So New York Times Bestseller Carrie Ryan and I had an awesome weekend of eating, lounging around on the couch, brainstorming, and watching movies that reminded us of our books. It was half writing retreat, half slumber party.
Rio was utterly charmed by Carrie, and vice versa. I mean, I know she doesn’t look too thrilled in this picture, but Carrie’s more than making up for it, don’t you think? Trust me, Rio loved Carrie like only a “curl up on the guest bed, roll over and whine until Carrie rubbed her tummy all morning” little brat could.
Quoth Carrie: “She’s so little! She’s so compact! She’s like the mini-cooper of dogs!”
This is what happens when you’re usually living with an 85 lb. rottie mix. Don’t you worry, Rio. I think you’re the perfect size.
And then yesterday, we drove up to Baltimore to attend Carrie’s launch. In Carrie’s tour packet, it said “your friend will drive you up to Baltimore” and I am not one to disobey the mandates of the Random House publicity team.
Fortunately, it was a lovely day out, and we had lunch down by the Harbor, overlooking the Constellation. It was so beautiful, in fact, that Carrie found it problematic when she tried to turn on the air conditioning in her very sunny and warm (93 degrees!) hotel room only to discover it didn’t work. So she got ready for her launch party in an overheated hotel room filled with two hotel engineers and a phone call every 30 seconds from the front desk asking if the engineers were there fixing the problem. (”Yes.” “YES.” “YES.” “Please stop calling us, they’re here.”)
I pretended to be Carrie’s PA, which was especially funny when the wine and strawberries showed up.
Carrie, a model of grace under pressure, ended up looking fabulous in a swingy gray dress and coral jewelry, and off we jetted to her launch signing at The Children’s Bookstore. I’ve never been there before, but it’s fabulous! I really had to have a talking-to with myself before I bought every single picture book in the place. As it was, one of the booksellers kept getting me to buy new unicorn books I hadn’t read, like Birth of the Firebringer, by Meredith Anne Pierce.
Research! Research!
Carrie’s launch was lovely. There was a great crowd there. Zombie fans, fantasy fans, writers, — there were even some folks who’d made her launch signing in Greenville last year. Talk about commitment!
Carrie talked about zombies, about her childhood fear of Poltergeist, and about how she and I have diametrically opposed creative processes that occasionally drive each other to drink. (I’m a planner; she is not.) She signed stacks and stacks of books, including two that I’m giving away to you, dear reader.
SPEAKING OF GIVEAWAYS, I am having a problem, guys. You enter my giveaways, and then when I announce the winners, they never show up and email me. I have a STACK of books that I’m supposed to send out to winners who have never contacted me. Like the Heist Society winner from a few weeks back? No word. I even left a comment on her blog. What should I do? I can’t chase you guys down all the time, and honestly, given that I’m buying these books with my own money and sending them out with my own stamps, I kind of feel like I shouldn’t have to. Should I give you a period of time to get in touch with me and if you don’t, your prize is forfeited? (Then no doubt I draw a new winner who never gets in touch with me and the darn cycle stars all over again.)
Okay, now that that little housekeeping issue is off the table, onto the giveaway!
Today I’m giving away a copy of the New York Times bestselling paperback of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, signed by one New York Times Bestselling author Carrie Ryan. AND, a copy of the amazing companion novel, newly released in hardcover: The Dead-Tossed Waves. Also signed by the author. May or may not include a small smear of wasabi from when it was sitting on the table at the sushi restaurant where said author and I had dinner last night. It’s that authentic, y’all.
HOW YOU ENTER:
Leave a comment in this blog entry saying how you would react in the face of the zombie apocalypse. I will randomly select two entries. When I announce the winners, if you are a winner, email me with your choice of which book you want. First come, first served.
It’s the follow-up to last year’s THE ETERNAL KISS, which was an (awesome) book of (awesome) vampire stories. Except for our book is not (necessarily) about vampires, but about all kinds of paranormal shenanigans.
My story is about killer unicorns. I know, shocking, right? It’s also my first historical ever ever — or at least, since i tried my hand at a regency romance when I was 15 and mainlining Johanna Lindsay.
FWIW, “Errant” is NOTHING like Johanna Lindsay.
