This month, I’ll be attending the New York City Teen Author Festival.
I will be appearing at the following festival events:
NYC Teen Author Festival Symposium
DATE: Friday, 3/19
LOCATION: New York Public Library, South Court, 42nd Street
TIME: 2:10-3:00 P.M.
Using Genre to Tell the True Story of Adolescence
featuring: Judy Blundell, Sarah Beth Durst, Lauren McLaughlin, Diana Peterfreund, Sara Shepard, Maggie Stiefvater, and Robin Wasserman
Gee, guys. Wonder what I’m going to talk about.
There is also talk about an enormous Books of Wonder signing on Sunday, but I have to see how the ol’ body’s faring before I feel free to announce that part, too. I may have to back out.
So this post started life a few weeks ago as a conversation with Carrie about what “dystopia” actually meant in the context of writing dystopic fiction. Carrie’s opinion, which I’ve since confirmed is the prevailing one, is that a dystopia is a society featuring negative/miserable/oppressive/violent conditions. My understanding of a dystopia, which I’ve held since high school up until the point that I had this conversation with Carrie and went to do some research on the subject, was that the word dystopia was specifically dealing with a society that presented itself as being perfect and utopic, but was rotten underneath. Something like the society in Scott Westerfeld’s book UGLIES. Everyone thought they were happy and at peace, but it was a lie.
Compare that to the societies in Carrie’s books, where no one is under the delusion that they are living in a perfect society. So I was describing her books as being post-apocalyptic but not dystopic, whereas she was saying they are both. (Note: you can have dystopias without corresponding apocalypses. Cf. THE COMPOUND and CANDOR.) So is Publisher’s Weekly, as of 2/15, in an article about “dystopian” YA fiction that comes with the headline “Apocalypse Now.” From the article:
“…hundreds of thousands of today’s teens are reading future-as-a-nightmare novels—and not just the 1984 and Brave New World classics required by their teachers. Publishers will be releasing dozens of new dystopian titles over the next few years. Among the scenarios: no more gas, no more water, viruses run amok, genetic manipulation gone awry, totalitarian leaders, reality TV gone too far, and so on.”
(Incidentally, both 1984 and Brave New World, to me, are what I’m thinking of when I classically define “dystopia”: both show societies that present themselves as being the ideal–particularly the latter, which bears many similarities to Uglies in its makeup and treatment of “wild” men.)
I have a thing for dystopian fiction and always have. Much of my juvenilia takes place in post-apocalyptic and dystopian worlds, and much of my teen reading did, too. In fact, most of my science fiction reading can be classified under the post-apocalyptic or dystopian sub genre. (Though, in a con-level conversation about YA SF on Janni Lee Simmer’s blog the other day–and really, the whole thing is worth reading–one big topic was how many SF folks discount dystopic fiction from their ranks.) If the idea of fantasy and science fiction is about holding up a mirror to real world issues, it helps if you can recreate the entire world of your story around that particular real-world issue. Do you want to talk about genetic engineering creating unfair class differences? Gattaca. Do you want to talk about ideals of beauty? Uglies. Privacy? 1984. Free will? Candor. Censorship? Farenheit 451. Third-world exploitation and getting desensitized to televised violence? The Hunger Games.
Like a scientist, the author of a dystopian work of fiction creates a set of very particular conditions within which he runs his human experiment.
As an author of six books of fiction set in our world, I have to say that’s an idea with seriously seductive potential. How often do the rules of our world get in the way of fiction I want to right? Astrid may rush out into the knight with an alicorn in her fist, intent on vigilante justice, but even she knows that the police must be called, people must be taken to the hospital — there’s proper procedure. In Secret Society Girl, the grinding of the tectonic plates between the created society (which has its own arguably dystopic qualities) against that of the real world formed much of the tension of the books. Was Amy going to follow the rules of her society, or the rules of the real world? What about the other society members? How could they play those rules off one another to achieve their ends?
So though I have never written a dystopic novel, both of my series do deal with a fictional construct of a little worlds-within-worlds where the rules operate differently, and usually in such a way that it’s severe detriment to the members of the little society. Rose & Grave’s secrecy hurts its members; the benefits aren’t as clear. The rules of the Order of the Lioness are restricting and backwards, even to those trying to resurrect it. I would describe only the former, however, as being a society that thinks of itself as actually beneficial.
(It’s interesting to think about this though, because I recently finished writing a historical killer unicorn story that has a very different perspective on the OoL — it is apparent to me now that a society might work under some circumstances and not others. If the world outside is a far more dystopic place then maybe you’re better off in the Order.)
But I’m not convinced yet, because I also would argue that books that are simply post-apocalyptic are not dystopian. To me, [The Hunger Games] is simply post-apocalyptic. (Those in charge weren’t and aren’t aiming for a utopia. Just control.) Similarly, just because a war is involved doesn’t make it dystopic to me. (Is Star Wars dystopic? Is The Hurt Locker?)
Unlike Joni (who comes down on my side of the definition, i.e., “dystopia”=”utopia gone wrong”) I would absolutely argue that The Hunger Games is dystopic fiction, even by her and my more limited definition. You are simply seeing it from the perspective of the already-oppressed. The population of the Capitol is shown over and over again that they have been taught to believe that their society is perfect, and that this horrible, torturous existence of the Districts is the way things are supposed to be.
So now we’ve got these two working definitions of dystopia:
a utopia gone horribly wrong (Uglies, Gattaca, Candor, etc.)
a world where everything is as bad as it could possibly be (The Forest of Hands & Teeth, Life As We Knew It)
But at what point are we just mixing up post-apocalyptic worlds and dystopian ones? Is an apocalypse necessary to bring on a dystopia? It’s easier, I suppose, to remake the world in the dystopic image of your choice if you clear it out with an apocalypse, first.
One of my favorite pieces of dystopic fiction is Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake. (She recently wrote a sequel, The Year of the Flood, which I haven’t read, though Ursula LeGuin’s review in the Guardian should not be missed, seeing how she takes Atwood to task for insisting that her work is NOT science fiction. ). O&C is about a dystopic future society, one in which corporations rule the United States, genetic engineering and pharmaceuticals are king, all creative endeavors have gone to the lowest common denominator (read: porn and snuff films), and the manufactured apocalypse that comes out of that. It’s not post-apocalyptic, really, It’s just plain apocalyptic, and it’s the dystopia that brings the apocalypse about, not (as is so often the case) the other way around.
Is dystopia in the eye of the beholder? Carrie calls her books dystopic. Publisher’s Weekly, along with some other sites that have been compiling lists of dystopic YAs, agree. To read these lists, though, one comes away with the idea that for all the talk about vampire books, it’s post-apocalyptic and/or dystopic fiction that’s really making a splash in YA these days.
