I said Monday, but I meant Tuesday. Aren’t you glad you weren’t holding your breath now?
Here’s a nice review from Janina to tide you over.
Author: rachelhartman
The afterlife is full of acanthus leaves
The wonderful folks at Random House have put up a Seraphina website. Go look, go look! It’s beautiful, even with my face on it!
SO MANY ACANTHUS LEAVES!
*dies happy*
*comes back, since post isn’t done*
I would also like to welcome the many new friends who have found this blog by connecting from that page. I feel like the world has suddenly grown much larger. Luckily, I have enough cookies and tea for everyone! I have infinite cookies and an ocean of tea! I’m running out of exclamation marks, however, so I’d better pace myself.
I am also reliably informed that there will be more exciting things to announce on Monday. I recommend against holding your breath until then, except perhaps in a figurative sense.
No, I haven’t forgotten you
Hello, darlings! I am busily writing guest posts for other blogs, which alas leaves me relatively little time and energy for my own. I will let you know when those come out, of course, and provide the requisite linkage.
Here to tide you over is a lovely review from Janicu. There will also be a bit of fun coming up later this week (note to self, confirm this with the Olympian gods, or whomever is actually in charge), which I will also stick in front of your nose.
Less than a month to go! But I have a feeling it will be a busy month.
One month + three days
Is it this way with every book, or just with the first? I feel the release date looming there ahead of me. It’s a bit hard to envision what must be on the other side of it; it’s like a wall, obscuring my vision all the way to the horizon. I’m not yet sure if I’m expected to punch a hole through it with my head or climb over it. Can I find or build a gate? I am a bit intimidated by the whole thing, I confess.
Still, I hold out hope that a portal will appear and I will walk right through – maybe even ride majestic, if I can swing it. There have been encouraging signs along the road contributing to this belief. One I stumbled upon a couple days ago, a very nice review at Parenthetical. The author of that blog has read Amy Unbounded, and it is always particularly lovely to read the reactions of people who are visiting Goredd for the second time, loving that world every bit as much as I do. Seraphina gives us Goredd from a different angle, perhaps, but the place is still deeply, fundamentally itself.
Then my friend Catie, at The Readventurer, brought another review to my attention just yesterday. This one’s at Chronicles of a Book Evangelist, and I was so moved by it that I’m going to quote it:
So often people who are scientific or logical are thought of or portrayed as being cold and passionless. In contrast, artists and musicians are thought to be moody and mercurial. But that isn’t really the case at all. Anyone who has ever watched Feynman talk about, well, anything, can see his passion for science; and the methodical precision required to master the most passionate of musical masterpieces requires determined discipline. And Math. Math is at the core ofeverything. … They are all interconnected. The very idea of separate areas of study is just our human brain trying to analyze and compartmentalize reality. The real world, and the way our human mind approaches it, is much more complex than than that; and I think Hartman would agree. The book itself is a testament to this idea – it is lyrical even at its most analytical.
Aw! AWWWW! (look how articulate I am, me the writer with all the words and stuff) I thought that was a pretty lyrical and incisive observation there, myself.
The day is coming. The path is clear. My heart is lifted, and I walk.
What I needed to hear:
The sublime Çetin Akdeniz on baglama, that’s what.
Ah, this song reminds me of driving through Turkey! We went into a music shop, pointed at a baglama hanging from the ceiling and said, “That! We want to hear that!” They let us have a listen to a few discs, but Çetin won, no contest. His ornamentation was lightning fast and he didn’t have a lot of pop or new-agey back-up going on.
The people in the music store all looked at us like we were crazy, and we probably were, a little. Vancouverites out in the hot sun get funny ideas: we like our baglama old-skool.
A few nice things
For a Tuesday, anyway.
My mother-in-law sent me this article (via her sister and niece) about new fantasy novels out this summer. Mine is mentioned in the recommendations down toward the bottom. Thank you for the vote of confidence, booksellers of Austin, TX!
The book has also been receiving a few starred reviews from the trade publications, which is very pleasing. I will put up some quotes soon on the front page, but so far Seraphina has garnered starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, The Horn Book, and – I just learned yesterday – Publisher’s Weekly. Thank you all so much. I am moved and humbled.
Being the mother of an eight-year-old, all these stars of course remind me of Mario Party 8. I’m imagining Donkey Kong himself flying in on a barrel to deliver them, and Bowser plotting ways to steal them back. But don’t worry! I shall distract him with Chump Charity, or Summon the Bizarre to keep him at bay!
My husband, upon hearing about the starred review in Publisher’s Weekly said, “Is that the one where Ed McMahon delivers the oversized novelty cheque?”
Given that Ed McMahon is dead, I really, really hope not. Zombie Ed McMahon is far scarier than Bowser.
