Peterfreund’s writing was stunning and ingenious. I could picture every move on the battle scene. I loved Ascendant, more then Rampant. It was unpredictable and ingenious. I think that you should start this series soon, I am sure that you will not regret it.
I reviewed the first book in this series Rampant earlier this summer. Ascendant blew it out of the water. The way Peterfeund writes Astrid’s transformation throughout the book is at times so heart-wrenching and beautiful that I actually felt tears spring to my eyes. I fell in love with Astrid in a way that I wouldn’t have thought possible after reading the first book. By the end I was SO SAD that it was over!
I am having a really hard time writing this review because A) I don’t want to reveal too much and B) right now, having literally just finished it, all I can think or say is Oh. My. God. This book was AWESOME! I was torn between feeling bad for Astrid, wanting to “stop being an idiot!”, and wanting to cry for the unicorns. So I will just say this, if you have read Rampant, you MUST read Ascendant. This book brings adventure, emotion, and most of all answers that you will NEVER believe! Hats off to Diana Peterfreund. You, Madame, are an AMAZING storyteller and I look forward to reading anything and everything you write.
Ascendant, which is the sequel to Rampant, was not what I was expecting. Rampant was filled to the brim with action whereas Ascendant was more filled with emotions and introspection. It wasn’t JUST an entertaining read…it really made me think about the ethics of it all (killing unicorns, experimenting on them, capturing them)…Astrid begins to connect with unicorns on another level which begins her questioning her dedication to hunting and living the life that she was thrust into. There are some moments that truly made my heart feel heavy. It is easy to sympathize with Astrid. All the hunters have had to give up so much, but Astrid is expected to live up to the Llewellyn name and it seems an impossible task. This book isn’t just about killer unicorns, it is about strong women who are finding themselves and learning to fight for what they believe in.
If you want a novel that will suck you in with action, adventure and a little unicorn killing then Ascendant is the book for you! Diana Peterfreund takes on the ride of a lifetime with the sequel to Rampant. Astrid is back with even more drama in her life. I was really intrigued by this novel and thoroughly enjoyed it.
And don’t take their word for it. You can read a big excerpt yourself at the Harper Collins website:
It’s been a pretty good week. A starred review in School Library Journal for ZvU that says I “wow readers”, the announcement of my long-secret secret project, news from my editor as of yesterday that Morning Glory has ALREADY gone back for a second printing (a month before release!), Carrie Ryan coming into town for a visit, and topping off with what I’m sure will be an awesome panel…
I wonder what amazing development next week will bring?
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* Although I did get an email yesterday from a reader who says he spotted a copy in a midwest Borders. So apparently there are a few trickling out.
The news is out, and apparently my agent already has her hands on a hot copy, so I suppose I can finally, finally share the news I’ve been keeping to myself for nine months:
My SECOND full-length book this year……. ::Drumroll, please::
Yes, that’s Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, and Diane Keaton on there. MORNING GLORY is a new movie coming out this November from Paramount Pictures. It’s produced by JJ Abrams (Lost, Alias, Fringe, Star Trek) and written by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada screenplay, 27 Dresses). I adapted the novel from the screenplay. The book will hit stores on October 19th.
Here’s the trailer for the film:
Now, to answer a few of the questions I know are coming…
Is this a work for hire?
Yes. I do not own the copyright to this book. It is Aline Brosh McKenna’s original idea and work. I merely adapted it for the page.
Have you met anyone involved in the film?
Nope. I was given a copy of one of the shooting scripts (watermarked with my name) to use as reference when writing the novel. When there were discrepancies between that script and the final cut of the film, I was asked to make edits. I’d love to meet people.
Have you seen the film?
No, but I’ve seen the trailer, a bunch of still shots, and one tiny scene some dude illegally recorded with his cell phone at an early screening and uploaded to You Tube. I can’t wait to go see it, though! It looks great.
How did you get this job?