(ETA) The full list of authors in the antho are:
Becca Fitzpatrick
Caitlin Kittredge
Karen Mahoney
Justine Musk
Daniel Marks
Diana Peterfreund
Sarah Rees Brennan
Michelle Rowen
Carrie Ryan
Maggie Stiefvater
Rachel Vincent
Daniel Waters
Michelle Zink
And I’m sure they’re stories are totally awesome too. Actually, I’ve read the story of New York Times Bestseller Carrie Ryan, and it is totally awesome.
Though really, I think they must have designed this cover especially for me. New York Times Bestseller Carrie is sitting across from me right now, and when she saw the cover she’s like “oh wow, they illustrated your story.”
Then we looked closer and realized it was supposed to be a ghost of a fairy wing, and not a veil, like it looks. Still, I am sticking with my story. Read Kiss Me Deadly, with a cover that illustrates “Errant,” which is an 18th century French feminist killer unicorn story about a nun and a bride and a forest full of monsters.
John Scalzi and Justine Larbalestier are talking about “owning” your one star reviews on Amazon. I went to go look mine up, only to discover that, to my shock, I don’t have any one star reviews on Amazon. Given the angst I’ve felt over Amazon reviews in the past, I was sure that some of them had to be one star. No, apparently only two stars. I have my fair share of those.(Don’t worry, though, I have plenty of one star reviews on Goodreads!)
Yet none of them, I think, can possibly top the one I just received for Rampant. A snippet of its (two star) fabulosity:
“I felt as if the author is very self-impressed and narcissistic. Which I guess is fine until it permeates the writing. If you read the jacket cover - all about how wonderful and adventurous she is - and then realize she’s attempted to weave in the myth of Diana goddess of the hunt and that her name is Diana….well too much self homage for me. Nothing redeems this insipid tale.”
Finally, someone calls me out for making the magic system in my book something that was invented by a goddess whose name is the same as mine. I was wondering when that would happen.
Justine’s post is all about Jane Austen’s one star Amazon reviews for Pride & Prejudice. I haven’t read through them, but I sincerely hope that someone calls that chick out for naming her most beautiful Bennett sister Jane, not to mention that annoyingly perfect Jane Fairfax from Emma.
This month, I’ll be attending the New York City Teen Author Festival.
I will be appearing at the following festival events:
NYC Teen Author Festival Symposium
DATE: Friday, 3/19
LOCATION: New York Public Library, South Court, 42nd Street
TIME: 2:10-3:00 P.M.
Using Genre to Tell the True Story of Adolescence
featuring: Judy Blundell, Sarah Beth Durst, Lauren McLaughlin, Diana Peterfreund, Sara Shepard, Maggie Stiefvater, and Robin Wasserman
Gee, guys. Wonder what I’m going to talk about.
There is also talk about an enormous Books of Wonder signing on Sunday, but I have to see how the ol’ body’s faring before I feel free to announce that part, too. I may have to back out.
Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, the authors of BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, are on their way to Seattle, Chicago & the Bay area for the second leg of their book tour. They are hosting a special contest in honor of the tour, and I’m part of it. The winner of the BEAUTIFUL CREATURES: Unlock the Curse Contest will be win the magical object that brought Ethan and Lena together in the novel… Genevieve’s locket.
Information from my book, RAMPANT, will be used to solve one of the clues to unlock a challenge in the contest. Here is the complete list authors participating in the contest and their books, in the order in which the clues for their books will be given:
WICKED LOVELY by Melissa Marr
TITHE by Holly Black
CITY OF BONES by Cassandra Clare
SHIVER by Maggie Stiefvater
THE DEMON’S LEXICON by Sarah Rees Brennan
RAMPANT by Diana Peterfreund
So come back to this blog to find a clue that will help unlock one of the six challenges, and good luck Unlocking the BEAUTIFUL CREATURES Curse!
And here are pictures of the gorgeous cameo locket prize!
Isn’t that gorgeous? I love books that come with special jewelry. Now I just need someone to start making me swords and alicorn daggers.
