Myth, the Universe, and Everything

I love good crossover fiction. I'm sure that's part of the reason I love The Avengers. (Also, Joss Whedon, I'm looking at you.) So I was really excited to see that Rick Riordan has announced he's doing a crossover short story featuring Percy Jackson and Carter Kane -- heroes from his two major mythology series. (Shannon Maughan's Publishers Weekly article with the announcement and full details is here.) It's planned as a short story, and it's currently only being published in the back of a paperback book (the hardcover of which I already own), but I have hopes that as the pub date approaches, we'll see an option to buy an e-version of the short for 99 c. Because I would totally spend that on a short story.


(Cute crossover art by SpiralNinja05 at Deviant Art, found by my Google Image search.)

I got to interview Rick back in 2006, when I was writing for Literature Community news, when the first two Percy Jackson books were out, and Rick had more adult novels published than YA titles. I look at that article and think how much his world must have changed in the past seven years.

Rick isn't the only writer doing crossovers. Ally Carter crossed over her two brilliant series -- The Gallagher Girls and the Heist Society books -- in Double Crossed, which, best of all, she gave away for free. I grabbed it the day it came out and read it on my computer, since the nook edition wasn't up yet, and it's delightful. If you haven't checked out either series, this isn't a bad entry point into the worlds -- and it should definitely get you intrigued about both series.

In other news, the Regaining Home Kickstarter hit 21% in the first 24 hours. Woo! I'm very hopeful that we'll make the goal -- and I even posted the first stretch goal, re-editing the first two books and publishing them in multiple e-book formats, this morning. Thanks to everyone who has already contributed or spread the word, and thanks to those of you who are planning to do so!

So, there's been news lately about Wiley Agency starting an Amazon only imprint for their writers. It's sort of a weird deal -- a literary agency acting as a publisher and giving exclusivity to a single seller -- and it's much debated (which I won't get into here). It has got me thinking, though: in theory, writer royalties are supposed to be larger in e-books. (That's another thing being batted around the news lately.) If that's true, it would make sense for me to exclusively buy e-books instead of mass markets, as they're priced very similarly, and on e-books, my money would go more directly to the writer.

So, writer friends:

1) Are your royalties better on e-book?
2) Does my math make sense?

Twostripe has looked at my to be read pile, which I've now divided into three as part of the baby-proofing efforts at the house (it's far less likely to topple now). When I talk about buying a new book from my release list, he makes a funny gurgling noise that isn't at all a sound of approval. He suggested, however, that I look into saving us shelf space by buying digital, so I'm headed that direction. (I picked up Nalini Singh's newest, Bonds of Justice, when Kobo Books was having a sale the other day.)

This messes up my "I like all of my books to look the same on the shelf" strategy -- I'm compelled to buy matching book sets, which is why I have all the Percy Jackson books in hardcover, and why I at one point had three different incomplete sets of the Harry Potter series, since I picked up paperbacks of several of the books in England over two or three trips. On the up side for the blog, slimming down my print collection could mean a lot of fun prizes and contests coming up here.

All right, one week to get myself back on my feet, and here I am, returning to ye olde blog. (I was delayed in turning in my short story to my editor, and one of the things I forbade myself from doing was blogging before it was finished and ready to turn in.) But a couple of cool things happened today, and I wanted to make sure to blog about them, and update you guys on my goals from the trip, before Saturday turned into Sunday. (Hopefully, the novel tourism post will go up tomorrow!)

So, first cool thing: my review of Caitlin Kittridge's (blackaire's) novel, Street Magic, went up on Flames Rising. Matt was kind enough to post it for me on a Saturday, because the book has just hit the shelves, and I didn't want to have gotten an advanced reader copy for nothing! It's a really, really excellent novel, which I expound upon in my review. Check out what I had to say, and look for the novel at your local bookstore!

Second cool thing: I finally got to meet Anton Strout (antonstrout) (who is, for the record, the most beloved low-to-midlist urban fantasy writer in America, or so I hear) live and in person. He did a book signing up in Pittsfield, his home stomping grounds and not distant from my college stomping grounds. So finally, I have my books signed. Hooray! I decided that bringing him a PEZ dispenser would border on creepy fangirl, so I decided to eschew it and just bring books and questions and a big smile. He did a reading from the first chapter of Deader Still, which was brilliantly creepy and got wonderful reactions from the audience (including me -- I'd forgotten how vivid, and, frankly, gross, that scene was!). The best part, however, was his commentary -- as he was reading, he'd interrupt himself and tell us little bits about the characters or his word choice or things that he liked about the scene, which was a huge enhancement to the story for me. Also (and I hope I'm not blowing his cover), he is super nice in person. Based on his blog and his books, I was expecting more snark, but he was totally gracious and sweet. (And I'm not just saying this because he might find this entry later. These are honest impressions here!)

