Scott Westerfeld's Blog, page 28

Goliath Art Reveal

Okay, here we are only a couple of days late, a sneak preview of some art from Goliath!

Click here for a zoomable version. You can zoom it up REAL BIG.

In other news, there's a new book out now called The Steampunk Bible. It has interviews and art from a bunch of steampunk authors and artists, including three pages about me and Leviathan.

Here's what it looks like:

Click here to read more about it.

More blogging soon. Thanks for your patience!

May 1 Art Released Delayed

Sorry, but my promised Goliath art preview has been delayed due to the NEWS.

As a New Yorker who lives (part of the year) less than two miles from Ground Zero, this result has affected me in an unexpectedly emotional way. Closure is a real thing, apparently. But in a couple of days, I'll be back to normal. And there will be ART then.

I am having cake now. (Cake, also a real thing.)

Ganked for here.

Fan Art Friday

Back in my younger days, when people would ask where I went to high school, the conversation would often go like this:

"I go to Arts Magnet."

"Oh. So you're a painter."

"No."

"A sculptor?"

"Um, no."

"What? You just draw?"

"Nope."

"But . . . you're an artist, right?"

"Yep. I compose music and direct and act in plays."

"Oh, right. Artssss Magnet."

*sighs*

One of the fudgeries of spoken English is the way we often use the word for a subset to mean the whole set, and vice versa. To some people, "artist" means "painter," "American" means "from the USA," and "animal" means "multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdoms Animalia or Metazoa BUT NOT HUMANS CAUSE WE'RE SPESHUL."

Of course, we're starting to get rid of a lot of these fudges, but it's still tricky. I often use "USian" instead of "American," but as a southerner I correct Aussies who call me a "yank." The politics of who's the subset in these verbal habits can be very problematic, you see. (But at least pretty much everyone has given up saying "man" for "humanity.")

AND YET, here I've done more than a dozen Fan Art Fridays, and about 99% of the fan art I've shared with you is drawn or painted (or the digital equivalent). Apparently I've been colonized by my painterly high school oppressors without even realizing it!

So here we are at last, a special edition of Fan Art Friday in which NO art is drawn or painted. (Well, some of it is, partly. There is no escape.)

Let's start off with costumes. Here's an awesome piloting jacket by DA's WaxesNostalgic, based on Alek's from Leviathan:

Cool, huh? You don't see enough leather in cosplay.

And here's some self-portraiture by bano–kagi, which is partly cosplay, but also involves the art of resembling Deryn Sharp without even trying.

I mean, seriously. It's like she jumped out of the book.

SPEAKING OF WHICH:

This one is sort of on the border between drawing and sculpture, but you will agree it's totally cool. See if you can find the Leviathan characters in "Jump Off the Page" by ThePrinceOfParties.

This is a crop. You must follow this link for the whole thing!

Characters jumping out of books makes me happy.

More sculpture! Of a Huxley Ascender! This one from Parker-Strom.

And in a more jewelry mode, Heather L. offers up one of the Leviathan's fabricated bees:

It's so glittery, kind of like I describe the bees in the gut.

And now . . . something that will keep you Midnighters fans in stitches.

Heh, in stitches. (Bada-BOOM.) From Kristen G, who is clearly awesome, because those midnighters symbols are really detailed.

And in the photography category, Ren W. and Sammy sent me shots of the sky that might be related to Leviathan, of course. But which might also be somehow related to a CERTAIN LINE at the beginning of the Uglies series!

That one's by Ren W, and this next one's by Sammy.

Okay, we've covered Leviathan, Midnighters, and Uglies, and EIGHT pieces of art, so I think I'm stopping here. (Still fluey.) Rest assured, though, there will be more non-painterly art next week, including the bajillion pieces of fan-fiction you all sent me. (So. Much. Fan. Fiction.)

There will also be a tattoo, or perhaps even two. Seriously.

