Nothing says "big American holiday" like planning a trip to a city you've never seen before, right? And what better way to start your trip planning than with a pair of travel guides showing two famous American cities from a...different...point of view?

I'm giving away two signed Mur Lafferty books: The Shambling Guide to New York City and Ghost Train to New Orleans. These fun, fascinating, unique urban fantasies follow the adventures of a travel guide publishing house for, well, monsters.

Yes.

One part urban fantasy awesome, one part Travel Channel enthralling, and all Mur Lafferty snark, these books make me happy. And now they can make you happy! (Although they could also make you happy if you bought them, so remember, all books are available through other means.) To enter...

1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. Name a city you've always wanted to see.
3. Identify your country of origin.

That's it! The winner will be chosen from qualifying entries via RNG on Thursday, July 10th, so you have a week.

Game on!

There's always a little bit of awkwardness when a friend says "hey, will you read my new book?" They are, after all, your friend, and while you might well have sought out that book on your own to get to know your friend a little better, once they actually know you're reading it, then they might find out if you hate it. You might make them sad. (There is no perfect answer for this awkwardness, and I have generated it in my friends more than once when asking for blurbs. So saying "hey, will you read my new book?" is not a bad thing. It's just a fraught thing.) Consequentially, when KB Spangler sent me a copy of her first full-length novel, Digital Divide, I was at once happy—my friend wrote a thing!—and nervous—OH GOD MY FRIEND KNOWS I'M READING A THING. I waited a while before I started reading, is what I'm trying to say here, and finally grabbed it to keep me company on my book tour.

I am so glad I did. Digital Divide is the best book I've read in 2013. It's smart, savvy, endlessly entertaining, and gloriously smart, with a protagonist who really explores the line between humanity and technology. Rachel Peng is a half-Chinese, ex-Army, lesbian cyborg who just happens to be blind (a fact which she compensates for and conceals using clever cyborg trickery). None of these things define her. They inform her, they shape who she is, but what defines her is her own fierce brilliance, stubborn independence, and unwillingness to back off when there's ass to be kicked. If I have any regrets about Rachel Peng, it's that we're unlikely to ever see her front and center on a multiplex screen, cracking wise before she shoots somebody's kneecaps off. And we should. Rachel Peng is a bad-ass for the digital age.

There is one word of caution I should put down at this point: Digital Divide is a tie-in to KB Spangler's ongoing webcomic, A Girl and Her Fed; the two share a universe and several characters, although the main characters of Digital Divide are only side characters in the webcomic, and vice-versa. Because I read both, I can't promise the initial setup in Digital Divide wouldn't be slightly confusing for the uninitiated. That said, I think any initial confusion would pass quickly, done in by strong logic and a solid story.

If you want a book with a strong woman of color protagonist who is never belittled because of or reduced solely to the trappings of her gender, with a diverse, engaging supporting cast, with people of all sexualities and identities, and with an incredible amount of snark that never crosses the line into feeling forced, I urge you to pick up Digital Divide. Still not sure? Like most webcomics, A Girl and Her Fed is free to read; you can start there, get a feel for the writing, and then pick up a copy (available both digitally and in dead tree form).

Digital Divide. For those who want their awesome to be open to everyone.

(I thought a lot about whether this needed a trigger warning, and decided that it was better to err on the side of caution. So...TW: very oblique and carefully worded mention of a suicide attempt.)

I don't think it's any secret that I am a voracious reader. I read constantly. My friend Michelle has commented on more than one occasion that she, as a lifelong reader, is still amazed by the way she'll turn her back for thirty seconds, look back, and find me with my nose in a book. Since I grew up very poor, I also grew up a voracious re-reader; my favorite books were likely to be read five, ten, twenty times before I moved on, and I still go back to them. There aren't many new books added to that shelf these days—I finally have more than I can read—but when I need a friend, those favorites are always there.

When I was fourteen, I read Pamela Dean's Tam Lin for the first through fifth times.

Tam Lin is based on the ballad (which I was already enamored of, and would become obsessed with somewhere between readings three and five), but only very loosely so; it shares a structure, and not the details. It's about a girl named Janet, who loves to read, and goes to college, where she can read as much as she wants. It's about growing up and growing older and how those aren't always the same things, and it's about the things she does while she's at school, about falling in and out of love, and Shakespeare, and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and festive elephants, and pink curtains, and growing apart, and oh, right, the Queen of Faerie and the Tithe to Hell.

The main character, Janet, was everything I wanted to grow up to be. She was strong and smart and living in a world where the magic was subtle enough that I could see myself in her. She loved all the books I loved, and she wrote poetry constantly. It was because of this book that I wrote a sonnet a day every day for my entire high school career. Some of them were terrible, and some of them were just technically clean without being anything more than homework I had set for myself...but all of them taught me about word choice and meaning what you said, and they sparked a lifelong love of structured poetry.

Books were my salvation when I was a teenager (they still are, although I've gotten better about knowing how to save myself), but very few of them had real people doing things I could relate to and understand. Not like Janet. She was flawed and fallible and exactly what I needed, and better still, she gave my friends and I access to concepts like saying something when you needed help, and knowing that phrase would get you what you needed instantly, no questions asked. Because we thought we were being terribly clever, we used the phrase "pink curtains," which had been adopted for that purpose by Janet and her friends.

When I was sixteen, I decided I was done. I was out of cope. I was finished. I took myself and my favorite book (not Tam Lin, IT, by Stephen King) and went to a place and did a thing, and it was supposed to make me not have to exist anymore. And somewhere in the middle of the thing, I changed my mind. I literally started thinking about the characters in the books I loved, and how disappointed in me they would be, and how they wouldn't do this to themselves. They had more important things to do than die, and maybe so did I.

I went to a pay phone. I called a friend. I told her it was pink curtains, and she came and got me, and she did not judge, and she did not yell, and she helped me, because we had a framework for friends who would do that. That, like so much else that was good in our lives, we had learned from a book. From this book.

I still love T.S. Eliot and I still write sonnets and I went to college as a folklore major partially because I wanted to read, and study "Tam Lin," and be Janet Carter for a little while. Tam Lin influenced so much of who I grew up to be...and it helped me know that I could ask for help. So it's part of why I was able to grow up at all.

I love this book so much. I always will.

You should read it.

The random number generator has spoken, and the winners of three copies of Mike Underwood's Geekomancy are...

alumiere
fullcontactmuse
sleightedge

Please email me via my website contact form within the next twenty-four hours to receive your download information and instructions. I can't trouble-shoot if there are any issues with this download, as it is not my website, but I'll get you as close to the castle as I can.

Thanks to everyone for playing!

I am a total geek. I have never tried to conceal my geekiness, choosing instead to embrace it for the wonderful thing that it is. Without my geeky pastimes, I wouldn't have the same friends, the same toys...the same life. I don't define myself by my geeky passions, but I can't pretend that they haven't defined me throughout my existence. Much like a bonsai is shaped by wire and scissors, I have been shaped by the X-Men and horror movies and roleplaying games and mythology, and I like me this way.

All things considered, it's probably not a surprise that when I was offered the chance to blurb Michael Underwood's Geekomancy, I said "sure, why not." A magic system based on and powered by the geeky joys that run my universe? Yes, please. And to no one's shock or amazement, I adored it. It's fun, it's peppy, it's about people I recognize, because they're the kind of people I voluntarily surround myself with every day of my life. The sequel, Celebromancy, came out recently, and is even more fun.

But here's the thing: these books are e-only, which means they miss out on bookstore browsers and surprise eyes, and too many of the awesome geeky people I know haven't encountered them or had the opportunity to give them a try. So I asked Michael's editor if I could do an e-book giveaway for the first book, to get people hooked on the series, and he said sure (after he finished blinking at me a great deal). And so I now present...

SEANAN GIVES AWAY SOMEONE ELSE'S BOOKS FOR A CHANGE!

This giveaway is for three electronic copies of Geekomancy by Michael Underwood. The limitations:

1. You will need to get the book through a specific channel (the publisher's website), because what I have are download codes.
2. The book is not going to be "Kindle ready," and may not be transferable onto a Kindle without evil magic.

To enter, leave a comment with your geekiest moment. No geek is too great! I, and the Random Number Generator, will select three winners on Friday, June 28th. Open to US residents only (sorry), please leave your comment on the entry itself; comments on comments will not be eligible to win.

Game on!

Guys guys guys! The Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling* Show is tomorrow! For the eighth time, my band of merry wanderers will descend upon San Francisco, bringing music, chaos, and the excitement of a book release party with us! This time, we're actually not going to be at my beloved Borderlands Books, although they will be selling books at the event: thanks to an opening in the Variety Preview Room Theatre, we're going to be trashing someone else's house for a change! The party begins this coming Saturday at 6:00 PM, at...

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor (use the entrance next to Citibank on Market St.)
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE.

Delicious cupcakes! Free popcorn, for that circus feeling! A cash bar, including a signature cocktail designed just for us, The Snakehandler! Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff rocking the house, now with special bonus Paul Kwinn and imported bonus Vixy! And this time, I'm not the only author who's going to be taking her turn in the ring. That's right: I have AWESOME BONUS GUESTS. Sarah Kuhn, awesome author of the geek rom-com One Con Glory, will be joining the fray, as will Amber Benson, whose latest Calliope Reaper-Jones adventure, The Golden Age of Death, dropped just two weeks ago.

Three authors. A lot of music. Plenty of sugar. Accessible booze. NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY?

I thought so.

Seating at the Preview Room is limited, so please show up early. We are a kid-friendly circus, although there will probably be swearing (I'm planning to show up, I swear a lot). The doors will open at 6:00 PM to allow for getting drinks and books, meeting people, and generally relaxing into the night; the Circus takes the stage at 7:00 PM. Here is the full schedule for the evening (subject to change):

6:00 PM: Welcome to our party! The doors will open for milling, schmoozing, hitting the bar, and finding seats. AND CUPCAKES!
7:00 PM: Would you like some music?
7:30 PM: Perhaps you would like to win things.
7:40 PM: Now there will be a reading! WHO WILL IT BE? NO ONE KNOWS! (Amber, Sarah, or Seanan.)
8:00 PM: More music?
8:30 PM: More prizes?
8:40 PM: Another mystery reading!
9:00 PM: Last music of the night.
9:30 PM: Q&A and book discussion.
9:50 PM: Thanks and final raffle before we move to the lobby for signing.

One note from the management:

"Don’t Drive—Seriously. Parking sucks in this area. Take BART or MUNI downtown, as we are directly adjacent to the Montgomery Street BART/MUNI station! Street parking ($3.50 per hour/coins or meter card, no charge cards) is metered 7 days a week til 6PM. If you have to drive, we suggest parking at the Folsom St. Garage at 3rd & Folsom (cheapest), across from Moscone Center."

See you Saturday!

(*No snakes will be present at the event, which is a shame, because I like snakes. I will content myself with humans. FOR NOW.)

Growing up in the 1980s means that I can't remember when I first heard of Stephen King, because everyone had heard of Stephen King. I know I giggled with recognition and delight when I saw the shirt that Sean was wearing in The Monster Squad (1987). By that point, I had already seen the "Gramma" episode of The New Twilight Zone (1986), and Creepshow (1982; I didn't see the theatrical release, so you can stop freaking out about what kind of movies my family took the four-year-old to see). Stephen King was my background radiation. Bruce Banner got Gamma Rays. I got a baseball fanatic from the state of Maine.

(Had someone told me when I was eight that Stephen King loved baseball, I might have learned to give a damn about the game. Clearly, the universe missed a bet.)

The first really serious piece of writing I can remember doing was a twelve-page essay, when I was nine, explaining to my mother why she had to let me read Stephen King. It had footnotes and a bibliography. I slid it under her bedroom door; she bought me a copy of Christine from the used bookstore down the street. I had already read Cujo and Carrie illicitly, sneaking pages like other kids snuck looks at dirty magazines, but Christine was my first ALLOWED Stephen King. I devoured it. And then, like a horror-fiction-focused Pac-Man, I turned on the rest.

Stephen King, without ever knowing who I was, helped me through some of the hardest times in my life. I read IT all the way through a court case that seemed like it was going to destroy everything I loved, forever. I was nine. My grandmother bought me his new hardcovers every year for Christmas. I bought tattered paperbacks with nickels I had hidden in my pillowcase, where no one else could find them. I skipped meals to buy more books. I read them all, over and over, and I endured. He taught me that sometimes, dead is better, things change, and you own what you build. He taught me to read if I wanted to write, and to love the words, and to never be ashamed of loving whatever the hell it was I wanted to love.

In a weird way, Stephen King gave me permission for a great many things, and since those things are integral to who I grew up to be, I have to say that he, through his work, was just as big an influence on me as any other adult in my life.

He taught me you can get out.

Today is his birthday; he was born in 1947, and he's still writing today, which I appreciate greatly. I may never meet him, and that's probably a good thing, as I'm not sure I'd be able to speak English if I did. But I surely do appreciate the man.

Happy birthday, Stephen King.

Thank you.

I think everyone is familiar with the Disney princess by now: a collection of boiled sugar girls in sparkly dresses and high heels who happen to resemble the spirited, interesting heroines of the movies we love, all of them posed to perfection in big groups of rainbow loveliness. They stare soullessly from bookstore walls and supermarket shelves, hawking everything from dress-up shoes to fruit snacks. The stories they come from may be exciting, or interesting, or educational, but the Disney princess shows none of those traits when she's on-duty. She's there to be a display, and that's all she's going to be.

(As a total aside, if you want to see these girls when they're off-duty, and hence more fun, check out Amy Mebberson's Tumblr for her Pocket Princesses. They're awesome, and they have the spunk, spirit, and personality that the official Princesses sadly often lack.)

