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.

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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:

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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Just so y’all know, I did 3543 today. Boo-yeah. That puts me ahead for the next two days.

Weekend, you are mine.

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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!

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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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This weekend, I went to a workshop on “voice” with Barbara Samuel. I thought it would be very helpful, because I’m having a bit of a split personality issue regarding my writerly voice right now.

It used to make perfect sense — in fact, way way back in the very beginning of this blog, I even had a whole series on writerly voice, where I invited other writers to write a scene on a certain subject to see how voice made even similar premises into very different stories. But now i”m rethinking the whole idea. Because, over the last six years, I’ve come to think of the voice I use in any particular project as being another tool in my toolbox — the voice I use is dependent on the character and the story. Talk of “voice” no longer resonates for me outside of thinking “does X voice work for Y story” — or not. It doesn’t seem like the proper use of “voice.” “Author theme” or “storyline” maybe.  Is it all about finding the story most suited to the voice that’s easiest for you to write in?

Having typed that, I think that’s what she’s getting at. But writing in the same voice/the same story forever? Nah, that’s not me.

I wrote four short stories this year. Maybe it’s because you can be more experimental in short stories, but the voice in each is markedly different. Some, indeed, are almost unrecognizable to people who think they know what to expect from a Diana Peterfreund story.

One of the voice exercises Barbara had us do was list our ten favorite movies, our favorite book at fifteen, and our favorite book we read in the last six months. This was my list:

Movies (in no particular order):

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. The Terminator
3. Casablanca
4. Working Girl
5. Swingers
6. A Letter to Three Wives
7. Persuasion
8. Pride & Prejudice (1995)
9. The Incredibles
10. The Princess Bride

Favorite Book at 15: The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Favorite Book I Read in Last Six Months: The Daughter of Smoke & Bone, by Laini Taylor

Barbara called on volunteers to share their list and from them attempted to analyze their general tastes and what kind of genre and story they were drawn to. I did not volunteer, but I didn’t need to. It’s pretty obvious from my list.

(FWIW: Ten movies is not enough. Twenty-five, Barbara said, gives a much clearer picture. 25 would also have made it way easier for me to pick — I have at least 5 alternates that could easily be switched out for the ones on that list.)

This is what I saw:

Stories of empowerment and self-discovery; about women and/or employing strong female characters*; love stories, especially love stories that are really about something else entirely; strong secondary characters; lots of  speculative/fantastical elements; wry humor.

*Note: Swingers is a notable exception to this. I love this movie, but it doesn’t pass the Bechdal test.

I guess I’m doing okay on writing what I love.

There were a lot of other exercises, some which resonated with me more than others. I’m not sure I came away with an answer to this voice conundrum though. Having said that, however, I think this would be an excellent workshop to attend if you’re feeling in a rut about your writing, or if you’re a beginning writer and you want to explore and develop your natural voice.

When I write like Amy or Astrid or Elliot or Kai, I’m writing like Amy or Astrid or Elliot or Kai. I work hard at making them sound different.To me, how they sound the same — they are very intellectually curious people, for one — is part of what makes them the kind of characters I’d write about. There are things about my writing, about the stories and characters and situations I’m drawn to, that I’m not sure I’d be able to escape from, even if I tried.

There are definitely writers with singular styles, but they are also styles they have, for the most part, chosen. To compare it to art, I’m sure when I say Monet or Dali or Picasso, you get an image in your head of a particular kind of art. But if you go to a museum, you can see Dali experimenting with impressionism or cubism or other styles. There wasn’t actually ONE way these guys could paint. They developed that way or chose that way and they were very successful at it, but one wonders, if they were successful in some other way, might they have stuck with it? If they were not successful in the style we know them for now, would they have done something else?

Some of the writers I know are remarkably versatile, like Justine Larbalestier, who can do romantic comedies and psychological thrillers and everything in between. Some friends of mine found their niche early and stuck to it, some had a false start in a genre that wasn’t right for them (say, chick lit), and then found their footing in something completely different (literary horror). I tried writing category romance for years until I realized that it wasn’t the right venue for my writing talents.

