Toon Thursday: What Type of Writer Are You?

Brand new Toon Thursday, get it while it's hot! It may not be the early-morning edition, but surely you'll all settle for the evening edition, yes?

Happy Thursday!

O, Tor, How We Love Thee

Just say YES to $2.99 specials for the beginnings of three YA series with a touch of the fantastic - Cybils nominee Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake, Personal Demons, by Lisa Desrochers, (a very nice person AF has lunched with in person), and Shadow Grail: Legacies, by the legendary Mercedes Lackey. This price is good for four weeks, if you can believe it, so save your lawn-mowing money, and think nice thoughts towards Tor! w00t!

Chatter in the Blogosphere

There's a fair bit of hit or miss going to be on for the next two weeks as attempt to uproot from Scotland - not taproots, though; just couldn't manage - and resettle my possessions, if not my self, elsewhere. I'm hoping to develop a breezy and brief (Hah! Brief. Who am I kidding?) style so that I post frequently short bursts of things I've found intriguing.

With this in mind, I point backwards to the great conversation, "It's Complicated!" that went on LAST week at CBC Diversity blog. Featuring such well-known advocates for ethnic and cultural representation in YA lit as Debbie Reese, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and some surprising words from experienced editors and agents, this conversation struck up a number of respectful and intelligent exchanges in the comments. A rarity elsewhere, but "Status: Normal" in our community - which is more amazing and precious than maybe you understand, giving the level of vitriol in national discourse.

Add those introductory discussions to the wonder that is this week's panel discussion at SF Signal on writing race in science fiction and fantasy.. Hosted by Zack Jernigan and featuring David Anthony Durham, Aliette de Bodard, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Ken Liu, we're getting all kinds of cultural and ethnically diverse opinions and perspectives. This promises to be full of really intelligent, thoughtful exchanges.

Meanwhile, Liz Burns is doing her thing with Kelly Jenson and having an unconventional blog tour. This means it's bloggers talking about blogging - best practices, ethics, why we do it, where we're going with it, what we want our relationships with the editorial/publishing world to be -- which has sprouted a number of really good points and some intelligent conversation. (No, we don't believe that blogs are free advertising - we write about the books we love, and if you want a guarantee of something? You pay for it. As you would anywhere else.)

All in all, some good chatter to chew over.

A Memorial Day Booklist

Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Photo: Wikipedia (public domain image)

We don't really post a lot of book lists around here, per se, but since I don't have a review ready to put up today, I thought I'd celebrate Memorial Day in one of the best ways I can think of to honor those who have given their lives in military service. Whether or not you agree with any given war, whether or not you personally would ever serve in the military, has nothing to do with whether we appreciate the service of those who do make the choice to take such a role, or whether we respect and honor those who died in that role.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that whether your patriotism is rabid or mild, Memorial Day is more than just big department store sales or barbecues or even putting a flag outside your house. To me, remembering and reading the stories of those who served, those who died, is one of the best ways of continuing to honor them, and it's a direct way of connecting with history. And you don't need the excuse of a calendar holiday to do it.

On that note, here are some personal favorites along the theme of war and military service, some adult, some YA; some fiction, some non--please note that this is not a complete list, but simply a list of books  I've read and enjoyed.

Operation YES, Sara Lewis Holmes (MG fiction)
The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (adult fiction/memoir)
Pride of Baghdad, Brian K. Vaughan (graphic novel)
Bombers and Mash, Raynes Minns (nonfiction about British women's lives in WWII)
Sunrise Over Fallujah, Walter Dean Myers (YA fiction)
The Green Glass Sea, Ellen Klages (MG fiction)
Mare's War, Tanita Davis (YA fiction)
Flygirl, Sherri L. Smith (YA fiction)
Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein (YA fiction)
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut (adult fiction)

Feel free to leave a comment with any of your personal favorites that I might have missed and you think are worth a read. And, regardless of your plans for this particular day, go forth, read, and remember.

TURNING PAGES: Dust Girl, by Sarah Zettel

Short of my time with Grapes of Wrath in high school, and Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust, I have to admit that my grasp of Dust Bowl literature is not all that firm. I read way too much into it, and find myself wheezing and coughing at the idea of dust, dust, dust. And don't get me started on locusts or whatever. The Midwest in the 30's: it's very much my nightmare.

Enter Callie LeRoux of Slow Run, Kansas...

Reader Gut Reaction: I like the idea of a fairy series set in the Old West. Much of American fiction set in the thirties is concerned with the concrete - job losses, racial instability, post World War I angst and hills like white elephants or something. Fiction for teens and young adults set in that time tends to lean toward Rockefeller-esque excess, high-class hijinks and the like - a lot of raccoon coats, bobbed hair, and bored people at dances. And yet, there is certainly more to the era, and more to the history of Americans at the time. People were superstitious and believed in all manner of things, so fairies -- and the battles of the fae for the world - are perfectly reasonable. This novel is a strong beginning for what's going to be a really interesting trilogy.
Concerning Character: Callie is a determined person. Hedged about by her mother's rules of conduct and courtesy, even as they're among the last two people in Slow Run, Callie keeps her chin up. It gets a little tougher to pretend that all is well when the doctor leaves... he's the only one keeping Callie's body and soul together. The dust pneumonia, which causes her to have to sleep in a muslin mask, is going to kill her. And YET: her mother weeps for her, but will not budge from Slow Run. Not when her father might be back for her, any day. Not when she promised she'd stay ...