There are books on that list I’d describe as dystopic, and ones I’d describe as post-apocalyptic. My own, personal definition is that if the effects of the apocalypse is still coloring everything, and bringing it down, it’s post-apocalyptic. If it’s more about the new (evil) society and the way things are working (even if that society is a direct response to the apocalypse), it’s dystopic. For instance, I’d classify Uglies as dystopic, because though we hear about the Rusties and what happened to them, it’s ancient history to Tally, like Roman ruins. It has nothing to do with her life and the way her dystopic society operates.
(And, as I said earlier, it’s quite possible to have a dystopic story without a corresponding apocalypse.)
But the trend these days is to lump them all together. Post apocalyptic –> dystopic. And maybe, as a subset of YA speculative fiction, it’s as good a definition as “a girl and her paranormal boyfriend.” After all, there are a lot of books on shelves right now that are werewolves or demons or fairies or fallen angels and they definitely appeal to the same market share as the people who are reading the ones about vampires. The people who like to read the post-apocalyptic books are the same ones who read the ones I’ve been calling dystopic.
The PW article goes on to say:
“YA authors “are using the dystopian genre to try to grapple with the issues of today,” says David Levithan, v-p and editorial director at Scholastic. But unlike writers of adult fare, they are giving their downbeat stories an optimistic twist. “It’s about improving the dystopia rather than throwing up your hands and saying, ‘This is what we’re fated to be,’ ” he says. “We realize we could be these characters.”
““If there’s any one theme in children’s literature, it’s hope,” Perfect author Lerangis concurs. That was true for Diamond of Darkhold, the fourth and final tale in Jeanne DuPrau’s Book of Ember series, and it’s true for the final book in Pfeffer’s Life As We Knew It trilogy. The books are never as bleak as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, or Stephen King’s Under the Dome. Scary stories (and movies) help kids work out their fears, says Girl in the Arena author Lise Haines, “and almost function like fairy tales. Even in the worst of situations, we find ways to get through, and sometimes even better the world.”
I really like that. In fact, I was saying something very similar to my editor the other day, in a discussion about this very topic. About how post-apocalyptic fiction can in fact, be quite optimistic.
“Recently I’ve read a few books where a character is introduced a few chapters into the story and the narrator/main character describes her as “black” or “Asian” or “Hispanic.” It always jolts me because the rest of the characters in the book are not described as “white,” but it is assumed as a reader I know they are. Now if by saying a character has blue eyes and red hair the author figures I’ll know the character is white, why can’t he/she just say something like “her eyes were as brown as her skin” to describe someone who is black? It just comes across that the author assumes his/her readers are white. Does this bother anyone else? Am I being overly sensitive? For the record, I’m white.”
There have been several posts recently about the issue of describing race in novels, with the general complaint being that if a character is described as “black” or “Asian” or etc. then why aren’t white characters described as white?
“Doing good descriptions is hard, because you have to choose which facts are relevant to mention. How people *interpret* these facts–well, that’s another matter entirely. But when you write something, you have to have SOME sense of what impact your words are going to mean. That is pretty much the job description. Those descriptions are code–they should tell you something about the character, something aside from what’s there, flat, on the page.”
“When the characters, plot, or setting requires an author to define race, how does he or she accomplish this? Is there a “Korean kid” or a “black girl”? The problem is that socially constructed race words like African American, black, Asian American, and Latina are typically used only for characters who aren’t of European descent. North American authors conventionally don’t use “European American” or “white” to describe characters because to label every character’s race makes reading tedious. Why use any such labels at all, then? The best answer is because it made sense for a particular character or a first-person narrator to label people with those terms.
“If labels aren’t used, but you know a character is nonwhite, ask yourself and your students how the author communicated that fact. Check for tired food-related clichés about “coffee-colored” skin or “almond-shaped” eyes versus fresh, bold attempts to delineate race and culture in a story.”
And this is pretty much how I’ve gone about it. I’m sure it says something about me as a reader that despite living in a very multicultural world, I’m going to assume a character is white unless told otherwise (by the cover, the character themselves, or a description). Of course, there are exceptions — for instance, if I’m reading a novel about a prince in medieval Japan, I’m going to assume his ethnicity is, you know, Japanese. And it changes, too. If I’d picked up a novel a few years ago about the daughter of the President of the USA, I’d picture someone who looked like one of the Bush girls. Now, I’d picture one of the Obama girls. And that’s because my head goes to the “president’s daughter” file in my brain and the first picture that pops up is the REAL president’s daughters.
Or maybe Zoe Bartlett.
In SSG, the characters’ races/ethnicities/minority status were very much part of the story, as sometimes they were selected for the society to fulfill certain token spots. Rose & Grave needed the gay black member, the male Asian-American member, the Muslim Middle-Eastern member, the Jewish member. The narrator Amy, who is white, is also more likely to think of someone’s race if it’s a race different from her own.
In Rampant, the characters’ nationalities actually took precedence over their races, but it also didn’t make sense to me, knowing as I did that Alexander the Great started out from the eastern edge of Europe and moved east across the Middle East and Asia, and then the three thousand years of history that followed, that all the characters would be white. Most readers (rightly) assumed that Grace Bo, from Singapore (and an Asian hunting line), was of Asian descent. Funny story about Grace: in college, I wrote a short story about a girl named Grace (no last name) who was in medical school, and EVERY SINGLE PERSON who read it assumed (wrongly) that the short story Grace was Asian-American, probably because most of the people we knew who had names like Grace and were studying to be doctors were in fact Asian American. So maybe that contributed to my thought process when naming Grace Bo Grace. Well, that and the fact that Grace under pressure is the big discovery that character makes in Rampant. Readers also probably picked up on the fact that Ilesha, from India, was Southeast Asian, and knowing that Valerija comes from eastern Europe is enough to get a picture of her appearance in your head.
But this isn’t always the case. Despite quite explicitly describing the French hunter Zelda as having dark black skin, there were readers who translated that as “dark black hair” and I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake not being specific in my descriptions of Giovanni. Yes, he’s half-Italian, half-American. But when you picture Giovanni, do you see this?
Because that’s what he looks like. And though Astrid describes him in detail, she never specifically says he’s black. And a lot of readers have taken her descriptions of dark skin and curly, close cropped hair as being indicative of white Italians. I know many white Italians who have, for white people, “dark” skin and dark curly or wavy hair. My brother, for instance, who is practically as Italian as Giovanni.
