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January was a tough month for us. Rio was sick for a lot of it, we were sick for the rest. But other than that…
- Declutter bedroom: Didn’t get very far on this.
- Organize attic, basement, and spare closet: Didn’t even start.
- Get rid of unused furniture: This month for sure!
- Lots of yard stuff: it’s January. We’ll survive.
- Fix refrigerator ice machine: I really need to get on this.
- Spend quality time with Sailor Boy: We went out to dinner for my birthday and shared a stomach flu. Does that count?
- Spend quality time with Queenie: Man, she’s fun to hang out with!
- Put Rio in agility (or similar) classes:This didn’t happen, owing to me being so busy making sure that Rio did not die.
- Take Rio for a hike at least once a week: see above. I actually went on a hike with her today (Feb 3) for the first time this year. I’m SO relieved she’s better.
- Promote the six new releases and four reprints I have coming out in 2012: Got started on this.
- Pursuant to previous, update website! Ah, finally. Something to cross off.
- Finish Major Secret Marketing Effort for FDSTS #1. Two things.
- Finish MSMEfFDSTS#2. Barely started on this one.
- Finish new book: Soooooooooo close.
- Finish Secret Project #1. On hold for a moment.
- Finish Secret Project #2. Or, you know, start it.
- Attend at least two writing-related conferences. Not sure which yet.
- Get invited to at least one short story anthology. Done! Woo hoo, universe!
- Follow up with co-conspirators re: Secret Project #3. Hear me, co-conspirators? I haven’t forgotten!
- Pursuant to 18, above: Write new short story.
I’ve spent the last few days implementing updates to my website, which was a tiresome and unwieldy process, owing mainly to the combination of 1) I hadn’t updated the website since 2010, and 2) the website was designed when I only had ONE book series out with a few non-fiction works on the side, so the organization requires a lot of repetition. It includes nesting menu items and separate pages and such, which while fine when you only have one books series, when you have two series, two standalones (check out my pretty new FDSTS page!), and several short story collections, some of which are part of the existing series and some of which are separate…. well, it all starts to be this giant unwieldy thing.
For instance, if I have a new anthology out (which I do, go buy it!), but that anthology has a unicorn story in it (not Brave New Love, but stay tuned for April!), then that antho has to be cross listed on my new releases page, my books page, my unicorn page, and my short fiction page. (You guys, I also just realized that apparently, under my unicorn heading, I have an entire “short works” page devoted ONLY to the unicorn short fiction, which was originally just a mirror of my other short fiction page, because until this month the only short fiction I’ve published is unicorn stuff, but seeing as that is about to change drastically this year……. GAH.)
Why did I do it like this? WHY??????
I mean, I know why. Things were a lot more simple, category-wise, when I designed the website. I’d published three books and two essays. And to be honest, I’m still not sure of a better way to do it. Fantasy vs. contemporary? Adult vs. YA? But still break out short fiction? I know I need a new site design, eventually, but I’m hoping to hold off on that for six months or so…
Anyway, after hours and hours of messing with links and updates and resizing images and fixing widgets, I kind of threw up my hands and decided I’d rather finish my taxes (YES I WOULD) than check any more links, which is why my printable booklist page is still a little out of date, and some of the widgets need adjusting, and there are links to non-existent Borders pages throughout the site. Sorry. Don’t click the Borders links.
So then I finished my taxes, and did a whole other admin thing I’ve been putting off for far too long.
Boring, right? I mean, not my website. My website is all very pretty. Go check it out in full.
And realize that the whole thing is probably going to be changing AGAIN in the next few weeks, as I receive final word on not one, but THREE secret projects that will be available in April/May that I will have covers and such to show you soon soon soon.
And possibly four. Stay tuned.
~Diana
When I am writing stories set in the real, contemporary world, the names the characters have are much more familiar to our ears. That’s why the heroine of my first book is named Amy, and her friends have names like Lydia, Brandon, George, Jenny, Malcolm, Josh, and James. She has friends with more unusual names (like Harun and Odile), to be sure, but then again, so do “normal” named people in real life. Most of my writer friends have names like Carrie, Sarah, Jennifer, Julie, Erica, Heather, etc., but I also know writers named Richelle and Varian and Lavinia.