My editor for the Secret Society Girl books thought I’d be a good fit for the project because of the tone and character of Becky (Rachel McAdams’s scrappy and capable up-and-coming television news producer). The script has the same irreverent yet poignant tone and larger-than-life hijinks I targeted in the Secret Society Girl books. She pitched it to me and me to Paramount. Fortunately, we all agreed.
You have always done original work before this. Why work for hire?
Why not? The truth is that there are lots of kinds of writing that I’ve “never done before” but would leap at the chance to do if anyone was interested in letting me. This year, I’ve also published my first short stories, which was something else I’ve never done before, but I had a total blast. I’ve also sold my first science fiction book and my first retelling. As for the novelization, I loved the chance to be able to adapt someone else’s characters and words, to try to do justice to the story they told and the way they wanted things presented. I probably would never have written a character like Becky all by myself, but to write her through the eyes of the screenwriter who did allowed me to stretch my own wings in terms of character creation. I learned a lot by forcing myself into those constraints, and I also learned a lot by deconstructing such a fine screenplay. To write such an adaptation was on my writer’s goal list. Check.
There are three additional reasons I took this job. 1) Yay! A job! Freelancers like me like that. 2) It was a REALLY good screenplay. Of course I loved Aline Brosh McKenna’s other films, so I had a hunch this one would be great too, but this screenplay made me laugh out loud several times. I wanted to be able to translate some of that wit to novel form. 3) I love working with my brilliant Random House editor, and this was a great opportunity to do another project with her.
I don’t live in America. Where can I get this book?
Currently, Czech, Polish, Korean, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Spanish rights have sold for this book. Everyone in the US and Canada, though, can buy it on October 19th.
(First: the winner of the Worldbuilding Q&A giveaway is alaska! Alaska, email me and tell me your address and whether or not you want Rampant or Ascendant. To everyone else, I’m still answering questions, but I’ve been a bit tied up. so I’ll answer the rest of them in separate blog posts instead of the comments thread. Keep an eye out.)
ZVU was a total labor of love for everyone involved. I remember when Justine first told me about the idea, and I was holding my breath and crossing my fingers that not only would she be able to sell it, but that I might be able to contribute. Last spring, I was given the go-ahead, and I wrote my first short story since college (not counting the Secret Stories). “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” is an origin story for one of my unicorn hunters. I got the idea from a line in RAMPANT, though you don’t need to have read RAMPANT to enjoy “Care and Feeding…” and the story doesn’t actually have anything to do with that line.
And I’m glad that so many other people love the story as much as I do. To date, the collection has received two starred reviews, from Publisher’s Weekly and now, from School Library Journal:
“Diana Peterfreund wows readers by delving again into the dark world of Rampant (HarperTeen, 2009) with “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn,” proving Astrid is not the only strong female hunter out there.” — SLJ
And the bloggers have been weighing in as well:
“I am ashamed to not have read any of Diana’s work sooner. It’s funny. And interesting. The world of Your Killer Baby Unicorn is totally awesome, and I have missed out. Unicorns with fangs and secret unicorn-killing-squadrons run by nuns in Italy? HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THAT? … One of the best unicorn stories in the set.” — Dreaming in Books
“My favorites were Maureen Johnson’s “Children of the Revolution”, which is about a girl minding the children of an eccentric celebrity, Scott Westerfield’s “Inoculata”, which takes place on a southern farm surrounded by zombies, Libba Bray’s “Prom Night”, about kids trying to have a prom night in the after math of a zombie apocalypse, and Diana Peterfreund’s “The Care and Feeding of Your Killer Baby Unicorn.”” — The Bodacious Pen