The Barnes and Noble in Pittsfield is pretty darn great. They didn't have Pandora's Closet in stock, sadly, but I did pick up Red Headed Stepchild by Jaye Wells and Angel's Blood by Nalini Singh. The staff was really great, too, but my favorite part was walking in and seeing a young woman reading manga with this huge grin on her face, totally oblivious to anyone walking by. Seeing the power of reading in person like that gives me a little thrill.

So, those are my good things. ( Now to catch up on my goals... )

I was recently reminded of the old saying, "How do you eat an elephant?" (The answer, of course, is my subject line.) It made me think about how I could approach working on the novel, somehow dividing it into small deadlines rather than giving myself a final deadline that comes and goes without anyone noticing it. I'm still pondering this, but think it's probably a good idea, if I can figure it out.

On a completely different line of thought, I read an article in the New York Times Book Review in which some teen authors declared no adults would read teen novels. This, to me, seems silly and not terribly true, if only because I'm clearly someone who does. Most of the people I've told to read "Percy Jackson" are adults; almost all of the people I've discussed "Percy" with are adults. The Twilight series is extremely boundary crossing in that way, according to the magazine articles that have declared Edward to be the new Mr. Darcy. (I can't link to that one, as I can't remember where I read it.) I think the idea that adults aren't reading YA is becoming less and less true as the teens who grew up reading YA novels become adults. I'm cuspy on that--we had a great YA section at my public library growing up, but it was before the YA boom. But I remember where the good stuff is kept, so to speak, and regularly check out books from both the children's section and the YA room--moreso than I read adult novels and definitely more than I read non-fiction.

I'm wondering if the stigma against YA books is more prevalent outside of the SFF genres. It seems to me, particularly since a lot of the shared-world genre fiction is often considered YA in libraries, even if it really isn't, that maybe the genre readers understand the whole age category thing in a different way. Even if the YA genre is more important (and I've read some compelling arguments that YA is a genre to itself rather than an age category, although I don't think the label is always used appropriately), the fantasy genre feel might bridge gaps for fantasy-readers. I don't know if I think it's true, but I suspect it bears pondering, and I'd love to hear what others think on the topic.

Nearly all of my B&N preorders have shipped and should be arriving on my porch in the next few days. So I'd like to take this moment to wish a happy Book Birthday (in some cases, belated from earlier this week) to:

• frost_light's One Foot in the Grave,


• melissa_writing's Ink Exchange, and


• shanna_s's Don't Hex with Texas

Welcome to the world, books!

--

Quick notes on why I've gone missing lately (and a further demonstration that I am actually learning html coding--the more that I use it, I figure the less I'll have to look it up every time I want to bullet a list). Since last Friday I:

• Read the first chapter of The Lightning Thief aloud at a storyreading night.


• Ran three Xen'drik Expeditions D&D games.


• Committed my very first TPK as a DM.


• Finished going over the edits for the d20 Steampunk Musha Player's Guide.


• Signed a copy of Into the Reach for a facebook friend who managed to find one used and mailed it to me.


• Wrote a review for Flames Rising.


• Wrote a biographical essay about Marc Aronson (which was incredibly fun--he's a great representative for nonfiction for younger readers, and when John Scieszka's term as National Ambassador for Children's Literature ends, Aronson should be a serious candidate).


• Read Nalini Singh's award winning paranormal romance Caressed by Ice, which I ended up very much enjoying, despite its having two themes that normally make me put a book down (a serial killer/stalker as a major threat and one of the characters having been raped--the former which really doesn't ever sit well with me, but worked out, and the latter of which Singh handled in such a way that the healing process was compelling rather than distressing).


• Watched The Sting with my husband.

Huh, it felt like so much more before I wrote the list. At any rate, it's been very busy around here, and I'm trying to catch up on my blog reading while not falling behind on my schedule of assignments. We'll see how that goes.

I'm making progress on my to-do list, but Monday is creeping up at a much faster pace than I'd anticipated! I expect to get one more thing crossed off my list tomorrow and make progress on a couple of others, but we'll see how it goes...

In the mean time, I scoured my house for my book on Ephesus that I bought in Turkey last time I was there. It has completely vanished, much to my dismay. I may have found a copy on alibris, which I ordered, and which might get here in time--but it may be a different book, and it may arrive late. It's all up in the air. This leaves me with the option of doing a lot of internet research, as I haven't been able to track down useful books at my library (or in my library system), unfortunately. Perhaps AAA would have something.

I did read The Titan's Curse, the new Percy Jackson novel by Rick Riordan, to get me in the Greek myths spirit. Did you know Apollo writes Haiku? It's all the rage! (This leads me to believe that amieroserotruck is truly inspired by the god of inspiration himself in her haiku reviews...)

My goal is to write an interesting blog entry tomorrow that isn't filled with last minute trip details. Stay tuned!