Parents have all sorts of reasons to justify their name choices. They name children to honor family members or friends, living or dead, or to invoke qualities or feelings or to “borrow” the qualities and feelings they might attribute to saints, celebrities, or other well-known bearers of said name. They name children things that sound “unique” to indicate how special their child is to them, or go the other way and give their child a name they know (or think they know) that everyone will easily be able to spell and pronounce.
When parents name their children, they are making a statement about that child. When a writer names a character, she is doing the same thing. The fortunate thing is that, when naming a character, I can cheat. I already know that I’m naming the villain, so I can pretend that years ago, his mother looked at his precious little infant face and went, “He just looks like a Lucifer Evilius Blackheart McNasty to me.”
And sometimes, what that character’s parents are like really informs the name they are given. Take, for example, Poe, whose real name is James Timshel Orcutt. With Poe, I got to have the best of both worlds. He got his Evil von Villainous society name (it doesn’t get much more nefarious and intimidating than Poe), and the name that sounds like it was given to him by the people we later learn are his parents. He also gets a far softer nickname, Jamie, that takes both Amy and the reader by surprise when they learn it — a calculating moment in the text.
Another name which says as much about the character’s parents as the character is Astrid. Astrid hates her own name, because it’s a symbol of everything her mother wants her to be — a warrior with a long family legacy. If Astrid had her druthers, her name would probably be Jessica or Katie or Amanda. But if you know Astrid’s mother, you’d know that would never be an option.
With fiction, the author can also control everything that ever happens to that character as a result of their name. You can name a character Richard and pretend that no one ever made Dick jokes at his expense. (Or, if your character is Astrid, and you’re as cruel to her as I am, you can make sure the reader knows exactly how many jokes she suffered.) It should come as no surprise that I was much more concerned about the ridicule my actual child might receive on behalf of the name I gave her than what any book reviewer says about my character names. Astrid is pretend. She won’t be scarred for life if you make fun of her name.
My kid is a real person, and when I named her, I had to imagine saying that name a hundred times a day for the rest of both of our lives. I had to picture her writing it at the top of every form she ever received. I had to picture it being a name that suited her when she was a baby, when she was a child, when she was a teenager, an adult, an old woman. I had to imagine it suiting her if she decided to become an actress or a physicist or a pilot or a politician. One of the best pieces of advice I got when I was naming my child is to practice the name. Go out and order a coffee at Starbucks using that name. Use it in a dozen sentences. “Diana, go clean your room.” “I have to go pick up Amy from preschool.” “I’m sorry, Astrid can’t come to the phone right now.” “Elliot, you get inside right this very minute!” “Hello, this is Philippa speaking, how can I help you?”
By the end of my pregnancy, Sailor Boy was going nuts. He’d thought we’d narrowed the name list down ages ago, but I kept coming up with new options. (poor man. It’s one of the hazards of living with a writer. And, to be fair, we decided on Rio’s name super quickly.)
And if you’re a big name nerd, like I realized I was when I discovered all these name blogs, and an author, you’re in real luck. Because I’m not going to have as many kids as names I’d love to use, and there are all kinds of names I wouldn’t give an actual child (or that I’d never be able to convince Sailor Boy to use) that I can bestow on my fictional children. Names like Malou (a nickname for Mary-Louise), that I used on the main character in one of the stories I have coming out this year. I have enough names to last a whole career, now. And no, they aren’t all “weird” either. Like I said in the comments section of yesterday’s post, I have another short story coming out in April where the protagonist’s name is Andrew.
Yes, he’s a guy.
Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone’s resolutions and dreams and goal-settings come true.
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.
Yesterday, I posted about my 2011 goals and how I was doing on them. Today, I’m posting about my goals for next year. I’ve divided them into three spheres: work, home, and family. My goals this year are much more ambitious than last year, when I was at home full time with an infant.