“Now, Team Unicorn, don’t get your panties in a twist. I loved the Unicorn stories too. How could I not when authors like Diana Peterfreund and Meg Cabot are writing them. Anyway, Ms. Peterfreund wrote about a young girl who saves a baby unicorn. I enjoyed Wendy so much that I hope we see more of her. Maybe in book 3 of the Killer Unicorn series?! We NEED more! Also, awesome, but totally hilarious was Meg Cabot’s Princess Prettypants. Which was about a typical unicorn that farts rainbows and smells like a florist shop. So funny! So if you fall into either category, unicorn or zombie lover, you’re sure to find something that tickles you fancy in Zombie vs. Unicorns. I highly recommend it for a good laugh, or a good scare. Keep it on your bookshelves for a rainy day, you’ll love it!” – Cry Havoc Reviews
“The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn by Diana Peterfreund. Team Unicorn. 4 ♥ / 5 ♥
I need to go read Rampant as soon as possible. Killer Unicorns, and the girls that hunt them…it’s like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but with unicorns. Wen is a unicorn hunter (not that she’s practicing) that suddenly finds herself caring for a newborn unicorn. The indecision that she feels comes through loud and clear. Clean writing and some awesome new unicorn lore and background makes this story of taming a killer unicorn an incredibly interesting one.” — Escape Through the Pages
“Favorite Unicorn Story: The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn by Diana Peterfreund. I’ve been wanting to start this killer unicorn series after raves from Lori and Candace, and this just makes me want to read it even more. Scary, action-packed, and wonderful.” — Reading Angel
“I loved the commentary that was between Black and Larbelestier. It was full of snarky and funny remarks. It also gave a brief glance into what the story was about, before you read it. I liked that it switched between Unicorn and Zombie stories. “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” by Diana Peterfreund was my favorite story, but I love her novels about killer unicorns.” — Sarah’s Random Musings
“The stories I did really enjoy were The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn by Diana Peterfreund, Princess Prettypants by Meg Cabot, and Cold Hands by Cassandra Clare. I really got into all of the characters and the plot in just the short stories that they were in….In The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn, I loved Wen. I loved how she followed what she felt was right, even though she had been raised to believe that unicorns were evil.” — So Many Books, So Little Time
“I devoured this story with fangirlish glee. I also have a bit of an obsession with exotic animals and their training, especially animals of the intelligent variety (y’all know I have Chocobo, an African Grey parrot, right?) so this story was a total win” — Cassandra Yorgey for Examiner.com
““The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” by Diana Peterfreund hopefully is a segue to her new book! It was awesome!” — Bitten by Books
“After reading this short story I really want to read Rampant and find out more about the unicorn lore and the world of unicorn hunters.” — Dreaming of Books
And now for the giveaway. As simple as can be — just leave a comment here, and you, too, can win a copy. Have at it!
Last night, my pal Pam Bachorz and I were supposed to participate in a chat on worldbuilding at yalitchat.org. Unfotunately, neither Pam nor I are a member of that particular organization. We were confused and thought we were participating in a Twitter chat using the hashtag #yalitchat. Oops.
Anyway, I felt bad that we missed out on the chat and so I thought I’d give anyone who wanted to chat and wasn’t able to the opportunity to try again. So this week on the blog we’ll be doing a worldbuilding Q&A. Go ahead and ask your questions in the comments, and I’ll answer them in the comments. And maybe Pam will come by, too. I don’t know. I haven’t asked her yet.
And to make it extra fun, I thought we could do a giveaway. Everyone who asks a question is entered into a contest to win either a copy of RAMPANT or ASCENDANT (winner’s choice).
Before we start, I thought I’d give a little overview about my personal take on worldbuilding. Worldbuilding, in my mind, is not something that belongs solely to the realm of speculative and paranormal fiction. It’s something that every writer worth his or her salt engages in. Intricacies of setting, of the relationships between characters, of the world they live in — that’s all worldbuilding. If you set your story in an office building and the office manager decrees that Fridays are casual dress days, that’s worldbuilding — you know why? Because then when you have your main character score an interview for a much better job on a Friday afternoon, you have to find a way for her to sneak her suit in so everyone else in jeans doesn’t get suspicious about what shes up to. Which brings me to:
Diana’s Personal Worldbuilding Rule #1:There must be rules.