I did not get the dark skin and hair in the genetic lottery. I REALLY did not get the curly hair. But I digress.
Anyway, I don’t know what the right answer is, and it’s one I’m going to revisit in every book, because I’m going to continue to write characters of many different ethnicities. In my experience, I think the possible danger of throwing a reader out of the story by explicitly describing a character’s race like the question on Daphne’s blog is probably a fair price to pay for making sure that your readers know the race of the character. YMMV.
Another challenge would be to describe the character’s race in a time when the words we use don’t mean anything. How would a character in, say, Carrie Ryan’s books describe people of different races? They don’t even believe in the ocean in that book. Do they believe in continents like Asia and Africa? You’re not Asian-American if there’s no America, if no one knows what happened to Asia.
So I know I owe y’all a big continuation of the Nice Guys exploration and I promise I’ll be getting to it, but I’m so ridiculously swamped right now, you have no idea. Meanwhile, here’s two interesting posts by Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier about the Blank Page Heroine — or the personality-less girl that often serves as either a male fantasy or a stand-in for female readers to insert themselves into the story and run off with the hot hero. One of the big tips in writing romance novels is to have a hero your reader wants to fall in love with an a heroine your reader wants to be. Relatable != Personality-free.
Go read those posts. In the comments section of Justine’s post, PixelFish brings up the topic of geeky characters, which is one type of personality that doesn’t get a lot of play in traditional romances:
I also wanna mention Meg Cabot who writes some geeky heroines in her adult romances. (My favourite is a short redhead who reads gossip columns, watches the weather channel and has a Princess Xen action figure.) I compare that to another writer who I will refrain from naming who claimed to write about geeks but only wrote Hollywood geeks–ie. beautiful people who just needed to take their glasses off to find love. Whereas Meg Cabot’s geeks are geeks to the bone. Her character wasn’t going to stop watching the Weather Channel or ditch the Xena figure just to get a guy.
I started thinking about geeky characters, and their portrayal in fiction. I have recently finished watching all the available episodes of GREEK, and among my myriad problems with the show (inconsistent characterizations, sexism, massively bad stereotyping) is the way they codify geekiness. It’s not “quite” as bad as watching an episode of Saved By the Bell, but it’s close.
For instance, the two main characters, Casey and Rusty Cartwright, are a brother and sister who fall firmly among the “popular cheerleader” “geek loser” lines. Casey, the older sister, is a gorgeous blonde who is the leader of her “best sorority on campus,” has an active social and sex life, and is time and again shown to be very shallow (picking taps pledges based on their hotness factor). It is established that her younger brother Rusty is a “loser” whom she doesn’t even acknowledge to her closest friends, predicated mainly on the fact that he wears striped polo shirts, turned down MIT to come to this state school and study “Honors engineering” and is a “genius” who doesn’t do tequila shots. Rusty wishes to join a fraternity, and is quickly welcomes into the embrace of the “loser” frat on campus, Gamma Tau. (And by “loser” they seem to mean “Animal House” not “Revenge of the Nerds” as this frat clearly throws amazing parties that seem to be populated every weekend by hundreds of students. Later in the series it is established that there is a frat for “nerds” called something that sounds like “sci fi” but is made of Greek letters, where the members all wear glasses and watch Star Trek.)
The members of Casey’s sorority, though they are the “hottest” girls on campus, are constantly worried about being associated more often with this “loser” party frat than with the blazer-wearing trust-fund frat Sigma Chi, who are supposedly the “hottest” guys on campus — DESPITE the fact that the leader of the “loser” frat is easily the most attractive and interesting person on the show, is tapped for the super special senior secret society that the leader of the “best” fraternity is also tapped for, has a long string of hotties to date and regularly dates the members of Casey’s so called “best” sorority (later, this becomes an issue, as apparently their intimate connection to the “loser” frat brings down their reputation on campus). Meanwhile, the members of this “hottest fraternity” are mostly either openly gay or closeted (thereby negating the purpose of being a source of dates for their “best sorority partners) or butt ugly (as evinced by the short, pale, pugilistic crew cut red head currenlty rallying the other frat members against the Jason Dohring lookalike frat leader)…
To make a long story short, I don’t really grok the understood and unstated value system which informs every plotline on the show, but that might be because I’m the kind of person who knows what grok means. To the characters of Greek, I would be a geek/loser relegated to (undeniably popular and sociable) fraternities, if I managed to make it into one at all.
I have a hard time understanding that. I didn’t go to a big frat school. I don’t even know if any of the frats were residential, but I do know that I had sorority girls as roommates (and my husband had fraternity boys) as upperclassmen. I always imagined there was a frat for every flavor at the schools where frats are a thing. And I have a really tough time understanding why the frat with the reputation for throwing the best parties on campus could be simultaneously regarded as “losers” — especially since time and again, the characters say they joined the greek system “for the parties.”
It’s a similar problem to the one I find watching The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, where often, in adjacent episodes, the characters make the EXACT SAME geeky reference (often to Star Wars). In the former show, the characters are drawn as out of touch losers with no friends outside their circle and zero romantic opportunities. In the latter show, the characters are drawn as attractive, sociable members of society with hot wives, hot girlfriends, and an endless parade of hot one night stands. (Also in the latter, the hot girl dates make geeky references too.) Since when does liking science fiction and academia turn you into an unsocialized loser?
Honestly, HIMYM feels way more realistic to me. Geeks come in all shapes and sizes, and some of us have happy, sociable, romantically fulfilled lives with our cool, cute geek husbands, thank you very much. We don’t live in Revenge of the Nerds or Saved by the Bell, people. Look around. The geeks have inherited the Earth.
I didn’t set out to write “geek” characters. The characters of Secret Society Girl are, granted, far more “geeky” — by Greek standards! — just by dint of studying hard enough to make it into an Ivy League school. I had to laugh at Pixelfish’s suggestion of “taking off the glasses to find love,” since the hottest and most popular guy in my books by far is George Prescott, who wears glasses and gets the girl. He also rocks a mean Star Wars reference on many occasions.
Poe, however, is a character whose geekiness is overlaid by general anti-social behavior. It’s not just that he wears old, ill-fitting clothes as a poor undergrad and owns a giant pet snake named Voldemort and was probably a D&D Dungeonmaster growing up. It’s that he doesn’t seem to want to be friends with most people and most people return the favor.
None of the girls in SSG are coded as geeks, either, and really, that’s part of the point. When I got to college, I realized that many of the interests that might have gotten you in trouble in the rigid high school hierarchy no longer existed. There was a larger pool of students from which you could draw your own social group, and even the most party animal of kids (again, I suppose “party animal” is coded as “loser” on Greek) were bookish nerds about something, otherwise, they wouldn’t have been at Yale.
