Obligatory comments for Code Geass R2 episodes 6-7: Yeah, okay Sunrise. Make me like Nunally now, after I've spent a whole season eyerolling at how boring she was. Can you say "Eupie's replacement", though? Srsly.
Also. Rolo vs. Nunally makes for great fake!sibling rivalry. Both covet Lulu Nii-san's affections. Or rather, Rolo isn't ready to share. Filthy hypocrite. I loves him.

Fun fact for Doctor Who fans: if you've seen the episode "Father's Day", it might interest you to know that you've all been Rickroll'd. Just a little discovery.

Oh and, speaking of which, I am on the biggest DW kick right now that I'm catching up on the parts of the rebooted series that I hadn't seen. Expect arts(?)

Temperatures have reached ungodly levels this weekend. In case you forgot, California: I am a native of the English countryside. Your warm autumns are lovely, but your summers are decidedly uncomfortable for anything other than skirts and shorts.
My Sunstar flower has become depressingly dry. :<

( WOOSH! )

I have done nothing of significance today besides eat sushi and doodle, and my sleep schedule is a bit off.
To sum up: I haven't really done much of what I ought to have been doing this weekend. But dammit, I had fun. ♥

HAVC midterm/essay beckons. And some of you lot are out of school already just how, exactly? =_=;
Wish me luck; I've a feeling I'll need it.

I've tried so many differnet types of queries for this one and this is the one I've kept around. Right now it feels really... wordy. The novel is in first person and her real name is never used at all until the last part of the book. Might not been the best idea to do, but considering the novel is in first person I thought it worked at the time. So that is why no names are mentioned in the query. I did think that it could be interesting to write the query in first person from her point of view, but haven't yet. Any ideas on what it needs? Or if I should mention her name and worry about it not showing up in the chapters I might send?

Dear agent

I'm seeking representation for my completed science fiction novel Run at 105,000 words. This book is a stand-alone and no squeals are planned.

As a young girl lays her brother to rest; she vows to untangle the web of mystery surrounding his death and find how and why her own father was involved in his death. She then leaves the only planet she has lived on, risking the dangers of her universe over her father's wrath. Welcome to Run, a science fiction thriller that leads her on a chase through the universe.

She tries to stay out of the public eye, doing her best to hide under aliases and changing her appearance. At the same time trying to find out what happened to her brother and why. Forced to remain on the Basic planets - the ones that have little to do with the Prime worlds of the universe - she keeps everything to herself, trusts no one and makes sure that she never uses her given name.

Going by the clues her brother has left her, she finds that her brother was killed for a reason she can't yet imagine. Soon she discovers that her father has set her up as the lead suspect in her brother's death. She fights to keep herself from being found as she uncovers the truth of why her brother was killed.

It is not long before she finds out that things are not what she first thought. She'll have to think a head of her father. Using her wit and training she has to find out the reason behind her brothers death before her father destroys everything.

I hope you can take the time to consider representing me.

Sincerely

My day began with a series of squawks--Pif was bringing me a present, a live gray catbird. I was able to catch it and release it before it could flutter around inside the house. Scared, it grabbed one of my fingers in its beak and didn't want to let go.

Then I worked on my program, Xox, and felt that I was making some progress, though I didn't test it again. After the delivery of some planting soil and cedar chips ordered by Louise, I did some gardening until I was chased inside by the rain.

Then I read Mark Twain's Joan of Arc. If this story was not historical, it would surely be fantasy--the story of a young woman destined to free her people from their oppressors. But I think readers would find Joan's accomplishment hard to believe, if they weren't historical. And the tragic ending would be hard to sell, I think. I also seem to recall reading (Wikipedia corroborates) that this was the work Twain himself thought most highly of, even though it's not the public's favorite. All in all, the book leaves me with many things to ponder.

There was a bit of talk about references from readers of your manuscript in your query letter. This morning, this review came up on the Query Shark site.

Janet is not particularly nice about it, but I think it's safer to stay away from quoting what other people thought of your manuscript and let the words of your manuscript speak for themselves. That's the message I'm getting anyway.

It's prolly not all that wtf... But the aluminum casts Dr. Tschinkel makes of these ants' nests are really cool. I wanted to share it with you guys, The chambers ants make in their nests are pretty amazing, thought you might think it's cool too.


PS, I'm in this =P

I've been reading some romances lately. For this review, let's look at Elizabeth Bevarly's Fast and Loose and Mary Jo Putney's River of Fire. Both featured redheads, but the similarities end there.

