Have Yourself a Bookish Little Christmas

Free stories on Christmas? Yes, please. While the only book I've had the opportunity to cuddle up with today features more talking animals than I care for, for you I have something completely different. My distrust of talking animals is another blog alltogether. The Two Sisters is an itty bitty companion piece to The Hidden Icon, and it is, I hope, a treat for folks who've already read the novel and those who haven't yet. It's relatively spoiler-free - if you've read the back cover you're safe, seriously - and offers a vignette-like introduction to two of the novel's main characters. Step (just a little) outside the narrative of The Hidden Icon for a story within a story, a tale of sisters in spirit and flesh, of haunts and unexpected sacrifices.

I wasted I don't want to tell you how much time formatting it for the Kindle, only to find I can't offer it for free in that format, so, I've only got a .pdf for you. You can download it here. The .pdf also includes the first two chapters of The Hidden Icon because, as my most excellent publisher recommended, why not? If you spend half as much time salivating over the cover as I did - Mara Stokke does absolutely beautiful work - and maybe half as much time over again reading, I'll consider this venture a win.

Enjoy and happiest of holidays!

I Love (Fictional) People

Of all the times to come to a realization about one’s own reading and writing preferences, today it was a Facebook meme that just stumbled me.

You know the one going around, about the nine books you’ve read that’ve just stuck with you for whatever reason. They’re not necessarily books you’d recommend for the Pulitzer or the Nebula or the Newberry, but they might be. Mostly they’re the stories that work their way into your bloodstream and your muscles and your bones. No matter how many Great Works of Literature you’ve read, these books are the books that really flipped your switch, as my pal Patrick Donovan would say.

In thinking on my nine, I recalled a book my best friend and I each acquired at a school book fair. (How those were the greatest thing in the universe, next perhaps to the school days where we got to wear our pajamas and read in the library all day, is another blog post.) The book was Sherryl Jordan’s Winter of Fire. It consumed us. We read it multiple times that year and the year after, and at least once a year every year until we’d graduated high school, I’d wager. Now I’m wondering how it is that twelve, thirteen, fourteen years have gone by and I haven’t read it again, and how in thinking on what it was I loved so much about it, I’m realizing something about the other books I’ve chosen to love, the sorts of books I’ve chosen to write.

Despite being a science fiction/fantasy novel, Winter of Fire was character-driven. The protagonists’ feelings, her relationships with the other characters in the novel, these are the things that I remember. The scenes that are most vivid in my mind are the quiet, contemplative ones, where Jordan isn’t exploring the curious world she’s created but instead the curiouser world of the human heart.

I love unicorns and magic and the surreal, spectacular realms created by many a beloved speculative fiction writer, but what really keeps me in these worlds are the people who populate them. This is why I struggled with The Lord of the Rings and can’t read most books with overtly complicated space travel mechanisms. Unless you’re Mrs. Whatsit I probably don’t care as much about how you get from point A to point B in your starship as I do about the crew, the captain, the conflict. I want the thrill of familiar emotions in an unfamiliar environment. I want those places to be believable and rich, mind, but they’re not the whole of why I’m reading.

What about you?

Coffee and Books: BFFs

A few weeks ago I thought of the best New Year's resolution ever, and also one I am actually like to follow through on. Don't ask me how my year of not complaining about insignificant things went, because the answer is badly. And it was also more like two weeks instead of twelve months. But it seems silly to wait for 2014 to start doing something that makes so much sense to me now, so, I'm not going to.

I was privy to a writer's rant a few weeks ago over the cost of eBooks, and while I certainly felt for the fella, I've also benefited tremendously as a reader from having access to such a bounty of fiction at such a low cost. I've purchased books I might never have read otherwise because they were a buck or two instead of twenty, and gone on to rave over those books and recommend them to friends (when they've been good). Most of my life I've only ever bought books for class, or after checking them out from the library enough times that I've paid for the book already in late fines. A book is an investment, something I'm going to be adding to a carefully curated library, and not something I've ever considered buying on a whim.

Until I got my Kindle.

And now I can read so much more, occupy so many more worlds, and frankly, it's dirt cheap. Criminally so. Do I think this is a bad thing? Sometimes. But the sheer amount of published material available to the contemporary reader is staggering. Finding something you can really connect with is even more of a challenge. It only makes sense that with greater supply, there is diminished demand. I've enjoyed taking advantage of a system that allows me to take a risk on an unknown author, or follow up on a recommendation from a friend before I have the chance to forget about it.

So here's where the resolution comes in. There's often the joke that a cup of coffee costs more than an eBook. And given my complete lack of hesitation in dropping four bucks on the good stuff (a friend has accused me of rubbing ground coffee on my gums; I really do have a problem), I'm going to promise myself that every time I do I'll commit to buying a book, too. I'm not in the habit of issuing challenges, but I feel like this is a good one. So consider yourself challenged to do the same. Wouldn't you rather be reading when you're drinking liquid creativity, anyway?

This week it was an iced dark roast and Winona Kent's Persistence of Memory. What'll yours be?