It wasn't until I read the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter that I noticed the creepiest thing about the Disney princesses: they never look at each other. Get six of them in a group, and they will all strike independent poses, they will all gaze at independent points off in the distance. They never make eye contact. They never acknowledge each other in any way. Why?

Because if you're going to be the fairest in the land, you can't ever admit that anyone of comparable fairness even exists. To be the prettiest princess, you must also be the only princess. So all you other princesses can just step off; this is my spotlight.

Creepy.

As most of you probably know, I read a lot of urban fantasy, geared both at adults and the YA market. I enjoy it. It makes me happy. It features, as a genre, a lot of strong female characters doing strong female things. Yes, it has its flaws, because all genres have flaws, but on the whole, it's probably my favorite genre right now.

Only. I noticed a thing. This is a thing that I am not immune to. Nor is it a universal thing (so making long lists of exceptions to this thing is not necessarily helpful, although discussion of specific examples is, as always, awesome). But it's a thing I think we should be thinking about, both as creators and consumers. And it's this:

Urban fantasy heroines have a lot in common with Disney princesses.

The standards for "fairest of them all" are different when your kingdom is a city and your ballgown is a pair of leather pants. You need to be the best ass-kicker, the best snarker, the best crime-solver or magic-user, or whatever. But they're still high standards to live up to, and it's easier to do when there's no one else in your sandbox. If no one else is kicking ass in leather pants, you don't have to try as hard to be the best. Consequentially, we keep seeing urban fantasy heroines with no peers. No other women who kick ass. They might have sidekicks, or even other strong female characters in supporting roles, but it feels like a lot of them...well. Like a lot of them just don't have any friends.

In my daily life, I have a lot of friends who are, well, fairer than me in some ways. Vixy is an amazing lead vocalist. Pretty sure if we were auditioning against each other, she'd get the part. Also, cartoon birdies braid her hair. Cat and Bear and I write very different books, but we're all award-winners and best-sellers and Cat raises chickens and Bear climbs mountains, neither of which I do. Kate is witty and snarky and often faster on her feet than I am, as well as being a thousand times more organized. Meg is a natural redhead who makes her own clothes and bounces back after flying over the handlebars of her bike...and these are only a few of the amazing, incredible, bad-ass women who share my life.

It can be easy, as an author, to smooth and sand the story until all the unnecessary characters are gone, and I can see where that might mean you have to lose a few of the members of the Breakfast Club. At the same time, if that process leaves six male characters and one female, and only one of those male characters is Prince Charming, why are the other five all dudes? Can't we balance things a little? For me, female characters are more believable when they have friends. When there are other women around to talk to, trade tips on wearing leather pants without chafing with, and generally enjoy.

And if someone says that a story containing more than three characters "only needed" one woman, I sort of have issues with that. (In my perfect world, no one would say that about two or three character stories, either. But I'm willing to grant that some stories need two males and one female, if you'll grant that the opposite is also true.) Even Magic Mike, a movie about male strippers, managed to have two female characters with distinct and interesting, if brief, speaking roles.

I don't like that the Disney princesses have been frozen in place, never making eye contact with the only people who could really be their peers and understand the trials of the tiara. I'd hate it for that to happen to our urban fantasy girls, too.

...take these broken wings and learn to fly.

So I read Chuck Wendig's Blackbirds. Which is being billed as urban fantasy, but which bears about as much resemblance to most urban fantasy as, say, Evil Dead bears to Saw. They're considered the same because the labels are too broad and too flawed, but they're very different creatures. And that? Is amazing.

Blackbirds is the story of Miriam Black, a girl who, by touching you, can bear witness to your death, whenever—and however—it might be destined to occur. Aneurism in five minutes or slow wasting away in fifty years, it don't matter. Death, like the honey badger, doesn't give a fuck, and Miriam, who can't control her powers, is trying her best not to give a fuck either. (Miriam is a lot like Rogue from the X-Men: embittered by a power she didn't ask for, trying to survive in a world that has every reason to shove her in front of the nearest semi.)

The story is simple: girl meets boy, girl foresees boy's death, girl is convinced that she can't change it, boy thinks girl is crazy, hilarity ensues. Only for "boy" read "trucker the size of a small mountain," and for "girl" read "psychopomp death-seer girl just trying to run the roads to her own extinction." I think Miriam would get along well with Rose Marshall; there's a lot about her world that feels like Rose's, but different, and in a wonderful way.

One of the fascinating things about this book is...well. Okay. So I was a really grumpy teenager, right? I felt alienated and lonely and like no one could possibly understand me except for my small group of like-minded friends. This turned into our "freaking the mundanes" phase, which not everyone goes through, but which I think most of us have at least seen. We used to sit on the community college quad at lunch (half my friends were students, the rest of us snuck over from the high school across the street) playing "Penis," where you just keep shouting "PENIS!" louder and louder until you crack up, so you can see the looks on people's faces.

Miriam is like that. Her life is one long game of Penis. She swears, she's inappropriately lewd (which is different from appropriately lewd, although she does that, too), she goes for the shock value, because she wants to keep people away. I think this book contained more instances of the word "fuck" than the unrated cut of Clerks. But here's the kicker:

Chuck Wendig isn't playing Penis with you.

He manages to write a protagonist who's all about the shock, but the book never feels like the author is trying to shock you. He's just telling you what happened. It's a travelogue of tragedy, and it's beautiful and terrible, and it couldn't have happened any other way.

Miriam is a damaged protagonist, and her story is a damaged story, and I loved it. It's like the bastard child of American Gods, Sparrow Hill Road, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and you should check it out if you like these things.

Really.

I've spoken before about how much I read, and about how much I seek for representation in fiction, both for myself, and for the sake of the people that I care about. How much it hurts when you're the token, or invisible, or the person that doesn't exist. How hard it is to accept that somehow, often through no fault of your own, you're the sort of person who doesn't get to be the star of stories, or even a major supporting character. And about how wonderful it is when that somehow, against all odds, you open a book and see yourself, or your friends.

Yesterday, I read Silence, by Michelle Sagara. She's a fellow DAW author, a sweet, smart lady, and an all-around neat person whom I adore both personally and professionally. But before yesterday, I have never wanted to hug her for an hour and thank her forever.

Silence is a solid, interestingly-told YA novel that seems, superficially, to be just another wave in the current flood of YA supernatural. Being a wave isn't bad; I write urban fantasy, I am basically sponsoring a surfing competition. But there's something wonderful about diving into a wave and discovering infinitely more.

Emma, our protagonist, talks to dead people. She has several close female friends, including Allison, who would be a stereotypical geek in some stories, and Amy, who would be just as stereotypically a mean girl. Yet they work, and they make sense, because they are genuinely written as people. It's not presented as criminal to be smart, or to be pretty: it's just who you are. Emma's greatest asset is her niceness, a genuine generosity of spirit that is so very rare in heroines today. She reminded me of Vixy, and that's about the highest praise I have.

But really, where this book won me, and why I recommend it so readily, was when we met Michael. Michael, who is a high-functioning autistic who has been going to school with Emma and the others since kindergarten. Michael, who is in advanced math and science classes and doing just fine, thank you. Michael, whose friends care about him and look out for him, and who value his friendship and his place in their lives. He is presented with limitations, but so is every other character in the book. He's presented as a person, and for that alone, I will love Michelle forever.

Read Silence. Read it because it's awesome, and read it because any author who includes a complex, well-written, believable, believably autistic central character deserves our applause, and book sales are the best form of clapped hands, for an author.

My hat is off to her.

Voting for the 2012 Hugo Awards is now open for all Attending and Supporting members of the 2012 World Science Fiction Convention, ChiCon 7. ChiCon will be held this August in Chicago, Illinois, where attendees will be able to see such wonders as me tending bar for Barfleet, Amy fiddling for everyone in the known universe, and Cat and I in full-on flustered fairy tale princess mode. Super-fun!

Now, if you're not going to WorldCon, you may wonder why this is relevant to your interests. I have two words for you: voter packet.

All Supporting Members receive, in addition to Hugo voting rights, a copy of the Hugo voter packet. This includes all the nominated works for the year. Novels, novellas, novelettes, short stories, graphic stories, and yes, related works (so this year, they had to figure out how to include MP3s of an entire filk album—I am a living complication). Strictly speaking, this is well over a $50 value. I mean, the Related Works category alone would probably cost you around $80 if you bought all the physical media, and that doesn't go into the fiction categories at all. So you save a lot, while getting a neat little packet containing electronic copies of what the community thought was best about the previous year. And oh, I forgot to mention there's also samples of the Fan Writer nominees, and art, and and and and...

And here's the thing. I can't pretend that I don't have a vested interest in this year's Hugos: I said last year that no one accepts a nomination when they don't want to win, and I meant that sincerely and without embarassment. It's even worse this year, when I'm on the ballot four times and terrified of losing four times. I want to win. But even more, if I'm going to lose, I want to lose fairly. I want to lose because the community spoke, and what they said was "this one over here should be the victor." That means people need to vote.

Every year, when the Hugo ballot is announced, some people say "these things, these things are wrong." Then, after the votes are counted, some people say "these wins, these losses, they are also wrong." But the only way to change the wrongness is to participate. That means nominating, and that means casting your vote. It's never been easier, and it's never been more...balanced, for lack of a better word. $50 isn't peanuts. There have been years where I wouldn't have been able to afford that. On the other hand, you get a lot of bang for your bucks, and you get to be a part of shaping our community's history. And if you register now, you may even have time to read everything before the deadline!

If you can afford a Supporting Membership, I highly recommend it. It's a fair value, and it lets you participate. Everybody loves participation, right?

This ends today's public service announcement.

First off: my beloved catvalente has written a heartbreaking essay about sexism in geek and science fiction/fantasy culture. You should read it, because it is relevant. Also because it is heartbreaking and true. Having been one of those female fantasy authors threatened with sexual violence because I dared to own cats who came from a breeder, and not a shelter, I can testify that things get really ugly, really fast, on Captain Internet.

And so...

Last weekend at Emerald City, I saw a sign that infuriated me. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It was a big banner on the front of a self-published* author's booth, reading, "Finally, a book for BOYS that the GIRLS will enjoy reading, too!"

Oh. You mean unlike 90% of the well-regarded "classic" science fiction, fantasy, and young adult genre novels out there? And 98% of the horror? And 99% of the military science fiction? And, let's face it, the majority of anything that's not a romance, a story about princesses, or a horse book? As a girl who grew up reading Bradbury, King, Wyndham, Anthony, Asprin, Piper, Foster, Knight, Shakespeare, Poe, De Lint, Baum, superhero comics, and horror comics, I cry thee foul.

And no, this is not a case of me carefully editing out the female authors of my childhood. After wracking my brain, the only ones I could come up with who even managed to compete for my affections—who were writing stories with girls, rather than girl stories, and were thus worth reading in my twelve-year-old estimation—were McCaffrey, Kagan, Tiptree (who wrote as a man), Pini (whose writing still gets credited to her husband by about half the people I talk to), Jones, Duane, and McKinley.

I discovered more female authors as I got older. Emma Bull. Pamela Dean. Jody Lynn Nye. Women who were writing stories with girls, not girl stories; women who were building the foundations of a new genre, filled with interesting, clever, intuitive characters who yes, sometimes happened to have the same plumbing I did. And sometimes they didn't, and that was okay, too. But—and this is where we loop back to the beginning—it didn't matter. If I wanted to read, I needed to read books about boys. Books that were probably intended by their authors as being for boys. If I wanted to enjoy reading, I needed to enjoy books for boys.

If this has changed at all, that change has happened in the last eight to ten years, beginning with the publication of Twilight. People were writing books for girls before that, but there's always a trigger event, and Bella Swan making millions of dollars for her author (and publisher) was the trigger for a veritable flood of "girl books" hitting the shelves. These were books with female leads, with women on the covers, with a stronger romance subplot than had necessarily been required in YA before people figured out that hey, girls read, and maybe some of them will read more if you offer them female characters to read about.

Since then, the number of "girl books" has exploded, and while some of them are girl stories, some of them are also stories with girls. Some of these books are romances. Some of them are not. Some of them are medical thrillers, adventures, war stories, epic fantasies, distopian futures, cyberpunk, steampunk, mythpunk, modern day, anything you can think of. Because they are stories. And yet somehow, the fact that they have girls on the cover makes them not worth reading. The fact that the main characters have to squat when they pee makes them untenable to half the population. The fact that their authors grew up being told that real science fiction, fantasy, horror, and adventure starred men doing manly things in a manly way, and yet grew up to write books about women doing the same things, does not prove that literature can be a gender neutral experience where story matters more than anything else; it proves that we need more books for BOYS that GIRLS will enjoy, too. It means that the girls keep on coming second, that we keep being the deviation, and not the norm.

I do dislike the fact that right now, sexy girls pout at me from the covers of almost every book in the YA section, because I know that culturally, we discourage boys from reading those books, and damn, they are missing out. But I also dislike the fact that I'm expected to be totally a-okay with teenage girls reading books covered in muscular men with giant guns, while sneering at teenage boys reading books with thoughtful-looking women on the covers. We say "don't judge a book by its cover" like it's a Commandment, and then we turn around and tell boys not to read books with girls on them, or books with pink on them, or anything that doesn't look macho enough.

If I could read Little Fuzzy, you can read Partials. If I could read Myth Adventures, you can read The Chemical Garden. There will always be some stories that appeal to us more than others, but when we start saying "this book is for BOYS but don't worry, GIRLS can read it, too" vs. "icky GIRL BOOK is ICKY and NOT FOR BOYS," we create a division in our literature that doesn't need to be there, and frankly, upsets me.

Let's all just read the books we want to read, regardless of covers or the gender of the main characters, okay? Because otherwise, we're missing out on a lot of really great stories. And that would be a shame.

