I spent New Year’s Eve in a highly productive manner: finishing my final proofs for For Darkness Shows the Stars. It’s fitting that I welcomed the New Year with work, as this is going to be a very, very heavy work year. Just look at my release schedule (anthologies and collections show my contribution in parentheses):

January: The Girl Who Was on Fire: Movie Edition essay collection (“Hunger Game Theory”)
February: Brave New Love anthology (“Foundlings”)
March: Rampant audiobook, Ascendant audiobook (yes! There will be audio books! I even have covers!)
April: Zombies vs. Unicorns anthology paperback (“The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn”), unnamed secret project (hopefully I shall be able to name it soon)
May: Ascendant paperback
June: For Darkness Shows the Stars

Fall: Under My Hat: Tales From the Cauldron anthology (“Stray Magic”) ; Foretold anthology (“Burned Bright”)

There’s also another release I have been unable to find any information about. And for my overseas readers, there are a few releases I don’t have dates for yet. Like I heard on Twitter that my Brazilian publisher is putting out Tap & Gown (Rosa e Tumulo #4) “next summer”. But that’s all I know.

10 projects (AT LEAST!) out next year. Yikes. Guess that makes up for the big ol’ goose egg of 2011. (Hey, I always said last year was a “building year.”) And that’s just that I can announce yet.

And, as an added bonus, all but TWO of this year’s SIX new releases are total stand-alones:

• For Darkness Shows the Stars: a post-apocalyptic novel inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion
• “Foundlings” (in Brave New Love, ed. by Paula Guran): a short story set in a near-future America
• “Burned Bright” (in Foretold, ed. by Carrie Ryan): a contemporary short story about a girl and a cult and the end of the world
• “Stray Magic” (in Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, ed. by Jonathan Strahan):  a short story about a girl who works in an animal shelter and the unusual pet who falls under her care.

The other two include “The Hammer of Artemis”, which is set in the killer unicorniverse (it’s historical, like “Errant”) and the aforementioned unnamed secret project.

Though compared to the beginning of the year, that second half of the year is looking a little bit sparse. I’ll have to get on that.

Just Kidding.

Sorta.

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While I will not deny that there are a lot of novels out there that have borrowed the love triangle formula (in the mathematical sense) that worked so well in Twilight, it’s not a singular occurrence. Also incredibly popular after the worldwide, game-changing, publisher-floating, industry-saving and genre-creating success of Twilight? Books about EVERYTHING that Twilight was about. Books about vampires, books about beautiful immortal people, books about unusual families of paranormal humanoid creatures living amongst us, books about girls with paranormal boyfriends, and books in which high school girls fall into extraordinarily quick and everlasting love. All of these are available in ready supply right now, all of them owe at least some part of their current popularity to Twilight.

This is a good thing. People finding new things they like in books and then reading more books about those things? Wonderful.

And one of those things, yes, is “a girl in love with two boys” love triangles.

I have only published one book with that kind of love triangle in it: My first novel, Secret Society Girl, which came out in 2006, right when Meyer was lighting the world on fire with New Moon. Like Bella, my character Amy has to make a choice between two boys she likes who both like her.

However, I have written two books with this supposedly rare “two girls one guy” love triangle: Rites of Spring (Break), in which Amy competes for the affections of a guy, and the upcoming For Darkness Shows the Stars, which is based on Persuasion, and therefore includes the Anne Elliot — Captain Wentworth — Louisa Musgrove triangle so beloved (or beloved-to-behated) by its fans.

So, having published one of these and seen years worth of reader reactions (and read enough reactions to the Persuasion one to know it’s the same), I can tell you right now why the Twilight kind is more popular:

1. most of the readers of these types of novels are girls
2. These readers are moved by the “tough decision” facing a heroine with two fabulous guys after her.
3. Which leads to “team” formation, by individual readers, in fan circles, and by publicity departments.
4. Whereas the heroine competing for the affections of a guy against another girl gets one reaction: beat the “other woman.”

(Note: this is very typical Louisa Musgrove treatment in Jane Austen fandom.)

If the other woman is a normal woman with faults like the heroine, she is labeled an irredeemable b****. If the other woman is a saint, she is allowed to be pitied, but we still root for the heroine to get the man. Why? Because to do otherwise would mean the reader is rooting against the heroine. And, almost without exception, that ain’t good.