A few years ago, a big publishing exec told me that all the successful writers only write one kind of thing. My response was that that was great, if you were successful at that one thing. But what would have happened if I’d kept writing romance novels? Over and over and over. I’d written four (and two novellas). I’d submitted them, I’d entered contests, I’d won contests. I was doing revisions on one for an editor at Harlequin, and I got an offer on an another from an agent. What if one of those books had sold? Or what if — and here’s a road-not-taken that’ll keep me up nights — what if it did JUST good enough to keep me from branching out? What if it got an agent but didn’t sell, for example? what if I’d kept at the romance because I was getting all this close-but-no-cigar feedback?

Because the problem was, though I was writing about romance, I wasn’t writing romance novels. Now I understand there’s a big difference.I don’t know if I would have wised up. Or when. But my career would not look like this.

Back to that “successful writers only do one thing.” Some do. This is true. But a lot of artists evolve. A lot of artists experiment. Picasso has blue periods. Scorsese directed The Age of Innocence *and* Goodfellas *and* now he’s doing Hugo. (The difference is, the writers who do the Scorsese thing usually have to take pseudonyms to do so.)

Sailor Boy likes to remind me that for all I’ve got seven books out (and one in the hopper), I’m still at the beginning of my career. So far, readers have pretty much only seen me do the secret society girl thing or the unicorn thing (Morning Glory doesn’t count, as in that case, I was writing in the voice of the screenwriter). When FDSTS comes out, they’ll see something not quite like either. And I’ve just finished what is possibly my most experimental short story yet.

That was another valuable thing I took away from Barbara’s workshop. She had us do writing prompts in the voice of ourselves at different times in our life. Who we were at 7 or 15 or etc. It was meant, I think, to show us how our voice even in different times of our life was all connected. But it reminded me of something else. My foray into short stories has allowed me to experiment with my writing in ways I didn’t dare do in long form. And, after taking those practice runs, I learned how to utilize what I’d learned in my full length books. For instance, after writing “Errant” in third person narrative, after years (and 7 books) in first person, I was willing to try another book in third. So the shorts have been important, too. They’ve shown me I can write in other voices, in other styles, and in doing so, unleashed the potential for many new stories.

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1. Changed the name of one of my main characters.
2. Changed it again.
3. Wrote angsty emails to my editor and Carrie Ryan about the name of my main character.
4. Consulted approximately seven thousand naming sites on the internet for insight into what I should do next.
5. Made the questionable decision to take my eleven month old to the Bethesda Library to hear Ellen Hopkins talk.
6. Listened to Ellen Hopkins talk for 15 minutes.
7. Removed Q and self from Ellen Hopkins’s talk since Q decided to not be quiet.
8. Played with Q and a set of rather sexist “career dolls” in the children’s room of the Bethesda Library (seriously? Why was it male doctor, female nurse, male police man and female cashier?) while I waited for the end of the Ellen Hopkins talk.
9. Got Tricks and Perfect signed by Ellen Hopkins, who was very sweet to Q.
10. Drove home from Bethesda with a snoozing Q in the backseat, and, as often happens during quiet night-time drives, had a brainstorm about my naming issue.
11. Came home and started Googling names again.
12. Randomly saw an ex-boyfriend playing a bit part on a TV show.
13. Almost spit my pizza across the room when I saw it.
14. Reveled in the cooler temperatures.
15. Doodled five variations on the new character names onto a sheet of paper.
16. Realized I looked like a middle schooler doodling the name of her crush on her Trapper Keeper.
17. Realized it looked even more like that because one of the names actually was the name of a guy I dated in high school — NOT the guy I’d just seen on TV. (And guys, I’ve had like three ex-boyfriends in my life.)
18. Considered whether I could actually name a love interest in a teen book the same name as a guy I’d dated when I was the character’s age.

I am still undecided. I am ruminating over a pot of tea. What say you?

(Yes, this is what making a book looks like. Why do you ask?)

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It’s New Cover Day! I love New Cover Day!

Except it’s probably not really new cover day for most of the readers of this blog, since it’s only the UK publisher (Constable and Robinson) who are advertising this cover. The US publisher (Running Press Kids) might have a totally different vision in mind. But still, my story will be inside this book, too. Hello, potential UK readers!