Vampires are allergic to sunlight. People who know how to use The Force can move things with their minds. You can use magic to do anything but bring people back from the dead (this appears to be one of the few rules in the Harry Potter universe). “There can be only one.” I don’t care what the rules are, and I don’t care if the reader knows them all — or any of them. Maybe figuring out the rules is part of the fun of reading. (Wait, I take that back. Tell the reader at least one or more of the rules. Give the poor guy a toehold!) But the writer had better know the rules. Which leads me to…
Diana’s Personal Worldbuilding Rule #2:Break the rules only at great peril — and if you have it under control.
The best known examples of doing this the right way are in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy used to explain the rule of its world in the start of every episode: “Into every generation is born a slayer, one girl who has the power to blah blah blah the vampires.” ONE. One Slayer. If Buffy dies, a new slayer is called. That’s the rule. Except, Buffy brilliantly bends that rule, because prophecies are for losers. People don’t die the way they used to, and what’s technically “dead” isn’t permanent in today’s world. So when Buffy briefly drowns at the end of the first season, another slayer is activated. And then there are two, which makes for a LOT of lovely plot twists in seasons two, three, and four, when you see what happens when two very different slayers are at odds with one another.* And then they break the rule all over again in Season 7 when Buffy decides that the whole idea of a bunch of potentials waiting around for a Slayer to die is ridiculous, and gives them ALL Slayer powers, which leads to a big awesome battle at the end of Season 7, and which I’m sure leads to some good plot twists in the comic books — I haven’t read them — but did lead to one very interesting episode of Angel wherein Angel and Spike are forced to battle a crazy and abused Slayer. So yes — that one broke the rules in a good way.
But, you have to lay the groundwork for breaking that rule. You have to have Buffy go, “Let’s cross the streams and see what happens,” (another excellent rule-breaking moment). It has to be important and it has to be game-changing. Otherwise, you’re going to alienate your reader. You’re going to have midichlorians on your hands, or you’re going ot have that random moment where Neo controls the robots in the real world and then NEVER DEAL WITH IT EVER** and your die-hard fans are going to be saying, WTF, George Lucas? WTF, Wachowskis?
So, to reiterate, if you’re going to break the rules, you better know what the rules are, how you plan to break them, and how you plan for that to complete change the game in the world you’ve created. Which leads me to
Diana’s Personal Worldbuilding Rule #3:There must be a reason.
Not only must there be rules, there has to be a reason for those rules. It doesn’t have to be a good reason, or a fair reason. (The rules in my killer unicorn world are misogynistic and dangerous, and that’s kind of the point for me.) But there has to be a reason, if only because you must have a reason to mention every thing you mention. There has to be a reason you made them vampires. If not, why aren’t they just men, or elves, or ageless liver-eating mutants who live in air ducts? If there’s a magic wishing well on the princess’s property, she’d better, at some point, do something more than draw water from it. This is not unlike my favorite advice from Chekov about the gun on the wall. There HAS to be a reason. There has to be a reason that you made the choice you did. Sometime in the future, I will be discussing this in great detail. And there must be a reason that your magical element has the rules it does. It doesn’t have to be a good reason. Maybe the vampires in your book are not allergic to garlic, but you wrote that in because you really like the idea of Dracula working in a pizza parlor and taking a nip of the guests who’ve had too much chianti, which, naturally, wouldn’t be possible if they couldn’t deal with garlic. In the movie The Lost Boys, there’s a rule that says there are “half-vampires” who have all the qualities of vampires but don’t become full-fledged until they kill someone, and can be turned back if you find the head vampire and kill him. This is a weird and unusual vampire rule (though not entirely unlike Mina Harker’s experiences in Dracula, where she is freed from her trance only after the death of Dracula), but is very important to the plot, since the main character is one of these half-vamps, and so is his sexy girlfriend.
And here’s an example of how solid worldbuilding can help you in your writing. In an early, early draft of Rampant, (it wasn’t even going to be called Rampant then) I had magical closets. That’s right: magical closets. The characters could stand in front of the closets and think about certain things and when they opened the closet doors, the things they needed would be inside. This had a lot of backlash for them, in that if they stood in front of the closet and thought about how dangerous unicorn hunting was and about all the hunters who came before them who’d probably died for the cause, then opened the door, they’d drown in a pile of bloodstained clothes belonging to old hunters.