Jenny, probably the shyest of the taps, is a computer engineer, but she has a large group of friends in both her computer and religious circles and can hold her own in most social situations.Her shyness is a cover, because she also has a smart mouth, and I always imagine her being much more outspoken online and probably more used to that in her day to day life — until the Diggers got their hands on her.
And part of it also is that I was writing about young adults at a highly competitive college. They were 21 years old and, for the most part had come to terms with their personality types and the friendships those engendered. That was the whole point of the society — to break them out of that mold and make them friends with people that weren’t part of their social group. (Greek has something similar with the leaders of rival frats joining the same secret society.) But I could also play with the hierarchy label, especially in the first book, where Amy’s insecurities about George and Clarissa are not even recognized by the other two characters. Amy’s whole reason for hating Clarissa is because she knew that Clarissa talked bad about her freshman year. Back when they were teenagers. Back when Clarissa and Amy were both more caught up in the idea of high school-style hierarchy. Clarissa, at 21, doesn’t even remember it. It’s no longer part of her personality or worldview.
And then I wrote a YA novel, and I got to bring the whole high school hierarchy back into play.
Astrid, in Rampant, comes from a high school society far more focused on sports (Phil is popular because she plays volleyball, Brandt is popular because he swims) but her borderline status is due to her own shyness, her mother’s reputation around town and family as a crazy person, and the fact that a lot of 16 year old boys are put off by 16 year old girls who are smarter than them, especially in the sciences. Nevertheless, she is, at the start of the novel, dating someone, and she gets another boyfriend in Rome.
I didn’t realize this as writing it, but I’ve had teen girls come up to me and say that Astrid must be very beautiful and popular, to have two boyfriends. I don’t really think of it that way, given the nature of her relationship with Brandt. He was her first boyfriend, and he’s the kind of guy who dates a lot of girls. Personally, I think he’s taking advantage of Astrid’s place in the social pecking order, especially in her first year at school where she doesn’t have Phil around as an anchor. But though Astrid’s love of science might code her as a geek, her mother’s reputation pushes her more into the “freak” realm. Either way, her social standing at school is far from secure. And then I take her out of that environment and put her in the Cloisters, where she suddenly finds herself to be at the top of the totem pole, part of an inner clique among unicorn hunters — a social structure that would be utterly alien to the kids on Greek. And she feels just as uncomfortable there.
I wonder if YA fiction is written about more “geeks” — more people who feel out of place in their environment. Because I think almost every kid does, no matter where they truly stand in society. I can think of very few books (outside the Gossip Girl and knock off group) written about the most popular girl and usually they are “the popular girl brought low” variety — like SKINNED by Robin Wasserman, which is a futuristic sci-fi take on destroying the life of the popular girl. And even Gossip Girl has that outsider perspective, the perspective of the gossip girl narrator.
My own high school experience was fine. Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of relationship drama, and a lot of the time I felt like I was on the outs with certain groups, but I also had plenty of friends. I went to a small high school (~60 people per grade) and lines weren’t drawn that way. The captain of the soccer team (we didn’t have football) was also the lead in the school play. The student body president was also the artsy, guitar-playing party kid (I dated him — in fact, he was my only high school boyfriend, an experience that proved I was so not ready for the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing at 16). We didn’t have much of a geek/cool kid divide. People hung out in different groups, but there was also tons of crossover and no one really looked down on any other group. I remember talking to one of my good friends, who was definitely part of the jock crowd and partied more than most of my friends, but was also in highest AP calculus and ended up at Princeton, and he was marveling about how the stereotype at most schools is that the “mean, popular” kids were all the jocks, but the theater kids in my school were way more stuck up. I was a theater kid, and had been, I believe, regaling him with tales of the latest theater crowd drama.
What do you think? Do you like books about geeks? Do you like geeky romantic interests? Do you think that YA books get the lion’s share of geeky characters? What book reminds you most of your own high school experience?
Oh, and for those of you who went to large, frat-focused school. Is Greek right about their take on that society? Why would people join frats “for the parties” then look down on the frat that throws the best ones?
Hi, everyone, it’s me, your absentee blogger. I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting this place of late (I know I’ve owed folks more on the “nice guy” thing for, like, weeks) but I’ve been so busy! Florida, St. Louis, New York City, the KidLitCon — and then revisions, revisions revisions! It’s been a whirlwind.
For instance, this weekend I spent all day Saturday (from about 6 AM to 10 PM) at the KidLitCon here in DC. I attended panels on how authors, bloggers and publishers can work together, a panel on the new FTC guidelines work (and “guidelines” is really the appropriate word here, because the takeaway message I got from the very nice FTC rep was that everyone needed to chill out), and got to hang out with some amazing authors, including Laurel Snyder, Amanda Brice, Caroline Hickey, Pam Bachorz, Paula Chase Hyman, and Varian Johnson.
Varian Johnson, me, and Paula Chase-Hyman at “Meet the Author” at KidLitCon
On top of that, I met some amazing librarians whose blogs I totally intended to come straight home and check out… except:
My train to New York City left at 7 AM the next morning. Yikes.
So, after sleeping all the way to New York, I arrived, checked into my hotel (Luggage = one tiny suitcase and one enormous bag of killer unicorn cookies) and betook myself downtown to Books of Wonder. The other authors at the signing included John Connolly, Marissa Doyle, John Hulme, Daniel Kirk, Sara Beth Durst, Dan Poblocki, and Michael Wexler — and I am now the proud possessor of all their books.
Also at the signing: my editor, Sharonluvscats (in her awesome unicorn jacket!), Cassandra Yorgey, my uncle Tom (who drove down from Buffalo to see me!), a whole bunch of my college friends, and Mitali’s dad.
THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO BRAVED THE CRAPPY WEATHER AND CAME!
It was a really fun signing. Instead of doing a reading (which always makes my palms sweat in fear), we all got a chance to talk about the kernel of the idea behind our books. And regular blog readers know I can go on forever about the ideas behind killer unicorns. After our presentations, a school principal came up to me and said she was buying Rampant because it sounded very educational. I hope, upon reading it, she decides there’s enough mythology, monasteries, and museums mixed in with the making out and the manslaughter.
See what I did there? What a wordsmith.
After the signing, Sarah Beth Durst and Sarah Cross and I went to a nearby bakery and had ridiculously rich hot chocolates with ridiculously large marshmallows in them. Then Sarah Cross and I went to dinner and caught up, since I hadn’t seen her since Team Castle. We caught up for, um, five hours. Eventually, the people at the restaurant took our teacups and water glasses away and refused to keep refilling. Getting the hint, we betook ourselves to Grand Central Station and kept catching up in the lobby until we finally, reluctantly, admitted we should both probably go home and get some sleep.
