Theodora Goss's Blog, page 39

Mything Things

I'm mything things in my life. That has such a double meaning, doesn't it? On the one hand, I do feel as though I'm missing things mythic, and on the other I'm in the process of creating things mythic: I am mything.

I think I need to do more of it. I get so caught up in the mundane, and sometimes I forget to look beyond it. I was thinking about that as I read a blog post by Grace Nuth on Domythic Bliss about why we should decorate in a way that includes story, that is individual. It was a lovely post, as always. I think that's why I've been going to antiques stores and thrift stores, lately. I think I need more story in my life. That's why I've been buying things with stories of their own. The birdcage, for example. Or the wicker chair. Or the sewing cabinet. I don't know what those stories are, but they are written into every scratch in the paint, every scraped leg.

I'm not writing at the moment, which is difficult for me: I have so much else to do, and writing always seems to get pushed off somehow. I know that's wrong. I know the writing should take priority. So I'm going to have to rearrange my life somehow, to prioritize writing again. I'm just not quite sure how yet. But I'll get there.

I thought you might need some myth in your life as well, so I'm including two beautiful things in this post. The first is a song written by Amal El-Mohtar. I've posted it before, but that was a long time ago, and I have no doubt that you need to hear it again. Right?

The second is a video by Rima Staines. I may have posted it before as well. But again, repetition of a good thing is a good thing in and of itself.

So there you are, two beautiful things for your day.

In the Domythic Bliss blog post, Grace Nuth writes,

"The amazing artist (and incredible writer) Rima Staines recently wrote a post on the first day of 2012. I could summarize it here, but then you might not go over there and read it, so instead I'll just link it here so you have to! But in the post, she discusses the idea of a subtle revolution against the bland, homogenous and commercial aspect of modern society. I was definitely roused and inspired by the idea of this revolution or movement. It got me thinking about how we all are participating in a subtle revolution by trying to carry on and revive the folklore and fairy tales from our mythic history. We are like the green eco-movement, only our goal is to save folklore instead of nature (although of course the two go hand in hand!) We want to save the stories of the past, and create new ones."

I like the idea of a subtle revolution. I think I could be a subtle revolutionary. Viva la Revolución!

Being Overwhelmed

My index finger is sticky with spray-paint.

I know that I haven't been posting regularly. Here's what happened. First, the book came out and I had the publicity to do. And then I was given an important project that I had to finish by last week. And in the midst of all that, I had my regular schedule of teaching.

As a result? I was overwhelmed. It was too much: stress, worry, late nights. Too much sensory input, both external and internal. I'm not sure I can describe what that's like, for anyone who doesn't already know. What you end up feeling is a sense of complete exhaustion, and yet you can't settle down to anything. I recognized it in a blog started recently by a friend of mine: Girl Unlocked. It's not exactly what I experience, because we're different people, but it's similar. And it leads to a similar impulse to clean up one's life, to make things better.

This was the first weekend for two months that I have not been drowning in deadlines, so although I have plenty of work to do, I knew that I had to get out and do something. Oscar Wilde (I think through Lord Henry) says that "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul," and I have always taken that as sound medical advice. When your problems are existential, you have to act. So I acted.

I started by vacuuming the rug, which needed it rather badly, then sorting through all the clean clothes and deciding where they went. (Some in the closet, some into storage, some to be mended.) And then I worked on some things I had bought at my favorite thrift and antiques stores but had not had a chance to repair, repaint, whatever they needed. Would you like to see?

The first thing I did was spray-paint a wicker chair I had bought some time ago, as well as a birdcage I bought last week. What will I do with a birdcage? I haven't the faintest idea, although certainly not put birds in it, since I don't believe in keeping things with wings in cages. Or as pets.  But there was something magical about the birdcage.  It has fine lines, good proportions.  I'm sure I can find a use for it.

That's why I have spray-paint on my index finger. The spray-paint color is Blossom White, in case you were wondering. I hate the standard gloss white people seem to use on furniture, particularly wicker.

I also washed and dried an embroidered linen runner I had found.

It needs ironing, but it's quite pretty, and I thought it belonged with me rather than in a thrift store. And one can never have too much linen. (Although I have a closet full of antique linen and silver. But that's what happens when you inherit quite a lot of it.)