Home:
- Declutter bedroom: If you’ve been paying attention, this has been on the to-do list for quite some time. I’m kind of a tough customer when it comes to saying goodbye to clothes — even if they’re clothes I never wear anymore (like my office wardrobe, when I haven’t worked in an office since 2006).
- Organize attic, basement, and spare closet: the downside of all the reorganizing we’ve done in the rest of the house is that certain areas of the attic and basement have become catch-alls. I know a lot of the stuff in there is not needed anymore, and I should toss it.
- Get rid of unused furniture: Also a long-held to-do. This includes one dresser in the guest room and one dresser in the master bedroom that have both sat empty for months… and yet there they sit, taking up valuable real estate. I need to get my act together and Craigslist the darn things.
- Resod yard/rip out side garden: This is SB’s pet project for spring.
- Fix fence: We really need to get on this. We’ve been dragging our feet for almost two years now. What happened was a tree fell over on one corner of our chain link fence and pulled the whole thing out of whack. The gate hasn’t latched right since, but since it’s just one corner and we don’t want to replace the whole fence, we’ve had a tough time finding someone who wants to do that little job. (Every fence company I call quotes us replacing all the fences on our property). This is par for the course in home repair I’ve found. We have one cracked floorboard — but all the repair folks won’t do anything for us unless we let them rip up our entire floor. It’s ridiculous. You have to either become a DIY expert or get taken to the cleaners for every tiny piece of home repair.
- Plant herb garden: I’ve already started on this with winter hardy rosemary and sage.
- Plant veggie garden: I’m grateful for all the success I’ve had with tomatoes but I’d really like to start expanding my repertoire. However, everything else I’ve ever tried has been middling to full-on bust, including: lettuce, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, radishes, strawberries, and bell peppers. The hot peppers were okay, but we rarely ate them.
- Keep working on that Ent.: I spent days ripping down vines last spring and I don’t know how much good it did — most of them grew back. This year I’m going to try attacking it in winter. Maybe when they’re dead/dormant it’ll be easier to detach them.
- Fix bushes in front yard: Some of them are starting to look super raggedy and our last attempt and trimming/shaping didn’t go too well.
- Fix refrigerator ice machine: see above re: repairmen as to why that hasn’t gone over so well yet.
- Do at least two other home improvement projects. I have a few potentials on my list.
Family:
- Spend quality time with Sailor Boy: And that means more than just being couch potatoes in front of Netflix once Queenie’s gone to bed. If we’re going to be couch potatoes, it should at least be in the pursuit of finally finishing Portal 2’s 2-player game.
- Spend quality time with Queenie: Somehow, I think this will be the easiest resolution of all to keep, if only because Q herself actively pursues QT with us at all hours.
- Put Rio in agility (or similar) classes: This is part of my “Rio needs more QT” resolution. I also think she needs to spend more time with other dogs. Ever since we lost Gracie and stopped fostering, she’s been pretty dogless, and while in Florida for Xmas with my parents’ and brother’s dogs, it showed.
- Take Rio for a hike at least once a week: I miss our hikes.
- Take a family vacation: This is a biggie. We haven’t been on a real vacation since before Queenie was born, and she’s getting to an age where she might have fun on a vacation. We just have to decide what to do.
- Put Queenie in swimming lessons this summer. I think she’ll love it! She loves swimming here in Florida.
Work:
- Promote the six new releases and four reprints I have coming out in 2012. Yes, that’s how many I’ve got in the US alone. I have a few foreign releases planned as well. Schedule forthcoming.
- Pursuant to previous, update website!
- Finish Major Secret Marketing Effort for FDSTS #1. I’m actually haflway through that.
- Finish MSMEfFDSTS#2. Barely started on this one.
- Finish new book. About half way through this as well.
- Finish Secret Project #1. Have been making good headway here in Florida.
- Finish Secret Project #2. Or, you know, start it.
- Attend at least two writing-related conferences. Not sure which yet.
- Get invited to at least one short story anthology. Putting that out there in the universe. I love me some short stories, and I have a pretty good track record so far.
- Follow up with co-conspirators re: Secret Project #3. Hear me, co-conspirators? I haven’t forgotten!
I just can’t stop.
