First off, I did 2.5k on my WIP yesterday, bringing my NaNo total up to 8127. Snoopy dance a go-go.
8127 / 60,000
It’s going pretty well. I still totally love my heroine, and think she could happily stand alongside the likes of Veronica Mars, LaDonna Batiste-Williams, Gemma Teller Morrow, and Gloria Pritchett. Her love interest… eh. I think he’s taking me a little while to warm up to. Which is okay. After all, I wasn’t even thinking about Poe at this point in Secret Society Girl.
Though I’m not doing a four-book series this time. Hmmmm…
I think it’s his name. I’m having the most terrible problems with his name!
Also, while shopping this morning, accidentally stumbled across a killer Halloween costume (for $6.99), and since I’ve been lobbying Sailor Boy pretty hardcore to let me throw a Halloween party this year, I knew it had to be mine. It called to me from across a crowded thrift shop.
Oh, frocks.
And speaking of surprises, look what came in the mail yesterday:
These are the Simplified Chinese Secret Society Girl & Under the Rose I sold back in the summer of 2007. Two. Thousand. Seven. When I was a simple single gal and Queenie was just a sparkle in Sailor Boy’s eye and Rio was just a sparkle in the eye some Toller in Canada. When there was no such things as killer unicorns and I lived in a one-room apartment and almost no one had a smartphone.
Publishing is a strange, strange business. Anyway, here they are, and man, are they gorgeous!
These are the headings. I don’t know if it says “Under the Rose” or “Diana Peterfreund”. But whatever it says, it does so with thorns!
These are the little widgets on every page. The one on the bottom is Secret Society Girl, and I like how it kind of looks like a tattoo — you know, to match their tattoos. The one on the top is Under the Rose. Note the little high-heeled ankle boots. I guess that’s to denote it’s chick lit? So adorable!
I love them. I hug them. I wish I read Chinese, or that I knew someone who did.
These are my first foreign editions to utilize different covers from their U.S. counterpart. What do you think? The black makes ‘em kind of badass, huh?
I’ve received word that I’m scheduled to appear tonight on the Sundance Channel show LOVE/LUST, during an episode about secret societies. It’s schedule to run at 10 PM, and, well, if you look at the schedule, a LOT after that. This seems to be the type of show they like to rerun for the insomniacs in the middle of the night.
Because apparently, listening to me wax on about what a bunch of Ivy League prepsters did in the 1800s is a sure-fire sleep aid.
I am curious to see how they choose to edit it. It’s one of those late night faux reality “clip shows” where they bring in experts to discuss whatever the topic at hand is. I talked a lot about frat initiations.
Which is weird because I was never in a frat, but they’re very similar to secret societies, as you’ll learn if you watch the show.
See? TOTES an expert!
In related news, I was reading an article about baby names yesterday and they were talking about the way male names “go girl” (like Evelyn, Ashley, Tracy) and rarely go back, and they were discussing Jamie. Which of course, I love for a boy. Though I tend to think of it as a common enough girls’ name, I have actually only known one girl Jamie,a and she spelled it “Jaime”. However, I did know a Jamie-short-for-James guy in college.
No, he was not the basis of Poe. He is, however, a screenwriter and producer, last I heard, who launched his career in the industry by making up a fake secret society at Yale, the rights to which story were eventually made into a made-for-TV-film.
I’m amassing quite a collection of foreign editions of Morning Glory:
Look at all those different covers. The Brazilian one (which just came in and so is not included in this picture) has the same cover as the French one (top right).
And there’s other fun stuff, like the sticker on the Korean one proclaiming the screenwriter’s history with The Devil Wears Prada:
And the fact that my name, in Czech, is apparently Diana Peterfreundova:
Makes me sound like a spy in a Cold-War era James Bond film, dah?
Given that I was named for a Bond spy, I’m okay with that.
And of course, there’s the way the Spanish version doesn’t use quotes for dialogues, but instead, em-dashes:
Very Emily Dickinson.
I have done a lot of foreign deals over the years, but most of my books have used the same art as the US versions. So it’s fun, for once, to see the different covers.