This was a Bad Idea. As the worldbuilding for the story solidified, I realized that to keep it under control, I had to limit the rules of the magic in the world to two things: hunters and unicorns. Everything everything everything had to be about the relationship between a hunter and a unicorn. Not clothes or wood, not things magically appearing or disappearing. If I wanted magic in the actual setting, I needed to relate it back to my primary magical constructs: The body and soul of the hunter, the body and soul of the unicorn, and how those two things intersect. Therefore, if I wanted magic, it had to be magic MADE from that mystical connection between hunter and unicorn. If I wanted magic in my nunnery, it had to be because the walls were made of unicorns, and the hunters (and only the hunters) could feel that. But once I had nailed down that this was my primary, inviolate rule, it became pretty clear that the magical closets and their room-of-requirement style voodoo had to go.
Which leads me to my last big rule:
Diana’s Personal Worldbuilding Rule #4:The more fantastical the fantastical elements are in your story, the more you have to ground everything else.
This is where I’m especially glad that I use the term “personal.” Your mileage may vary on this, and lord knows there are many beloved stories where this isn’t the case. But as my friend Carrie Ryan says, you get a certain number of gimmes in a book. Use them wisely. If you try to shove too much magic into a story and you fail to ground it in reality with either setting, characters, background info, laws of physics — what have you, people aren’t going to buy it. And gimme points aren’t even. Someone writing a book about vampires has a lot more gimme points left over than I do, writing a book about unicorns. Because people are familiar with vampires — to say “oh, this is a vampire book” might be only one gimme point out of a hundred. For me to say “oh, this is a book about killer unicorns” — people are already skeptical going in. That’s 40 gimme points. I only have sixty left to play with.
So what do you do? You limit the magic. You make the characters oh so much more human and lifelike. You don’t all of a sudden introduce elves or magical closets on top of whatever else you have going on. You make sure that your reader has something safe to retreat to whenever the supernatural element of the story starts to erode their willing suspension of disbelief.
So those are my first few rules. Question away!
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* That a new Slayer isn’t called when Buffy dies again at the end of the fifth season always made Sailor Boy and I wonder if the “Slayer Line” isn’t now flowing through Faith — which would make sense because Faith was called after Kendra died, and the “extra Slayer” is really Buffy. But all that was negated in season 7.
** I really REALLY hate the subsequent Matrix films.
Have I mentioned how excited I am about this book?
To celebrate the release of ZvU, I’ll be appearing at the Baltimore Book Festival alongside editors Holly black and Justine Larbalestier, and fellow anthologists Carrie Ryan, Scott Westerfeld (both team zombie — hisssss!) and Kathleen Duey (Team Unicorn!).
And a little bird told me they’d have copies of Ascendant available. That’s PRIOR to the release date, y’all.
Be there or I won’t be responsible for what the zombies OR the unicorns do to you.
Friday, September 24, 2010, 5:30-700 PM
Children’s Bookstore Stage, Baltimore Book Festival
MOUNT VERNON PLACE
600 BLOCK NORTH CHARLES STREET
BALTIMORE, MD 21201
PANEL DISCUSSION: Zombies versus Unicorns Debate with Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfeld, Carrie Ryan, Holly Black, Diana Peterfreund & Kathleen Duey
Zombies versus Unicorns Debate
Team Zombie takes on Team Unicorn to prove which fantastic creature is superior. Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier lead their authors in a debate inspired by their new short story collection Zombies versus Unicorns.
You can also buy the whole anthology, and I recommend it heartily for fans of Scott’s series. Not only does the author introduce each essay, but it includes also includes the short story that inspired the Twilight Zone Episode “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” that inspired Scott!
Also… please tell me you’ve read this series. I know it’s been a few months since I actively plugged it on my blog, but it’s SO GOOD. Westerfeld and Uglies started this whole recent dystopian craze in YA. Not to be missed.