Veronica Mars:
Then I started doing one for Gossip Girl, but 1) I ran out of room, and 2) I’m about halfway through season four, and a wrench just got thrown into my design. I’m going to need to start employing curvy lines. Or at least catch up on the show before I try to parse ALLLLLLLL the pairings.
Meanwhile, I’m drafting away on my new secret project, codename PIMP (I know — naughty, naughty, right?) and am deeeeep into research. Research is a funny, funny thing. For instance, these are a few of the things I’ve been researching while working on my latest novel:
- orphan diseases
- Alexander McQueen
- sericulture
- Santorini
- taro
- juvenile canities
- Huntington’s disease
- animals in the family Mustelidae
- biomolecular computing
- solar sails
- coral spawn
- geothermal power
- hair dye and bleaching techniques
- ziplining
- rock cutting
- kites
My mind goes to strange places.
 There has been a lot of discussion recently on the state of love triangles in the current crop of YA literature. Most of the discussion has focused on how gosh darn prevalent it is, with a lot of the usual refrain of “I’m so sick of love triangles” or “do all YA novels have to have love triangles in them” and etc. Some of the discussion has raised the point that there seems to be a particular focus, in love triangley books, for there to be a girl choosing between two guys, rather than the other way around. Others have pointed out the fact that book publisher publicity departments get a lot of mileage out of pushing a “Team X” vs. “Team Y” campaign on readers (I’m looking at you, Hunger Games).
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:
- most of the readers of these types of novels are girls
- These readers are moved by the “tough decision” facing a heroine with two fabulous guys after her.
- Which leads to “team” formation, by individual readers, in fan circles, and by publicity departments.
- 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.
Just so y’all know, I did 3543 today. Boo-yeah. That puts me ahead for the next two days.
Weekend, you are mine.
I am participating in NaNoWriMo this year, though I think, officially, I’m cheating. Because I’m working on an already-started book, which is, according to the NaNo rules, “punishable by death.”
Seriously, that’s what it says.
However, in chatting about this with Carrie the other day, we came to the conclusion that published authors can cheat at NaNoWriMo, firstly because we’ve already achieved the stated goals of NaNo, which is to get off your butt and write already, and secondly because the chances we’re able to start a new book from scratch precisely on November 1st is… not so much.
Who am I kidding? I think anyone can cheat at NaNo. The point is to write, right? Get to 50k. Everything else is details.
In the end, I decided it was better for both me and the universe (and my buddies in WRW, for whom I am this year’s NaNoWriMo coordinator) that I do it this way than not do it at all. No harm, no foul.
So what I did decide to do was count everything I’ve already written in the novel as zero. And since I have, I’m estimating, about 50k left to write on the novel, it’s perfect. So, starting from zero on November 1st, I now have, this lovely Friday morning, 7,773 words. I need to write another 2400 today to stay on track, since I suspect I won’t get much of a chance to write on the weekends.
Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo? I’m “dianablue” on the site. Friend me and we’ll cheer each other on!
So this is the week I’m going to show you all the For Darkness Shows the Stars cover, which is my favorite of all my covers. But before I can talk about the cover, I want to talk about the title.
A long, long time ago (in book publishing world), in 2005, I started writing a book called “Last of the Unicorn Hunters.” This title, I was told by EVERYONE, simply would not do. Thus began a months-long search for the perfect title. Many were considered. Some were mocked. A few were mocked with love and sincere affection (such as my Ludlum-loving friend’s ardent campaign for “The Horn Identity.”) I started making a list of titles that I loved. I had recently read a book called Valiant, by Holly Black, and I loved that title. I decided I wanted my title to have the same feel as that one.
Enter Rampant.
Rampant was the first book I ever sold that retained the title I sold it with. I did not realize, back at the time, that we were entering an age of one-word titles in YA fiction. Now pretty much every YA book has a one-word title. Look at the shelves: It’s one word from here to the travel section. Shiver, Matched, Uglies, Rumors, Skinned, Ashes, Ice, Need, Hunger, Linger, Divergent, Witchlanders, MOckingjay, Hourglass, Possession, Evernight, Everneath, Unwind, Intertwined, Savvy, Grace, Graceling, Fire, Liar, Leviathan, Mastiff, Devilish… and of course, Twilight.