Fast and Loose seemed to have everything I like in a book: a loony heroine, an awesomely sexy hero, horses -- what's not to like? Well, here's a little sample:

Nothing brought more joy to Cole Early's heart than watching the day dawn from the railing of a racetrack. As he sipped strong black coffee from the cardboard cup in his hand, it occurred to him that Santa Anita was one of the most glorious tracks for doing just that. At barely six a.m., the crisp yellow sun was cresting over the shallow green peaks to limn them with gold.

Do you see it? ". . . from the cardboard cup in his hand." Really? He wasn't holding it in, say, his shirt pocket, or maybe between his oddly prehensile toes? We hates pointless verbiage, precious! This paragraph also has a wad of telling-not-showing, and then when it gets to the showing, it shows me a sentence from, apparently, some other novel where words like "limn" belong. And you know what? This is the first paragraph. Here's another sample from the second paragraph: "His chest filled with something big and undefinable, a sensation he'd never quite been able to identify. . . " Aargh! I so wanted to love this book. But all the extra blah-blah-blah completely obscured the excitement and I just could not make myself read it. I've loved books by Bevarly before, but this one was a stinker.

By contrast, River of Fire was all that and a bag of Regency-flavored chips. PTSD! Artists! Sex, But Not Too Much Of It! By that last part, I mean that people had sex, but it was just part of the story, rather than (*coughLKHcough*) a Big Thing. Also, this story had An Evil Stepmother! Not one, but two Plucky Cripples! A Loony Dad! An Estranged Relative With a Plan! Betrayal! Thievery! A Crazy Lady! Murder! Plots! U NAME IT!!

To be clear, the writing in River of Fire is not super-duper-fabulous. I looked for something to share that really made me happy and I couldn't find anything amazing. But it was good enough to let me sink into the fabulousness and enjoy myself. Putney doesn't waste a word in any sentence, always moving the plot forward. I really liked her hero and her heroine, and best of all, nobody in the book was Too Stupid To Live. Everybody was smart, everybody made sense -- for that alone, I liked the book. I recommend this one next time you have an afternoon or two to while away on the couch.

Interested in the Interstitial Arts Foundation? All are warmly invited to join us for an informal meeting/get-together to talk about Interstitial Art (and our recent anthology, INTERFICTIONS (ed. Delia Sherman & Theodora Goss, a Tiptree Honor Book!, and forthcoming INTERFICTIONS 2, to be edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak), and the IAF and how you can get more involved in what we try to do. Questions & suggestions welcome!
Sunday, 11:00 a.m. - Noon
Concourse Hotel
Room 629( Read more... )

Hopefully this is WTF enough..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/1966106/What-came-first---the-egg-or-the-gecko-inside.html

The bizarre discovery was made by a doctor in Darwin as he made dinner earlier this week.

Peter Beaumont broke open an egg and was shocked to find a dead gecko inside. “I was cracking the eggs into a pan when I noticed one of them was all cloudy. I looked at the shell and saw a tiny gecko,” he said.

 

 

http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2008/05/30.html

Dear Query Shark,

My lineage made me one of the fortunate ones. But to paraphrase an old Hollywood bumper sticker, “My Mercedes went up my nose.”

My father is A.B. My mother, C.D., came from Hollywood royalty. My memoir, SCARS, is a candid journey through a world of dangerous people, and crimes fueled by an all-consuming battle with drugs and alcohol. And when I found myself dangling on the edge of a New York city subway platform, waiting for the next train to burst through the tunnel and put an end to the horror my life had become, I wondered how it had all gone so terribly wrong. I hoped that this last desperate act would finally atone for years of senseless aggravation, deception and pain inflicted on those I loved and those who had struggled to love me.

This is often a harsh look into life with a father I feared as much as I loved, as he watched me self-destruct and waste away a promising career. Little did he know that from the moment he introduced me to playwright, Miguel Pinero, life would begin to unravel.

From the beauty and wealth of the Hollywood suburbs to sleeping on cardboard in the alleys of San Francisco, it is a story of guns, jail, a lover's suicide, and transvestite hookers turning tricks in my back room. This is an honest, revealing, and sometimes humorous look into a life I didn't find worth living until my father reached out and rescued me from the clutches of death.

I plan to include photographs and letters from this time period and I am ready to send you my completed 171,00 word manuscript.

Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.