There were some things that didn't need fixing, like the wicker basket I found. Here you can see it on a sewing cabinet I picked up several weeks ago, in front of an engraving I bought at Boskone. The engraving needs to be reframed. (A green engraving in a green mat in a green frame? Seriously? If anything in your house looks "decorative," you're doing it wrong.)

The sewing cabinet is not going to be a sewing cabinet, of course. It's going to be a place to keep jewelry. A jewelry cabinet. The legs are a little water-damaged. I'm not sure what I'll do about that yet.

If you open the top drawer, you can see places where spools used to be kept. I think I'll leave that as is, although it does need cleaning, and fixing because there are stray wires and the like.  And the stubs of old broken dowels that need to be removed. (The small painted box comes from Poland, and it's where I keep my rings.)

So I spray-painted and washed, and then I went out and visited my favorite antiques store to see if something I had seen last time was still there. And it was. I'll write about that another time. It's just a small thing, a wire basket for holding letters, but I haven't decided yet whether to paint it or leave it as is.

This was the sort of day on which I wore my oldest jeans, a black t-shirt and cardigan, and beat-up Keds with no shoelaces. And pearls. Why the pearls? I have no idea, they just seemed appropriate. It looked something like this, although this is an old picture I never posted and does not include the pearls:

I have a lot of work ahead of me this week, and I'm very tired. But I'm going to start trying to post again regularly. It's better for me to do so, I think. It allows me to talk through things, even when they're simply what I did that day, like spray-painting birdcages and wicker chairs.

The Boskone Reading

This weekend was Boskone. Have I mentioned that? I don't remember what I've said here anymore. I've been so very, very busy, and at this point I'm completely exhausted. I can barely type. But I did want to post two things today, and then in the next week I'll start trying to catch up.

First, The Thorn and the Blossom received a wonderful review from Publishers Weekly:

The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story

Theodora Goss. Quirk, $16.95 (82p) ISBN 978-1-59474-551-5

Evelyn Morgan is a university student struggling to lead her own life despite others' expectations; Brendan Thorne's troubles begin when he loses his wife to heart failure and subsequently quits his job. A chance meeting leads to their falling in love around the centerpiece of a medieval Cornish version of the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and from then on their lives and relationship seem to be a modern-day parallel of the frustrated romance between Gawan and his beloved, Elowen. But Goss (In the Forest of Forgetting) presents no ordinary linear tale: the reader is treated to both characters' stories in parallel on alternate sides of an accordion-style book, letting the reader decide which story to begin with. The fantasy elements are light, revolving mostly around Gawan's story and Evelyn's visions of fairies and trolls. Overall this makes the tale align more with old-fashioned romance than pure speculative fiction, but Goss' appealing characters and modern magic atmosphere will continue to attract a following. Illus.

And second, the reading I did from The Thorn and the Blossom at Boskone was taped! The videos are available on YouTube, but you can see them below. Reading with me is my wonderful editor, Stephen Segal, who actually came up with the idea for the physical format of the book. (I came up with the idea for the story, of course.) The first video is the reading itself, and the second video is a Q&A session we had afterward. I hope you like!

I'll get back to blogging regularly soon. Probably some time next week, once I've recovered a bit. It's been exhausting, but there's a good reading why I'm doing all the work I'm doing. I'll talk about it, eventually . . .

Fantasy Love Stories

Honestly, I'm not sure how I'm going to make it through the next two weeks. I've been given a project to complete, on top of everything else I'm doing right now, and in order to complete it on time, I'm working whenever I can – until late into the night. I'm getting four or five hours of sleep a night, which is not good for me.

So for the next two weeks I'm going to be posting sporadically, and my posts may not be all that interesting. I apologize in advance . . .

Today, I'm going to post about something that came out online just today: my slideshow on the top ten fantasy love stories for Huffington Post. Here's the introduction:

When you're in love, it feels as though you're living in a fairy tale. The prince or princess of your dreams has chosen you, and you're going to spend the rest of your lives together, happily ever after, in a castle on a hill with singing furniture and animals that do all the cleaning. Right?