Five Favorite Book Characters of All Time

The gals at The Great Noveling Adventure have been a delightful distraction from my writing lately (and they've got some swell stuff for writing, too, for when you're feeling responsible and crafty). In a recent post, one of the writers talked up her five favorite book characters of the year, and it made me want to do the same thing. I only wish I'd read enough this year to have more than a handful of characters to choose from. So instead I'm going to take the easy way out and share my five favorite book characters of all time. Because what isn't fun about all time? These aren't in any particular order, and while some of these books are certainly among my favorites, these characters transcend the page, making me wish for short stories and artist renderings and, gasp, fanfiction.

"I dig American movies. I dig Negroes, particularly Michael Jackson. I dig to disseminate very much currency at famous nightclubs in Odessa... many girls want to be carnal with me in many good arrangements, notwithstanding the Inebriated Kangaroo, the Gorky Tickle, and the Unyielding Zookeeper."

Alex Perchov from Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated is irresistible from the very start. As far as I'm concerned, he's the "hero" of this novel. Never has a character misused so many words so spectacularly.

 ∞

"Remember that while the Clayr can See the future, others make it. I feel that you will be a maker, not a seer. You must promise me that it will be so. Promise me that you will not give in. Promise me that you will never give up hope. Make your future, Lirael!"

Lirael from Garth Nix's Lirael and Abhorsen manages a balance of strength and vulnerability on the page that makes me wonder if perhaps Nix was a teenage girl in another life. She's the rare heroine who can make enormous, childish mistakes, cry about them, and challenge herself to overcome them without ever distancing her reader (at least not this reader).

  ∞

"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice demands a place in my esteem forever, and the esteem of most women, I think, of my generation and temperament. She is confident, intelligent, and refuses to compromise who she is despite every expectation that she must.

  ∞

"Curiosity killed the cat,” Fesgao remarked, his dark eyes unreadable. Aly rolled her eyes. Why did everyone say that to her? 

“People always forget the rest of the saying,” she complained. “‘And satisfaction brought it back.” 

Aly Cooper from Tamora Pierce's Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen is indomitable. And so funny. I feel like I don't read enough traditional fantasy with a good sense of humor, but Aly really carried me into this series after many failed attempts to read Pierce's other works.

  ∞

"You show the man you are when you insult me thus," I said very quietly.

"And what sort of man is that?"

"A man with no sense of right or wrong. A man who cannot laugh and who rules by fear. A -- a man with no respect for women."

There was a moment's silence.

"And on what do you base this judgment?" he asked eventually. "You have spent but the briefest time in my company. Already you believe me some kind of monster. You are indeed quick to assess a man's character."

"As are you to judge a woman," I said straightaway.

So, I lied and saved the best for last, and I'm cheating because it's actually two characters. Bran and Liadan from Juliet Marillier's Son of the Shadows are whole and real within minutes of meeting them on the page, but together they make me weep. Marillier has gone on to write a number of Sevenwaters novels, and most of them have been highly enjoyable, but still. All I want is more of these two, forever.

... I can't promise I won't do this again with my biggest fictional crushes. Or favorite fictional worlds, because, nobody from Harry Potter even made this list because I'm really just in love with Rowling's world building. But for now, who's on your list?

Love at First Sight

Well, almost. I'll be honest. I wasn't sure when I started reading if I was going to enjoy G. Willow Wilson's Alif the Unseen, but I've never been more delighted to be wrong (about a book, anyway). Once I got into the mystic, jinn-blue heart of it, I couldn't put it down.

I've seen some references here and there that liken the novel to Harry Potter, and I think I know why. Willow Wilson is incredibly skillful in taking the mundane and making it magical, which is even more of a feat given she does so with a) the Middle East, a world  largely mysterious to the Western reader already, so she's almost doing double the work, and b) the seemingly black and white, zeroes and ones world of computers. I was so impressed with the believability of the hacking that goes on in this novel, along with about a thousand (and one nights) other things. Like Rowling, the world leaves me wanting more, to the degree that I wish there were a journaling community where I could pick up a Sila character, or at least a forum with some illuminating fanfic about Vikram and the Convert.

My tastes, they are so much less lofty than the aims of this novel. I hope it's okay if I love it anyway.

Listen Up

For a first time mama, I make a lot of time to read. Which still isn't a whole lot, or nearly as much as some others I know (envy!), but I do what I can. I also try to read in front of my daughter as often as she'll let me, because I want her to know that I'm a reader, that I value books, and they're more fun even than the Farscape marathons that accompanied her early nursing days. But being a baby, she doesn't have my unrivaled attention span for a new book (though she does toss the ones she doesn't like to the floor, which I can appreciate after reaching the end of Cold Mountain). So when we're not listening to "Pollywog in a Bog" or "Prairie Lullaby," I'll often listen to some old favorites on audiobook.

I indulge in Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy at least twice a year, and the full cast version of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, too. There are a few books that listening to has actually made readable, though I've gambled on others I neither enjoyed in print nor by ear. And let's just say I can't even wait to hear as well as read one of my favorite writers later this year.