(*This is relevant only because it implies no editorial oversight. If I were to try using a slogan like this, my editors, and my agent, would politely make me stop.)

My "to be read" pile is notoriously huge, to the point that I will not allow myself to configure the Kindle that The Agent gave me for our anniversary until the stack of physical books waiting to be read weighs less than I do (this might happen faster if I stopped buying books). I have no system for going through it; I basically dig until I find something that looks interesting and fits what I want to read right now, and then go.

Yesterday morning, I decided to go for some YA fiction, and grabbed Giving Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe, a contemporary paranormal about bullying, loss, grief, true friendship, and a girl who can talk to dead people. I enjoyed it quite a bit; enough that I looked up the author to see if she had anything else I could buy (like maybe a sequel). What I discovered was that her second book, The Way We Fall, had just been released. I made a note to look for it...

...and then last night, when I found it displayed on the "New Releases" shelf at Barnes and Noble, I picked it up. I am weak. And I am glad to be weak, because this book is awesome.

Told in diary entry format, The Way We Fall is the story of Kaelyn, a sixteen year old girl living in an unidentified island community somewhere off the coast of Canada. She's writing a journal of letters to her best friend, Leo, first because she wants to reestablish their friendship, and then because she wants him to know what happened while he was gone. She wants him to know how they all died.

Because see, a strange disease hits the island. Airborne, with a long latency, and a period of increased sociability during what should be considered the most infectious stage. So when you're at your sickest, that's when you want to hug the neighbors and tell them how much you've always appreciated them. And then you die. It starts slow, and gets steadily worse, as diseases of this type usually do.

Kaelyn is not a doctor; not a scientist; not a virologist; she's a teenage girl, and her view on the outbreak is both moving and unique. She just wants to protect her family, herself, and her friends. She wants answers. She doesn't get them—not all of them, not enough of them. Crewe has done enough research to put together a plausible progression and set of symptoms, without actually needing to pin down her virus and walk herself into bad science territory. Instead, she has real people, in a bad place, and she lets them deal with their circumstances as best they can.

Kaelyn is a strong, smart, believable female protagonist in an tense YA novel that focuses on character and situation, rather than romance. Her losses are genuine, and painful. Better yet, there is an excellent level of diversity in the characters. Kaelyn and her older brother are mixed-race, with a black mother and a white father, both of whom appear quite a bit. Kaelyn's niece, who is central to the story, is black. Her best friend was born in Korea. And her brother is gay without being a stereotype or defined purely by his sexuality.

I really can't recommend this highly enough. I'm excited to know that there's a sequel coming, because not everything was answered at the end...but then again, not everything needed to be. It's a beautiful book.

You should check it out.

I read a book recently* that I should have adored. It had a great cover, an interesting premise, and blurbs by several authors that I idolized and trusted. If they were endorsing it, it should have been amazing.

It is currently at the head of my short list for "worst book I read in 2012." I want those hours of my life back.

It wasn't offensive; it didn't call me names or slap my hands or steal my shit. It wasn't poorly written, although it had some pacing issues; the words were in the right order and generally spelled correctly. I can't in all good conscience call it a bad book. But I hated it. Absolutely, empirically, and with very few caveats. It was not my cup of tea. It wasn't even in my cup of tea's time zone. So why did I pick it up?

The blurbs. They made me think this book and I would get along, thus projecting one of the Geek Fallacies onto an innocent piece of prose. Friendship is not transitive, and neither is readability.

This is the dark side of blurbs: this is why authors sometimes have to say "no," even if they like another author's work. Because when I put my name on the cover of a book, I am saying "I like this, and if you like the things I like, you will like it, too." But what happens when you don't? Suddenly everything else I like is questionable. What if Diet Dr Pepper, Monster High dolls, and carnage are all waiting to betray you, too? Where is the line?

We have to be careful. We are trading on your faith, and our reputations.

Have you ever read a book based on the blurbs, only to find your faith in the authors who provided them somewhat shaken? Not your faith in the author who wrote the book—presumably, if you bought it based on blurbs, you didn't have any—but your faith in the blurbers?

(*No, I will not name the book. Why? Well, one, I am not in the business of bad book reviews, unless it's a non-fiction book riddled with factual errors. Other people obviously enjoyed this book, otherwise the blurbs wouldn't have been there in the first place. Your mileage may vary, and all. And two, as an author, I wouldn't want to find someone ranting about one of my books like this. So since the book didn't murder my puppies, I will not name it.)

Apparently, "December" is synonymous with "that month where Seanan is too busy and/or distracted to remember to update her journal, even when she thinks she really ought to." Super-fun! Also, I'm sorry. Also, I need a nap. So here are some bullet points to soothe your abandoned souls, while I try to find my head:

1. Human For a Day is available now at a bookstore near you! This awesome anthology contains "Cinderella City," my second Mina Norton story (the first, "Alchemy and Alcohol", appears in Tales from the Ur-Bar). I've read through the whole book, and it's excellent, easily passing my "should I keep this" test for anthologies even without taking into account the whole "I have a story in there" aspect. You should totally pick it up.

2. Speaking of picking things up, my beloved Borderlands Books has published their holiday gift guide, which is insightful and lovely, and lists my Mira Grant books as great presents, thus providing that it's also brilliant and worth listening to. If you're wondering what to buy for the reader in your life, or for yourself, check it out.

3. Also, I was three of the top ten paperbacks for November. Feed came in at number three, One Salt Sea at number eight, and Deadline at number nine. I am well pleased.

4. As of right this second (this will change), I have all the Monster High dolls (except for 2010 SDCC Frankie, and I'm not paying that much for a doll I wouldn't be willing to take out of the box). I'm missing one fashion pack, and that's it. Since there are six more characters confirmed on the horizon, and the eternal looming rumor of a basic Jackson Jekyll, I intend to enjoy this rare moment of completeness while it exists.

5. Geek Fest in Seattle was absolutely wonderful. I met awesome musicians, made music with some of my favorite people, and discovered how much cranberry sauce constitutes "too much" (hint: I multiplied the recipe by a factor of six). Also I got to see some of my favorite people meet and hang out with others of my favorite people, and a good time was had by all.

6. Still loving Criminal Minds, woefully behind on everything else except for Glee, New Girl, and Bones, probably going to get lynched by my housemate if I don't clear some things off the DVR soon.

7. You know what? Seriously, go pick up Human For a Day. It's my good friend Jennifer's first editorial job with a big six publisher, and I really want her to be able to do more of these, because she really does a fantastic job. She brings a degree of integrity and focus to the table that really shows in the finished product, and I want to see her wind up becoming a name on a level with John Joseph Adams or Ellen Datlow, where anthology construction is concerned.

8. The new Glee soundtrack has been released, with the end result that I now have "Red Solo Cup" so firmly wedged in my head that I would need a crowbar to get it out. I don't dislike the song, but I didn't sign up to have it permanently melded with my skull. Bah.

9. Oh, hey, skulls! Have any of you read Dawn Metcalf's debut YA novel, Luminous? Because it's about skeletons. And stuff. And I need to do a proper review, because it was awesome. And while we're all talking about diversity in YA, this book has: a Hispanic heroine (who is sometimes a skeleton), an Orthodox Jewish character not presented as being misguided or odd, at least one character who isn't skinny and doesn't want to be, real consequences, real concerns, and characters of multiple non-Caucasian races, apart from the protagonist. This is an awesome book.

10. Zombies are love. Anyone who tells you different is selling something. Probably anti-zombie security measures.

I was asked recently if I would be willing to make a list of some of my favorite urban fantasies and paranormal romances. Because I am an amiable blonde, I am doing so. In the case of series, I will list the series name and first book, so you know where I at least think you should start. Format is as follows:

The Toby Daye Series, Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire.
Half-fae private investigator-slash-knight errant October Daye tries to solve magical murders and prevent more than the usual amount of chaos in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ongoing series, sequential, told in the first person. Five books currently available, two more confirmed.

Genre: Pretty unadulterated urban fantasy.
Recommended for: People who like my books, since I wrote them.
Romance level: Low so far. Sex not shown onscreen. Safe for teenagers and your mother.

For this list, "favorite" is defined as "I enjoy reading them, and am actively pleased to see another book in the series or by the same author," rather than "this is the highest quality that the genre has to offer." My books, my biases. This is by no means a comprehensive list, since my attention span is not that great right now.

With me? Awesome. Let's rock.

( Click here for some of Seanan's favorite urban fantasy and paranormal romance reads.Collapse )

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I read a lot of urban fantasy/paranormal romance. I mean a lot. Given that I read fast enough to get through a 300-page novel in a day, easily, and am currently trying to race through my to-be-read shelf like I'm being pursued by wolves, I'm basically binging on the stuff. I'm going to need to spend six months on Urban Fantasy Weight Watchers after I finish my current read-through, during which I'll be allowed nothing but bad mystery novels and non-fiction about things that make you die (diseases, parasites, Australia). This means that I am sensitive to tropes in UF/PR the way I'm sensitive to tropes in lousy horror movies.*

The majority of urban fantasy is written in the first person. I fight the monster, I open the door to the creepy crypt at the bottom of the hill, I try not to summon a snake god to Thanksgiving dinner. This creates a feeling of absolute immediacy, while also creating a feeling of safety, since most first person narrators are reasonably guaranteed to survive their stories. (I consider, say, Rose Marshall an exception, since she's already dead. Maybe this explains why she gets shot so much.) It also limits the perspective of the books. When you're reading a Toby book, the only information you'll get is what Toby has to give, and that information will always be filtered through her particularly Toby-esque way of seeing the world.

Third person gives you more leeway on the will she/won't she question where surviving is concerned, and also creates the option to provide the reader with additional information. Sure, the protagonist is bound by their own perceptions, but the author gets to play with omniscience. This is both good and bad, and the varying degrees of third person omniscience is a topic for another day. Suffice to say that sometimes this distancing serves the story very, very well.

I have just finished reading two third person urban fantasies, neither of which will be named here, because I'm looking critically at structure, not trying to compare-and-contrast their plots or the quality of their writing. In the first, the author took advantage of the third person structure and hopped from place to place, now following the villain, now following a secondary character, now returning to the primary protagonist. The omniscience was kept to a minimum, since otherwise, the plot would have turned boring for the reader; this is obviously pretty tricky, but the writer handled it well. I don't think this book could have been written in first person, and the tense never bothered me. It was a third person book because it needed to be.

The second third person urban fantasy stuck to an extremely limited perspective, following the protagonist at the exclusion of all else. At no point, did we get information that she didn't have, which made waiting for her to catch up occasionally a lot more frustrating than I expected it to be. I'm used to being forgiving when my UF/PR protagonists are a little slow, because I'm used to being so deep in their heads that I can see why they're not making the intuitive jumps that I can make. I know how they think. In the absence of that knowledge, I kept waiting for the heroine to be smarter than I was, and I kept being disappointed. It honestly left me wondering why the author didn't stick with the first person perspective that's standard in the genre. It would have been the same story; it would even have been a stronger story, because the immersion in the heroine would have made it much more urgent.

Choosing a story's point of view can be difficult, but I find that usually, I can tell which they need to be by looking at whether the story would even be possible in a tighter perspective. And I try to keep things as tight as possible, for the immediacy. Your mileage may, and probably will, vary.

So how do you feel about perspective? Does first person keep it tight and immersive, or is it off-putting and overly familiar? Does third person make things mysterious and flexible, or is it distancing and remote? Or does it even matter if the story's good?

Thoughts?

(*If the movie starts with people in the water, it's either an evil sharks movie, an evil alligator movie, or a sea monster movie. If you see a shark within the first five minutes, it's not an evil sharks movie. Etc.)

Back to New York!

Tuesday morning found me oversleeping, since all that puking the night before had left me totally exhausted. I eventually staggered out of bed and made my way downtown to the convention center where BEA was being held. Luckily, it was in the same convention center as New York Comicon, so I was able to find my way with relative ease, and did not wind up wandering lost through Manhattan for the rest of time. It could happen!

Alex at Orbit had already given me my badge, so I swung by registration to pick up a lanyard (v. important, lanyards) and called The Agent to let her know I was on-site. She promptly swooped in, grabbed me, and whisked me hither and yon to see people that needed seeing—including Toni and Charlaine, which was a wonderful way to begin the convention. Hugging and happiness followed, and then they settled in to do a signing while The Agent and I ran over to the Orbit booth to acquire copies of Deadline for their enjoyment. Happiness is giving early copies of books to your friends.

With the hauling about portion of our program complete, The Agent freed me to wander where I would. So I wandered.

Book Expo America is a lot like New York Comicon, scale-wise, which probably explains why they fit in the same convention center. Only instead of toys, you have books. And instead of media goodies, you have books. And instead of scantily-clad booth babes, you have booth librarians, which is kinda more awesome. And did I mention the books? It's like lit-geek Disneyland, only without the teacup ride.

Which is sort of a pity.

All too soon, I had to leave the convention center and head for DAW. Because I was running late, I cleverly decided to take a taxi. Unfortunately, my streak of "always pick the taxi with the driver you have no languages in common with" continued, and my request for the PATH station resulted in my being dropped at Penn Station. Argh. I found my way to the PATH (only about three blocks away) and hopped on a train, which delivered me promptly and without fuss to the correct locale. Hooray for trains!

Better yet, hooray for DAW, which was exactly as welcoming and familiar and wonderful as I hoped it would be. DAW is one of my favorite places to spend a day, and not just because I can usually cadge someone into taking me to visit the "take" shelves of free books scattered around the building. I love everyone there, and I'm comfortable there, which is rare for someone as twitchy as I am.

I had a nice talk with The Editor, and got my revision notes for Discount Armageddon, which is next on my agenda for working on. Eventually, The Agent showed up, and we all went out for delicious Indian food dinner, where I ate goat and chicken and mushrooms and fish and naan and om nom nom Indian. Seriously, we ate so much Indian food it ached. I wanted to go home and collapse.