Of course, real life never works out that way (show me a mouse that does dishes, for example). But fantasy does tell us some important underlying truths about the experience of being in love. There's a reason that romance has always had a fantasy element. (Think of Odysseus falling in love with the sorceress Circe, who turned his men into swine, or Oberon and Titania deciding the fates of lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream, or Mr. Rochester asking Jane Eyre if she is one of the fairies). Romance is a sort of magic: it changes our perception of the world, making us believe that we've found the person we are meant to be with, that the two of us are truly one. It can fill us with an ecstatic sense of joy and make us feel as though the furniture could sing – if we just listened closely enough. But fantasy also shows us some darker truths about love. The modern popularity of paranormal romance has its roots in fairy tales about women marrying bears, and bulls, and other beasts, which reveal that the one we love is not, in fact, a version of ourselves, but another being – one we can never know completely. Love can overcome those differences, but they are still differences. Fairy tales also reveal that love is difficult: sometimes you have to climb a glass mountain in iron shoes or confront a bloodthirsty ogress. I think some of the truest and most important stories about love are fantasy stories, which show us both love's power and its complexity.

Here are my choices for the top 10 fantasy love stories, both ancient and modern. Fair warning: none of them involves sparkly vampires!

I'm going to give you my top ten here, but in order to read why I've selected them, you'll have to go over to the Huffington Post slideshow! So, without further ado, the top ten! (In my mind, I ranked them 10 to 1, but the slideshow allows you to rank them yourself.)

10. The Myth of Eros and Psyche

9. Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire in The Time Traveler's Wife

8. Richard St. Vier and Alec Campion in Swordspoint

7. The Ballad of Tam Lin and Janet

6. Tristran and Yvaine in Stardust

5. Morgon and Raederle in The Riddle-Master Trilogy

4. The Legend of Tristan and Iseult

3. Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings

2. The Fairy Tale of Beauty and the Beast

1. Westley and Buttercup in The Princess Bride

Do you agree with my choices? Disagree? I'm interested in finding out . . .

Happy Valentine's Day!

Ratings and Reviews

I know, this is the way I always start nowadays: I'm very tired! But this has been a particularly tiring week.

I had a wonderful time at the reading on Tuesday night, and then a wonderful time meeting people at the Concord Bookshop today, and I'm going to post pictures. I'm also going to link to some of my favorite reviews of The Thorn and the Blossom.

But maybe tomorrow night. Tonight I'm too tired, and so I'm going to write about an issue that was raised on Tuesday night. An audience member asked me, how do you handle reviews? Because whenever you write a book, there will be positive reviews, and there will be negative ones. And as I told him, I don't think writers ever develop thicker skins. We can't. We have thinner skins than most people, and I think we need to be that way: it's what gives us the sensitivity to write, to create art.

So how do you handle reviews? Well, I read mine. Even the negative ones, partly because I find that I learn from them. When they're done well, they're like getting feedback from a critique partner. The good negative ones, I appreciate. And then there are the ones that say "This just wasn't my sort of thing" or "The book was stupid." Those I can't really learn from. (Make my next book not stupid. Got it.) Those are also the ones you need to put into perspective.

How, you ask. (Even if you didn't just ask that, you did. Trust me.) Here's what I do.

1. Go to Goodreads.

2. Look up James Joyce.

3. Read his one-star reviews.

Did you know that Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has (as of today) 2423 one-star reviews? This is JAMES FREAKING JOYCE. If he's going to get that many one-star reviews, I don't think I'm going to worry about mine.

Here's what some of those one-star reviews say:

This book is a very dry, written version of the Dead Poet's Society without Robin Williams.

I almost felt as though I was reading something written by someone with a severe case of ADHD, with an inability to focus on any central point for more than a moment.

The only reason I am giving it 1 star is because I didn't want anyone to think that I just forgot to rate it.

This review is based on a partial reading of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man because I really couldn't force myself to read more than the first 25 pages (and page 99, to see if it had improved).

He may be the master of moderist lit and stream of conscious narration, but every time I try to have a Joyce appreciation moment, I flash back to an ex boyfriend who would call me at 4 a.m. to sigh into the phone for an hour before finally offering, "I feel abstract."

This was much more enjoyable than Ulysses, which is saying almost nothing.

There was no climax and that also bothered me.

I found it extremely difficult to get through (and this is coming from someone who read Atlas Shrugged in a week) and filled with the sort of run-on sentences that make children grow up to hate reading.

I read the beginning and chose to stop. I would rather read Vogon poetry, or stab myself repeatedly with a fork, than read Joyce.