Speaking of foreign deals, I have some big news for my Brazilian readers. Editora Record, the publishers of the rest of the secret society girl series, has made me an offer on book four, Tap & Gown. And, in case you can’t get enough of my books, they’ve ALSO bought my fantasy novels, Rampant and Ascendant. I’m so excited to be able to bring the conclusion of the series to my Brazilian readers as well as to introduce them to my fantasy novels as well.
A twitter conversation I had yesterday got me thinking about how hard it is to wrangle certain details of your world building over a long series. I’m not talking about the broad strokes that make your world what it is, but rather, the tiny little details that might only come up once or twice and are not extremely important to the story.
dpeterfreund
1) Why do you ask? 2) What do you think? @KenoshaChick10
KenoshaChick10 @dpeterfreund 1) I ask based on the minuscule detail in RoSB when Poe sits down with Amy & Malcolm on the beach, she notices the book he’s reading has a french title. 2) And while the book may not have been written in French nor do I know why a lawyer would be fluent in it, I like to imagine that, yes, Poe does speak French and reads French literature. And when he and Amy went to England they took a trip on the chunnel to Paris where he politely ordered her dinner perfectly. My imagination may have run away with me.
Well, of course that sent me scurrying back to books I wrote three and four years ago to try to make sure I had all my ducks in a row. What languages does Poe speak. What languages did he take in school? What languages does he utilize over the course of the series?
I had a conversation with Sailor Boy about this:
Me: Does Poe speak French?
SB: Did he take it in high school? Instead of Spanish? That doesn’t seem likely.
Me: Well, he could have taken it in college.
SB: You think?
(Note: Yale, and therefore Eli, has a language requirement.)
As I’ve written before, I like writing characters who are polyglots. What I know for sure about Poe is that he speaks German to Amy in Secret Society Girl and he is reading a French book in Rites of Spring (Break). However, since the German’s during initiation, he could be speaking from a script. I speculate that he in fact does know some French, and that French was the language he took in school. Is he fluent? Unlikely, but he’s got a working grasp and if he had the opportunity for intensive practice (like a chance to travel to Paris) he could get around. I also believes he knows Spanish, and that he learned it from his father and from his father’s coworkers in his landscaping business.
But someone without baby brain and who is paying a lot more recent attention than me to hints in the text might come back and tell me about how I claim at one point that Poe speaks Mandarin.
Sailor Boy and I have a running joke about Ted Mosby, the main character on the TV show How I Met Your Mother, and his many, MANY languages. For a long time, we speculated that his apparent fluency in ASL was because his sister was deaf. Then we met the (hearing) sister. So where did Ted learn ASL? At Wesleyan? In Cleveland?
Apparently, in addition to studying architecture (which, I have no idea what that program was like at Wesleyan, but at Yale, it was pretty intensive), he also had time to master ASL, Italian (as seen in “Robots vs. Wrestlers” where he recites Dante), French (“Ten Sessions” in which he and Stella speak entirely in French), and German (In “The Stinsons” Ted tells Barney’s “wife” that he saw her in Die Heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe by Bertolt Brecht). Of course, Sailor Boy and I disagree on whether Ted saw her act in the original German, or was just using hte German title for the play in the same way that he uses a pretentious pronunciation of encyclopaedia. But, at the very least, dude knows four languages. Go, Ted.
And, unlike Poe, Ted does not aspire to be a spy. So the chances are that Poe does, in fact, know French. And Spanish. And probably Arabic or Farsi, too. But you didn’t hear that from me.
And I wonder if you asked the folks at How I Met Your Mother about Ted, what they’d say. Do they realize that they’ve made him a very impressive polyglot, or, for continuity’s sake, are they sticking with ASL only? (In passing, anyone remember how Veronica Mars knew Spanish in the pilot and then forgot it by the end of season one?)
See, I notice these things, and I know that TV is written by dozens of folks, whereas my novels are written only by me and I can’t tell you with absolute certainty, a few years later, how many languages Poe speaks. I might have been able to tell you then.
Compare that to Rampant, in which the languages characters can speak and when they can do so is very important to the plot. Astrid’s Italian gets steadily better over the course of the first book, and she even picks up a little German because so many of her fellow hunters speak it. In Ascendant, she studies French. I’d wager that Phil is nearly fluent in Italian by the end of Ascendant, and characters whose English was poor to middling (like Valerija, Rosamund, and Mellissende) are way better at it by dint of living with so many native English speakers like Neil, Cory, Phil, Astrid, and Grace.