...which was naturally the cue for me to be hauled through half a dozen BEA after-hours parties. Good: I saw (and hugged) Cat and John Scalzi, who looked as terrified of the noisy crowds as I did. I also saw (and hugged) Tempest, who had a fan, and looked totally at ease. And I met Scott Westerfeld! Serious awesomeness.

Eventually, The Agent noticed that I was wilting, and I was loaded into a cab with a driver who understood where I wanted to go and took me to the PATH station. I returned to Jersey City, staggered home, and collapsed into bed too tired to die. Which meant, of course, that Wednesday was going to be the big day in town...

Next: Wednesday at BEA, mojitos in my eye, and signing Deadline.

Aigh! How is it already mid-May? How is it already past mid-May? Seriously, this isn't cool, people. But since life marches on, here are some random updates about things you may want to know.

Wicked Girls T-shirts.
The spreadsheet has been finished and handed off to my lovely assistant, aka, "Deborah," who is now using our peachy-keen new merchandise email address to send out the order confirmations. So if you requested a shirt, you're going to hear from Deborah! She'll be asking you to verify that we have the right information, requesting shipping information, and setting up things so you can pay. Please, please, remember that we must receive payment to place this order. That's why the original post said "cash in the cookie jar." If you can't pay for your shirts, we may have to remove you from the spreadsheet, depending on how long it takes for everyone else to pay.

Welcome to Bordertown about to hit shelves.
The new Bordertown anthology is just about out, and it's amazing. Mia (chimera_fancies) will be doing pendant sales of special Bordertown pendants soon, and there are contests and giveaways and blog tours, oh my! It's an incredible book. If you love urban fantasy, you should absolutely buy this book. This is the city whose foundations informed us all, and it's finally opening its doors again.

Oh, right. Also, Deadline.
I, too, have a new book coming out. Deadline will be released on May 31st, which makes it technically a June book (ah, the wonders of reporting). So you'll be able to buy it from a bookstore near you, and you totally should, especially if you enjoy my cats being full of catfood, and not full of my delicious flesh. They eat a lot! I'll be in New York for the next week, which sadly limits the number of pre-release blog giveaways I can do (having no books as yet, the current number is "zero"), but I'll be doing fun things up until then. Primarily the ongoing, and increasingly grim, countdown to the Rising. You're welcome.

Book Expo America!
Why am I going to New York? For Book Expo America! This is going to be my first BEA, and I'm mad excited. I'll also be seeing friends, eating artisan frozen treats, and visiting both my publishers for an entire day, thus guaranteeing that they'll be sick of me and give me things in order to make me go away and leave them alone. I'm basically an animate mixed blessing. I'm planning to have a fabulous time, because I always do, and when I leave, I'm heading for...

Wiscon!
It's my first time. Be gentle. I'll be mixing drinks at the Whedonistas party, which is good, since I don't like trying to mingle at these things, but I loooooooooooove making mai tais and mojitos. Donations of strawberries gratefully accepted, because I always need more than I think I will. If you're over twenty-one and planning to be at the convention, you should come see the gleeful mania that is me with a cocktail shaker.

Cats.
Blue. Also, fluffy.

Monster High.
New dolls should be hitting the shelves ANY DAY NOW, and the search is driving me batty. The universe needs to stop taunting the happy fun blonde and gimme already, before my already strained patience decides that the time has come to snap.

...and that's my status for the day. How's by everybody else?

For all that I argue constantly that urban fantasy is one of the oldest genres, and that those of us who write it are the descendants of Lily Fair and should be afforded the same respect as the children of her better-known sisters, Snow White and Rose Red, the fact remains that urban fantasy as we know it right now, today, is a relatively recent beast. It developed slowly, lurching and slithering its way out of the jumble of general fantasy and into its current position.

A lot of the classics* of the urban fantasy genre were published during the 1980s, and many of them fell out of print during the same time period. They were like thieves in the night, only instead of sneaking into your house and stealing all your stuff, they snuck into your head and planted ideas like seeds. Maybe they didn't germinate overnight. Maybe they took years, or decades, to begin sprouting. But they did sprout, and the flowers they grew into spread more seeds, until the genre itself began to grow.

I was too young to really appreciate what was going on during those beginning days, but I already read voraciously, and several of those strange flowers have been a part of my mental landscape for as long as I can remember. Jack of Kinrowan. War for the Oaks. Gossamer Axe.

Bordertown.

Bordertown was a modern-day Neverland, a place where the lands of humanity and the fae collided, with magic and science at continual war with one another. It was a place for teenage runaways, filled with music and madness, and there were times when I, as a pre-teen nerd girl who never felt like she really belonged anywhere, practically ached with the longing to find that magic doorway that could get me there. In Bordertown, I would find friends, and adventures, and stories, and maybe I'd get hurt, but I'd do it in a place that hurt everyone, not just the ones who didn't quite fit in. In Bordertown, I could make the rules, and break the rules, and take the rules for whatever they were worth. All I had to do was find the door.

I knew even then that Bordertown was just a story, but it was a beautiful story, and stories have power. I read every Bordertown tale I could find with the same voracious need, and when they stopped coming, I started looking further afield. When I met Ellen Kushner last year in Australia, I told her that I wrote urban fantasy because I'd come too late to write Bordertown, and the genre as it exists now was as close as I could get.

Those original books are sadly out of print now. For thirteen years, the doors to Bordertown have been closed.

The doors to Bordertown are opening again on May 23rd. Welcome to Bordertown is a gorgeous, glorious anthology of all-new stories and poems set in that magical place, written by an incredible assortment of authors, and because the authors and editors are clever, you don't need to know anything but what I've told you here to appreciate it. Bordertown is where the magic is. Bordertown is where the music is. Bordertown lives.

In the meanwhile, you can read three of the original stories on the website; you can begin exploring this world; you can fall in love the way I did when I first heard the city's name, and the way I did again when I went to Boston and was handed an advance copy of the new map. Bordertown lives.

Now step into the story and find out why so many of us have loved this world so fiercely, so cleanly, and for so very, very long.

Bordertown lives.

I missed it so much.

(*Defining "classics" as "things without which the genre would not occupy the shape it occupies today," not based on popularity or staying power or even, in some cases, quality.)

We are now eight days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. I've been counting down to the book release with a variety of lists, some directly related to Toby's world, some not. Today is more like a "well, maybe." See, people ask me about my research. And today, I figured I'd acknowledge those questions by listing eight of the reference books I couldn't live without.

Not all of these books are currently in print. I can't stress that enough. I'm not saying "run out and replicate my reference library," I'm saying "these are the books I use." I've provided Amazon links where possible. Enjoy!

8. The Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook [Amazon]. The second edition of this book has come out in paperback recently, and it's so, so worth it if you're doing anything with characters who don't have modern American names. I use this book once a story, and sometimes more often. It won't replace the need for independent name research, but it takes a lot of the weight off.

7. An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures [Amazon]. Out of print. If the Toby universe has a folklore Bible, this is it. This seminal work by Katharine Briggs was, and is, regarded as the definitive work on fairy lore of its type. I have learned more from reading her footnotes than I learned in some folklore classes. While out of print, used copies are reasonably easy to find. This is a real must for anyone working with European fairy folklore.

6. The Book of Poisons [Amazon]. This is part of the Writer's Digest series about ways for writers to kill people. It's a beautifully put together and researched volume, and while parts of it naturally became out of date while it was still being edited, the historical and natural poison sections are invaluable. Just, ah, don't read it on the airplane.

5. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads [Amazon]. Is this a five-volume set of song lyrics with footnotes and no sheet music? Yes. Yes, it is. Is it an incredible cornerstone in our understanding of the evolution of English and Scottish folklore, and an absolute must for anyone working in those traditions? Yes. Yes, it is. Francis James Child, I salute you.

4. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [Amazon]. The Wordsworth reference dictionary collection is one of the most amazing, most frustrating reference sources in the world. They're impossible to find; there's no exhaustive list; even after years of tracking them down, I keep finding titles at used bookstores that I've never heard of before (and need desperately). Despite all that, if there's a Wordsworth in your area of study, get it. They're amazing reference books.

3. The Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology [Amazon]. This book is still in print. It also costs ninety dollars, so unless you're serious about your cryptid reference library, you can probably find cheaper alternatives. That said, I can use this book to kill rattlesnakes, spiders, and possibly home invaders, so it's totally worth it.

2. A Field Guide to the Little People [Amazon]. Nancy Arrowsmith's Field Guide is another of those absolutely priceless references for fairy and folklore, and had I made this list two years ago, I would have needed to add an "out of print" footnote. But not right now! This is a great book, and I'm so thrilled that it's available again.

1. The Monster Spotter's Guide to North America [Amazon]. Is this a serious work of cryptozoology? No. But it can lead you to new research channels, it can suggest cryptids you might want to look into, and it's just plain fun, which makes it a great reference book for the beginner. It's amazing how a fun gateway book can make a dry-as-dirt advanced course worth it.

Happy reading!

We are now eleven days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. I like to read almost as much as I like to write, and I like to read urban fantasy. So here are eleven urban fantasies you should check out.

11. Dead to Me, Anton Strout. The first of the Simon Canderous adventures, Dead to Me is sort of like a big transcription of the most awesome Bureau 13 book you never got to play in. Simon has actually met Toby in comic strip form, which tells you just how cool I think he is. The fourth (and currently final) book in the series, Dead Waters, comes out real soon now, so this is your chance to catch up!

10. Spellbent, Lucy Snyder. Jessie Shimmer is to most of the lipsticked, high-heeled girls of urban fantasy as Bruce Campbell's Ash is to the movie star leading men of most horror movies. She laughs in their faces, and then she blows the living shit out of something, just to show how awesome she is. I could not love this book (and series) more if it came to my house and baked me cookies.

9. Death Most Definite, Trent Jamieson. I sometimes feel like way too much urban fantasy is set in the United States, when there's this whole huge amazing world out there in need of some shit randomly exploding. Trent Jamieson's Death Works series addresses this gaping hole in my life with style, elan, and yes, massive property damage, which is something I like in a good Australia urban fantasy.

8. Spiral Hunt, Margaret Roland. The Evie Scelan books use aspects of deep Celtic mythology that just blow me away, because they're the sort of thing that shows loving, passionate research. The fact that they are combined with a loving, passionate story about the world's most paranormally gifted bike messenger (who is a total bad-ass) is basically just icing on the cake. The cake of awesome.

7. Staked, J.F. Lewis. Maybe I'm pushing the definition of "urban fantasy" a little by including this hard-rock vampires and demons and extensive property damage oh my delight, but I really don't care. My post, my genre, my rules...and my stars, do I love this book. It's fun, it's frantic, and it's a whole new take on vampires. Including a main character who regularly bursts into flames.

6. Carousel Tides, Sharon Lee. This isn't urban fantasy in the "bright lights, big city" sense. It's urban fantasy in the "magic leaking in around the edges of the world, all the things you never noticed, but somehow always knew had to be there" sense, and it's brilliant. It's a sweet, brilliant book, and the fact that the scope of the setting is small makes the story that much bigger.

5. Night Shift, Lilith Saintcrow. I liked Dante Valentine; I love Jill Kismet. But more, I love where this series goes. Seriously, even if the first two books were shit (which they're not; they're good, and get better with each volume), it would be worth reading just to get to book five, which contains some of the bravest, ballsiest writing I have seen in this genre. Seriously awesome.

4. Summon the Keeper, Tanya Huff. Out of everything Tanya has written, I think I love the Keeper books the very best of all. I went through three copies of this book before I stopped reading them to death, and I only stopped because I developed a large enough "to be read" shelf that I don't have time for that sort of literary abuse anymore. This series remains fascinating and unique.

3. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull. This was one of the foundational works of modern urban fantasy. Without Eddy and the Fae, your bookshelf might look very different. I know mine would. If you haven't read War for the Oaks, and you like urban fantasy, you really should, if only so you can see where some of our modern tropes and traditions came from. Also, the book kicks ass.

2. Bitten, Kelley Armstrong. This is not my favorite volume in Kelley's Women of the Otherworld series, but it's the first, and it's brilliant in its own right. Plus, if you like it, you've just unlocked a multi-volume series that persists in getting better and better with every page she writes. I am in awe of this world.

1. Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner. You can't read this yet. It's not out yet. But just you wait; it'll blow you away.

The lovely and talented Allison Pang: Unicorn Hunter is welcoming her debut book into the world today! Hooray! Happy bookday, Allison!

A Brush of Darkness [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is a fun, flirty, fabulously bizarre addition to the urban fantasy world. Forget vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Bring on the succubi, incubi, and teacup unicorns!

I was actually asked to blurb this book, which means I read it months ago, and explains a bit of my enthusiasm. My blurb:

"Weird, wild, and ultimately wonderful, A Brush of Darkness is a joy from start to finish, with a completely unique mythology that's as fun to figure out as it is to read. I can't wait to see what happens next—and I want my own enchanted iPod!"

Both these statements remain true. I can't wait to see what happens next. And I want my own enchanted iPod.

I'm just saying.

I am not going to write an Arisia con report. I'm not good at them under the best of circumstances—they either wind up obscenely long and take six months to finish, turn into a series of comic strips, or make no sense—and these are not the best of circumstances, what with the "two conventions in two weekends" and "under a whole lot of deadlines" parts of our program. So these are the summarized highlights, for your amusement and edification.