Shifting gears abruptly
Came across this nice review today at The Bookbag. I am so tickled that the book is “classy”, especially after all my filking has other people calling me “the Weird Al of YA”. But y’know what? I’m comfortable with my contradictions. I can be both.
I live to filk another day
Oh, hi. I’ve been playing Skyrim and running errands and trying very hard not to think about the sequel, which is still in the capable hands of my editor. I’m afraid I have also been rewriting songs, which gives me a peculiar comfort. I like that there are rules – the rhyme scheme, the rhythm and melody – because that makes it an interesting puzzle to solve. This week’s bit of filking was originally “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay. Link to the source song provided in case you don’t know it. Once again, it’s something that happened to come on the radio and catch my imagination.
I’ve turned it into a song about burnout. Just in case you’re prone to worry: I’m not THIS burned out. But I have been before. I’m tempted to call this “Escriba el Escrito”, but that’s kind of nonsensical (and probably ungrammatical – it’s been many years since I had good Spanish). So let’s just call it —
“Burnout, or When I Wrote the Words”
I used to write the words,
Like a goddess, I created worlds
Then one morning I walked away
Guess I’d run out of things to say
Burnout crept up so gradually
I was sure it wouldn’t happen to me
I wrote all day and I wrote all night
And my characters lived, god they burned bright.
The story engulfed my life
Filled it with war, trauma, glory, and strife.
Then all at once I could take no more,
I gathered my heart, dashed to the door.
I hear accounting is nice and boring,
Driving taxis or laying flooring,
Manual work to bypass my brain,
No more digging in my own pain.
The life of the mind seems rarefied
Not the thing to leave you fried,
But that’s what occurred
Back when I wrote the words.
I stood off and I gave it time
I could barely stand to claim it as mine
Wondered whether I’d ever try
To speak its name or catch its eye.
But the story followed me
And I knew that I would never be free
Until leapt back and faced the fight.
Someone tell me why I wanted to write?
I hear accounting is nice and boring,
Driving taxis or laying flooring
Manual work to bypass my brain,
No more digging in my own pain.
The life of the mind is rarefied,
You can’t quit cold and be satisfied.
No matter what you heard,
I’ll be back to write more words.
(Seriously, you need to picture me dancing just like that dude in the video.)
Prog rock poultice
So where was I? Ah, right. Grumpy!
When attempting to relieve a bad mood with prog rock, Pink Floyd isn’t the only way to go. So much depends on the nature of the grumpiness. Pink Floyd should be applied when you’re experiencing a case of the Vast Existential Mopes, and/or if you see marching hammers (for that latter, maybe call a doctor too). There are certainly other variations, and other prog rock for any occasion.
Is your grumpiness dramatic and fierce? Medieval? Perfectly encapsulated by the phrase “Let the blood flow, let the blood flow,” sung by a shrill Scotsman in an Anglo-Saxon helmet? Yeah, I’ve been that grumpy. In that case, you want Marillion’s “Grendel“. In particular, you want the second half, where Fish (yes, that’s his name) puts his helmet on and disembowels a member of the audience. Y’know, metaphorically.
Is your grumpiness keeping you up at night? Is it just a touch paranoid? Are there submarines lurking in your foggy ceiling? Oh, I’ve seen those too, darlings. For this flavour of sulk, I prescribe King Crimson’s “Sleepless“. It’s all right to feel a little fear.
Are you so complicated in your cantankerousness that no one understands you? Do you feel pulled in conflicting directions by your inner Apollonian and Dionysian homunculi, one in a business suit, one in his birthday suit? Is your grumpiness an elaborate artistic snit? Then you may already be living at Rush’s “La Villa Strangiato“. I’m there way more often than I like to admit, so I sympathize.
Take some prog rock and call me in the morning
So okay, say you’re grumpy. So grumpy you could steam-clean the carpet with your eyes, but you won’t out of pure peevishness. So grumpy your skin turns green and your friends all call you The Incredible Sulk.
You’re grumping through the kitchen, making yourself a cup of (Nas) Tea (Mood), listening to “Firth of Fifth” again in the vain hope that it will cheer you up, when suddenly… it does. Not all the way, mind, but a little bit. Enough for a thought, like a ray of sunlight, to get through your cantankerous cloud cover.
It’s going to take more than one puny Genesis piece. You’re going to need a whole musical regimen, says the thought. Some kind of Prog Rock Grumpiness Cure.
And that makes you laugh. Laughing is Kryptonite to grumpiness. It’s the beginning of the end.
However, maybe you’re not ready to completely let go of the Vast Existential Mope just yet. Here’s some dismal Pink Floyd. Not dismal enough? They can do MORE DISMAL.
Tomorrow: what I listen to when I’m done feeling sorry for myself.
Rachel Hartman 