The next morning, I woke up, packed up my killer unicorn cookies:
And headed off on my day of extra special secret fabulous promotional events. I did a television appearance (more on that soon), a video interview (more on that a little less soon, but still not so long from now), and had nice long chats with my editor about — ahem — secret books I may or may not be writing (see column at right).
And then I came home to Sailor Boy and Rio and TempDog #4, who all missed me madly. And I spent all of Tuesday playing catch-up.
So, there you have it! Why I’ve not been around. Sorry.
In other news, I’ve got winners of the fabulous Kristin Cashore Giveaway, and here they are:
MICHELLE OF THE SPIRAL PATH (comment #7)
SARA OF THE HIDING SPOT (comment #16)
And here’s how it works. You two email me and tell me whether you want Graceling or Fire. First come, first served.
There’s been a lot of talk around the blogosphere recently about the general love of bad boys. I’ve seen a few folks saying that nice guys can work too (and a few more actually claiming “bad boy” status on characters I would certainly categorize as “nice guys”) but it’s pretty much nothing compared to the wave of bad boys taking over books.
My writer friends have been noting the phenomenon as well. One writer was bemoaning the current trend of “the badder the better” and saying it used to be the bad boy hero was some dude who’d just killed a man. Then it became an assassin with a heart of gold. Then just an assassin. Then just a murderer. Another writer wondered if this onslaught was a factor of readers wanting to live vicariously through the exploits of a fictional heroine who walks on the wild side with a lover who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But, hasn’t that always been the case with bad boys in fiction? This isn’t a NEW trend. So why now are books filled with ever more reprehensible men?
Bad boys never did it for me. I never had a thing for Heathcliff (abusive, horrible puppy-killer!) or Mr. Rochester. I liked Gilbert Blythe and the fine, upstanding, stick-in-the-mud (if jerky) Mr. Darcy. (Actually, I *really* liked Captain Wentworth, who I suppose had the technical bad boy edge of being a privateer.) I thought Angel was a sociopath, and though I liked Spike as a character, I was never attracted to him and found his relationship with Buffy to be utterly laughable (as opposed to his relationship with Drusilla, which I actually found quite effective and moving). Me, I liked Riley — til they ruined him, that is.
(It is important to note that I do not think that angst=bad boy. Edmund Pevensie, upon whom I have a crush I’ve actually been paid to write about in detail, is angsty — but not a bad boy. He had one little lapse in judgment, and proceeds to spend the rest of the books atoning for it. A lot of bad boys are, however, angsty, which is usually our entry into sympathizing with them.)
So the only bad boy I ever fell for was Logan Echolls of Veronica Mars. And I fell hard. Perhaps it helped that Logan was still a child, and it was possible for him to rise above his abusive father and horrific home life that was making him into a psychotic jackass (See above re: angst and sympathy). I watched the end of the first season of VM with my heart in my throat worried/terrified that Logan had murdered his ex-girlfriend Lilly in a fit of jealous rage. And through it all, I loved him. My one bad-boy crush.
Perhaps my love for Logan helped when I found myself crafting my own bad-boy love interest — or what one reviewer (positively, if you can believe it) called “the asshole love interest.” It certainly hadn’t been my intention to write that guy, and it was really challenging too, to make it believable — to me — that a reasonable woman would take that kind of risk with her heart or with her safety. It took the better part of a book to set up a situation where I could even get her to a point where she’d initiate it, and another book entirely to get the relationship off the ground. It had to be believable for me.
And it worked, if the reader responses are anything to go by. People love Poe. I sometimes wonder how much they love him, and how much they love the trope of the bad boy. I worked hard on him, but most folks were on board right from the start. There’s something about bad boys that gives them that capital. Ironically, though bad boys have a population of readers ready to love them from the word go, good boys have to work five times as hard.
Here are the struggles they face:
If they are sweet and considerate, they are perceived as weak.
If they are steadfast, loyal, and sure of their feelings for the girl, they are perceived as desperate, lying, or too good to be true.
If they are fine upstanding citizens, they are perceived as bland and goody-two-shoes.
And to those naysayers, I present Mr. Lloyd Dobler:
Let’s face it, we all want John Cusack standing outside our house with a boombox.
And the whole point of Say Anything, really, is that Lloyd embodies everything that a bad boy is not. He’s sweet, and considerate, and unassuming, and steadfast, and stand-up, and absolutely, unequivocally in love with a girl that everyone thinks outclasses him.
MIKE: I wanted to ask you: how’d you get Diane Court to go out with you? LLOYD: I called her up. MIKE: Yeah, but how come it worked? I mean, like, what are you? LLOYD: I’m Lloyd Dobler. MIKE: This is great. This gives me hope. Thanks.
Lloyd isn’t boring or weak (he can manhandle drunks at a party pretty handily), but he’s also pretty accepting of the fact that his general lack of ambition and his vague idea of being a “professional kickboxer” doesn’t hold a candle to Diane’s future and destiny. So why do we like him so much?
A friend of mine told me it’s because Say Anything is, ultimately, Lloyd’s story. It’s not the story of a high-powered ambitious girl who accepts the gentle love and devotion of a nice guy like Lloyd Dobler. It’s about Lloyd, everyone’s favorite everyman, who through true love and devotion wins his prize of the beautiful girl. We’re with Lloyd. We really want him to get his heart’s desire, and when he does, we cheer.
But what if this was Diane’s story? Would we then perceive Say Anything as being about a very successful girl who takes pity on the class slacker, has a little summer romance, and when her life goes all topsy-turvy, settles, knowing this guy is willing to be her house-husband and general shoulder to lean on in England? Comforting, sure, but not exactly the stuff of high passion.
Heck, even Lloyd’s cadre of girlfriends (a delicate balancing act, from a writer’s perspective, to present Lloyd as being platonically beloved by women without coding him as someone who is not boyfriend material) have to have a discussion about his catch-factor:
REBECCA: Hey, I know this is a strange thing to say, but maybe Diane Court really likes Lloyd. COREY: If you were Diane Court, would you honestly fall for Lloyd? (long pause) Yeah. DC: Yeah! REBECCA: Yeah.