Thanks to Kiersten White, a fellow HarperTeen author who as a debut novelist is understandably keeping close track of these things, I discovered that the fall 2010 list has finally made it to pre-order status at Amazon. Kiersten’s book, Paranormalcy, is out September 21, a week before Ascendant. (September 28). I have to say it’s always fun to see the listings go up. It’s usually the first time I see things like proposed page count, suggested retail price, and ISBN. Yes, authors sometimes find these things out from Amazon, too. I have a friend who first saw her cover when it went up on Amazon.
In case you were curious, the ISBN numbers of Ascendant are:
ISBN-10: 006-14-90024
ISBN-13: 978-006-14-90026
Those numbers will really come in handy if you wish to order Ascendant from book retailers other than Amazon.
Speaking of covers, I saw an early version of Ascendant’s recently. V. exciting stuff. One thing I really like about the cover concepts behind this series is how hard Harper works to nail down Astrid’s emotional state in the pictures they choose of her. I know from talking to my editor that they look a lot before they get the right picture that portrays what she’s going through in each novel. As those who have read Rampant know, Astrid’s duty rest very uneasily on her shoulders, for more reasons than one, and it’s this conflict that forms the core of Ascendant. This is the book where environmentalism comes to the fore, folks.
In other news — and perhaps it’s the knowledge that my antipodean friends are enjoying their summer right now while I’m snowbound in DC — I’m finding that I’ve had the most insane cravings for New Zealand food recently. I’ve been drooling over photos of pavlova, which I could make here, you know, if I knew anything about whipping egg whites. I’ve been making a ton of lamb dishes. And I’ve been craving two things that I can’t actually get here, and those two things are:
glucose energy candy
hokey pokey ice cream
I know, I hear you now. “Glucose energy? I’ve got news for you, Diana, all candy has glucose energy.” Yes, but only in New Zealand do they actually have a candy that CALLS itself that, that advertises its benefits as glucose energy, that features commercials in which a harried kindergarten teacher doles out little dollops of glucose energy to her oddly lethargic charges so they can go out and act like madmen on the swingsets again.
So here’s a story. I was hiking the Tongariro Track, which is a three-day hike on the North Island through a (mostly) volcanic wasteland that is famous primarily for being the Mordor set in Lord of the Rings. (It’s actually gorgeous and often sunny in real life). And I was tired, because, not being a New Zealander (like, you know, Edmund Hillary), I don’t think of anything less than a ten day trek into the wilderness as (and I’m quoting here) “a bit of a wander.” So I was sitting, trying to catch my breath, and a very nice Kiwi woman dropped by and, concerned for my lack of stamina, offered me a few pieces of her glucose energy candies. (They are fruit-flavored hard candies.) Sailor Boy and I made much merriment out of the way she called it glucose energy, and chocked it up to the whole “separated by a common language” thing, like how they also sell “Sultana Bran” cereal and put “capsicums” on their pizzas. But, it turned out that glucose energy is a real brand, and they have TV commercials which are so incredibly awesome I remember them six years later.
And the other thing I remember and long for and will probably be the very first thing I buy if I ever return to Aotearoa, is hokey pokey ice cream. Hokey pokey ice cream is the best ice cream flavor in the entire world, and, in New Zealand, it’s also the second most popular flavor. Like if you walk into a gas station and they’ve got three bins of ice cream it’s probably going to be vanilla, chocolate, and hokey pokey.
See this girl? Want to know why she’s so happy? Because she just bought two liters of hokey pokey ice cream for like $3 NZ and it’s got 15% more hokey pokey pieces in it. Tip Top is not expensive and yet, it’s still really, really good. Ice cream in New Zealand (actually, all dairy in New Zealand) is delicious.
NO ONE IN THE US MAKES HOKEY POKEY ICE CREAM! This is a travesty. Hokey pokey — they say it’s like toffee, but it’s not, really. It’s like… butter pecan ice cream without the pecan, and little pieces of semi-hard caramel studded all throughout. Someone please import this stuff.
There has been a lot of chatter on Twitter lately about the role of gender in YA books. On one hand, women writers and female-centric books dominate the YA market. (An interesting phenomenon given the “general knowledge” that a girl will read a book by or about any gender, but most boys will only read books about–or sometimes by–males.)