It was so prevalent that when we went to title Ascendant, we had a bit of a challenge on our hands. Quite simply — we were running out of appropriate words. In fact, I’d already gotten emails from other writers trapped in the “one word title” conundrum of a series, annoyed that their chosen titles were considered too close to “Rampant” to be acceptable. (I’ve also gotten that email in regards to Ascendant, and I live in fear that someone will use my chosen title for the hypothetical killer unicorn book three before I get to it.)
When I went to title my next book, a post-apocalyptic retelling of Persuasion, I had one rule: No one-word titles. It was, of course, a tad ironic, given that Persuasion is one word, and a title that fit in quite neatly with the current YA trend. It did not, however, fit very well with my vision for the book.
Again, a protracted search for titles. I paged through my dog-eared copy of Persuasion, hoping for phrases that would rock my fictional world. As I did for Rampant, I made a list of words that fit with the themes and motifs I planned to explore in my book. Up spat a lot of imagery about winter and remembrance and navigation and lantern-light and compasses and stars and engineering and Greek myths and seafaring and waiting. I came up with several titles. None were acceptable. A few found their way into the book in other guises.
Eventually, I found a poem by Carl Sandburg called “Prayers After World War” which says, in part:
Wandering oversea singer,
Singing of ashes and blood,
Child of the scars of fire,
Make us one new dream, us who forget.
Out of the storm let us have one star.
And fell in love. For this, I thought, was the world I’d created. This was a world where things had been bad — so bad that people were happy to forget the past, forget the things they’d once known, and be afraid of the dreams they’d once had. It was a story about the children of the apocalypse, who had been born into a world brought low, and dared to dream that it all could someday change, dared to explore beyond their shores, dared to “make a song for tomorrow” as it says elsewhere in the poem.
But “Out of the storm let us have one star” was WAY too long for a title. Still, I loved the idea, and I kept digging. I considered phrases I liked that were along those lines:
“Shoot for the moon. If you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” (Hmm: Fall Among the Stars? No, too space-opera-y.)
“I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” (Hmm, Fearful of the Night? No, wrong emotion.)
“I would rather be ashes than dust.” (Hmm… love it, but can’t think of a fitting title.)
“I love the light for it shows me the way, but I endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” (Wait a second…)
Bingo.
For Darkness Shows the Stars was born.
I wrote a proposal and sent it on to my agent. I did not think it was a title we’d be allowed to keep, given the trend in YA titles, but I thought it was one that my editor, and hopefully the acquisitions team, would find evocative, even if marketing made us change it. I consoled myself by remembering that Persuasion was not actually a title Jane Austen had chosen herself, but rather the one her brother had put on the book after her death. She’d been calling it “The Elliots.”
(My editor later told me that she had initially doubted we’d be able to keep the title, but marketing loved it as much as we did, and here we are.)
So what does this have to do with the cover? Well, when we started talking about concepts for cover art, one of the things we knew was that with such a distinctive and distinctively evocative title that we would want to play on and play up those words as much as possible. I started collecting pictures of starscapes that reminded me of scenes in the book:
And pictures that reminded me of Elliot, because I knew the other prevailing trend on covers was pictures of girls:
(Actually, now this photo reminds me of the cove of Saundra Mitchell’s The Springsweet. Right? With the dress and the lighting and the general feel?)
So I sent these all along to my editor, and then I begged — I actually begged, and she can verify this — for an interesting font treatment, because I was busy being in love with the cover of Kami Garcia and Margie Stohl’s Caster series books. (Also: true story, their cover designer used to work for Harper, and he had once been assigned to design the cover of Rampant before he left.) And more than that, because I loved this title, and I wanted it to be an important part of the cover.
But, as with keeping the title itself, I never actually expected any of this to come to pass.
Anyway, time passed, and I finished the book, and then, one day, I was watching TV, and I saw a music video that stopped me in my tracks.
More on that tomorrow.
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