When I first heard the audiobook version of “Errant” I was amused by the voice actress’s rendition of the characters — Elise and the other French characters had French accents, while Gitta’s was German. It was interesting because except for a few commands from Gitta to Enyo that appear in (untranslated) German in the text, all the characters are speaking to each other “in French.” (It even states at some point in the text that Gitta speaks French with a German accent.) Still, the accents added a lot to the French “flavor” of the dialogue, so I enjoyed it. To my ears, it made Elise sound even prissier, and Gitta tougher, which worked well for me. But again, that’s another case where the languages the characters speak and how well they speak them (Elise yells at Gitta that she can read “some Latin” and Gitta boasts about all the languages she speaks) are more important to the story than whether or not Poe was reading a French book.
Because the purpose of that French book is to illustrate to Amy and to us how little she/we know about Poe.
And, if I know Poe, he could have easily picked an English book to bring to the beach. He chose a French one to show off. Probably to show off to Amy.
Eu sei que vários de vocês, meus leitores brasileiros, estão esperando notícias sobre o lançamento do terceiro livro da Sociedade Secreta, e agora eu as tenho! Aqui estão:
Rites of Spring Break (Vol. 3) será lançado no dia 14 de janeiro de 2011
Eu não sei se será a mesma capa ou qual o título traduzido ainda, mas vocês só tem apenas um mês de espera!
Obrigada pela sua paciência!
______________
I know a lot of you have been waiting patiently for new on when the third book of Sociedade Secreta will be out, and now I have it:
Rites of Spring (Break) — (Vol. 3) — will be out on January 14, 2011.
I don’t know if it’ll be the same cover, or what the final (translated) title is yet, but you only have another month to wait.
Thanks so much for your patience!
(Oh, and if any savvy Brazilian reader wants to help me translate this message into Portuguese, I’d be so grateful!)
Thanks to Twitter, I came across a blog post by one Racecar Brown referencing one of my earlier rantsdiatribesexplorations 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.
I’m feeling good this morning. First of all, I have some great news to announce about the secret society girl series:
Turkish rights to Diana Peterfreund’s SECRET SOCIETY GIRL, UNDER THE ROSE, & RITES OF SPRING (BREAK), have sold to Artemis, by Whitney Lee of the Fielding Agency on behalf of Elaine Spencer at the Knight Agency.
Savvy readers will note that this little deal does not include Tap & Gown. Yet. Savvier readers will be just as excited as I was by the name of my new publisher. Seriously, how awesome is that?
Next bit of great news: both of my anthologies out this year (Kiss Me Deadly and Zombies vs. Unicorns) are coming out as audio books! I’m so excited! I’ve never had an audio version of one of my books before.
Next bit of great news: I’ve received some advanced reviews of ASCENDANT and they have made me all happy:
“Ascendant is a direct sequel to the super-awesome Rampant, which I actually really enjoyed. With Ascendant, the intros and exposition is pretty much out of the way so the book gets right on down to business. There is absolutely more sexual tension, more unicorns, more action, and a lot of moral dilemma. I loved it! What was so cool is how Peterfreund made her events grey areas. By this I mean things were taken out of a black and white context and given complexity and layers. I guess it’s awesome how we get to see two sides of a coin.
“I actually enjoyed Ascendant way more than Rampant. I thought Astrid really came into her own. Confession corner: After I finished I really had trouble finding a book to read. I mean, what’ll measure up to that kind of awesome?”
Cassandra Yorgey of examiner.com also snagged an advanced review copy of ASCENDANT at BEA, and reviews it (along with a plea for a third book) here:
“[A] prominent theme throughout Ascendant is how we treat animals. Animal conservation and medical testing are issues that Astrid is on the fence about. She struggles with these things, often bordering each side of the fence trying desperately to reconcile necessities with human decency. And even if you don’t care one whit about those things, there are still killer freaking unicorns, which is awesome socks no matter how you wrap it up.
