Theodora Goss's Blog, page 40

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.

Hitting the Wall

On Friday, I hit the wall. I actually had to research that phrase: I thought it was the one I wanted to use, but I just wasn't sure. Sometimes I'm not sure about colloquial American phrases, despite the fact that I've grown up here.

Hitting the wall is what happens when you've been running and running, and suddenly you can't run anymore. That's what I've been doing, I think: all that running. And suddenly, I was completely out of energy. When I got home on Friday, I fell asleep, and I ended up sleeping much of the weekend.

I'm not going to try to write very much tonight. I do want to post about a few things that I haven't posted about yet, and that I wrote or read or watched over the weekend.

First, I wrote a guest blog post for The Bookaholic called "What Are We Mything?" Here's the first paragraph:

"When I teach classes on fantasy literature, I often start by having my students read Sigmund Freud's essay "The Uncanny." In that essay, Freud tries to figure out why we respond to certain events with a sort of creepy, uncomfortable fear, the sort of fear you feel when you see a ghost. (Each time I teach his essay, I think of Scooby Doo, shivering and whining until Velma reveals that the ghost is really the caretaker of the dilapidated old estate.) Freud says we feel the uncanny when we experience something that challenges our sense of reality, that makes us think our rational, scientific view of the world is inaccurate. Suddenly, we encounter the supernatural, and we start wondering if we really live in a world that can be explained by the laws of physics. Maybe ghosts do exist after all?"

To read the rest, you have to go look at the post! It's all about why we need myth in our lives.

And I wanted to think about a quotation from a blog post by Terri Winding:

"A question today: What gets you to your writing desk or drawing board or rehearsal room or where ever else it is that you create your art? I don't mean on those magical days when everything is flowing so well that a herd of elephants couldn't keep you away . . . but on all the rest. What gets you into the studio, what overcomes distraction and procrastination, what helps you to put brush to canvas and pencil to page – even on those days when you're tired, or stale, or fearful, or worried about a dozen other things?"

I was thinking about this particularly because I'm not writing right now – or I am writing, but it's all Q&As and guest blog posts. Which I love doing, don't get me wrong, but I'm not working on the story I'm supposed to be writing. I've gotten Ivan and Blanchefleur to Professor Owl's tower and just left them there. What gets me writing is that when I write, I get to escape to my own magical countries, and you know what? I like living in my own magical countries. They can be so much more interesting than this one. I actually like what's inside my head. I wish I could go back there – maybe once I finish a few more things.

There's a final thing I wanted to say. Over the weekend, when I was so tired, I watched the movie The Secret of Moonacre. I realized afterward that it has very low ratings – the reviews were not good. Well, you know what? All those reviewers are wrong. I loved it! I could see where the negative reviews were coming from. The movie does not have a linear plot, and it cuts abruptly from scene to scene. But the director is Hungarian, and I've seen those techniques used before in Hungarian movies. They are not flaws but choices the director made. And it's visually beautiful – stunningly so. And the story is strange, unusual. I think we like what we're used to. We feel comfortable when a movie goes the way we expect, when we can actually anticipate what's going to happen. Anything strange, anything unexpected, throws us off. But my task, as someone who is a sensitive reader and viewer, is to understand the strange, to appreciate it. (I'm not saying it's everyone's task. But it's my task. This is the way I was made, and what I was made for.)

The movie teaches me something: that when you have an unusual vision, you have to follow it. No matter what anyone tells you.

Having a Genius

I was so tired yesterday that I couldn't write a blog post! Instead, I fell asleep. And then of course I woke up late and still had a lot of work to do . . .

I have some more interviews and reviews to post here, and then, yes, there will be an actual (if short) thought on having a genius at the end of this post.

First, I recently did an interview with Library Thing.