And maybe it also helps that Lloyd is so in love with Diane — standing-outside-the-window-with-a-boombox kind of love. But of course, that kind of thing can backfire on a nice guy. In high school, my friends and I used to say that a romantic gesture had nothing to do with the gesture — it was the guy doing it. If you liked the guy sending you secret notes and flowers, it was romantic. If you didn’t, it was lame and stalkery. If it wasn’t cutie-pie John Cusack — Lloyd Dobler who we were all rooting for — standing out there with the boom box, we’d probably recommend that Diane call the cops.
I ran into that problem myself with Brandon. The sweeter and more romantic Brandon was to Amy (and, most importantly, the less that Amy responded to it) the more his actions were viewed by the readership as lame and desperate. So maybe it’s that Amy actually likes the equally lame (from an objective standpoint) stuff that Poe pulls. I mean, a half-eaten pack of LifeSavers as a present? Not exactly diamonds and chocolates.
As the reactions to the boys in the SSG series came in, I was fascinated by what readers chose to believe of Amy’s narration and what they discarded. All first person narrators are to some extent, unreliable, in that the reader only sees what they see. Even if they are telling the absolute truth to the reader, they are not omniscient, and they bring their own biases into the situation. Take, for example, Amy’s initial reaction in SSG to Clarissa’s overtures in the library. Because Amy hates Clarissa, she thinks Clarissa is trying to be bitchy to her and to question Amy’s right to be tapped by Rose & Grave. Later, of course, we discover that Clarissa was honestly curious. Readers assume Amy’s version of events, and are corrected only when Amy is.
(Of course, some of them are never corrected. I am always surprised by the number of letters I get from people who hate Clarissa, even though Amy grows to love her.)
So perhaps readers’ disdain for Brandon’s romantic efforts is a result of Amy’s disdain. And yet, Amy is plenty disdainful of Poe through both SSG and UTR, and I got lots of letters at the end of UTR that were pro-Poe. (Which, honestly, was a relief, given what I was about to do with the storyline.) It’s hard for me to say, since I’m the writer. Were there subtle manipulations coding the reader to root for Poe over Brandon? Sure, why not? Are my skills as a writer, then, not up to snuff if I haven’t succeeded in making you root for the romantic coupling of my choice?
Now there’s a question to get neurotic over.
It’s interesting that there seems to be a definite line between “steadfast” and “obsessive”. The former is the realm of the good boy, and it’s apparently boring and desperate. The latter is the realm of the bad boy (he climbs in your bedroom window, he stalks you, he’s always there, watching you). It’s apparently sexy. Spike is an excellent example of this. He chased after Buffy no matter how much she told him to stop, no matter how much his obsession with her became increasingly desperate and pathetic (first making his real girlfriend, Harmony, dress up like Buffy for sex games, then later, making his own Buffy sexbot), and viewers still found him incredibly attractive and cheered him on. Now, tell me truthfully. If you found out that some dude had a crush on you and when you rejected him, he dressed up a sex doll to look just like you — ummm. Hot? I don’t think so.
(I found the most lovelorn pic of Spike I could for this part, and, sidebar, do you know if you just google the word “Spike” this is most of what comes up? No actual, you know, spikes.)
There are some old screenwriting tricks writers sometimes use to create sympathy for an otherwise unlikeable character. If he’s mean, show that other people — people we’re inclined to like — like him. Have him be sweet to children or small animals.This is called “save the cat.”
When we see Logan going to get the belt his father will beat him with, we understand there’s a reason behind his jackass nature. When Spike risks death to protect Dawn, we see that he really does care about both Summers girls. Personal sacrifice, vulnerability, unshakeable interest in the heroine (who can’t help but be at least flattered, though returning the interest is the brass ring)… these are all games that you get to play with the bad boy. But the good guy? He’s not otherwise unlikeable. The readers already know his vulnerabilities. They like him.
They just don’t lurrvvve him.
Except when they do? Why do we swoon over Lloyd Dobler when he’s nothing like Logan Echols?Or are they different populations entirely that do the swooning? Are some of always going to be Team Bad Boy and some of us always going to be Team Nice Guy? And what does that make of me, Team Nice Guy, except for that one little dalliance with Logan?
While I was out at my RAMPANT signing in Tyson’s Corner, VA this weekend, a few more reviews of RAMPANT popped up ’round these here internets.
The Book Lover (quite adorably) gives it “four alicorns out of five” though spoiler warnings are in FULL EFFECT if you click through to the full review. Here’s a spoiler-free snippet: “It was an engaging novel with an easy-flowing story and I had it finished the day after I bought it. I was unable to find it at local libraries so I took a chance on it by buying my own copy. Sometimes a book that seems so good can not live up to expectations, but I’m happy to report that this one did not disappoint.”
The Book Scout rated it 48 out of 50 in an utterly spoiler-free review (yay!) and says:
“This was such an amazing book, it’s really hard to describe how I felt about it. To begin with, I thought the topic sounded so far fetched- I mean killer unicorns, come on! From the first page I was hooked. There was already a lot of action and I was learning things about unicorns I never in my wildest dreams would have believed. Peterfreund presents the idea of killer unicorns in a way that makes you believe in them. Her writing style has a nice flow, and the historical facts were great. I learned more about Alexander the Great and the Goddess Diana then I ever have in history class! Unicorns have always been something I would love to read about and this book just made me want to find out all I could about unicorns. Fast paced, exciting… this book had it all.
“Rampant took me longer to read then normal, because I was so caught up in school work and everything, but every free chance I had I was reading it. The ending left me wondering if there’s going to be a sequel! I really hope so. As I was reading I would shout out in surprise, stand up in shock (yes spilling my somewhat surprised cat onto the floor), and cheer with joy. I love books that draw emotions from me, and this book definitely did. I’ve been reading a jumble of book genres lately, but fantasy is one of my favorites, and this book was a refreshing look at how great fantasy can be. I would highly recommend this to anyone- even people who haven’t liked fantasy before.”
Gosh, I really loved this review. I mean, the fact that the reader (a high school freshman) liked the book and all is fantastic, but it really makes my day to learn that she liked it for the reasons I wrote it. I wrote this book for the teenage girl that I was — the one who was totally obsessed with Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, not just because of how it made me thrill and shout and cry and shudder, but also because it had all that interesting stuff in there about what it was like to live in medieval Britain and the religions of the time and all that stuff. I was taking Latin classes, I was a big mythology nut, and I liked books that addressed all kinds of interesting stuff — Druids, unicorns, whatever! — while telling a fun story. (Actually, that’s still what I like, so go figure.)
This one definitely goes in the rainy day pile.
And, since I am now the recipient of every unicorn-based link on the web, I share with you these rather cool and scary Arts & Crafts-style unicorn stickers. (via a librarian friend on Twitter — btw, I think librarians must know all the cool blogs to follow, it’s how I discovered Awful Library Books, too).