That's probably enough, right? (I actually cleaned up some of the punctuation.) After all, you can go read them yourself. I should be clear and say that while I don't like everything James Joyce wrote equally, I do consider him a genius and one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. And a man capable of exquisite prose. For example, here is the final paragraph of "The Dead":

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

The final sentence makes me shiver.

I'm not going to comment on those comments (and my opinion of Atlas Shrugged is unprintable), but I think they'll help you put reviews into perspective. Because we're talking about JAMES FREAKING JOYCE and some people aren't going to like him because they're looking for a climax.

As for ratings, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has a 3.54, which is lower than Twilight, which has a 3.67. I'm not even going to comment on that one. But this is possibly worse: it's rated lower then Stephen Hero, which has a 3.64. Now that's just stupid, but it's also predictable because the people who read Stephen Hero are already Joyce fans, while Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is read by most high school students. If only your fans read you, your ratings will be higher.

Lev Grossman wrote an interesting article on ratings and reviews that I will discuss tomorrow. But I hope today's brief discussion of ratings and reviews has been helpful. Remember, I read my reviews, even the negative ones, and try to learn from them. But you can't take them entirely seriously.

Reading and Signing

I'm so tired! Honestly, if I didn't have a reading tomorrow, I'm not sure I would even try to write a blog post tonight. But I do have a reading, and then a signing later this week. (You can imagine that for an introvert, it's these public events that are so difficult. They make me want to find a cabin in the woods and just write. But when I do them, I do end up enjoying them, partly because I genuinely like meeting people. And I think it's good for me to do things that are difficult.)

So, here are the events.

The reading is tomorrow night, Tuesday the 7th at 7:00 p.m., at the Boston University Barnes and Noble in Kenmore Square. There is more information on the event on the Quirk Books website, as well as a Facebook page for the event.

And then, on Thursday, I'm going to be at the Concord Bookshop in Concord, Massachusetts, from 2:00-3:00. I'll be signing books and just generally hanging out, so come talk to me! The Concord Bookshop has an event page for the signing.

So there you have it, my two events for the week.

It's late and I don't have time to write more tonight, so I'll leave you with a sanctuary. (Sanctuaries are places you can go when the world seems too much with you. Some sanctuaries are physical, some are mental. This one is mental.)

It's the song "The Bonny Swans" by Loreena McKennitt:

I'm looking forward to both the reading and signing, but this is going to be a long week. And to be honest, I'll be glad when it's over.

Feeling Envious

Today I'm feeling a little envious.

Several days ago, I read a lovely interview with Margo Lanagan, the Australian writer. In it, she talked about her writing day. I'm always fascinated by accounts of how other writers do their work. If you're a writer, go read it. Here's a description of how she starts her day:

"Get up as early as possible and, before I'm awake enough to attack myself with criticisms, start writing (I write the first draft of everything longhand, in biro on lined bank-weight paper). If I can get in a couple of hours before breakfast, that sets me up for a productive rest-of-the-day.

"Breakfast, then head off to my rented Writing Room, two blocks from my house. Install myself there, immerse myself again. I still aim for ten pages a day – I'm not allowed to beat myself up about it if I don't make the count, but I do have to try. I've found that if I'm on a roll and write substantially more than ten pages, I'm in fact stealing words (and likely slightly sloppy words) from the next day.

"Sometimes the ten pages are done by 11 a.m., sometimes it takes a full 8 hours to get them. Whatever's happening, don't let anxiety leak into the process. Keep it as enjoyable and hopeful as possible. Writing snacks: raw carrots, Vita-Weats, anything crunchy – but low fat (don't want to get sleepy!) – I literally chew my way through plot glitches. If I can, stop writing at a point in a scene where something interesting's about to happen, to make it easy to start again next day.

"Walk away from it and do unrelated things. Exercise is the best; rinse out my brain with oxygen. Put the book out of mind until just before going to sleep, then just gently prod at the scene I'm going to tackle in the morning, get it ready to take up on waking."