Brave New Love

13 Dystopian Tales of Desire
by Paula Guran

Mar 6, 2012
ISBN: 9780762442201
ISBN-10: 0762442204
Published by Running Press

When society crumbles, can young love survive? When the young are deprived of their bright future and left to survive day to day, what bonds remain between individuals? Can young love survive a dystopian nightmare? This exciting collection of stories explores the struggles, both emotional and physical, of teenagers trying to survive as society falls apart or as they help build a new world. Compelling, emotionally charged stories of young lives lived in desperate circumstances by: John Shirley, Elizabeth Bear, Kiera Cass, Nisi Shawl, Maria V. Snyder, Carrie Vaughn, Steve Berman, Amanda Downum, Diana Peterfreund, Jeanne DuPrau, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jesse Karp, William Sleator, Carrie Ryan and Seth Cadin.

My contribution is entitled “Foundlings” and it’s a story about sisters, secrets, and a world where the slightest slip can turn you into a ward of the state. It’s set in a totally new world for me. It’s also the first thing I wrote after giving birth to Q, and once you read it, that’ll give you a real laugh.

I’ve been lucky enough to read the other stories in the collection and you’re in for a treat!

This book’s creation has not been an easy path. A kerfuffle earlier this year resulted in a change in editor and lineup, and a long delay in publication (almost a year!) It was wonderful having a chance to work with Paula Guran, and I’m pleased that proceeds from this anthology will be going to a charity that helps homeless LGBT teens and there are several stories in the collection featuring LGBT characters.

I hope to have other cover news soonity soon soon soon…

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Hello again. It’s Rio, back on blog duty since it’s STILL RAINING and honestly, a girl can only gnaw on her tail and nap on the couch so long. Mommy even broke down yesterday and gave me a kong full of frozen peanut butter to lap, but that little trick backfired on her some since Queenie got into it when she came home yesterday afternoon.

I’d like to say it’s not easy being a writer’s dog, but that’s not true. I know if my mommy worked at an office, I’d be left alone in the house all day. Here all I’m asked to do is sit on Mommy’s feet during the winter. Mommy can take off in the middle of the day to take me for a walk, and there are people on the internet who think I’m cute.

But the gig has its downsides, too. For instance, I have to admit I get a little jealous of all the fictional animals Mommy creates. First, it was Voldemort the snake, who I don’t mind telling you I do NOT like one bit. Apparently, he’s even older than I am, because he was created before I was born. So, for that matter, was Bonegrinder.

Bonegrinder is, quite possibly, more popular on the internet than I am. We can’t have that, folks. See how cute I am?

So, whatever. Mommy made Voldemort the snake and Bonegrinder long before she met me (and boy was I cute then):

but what’s her excuse now? Why can’t I be in every book? Why can’t I be a unicorn hunting dog? I like unicorn hunters:

Lately, she’s gone totally overboard in creating animals, ever since I started hanging around her. It’s like she’s obsessed. It wasn’t enough that she had Voldie and Bonegrinder and Bucephalus. She added a whole host of new unicorns in Ascendant. (I mean, come on, guys. Angel? That was a ploy for unicorn sympathy, plain and simple.) And of course, there was Flayer. And Enyo.

And then, to add insult to injury, she created some DOGS. Gotta make fictional ones, Mommy? Think they’ll keep your feet warm in the winter? Gog and Magog, which I’m sorry, are very clearly ripoffs of Temp Dog #2. This year, she made another dog character, Goneril. You haven’t met Goneril yet. She’s in next year’s Under My Hat anthology. And, for the record, she is NOT AS CUTE AS ME.

And now she’s at it again. You should see her. I have to lie here on the floor by her desk, pretending to nap as adorably as possible, letting my little feet twitch as if I’m dreaming of chasing things (in a land where it’s not flooding, darn it ALL) and trying to distract her with my undeniably toxic levels of cute, and she’s sitting there, typing away and giggling at the antics of her latest animal creation.

Guys, I fear it might be cuter than me.

WE CAN NOT HAVE THAT.

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Well, that was a week. I was sitting at my computer, twittering, when the earthquake started. At first I thought it was a truck passing closely outside. Then I noticed my tomato trellises shaking away and as the vibrations grew stronger, I put it together. (Yes, that’s a B.A. in Geology, why do you ask?)