Callie is, deep down, justifiably angry -- and angrier still when her mother wants her to "call" him. She's had the ability to call him back, all this time, just by doing one simple thing? But, the simple thing turns out to be much, much more complex than Callie ever dreamed, and when she loses her mother, she knows she has to get out of Slow Run -- and find out what's really going on with her life. The adventure that follows is surprising, fresh, and engaging.

Recommended for Fans Of...: Novels in which girls find their strength and do things - two which come to mind are Holly Black's Tithe, Justine Larbalestier's Magic or Madness series and Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series - but neither of these are quite a match. This is a whole new idea.
Themes & Things: Themes are of self-reliance, decision-making, and there's a strong, strong theme of identity -- hiding who we are, vs. being out loud and proud with every part of it. Slow Run, Kansas in the early thirties isn't ready for all of Callie - but more important is that she learns to be ready for herself.
Cover Chatter: Thank you, cover people, for adding to my nightmares about dust. Now it has faces in it, ghostly ones. Great. Thank you so much. Meanwhile, the cover model is meant to represent a biracial Callie - a fair job, though her hair is described as black, coarse, and braided down. Ah, well, having a YA female book cover sans the quarter face/torso and the flowing hair would probably set off some sort of time-space disruption.

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You can find DUST GIRL by Sarah Zettel at an independent bookstore near you!

Don't Fear the (Prose) Reaper—Just Read This Book

I don't post many reviews of writing-related books, probably because there aren't many writing books I go out of my way to read cover-to-cover, but not long after I started reading Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print by experienced manuscript editors Dave King and Renni Browne, I knew I'd be finishing this one.

Now, we are ALL—admit it—just a bit scared of revision. And when we aren't scared, we're perplexed and confounded. Where to start, what to look for; it can seem like a staggering task and it can feel impossible to get the necessary distance from our writing. Yet we're told, as writers, that we need to learn to love revision, that all writing is re-writing. If you're particularly unlucky (like me, some days), you end up in this sad little limbo where you can't stand your shitty first draft and you have no idea how to fix it.

Enter this book. I have to say that I've been meaning to read this one for, literally, years. It was on my Amazon wish list, and I finally bought a copy for my Kindle, and now I'm wishing I'd just bought the durn thing when I first browsed for it. What this book is not: It is not a manual for plot. It's not a how-to for making your story a good story in the first place. It doesn't tell you where to get ideas or how to tell if your story has a stupid premise and should be consigned to the scrap heap. It's not a how-to-write book.

What it does do is address issues of STYLE, MECHANICS, and CLARITY that commonly afflict first-draft prose, whether you're a beginning writer or an old hand. Want a clear, no-nonsense explanation of show vs. tell? King and Browne provide one. Want to know when to summarize something in exposition and when to show it through character actions? This book has tips and exercises to help you out. Dialogue and internal monologue, voice and style, pacing and proportion—the authors make it very clear what to look for, and each chapter includes ample examples from workshops and from real-life published authors. Each chapter also ends with exercises for further practice and a checklist of questions to consider as you run through your own manuscript.

This book really ought to be required reading for any fiction writer who is serious about revision and making your writing the best it can be in terms of overall spit and polish. I don't think I've taken a single writing class that ever laid out these issues so clearly—and, of course, the more practice and attention is given to such matters in revision, the better (I hope) we will get at avoiding and/or pinpointing problems in the future. If you're trying to get an editor's or agent's attention, you'd do well to read this book, but even seasoned pros could use a reminder now and then. For me, it's a must read—and I'll be turning to it again and again, I'm sure, since I'm neurotic like that. WRITERS: GO READ IT!

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You can find Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Dave King and Renni Browne at an independent bookstore near you!

☺YAAAAAY!☺

There's a whole lotta "yay!" going on, but it's been going on a little quietly.

In the last several days and weeks, there have been some books which have launched (Yay, Lissa Wiley, Liz Wein, and me), some -- okay, a shuttle launched (YAY! Dragon 9/Space X!), some birthdays (Yay, Farida, Jules, Liz, and Sarah), and some awards. First up, I need to give an official squee to Laura for BookSpeak winning in the Children's Literature category of the Minnesota Book Awards! Yaaay! How very satisfying of a win, and I thought the way her family collaborated to have a little celebration at home for whatever outcome was so very, very sweet. Now, THERE are some people who know how to celebrate!

The IPPY Awards were established in 1996 to honor some "unsung titles" put out by indie booksellers. And who won a 2012 IPPY Award National Category Multicultural Fiction - Children's Bronze? That'd be one Sarah Jamila Stevenson, co-blogger at this fine blogging establishment. YAAAAAAAAY!

Yes. At THIS BLOG, a person won a book award. And... *crickets* Would she have ever mentioned it? Ever? Who can say?

You might have heard NPR's "Morning Edition" yesterday whereon Nancy Pearl, Librarian Extraordinaire, listed some great "summer reads" she's recently enjoyed. First up on the list? Map of My Dead Pilots, by one Colleen Mondor, the well-known Kidlitosphere organizer from Chasing Ray.

Nancy Pearl. Colleen. Unspeakable squee.

Both A.F. and I have been sick, busy, and burdened (and could the freezing/rain just STOP already?), and there's a bit of that sick-busy thing going around, too, but in sort of a mid-week kicks like Jules does of a Sunday, we invite you to share some "Yay!" going on in your world, too.

And, because this phrase has been ringing in my ears lately, Don't forget to be awesome.