In Rites of Spring (Break), Amy does not win her love triangle. And despite the fact that I very clearly demonstrate that the guy at the center of it is NOT the one for her, and soon after I embroil her in a fabulously delicious romance with a new guy, you would not believe the number of emails I get demonizing both other parties and wishing that Amy had won. Even though, if she HAD won, she would not have going on to her wonderful romance that they also say they love so much.

The way I look at it is like this: even if you know your ex or the guy who would never ask you out in high school  was TOTALLY wrong for you now, you still want to look drop-dead gorgeous at your high school reunion, right? Just because you’re better off without them doesn’t mean they shouldn’t still pine for you. It’s not the most enlightened of all feelings, but it’s a fantasy.

(Hello, exes. Yes, this is what I Iook like every single day. No, I do not currently have bags under my eyes because Q was up half the night or applesauce in my hair because, well, see previous.)

And it’s that fantasy — of having multiple people madly in love with us, that is so compelling to so many readers.

But here’s the problem: because it’s so compelling, and because publisher publicity departments (understanding this visceral response readers have to this storyline) have pumped it up, its prevalence in the book on the shelves and, perhaps more importantly, in the marketing material for books on the shelves, has trained readers to expect a love triangle in their novels When people complain “why does there have to be a love triangle in every YA novel” they are often complaining about things that a few years ago would not have been considered a love triangle at all.

How do I know this?

Because there was no love triangle in Twilight.

Bella loved Edward, and Edward loved Bella. There might have been a few other people who were interested in dating Bella, just like there was some lingering resentment on the part of Rosalie that she hadn’t good enough for Edward while Bella was, but neither of those things weighed particularly heavily on either of these characters’ minds (and Rosalie has been long since happily matched up).

But if that book were published today, with the microscope readers have been trained to place on any whiff of something that might be a love triangle, they might see this:

And maybe that’s a compelling story, told from the point of view of Mike or Jacob. Poor guys, they secretly love Bella, but she only has eyes for the vampire. Indeed, as the series progressed, Meyer chose to dwell on this facet of Jacob’s story. But that’s as the series progressed.

I read reviews of books all the time where they talk about love triangles that range from a stretch to completely non-existent. I have received emails about the “love triangle” in Ascendant. At first, I spent a lot of time scratching my head. Then I realized they were referring to the fact that Astrid is pursued by one boy while dating another.

To me, that was no more a love triangle than the fact that every boy in Forks instantly goes ga-ga over the “new girl” Bella is somehow indicative of a love tetrahedron.You kinda need love to have a love triangle. Or at least the idea of choosing one over another. The love triangles in my friend Carrie Ryan’s books (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, etc.)? LOVE. TRIANGLES. Mary is in love with Travis but betrothed to his brother. Gabry feels enormously guilty over her growing attachment to Elias after her old boyfriend got infected with the zombie plague… for her. Angst galore! What will she choose? Who will she end up with?

If you’ve read Ascendant, you know that’s not Astrid’s problem. And not in the sense of “she has bigger problems” (which she does), because girls on the run from zombies ALSO have bigger problems, but more in the sense that those questions are not on the plate for her.

However, I also agree with Carrie’s point in her own post on love triangles, in which she says:

“To me, that’s the essence of a love triangle — each man is a viable choice for the heroine but each speaks to a different part of who she is.  The heroine isn’t choosing between two men, she’s choosing who SHE wants to be and that will dictate who the right match is.”

I first read about this conceptualization of a story’s love triangle in a screenwriting class in 2005, and it really stuck with me. When I looked at the love triangle in my first book through this lens, I realized not only why neither prong would work but who, in fact, it was that was right for my heroine.

(When Meyers claims in interviews that the books are anti-human, this is what it means. If you can swing your vampirism the way the Cullens do — going off and eating venison in the woods — there is absolutely no downside to vampirism. Bella’s choice reflects the fact that, very reasonably, she’d rather be an eternally healthy, beautiful, young, powerful, awesome vampire then get old, get sick, get hurt, and die in a frail human form.)

But of course, all choices a character makes is reflective on who she is. The choices that Astrid makes in Ascendant regarding her love life have very little to do with the boys involved, and everything to do with her depression, isolation, and eventual nihilism. And though you can argue that Giovanni is a reflection of one facet of Astrid’s character, choosing him would not magically make that Astrid manifest, and Astrid knows it.

One of my favorite scenes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes from season five. Buffy and her friends have just overcome a spell that was meant to split Buffy into her component parts: normal girl and vampire slayer. Her boyfriend Riley tells her that he loves all of her — both parts. That to him, she is indivisible.The tragedy comes when later in that same episode, he posits that it is this elemental wholeness of Buffy that makes her unable to love him. (And where he goes from there is truly tragic.)