Doesn't that sound nice? It does to me. But of course, I was comparing it to what I was doing that day, which went something like this. I wake up at 7 a.m., get dressed, commute for forty minutes to the university, sit in my office and prepare for class, teach four classes in a row, sit in my office and hold office hours, commute back for forty minutes, pick my daughter up from school, and make dinner. Then, I sit in front of my computer and do whatever I need to – often, answer emails, type up a blog entry, do any writing work I need to (by which I don't mean writing – right now I have an interview, a guest blog post, and an afterword to write, which I need to get done sometime this weekend). If I have any time afterward, I may try to write something, but honestly, lately I've just been too tired. Not every day is like that: I don't teach on Tuesdays or Thursdays, so those are days to catch up on marking papers, but they will also soon be the days I schedule mandatory conferences with students.

It's kind of a miracle that I get writing done at all.

When I was reading the interview, I also envied Margo's writing room in an old Victorian house. I have a writing space of course, but it's in a corner, and I can usually hear whatever else is going on in the house. And it's also where I prepare for teaching. Before I go on to what I think of all this, I'm just going to say that Margo is a wonderful writer and has a book coming out, which I'm going to read as soon as it's available. Here it is:

It's all about selkies, and I love selkie stories. So I'm really looking forward to it. I'm very glad that Margo has a lovely office and the time to write books for me to read!

But her interview also made me think about my own life and the way it's organized. I don't like envying other people. For one thing, there's something unworthy about it. If I want something that someone else has, I should figure out how to get it for myself, rather than envying that person. What will envy get me? (A blog post, evidently.)

What I envy, of course, is time and space, and there are many writers who have that. (Yes, I envy them as well. And I know perfectly well that, although they have more time and space than I do, they also have to do the same writing work, and often freelance work as well.) So how can I get that time and space? Those are the questions I'm thinking about right now. I don't have answers for them yet, but at least they're on the agenda.

Today, I did two things that made me happy. I went to one of my favorite antiques stores and bought a small sewing cabinet, sort of like a table with drawers. It's old and elegant and mahogany, and I'm going to use it as a jewelry chest. And I bought two scarves. I don't know why scarves always make me feel elegant: perhaps because they're not utilitarian. I do have a sense, finally, of who I am and where I want to go. I just don't see, yet, how to get there. But it will happen.

Winter Song

I'm so tired! I've been working all day, and will probably be working late into the night. There are a couple of things I want to post. First, there's a lovely review of The Thorn and the Blossom up at A Word's Worth:

This is a book unlike any I've read before: it's literally a two-sided story. Pick it up, think it's like any normal book. Then you realize: it's accordion-folded. Read through one perspective, then turn the book over, and start reading again – from the other perspective. If it sounds a little odd, don't worry: once you have it in your hand, it makes a lot more sense. And you will probably be a little in awe, if you are anything like me. So much for the book format, but what about the story? Well it's pretty much as amazing as the format. Have you ever read a book, told from one character's perspective, and wondered what the other was thinking? Especially when it's a love story? Theodora has given us a chance to see the same story play out from two wholly different points of view: Evelyn's and Brendan's. I read Evelyn's story first, and found myself emotionally invested fairy quickly – I devoured her story. When it ended, I almost got really sad: it was over! And then I remembered I still needed to flip the book and read Brendan's side of things. Happiness! And wow – what an experience.

If you click on the review, you'll see that there's also an interview with me, and a giveaway! So if you want to win a copy of the book, go enter . . .

Second, I've been so tired recently, and working so hard, that I've felt the need to retreat, to find a sort of refuge. But of course I don't have an actual physical refuge, so instead I've been looking at pictures. Like these, from Domythic Bliss:

Third and finally, I'm going to include a song that's been going through my head over and over again, I'm not sure why. But here it is, "Winter Song" by Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know what I'm doing. You know that this is a sort of spell, that I'm summoning something to me. I don't know what, exactly. But that's what these words and images and music are. They're a way of saying, dear universe, you know that I'm tired, and that I need something. And you're usually better at giving me what I need than I am at knowing what it is. So I'm asking: whatever it is, just go ahead and send it my way. All right?

Learning about Publicity

I'm so tired tonight! So I'm going to include some links, and then I'm going to mention a few things I've been learning recently about publicity.  This won't be a long post. Here are the links.

First, I was featured in an article in the Boston Herald today: "'Potter,' 'Twilight' Feed Generation's 'Hunger' for Fantasy Lit." The online version includes a picture of me, and the print version also includes a picture of The Thorn and the Blossom. Here's part of what I say in the article:

"When I was growing up there was a fantasy section of the bookstore and a literature section. Now mainstream literature and fantasy are coming together," said Theodora Goss, 43, a 2008 World Fantasy Award winner and Boston University writing program lecturer.