And here are some more reviews:

Dialect Magazine: Destined, unstoppable true love is a theme I tend to avoid in my reading, but Goss expertly blends the all-encompassing passion, and the literary love story, with the history and myth of Arthurian legend, layered like the accordion folds of the novella. The beautiful craftsmanship and slightly awkward form of this novel is a perfect format for the love story within. It is just inconvenient and fragile enough to prohibit one-handed subway reading, making reading The Thorn and The Blossom into a more mindful activity. In Goss' The Thorn And The Blossom, fairies and witches' curses and true love are real, but so is catching the bus and marking papers. This is magical realism at its best, a blend of epic love story and subtle affection. This story is for readers who believe in magic and true love, but not in lovers pining away, blandly waiting for a match to turn up and transform life.

The Charlotte Geeks: Goss has written a complete tragic love story and done so in 82 pages, the amount for each character to tell his and her tale. [ . . . ] If you are a book collector this is a great buy for your collection. It is unique in its design and construction. If you enjoy a tragic romance, then this is an excellent novel to buy. It is a quick read, and well worth reading twice in order to better piece their stories together.

The Bookaholic: I did not hesitate to review The Thorn and the Blossom after reading the premise and seeing the unusual binding of the novella, and in the end I was not disappointed. While it was a quick read, short and sweet, I adored the accordion style binding and romantic backdrop for the characters. [ . . . ] Sometimes whenever I finish a novel, I'll wonder what the story would be like in the other character's POV. I loved how The Thorn and the Blossom gives you this vision.

Daemon's Books: I had a lot of fun reading The Thorn and the Blossom, it's really well crafted and it was a different reading experience not just in the story, but also physically in holding the book, which is like an accordion. So if you're looking for something new and exciting and quick to read (did I mention each side is only about 40 pages long), you should definitely get yourself a copy of The Thorn and the Blossom.

Beneath the Bracken: The bookbinder in me, was taken by the book itself. It's constructed in accordion style with a slipcase and gorgeous illustrations. The reader in me, was taken by the story. Two stories, actually. It's a love story which weaves the lives of Evelyn and Brendan, their past and their present; with a tale of wonder and enchantment. It's a quietly beautiful story that, with its clarity and charm, stayed with me in the days after I'd read it. One to read again.

Journey of a Bookseller: One of the most fascinating things about this book is that it is accordion paged and comes in a slipcase. His story on one side of the pages, hers on the other. There is no right or wrong way to read it. Read her story first, or his if you prefer. And it's a tantalizing tale. [ . . . ] Why not get a copy of this book for yourself and read about the secrets these two lovers hold? Happy reading.

Now, to what I was saying about having a genius. This comes from a talk given by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love.

I recommend this video for anyone who does creative work. I very much like the idea of having a genius (rather than trying to be one, which seems like an exhausting sort of task). And you know, it helps when I face the fact that not all reviews are as positive as the ones I've posted above. Anytime you create a work of art, some people won't like it. That's simply a fact of the creative life (and one Gilbert herself learned, I'm sure, when Eat, Pray, Love was published, despite the fact that it was a best-seller.)

So what do you do then? Well, what I've done is looked back at The Thorn and the Blossom, which I wrote more than six months before its publication date, and thought about what I would change now, if I could. And you know what? There is one thing I would change: I would add a particular paragraph. But that's it. I know that the story is what it was meant to be – that in a sense, I wasn't simply sitting down and writing it. I was also channeling the story. And whatever happens to it, however people respond to it, I'm confident that I wrote the story I was supposed to.

I like the idea of having a genius, a spirit that tells the story through you, so that in a sense you become a conduit for it. An educated and trained conduit, of course. But a conduit nevertheless.

And now, you know what? It's time to move on to the next project, tell the next story.

Reading and Writing News

I can't write tonight: I had my yearly eye exam, and the doctor put something in my eyes to dilate them, and I can't look at the screen without the letters going all blurry. All that blurriness makes me dizzy, gives me nausea. So what to do?