You know how they say animals feel these first? Rio didn’t even wake up.

We didn’t sustain any damage and we’re all fine, here.

A few days later, everyone started panicking about the hurricane. Where I come from, people prepare for hurricane season the same way people up north prepare for winter. It’s a given that when you hear a storm is coming, you make sure you have fresh batteries in all your flashlights, a bunch of grillable/ready-to-eat food, a full tank of gas, and a few gallons of water, just in case. The large-scale panic, I think, was entirely media-generated. Hurricanes are bad and dangerous and this one hurt a lot of people, don’t get me wrong, but the shelves empty of flashlights and batteries and red wine were a little shocking to me. Pick up some staples, and make sure you have flashlights and water. Thanks to the fact that Sailor Boy and I are part of the 9/11 Generation and we live in our nation’s capital, we’ve got a permanent “emergency cabinet” in our house (which reminds me, I need to add stuff for Queenie to my jump bag.)

Even my parents, who have lived in hurricane-central for over twenty-five years, called me to report whatever piece of yellow journalism they were hearing on the news.  We were all set — but we were lucky. Our power didn’t even go out. (Compare to July 2010, when an unnamed storm knocked out power to our house for a week.) We stayed indoors all day Saturday, and now there are little leaves and twigs all over my yard, but Sunday was gorgeous. We even took Rio for a hike in the park (the creek was running way high).

The moral of the story is, respect the weather, respect natural disaster,s be prepared, and for goodness sake, Don’t Panic.

In other news, remember when I posted these stats of For Darkness Shows the Stars? Turns out they were a little premature. No, I haven’t suddenly decided to add zombies. But I did have to do a little rejiggering of the chapters during the last round of edits. so now the chapter count stands at 43 and the unchapter count at 21. To compare: There are 26 in Ascendant and 27 in Rampant. There are 21 chapters in Under the Rose, which is the longest secret society book, and the one whose length is most comparable to FDSTS (see sidebar).

That’s a significant difference, to me. I wonder if it will feel so different to readers.I think sometimes I get overly obsessed with things like chapter breaks and chapter headings and the titles of various internal parts of my novel that readers don’t really care about. I suspect a significant number of readers never read the “confessions” — let alone the chapter titles — of the secret society books.

But of course, there are all kinds of crazy ways that I’ve learned readers read books over the years. Some read all the dialogue first and then go back and read the narrative. Some read the first few pages and then the last few pages and use that as a barometer to decide whether or not to read the book. Some buy all the books in a series and then hold off reading them until the series is complete. Some always skip the prologues, or never read the chapter titles, or refuse to read anything set in italic, or only read chapters with numbers divisible by six.

Some of these reading habits make me wonder how the reader in question can ever make sense of a novel.

Me, I’m a straight through, don’t skip a word kind of reader. I would never dream of skipping a prologue or a text block or a sex scene — the author put them there for a reason, and if I skip it, I’m missing something they designed to be part of the whole. And because I read that way, I write that way, too. I mean for all the words in my books to come in a particular order, and to be read in that order. I think you’re missing something if you don’t, but that’s the way my brain works.

There are no chapter titles in FDSTS — a first for my original novels. I felt like between the parts, and the quotes, and the unchapters — well, it was starting to get a little busy in the header arena. I don’t miss them. They were right for my other series, but simple numbers are right in this case.

Enough of that. You guys are going to be SO SICK of hearing me talk about FDSTS before the book comes out next June.

Next. June. Ugh. Kidlit publishing moves at a glacial pace, y’all. When I wrote Secret Society Girl, I turned the draft in August 31, and it came out in May of the following year. At least this isn’t as bad as Rampant, though, which had a 12 month wait time after proofs. One day, maybe I’ll be patient enough to write a book and not announce it until the ARCs come out.

Hahahahahhahahahhaha. Good one.

Yes, there will be ARCs of FDSTS. Sometime this fall, I hear.

This is what I’m doing to distract myself until then:

• reading a lot
• writing a lot

I am very excited about my new project. I am jamming it full of all kinds of things I’ve been interested in recently. Pets. Frocks. Swimming. Banter. And of course, fabulous names.

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