The Lexington resident's recently released novella The Thorn and the Blossom, a romance following star-crossed university students, blends Arthurian legend, fantastical elements and the modern age.

"I think that there's a deep and sentimental reason why we are reading more fantasy and why it is coming into the mainstream. More and more we are living in a fantastical world," Goss said.

For the rest of what I said, go read the article!

Also, several lovely reviews have appeared recently.

Sofia Samatar: Goss is a writer's writer; her characters are often artists, or people who are trying to become artists, or who wish they could be artists. The Thorn and the Blossom is, as its description advertises, a love story, but it's also a work story. It's about people finding the great passion that will make them happy, and for the lovers Brendan and Evelyn, that's passion not just for each other, but for meaningful work. For enchanting work. They seek out enchantment like knights in the Forest Sauvage, and we want them to find it. [ . . . ] There's no extra ornamentation on The Thorn and the Blossom, which may take some getting used to for readers who reveled in the more baroque language of Goss's electrifying collection, In the Forest of Forgetting. But I feel that in this book, once again, Goss writes her process through her characters. Brendan and Evelyn seek the right literary form to express the magic they've experienced, and they both write unexpected things as a result. As for Theodora Goss, she's left the weirder and creepier aspects of her work behind to write a curl-up-on-a-winter's-day love story in The Thorn and the Blossom.

(Full disclosure: Sofia is a friend of mine, and a writer herself, as you can probably tell from her review. You can also probably tell why I love this review so much: it's always amazing when someone totally gets what you were going for.)

Oodles of Books: This book was short and sweet, just like it sounds. The unique format is what intrigued me at first, and since I like anything with a love story, I was really looking forward to see what this would be like. Like mentioned, this is a two-sided love story which I thought was great because we got both sides of the story. How often does that happen? [ . . . ] I definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a short fairytale to quickly dive into.

Cheap Black Pens: The novel is a quick read, but it's quite sweet and clever. The book is written with the perspectives of two star-crossed lovers who bond over an Arthurian legend, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Shared dialogue is obviously the same, but it's great to read how Evelyn and Brendan have similar thoughts about situations. [ . . . ] I'm choosing this as my guilty pleasure read.

And finally, and I think this is really special, the book is featured in the New York Public Library gift shop as a Valentine's Day gift book! It's actually the only book included among the Valentine's Day items. Honestly, it's an honor to have the book chosen in that way by one of the greatest public libraries in the country. (I could say the greatest, but I have to show loyalty to the Boston Public Library, where I did some of my most important dissertation research!)

I was recently asked about how to work on publicity by a new writer, and I do have some thoughts on that. I'll be writing about it over the next week or so, as I publicize my own book. Tonight, I'll just share a few observations.

First, publicity is crucial. It's not about telling people how wonderful you are, or your book is. It's about telling people that your book exists. You have to actually get the word out.

You should already have done all the easy things. If you've published anything at all, you should have an Amazon author page, and you know what? You should also have an Amazon UK author page. Yes, you have to create those pages separately! Here's my Amazon author page, and here's my Amazon UK author page. As far as I can tell, you can't yet create an Amazon CA author page. But remember that we're living in an international marketplace. Your book will probably be available anywhere English is spoken (and many places it won't).

You should also have author pages on Goodreads and LibraryThing. Here is my Goodreads author page and my LibraryThing author page. The one on LibraryThing isn't very developed yet. I'm still trying to figure out LibraryThing, to be honest. It doesn't feel quite as intuitive as the others. At some point I should probably join Shelfari as well. Of these three, Goodreads feels the most important to me, because so many people use it. But each of them has a different function.

The point of all this is simply to be present where people buy and talk about books. It's not even to publicize anything in particular, but to have a presence. And then, when you do want to publicize something, you have a place to do so. Notice that I have a reading coming up at the Boston University Barnes and Noble on February 7th, at 7:00 p.m. I've already posted it on Facebook and Goodreads, and tweeted about it. But I had all those venues set up long before I ever had a reading planned.

I'll write more about this tomorrow. Tonight, I still have work to do. And yes, it's publicity.

What about Modernism?