I'm just going to tell you a couple of writing things, and then I'm going to rest my eyes. For those of you in the Boston area, I'm going to be doing a reading at the Boston University Barnes and Noble in Kenmore Square, on February 7th at 7:00 p.m. You can find the official poster for the reading below. I'm also going to be chatting with people and signing books at the Concord Bookshop, on February 9th at 2:00 p.m.

Recently, three interviews with me were posted: on SF Signal (with the wonderful Charles Tan); on Daemon's Books, which posted a lovely review of the book; and on The Qwillery, which  also posted a lovely review and is doing a book giveaway.

Also, believe it or not, I do still have other things going on, other writing projects. A short story of mine called "Beautiful Boys" will be in Asimov's Science Fiction, and I have another short story coming out, but I can't tell you about that one yet. Also, my article "A Brief History of Monsters" will be in Weird Fiction Review, sometime in February.

I'm sorry, I know, this post is all about the writing. But I can't think clearly enough to write about anything that would be more interesting, right now. I'll be back in better form tomorrow, I promise.

And here is the poster:

True Love

That's it, folks! All the book giveaways I'm going to have, because I have no more books to give away. (I have to keep a few copies for myself.) I loved all of the descriptions of true love. They were beautiful and heartfelt, and once again I had a difficult time deciding what to include here, both as winners and as honorable mentions.

Here are the two I finally chose as winners, after much debate. Jennifer and Matt, I'll email you about the books!  I wish I could send books to everyone who participated in these giveaways. Thank you all – your writing totally made my Mondays!

From Jennifer O. @ Lit Endeavors:

True love is watching Grease two times a day for a week because it's her favorite musical and you get a kick out of watching her sing "Totally Devoted to You." Love is drinking two pots of coffee to stay up all night because it's a Sunday, the Dr.'s office isn't open, and she has a fever of 102. Love is walking around in one piece and shattering into a thousand when she saunters into a room. It is reading twenty Mercer Mayer books in a row because instead of falling asleep, her laughter is filling the room like coins being poured into a glass jar. Love is calling her 6 year old classmate a turdbucket because he called her haircut ugly and "boy-looking."

Love is being reborn every morning, when she calls you Mom and asks you to make her pancakes with extra syrup.

From Matt:

I've read so many stories involving love, heard aphorisms about it, and seen it represented visually so often, I feel like I should be able to say something eloquent about love – romantic love in particular, but of course other kinds exist and should be celebrated as well. But the more I've experienced love in its various permutations, the more I realized it's tremendously difficult to pin it down even in the most abstract terms.

When I think about love that is true, I find myself turning to examples from my own life. First and foremost, I love reading, writing, language, words. That isn't to say I sit down every day – if only! – to write with a feeling of complete enthusiasm and unbridled possibility. Sometimes, I dread it. But as many difficulties as writing brings, life goes worse for me if I don't do it for any extended period of time. Words and stories, they comfort me. They challenge me. They give me everything and demand everything of me. We work together through the prosaic and the ineffable. It's a partnership of sorts, one that encompasses the greatest highs and some truly awful lows. But that aspect is such a part of me, I can't see myself not writing or reading. I can't remember who said that acts of creation are also acts of love. I think it's absolutely true. Okay, so maybe one aphorism.

The other example is my parents. My mom had me at what was certainly too young of an age. Instead of putting me up for adoption, or taking any other alternative, she dropped out of high school and raised me – and the six siblings that followed. Meanwhile, my dad has worked two, occasionally three or four, jobs to provide for us and especially for me, to give me a good education through elementary and high school. His days off are few, and the hours he's not devoting to the family are equally sparse. Same for my mom. Because of the time, attention, and opportunity they've given me, I have the mind, the talent, and the determination to make something of myself, to pay forward (and pay back, as much as possible) the tremendous debt of gratitude I owe them for making me who I am.

That's love in my eyes, pure, simple, and true.

And here were the honorable mentions, which are also wonderful.  These were especially difficult to choose, because once again I limited myself to four, just like in the last giveaway.  But there were many more I could have chosen!

