Myth, the Universe, and Everything

I've been building up links to share in my e-mail (I always e-mail them to myself until I have enough for a post). I was thinking about reviewing Breaking Waves, which I've just finished, but that may wait until tomorrow. Short version: really worthwhile anthology with a wide variety of stories.

But here are your links for digestion:

• Apparently, the Man Booker Prize committee has a thing against books in the present tense, according to an article in Salon. I tend to prefer books in the past tense, myself, but every so often there's a present tense story that proves me wrong. (As I explained to a friend, if it's written in present tense, the narrator can't die -- or the book would just stop. Which, I suppose, would be an interesting conclusion to a first person present tense story.)


• Josh Jasper at Genreville, among others, has blogged about Sir Terry Pratchett's sword made of star metal. That he forged himself. No, really. I salute you, Sir!


• I'm, of course, posting behind the ball on this, but Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is under attack. It looks like yet another case where the person trying to censor the book didn't even bother to read it.


• An impressive statistic: one in ten Americans uses an e-reader.


• PW did an excellent long article about Top Cow's new book, Artifacts, which I reviewed at Flames Rising.


• Comics and lit crit intersect with American Vampire, by Scott Snyder, who teaches courses like "The Monster Under Your Story." Sounds like fun, no?

I keep a release list on Google docs of all the upcoming books that I want to purchase. Sometimes, "upcoming" turns into "missed that pub date last month," sadly. I also keep an excel spreadsheet of all the books I've been reading (which I started because the Glamazombies, Mark Henry's mailing list community, put up spreadsheets for everyone to track their reading on the 50 Book Challenge during the first six months of the year; most of us had hit 50 by the time we quit tracking). It helps when I have to come up with a book to nominate for an award or recommend to a friend.

While I manage to be behind on other things over the past few weeks, I've been keeping up with reading. Sometimes sitting on the couch with a book seems like the only thing I can manage to accomplish. (Well, that, or watch The Guild, Felicia Day's web show that I've finally gotten around to watching; I'm somewhere in season 2.) So, two lists: first, a short recap of some of the books I've read in the last few weeks, and second, a list of the books I just bought today.

• Dead Girl Walking and Dead Girl Dancing by Linda Joy Singleton. This is a great YA series about soul swapping, starring likable narrator Amber who just happens into other people's bodies. While she does get sage wisdom from her grandmother, a kind of celestial bureaucrat, she also has to face off against Dark Lifers who want to drain her soul.
  
• The Mermaid's Madness by Jim Hines. Second in the Princess series, the novel features our trio of heroines facing off against another princess -- the little mermaid. In order to save Queen Bea, the three princesses have to confront the mermaid and convince her to release Bea's soul -- or take it from her. The book is just as much fun as the first volume, and some of the story lines that started in book one are gaining new developments.
  
• On the Edge by Ilona Andrews. Ilona and Gordon are doing it again -- raising the bar on what I expect in their genre. On the Edge is closer to paranormal romance than the Kate Daniels series, but like the Kate novels, there's a lot of great world building and mythology-mixing going on here. Also: it's smexy.
  
• Soulless by Gail Carriger. This definitely lived up to my expectations -- except perhaps that there weren't quite enough dirigibles. (The sequel promises more!) There was actually quite a bit more romance than I'd anticipated, as well, but I think Carriger mixed all her subgenres (and there are several) successfully. Definitely fun.
  

As for today, I brought home:

• My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent
  
• Demon Inside by Stacia Kane
  
• Thorn Queen by Richelle Mead
  
• Unbound (anthology, including Jeaniene Frost and Melissa Marr)
  
• Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire
  

In the mail, two preorders also arrived:

• Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
  
• Heat Wave by Richard Castle
  

Which means, with the exception of a few anthologies, the most recent Succubus book by Richelle Mead (which came out back in June!) and Rampant by Diana Peterfreund (which wasn't on the shelf today), I'm nearly caught up with everything that's come out that I had on the list. There are, of course, others I'd like to own... and my TBR pile is still stacked ridiculously high... and I have review titles that are still not reviewed... but these are really small obstacles to overcome!

So, I really should write down somewhere all the things I intend to blog about so I don't post three short entries in the space of two hours. (Maybe less. I'm not actually counting.)