Arriving in Boston! Persis picked me up from the airport, because a) Persis loves me, and b) I had made it quite clear that fuck you people, I am not going outside in the snow unless it's to enter a private car. No, I am not a prima donna; I simply refuse to take the bus or other forms of public transit when you have A FOOT OF SNOW on the ground. My sunny California upbringing can't handle the reality shift. I did, in fact, remain entirely inside the hotel until Monday afternoon, when I went outside in the snow, entered a private car, and returned to the airport. So screw you, New England winter; I am not your chew toy.

Hanging out with Rene! My room wasn't ready yet when we got to the hotel, so I wound up sitting with Rene, the Fan Guest of Honor, in the lobby Starbucks for about an hour. Rene was conchair for the Montreal WorldCon, and is a really neat guy. Plus he helped me get my luggage up to my room. Class act, yo.

Cat and Diana! My roommates for the weekend were the lovely Cat "The Crusher" Valente, and the equally lovely Diana "The Destroyer" Fox. They both arrived Friday afternoon, and seriously, it was like spending the entire weekend having an awesome slumber party with awesome people and our own private bathroom. Our hotel room looked like it had been hit by a localized tornado. A tornado of RAW AWESOME. I couldn't have asked for a better time. Plus? They brought me presents. (I also brought them presents. I like to share.)

The Paranormal Romance Weather Report! My first panel of the weekend was on the appeal of paranormal romance and the flirtation with the mainstream. The only panelist I'd met prior to sitting down at the table was Kelley Armstrong, which was sort of neat. We talked for an hour, and it was a lively and engaged discussion, but didn't come with as many book recommendations as people expected...so I used my closing comments to provide a cable-news style weather report on offerings in the urban fantasy and paranormal romance genres. Yes, complete with a "and next, here's John with sports!" closer. It was more fun than it should have been. Seriously.

Shawn! My good friend Shawn lives in Massachusetts, and swears he actually likes New England winters. This is because Shawn is insane. He actually came to the convention to see me! It was awesome. He is a good Shawn, and shall be renowned in song and story.

Shaenon Garrity, big-time star! Shaenon was the Webcomics Guest of Honor, which meant that her adorable mad science illustrations were all over the program book (awesome), and that she had the big box of Skin Horse strips available for people to paw through and purchase. I got one of my favorite strips. And also? A hug.

Ellen and Delia! Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman are a) mad awesome, b) very sweet, and c) just plain cool. They're also involved with the Bordertown revival, about which I will blog more very, very soon. And Ellen? Ellen gave me an ARC of the new Bordertown book, about which I will also blog more very, very soon. So who has an ARC of the new Bordertown book? THAT WOULD BE ME. Dude, the trip was worth it for that alone, I swear.

Having an Irish pub attached to the hotel! One of the two hotel restaurants was an actual Irish pub, with actual Irish pub food. I basically ate shepherd's pie for every "real meal" I had during the weekend, and while that may not have been awesome from a Weight Watchers standpoint, it was pretty damn cool from a "don't flip out and kill everyone in a ten-mile radius" standpoint. You may now thank the Irish pub for saving mankind.

...okay, so even when I'm doing the quick-and-dirty highlights version of a con report, I can't condense it very well. Tune in next time, for more things that were awesome, or at least interesting, since "Seanan has an allergic reaction to some lady's perfume and spends the bulk of Sunday yearning for death" is totally making the list.

Today is Kaja Foglio's birthday! If you don't know Kaja, she's one-half of the creative team behind Girl Genius, along with her husband, the interminable Phil Foglio. Together, they won the 2010 Hugo for Best Graphic Novel. Also, they fight crime.

I'm just saying.

This month, the Foglios unleashed their unspeakable powers on a new arena: the novel. While Phil has written book-length prose before (most specifically Illegal Aliens, co-written with the awesome Nick Pollotta), this is Kaja's first foray into this particular medium. Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is a novelization of the first two volumes of the Girl Genius graphic novel. Meaning what? Meaning that if you already read the comic, this isn't new story, per se, but it's deeper story, more intricate story. It enriches and expands on what you already know. And if you haven't read the comic, well, why not? It's available for free online. Yes, all of it. Yes, the Foglios make a living giving away their product. Why? Because it's that good.

Why am I telling you all this? Because it's Kaja's birthday, and what she asked for this year was, well, that we talk about her book. If you were considering picking up Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], why not do it today? Give Kaja a book sale for her birthday, and help the Foglios ring the bells on Amazon (or at your local independent bookseller—I note that Borderlands Books has the book in stock, as, I'm sure, do many others).

The Foglios are great people, and Agatha Heterodyne is a great book. If you like steampunk, gaslamp fantasy, wacky science, mad science, cute blonde girls in corsets, and making my friends happy, give Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] a look! Statistically speaking, if you're reading my journal, you'll probably be glad that you did.

So October is basically "embarrassment of riches" month here in the San Francisco Bay Area, at least as far as author events and awesomeness are concerned. Being a sensible person, I like things which are awesome. This weekend? Has a whole lot of awesome packed into a relatively small space. HOW DO THEY DO IT?!? I DO NOT KNOW. But you—yes, you—can benefit from it.

First up, tomorrow! Professor Laurence A. Rickels, author of I Think I Am: Philip K. Dick (available from the University of Minnesota Press) will be at Borderlands Books at 3:00 PM. One presumes he will be talking about his book. And immediately after he's had his turn...

ZOMG SKIN HORSE! Shaenon Garrity and Jeffrey C. Wells will be at Borderlands Books at 5:00 PM, celebrating the awesome-tastic release of Skin Horse, volume II in a delicious dead tree edition. It's gonna be awesome. Are we prepared to face Shaenon and Jeffrey together, in the same place? I do not know. But again, you can benefit from it, because dude.

Sunday, also at Borderlands Books, Richard Kadrey will be appearing to talk about the second book in the Sandman Slim series, Kill the Dead. Words cannot properly express how much I loved this book, and its predecessor, Sandman Slim, which is now in paperback. He'll be at the store at 3:00 PM, being AWESOME.

All events are free of charge, and remember, you can contact the bookstore to place orders and requests for signed books of your very own. I'll be attending the Skin Horse party, because I am a sensible blonde, and because I have been promised cupcakes. I hope to see you there!

In keeping with their great love for chart porn, Orbit (my/Mira's science fiction publisher) has posted a fabulous comparison chart of 2008's urban fantasy heroines vs. 2009's urban fantasy heroines. According to the sample set they have scientifically* assembled and presented for your viewing pleasure, stiletto heels and pouty lips are out, while sensible shoes and kicking your ass is in.

Check out the chart. Now check out this blog post by sandramcdonald, which includes a handy visual guide to many "classic" urban fantasy poses. What I find interesting is that the majority of these covers are classic-turned-cliche; they're not bad, they're just things that were very, very popular, and were consequentially overdone.

When I first sold the Toby books, a few people said to me, "You realize Toby's going to be a busty blonde with a tramp-stamp, right?" I acknowledged that I did, in fact, know this, but that I was okay with it if it would get the book out into the world. When my editor at DAW asked if I had any requests for the cover, I said I had two.

"I'd like her to have brown hair, and wear clothes."

Anything else? Nope. Just brown hair, and clothes. Toby is not the sort of girl who goes out in a miniskirt and a halter top—not unless she's under extreme duress—and she's never dyed her hair. I was incredibly lucky, and got what I asked for, along with a leather jacket, a petulant expression, and a gloomy, atmospheric backdrop. She didn't look much like an urban fantasy heroine (a few people even thought she was a boy), but she looked exactly like I wanted her to look. Now, a year later, she looks a lot like an urban fantasy heroine, because the rules have been changing. And it's wonderful!

Don't take this as "all urban fantasy covers used to be bad," because they weren't, and I really, really like a lot of them. All the elements currently in decline have their place in the genre. Toby doesn't have any tattoos...but Alice does (Alice is practically a biker gang all by herself), and so do pretty much all the lycanthropic teens in Clady's universe (since that way, your body can be identified even if you die when not in human form). Toby doesn't wear stiletto heels...but Verity does, and thanks to her specific combat style, she would be more than happy to kick your ass while she's wearing them. I just think it's fantastic that the genre has managed to expand to the point where it can include all these different types of heroine, all presented the way they should be presented, not according to some focus group-ideal that half of them don't live up to.

Evolution is awesome...and, apparently, wearing comfortable shoes.

(*In this case "scientifically" means "whatever the summer intern could get her hands on." It's a generous definition.)

So there's this publisher, Leisure Horror, that prints, well, horror. Lots of it. At least one new paperback release a month (probably substantially more, given the size of their catalog), spanning everything from the classic movie monsters to the modern splatterpunk. I love them. They're my literary popcorn, and I devour them the way my grandmother used to devour category Harlequin romances. It gets me funny looks on the train, since if you run down the line of afternoon commuters-with-books, you'll usually get "woman with romance, woman with romance, man with science fiction with big guns on the cover, me," and Leisure's graphic designers don't believe in being stingy with the arterial spray.

Last weekend at Spocon, in the dealer's hall, I was lucky enough to find a man with an entire box of Leisure Horror that I hadn't read yet. Yes, that's right: a box. I went through it to pick out duplicates, squealing as I did about how unrelentingly, gloriously terrible some of the books looked. Brooke, who was with me, initially thought I was rating them. Then she realized I was buying them, and made the best "Oh God why have you allowed this to happen?" face I've ever seen her make. I got twenty-one brand new horror novels for twenty bucks, and he threw in the box. Total win.

(My total win only increased later in the weekend, when trektone expressed delight over my horror novel haul. Now I have someplace to dump all the ones I don't want to keep! FUCK YEAH, SEAKING!)

I have since devoured three and a half books from the haul. The first one, Snow, was an incredible reminder of why I'm not actually a very good straight horror author. See, these things come out of the snow, and they kill people. They stick their creepy snow-creature arms into peoples' backs, and drive them around like disturbing meat-suit zombies. And then they eat you. Unless you can kill them first, in which case, hey, points to you. That's it. That's all. No science, no justification, no "oh my stars and garters, the Wendigo myth was based on reality"—there are snow monsters, and they want to make you die. I loved this book. If I'd written it, it would have been twice as long, involved a lot more why-porn, and probably lost a few entrails in favor of a) the scene at the top-secret government lab where we learn about the aliens, or b) the scene at the top-secret monster-hunters' library where we learn about the folklore behind the snow-creatures. It always makes me happy when I get a reminder of why I'm not the kind of horror author I sometimes secretly wish I were.

The second book, Dwellers, was the first thing I've ever picked up from Leisure Horror that could actually be adapted into a Disney movie. It would be a sad Disney movie, sure, and it would lose a lot of, again, entrails, but it would work. Dwellers is like Harry and the Hendersons crossed with The Thing. It's sad and poignant and tragic and funny and altogether wonderful, and I really didn't expect it. Again, there's very little "why" in the book. Horror doesn't need "why." Horror needs entrails, and horror gets them, but oh, wow, is this a fabulous book.

The two I've read since then haven't been even remotely as good, which is why I'm not identifying them by name. Altogether, it's been a fantastic reminder of why I read horror, and why I'm not so good at writing it in any format longer than a short story. Why is there a monster in the closet?

Because.

1. I am almost ready for Marcon! If by "almost" you mean "a packing list has been made, although no actual packing has been done, and hey, look, I have a set list." I'll pack tonight when I get home; tomorrow, I'll decamp to Kate's, since we need to get up at four o'clock Thursday morning if we want to catch our flight. Oh, the things I do for the love of conventions.

2. Last night was one of those "sleep so hard you wake up feeling hung-over" nights. I appreciate this. I don't get many of those nights anymore, and after I get over hating the universe, I tend to be refreshed and peppy. This sometimes creeps people out, as they aren't accustomed to seeing me peppy. Full of pep! There is nothing more dangerous than a truly cheerful blonde.

3. I'm currently cleaning and indexing my room, as part of an ongoing attempt to get my possessions under something resembling control. In the process of so doing, I found three copies of my 2009 chapbook. Now, I was under the impression that I had sold all the copies of my 2009 chapbook, which means either a) I can't count, or b) three people didn't get their chapbooks. If you requested a chapbook and never got it, please let me know, so that we can sort out what happened (and you can finally get your poetry).

4. I've finally updated my Upcoming Appearances page to include appearances through June, as well as the two stops on the Murder and Mayhem Tour that I'm doing with jennifer_brozek. I'll be adding more information to the June/July appearances, but at least now people will basically know where I'm going to be.

5. An Artificial Night is now on Amazon! What's more, it's on Amazon with a release date (September 7th), and actually relevant-to-the-book information (rather than the carry-over description of A Local Habitation that appeared there initially). The cover isn't up yet, but I'll totally scream when it appears, because every time one of my books is actually fully on Amazon, an angel gets its wings. I want my own CELESTIAL HOST, dammit.

6. I've rewritten the first six chapters of The Brightest Fell, and suddenly, without warning, this book has started to actually WORK. It's not uncommon for me to spend a hundred pages or so wandering lost in the wilderness, but The Brightest Fell is a particularly hard book. It's the last of the Toby books that was started pre-publication, which means it's been shelved several times while I worked on more urgent projects. To make matters worse, it's complicated, and changes a lot of things about Toby's world. So it's been kicking my ass, and I have finally started kicking back.

7. Who found a copy of Kelley Armstrong's out-of-print Eve novella, Angelic, while she was at Dark Carnival in Berkeley? Would that be me? Why, yes, I do believe it would be. I'll be doing more book gloating later, but I needed to offer this little snippet now. Because dude.

8. The cats come running when they hear the opening theme from The West Wing, because they know it means I'll be sitting still for at least forty-five minutes. Possibly longer, if the power of their purring is enough to make me start a second episode. Yes, I have managed to train my cats into taking an interest in the democratic process. When Lilly takes the state to court for the right to vote, you have permission to blame me.

9. It's cherry season. You do not want to know how many pounds of cherries I've consumed in the last week and a half...but as a hint, I could probably reforest Utah with my cherry pips, and I am now capable of telling fortunes for the whole of Oregon.