From Sara:

True love is not just taking out the trash and making the lunches and cleaning up the blood and poop and mud. It is not just the flowers and whispers and the shivering static sparks in your fingertips. It lives somewhere on the borders of these, braver and darker and gentler and fiercer. It smells of sulfur and fur and new bread and new babies' soft hair. It tastes like dust and chocolate and wine and salt. It laughs and moans and weeps and rages. And it is very quiet. Shh. It is sleeping. And never sleeping, sitting awake at your bedside to keep away monsters.

From Liv DelGiudice:

I've always been attracted to found family stories. That's the reason tales like Star Trek or the stories about Sherlock and Watson have always appealed to me. Of course as humans we love our families, and that love is pure and true. I love my mom! She's absolutely my best friend, but there's something about the idea of a found family story that really resonates with me.

I love the idea that Jim Kirk picked up the ashes of a life and blew away with them, to somehow end up on the Enterprise, with friends who could take him down a peg. I love the idea that in their own ways, in all their incarnations, Sherlock and Watson both bared their scars and let something other than salt into the wound. I love the idea that at the end of everything, Guinevere might have seen Arthur and Lancelot clasp hands and wondered if it was all worth it.

Because family is big, and it's love, and despite what some people might argue, it is so much more than blood. It's running to catch a Streetcar in New Orleans, hands clasped, trying to remember how to breathe because your best friend stayed too long with the author and now you might have to walk home. It's staring down some Klingons with a sarcastic doctor and a logical Vulcan and a beautiful woman whose name means freedom, and winging it because you can trust them. It's waiting three years to punch a missing part of your life in the face, because at the end of the world–he comes back after all. It's the question mark. It's forgetting to end your story.

True love is where you find it, however you find it, and however you want to make it. It's got nothing to do with age or knowledge or wisdom, just the feeling of falling into nothing with a hand clasped in your own, and knowing that even if you smash to bits on the ground, you'll have that palm pressed against your own, for infinity plus one.

From Michelle M.:

True love ripples like a stirring cadence, the ballad that breaks you out of sleep and clamors to be heard through the quiet. It's the world opening up to beauty once again, the fates knitting their ruby threads through your heart and combing ribbons into your hair, their hands washing you in rosewater and Venus' myrrh. It's the fluttering forth of secrets once suspended inside, melodies once wan now stitching a gossamer rhythm you're not quite sure of, but yet you listen, marking each delicate strain.

It's finding a scent of flowers crowning you in the cold, and the smallest shiver of joy beating a steadfast song. Of stringing pearls through the salt of wounds and dressing the body in precious stones, a mosaic of crystal and sun softening the skin. A gorgeous salvaging of dreams, the lips aflame with seeds.

From Keith Glaeske:

True Love is a Force of Nature. As such it can be resisted or accepted, but it cannot be tamed or overcome. Eros was one of the few things that even the Gods could not gainsay (the other being the Moriae, or Fate) – they were as powerless before it as humanity. And, if story is to be believed, even Time and Death are not proof against True Love.

Just as no human-made structure can last indefinitely against the fury of Nature, no human-made convention, taboo, or boundary can long withstand True Love. Like water, it can drown you or sustain you; like fire, which can melt butter and/or temper steel, it can shatter you or strengthen you beyond breaking.

Publicity and the Introvert

Reminder: Book Giveaway #3 ends tonight, so make sure you get in your entries before midnight! If you need to look at the rules again, they're in the post titled Book Giveaway #3, which is also where you can post your entries (in the comments section).

I've been doing what feels like a lot of publicity lately, although I know some writers do a lot more. But I thought I would describe what it's like, for anyone out there who's interested – particularly other writers. Because the truth is, most writers don't do a lot of publicity. The ones who do the most are also the most successful, although I don't know which came first. When you're successful, you have to do publicity. There's really no getting around it, unless you're J.D. Salinger. And trust me, you're not.