Sincerely,

Note; names will be included in mailed queries


171,000 words is about 71,000 words too many.

This is a query that would get an instant "not right for me" and that would be absolutely accurate. You can't pay me to read these kinds of memoirs any more. However, there is an audience for this, and it does sell, particularly if you have a lot of famous names attached so that is why you query widely. After paring it down of course.

And be prepared to prove everything. Memoir, particularly drug recovery memoirs are subject to increased scrutiny by skeptical editors who don't want to the subject of blistering commentary on Oprah.

http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2008/05/29.html

Dear Query Shark:

Teenager Cassandra O'Hare knows what it's like to live in constant fear of being mauled by a werewolf. Generations ago, a curse was put on her family that makes even the most civil of lycanthropes want to devour anyone in her bloodline. After her sister is left dead on the front porch, Cassandra and her parents move two states away to start over in a new town.

So, can you imagine the questions for the realtor? "Do you have werewolves here?"
Seriously though, you're missing the most obvious question of why they would think moving away would save them? Is there a den of werewolves nearby? (Where do werewolves live actually?) Wouldn't they be safe if they just took a boat out on the water when the moon was full? The set up for a story has to make sense. You can't just say "this is how it is cause it's my book."



At first Cassandra believes there is safety in the suburbs of Fox Hollow, but when a crazed werewolf begins stalking her, it becomes clear that she cannot escape the family curse so easily. Using what little she knows of magic and the help of new found friends, Cassandra tries to ward off her supernatural stalker before she shares her sister's fate.

I didn't think the werewolves had to be crazed to stalk her. I though it was the curse. And now she knows magic? New found friends?

What you've got here is all set up. There's no antagonist. There's no plot.

Into the Fire is an urban fantasy novel complete at 52,000 words.

This is a good closing sentence, but it's probably YA urban fantasy if the protagonist is a teen.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you!

http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2008/05/28.html

Dear Query Shark

“Substitute Wives” is a literary women's fiction book and a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakout Novel Competition. Publishers Weekly had this to say about it: “This unflinching and at times uncomfortable story is told in a deft, sure voice”.

Resist the urge to quote contest reviewers in a query, particularly those who are anonymous. PW comments here do NOT equate to a PW review in the actual magazine. I give ZERO credence to these blurbs cause I have no clue who wrote them, and I'm absolutely convinced that no one says "this is crap" in one of these things. Not to say that yours is crap, but trust me, some of them were.

Semi-finalist is also the kiss of death. Finalist might be ok, but the only ones I'd truly want to read would be the top three at most. Why? Semifinalist means you're one of 100 or so, right? I can't sell something that is as good as 97 other things. I need something that is BETTER than 97 other things..the top 3%. More likely the top 1%. You're shooting yourself in the foot by mentioning this. Let the book speak for itself.

Joy is a twenty-three year old millionaire working as a prostitute as a penance to ease her guilt over the death of her ex-boyfriend. Raised by an undemonstrative mother, and absent father and an abusive uncle, Joy has relationship issues, so when she meets Matt - a married man - on the job and hears all the right lines, she falls for him.


Ok, I've stopped reading right here. When you throw "millionaire working as a prostitute" at me, you've got to realize that there's a leap of logic here that isn't clear to me. I can see her working in a soup kitchen, or giving away her money, but whoring? Not quite so believable. In fact, not at all.

When Joy receives news that her mother’s terminally ill, she knows it's time to go home. Haunted by childhood memories, will she find the way back?

And this has zero connection to what we just read in the previous two sentences.

Says Amazon Top Reviewer: “the story drew me in and made me wonder what the motivations of these women were. As we got further into the story, it was becoming clear that the reasons were not all black and white, and that there was definitely some deeper meaning behind all of it.”

Again, this isn't something that works in your favor.

The Substitute Wives is commercial fiction and the word count is 63,000.

We artists and dancers move from inspiration and we will move the world."
Tama J. Kieves, This Time I Dance!

Will the world be moved by what you have written today?

Did you at least hit your daily goal?

Sound off!

The IAF Salon Discussion is up to 6 whole pages, and makes scrumptious reading, as artists I really admire - Wendy Ellertson, Rachel Pollack, Elise Matthesen, Jon Singer, callligrapher Jae Leslie Adams (whose work I always end up buying at Wiscon, and - hey! I see she's also maryread! and has pieces posted!) and more - talk about everything from The Pillow Book and Shelley Jackson's tattoo text, book art, body art, to how to sit down with a pile of beads and make art - as ktempest just posted over at the IAF Auction page, "There are a lot of threads we’re picking up and chewing over, but this question from Elise is particularly crunchy:

"When you make art of some kind, whether it’s writing a story or making some shiny thing or other, do you feel the impetus in your mind, or as a sort of pull in parts of your body, or something else? Is it different for different arts, for you?"