I've been trying to read more contemporary literature, but sometimes when I do, particularly the books that are popular, that make bestseller lists, I feel as though I'm suffocating in book. As though there's too much book there.

Here's what I mean, more specifically. I've been trained in a nineteenth century literary tradition, in Charles Dickens and George Eliot, as well as in what broke that tradition – the literature of the turn of the century, of early modernism. By which I mean writers like Oscar Wilde.

The books I've tried to read recently are in the nineteenth century tradition, of the big, fat book that moves slowly, that gives a full and vivid description of a secondary world, whether that world is Middlemarch or Middle Earth. The Harry Potter books are heirs to that tradition. They are books that ask you to feel, to experience the story emotionally rather than intellectually. They are books you can become immersed in.

And I start wondering, reading books like that – what happened to modernism? To the slim book that moves swiftly? Look, for example, at this excerpt from James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (which I picked mostly at random):

"The sunlight breaking suddenly on his sight turned the sky and clouds into a fantastic world of sombre masses with lakelike spaces of dark rosy light. His very brain was sick and powerless. He could scarcely interpret the letters of the signboards of the shops. By his monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality. Nothing moved him or spoke to him from the real world unless he heard in it an echo of the infuriated cries within him. He could respond to no earthly or human appeal, dumb and insensible to the call of summer and gladness and companionship, wearied and dejected by his father's voice. He could scarcely recognize as his own thoughts, and repeated slowly to himself:

" – I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork, in Ireland. Cork is a city. Our room is in the Victoria Hotel. Victoria and Stephen and Simon. Simon and Stephen and Victoria. Names.

"The memory of his childhood suddenly grew dim. He tried to call forth some of its vivid moments but could not. He recalled only names. Dante, Parnell, Clane, Clongowes. A little boy had been taught geography by an old woman who kept two brushes in her wardrobe. Then he had been sent away from home to a college, he had made his first communion and eaten slim jim out of his cricket cap and watched the firelight leaping and dancing on the wall of a little bedroom in the infirmary and dreamed of being dead, of mass being said for him by the rector in a black and gold cope, of being buried then in the little graveyard of the community off the main avenue of limes. But he had not died then. Parnell had died. There had been no mass for the dead in the chapel and no procession. He had not died but he had faded out like a film in the sun. He had been lost or had wandered out of existence for he no longer existed. How strange to think of him passing out of existence in such a way, not by death but by fading out in the sun or by being lost and forgotten somewhere in the universe!"

This is a way of writing that leaves spaces, quite a lot of spaces, for you to fill in. It's a writing with gaps. And so it allows you to breathe, to put in something of your own, to participate. In fact, you have to. You can't read it lazily. (I would argue that you can read Harry Potter lazily. At least, I have.)

The issue for me is, I don't want to write in the tradition of Eliot. I don't even particularly like Eliot. I want to write fantasy, but not like that. Luckily, I have Jorge Luis Borges and Milan Kundera to show me different ways.

(Twice in my life, I've dated men who told me they were in love with me, but did not like Borges. And I've thought, how is that possible? Because if you don't like Borges, there are some things about me you will never understand. Some of my stories wouldn't exist if it weren't for Borges.)

I suppose all this is why I'm drawn to late nineteenth-century literature, which is pre-modernism but has already started to fragment. The tyranny of the omniscient narrator is already gone in writers like Bram Stoker, Arthur Machen, and H.G. Wells. I recently read a story I liked very much: "Reports of Certain Events in London" by China Miéville, in his collection Looking for Jake. It took me a few pages to understand what he was doing, and for those first few pages I was frustrated, but once I realized that he was using those late nineteenth-century techniques, and what he was using them for, I felt a sense of delight. And then, when the key to it all, the term Viae Ferae, was in Latin, I thought, Ha! Lovely. It was the literary technique of another time, used in a thoroughly modern setting. And what I also liked was that the story asked me not to feel, but to think. Like Borges. (When stories ask me to feel, tell me to feel what and where and for whom, I often end up feeling emotionally manipulated.)

So I don't know, maybe I'm out of step with the times, in some way. But it seems to me that the big, fat fantasy novels are heirs to a mid-Victorian tradition. (After all, where else do you see three-volume novels, endless serials? Those belong to the middle of the nineteenth century.) And I'm not interested in writing that way.