(I know a lot of people dislike Riley because of the things he did AFTER this revelation, and I used to be right there with you, but upon repeated rewatching, I’ve come to the conclusion that Riley’s mistakes — and he makes plenty — are not so much him having a problem with a strong woman — since he ends up marrying another — as him deciding, maybe or maybe not falsely — that he’s not good enough for Buffy without magical powers. To be discussed in detail later. People often liken Astrid and Giovanni to Buffy and Riley, though I think a more apt corollary would probably be Buffy and Xander, which never happened on the show.)

Buffy may have chosen Riley, but choosing to have a relationship with this nice, normal guy (instead of her occasionally sociopathic vampire ex-boyfriend) doesn’t make Buffy a normal girl. Over and over in the series, Buffy is forced to make a choice between her love life and her job, often explicitly. Save Angel, or save the world, etc.? Again and again, they ask Buffy who she is, and her answer is “slayer.”

Sometimes, the triangle doesn’t even involve another guy. Sometimes it’s about the heroine choosing not to be with someone, full stop.

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You can buy them (or ones very much like them) and put them in your house:

For what it’s worth, the ones above don’t look like any unicorns in my book (kirins, which the shape most resembles, are dark in color), but the second one is a zhi with an oddly shaped horn.

Unicorn taxidermy. Who knew?

Of course, I studied a lot of taxidermy (and even cryptotaxidermy, which is what we’re looking at here) when writing Rampant, because of the Bucephalus tableau in the cloisters rotunda. I know a lot of people are into taxidermy these days, though it is not my personal aesthetic. Though I am a bit swayed by things like this:

Note to family and friends: do not, under any circumstances, get me this for Christmas. I’m already a little nervous that my house has begun to look like this:

One of these days I shall photograph my unicorn collection for you all. But not today, as I’m behind on my NaNo goals.

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Though Astrid would tell you otherwise, apparently, in France, unicorns are glowing women with white, feathery hair. Who knew?

Also: “licornes”! Love!

True story: Back when I was deciding about the different species of unicorn I was going to use in Rampant, there were a few names floating around that I never did get to use. One of these was licorne (the other was monoceros). In the end, I decided there wasn’t too much difference between the European legends from Germany (einhorn) and the ones from France (licorne). And licorne and unicorn sounded similar enough that I went with einhorn to describe my graceful, white, deerlike European species of unicorn. I’m sure if my books were translated into German, we’d have to come up with an alternate name for the “einhorn” species.

“The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” in Zombies vs. Unicorns does not differentiate between the species by name, so we’re cool in any and all translations. In fact, I have taken care not to digress into a species-specific discussion in any of my unicorn short stories, since you’re dealing with a limited wordcount, and I always go into the story assuming the reader has never read my books.

FWIW, Venom and Flayer are zhis (as is pointed out in Ascendant), while the unicorn that attacked Wen’s cousins was a kirin. In “Errant,” Enyo is a zhi, and the unicorns in the forest are einhorns. In my upcoming story, “The Hammer of Artemis” — well, that’s a surprise.

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…and then I fell over in shock and awe from the wonderful drawings that people have done. Seriously, fan art is the Coolest Thing Ever.

For instance, take Emilia Argon’s drawing of an einhorn from the Battle of Jutland:

The beard! The fangs! The braided horn dripping blood! Everything is to love. She really nailed the look of the classic sweet white unicorn with the killer twist.

And what about this gorgeous digital color rendering of a re’em, by ShadowKissedAngel:

Doesn’t it look like it just walked out of Rampant: The Animated Movie? I am completely in love with the appaloosa coloring. This is totally the kind of body I was envisioning.

Here’s another pencil sketch, this one from EmoAngel1122:

As you can tell from the text, this drawing depicts the close-up horror of Bucephalus.

And it’s not all unicorns. I’m particularly fond of this rendition of Astrid, from the end (!!!) of Ascendant, by xiao-tsubasa:

Isn’t this incredible? I just keep staring at it. I’m so stunned by the level of detail. Look at her hair! Her scars! The crescent in her eye. I’m also deeply impressed by the way this artist took Astrid at her absolute worst and managed to make her look so strong and capable. Well done!

One more Astrid from Emilia Argon (this one is entitled, “Astrid gets Gored and Stuff”):

Blue hair! Pink blood! The alicorn knife being wrenched from her hands!