Of course, I love this (also from Elise) about Interfictions:

The way writing can be sparked by tangible tokens like jewelry is definitely a thing of magic and interstitiality. For the last ten years, I've been keeping track of such things, in Haiku Earring Parties at WisCon and elsewhere, and in the Artists' Challenge program. (Next month I'll be putting out a chapbook, Glass Bead Games, with stories, poems and essays by Sarah Monette, Elizabeth Bear, Jane Yolen, Beth Meacham, Ariel Franklin-Hudson, and Betsy Lundsten, all inspired by pieces I've made. I'm really excited about it!)

I've seen Erzebet Yellowboy doing some very interesting stuff with words and sculpture, and many others. There's a lot of it going on out there. I was delighted that this auction project came about, because it's a lovely way to more fully inhabit the concept of interstitiality, moving it beyond the realm of "words that cross over" and letting the words and the wire and the beads and the songs all dance together.

I love the IAF anthology, and one of the things I personally like so much about it is that each story really feels to me like a little work of sculpture. I don't know how to say it better than that, and that's not sufficient, but... these stories, in Interfictions, are little wonders that catch the imagination, catch my imagination, in the same way that a wonderful bit of driftwood does, or a bead broken in exactly the right place. The book immediately took its place among my favorite anthologies ever, for that.

. . . and finally, Wendy Ellertson saying: "Is part of being comfortable in the world of the interstitial being comfortable with letting go of control?"

Please feel welcome to come and lurk (like me) or engage in this inspired & inspiring IAF Salon - and tell your buds! Don't be shy. The more thoughts and voices, the better.

What are your Hidden City's stories?

At the novels of the Hidden Cities website, you will notice the map upon which is pinned brief accounts of myth and mystery from around the world ... and that's where you come in. Because we want you to tell us your stories. Relate to us the strange tales of urban horror, mystery or magic that have happened to you, or people you know, or perhaps stories you’ve heard second-hand. Ghosts you have seen, legends you’ve heard, strange experiences you have had … and the accounts we like the most will appear on the site, pinned to the map where they took place.

The Details:

Please keep your submissions below 500 words, and make sure there's some basis in fact (whether it’s something you saw, or an urban legend you've heard, etc). No straight fiction. There's no payment, other than the fun of revealing your nightmare experiences for all to see! There's also no guarantee that everything we’re sent will be posted to the site. You'll retain full copyright, and you’re welcome to use your accounts elsewhere.

The Competition:

The first novel in this series, MIND THE GAP, will be released from Bantam Spectra on 20th May 2008, and the best two accounts we receive between now and then (to be judged by Chris & Tim) will each win a copy of the hardback Cemetery Dance limited edition of this novel!

So tell us what happened to you in the world's Hidden Cities.

Submissions should be sent to: citieshidden@thehiddencities.com

Learn more about the books:
http://www.thehiddencities.com
The Hidden Cities @ Christopher Golden's website
The Hidden Cities @ Bildungsroman

I like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland quite a bit. You might already know this, since I often bring it up in conversation, whether it be to reference it in relation to other novels or to discuss the book itself - or to sing the praises of my favorite film adaptation of the book, aka the 1972 British live-action musical Alice's Adventures in Wonderland starring Fiona Fullerton as Alice, adapted and directed by William Sterling, with music by John Barry and lyrics by Don Black based on those by Lewis Carroll.

...and yes, I can (and do) say all of that in one breath.

Someone uploaded the film in seventeen parts on YouTube. Thank you! I have arranged those seventeen parts in order (plus some other Alice-related videos) so you may now watch the movie simply by clicking below:



The movie is available on DVD. The DVD is, of course, better quality than YouTube. Get it. Watch it.

I myself own two copies of the DVD. The soundtrack is available on CD, yet I do not own it because it is packaged with the soundtrack for Petulia, also scored by John Barry, and I just want the Alice soundtrack.

Now I am cracking up, because a Peter Sellers movie is coming on television right as I type this, and I just quoted him as the March Hare in my previous post.