But I digress. In other YA news, great article here on reading YA novels by YA author Mary Pearson, who is somewhat unsurprisingly astonished to hear how many people bash them a priori. (Srsly, I just read a blog comment by none other than Laura Kinsale saying she assumed something was a YA novel because of its — faulty, in her eyes — simplicity. Grrrrrr...)
[UPDATED TO ADD: Laura has clarified her statement in the comments and apparently they were two different thoughts: she thought the book in question was simplisitic and, separately and due to other factors, thought it read more like a YA novel. Sorry, Laura! Also, everyone go buy Laura's new book when it comes out from Sourcebooks next February! (or, y'know, FLOWERS FROM THE STORM or any of her other awesome backlist titles right now!)]
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — teenagers read far more complex books in school than the average adult reads on their commute. They are spending hours every day analyzing Shakespeare and Hemingway and Faulkner. They are in TRAINING to look deeply into books. That’s the whole reason that adults invented bookclubs, to try to get some of that back. YA books are not dumbed down. Go read FEED or SKIN HUNGER and then come back and talk to me about that one.
Of course, maybe these teen readers aren’t necessarily reading the classics. And why? because they get more “points” for reading Gossip Girl. I’m totally serious. here’s a sobering article from the New York Times about a system implemented in over 75,000 schools in which students are encouraged to choose reading materials not based on literary merit, or even what interests them, but instead upon some mystical “points” system (for an article so focused on the vagaries of the system, it is never explained WHO assigns said “points”):
“You have to read the Harry Potter books” [the writer's daughter] said, exasperated. “They have all the points.”
She was right. “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” topped out at 44 points, while “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” were worth 34 and 32.
Comparatively, Hamlet is 7 and Frankenstein 14. I guess it’s a word count thing? Must be, since Gossip Girl is 8.
I love Harry Potter as much as the next girl, and I’m not a fan of genre snobbery, either, but I can see why if you can get twice as many points for reading OOP, you might skip over the 22-point Sense & Sensibility. Is no quarter given to the fact that reading Hamlet might be, I don’t know — HARDER than reading Gossip Girl? And I know this system is usually in place for the students to choose extracurricular reading, and why shouldn’t that be fun, but it’s not just classics that are getting the low scores. A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray, and The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, both recent YA fantasy novels– just like Harry Potter –are listed as 14 pts. each. (My novels aren’t listed. Zero points, I guess, or maybe Rampant is just too recent to make it in there.)
As much as I loved reading, I would have analyzed that list and read the books that were the most bang for my buck, even if I wasn’t necessarily interested in them. What a flawed system.
Anyone know more about this and want to shed some light on the subject?
an interview with the BookKids Blog of the Texas indie bookseller BookPeople, talking about strong female characters, the social ramifications of virginity, and what YA books I’m loving right now.
Did you know that there currently exists on this planet not a single, solitary signed finished copy of RAMPANT? Short of attending my signing in Rockville this Saturday (which I highly encourage you all to do), would you like to find out how to own one of the first? Then enter this giveaway on Carrie Ryan’s blog, where you might have a chance of winning one of two free, signed copies of RAMPANT!
Speaking of giveaways, the contest is still open over at Angieville. Come on guys, four measely more entries to break 100. Three free books. That’s like a 1/30 chance!
Thing the Third, Part Deux:
More Giveaways! Why? Because Harper Teen is having a BANNER week, that’s why. So there’s me and RAMPANT, in all our sword wielding, bowhunting, killer-unicorn-slaying glory, and then there’s Bennett Madison’s madcap mall thievery adventure of THE BLONDE OF THE JOKE, and then, there’s the debut of Jackson Pearce, and her djinn novel AS YOU WISH, which you can win right now by leaving a comment below!
(Note: AS YOU WISH was edited by my own fabulous editor Kristin Daly.)
Ever since Viola’s boyfriend broke up with her, she has spent her days silently wishing—to have someone love her again and, more importantly, to belong again—until one day she inadvertently summons a young genie out of his world and into her own. He will remain until she makes three wishes.
Jinn is anxious to return home, but Viola is terrified of wishing, afraid she will not wish for the right thing, the thing that will make her truly happy. As the two spend time together, the lines between master and servant begin to blur, and soon Jinn can’t deny that he’s falling for Viola. But it’s only after Viola makes her first wish that she realizes she’s in love with Jinn as well . . . and that if she wishes twice more, he will disappear from her life—and her world—forever.
Jackson Pearce spins a magical tale about star-crossed lovers, what it means to belong . . . and how important it is to be careful what you wish for.
Okay, so first thing’s first: that event I mentioned last week? I’m going to DragonCon! I’ve been invited by the lovely C.L. Wilson to share a booth in the exhibit hall with her and some other writers (list of my co-presenters forthcoming, and yes, I’m an utter flake for not having it right on hand). And so far, I’ve booked at least one panel:
Title: Writing for the YA and Children’s Market Description: How to write for an audience that’s half your age–or less. Tapping into the minds of today’s young people–what DO they want to read? Time: Sun 11:30 am Location: Manila / Singapore / Hong Kong - Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
So come find me at DragonCon! I will have many copies of the hot-off-the-presses RAMPANT for your signing, holding and reading-under-the-covers-with-a-flashlight pleasure.
Fourteen days, y’all.
This will be my first trip to a fantasy convention of any kind. Nothing like jumping into the deep end, right? However, I have heard from friends who’ve been that the number one absolutely essential item at DragonCon is a costume. And since I am a veritable costume NUT, I could hardly sleep last night trying to figure out what I would wear. I refuse to be outdone by Maureen Johnson, who doesn’t even write fantasy. Oops, I mean, Devilish, which was actually awesome. Devils and pastries are always a good combination.
Anyway, costumes. Right. So… what to wear? I mean, do I go all out with a cosplay kind of thing? (Sailor Boy is very skeptical of this, by the way, as every time I mention it his eyebrows go up and he’s all, “Really?” as if he hasn’t known me for 9 years, didn’t meet me in my guise as a costume designer, and didn’t sit through my whole, “Let’s have a COSTUME wedding!” scheme before nixing it.) And if I do decide to go as a particular character, who do I pick? If you watch that video I linked to up above, you can see how some of those people are severely hampering their ability to do anything other than cosplay at DragonCon. I don’t want to be that person.
I also do not want to be the person who is sitting at her booth in the exhibit hall, trying to sign copies of her new, very modern set YA fantasy novel and having people ask her why the hell she’s dressed up like Eowyn if her book takes place in Rome in 2009.