“Ascendant is one of those sequels that is so good I actually convinced myself it was part of a trilogy, even though there is in fact no third book under contract.”
Also on the rampage about the scheduling of the third book, we have Miss Havoc of Cry Havoc reviews, who was apparently so devastated by my 140-word tweeted reply to her about not having a third book under contract yet that she actually KNOCKED A STAR off her review of ASCENDANT ::sniff:: and prompted a few emails into my inbox on the matter:
“First I just want to rant a little about how there ISN’T GOING TO BE A THIRD BOOK! At least not anytime soon. Which really upset me ’cause I love me some Killer Unicorns! That also had to bring Ascendant down to a 4 star, because if this is how it ends…it just isn’t enough. I think we need to start a petition so that we can get some more Killer Unicorns!
“OK, on to the review! Loved it! Want to give it 5 stars.”
Since I’ve gotten enough emails/twitters/blog discussions/random assumptions on the subject, I feel I should make what is as formal a statement as I can make at this time, namely: I would like to write a third killer unicorn book, and I currently have a two book contract with Harper Collins to write more YA books. The first book in this contract, which I am working on now and will be out in 2011, is a post-apocalyptic retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. The second book (which will probably be a 2012 release) is undecided as of yet. It may be killer unicorns #3. It may not.
No one is the “bad guy” here. I am not holding killer unicorn stories for ransom (I have three coming out this year!). Additionally, Harper Teen is hugely in support of Rampant and Ascendant. Rampant will be out in paperback this fall (for the low, low price of $8.99), along with the hardcover of Ascendant, which was featured prominently at BEA and is going to be featured prominently again at ALA this weekend. We also have a lot of cool promotional things planned for the fall.
So, to answer the questions I keep getting about what you can do to make sure there is a third unicorn book, all I can say is, tell your friends about Rampant. Tell your local bookseller to stock it. Tell your local librarian to order a copy for her collection. Buy a copy of the paperback (for the low, low price of $8.99) when it comes out this fall. And just be patient, and we can revisit this issue in six to eight months. Think of this like a TV show. I don’t know if I’m “renewed” — I’m still mid-season! (And yes, I am aware of what my options are, one of them being that I’ve got a blank book under contract.)
“But, are the myths true? Are the unicorns all blood hungry, savage beasts? What about the people who are searching for the remedy, the cure for all disease? Who do you trust when those you want to trust have motives that don’t match yours? Were there nunneries filled with women warriors dating from the time of Diana who could keep the world safe from harm? Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a reason for them to still be viable? Man (and woman)-eating, not fluffy, no pink or purple manes or tales, unicorns; maybe not, huh?
“These books are really good. They are humorous and deal with a lot of the same questions that girls who aren’t unicorn hunters have to deal with. There is high romance, a little low romance, big questions about certain parts of life and how valuable these things can be, big adventure, strong and brave women. Good travel books, too, especially if you are on your way to Rome or France; good descriptions of the nightlife and tourist worlds. They are really good summer books. Ages 14 and up. (HarperTeen. $17.99. Rampant is available now, and Ascendant will be available in October! Ooh. October! Put it on your list, you’re going to want it when you’re done with Rampant.)”
W00T! I love booksellers who love killer unicorns.
And librarians. Seriously, this weekend at ALA, I must meet Betsy Bird (who apparently I know through two different degrees of separation?). Look what she had to say about ASCENDANT in her recent Harper fall 2010 preview:
“In an era of Zombies Vs. Unicorns, it seems appropriate that Diana Peterfreund’s killer unicorn book Rampant should get itself a sequel. Ascendant keeps up the fast pace of its predecessor and Peterfreund has been studying unicorn legends from around the world extensively for these books. Personally, I think Harper Collins is losing a huge opportunity with these covers. If you put a big, ugly, slavering unicorn with blood dripping from its mouth on the jacket, those copies will sell sell sell faster than you can print them up. Oh, and for those of you wondering what else Ms. Peterfreund has up her sleeve, I have five words for you: Post-apocalyptic retelling of Persuasion.”