The March Hare: "Now then: What did the father ghost say to his son?"
The Dormouse: "I don't know. What did the father ghost say to his son?"
The March Hare: "Spook only when you are spooken to."
- from the 1972 musical film version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Thanks, tea party critters. Now I'm going to speak with author Suzanne Harper about spooks, Shakespeare, Hannah Montana, spies, and Brian Boitano, among other things.

The title character in The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney has the ability to see, hear, and speak to ghosts. Have you ever had a ghostly encounter?

I once had what I'd like to think was a ghostly encounter - of sorts, anyway! I was in my early teens and my family was visiting relatives in Ohio. We had gone out to a lake, where we were hanging out, skipping stones, etc. I wandered across the road to an old cemetery that was divided in half. On the left were graves from the Civil War era; on the right were more recent graves. I love history, so of course I went to the left. As I was reading the headstones, I started to feel faint and then I started to hear cannon booming from the woods. At first I tried to tell myself I was hearing things, but the cannon kept firing. I walked over to the newer side of the cemetery and suddently I felt fine and didn't hear any cannon. After awhile, I convinced myself that I was just hearing things, so I went back to look at the Civil War graves - and once again, I felt weak and the cannon started to boom! At that point, I left the cemetery in a hurry.

( Read more... )

Visit Suzanne's website.

For more about The Juliet Club, check out my Shakespeare Spinoffs booklist.

Full-length review of The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney to come. Watch this space.

Hi,  everybody!

I am sitting here working on my memoir.  

It is very difficult, and I can see why there are so many bad ones on the market.  Mine is turning out to be horrendously sad, and I am going to have to fix that.  I think that sometimes it is easier to write about the hard things in life than it is to write about the happy things.  Happy moments need a careful hand so that they are not overblown.  That is what I think.  So maybe I will do the sad parts now, and then go back when I have the hang of the thing.  

There is also the problem of knowing when to start and when to stop.  It turns out that I am only 28, so that I don't have all that much to put into a memoir, but, still, I don't want to tell the story of my entire life.  I've settled on a time period between graduating high school and graduating college.  That's a whopping 10 years for me.  (I took the long way around.)  But still.  Where do I begin?  

Then there is the structure.  I've decided that going straight through is not the way.  I have to meander.  But I don't want to lose things along the way.  This is a difficult project.  

In the meantime, I am looking for more memoirs to read.  What's your favorite?  Will you let me know? 

Love,
Jo

I know this is really nerdy and weird, but sometimes The Ghost Whisperer scares the crap out of me. Does anyone else watch this show? I love Jennifer Love Hewitt a lot, which is why I started watching, but now I love the show itself too. I love to watch it at, like, three in the morning. Seriously, it scares me. It's awesome.

A year or so ago I lamented the abuse of James Frey over the fact-faults of his memoir A MILLION LITTLE PIECES. (and now I know why we need tags, which I was lazy about in the early days--can't find the post) Oprah excoriated this recovering addict on her program, in an interview too painful to watch. My complaint against the great O was that she should have known the poor man, as an addict, would lie. It's what addicts do.

But. Now, according to an L.A. Times reviewer, Janet Maslin, Frey has redeemed himself with a wonderful new book, BRIGHT SHINY MORNING, which is evidently a sort of F. Scott Fitzgerald novel set in Los Angeles. I was blown away by Frey's first book, and I didn't care a lot about whether it was a factual memoir or a fictionalized one. It was brilliantly written. He broke every literary rule in the book, and every infraction was justified.

My complaint here is that Maslin has attempted (and failed) to write her review in James Frey's style. For example: "He wrote a book but it was bad, liar bad, faker bad, it got him in trouble. A million little pieces. It was the name of the book. It was also how hard he got hit. He had to sit there on the couch. Everybody saw. The television celebrity book club woman got mad, she let him have it. He had to sit there on the couch. He squirmed, he cringed. Everybody watched, everybody blamed him. Then it was over. Then he was gone."

And later: "He wrote a big book. He wrote about a city. Los Angeles. He made up a lot of characters, high low rich poor lucky not, every kind, the book threw them together. It was random but smart. Every now and then he would pause the story, switch to the present tense and throw in an urban fact."

Why she would do this, and why the New York Times would pick it up, is a mystery to me. If you love this sort of--what would you call it--imitation? homage? You can read the whole thing here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/books/12masl.html?ref=books I think I'll just buy the book and decide for myself. And avoid this critic's reviews in the future.