And no, I’m not dressing up like one of my own characters. To quote the pre-Ari Gold Jeremy Pivens from PCU: one does not wear the t-shirt of the band you’re going to see at the concert.*
Not that I would be Eowyn, anyway.
Option Two, of course, is just to wear a general costumey thing. This is the option favored by my pal Marianne Mancusi. Her favorite aesthetic is called “Gothic Lolita,” and she talks about it at length here. My favorite aesthetic would, of course, be steampunk.** And of course, at a place like DragonCon, I could take the steampunk aesthetic one step farther than the usual jeans and white blouse with a velvet jacket and lace up boots look.I mean, goggles!***
The problem is, a lot of what the people out there selling clothing/costumes seem to think is “steampunk” is a bit more like Marianne’s “gothic lolita” if you ask me. Or perhaps too much punk (or goth/fetishwear) and not enough steam. Or just weirdly burlesque and uncomfortable. I’m not a steampunk stripper, y’all. I’m a children’s author.
Also, IMO, you can’t take a long skirt, rip big scraggly holes in it, and call it steampunk. It’s just spiderwebby. The definition of steampunk does not begin and end with “something Helena Bonham Carter would wear.” FWIW.
And there is also the whole commitment issue. I have nothing against people who want to go to a con and wear a costume and have that be their thing, but I have a tough time believing that I myself could be comfortable wandering around in something like this:
Kinda The Borg Do Steampunk, yeah? Outside of an actual production of Cirque du Soleil, this isn’t going to work.
So, yeah. Hopefully there is a happy medium to be had, in between my usual fare and the all out wackadoodle stuff. I pretty much want normalish, kicked up a notch. Because, y’know. DragonCon.
However, if I were to dress up as a character, who should I be? Leave your suggestions here.****
______________
* I believe it’s important to reveal at this moment that I totally just put together that was a very young Jon Favreau in that movie who is the recipient of Pivens’s criticism.
** Dude, I’ve never been so happy as I was when I discovered there was actually a name to describe all the velvet military jackets and bustled skirts and lace up boots in my wardrobe.
*** No, not really goggles. But maybe a pocket watch.
**** Please do not say Kara Thrace. Yes, I know I have short blonde hair. Still not happening.
Check out this great new review of Rampant, from the independent bookstore Russo’s Books in Bakersfield, CA:
Like most red-blooded girls, I’ve always like horses, and unicorns are an extension of that. Being a mythology buff, I’d bump into unicorns in my readings a lot. And I have to say, that’s where this book really hooked me.
The unicorns portrayed in the book aren’t the sparkly white horses with perfect spiral horns that are the boiled-down and sweetened unicorns popular today. They are based on the historical record of unicorns from around the world. No two unicorns from any region were alike, and that is reflected in this story. These guys are vicious! And yet, somehow, some of them are still quite adorable (like that little stinker Bonegrinder!)
The pacing is excellent, the excitement level is on the ceiling through most of the book, and the characters are completely developed and become like actual, real-life friends. I love Astrid and her cousin, and her mother drives me nuts! Even more than my own mother does! This novel is completely original and different from anything else I’ve read (and I’m ALWAYS reading) and I can’t wait until she writes more– this NEEDS to be a series!
The bookseller goes on to express concern that it’s more a book for older teens, “[especially] in our conservative town of Bakersfield,” but says (bolding original to the text):
Otherwise, this book is so much fun, so different from anything else out there, and so well done, I’d be pushing it into everybody’s hands as a must-read.
Nice, huh? I know there’s been a lot of talk lately about responding to reviews and how it’s always A Bad Idea, but I think the downside of that is that authors might feel afraid of participating in discussions they meant the book to engender in the first place.
Rampant, being a book about virgins with superpowers tied to their virginity, deals with the issues of sexuality, feminism, the commodification of virginity, and how religion, culture, and tradition intersect with modern society and the pressures on a teenaged girl. It has a strong abstinence message. It also has what I’m glad to see this reviewer call “well-written, tasteful, and accurately realistic” discussions by the characters in the book regarding the topics above. I’m proud that I’ve written a book where the female characters are making informed decisions about their choice to remain abstinent. They do it for different reasons, too: some have religious or cultural beliefs that form the basis of their choice. Others want to keep hunting unicorns, an activity incompatible with being sexually active. Some just aren’t ready, or just aren’t interested. All are valid, and it was important for me to show that. As an abstinent teen myself, I was often surprised and put off by the assumption that “only Christians” or “only prudes” or “only insert-descriptor-here” were saving themselves, and if I didn’t have a darn good reason not to, then I should.
For the record, “I don’t want to,” is one of the best reasons in the world. You don’t have to justify it to anyone. Not your friends, not your boyfriend, not your prom date, not that mean girl who put a “V” in Sharpie marker on the door of your locker that everyone could mysteriously translate and make fun of you for. Being a virgin is not an epithet.
I put a discussion of virginity and abstinence in the book because it was something I talked about when I was a teenager, and it was something I was interested in and would have liked to read more books about. Kind of like how I wanted to read more books about women warriors, and ancient Rome, and myths and legends, and really close friends, and kissing boys, and Renaissance art, and all the other stuff I put into Rampant.
Oh, and just in case the bookseller at Russo’s sees this… good news: it is a series! I’m writing the second one now, and it’ll be out in Fall of 2010. We haven’t figured out the title yet, but we have a bunch of finalists.
My writer friends have been noting the phenomenon as well. One writer was bemoaning the current trend of “the badder the better” and saying it used to be the bad boy hero was some dude who’d just killed a man. Then it became an assassin with a heart of gold. Then just an assassin. Then just a murderer. Another writer wondered if this onslaught was a factor of readers wanting to live vicariously through the exploits of a fictional heroine who walks on the wild side with a lover who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But, hasn’t that always been the case with bad boys in fiction? This isn’t a NEW trend. So why now are books filled with ever more reprehensible men?
It’s interesting that there seems to be a definite line between “steadfast” and “obsessive”. The former is the realm of the good boy, and it’s apparently boring and desperate. The latter is the realm of the bad boy (he climbs in your bedroom window, he stalks you, he’s always there, watching you). It’s apparently sexy. Spike is an excellent example of this. He chased after Buffy no matter how much she told him to stop, no matter how much his obsession with her became increasingly desperate and pathetic (first making his real girlfriend, Harmony, dress up like Buffy for sex games, then later, making his own Buffy sexbot), and viewers still found him incredibly attractive and cheered him on. Now, tell me truthfully. If you found out that some dude had a crush on you and when you rejected him, he dressed up a sex doll to look just like you — ummm. Hot? I don’t think so.
