Author: rachelhartman

I’m trying not to waste time

/ rachelhartman / 1 Comment

But that doesn’t mean I can’t waste your time, right? You’re dying to procrastinate, I can tell. Well, I’m here to help, because I’m thoughtful like that!

At my son’s guitar lesson last week, his teacher showed him something called a “step sequencer”. Here’s a website with one you can use. Click on the squares and listen to the interesting results.

This keeps my boy busy for… well, for as long as I’m willing to let him play with it. Which is sometimes, I confess, probably longer than I should. But it’s fascinating, right? No matter what you do, it comes out sounding like music, and that gets one thinking about music. What is music, exactly? Why is this randomness (or not, depending how you approach your note selection) so musical?

Part of the answer is the regular rhythm. Part of it is the fact that they’re using a pentatonic scale, so none of the notes really clash. But part of it is, I think, the tendency of our brains to want to make sense of things, to gravitate toward patterns and find meaning in them.

My son enjoys drawing pictures and writing words with the squares. The result is the Smiley-Face Song, or the Sound of Hello. As intently as he listens, I sometimes wonder whether he’s trying to see if he can tell what the word or picture must be by listening, extrapolating backwards from the sound. I wonder whether that’s even possible.

Did I say I’m trying not to waste time? Apparently I can waste time without even trying!

A fine day in Seattle

/ rachelhartman / 1 Comment

I went down to Seattle for a day to have an interview with Nancy Pearl, the famous librarian host of Book Lust. I think it went well. I had an excellent time, anyway, as evinced by my talking her ear off. That should air in September. I’ll link to it when it becomes available online.

I also had lunch with Amazon folks and dinner with booksellers and librarians (I can recommend a couple excellent restaurants in Seattle!). Fearless rep Deanna took me around to sign stock, and I got to have coffee with book blogger Flannery from The Readventurer. All in all a lovely, busy day.

The one question everyone asked me: when’s the sequel coming out? Ah, yes. Back to work!

Back, and dithering on as usual

/ rachelhartman / 1 Comment

The spam sure does accumulate when you’re not at home, doesn’t it? I knew I should have had someone picking up my mail and watering the plants.

(Pause a moment while I try to work out which part of the blog corresponds to plants. Some metaphors just don’t work.)

We visited my in-laws in the midwest. They threw a lovely party where extended family and old friends (including several of my husband’s high-school teachers) brought books for me to sign. I just heard that Seraphina is back on the NYT bestsellers list after a week off. My big extended family surely contributed to that! I signed about thirty books.

We also got to go to a Cardinals game. It was a nice, relaxing trip, a good chance to catch my breath after a busy July and fortify myself before an even busier September.

I have a few nearly-empty weeks to work on my sequel revisions. Excuse me if the posting here is light. I am going to need all the time-management tricks at my disposal, all the discipline I can scrape together to get this thing done in a timely manner. The good news is, I’m enjoying it much more this time through. It’s funny how you can work and work and not quite understand what you’re doing. I thought I was writing one book, but it turns out I’m writing a slightly different one, a book that was lying latent under the surface of the first but never quite revealing itself. It was only visible with a bit of time and distance — and the help of a sharp-sighted editor and a friend who asks irritatingly pointed questions.

Heh. Now it’s a whaling expedition. My editor cries, “Thar she blows!” and I hurl the question-harpoons after it.

The answer is always there. My brain is smarter than I am, and it knows what it’s doing. Sometimes it’s hard to have faith in that.

Seraphina wiki

/ rachelhartman / Leave a comment

Hello, friends! I am still visiting family, but I just had to pop in for a moment and tell you that my husband discovered that someone has started a Seraphina wiki site. It contains many, many spoilers, so don’t peek unless you’ve already read the book. They’ve got an impressive number of pages already – a real labour of love! – but Goredd is massive and this is the tip of the iceberg. I believe anyone who’s interested can join and contribute, and I bet the creators would welcome the help.

And thank you so much, site creators! I am so very pleased and flattered!

I know I said I was busy

/ rachelhartman / Leave a comment

But I’m always saying that! And there’s always time enough to let you know that the fabulous ladies (plus Archer, who ain’t no lady) at Cuddlebuggery Book Blog have posted an interview with me, in their trademarked Cuddlebuggery style. Which seems to involve dressing up like Vikings, something the rest of us just don’t do often enough in our daily lives.

Another interview

/ rachelhartman / 1 Comment

Hop on over to BrodartVibe’s Blog for A Conversation with Rachel Hartman. These questions were fun to answer, and the one about my favourite “library moment” really made me think (which I always enjoy!)

I am travelling soon to visit family, so posting will probably be light until the middle of next week. Just so you’re warned. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.

And four-armed is half an octopus. Words to consider, friends. Weird, weird words to consider.

 

Thinking about listening

/ rachelhartman / 14 Comments

I have a guest post up at Suvudu.com — The Top 10 Songs I Listened to While Writing Seraphina. It details my odd tendency to put songs on endless repeat and suck all the goodness out of them, like some sort of musical vampire.

I’m not sure how it’s possible, but I still love all those songs, even after the repetitions. You’d think they’d get old. Maybe they DO get old, and that’s what I like, treading those well-worn paths again and again. The familiarity. I have no idea. There is music I used to love that I’ve outgrown – most Beatles songs, for example, I get impatient with now – so that can happen. Other things I love even better with age. Is there rhyme or reason to any of it?

It bears thinking about. Can you use a specific piece of music to light up a specific part of your brain, and how is your written output different while under that influence? Because I’m sure I stop consciously listening to the music after a while; I have to, or I couldn’t be thinking about the words I need to write. It can be hard to maintain a strong feeling while thinking. Is music a way to keep that gate open, somehow, so there’s access to the feeling while I’m doing the problem-solving work writing requires?

No idea. But seriously, neurologists of the world, maybe y’all should get on that! I’ll be interested in knowing the results.

 

Two-for-one!

/ rachelhartman / Leave a comment

In honour of the end of the UK blog tour, we have a special double guest-posting today! First, The Inspiration Behind the Book at Words on the Shelf (thanks, Mazz!).

Second, The Making of the Dragon Mind over at writer Katy Moran’s blog. Thanks Katy! And thanks again to Random House UK and all the participating bloggers for arranging such a super fun tour!

My MTV interview

/ rachelhartman / Leave a comment

Bah, I can’t seem to embed this video, possibly due to my being in Canada, but if anyone would like to see the live clip I did from SDCC a couple weeks ago, here it is. Considering how little sleep I got the night before, I managed to be reasonably articulate!

Thanks to my hosts at MTV, and to my publicist, Paul, for setting this up.

The grand tour continues

/ rachelhartman / Leave a comment

Today’s guest post is hosted by YA Book Reads, and is called The Story Behind the Story. Natasha has also reviewed Seraphina. Thanks so much, Natasha, and YA Book Reads for hosting!