10. Zombies are love.

It seems like there are books that everybody hears about. I don't mean books like Pride and Prejudice or The Great Gatsby, where you would have to be either dead or completely unfamiliar with English literature to have missed them; I mean books like World War Z, which even my non-zombie lovin' friends have heard of, or Twilight, which, God, you couldn't miss without stranding yourself on a desert island for the foreseeable future.

Because every group is essentially a sociological tide pool, shifting slightly whenever the tide comes in but still cross-contaminating itself at a remarkable rate, we also tend to have a somewhat distorted view of "everybody." I bet if you polled a sample size of, say, the readership of this journal, you'd discover that Rosemary and Rue was one of the best-known books of 2009. Why? Because I wrote it, and talk about it constantly, and you read this journal, hence exposing you to it on a constant basis. I'm a literary pathogen!

On a more localized scale, we loan books to our friends, talk books up to our friends, and constantly infect each other with our literary passions. In the last year, I have caused my friends to read I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Shivers, A Madness of Angels, the complete works of Kelley Armstrong, The Mermaid's Madness, The Enchantment Emporium, and Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. These aren't the only good books I've read in the last year; they're just the ones new enough to still be available, and to have excited me with their sudden existence.

So here is today's challenge: Infect us with books we may not have heard of, but which are so damn AWESOME that it verges on a crime that more people don't know about them. Go for out-of-print things (that's why libraries and used bookstores exist), or the first books in series that started eight years ago. Bring enlightenment to the heathen, in the form of literary smallpox.

I'll start with five of my favorites, books I honestly think everyone should read (whether you enjoy them is up to you):

Hellspark, by Janet Kagen.
Mermaid's Song, by Alida Van Gorres.
Emergence, by David Palmer.
The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, by Tim Pratt.
Paper Moon, by Joe David Brown.

Authors, feel free to pimp your own work here; just get the word out, and let's see what we're not reading!

Kelley Armstrong is one of my favorite urban fantasy authors, and yet more proof that All Good Things Come From Canada.* She was the second person to officially blurb Rosemary and Rue, for which I will love her forever. (The first person was Tanya Huff, and for this, I potentially owe her a kidney.) I mean, really, the only thing that could make Kelley better would be for her to suddenly become local.

OH WAIT WHAT'S THIS? Kelley Armstrong will be appearing at San Francisco's own Borderlands Books tonight at seven? The best bookstore in the world has one of my favorite authors ever? Also one of my mother's favorite authors** ever? Is there anything about this which is not TOTAL WIN?

No. There is not. I hope to see you there, and remember, you can always contact the store to request signed/personalized books, because they are JUST THAT AWESOME.

Whee!

(*Okay, maybe not all good things, but since Canada gives me Brooke, Tanya, Urban Tapestry, Coffee Crisp bars, and ReGenesis, as well as the production of ninety percent of the television I love, I'm willing to give them some extra credit for awesome.)

(**Mom goes Jim Hines, Kelley Armstrong, me. When I eventually slay Jim and Kelley*** on the field of battle, this will be why.)

(***Accidental portmanteaus of Jim and Kelley include "Kim" and "Jelley." I now want to write a series of YA stories about Kim and Jelly, UNDERWORLD EXPLORERS. They would have wild adventures and wear silly hats. Kim is from a secret steampunk under-society built beneath the sewers of San Francisco, using the 1906 earthquake as cover. Jelly is a clone-construct originally intended as an organ farm for his creator. They probably fight crime.)

I arrived home last night, essentially dead on my feet, to find a book mailer waiting for me on the front porch. Huh, I thought, and picked it up. It was from Maine. I like Maine. It was from Sharon Lee (of Lee and Miller). I like Sharon Lee. I took the book mailer inside, opened it, and shrieked, startling both the cats and my mother.

I have a signed copy of Mouse and Dragon [Amazon]. The new Liadin Universe book. The direct sequel to Scout's Progress, the book that hooked me on Lee and Miller in the first place (while sitting in Rika's living room in Peterborough, England, thus proving that good things come from travel). Daav and Aelliana! Possibly my favorite space opera romantic couple, like, ever!

Did I mention that it's signed? To me? Because oh, right, I gave them a cover blurb, which is right there on the back cover. My very first published cover blurb, and it's on a Liadin novel by Lee and Miller.

As my beloved Deborah recently said to me, FUCK YEAH, SEAKING. (It's a Pokemon joke. Don't worry about it. On second thought, maybe you should worry about me making Pokemon jokes.)

If you're not familiar with Lee and Miller's work, you should be. They do space opera the way it's meant to be done, sort of Jane Austen meets rip-roaring adventure and also, starships. There's a compilation of three of the "origin stories" coming out soon, titled Dragon Variations, and the rest of the series is reasonably easy to track down.

I love these books enough to write cover blurbs for them. Also, I have a signed copy of Mouse and Dragon, which proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it's awesome.

FUCK YEAH, SEAKING.

Glee.

1) I find it really interesting how many people, when presented with a time travel thought experiment, will proceed to do things that result in their original timeline being immediately and irrevocably destroyed. Time paradox is not a cuddly kitten that you want to bring home and play with! Time paradox is bad! Remember, kids, friends don't let friends mess around with the laws of time.

2) Books I have read and loved lately: I Am Not A Serial Killer. Saltation. Freaks: Alive On the Inside (which I found at the used bookstore, signed!). Unshelved: Volume I.

3) Books I have written and loved lately: Deadline. The Brightest Fell. This is a much shorter list, and that's a good thing, because it means I probably haven't actually sold my soul to the devil. Much.

4) I love superheroes. I love Disney. I love these Disney heroines presented in glorious super-heroic style. I especially love the zombified Snow White. This is because I am, in many ways, predictable, and I am not ashamed of that fact. Not in the slightest. Nor do I think I should be, really, as my predictability makes me easy to shop for.

5) Lilly and Alice have figured out that, together, they now possess sufficient mass and surface area to prevent me from moving when they don't want me to move. This is fine when I have a book with me and nothing in the oven, but other times...not so fine. In other news, the house did not burn down, although it was a somewhat close thing. And it wasn't my fault.

6) What he said.

7) This looks like it's going to be an amazing season for movies. My favorite so far this year are How to Train Your Dragon and Kick-Ass, with The Crazies coming in as a close third, but oh! The glories ahead! Nightmare on Elm Street, Iron Man 2, Prince of Persia, Shrek Forever After, and Letters to Juliet! Splice! Even Resident Evil: Afterlife, because my love for the franchise outweighs my scars from the third movie. What a wonderful thing a movie ticket can be.

8) I appear to be thinking in almost purely short fiction terms right now, as I recover from finishing Deadline and tackle the trickier bits of The Brightest Fell. So far this week, I've finished two Toby shorts, started a third, finished an InCryptid short, and started my story for an invite-only anthology. I'm hoping I can even get a Vel piece shoved in somewhere, before the steam runs out.

9) Guess what I get tomorrow. I get a Vixy. Do you get a Vixy? No, you do not. I am not much of a gloater, but right now? Right now, oh, I'm gonna gloat. Because I get a Vixy. Of my very own.

10) Jean Grey is dead, James Gunn needs to call me, and zombies are love.

Bit #1: Toby has actually made it to the final four in the GIRL FIGHT TONIGHT, and she and Professor McGonagall are running literally neck-in-neck. Consider that a moment. Toby is a viable contender for defeating Professor McGonagall. The world has gone insane, and your vote could help her get to the finals, where she can have the pleasure of having her ass handed to her by Granny Weatherwax. Which is a victory unto itself, really.

Bit #2: Alcestis [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is a retelling of the classical Greek myth of Alcestis in the Underworld, and is just breathtakingly gorgeous. I am glad to own this in hardcover, because despite it taking up additional space, it is now sturdy enough to survive the many, many re-reads that it will be receiving as the years slip by. It's a beautiful book. Pair it with Malinda Lo's Ash and you have the perfect late Valentine (or early).

Bit #3: Castle has been picked up for a third season, guaranteeing me another night of brilliant television as time goes by. I really feel like I'm in something of a golden age, television-wise. I have my caper show (Leverage), my wacky science fiction (Eureka, Warehouse 13), my serious science fiction (Fringe), my comedy (Big Bang Theory), my mystery (Castle), and my good-n-gory (NCIS, Bones). Really, the networks don't need to do anything new with the upcoming season. I'm good.

Bit #4: Toby is still a contender in the Fourth Annual BSC Review Tournament, but her current round—in which she's going up against Juliet Marillier's Heart's Blood—remains very nearly too close to call. We're moving toward the end of the tournament, and it would be bad-ass to progress at least one more round, so please, if you have the chance, bop over and drop a vote.

Bit #5: I am apparently writing at least one short story (and maybe more than one, knowing me and my scary over-achieving ways) set before A Local Habitation, focusing on and narrated by January O'Leary. You can meet her girlfriend! Who is awesome, and puts up with an immense amount of crap from her scary technophile significant other.

Bit #6: Wondercon is this weekend! I am super-excited, and plan to spend the entire weekend wandering the floor, seeing awesome stuff, and learning new and exciting things about the X-Men. Because there is always something new and exciting to learn about the X-Men. (Hopefully not "Jean Grey is coming back," but things can't be wonderful forever.) I have also purchased my tickets for San Diego, which becomes a little more real every day. GEEK PROM IS GO!

Bit #7: Starfish loves you.

I am a total comic geek, and I'm not ashamed. I'm also a Marvel girl, and—as seems to be increasingly unusual in some circles—I'm a superhero fan. I like my flying men in tights and my women in impractical shoes. No matter how insane the storylines become, at the end of the day, it's pretty easy to make me happy.

We start, of course, with comics. For the X-geek in your life, or for the geek who just wants people to understand your love of all things X-Man, the Grant Morrison run on New X-Men is a fantastic place to start. It has enough backstory to "fill in the gaps" for people just joining, while being an incredible, world-spanning story that it's hard as heck not to love. The Grant Morrison run has been collected into three massive volumes. New X-Men: Collection I [Amazon] kicks things off with the bombing of Genosha, the world's only all-mutant country. New X-Men: Collection II [Amazon] ups the ante in a dozen different ways, and New X-Men: Collection III [Amazon] brings things to a screaming, ass-kicking conclusion. I highly recommend these books, and not just because Emma Frost features heavily.

If you're looking for something a little outside the mainstream of the superhero world, Robert Kirkman's Invincible is an amazing title from Image, one that dares to show superheroes as a little more human than most publishers will dare. It's a painful, beautiful story, and since it's relatively new (IE, "this century"), catching up isn't all that hard. Invincible: The Ultimate Collection, Volume I [Amazon] is a big, beautifully sturdy hardback introduction to Mark Grayson and his world. If that's a bit too big for your budget, Invincible book one: Family Matters [Amazon] and Invincible book two: Eight Is Enough [Amazon] include the first issues of the series, and are more than awesome enough to get you hooked.

My current favorite superhero title is a lot darker. Garth Ennis—the man who brought us Preacher, which really tells you something about how dark we're talking here—has turned his attention the superhero world, and the resulting title is...disturbing, to say the least. Start with The Boys, volume one: The Name of the Game [Amazon]. Proceed from there to The Boys volume two: Get Some [Amazon]. With fantastic art, a gritty storyline, and an all-too-plausible superhero community, The Boys is a great antidote to all that four-color brightness. (If you need still more dark-but-awesome superheroics, look up Incognito [Amazon] and Wanted [Amazon], which really has nothing to do with the movie. But don't say I didn't warn you about the dark.)

Important note: All of the above are graphic novels, and can be obtained from your local comic book store. The Amazon links are for reference, and for people who don't have a local comic book store. Buy local. It's awesome.

Soon I Will Be Invincible [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Austin Grossman is a brilliant piece of superhero fiction that looks at the heroic and the villainous at the same time. I can't recommend it highly enough. I also can't say much about it without spoiling the surprise. Check it out, it's awesome.

If you enjoy the "Velveteen vs." series, you absolutely have to take a look at Black and White [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge. This is the start of a bad-ass series about a world where superheroes are under corporate control, and stepping outside the lines costs you more than you could possibly imagine. It's an awesome treatment of a superhero world, and the contrast between good and evil has never been more blurred.

Sometimes you want your superheroes to be fluffy and fun, and those are the times when you should reach for the Bigtime books by Jennifer Estep. Karma Girl [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], Hot Mama [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], and Jinx [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] are superhero romance cotton candy with a sharply sweet bite, like cocktails that look completely innocent until they knock you on your ass. They're more fun than a barrel of radioactive monkeys, and I hugely recommend them.

I've tried to avoid movies in today's gift suggestions, but I can't resist slipping one in here: Krrish [Amazon]. It's sort of the Bollywood answer to the big-budget Hollywood superhero movie, with a dash of Tarzan and several large dance numbers. It's incredibly fun, and incredibly weird, and really, really worthwhile. For seriously.

Got any heroes or villains to recommend? Tell me about it!

The urban fantasy/paranormal field is huge, and it's easy to miss things in the hectic whirl of books as they come and go. In an effort to make your holiday shopping a little easier this year, or at least a little less crazy-making, here are some urban fantasy/paranormal suggestions for the book-lover on your list—or for you, if you haven't read them all yet!

Out in hardcover just this fall, we have Frostbitten [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], the latest in Kelley Armstrong's fabulous Women of the Otherworld series. If you're not familiar with this gorgeous patchwork world of werewolves, witches, sassy necromancers, and more, I highly recommend it. I also recommend starting with Bitten [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], the book that started the whole adventure. Fun, fast, and best of all, if you love it, you don't have to wait for the sequels the way the rest of us did!