On the other, there’s still a lot of sexism. Female characters are held toridiculousstandards (especially by female readers!) and vilified for having faults. In YA fiction, as in adult fiction, male writers are showered with praise and awards while comparable books written by female writers are not. Year after year, critics “best of” lists are all about the men. In that post, critic Lizzy Skurnick writes:
I got a glimmer of an answer last year as I sat in a board room hashing out the winners for one of the awards for which I am a judge. Our short list was pretty much split evenly along gender lines. But as we went through each category, a pattern emerged. Some books, it seemed, were “ambitious.” Others were well-wrought, but somehow . . . “small.” “Domestic.” “Unam –” what’s the word? “– bititous.”
Oh, those damn scribbling women and their little domestic novels!
A few months ago, I visited the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library in New York City. The exhibit displayed some of Austen’s letters, first editions of her works, things like that. But the exhibit that stuck with me the longest was on on Nabokov. Seems he wasn’t such a fan of Jane (along with Emerson, Twain, and other males):
“I dislike Jane, and I am prejudiced, in fact, against all women writers. They are in another class. Could never see anything in Pride and Prejudice.”
He was called out by Edmund Wilson, a famous literary critic. Great, huh? Well, wait until you see the manner of the calling-out:
“You are mistaken about Jane Austin. I think you ought to read Mansfield Park. Her greatness is due precisely to the fact that her attitude toward her work is like that of a man, that is, of an artist, and quite unlike that of the typical women novelist, who exploits her feminine day dreams . . . She is, in my opinion, one of the half dozen greatest English writers.”
So she’s good, but only because she writes like a man. Astounding, huh? Because no male writer (and certainly not Nabokov), ever made a great work of literature out of exploiting his own daydreams. Right? Anyway, Nabokov revisited Austen, found an appreciation for Mansfield Park, and proceeded to teach it in his lit classes at Cornell. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.
As I said in yesterday’s post, I watched the new PBS version of Emma. I have to say it won me over in the end, but only because I am a sucker for the proposal scene and the way the two characters, who have had such an unequal relationship throughout the entire book come together in a moment of true mutual respect. Yes, it’s due to a big misunderstanding, but it’s quite moving, and it makes you realize that when they are married, he won’t treat her like the child he spent the first half of the book treating her as.
But I digress. My point here is that each episode of the mini-series began with actress Laura Linney addressing the screen and lecturing: “Is Jane Austen too ordinary and narrow for today?” she asks us. Linney’s point turns out to be that Emma Woodhouse is not Harry Potter or Edward Cullen or Wolverine. That she’s just a normal human with normal flaws. (Those magical guys all have “normal flaws” too, though.) However, the use of the word “narrow” is suspect. Ordinary? Fine. But narrow far too closely echoes another famous critic of Austen’s, Ralph Waldo Emerson:
I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen’s novels at so high a rate, which seems to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer is . . . marriageableness . . . Suicide is more respectable.
Oh, Ralph, tell us how you really feel!
It must be nice to live in a world where your options are wider than “marriageableness” or not. I feel like Emerson must have read the first line of Pride & Prejudice, took it at face value, and then went for a walk in the woods. The women in Austen are concerned about marriage because marriage was the only “business” they were allowed to conduct. And Austen’s characters do in fact realize the folly of bad marriages. Elizabeth Bennet would rather risk the kind of poverty that ends up befalling the Dashwoods than wed Mr. Collins. Her friend Charlotte decides that the stigma of being an old maid rates higher on the humiliation scale than that of being married to a fool with good prospects. In Austen’s novels, the onset of love goes hand in hand with the onset of respect. They are romantic within the realm of practicality. Talk about a woman’s daydream! Those were high hopes for the 18th century gal. (And if you want to read about how easily it can all go wrong, check out Millenium Hall by Sarah Scott.)
So Austen is narrow. But it doesn’t stop in the 18th century. I recently read a New York Times profile of the writer/director/producer Nancy Meyers. Meyers is famous for her women-focused domestic comedies. She writes about affluent women and their families and their romances. Sounding familiar? Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday, It’s Complicated — these are hers. The first page of the long article is devoted to talking about how Meyers was asked to move from her table at a tony LA restaurant. Ha, see? Even powerful Hollywood moguls get no respect — you know, if they’re women.