The problem, of course, is that most writers are introverts. Publicity does not come naturally to us. It takes precious energy, which we need to replenish by doing things that do not involve other people. Like sleeping, or sitting under a tree.

Since I've been doing so much publicity lately, I'm going to give you my personal thoughts on it. But of course everyone does publicity differently, just as everyone writes differently. These are things I've discovered that work for me. And they work for me as an introvert, although as I've mentioned, I'm pretty tired right now. I need to sit under that tree or something. Except that right now the ground is covered with snow . . .

Some time ago, a writer friend told me that he was working on a novel, and that once the novel was finished, he would begin to publicize it. He would update his website, go on Facebook. Maybe even tweet. And I thought, how do I tell him that he's leaving it way too late? That you should start doing publicity at least a year before you have anything coming out? If you start doing it when you have a novel coming out, no one will know who you are. If you start at least a year before, it's just about making connections, about having a presence of some sort. But it was incredibly useful, when this book came out, that I'd been blogging steadily for a year, that I had been on Facebook and Twitter for a while. For one thing, I was easy to find. I'll be doing a signing at the Concord Bookshop on February 9th, and the bookstore contacted me through Twitter. People contacted me for review copies through Facebook. So just being out there mattered. It also mattered that when people interviewed me, they could find information on me. Journalists generally like to find background information before doing interviews. My website helped with that.

So I guess the first thing I would say is, you should already have been making connections, so that when something like a book comes out, you have a way to publicize it. You already have ways to connect with people.

Once you have a book, you're probably not going to be the only one doing publicity, of course. I know that copies of The Thorn and the Blossom went to all sorts of places: newspapers and magazines and bloggers. All of that was coordinated by the publicity department. Your responsibility is to respond to anything: answer Q&As, do interviews, write guest posts. That's tiring, by the way. Even if you're doing a telephone interview, it's as tiring as meeting someone and talking intensely for an hour. (Don't get me wrong, I love doing it, and I learn so much from the questions people ask me. But we're talking about publicity and the introvert, and it's tiring to do those sorts of things.)

That's the phase I'm in now, just trying to respond to everything. But I'm grateful, at this point, that I had so much in place before this book came out: that I had an updated website, with a press page on which I had a bio and photo. That I had Facebook and Twitter accounts so I could announce things and people could contact me. That I'd already been going to conventions, so I knew people who were reviewers and bloggers. I could ask them personally if I could send them copies of the book. There was no guarantee they were going to like it, of course, and I would never have expected them to like it simply because they knew me. If they disliked it, I would have expected them to say so, honestly. But at least I knew people to send it to. I could coordinate with and supplement the efforts of the publicity department.

So now I'm going to use this forum I've created to ask you, would you like to help with publicity? Because there are things I can't do, but that anyone else who likes the book can do. If you do like the book and you want to help spread the word, here's what you can do:

1. Go to the Amazon page for The Thorn and the Blossom (notice that I conveniently provided a link!) and "like" it. Or if you have something you'd like to say about it, consider writing a review. Anyone can review on Amazon.

2. If you're a member of Goodreads, consider also rating the book on Goodreads, or posting a review. Here's the Goodreads page (again, there's the link!). You can post the same review on both Amazon and Goodreads, if you want to.

3. If you're ambitious, you can also write a review on your blog, and thn link to it on Facebook or Twitter if you have those accounts. If you send me the URL, I'll also link to it in some way, whether through this blog, or on Facebook or Twitter. (Assuming it's positive and doesn't give too much of the book away. Of course, if you didn't like the book, you should feel perfectly free to write a negative review! It's important to be honest. But I probably won't link to it, because, you know, I'd rather publicize the good stuff.)

4. And if you're really ambitious, you can spread the word to actual live people. Relatives, your book group, etc. And how you do that is of course up to you! (By the way, if you want your book group to read the book and you want me to talk to your book group about it, I would be happy to do that.)