I stumbled over Wicked Game [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Jeri Smith-Ready this last year at DucKon, and was instantly delighted by her sense of humor, snappy writing, sexy heroine, and totally awesome sideways take on vampires. Best of all, the sequel, Bad to the Bone [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], is already available! You can have your cake and eat it to with the staff of WVMP, the radio station with bite.

Tanya Huff is always a masterful mistress of urban fantasy, and she proves it again with her latest release, The Enchantment Emporium [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. She introduces the Gale family of witches, a mysterious junk shop in Calgary, and more, in a fast-paced rocket ride of a book that will leave you gasping for more. I really, really enjoyed it. Plus it's hardcover, so it makes an excellent tool for killing spiders.

The first book in Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series, Ill Wind [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] totally rocked my socks off—enough so that I tracked down and devoured the rest of the available volumes (all nine of them) in less than a month. This is the gift that keeps on giving, although it may get you nasty looks from the person whose book budget you've just blown all to hell and back. The Weather Warden books are fast, fun reads, suitable for reading on vacation. Especially during a storm.

Lori Devoti's Amazon Ink [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] was one of those awesome surprises, a book that does something that totally unexpected and yet totally awesome at the same time. Combining Amazons who are more Xena than Wonder Woman with the modern-day Midwest, Traveller culture, and a genuine affection for tattoos makes this book a rock-and-roll romp for urban fantasy fans of all ages. Seriously. I'm loaning my copy to my mother, and then to my youngest sister.

In Dead to Me [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Anton Strout (and in the sequel, Deader Still [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]) we are taken where sane men too-often fear to tread: into the strange and surreal world of humorous fantasy, which is too often overlooked in favor of its serious siblings. These books are purely in the spirit of Bureau 13, Men in Black, and The Middleman, with their snarky, cynical humor and tendency to turn the absurd into the morbid and creepifying. I recommend them for anyone who likes to laugh. And we all like laughing, right?

A Kiss Before the Apocalypse [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] and Dancing On the Head of a Pin [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Thomas E. Sniegoski are noir done right, angels done right, end-of-the-world done right...really, they're just right, and they're incredibly enjoyable to boot. An angel and his dog, a love story worth living for, and a whole lot of things worth dying for combine to make one delicious bundle of awesome.

Finally, of course, you can do worse than ordering Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] for any readers in your life, or pre-ordering A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]. Surprise them with time-delayed goodies! Better yet, get both, and then astonish them with your foresight when the second book shows up in their mailbox. Or just buy extra copies for yourself, thus giving me a holiday gift. I am neither picky nor proud.

What can you add to the list? Wow us all!

Recently, I picked up a book that looked interesting. It hit many of my "sweet spots" for plot, description, and cover blurbs from people I trust. The cover didn't do it any favors, featuring, as it did, a generic Urban Fantasy Hot Girl standing in a Playboy circa-1984 pose, but I've enjoyed books with way worse covers. I entered the text in good faith.

By page two, I was ready to fling the book across the room. Why? Because the author had chosen to scramble the spelling of a common-to-the-genre word in a way that made it look not only pretentious, but difficult to read. This is a personal bug-a-boo of mine, since I really do feel that spelling was standardized for a reason, and while I managed to soldier through, it colored my ability to sink into the text for several chapters.

(As an aside, seriously: not all words become more interesting and mysterious when spelled with a vestigial "y." The worst example I've ever seen was in a YA series full of "mermyds," and the fact that I made it through all three volumes is a testament to the power of raw stubborn.)

One reader of Rosemary and Rue posted a lengthy, positive review, more than half of which was taken up by complaints about the pronunciation guide. Specifically, I didn't write down the correct pronunciation of "Kitsune." It's a fair cop—if you pronounce the word as written in the pronunciation guide, you'll be saying it wrong—and it's been corrected for A Local Habitation, but it was, for this person, as bad as if I'd spelled Toby's name "Aughtcober" and then claimed it was pronounced just like the month. Bug-a-boos for all!

Kate recently delivered a long and eloquent diatribe on "back cover buzz-word bingo," which I really wish I'd had a video camera running for, because it was awesome. The summation is that she watches the back covers of books for certain "buzz-words," and, if the book works up to a magical bingo score, she doesn't read it. I do something similar with bad horror movies, since there are specific buzz-words that mean "soft core porn" and "gratuitous torture," and those really aren't what I'm watching the movie to see.

So what are your bug-a-boos? Terribly twisted spelling? Pronunciations that you don't agree with? Buzz-words oozing off the back cover and getting all over your shoes? How about heroines with ruby hair and emerald eyes who aren't appearing in an Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld fanfic epic? Inquiring blondes want to know!

My original plans for today, which centered around bad horror movies and lounging about, fell through when my date for the afternoon was forced to cancel for reasons outside his control (something about "surprise apartment inspection" inspired him to think he should stay home and tidy). Since I'd previously been making grumpy noises about missing the book release party for Gail Carriger's Soulless [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], I decided that this was the universe hinting that I damn well ought to go off and get some books signed already. Thus was it decided: a lazy Sunday in San Francisco for me!

I departed early enough to seek out and indulge in the sweet fruits of Dynamo Donuts, San Francisco's answer to Voodoo Donut. Sadly, they didn't have the pumpkin spice donut, or the bacon donut, but I salved my wounded sensibility with a chocolate rose donut (Luna would approve), and made my way to Borderlands for the event. I made it easily in time, and snagged a few extra copies to have signed for friends (as well as the next two books in the Weather Wardens series, because I am a greedy blonde sometimes). Taking a seat, I settled to enjoy the event.

The author herself was introduced by the inimitable Jude, who punished me for some unspoken slight by calling out my presence in the audience. (It was actually very sweet, as she said that Soulless was one of "only two first novels this year" that garnered huge amounts of excitement, the other being Rosemary and Rue, "whose author, Seanan McGuire, is sitting there looking unobtrusive." So I failed my stealth roll. Probably the bright orange coat didn't help.)

The lovely Ms. Carriger was smartly dressed, witty, and sweet, and read a passage from Soulless before submitting to questions and signing. I had all three of the books I had with me signed, and chatted a bit about editors at Orbit before moving on. She hadn't realized I was also Mira Grant. The world, she is very small. There was a full tea service. I, being me, didn't drink any tea—blech—but did eat some very tasty tea cookies. People hung out for a while, being chatty, and then mostly dispersed, leaving me and a sweet lady named Andrea to chatter at Jude and Jeremy as we helped to tidy and amused the cat.

It was a good, easy Sunday, and I highly recommend Soulless (review to come in a bit; suffice to say that it made me laugh out loud). If you want an autographed copy of your very own, Borderlands does ship, and would be happy to sell you one. Just call the store and ask.

Life, as they say, is good.

So today is Tuesday—hooray!—but for me, it's essentially Monday, because I spent the real Monday in a haze of sedatives, painkillers, and other exciting pharmaceuticals associated with having lots and lots of dental work done. I now have two permanent crowns on my upper right rear molars, and can actually eat crunchy foods, like apples and carrots. This is very exciting for me. I'm living the dream, and in the dream, I can chew. (Years of poverty plus a pronounced phobia of dentists mean that I have a lot of work ahead of me. Fortunately, I have a very understanding dentist who specializes in working with the phobic, and who understands that I need to keep my iPod on at all times to keep from panicking when I hear them talking about what they're going to do. Oblivion is my anti-phobia buddy.)

In keeping with the week's established medical theme, I'm going to be spending the afternoon with my doctor, being poked and prodded and (one hopes) declared to be in as good of health as can be expected. This is a necessary first step in scheduling my next spinal epidural, IE, "those periodic injections which render Seanan capable of continuing to walk and interact like a normal human being." It's probably too much to hope that the procedure could happen before OVFF, but I'm guardedly hopeful of shoving it into the week between OVFF and World Fantasy, when I'm already going to be off from work and can thus spend the day in bed without any guilt.

Today is the book-day birthday for The Mermaid's Madness [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by jimhines, a gentleman and a scholar if ever there was one. He's also a fellow member of the DAW Mafia, and just an awesome all-around guy...plus the book is amazing. My mother liked it better than she liked the first one, and we all remember how much she liked the first one. I highly recommend The Mermaid's Madness as a good investment of your book-buying dollars for this week. Join the Princess party now, and beat the rush!

I spent a good chunk of Sunday accidentally taking a six and a half mile walk through the cities of Concord and Clayton. I was trying to get to a friend's house for a barbecue, and I overshot by a little bit, assuming you consider four miles, much of it uphill, to be "a little bit." I had never walked some of that route before, so it was educational. I also hadn't walked all the skin off my heels in quite some time, so it was painful to boot. I am now wearing thick socks and bandages, and have no intention of taking that walk again any time soon. Still, it was a pleasant, if unexpected, little adventure in getting to know my home town a bit better. (Quoth a woman who saw me walking by with my iPod on, a Super Double-Gulp in one hand, and a book in my other hand, "Now that's multi-tasking.")

Autumn has arrived at last; I was forced to break out my duvet Sunday night, and woke this morning under a cascade of cats, since not even Alice's innate insulation robs her of the feline desire to snuggle up to the nearest human and leech as much heat as she possibly can. (They promptly stole the warm spot when I got up. This is because they're cats, not idiots.) Next up, umbrellas and the annual hunt for a pair of shoes that I haven't already worn past the point of being waterproof.

And that, for the moment, is that. What's new with the rest of the world?

1. Sketched and started inking my third possible Borderlands bookmark. See, Borderlands Books in San Francisco does limited-edition bookmarks with interesting art on them, and—after my signing/book release party/circus sideshow earlier this month—they invited me to design one of the upcoming bookmarks. As is so often the case when I am paralyzed by choice, I said "screw it," and am doing multiple bookmark designs for them to choose from. The first one, involving clownfish mermaids, is completely done; the second, involving seahorse mermaids, is in rough pencils with some inks; now, so is the third, involving Allomai and a fuck-ton of ribbons. I find this soothing and infuriating and an excuse to buy more art supplies. Everybody wins.

2. Bought the new Kelley Armstrong book, Frostbitten. This was sort of a comedy of errors, since the guy at Borders hadn't put it on the shelves yet, but had put it on the "we're putting this on shelves" cart, which meant there were no copies in the back of the store. I eventually located the cart, thus locating my book, and money was exchanged, rather than bloodshed.

3. Read the new Kelley Armstrong book, Frostbitten. What? I read fast. Also, it was so awesome I couldn't put it down. I love Kelley Armstrong's work so much.

4. Watched the final episode of season three of Primeval, the second-to-last episode of season one of Warehouse 13, and two more of the audition episodes for the current season of So You Think You Can Dance. A few people have informed me that they don't believe I watch as much television as I say I do. To them I say: you're probably right. I think I watch substantially more.

5. Sort of accidentally knocked out a thousand words on Deadline, which will get included in the next word count post, because I'm feeling too lazy to bother with doing that much math right now.

How about you?

1) The new Kelley Armstrong comes out tomorrow! Frostbitten [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is the tenth book in her Women of the Otherworld series, and the fourth (!) to feature Clayton and Elena. Now, Elena's not my favorite narrator—that honor is reserved for Paige, with Jaime coming in a close second—but her books are always exciting reads, and Armstrong definitely knows how to tell a story. I'm super-excited (and not just because she gave me a kick-ass cover blurb).

2) Oh, wow! Is it finally time for the major publisher hardcover edition of David Wong's John Dies at the End [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]?! It so totally is! John Dies at the End started as an Internet serial, became a limited-run paperback from Permuted Press, and is now a glorious hardcover packed with horror, comedy, excitement, and the dreaded soy sauce. I love this book. Now you can actually own it. You're so lucky.

3) Dexter is back! Glorious, glorious, amazing Dexter. Michael C. Hall, how you fulfill me.

4) Actually, while I'm talking TV, here are all the other shows I follow that are back on the air (presented in alphabetical order, for the sake of my sanity): America's Next Top Model, Big Bang Theory, Bones, Castle, Fringe, Glee, NCIS, Numb3rs, So You Think You Can Dance, and Supernatural. Basically, I am awash in televised goodness.

5) Whip It comes out on Friday. I have to say, there is no bad in a world that can combine Ellen Paige with roller derby. No bad at all. Hopefully, it'll take the nasty taste of the recent Fame remake out of my mouth.

So that's what I'm excited about this week. What are you excited about?

Last year, jimhines wrote a fantastic book called The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. My mother really really loved it, thus proving that a) she has taste, and b) Jim is trying to woo her away from me. Hmmmph. But since we're both DAW authors, it's not like I could stay cranky for long.

Well, in just two weeks, the sequel to The Stepsister Scheme can finally be yours. The Mermaid's Madness [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] comes out October 6th, bringing you everything you loved about the first Princess adventure, and so much more!

Because it's almost Jim's book-day birthday, I thought he needed a pretty little dead ghoul to make the day even more exciting. Mel was surprisingly mellow about being turned into sushi, probably because the ocean is full of sharks, and she likes anything with more innate killing capacity than she possesses. I was a lot less mellow when I realized that I was going to need to hand-color all that fish netting. Oh, the things I do for love...

Happy book-day, Jim! Hooray for The Mermaid's Madness!

1. BART is not on strike. I would say "yay, the unions reached a settlement," but since I left Lilly alone with my Internet-equipped computer just before the strike was called off, I'm going to opt for "yay, my Siamese is not fire-bombing the California coastline to protest Mommy not coming home for a week." Don't mess with the Siamese. You will regret it.

2. Fourteen days. Just saying.

3. My new Netbook is a joy and a wonder, except when it's royally fucking stuff up. Most recently, it has elected to royally fuck up the .ms of Red Hood's Revenge that I was giving a quick polish for Jim. I'm attempting file recovery now, and if that doesn't work, I'll just go through the .ms a second time. Thankfully, it was relatively clean.