Then the writer goes on to talk about how important and influential and successful Meyers is — never letting go of the fact that gosh, it’s hard since she’s a chick. In response to a complain about the number of takes she likes to do of every scene, her (male) agent is quoted as saying there wouldn’t be a complaint if Nancy was Mike Nichols. And gosh, Jack Nicholson respects her, too! I especially loved this bit:
It would be tempting to attribute Meyers’s uninflated manner to her being female — to having been trained from birth in the art of the soft sell — except for the fact that she is more straightforward than girlish, more clear than coy. “She’s just really smart and doesn’t seem to be impeded by all the weirdness that everyone brings to whichever gender they are,” says Helen Hunt, who starred in “What Women Want.”
In other words, just because she’s powerful, don’t fear that she’s that horrible, aggressive kind of female. Don’t fear that she’s a bitch.
Later, the writer, Daphne Merkin, calls Meyers’s women-centric, romantic films “retro” and “post-feminist” — tags I find rather shocking. Because they are romantic? The women in Meyers’s films are successful and (usually) wealthy from their own accomplishments. Diane Keaton’s character in Something’s Gotta Give is a hit playwright with a tenured professor (in Women’s Studies, yet!) for a sister. Cameron Diaz’s character in Holiday owns her own movie trailer production company (and a mansion in Beverly Hills). Diaz puts it bluntly in that film when she tells Jude Law’s single-dad character that she feels comfortable telling him about her success because she knows he won’t be intimidated, having been raised by a mother who was a high level executive editor at Random House. The romantic elements of the film do not detract from the feminist ones.
And the writer momentarily agrees:
“These women are self-sufficient and notably energetic. They may not have men, at least when we first meet them, but they make do with friends and children and siblings, for whom they whip up tasty dinners and homemade pies and laugh over their own situations. When men do appear on the scene, whether in the form of a babe-chasing player like Jack Nicholson’s Harry or Alec Baldwin’s renewedly impassioned Jake (or Dennis Quaid’s Nick Parker in “The Parent Trap,” for that matter), they awaken dormant desires that nevertheless have to be fit into pre-existing, busy lives.”
But then she spends a few pages obsessing over the filmaker’s focus on set dressings. She criticizes the thread count in the upholstery as being needlessly lush and overindulgent. Let us unpack the following quote:
“Whether her insistence on “softening the message” [Meyer's quote, which I for one believe was taken out of context] through plush surroundings ultimately weakens the films — renders them more glossy and insular than they need be, even for a genre that is inherently fizzy — is a question I have debated with myself and others.”
So, because women-centric romantic comedies are “inherently fizzy” we should make doubly sure to grit them up in a visual sense? I wonder how many other filmmakers are asked not to put their characters in fancy cars or film in exotic locales in order to, you know, make something real. These damn domestic female stories!
“At worst, her films can give off an air of tidy unreality — and it is this unexamined aspect, I think, this failure to even hint at darkness, that most fuels critical ire. Richard Schickel condemns Meyers with faint praise, hinting that she and the studios have struck a devil’s pact of sorts. “Clearly there is an audience for sweet little middle-class romances of the kind she makes, and it pleases the studios to indulge a woman, whom they would not trust with more vigorous projects. It’s as if they’re trying to say: ‘Hey, we’re not sexists. We make Nancy Meyers movies.’ ””
“Sweet little middle class romances.” (First of all, anyone who lives in a house like the Hamptons mansion in Something’s Gotta Give is NOT middle class, fwiw.) But can’t you just hear Emerson’s or Nabokov’s dismissal of Austen in those words? Can’t you hear the dismissal of that roomful of critics deciding on literary awards? Why is domestic a dirty word? Why is a character driven movie about a successful person dealing with their personal lives a Best Picture nominee if it stars George Clooney, but not if it stars Meryl Streep? I think I’m inclined to agree with Meyer’s agent. An article like this would never be written if Nancy was Ned.
I leave you with this (there’s a little bit of language at the end):
So like every child of the nineties, I was obsessed with Calvin and Hobbes. We had all the collections in my house and I loved reading them, over and over. I really connected with Calvin — his limitless imagination, his ability to turn anything into a narrative, his love of nature. Sailor Boy and I often quote lines from our favorite comic strips, especially the one where Calvin comes upon Hobbes sleeping in the sun and begins to recite:
“My tiger, it seems, it running ’round nude,
His fur coat must have made him perspire.