Listening to a book is such a dozy pleasure, like nursing a cup of hot chocolate in December, or taking a bubble bath. I can't race right through, and I'm not competing with my cat for a comfortable spot to rest my arms. Listening also means I can get away with things like folding diapers or building block towers at the same time. While I've got to start being more mindful about what we're listening to as my baby girl grows up (I don't want a repeat of when this book got super unexpectedly sexy, super fast), listening to books seems to me like a lovely way to share some of my favorites with her.

And a way to take advantage of what precious little spare time motherhood provides.

All Shook Up

It's rare (for me) to read a tough as nails heroine who delivers on the grit and still has enough heart to keep me reading. While she took a little while to grow on me, Boneshaker's Briar Wilkes' ferocity (and at times her heart-achingly dear vulnerability) where the fate of her son is concerned is a wondrously written thing. I felt I was getting a little sneak peek at the future of worry and love over an almost grown up child, and I connected with Briar in a way I'm not sure I would have before I became a parent.

But Cherie Priest's Boneshaker offers plenty to revel in. The Doornails and the gadgets and the rotters and a surreal, Blight-fogged Seattle thrilled and really fired my imagination. I even loved Priest's epilogue for the nit-pickers (and anyone who does their research just so they can toss it).

My only complaint was in the reveal of Minnericht's identity. Without more of his story, it lacked the impact of Briar's confession (which I loved, and should've seen coming and didn't, a credit to Priest's writing).

Super curious about the next installment and will absolutely be reading.

Book Lust

I feel like I'm giving myself permission to write about All The Things in a way that is neither deep nor lyrical. Because I am, lately, a creativity camel. My urgent need to write and world-build and daydream is by necessity put off by diapers that need changing (and washing and drying and folding), block towers that need collapsing, toothless smiles soaked up and baby giggles bottled. When I get my figurative drink on, however, I drink deep. So I am excited about reading and writing when I can, and presently, this. I've made a concerted effort to read women in the science fiction and fantasy genre (and all books ever, really), and I love a good reading challenge. I've had Cherie Priest's Boneshaker on loan from the library and am anxious to dig in. I only wish I hadn't just finished Julianna Baggott's Pure, because, my goodness, what a note to begin on that gritty gem would've been.

Reading is such a cornerstone to writing that even when I'm reduced to a blubbering, unproductive mess by the spectacular imaginations of others, I can't regret the hours lost in another world. Because lost isn't even really the right word.

It's more like lust.

A good book is about what can't be had, only dreamed. And I can't hope to write one if I haven't read a whole hell of a lot of them.

Psychosomatic Symptoms

You know the feeling when you finish a really spectacular book and you just can't move on? You're hanging around on the last page, musing over the last few lines, perhaps turning to the mysterious blank pages publishers include and hoping for a secret little bit more. Like when I went to the movies as a teenager and waiting around until the credits had finished rolling rewarded me with an intimate fifteen seconds of something. Good movies don't seem to do that anymore. But that's a story for another day. I've got the book-finishing-psychoses of a rabid reader and a writer working against me. I find myself wishing for more and more and more book and also wondering why it is I think I've got something in me that will make somebody else feel the same way. And what's the point of writing if i haven't? I want to turn pages more than I've ever wanted to turn heads, to facilitate cramped hours in bed ravishing sentences long after bedtime, to fan crushes and crush expectations to finest metaphorical powder.

But I finish something like Maureen Johnson's The Name of the Star and I just don't feel like a contender.

But You Don't Have to Take My Word For It

Re-reading has always felt indulgent to me in the best of ways. When I was studying literature it was practically breaking the rules unless I was doing so for comprehension of some unnecessarily overwrought text, when reading for pleasure was worthy of a laugh unless you were arguing that you actually enjoyed imagining the Panopticon into every nineteenth century English parlor (which happened in a class, once, but the tally of incidents in which I felt like a dirty fiction writer daring to enjoy artistry without critical theory are too many for any one blog to recount, and certainly not this one). But I've always done it, and I do it now, too, flying in the face of all of what's great and new and should be read; some books are just old friends.

Revisiting Anne Shirley of late has made me marvel at how little I needed to go on as a ten-year-old reader, how dearly dreaming talks of mischief and the paper-heady scent of apple blossoms could render me. I'll tell you, almost nothing happens on the page. What does is almost always relayed to Marilla over plum cake hours after, unless it's a certain titian-headed someone falling off of a roof, or nearly drowning playing at The Lady of Shalott. I've got a kindred spirit of my own in K, and the wild ramblings of Anne and Diana are just as I remember them, as I remember ours as sweetly.

What isn't the same the second time around is Tolkien. I remember struggling and abandoning the first book after Bilbo's party before I'd seen the films, and only after managing to get through the trilogy on the merits of the cast. I swore Aragorn had no personality and the hobbits little more than appetites, but there's something to be said for re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring with ten years to season the pages and my temperament. The prose at times feels positively lush. If I've told my husband once I've expressed to him a dozen times my shock over how much I am actually enjoying this re-reading, which is a testament, perhaps, to what an unworthy jerk I was at nineteen. But really, who isn't?

Besides, I can't trust anyone who fantasized they were an edgy Elizabeth Wakefield. No matter how cute Conner McDermott was written.