Me

Thinking about listening

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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.

 

My MTV interview

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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.

Seraphina’s wonderful opening night

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Tuesday evening we had a charming soiree at KidsBooks, a wonderful children’s bookstore here in Vancouver. It was by invitation (mostly — we had a few walk-ins too, which was awesome). I invited everyone I could think of, and was delighted with how many people came. I even had friends come up from Seattle and Vancouver, WA!

As I had long threatened, there was cake:

It’s a girl!

The first forty-five minutes or so were spent greeting people. I knew pretty much everyone who came, so there were a lot of hugs. It was nice to be able to have my very first event in the company of friends.

Then I did a little reading. Here’s Phyllis Simon, one of the owners, introducing me. Thank you so much for your kind hospitality, Phyllis!

I’m the one on the right. Thanks again to all the KidsBooks staff!

Apparently I make a lot of faces while reading. My friend Liz Edgar caught this one:

IMG_3655

Then I signed books. This picture is me at the very end signing stock for the store, which is less interesting, but it’s the only picture I seem to have gotten of my local Random House rep, Trish Kells, who helped arrange and coordinate the whole event. That’s her in the pink. Thanks, Trish! It was wonderful!

We had this down to a science by the time we got through that pile.

Here are a few more pictures from Liz, who is an excellent photographer, just to give you a little more flavour of the evening.

Books and Reader

Signing

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That last picture is my husband, looking tired but happy. That about sums it up for all of us at the end of the day.

Interview at The Enchanted Inkpot

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Hello, friends! We had a wonderful time last night at KidsBooks, and I will be posting pictures as soon as I get my act together. In the meantime, here’s a bit of fun: Deva Fagan interviews me at The Enchanted Inkpot. Ms. Fagan asks some really insightful, interesting questions, which were fun for me to answer. Enjoy!

Update: just had to pop back and share this review at Lytherus as well!

Today’s the day, darlings!

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I’m supposed to be napping, because was up at ridiculous o’clock this morning, like a kid on Christmas. And I do find myself at a slight loss for words, here, now that it comes down to it.

Let me merely say: my heartfelt thanks for all the support, encouragement, and enthusiasm. This has been a very long journey. Some of you have been on it with me from the beginning; some are just newly joining in. Thank you each and every one.

Another interlude

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Technically this one is musical as well, but the music isn’t as good because it’s me singing it. I suddenly realized that because I missed choir practice last week, there’s an entire song I don’t know at all. It’s our conductor’s idiosyncratic arrangement of “Bring Me Little Water Sylvie.”

“Idiosyncratic” makes it sound dreadful. It’s not. It’s quite good. It just has a lot of accidentals and some interesting but counter-intuitive dissonance. Also, the MP3 he sent me features him singing the alto part falsetto, which gives me the giggles.

So I am trying simultaneously to learn the alto part and write blog-tour posts. My success rate at each is about what you might suspect, although I think I’ve about got the song down. I’ve been singing along so automatically that I forgot I was doing it when I answered the door for the FedEx guy.

Curiously, the lyrics at that moment chanced to be perfectly apropos: I can hear you callin’!

FedEx, it appears, selects its delivery dudes for unflappability. This is why.

Ten dumbfounding facts about me

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These went up at Book Chick City while I was out of town, and I failed to notice until after I’d already posted yesterday. But if anyone’s interested in ten amusing and largely silly facts about me, here they are.

One thing I failed to mention, but could have, is that I am completely incapable of resisting a jigsaw puzzle. My son recently got a jigsaw puzzle of the Rosetta stone. It’s either extremely cool or it’s going to make me go blind from squinting at tiny Greek letters. Probably both.

One month + three days

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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.

I live to filk another day

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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

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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.