Gotta say, Betsy, I too am disappointed they couldn’t squeeze a unicorn on that cover. But then again, prettyprettyAstridhair. It’s so hard to put everything that this book is on one cover. Maybe in a dozen years, when my series is recognized as a modern classic, I’ll get new gory covers. Then Roman ruin covers. Then chem lab covers. The possibilities are endless.
And to wrap this up (and then go pick up my car which is finally ready, yay!) I have this lovely review of RAMPANT from a livejournaler called hamsterwoman:
“You know how, in about 90% of my reviews, I will get to the main character and say, “I liked [him/her] OK” or “Him/her I was ‘meh’ on”? Well, ha! Because I freaking LOVE Astrid Llewelyn. She is easily my favorite character in the book, my favorite thing about the book (and I really liked the book), and there isn’t even any question about it. Astrid is awesome!
“Astrid is a real scientist in training. Not only is she interested in science and actively going after becoming a doctor (volunteering in the hospital) even though she is just 16, but she is believable in this role. She has a scientist’s mind, analyzing inputs and details even in high-stress situations — e.g. noticing [snipped for spoilers]. And she thinks in terms of behaviour patterns and hypotheses, and she resents unscientific ideas, like that particular skills run in families, and is frustrated by the others’ reluctance to try an examine the unscientific but apparently true effects scientifically. And she stages actual scientific experiments with her fellow hunters, and uses words like “ambient unicorn influence.” (In retrospect, even at the very beginning her thoughts on her relationship with the douchy boyfriend feel kind of scientist-like — she is trying to maximize the benefits of dating him while minimizing how much groping she lets him get away with.
“I can’t readily express how awesome I find this, but it is. I’ve seen/read quite a few attempts to portray young geeks/science types, and so many of them end up feeling like caricatures to me or like shallow “my nerdness is pasted on” decals, or like someone’s fairly uninformed idea of what would-be scientists are like. And there’s none of that here — Astrid’s the real thing. She thinks and acts and argues in ways that are familiar and true to me. People talk about having different kinds of female heroines for girls to identify with, and there are tomboy types and girly girls and girls out to prove things to the world and girls looking to find themselves and to learn the meaning of love and friendship or whatever, but I don’t think I’ve actually encountered a female heroine before that I could identify with as closely as with Astrid. There have been plenty that I wanted to be like or think I was like, but for sheer identification, yeah, Astrid is pretty much it. And, yes, it’s quite nice to have that, even as an adult.”
I really need to start printing these babies out and pasting them up on my wall or something for those days when I feel like I suck and can’t write consistent characterization to save my life. Because one of Astrid’s core conflicts is trying to resolve the science that she knows is true with the magic that she must, as an astute observer, recognize. I hope with Ascendant that I’ve successfully evolved that inner struggle and kept Astrid a scientist, even if she happens to be a magical one. (I think Cassandra thinks I did.)
And now I’m going to shut up before I start in with the spoilers…
A lot of people having been sending me Yale new recruitment video with gasps of horror. Oh, it’s so cheesy! Oh, it’s so campy! Oh, it’s so ridiculous!
Yeah, sorry, guys, I’m not with you there. I loved the video. I thought it was creative and poignant, and it reminded me of the feeling I got on my own high-school visit to Yale, when I got the feeling that I didn’t at the other universities I visited. When I knew that this was the college for me. Yes, I shed a bit of a tear. What can I say?
And then afterwards, just because Sailor Boy and I are cheesy like that, we put this on:
Sometimes Google Alerts sends me the most awesome things. Like today, I got a link to this amazing fanmade movie trailer, that imagines Secret Society Girl as a Roland Emmerich thriller starring Isabella Swann, Little J, and Cyclops.
While in New York with Mitali last week, I was talking about the secret stories I wrote in 2009. In the lead-up to the release of the final Secret Society Girl novel, Tap & Gown, I wrote a bunch of short stories told from the perspective of the other characters in the series. They were released first as password-protected goodies for subscribers to my newsletter, and then later for everyone on the website.
I did it for fun, and to celebrate the conclusion of my first series, but it definitely re-awoke in me a love for the short story format. I loved it so much, I went out and sold a few new short stories, which will be out this year. And the fan response was great. I know a lot of folks read them and discussed them. One fan even translated one into Portuguese for my Brazilian readers.