It lies on the floor, should this be construed
As a permanent change of attire?
Perhaps he considered its colors passé,
Or maybe it fit him too snug.
Will he want it back? Should I put it away?
Or leave it right here as a rug?”
It should be noted that Rio, to whom this poem is most often directed, is about as amused by our efforts as Hobbes was in the strip.
At its height, C&H was subject to a ton of copyright violations. Though Watterson never licensed his images for commercialization. the streets were rife with cars bearing bumper stickers of an evil, peeing Calvin. And then, Watterson ended the strip (to a great fan outcry), and lived as a recluse. But recently he gave an interview to a local Cleveland reporter. Naturally, I was all over it.
My disappointment in the interview is mainly that, with all the opportunity the reporter had to ask BW about his long career, he settled for basically asking the same question over and over again. Look:
What do you think it was about “Calvin and Hobbes” that went beyond just capturing readers’ attention, but their hearts as well?
What are your thoughts about the legacy of your strip?
What would you like to tell the fans who are still grieving about the end of your strip?
Because your work touched so many people, fans feel a connection to you, like they know you. How do you deal with knowing that it’s going to follow you for the rest of your days?
How do you want people to remember that 6-year-old and his tiger?
You can actually see Watterson growing frustrated with having to answer it repeatedly over the course of the interview. There was literally only ONE question that veered from this repetitive pattern: “Do you like the idea of a C&H postage stamp?”
Watterson was pretty gracious though. He just kept beating the drum of: “The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.”
This is so true. Now, decades later, I’m an author myself, and I see that what people choose to take away from my book could be what I put in there or could not. It can sometimes be something that I never even saw in the text myself.
I spend a lot of time wrestling with the notion of “Why did Reader X get this part of the book, but Reader Y missed it? Why did Reader Z love this part of my other book but doesn’t love a similar part in my new book?” (Curse you, internet, and your proliferation of reader reaction blogs and websites!) BUt I can’t control what experiences the reader is bringing to my work, and how the simplest turn of phrase might jar something inside of him or her.
I wonder what the secret is to Watterson’s zen. How it is that he came to a place where he could say, “I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it” and be done with it. Because when I’m writing, I believe that. When I’m writing, I think to myself, Oh, isn’t this fun. I really like this part. I think this part is fun to read, I think people are going to like this. I am writing for the reader’s entertainment. I want to make the experience of reading one of my books a good experience for the reader. I want it to be exciting and informative and romantic and scary and funny and sad.
But whether it IS to each individual reader — well, that’s up to them.
And, in passing, what a waste. What great questions the reporter could have asked! “What do you think Calvin is doing now, all grown up? Is he an astronaut? A writer? Is he a desk jockey with a marvelous inner life? Does he drive his wife crazy with sick snowman jokes every February? Does he take his kids for hikes through the woods? Does he recite poetry to his dogs while they nap on the rug?”
When: 6-7:30 PM, January 6, 2010 Where: Jefferson Market Branch of New York Public Library, 425 6th Ave, at 10th St., New York City Who:
Alexandra Bullen, Wish
Gitty Daneshvari, School of Fear
Dream Jordan, Hot Girl
Robin Palmer, Little Miss Red
Diana Peterfreund, Rampant
And if y’all are very good, I might read a bit from Ascendant.
Off to decide what to wear (something warm) and which excerpts to read. Later!
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.
Carrie, a model of grace under pressure, ended up looking fabulous in a swingy gray dress and coral jewelry, and off we jetted to her launch signing at The Children’s Bookstore. I’ve never been there before, but it’s fabulous! I really had to have a talking-to with myself before I bought every single picture book in the place. As it was, one of the booksellers kept getting me to buy new unicorn books I hadn’t read, like Birth of the Firebringer, by Meredith Anne Pierce.
And the other thing I remember and long for and will probably be the very first thing I buy if I ever return to Aotearoa, is hokey pokey ice cream. Hokey pokey ice cream is the best ice cream flavor in the entire world, and, in New Zealand, it’s also the second most popular flavor. Like if you walk into a gas station and they’ve got three bins of ice cream it’s probably going to be vanilla, chocolate, and hokey pokey.