4. Also thankfully, my Netbook did not elect to royally fuck up the latest draft of The Brightest Fell (Toby Daye, book five). This is A Very Good Thing. I would be substantially less sanguine about that particular rewrite. There might be screaming, and possibly the eating of human flesh. Mmmm, human flesh.

5. The incredibly awesome stick insect that has been sticking to Kate and GP's front door frame for the last few weeks was gone this morning when I went out to meet the bus. I wish him all good things in his future endeavors, and hope that he is not inside the house, preparing to crawl into someone's ear.

6. I have decided that I don't like second books in trilogies that don't admit to being trilogies when I pick them up. There will be more on this later.

7. I want a nap.

How's by you?

So last year, Entertainment Weekly decided to rank "the new classics," and made lists of the "100 Most Influential" bits of various media in the last few decades. They had a list of movies, a list of books, a list of TV series, and so on. This, naturally, made me think, because their list looked absolutely nothing like mine would. I promptly took umbrage, as I am wont to do, and made my own list of books that influenced and informed my reality. That was a year ago. Things can change considerably, in a year.

You know what comes next.

Books on this list aren't necessarily high literature; they're not necessarily classics; they're not even necessarily particularly good, although I think the bulk of them are. They're just the books that combined to construct a me. They are, in short, not the books I was supposed to fall in love with; just the ones that I did.

Your list will probably be drastically different. You may still want to take a look at mine. You might just find a few things that will surprise you.

( Click here for Seanan's updated list of 100 books that have influenced and rocked her world, and which may have influenced and rocked yours. Complete, in some cases, with commentary. Because she can, that's why.Collapse )

So my friend tim_pratt is in a bit of a sticky situation, which he has detailed fairly thoroughly. Sadly, this isn't a unique situation right now; a lot of us are in fairly sticky situations. I'm very fortunate in that I am currently able to feed my cats, pay my bills, and buy comic books. Others, not so much.

Tim is lucky, however, in that he comes complete with a personal savior: Marla Mason, the magical bitch-queen badass sorcerer of Felport, who will totally mess you up if you look at her funny (and don't think that she won't). In an effort to make a bad scene a little less bad, Tim is putting up a serialized, donation-funded urban fantasy novella, Bone Shop, in which you can meet Marla, and watch as she grows up to be, well, badass.

Enter the Bone Shop.

Go, check it out, and if you enjoy good urban fantasy, have a party. You, too, can avoid being put on Marla's little list of people who need to be bludgeoned to death with the nearest available brick.

That didn't come out right...

You may or may not remember my delighted review of Evernight [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] by Claudia Gray. What's more, you may not remember my enthusiastic recommendation of the sequel, Stargazer [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]. That's okay, because I remember these things, and I'm always more than happy to remind you. I try to be generous that way.

I got bored and was left unsupervised with art supplies. This is never safe for the people around me. What's more, I was left with art supplies, the desire to make a book advertisement, and the capacity to compose cheesy lyrics. Be afraid! And so I give you...

The Evernight Alma Mater.

Dear Evernight, so tall and proud
And spookily you stand
Like something from a horror film
That lays waste to the land.

Your looming windows watch the night
Like blind and angry eyes,
Your judgment falls on each of us
As from your steps we rise.

Dear Evernight, with pride we come
To learn what you impart,
We pray that you will let us live,
Though you don't have a heart—

Your uniforms are well-designed
To make the bloodstains blend,
And what we learn to shatter here
We also learn to mend.

Dear Evernight, your hallowed halls
Will teach us how to thrive,
And those of us who graduate
Are lucky to survive!

...it sort of scares the cats when I sing it in the shower.

5:15 AM: Wake up to the shrieking blare of the alarm clock. Reaffirm desire to purchase one of those nifty little iPod-dock alarm clocks after DucKon, so that I can be woken up by something that doesn't make me want to lunge for the nearest blunt object and commit a homicide. I'm a light enough sleeper not to need an alarm clock that could be used to notify the UN of the impending zombie apocalypse, thank you very much. Get dressed, get packed, get out the door.

7:00 AM: Arrive at desk in San Francisco, and settle in for a day of being as productive as I possibly can when I'm leaving the office at one to deal with scary dental things. I am surprisingly productive, largely thanks to my love for the sacred to-do list. If not for the sacred to-do list, I would be a whimpering heap under the bed by now. All hail the sacred to-do list, and all hail Franklin-Covey, the manufacturers of my planner and its various accessories. Seriously. These people save my ass daily.

1:00 PM: Leave the office. Head for the train. Take the train to Borderlands Books, where my usual impeccable timing means a) I miss Jude (rats!), b) the naked cats aren't in the store (double rats!), and c) Cary—in addition to being the only employee present, which reduces the viability of chatting—is in the middle of inventory, and thus borders on negatively social. Purchase several books, because I am me. One of these is a paperback titled Denver Is Missing, by D.F. Jones, who also wrote Earth Has Been Found. Nobody ever gets to call me bad at titles ever ever ever ever again.

4:00 PM: Go to dentist, who prods me repeatedly while going "Does this hurt?" Nothing hurts before it gets prodded. Now...well, pain is annoying but endurable, I suppose.

5:00 PM: Arrive home. Update LJ before preparing for an evening of edits, fuzzy cats, and really lousy horror movies.

Halloween is every day.

...well, Tanya Huff's new book, anyway. Today is the release of The Enchantment Emporium [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies], the latest awesome adventure in awesome adventuring from Tanya Huff, the woman who basically woke up one day and said "hmmm, I think I'll create a genre." (Seriously, if you like books about vampires, or anything in the urban paranormal class of books, you should buy this book just to say thank you.) Better, she and I share a publisher, which means I had the opportunity to find out early just how awesome The Enchantment Emporium really is.

How awesome?

Damn awesome. I've been reading and loving Tanya's work for years, but I haven't enjoyed one of her books this much since Summon the Keeper (which I read about eight or nine times over the course of a single summer, because I loved it that much). The Gale family is enthralling, their mysteries just mysterious enough to keep me reading, and just clear enough not to become annoying. The language is gorgeous, and the story is a hell of a lot of fun. If I have any complaints, it's that this isn't a series yet, so I can't promise more. Then again, sometimes the best stories are the ones that stand all by themselves.

The Enchantment Emporium: because while we can't be absolutely certain WalMart is ripping holes in the fabric of space and time, who wants to take the chance?

Available now from a bookstore near you, assuming you live somewhere where there are actually bookstores. If not, it's available from Amazon and Mysterious Galaxies (here, have the links again: [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]), and there's even a Kindle edition if you live in an atmosphere hostile toward paper.

Yay!

10. Betsy -- aka "the breeder from whom I am purchasing my new Maine Coon" -- emailed me last night to get the last of the information she needs to fill out Alice's health certificate. (The airlines require you to have a health certificate for any animal you wish to carry onto a plane; something about not really wanting to deal with a rabies outbreak at thirty thousand feet. This just shows that they don't want me to have any fun.) So it's officially official, and I'll be bringing home my new baby girl this weekend. Perhaps then Lilly will allow me to sleep through the night. Unlikely, but a girl can dream, right?

9. The word counts have been missing lately because I've been continuing to hammer on the reboot to Late Eclipses, trying to yank the book into alignment with the awesome I know it truly has the potential to be. I'm about a quarter of the way through the text at this point, and things really are becoming visibly more and more awesome. We haven't reached the point in the revisions process where I can no longer make fair and measured assessments of quality, and that's good.

8. People everywhere are getting their copies of Ravens In the Library, and while I haven't seen any full-length critical reviews, I'm generally seeing positive reactions to the book itself. (I am, of course, primarily interested in seeing the book do well, because it's for an excellent cause, and in being my usual neurotic little blonde self about reactions to my story. But at least I'm up-front about it, which makes it a little less crazy-making.) Remember, the book will only be available until Sooj's medical bills are fully covered.

7. I have registered for World Fantasy, booked my hotel room for San Diego, applied for professional membership to San Diego, and arranged for hotel space in Montreal. I am, in short, basically done with my convention arrangements between now and August. (BayCon is local enough to require little pre-planning on my part, while Duckon is taking care of all the arrangements for me, on account of I'm one of their guests. It's nice.) I'm always happier when I know that things have been set up as far in advance as humanly possible.

6. Zombies are still love.

5. In the last several weeks, my website has gone from "idle" to "awesome," with almost all our functionality now up and online. The only things still pending are the forums and the mailing list, and both these are being held up by issues on the server side, which we're working to resolve. (Getting the forums up and functional now gives my mods time to try to break them before I'm banned from that part of the site nigh-completely. Planning ahead. It's what's for dinner.)

4. While I'm still not sleeping nearly enough, thank you Lilly, I feel somewhat less like a corpse today than I did yesterday, probably at least in part because I forced myself to go to bed immediately after Big Bang Theory last night. Nothing says "a good night's sleep" like adorable physics geeks and inking before turning in. Although losing my pencil for half the episode really didn't help.

3. I have seriously not read a book that was anything short of awesome in the past week. They were YA and adult, mainstream, fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and all made of pure, unadulterated awesome. If all books were as good as the ones I've been reading, the bar would be set so high we'd need a telescope to see it. I couldn't be happier with my recent reading choices. I really couldn't.

2. In two days, I go to Seattle. In three days, I see my Vixy. In four days, I see Kitten Sundae live and in concert. And in five days, I get to take Alice home with me, thus ruining everything, in the nicest way. (Obligatory Jonathan Coulton reference for the quarter!)

...and the number one good thing about today...

1. My life is so wonderful right now. I'm tired, I'm grumpy, and I'm inclined to smack anyone who pokes me with a stick, but at the end of the day, even I can't pretend that my life isn't amazing. Rosemary and Rue is well on its way to publication, and according to Amazon, 90% of the people who visit the page are buying the book. Lilly and Alice are both healthy. My back is behaving itself remarkably well, and spring is springing up all around me, making my normal walking habits much less crazy. I have the best friends in the world -- everyone should have the best friends in the world, because it makes everything better -- and I own more bad horror movies than I could watch in a lifetime. The world is wonderful.

I think we're gonna be all right. So what's new and awesome in the world of you?

I read semi-constantly -- I've never really gotten past that third-grade geek-girl with a book in her hand, another in her desk, and three more in her backpack phase -- and as a consequence, I've developed some rather eclectic, rather specific tastes. I like urban fantasy, I like sociological science fiction, and I like horror with monsters in it. I like non-fiction books about horrible diseases, both modern and historical. I like modern chick-lit of the Meg Cabot school. And I like good YA.

The recent renaissance in young adult fiction has really been a miracle, at least from where I'm sitting, because it's like it went from zero to 'holy cow, look at all this AWESOME' in less than six years. Sure, there's a lot of chaff mixed in with all that wheat, but there's more than enough wheat to make a really healthy, fiber-riffic loaf of bread. I have now beaten this metaphor to within an inch of its life, and will move on.

Because I've been reading so much YA recently, I thought I should do a quick round-up of books I've read which have proven to be awesome. This isn't what I'd call a book review post, per se, since I'm not really taking the time to review things, but with as much as I read, this may be the only way to get the word out about some truly rockin' books. The word needs to be gotten. You should get the word.

First up is the fantastic Evernight [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies], by Claudia Gray. This book hit shelves officially yesterday, and I've already read the whole thing twice, read some of my favorite scenes three or four times, and planned to loan it and Evernight both to my niece Kristine, because they will rock her world completely. I'm going to say something I don't say very often: Stargazer is totally worth the hardcover shelf space. If you like vampires, supernatural romance, school stories, or just plain good fiction, you should really give it a read. There will be a better review later.

Lipstick Apology [Amazon] by Jennifer Jabaley is a) non-genre, b) really awesome, and c) not technically out yet, being as it's one of those wacky advance reader copy things. How I love you, ARCs. Anyway, Lipstick Apology is sort of like a combination of Gossip Girl and I'll Be There For You (the sequel to Beaches), as written by Meg Cabot. It's smart, it's sassy, it's sentimental without becoming sappy, and it's just all-around really worth reading. I didn't find any of the lessons preachy, and all the characters were actually people, even if they weren't necessarily people we were supposed to like. I figured out the central mystery pretty quickly. I'm also substantially more well-read than most of the book's target audience, and even knowing what was probably going on did nothing to detract from my enjoyment of the book as a whole. I really recommend it.

I'm actually in the middle of So Lyrical [Amazon] by Trish Cook right now, and since I've never read it before, I guess I technically don't know if it's actually going to maintain its early promise and come out awesome on the other side. But frankly, I don't care. This book is like a fantastic mashup of Gilmore Girls and Rock of Love. It's snappy, it's sharp, it's trashy when it needs to be, ironic when it needs to be, and I would totally have hung out with all the main characters when I was in high school. Plus, it's in paperback, so it's not like you're taking that much of a gamble.

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies], on the other hand, is almost like the antidote to all those sappy vampire books that seem to be flooding the shelves in the post-Twilight haze currently covering the young adult section. Beth Fantaskey has managed to create a vampire romance that's touching, interesting, and oddly realistic, with a vampire society that makes an incredible amount of sense. I mean, between her and Claudia Gray, I actually believe this genre has a lot more of a future than people give it credit for. Plus, I really like her hero, as well as her heroine. It's a win all the way around.

Because this is my post, not yours, I'm also choosing to give a quick shout-out to one of my favorite young adult books of all time: The Girl With the Silver Eyes [Amazon] by Willo Davis Roberts. It's out of print, but in today's world, that only means as much as you want it to mean, and this is the sort of book that's just like a warm, fuzzy blanket filled with goodness and warmth. The technology is naturally a bit outdated, but the social aspects of the book, and the outsider aspects, all remain very true.

That's my YA round-up for today. Because I like to share.