Also, Emilia thoughtfully includes the best plot summary of the end of Rampant that I have ever read:

“Astrid gets whacked by an evil unicorn, spends three days lying in a pool of her own blood, her mum goes bonkers, she gets rescued by a giant talking elephant unicorn, then kisses Giovanni a lot. After that she pretty much kills everything.”

True that.

I hope everyone has an extraordinary weekend, filled with Halloween parties and costumes and way too much candy. I am super excited about next week — Queenie’s first Halloween costume, the start of NaNoWriMo, a giant contest announcement, and oh yeah…

The reveal of the cover of For Darkness Shows the Stars.

See you then!

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But for now:

Best. Book. Trailer. Ever:

Carolyn Parkhurst, you rock.

And, an awesome article about creating kick-ass heroines, featuring none other than the incomparable Tamora Pierce. (You guys, you guys. I’m meeting Tammy next month and I’m already all jumpy about it.)

A great interview with the ever-classy Lauren Myracle about the whole NBA debacle.

A fun review of Ascendant. I’ve said it before, but there’s really nothing like a review where the reader nails and loves what you were trying to do with the book. The killing of an endangered species like unicorns is not just a gray area — it’s a downright charcoal black one, and it was important to me in Ascendant that it’s not just Phil whining about it and everyone patting her on the head (as so often is the case with people ignoring totally rational points made by conservationists), but also that the main character, Astrid, really starts to question the role she’s been handed and is expected to fill. I think teens are doing that all the time — the adults in her life are telling her this is what she’s supposed to do, but she looks at the evidence before her and goes, wait, this doesn’t add up.

I know with the killer unicorns series I’m working against the tide of most modern fantasy fiction. The magic in these books is an unfair magic, and in some cases, it’s even an evil magic — a magic that it would be totally rational and acceptable — even preferable — to reject. That is not the case in most fantasy fiction — in most cases, it’s “non-magical people don’t matter” or “non magical people aren’t as good.” Why would you be a Muggle if you could be a wizard, goes the trend. The Harry Potter example is especially illustrative here. Though much is made of how it’s okay to be “Muggle-born,” actual Muggles are shown as being clueless, ineffective, or easily discarded (one of the saddest parts of Book Seven is how Hermione “erases” herself from her parents lives). The takeaway is clear. Muggles < wizards.

The same is true in another mega-hit of the genre, Twilight. Author Stephenie Meyer is on record saying that she’s “anti-human” in the series, as it’s obvious from the way she’s constructed her world that vampires and werewolves outclass the human race on every possible level. Bella realizes it — she wants to be a vampire from day one. Who wouldn’t? There’s no downside. You live forever, young and ridiculously beautiful, and with a little willpower (i.e., the way the Cullens act) you don’t have to eat anything but venison and polar bear. The only possible downside is the predilection the Cullens have for eternally repeating high school. THAT doesn’t sound fun. The rest of vampire life is peachy, though. (In fact, one friend of mine is fond of pointing out that it’s the Cullens, and not Victoria, who have a moral imperative to spread vampirism around.)

So readers understandably come to a fantasy series going magic = good. Having magic is better than not having magic. I get emails every week from readers who wonder “what Phil will do now.” And I always think about Astrid, who would probably rather be in Phil’s position (she wouldn’t like to have had Phil’s experiences, but she would like to be freed from her hunter duties). Phil’s world is wide open, and she chooses to be part of the killer unicorn thing. She doesn’t on any level have to be, which, indeed, is the choice you see Marikka make in Ascendant.

However, most readers of fantasy are coming to fantasy because, you know, they LIKE magic. Thus it is very rare for a fantasy series to focus on how the acquisition of magical powers is something to be avoided — two prominent examples are Justine Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness series and Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone (though even in that one, the character judiciously uses it). It’s an interesting paradigm, to be sure.

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However, the existence of unicorns does not cause the world to grind to a halt. This strikes some readers as odd, though it’s actually the most realistic reaction. About five years ago, they confirmed the existence of giant squid, another heretofore mythical monster best known for its literary exploits (hello, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). When I was a teenager, I had a book of mythical monsters. This animal was in it, despite the fact that there had been occasional sightings of dead giant squids or pieces of dead giant squids found in the bellies of whales. (People have things called unicorns horns, too, and there are “created” unicorns like the kind that used to tour with the Ringling Circus.)

But slowly we learned more and more about real giant squids, and now we have videographic proof that they are real. Sixty foot long squids, totally real !There were articles about it in every paper, and people talked about it on the news for like a week. But I still got up and went to work that day. The metro didn’t stop running because there are actually giant squids in the sea.