I meant to mention that Ilona Andrews wrote about her connections to the funeral business over on League of Reluctant Adults today.* For the first time in what seems like ages, I actually dug someone else's description of the funeral world (I've mentioned before my love-hate feelings toward Six Feet Under, and how I'm not particularly keen on either My Girl or Fun Home, despite both being very well liked). There's a certain sense of humor required to work in the funeral business, and I love that she's drawing on that sense of death having to be funny in some way in her fiction. I've got Magic Bites out from the library--it's just behind Making Money, the first Hallowmere novel by tltrent, and the jfic I'm reading in hopes of coming up with a brilliant essay by the end of the month on my to read pile.

*Yes, I am plugging the League pretty much every day. They're bribing me with potential to win cool stuff. Thus, I cannot help myself. Free books is too good a possibility to pass up.

It is the day after a convention, and my brain is still in what I'm now calling ConSpace. This is a state of existence that is not coherent, and creates such good ideas as having beans on toast for lunch, getting out the lunch supplies, and making myself a cup of tea instead, then forgetting about lunch for an hour.

If this writing is as incoherent as I feel, I apologize in advance.

--

United Fan Con was my first venture into the world of regional, non-gaming cons. It was, I believe I can safely say, nothing at all like GenCon, and only a very little bit like Origins. The highlights of the week were hanging out with the guys from Secret Identity Podcast, who were my convention hosts, and the guys from Hero Envy, getting to meet a handful of the New England Browncoats I've been on a mailing list with for a year or more and have never before met in person, and getting to hear parts of Jewel Staite's Q&A session.

My favorite part of the conventions is always talking to new people about books--sometimes my books in particular, but also whatever people happen to be reading. I had a lovely chat with some young women about the wondefulness of Terry Pratchett. I had great fun spending time with sarahtdl talking about libraries, being a libra, anime conventions, and a host of other topics. I also had a chance to speak with some other authors and comic book designers/writers/artists about their work. I had doughnuts with the guys from Radbu Productions. I sat next to Sean Wang (pronounced Wong) (who has a most excellent print available of the characters of the Fellowship of the Ring and a great space adventure comic that I did not get a chance to read at the con but am putting on my Christmas list). I had a great chat about designing booth space with Mark Tarrant, the author of an upcoming Vampire Western called The Blood Rider. And I talked about small publishers with Clifford B. Bowyer, author of The Imperium Saga, a trilogy of adult novels that runs alongside a series of children's middle-grade fiction that tells another part of the story. (His books are available through Silver Leaf Books.)

I also gave Jewel Staite a copy of Into the Reach, because it seemed like a good idea at the time. If she likes it (which, of course, I hope), then it will have been a good idea, and I'll be very glad. But I imagine being given a book by a little-known-author at a convention is probably a bit odd, so who knows what will happen.

--

It does, however, lead to something that has been tickling at the back of my brain. Early on when he was writing the first novel of the Dreaming Dark saga, Keith Baker mentioned that if he were casting actors to play his characters, he'd almost certainly cast Nathan Fillion, but the rest were up for grabs. Since then, Keith has run a poll on his Web site asking readers to cast the other characters. I don't often cast my characters as actors until after I've already got them solidly in my head, and sometimes not even then. I've been told by my first reader, Arielle, the actor who must be cast as Kennerly (not listed here as when I eventually have my own Web site, I may copy Keith and do polls). I've also discussed casting the characters once with my husband, but never really landed on anything positive.

After this weekend, though, hearing Jewel speak about how much she enjoys kicking butt in her upcoming movie The Tribe, a thought that had been floating in my brain clicked into place. If it were up to me to cast actors as the heroes from Into the Reach, I'd cast Jewel as Lydia, so long as the "auburn hair" look works for her.

So, if this manages to float around the ether of the internet so that some Browncoat notices and it eventually gets back to Jewel Staite, that was the subconscious reason that I gave her a copy of the book--which, of course, I didn't explain because it wasn't formulated in my head, and I (being one of those people who doesn't like to be in the way) didn't want to bother her with actual conversation while she was busy doing her photo shoot. (In fact, I would have been just as happy to let her guest liaison give it to her, but he insisted...)

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A final note, and then I'm actually going to get back to making lunch (which I've been neglecting now for about an hour and a half). I did get filmed for a Secret Identity promo, and Brian LeTendre interviewed me for the next issue of their podcast, which they recorded at the show. (I'm sure there are probably bits of my extremely loud trumpet of a laugh that filter through while they're doing bits of the show I'm not intentionally in, for which I apologize.) When I have the link for both the new episode and the promo, I'll post them here.

Just finished reading Scrib, a YA novel by playwright David Ives, which would had me in stitches this morning between drifting in and out of ConSpace fog.