Of course, what I want most of all is simply for people to enjoy the book. But if you do want to help out, that's how to do it. And for writers: if you want to use or copy any of this blog post for your own publicity efforts, please feel free to do so. I'm learning a lot, and I want to share it with all of you.

Thinking about Fear

Reminder: Book Giveaway #3 ends tomorrow night at midnight! If you want to win copies of The Thorn and the Blossom and In the Forest of Forgetting, look at Book Giveaway #3 below for the rules, and post your answer in the comments section of the post!

I've been thinking about fear recently. There's always fear involved when you're attempting to do something new, and writing a book is always something new, something that is at least a little fearsome. You're afraid that once you write the book, people won't like it, or won't buy it, or will buy it but won't like it afterward, or any of the various combinations of things that can make you wonder why in the world you bothered writing a book in the first place. Rather than, you know, watching television and eating chocolate.

(Yesterday, I had dinner with friends who are writers, and one of them said to me, you never learn how to write a story. You learn how to write that story, that book. You have to learn all over again how to write the next one. So the experience is always different, always new.)

I should point out here that despite my fears, The Thorn and the Blossom is doing so much better than I could ever have anticipated. Some people will like it, some people won't, and that's always the way things are. But it's selling!

Today, I saw three things other people had said about fear. The first one is something I see every day, because it's tacked to the bulletin board above my desk. I originally took it from Terri Windling's blog:

"What would you do if you weren't afraid"?

It's on a post-it note, but I should probably have it typed up, or even tattooed on me somewhere, because it's quickly becoming my motto. I ask myself that question often: what would I do in this situation if I weren't afraid? There are several projects I'm working on at the moment. One is a poetry collection, which I think I've mentioned, and that's attended with all the fears one always has about a book: what if no one likes it? What if my poetry is terrible? And there's a secret project of sorts that will accompany the poetry collection, which I'll tell you about soon. And then there's a super secret project that I'm just starting to work on, and that one I really had to think about. But I thought, what would I do if I weren't afraid? And the answer was, I would do it. So there.

The second thing I saw today came from Twitter:

"A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom." – Aung San Suu Kyi

Yup. Especially common sense. We think it doesn't make sense to do something, or do it in a particular way, and so we don't do it. Well, common sense is just shorthand for what other people would say. And what do you care about what other people would say? You are you, you have your vision, and you have to follow it. Despite common sense. You have to do it sensibly, in that you need to make sure you can eat and have a roof over your head while you're following that dream. But there's also such a thing as uncommon sense. Your uncommon sense is that small voice inside you that tells you which way to go. If you don't think you have one, that's because you haven't been listening to it. Listen, and it will be telling you all the time where you should go next.

And then, I saw this on Jeff Vandermeer's blog, in a post called "Things I Know?":

"Fear and taking the short-term view will harm not just your career but your creativity. Conversely, taking chances while keeping the long-term in mind will often reward you. But the important thing here is beating the fear. Even writing itself is often about beating the fear – evading the fear that comes with the editorial mind-set, which can rob you of the confidence to write. In the broader sense, it's fear that makes us not push outside of our comfort zones. It's fear that tells us we're not worthy of an opportunity. It's fear that tells us this new thing isn't something we can actually accomplish. Jumping in with both feet while being aware of the long-term effects of what you're doing is so important. Saying yes is so important. As important? Don't fall into patterns of paranoia and bitterness. Something is always going to go wrong in your career. There's no getting around that. You can lose yourself in circles of why that turn your world into a place where you only see the negative. This just feeds the fear more, and gives you more excuses to not do something."

I can't add anything to that – it says what it needs to so perfectly. Oh, and that question about why I bother to write books in the first place? It's because I look at the world around me, and there are things about it I don't like. And so I want to change it. Changing the world: that's why I do what I do. Despite the fear, following my uncommon sense.

(Do you think we'd still be talking about Joan of Arc if she hadn't followed her uncommon sense?)