What happened with giant squids is similar to what happens with unicorns — there are articles about them, researchers can get grants to study them, people who are fascinated are still fascinated, and people whose lives aren’t so much touched by the whole situation go on with their lives as they did before — to them, it’s a curious article in a newspaper, a “Huh, isn’t that cool. Pass the coffee,” kind of moment. If it happened today, it would probably trend on twitter, and then the world would move on.

Now, with unicorns, it’s a little different, because, generally speaking, giant squids aren’t a danger to anyone except sperm whales and Captain Nemo, whereas the unicorns in my books attack campers in wild places and children in public parks. Indeed, in “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn,” which takes place at the same time as Ascendant, a unicorn attack has caused the closing of all the parks in Wen’s town.

And yet, the world still goes on. To imagine otherwise is a statement about how sanitized most of our lives have become — most of us are lucky enough not to live in a place where we are in danger of being attacked by wild animals. Again, my concept of how real people and towns would react to this danger is based in reality — in how rangers in National Parks respond to bear attacks, or, on a more personal note, how the people on the beaches in my home state of Florida responded to a mysterious uptick in shark attacks about a decade ago.

Namely: there were lots of articles about it, lifeguards warned you about sharks, in places where there were heavy shark sightings or reported injuries, they closed the beaches… and yet people still went to work and school, and let their kids build sandcastles on the shore… even if they didn’t let them go in the water.

Of course, as Mark Twain once noted, the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be believable, and to some, it’s just not as fun if the average accountant or pastry chef or soccer mom hears about unicorns on the news, then continues to pay their bills, make lunch, and drop the kids off at school the way they do when they hear about shark attacks or the reality of giant squids.

Except, not everyone does that. My books are about the people who don’t. (If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be very interesting to read!) The people who put their entire lives on hold and devote themselves completely to the unicorns. Before there were unicorns, Neil Bartoli was a law student, Philippa Llewelyn was a volleyball player, Lilith worked odd jobs and Astrid went to high school. And you don’t have to be a unicorn hunter, either. All those environmentalists camping outside Gordian Pharmaceuticals — they have jobs and lives and families, too. But to them, unicorns are more important. There are people like that, and there are people who just watch the TV shows Lilith stars in and then go back to being bank tellers and car salesmen and pediatricians.I don’t talk a lot about those people in the books, though.

There are also people in the middle. People like Giovanni, who indeed had close encounters with unicorns, and now has a nice story to tell his friends at college. One imagines that when there’s a unicorn story in the news, Giovanni’s friends say, “Hey, aren’t you dating one of those unicorn hunters?” the same way I might read a story about the space shuttle and say to a friend, “Hey, isn’t your cousin an astronaut?” Giovanni can say, “Yeah, I got attacked by unicorns once. I hid in a van and this girl I was dating kicked their ass.”

Actually, I know exactly what Giovanni says. One of these days, I’ll write that story.

I’m such a tease.

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So, let’s see… what can I tell you? If all goes as planned, it will release in 2012. It’s set in during the Renaissance (yes! More historicals!) It’s the thing I was twittering about the other day. And it’s about killer unicorns.

More specifically, it was inspired by a reader. It’s actually the first thing I ever wrote that was so explicitly inspired by a reader. Not that I’m taking requests!

I hope it was not a mistake to mention that part.

Okay, I’m off to sleep, since I’ve had such a busy day throwing Queenie a birthday party. Back later with more on that.

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On the radio this morning, the DJ was talking about how there are now fantasy bowhunting leagues, like fantasy football leagues. How neat is that?

Of course, I already have a fantasy bowhunting league. It consists of Astrid, Cory, Valerija, Melissende, Grace, Dorcas, Ursula, Ilesha, Zelda, and Wen.

I’m sorry for my lack of substantive posts of late. I’m hard at work. I’m writing a new story (a unicorn story), and my new book, codename PIMP (which is hilarious — the codename, not the book, though the book does have some LOLs in it), and planning Queenie’s birthday party.

I know, I can’t believe she’s almost one year old, either.

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Bucephalus (this is as close as I could get, and it’s not very close)

Angel:

And, of course, Bonegrinder

and Flayer

And Astrid’s dress:

What? How did that get in there? Cobie Smulders, you are one tall, blue drink of water.

Seriously though, this is kind of what I pictured for Astrid’s dress, except a somewhat darker, smokier blue. Ooh-la-la.

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