If you're coming to BEA or simply live near New York City, don't forget

my appearances next month. I'm coming 10,000 miles for this BEA, so I don't want any empty chairs!

And just a reminder, you guys know I'm on Twitter, right?

Book Week Events

Before I get to Fan Art Friday, there's a bunch of STUFF I should mention.

1) My New York Public Library event for Book Expo America has been moved to a bigger venue. If you tried to book tickets and were denied due to overflow, you can try again. Here are the deets:

NY Book Week Science Fiction/Fantasy Evening

NYPL Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd and 5th

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

6:00 – 7:45PM

Contact: Chris Shoemaker, [Christopher_Shoemaker@nypl.org], 212.340.0958

Authors: MC: Gavin Grant (Small Beer Press)

Music: Brian Slattery

Lev Grossman, John Scalzi, Catherynne M. Valente, Scott Westerfeld

Sponsored by: BEA, NYPL, KGB Fantastic Fiction Series, NYRSF Reading Series

Each author will be reading for about twenty minutes, accompanied by original improvisational music courtesy of the excellent Brian Slattery. Then: Q&A.

I'll also be at the BookRageous Bash later that night, at 8:30. Google it!

2) For those of you attending actual BEA, I'll be signing at 1PM on Wednesday, May 25. This is a ticketed signing, so check out this schedule of all the authors, which also explains how to get tickets.

3) And I have a panel on Wednesday night too!

Writing for Teens Today : Authors Speak

Join some of today's hottest YA authors as they discuss writing for teens in today's market. From developing authentic voices to keeping the reader hooked, from plot twists and turns to keeping the slang right, find out their tips and tricks to staying in style.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Mulberry Street Library

10 Jersey St.

New York, NY

212-966-3424

Ally Condie – Matched

James Dashner – The Scorch Trials

Ellen Hopkins – Fallout

Maureen Johnson – The Last Little Blue Envelope

Lauren Kate – Torment

Scott Westerfeld – Behemoth

Bring your copy from home or buy a fresh edition on site and collect autographs! Fully accessible to wheelchairs. Ages 12-18. (Does this mean adults can't come? I doubt it, but maybe we're only signing for teens. Who knows?)

There are many other things going on around BEA, of course. Here's a list of all the other events that are open to the public.

See you at BEA.

An Interview, an Apology

Yes I'm SORRY I didn't post an fan art last Friday. I was overwhelmed with submissions and with a touch of the flu. But rest assured that you'll be seeing lashings of fan art right here THIS Friday.

In the meantime, I have a cool interview to share with you, but first some very important news:

Today is the book birthday of The Last Little Blue Envelope, Maureen Johnson's long-awaited sequel to 13 Little Blue Envelopes. I'm sure zillions of you read that ages ago, and will want to get the new one TODAY. If you haven't read 13 LBE, you've been missing a total YA classic.

The books are about a girl who inherits a set of 13 envelopes containing mysterious messages from her recently deceased aunt. She has to travel around Europe to decode them, and discovers love and art and much more in the process. 13 LBE is justly famous and beloved, and is simply a must read. I'm sure the sequel is going to be awesome.

And now for my interview with the Science Fiction Book Club, which is publishing its own edition of the Leviathan trilogy. This interview contains some tantalizing hints about Goliath, and reveals for the first time some of the amazing color images from the companion art book for the series, The Manual of Aeronautics.

Click here to watch it bigger. Thanks to Diana Pho and the SFBC for taking the time to chat with me.

Before you ask, The Manual of Aeronautics comes out in August 2012. It's in a bigger format than the other books, so you can bask in its large and glorious images, and is ALL in color. There are beasties, machines, uniforms, character portraits, and of course loads of plans from a certain living airship. (Obviously, Keith does the art.)

See you Friday.

Goliath Word Cloud

Back in 2009 I blogged a word cloud of Leviathan as a NaNoWriMo tip.

Word clouds (made easy by the lovely and clever people at Wordle) are graphic representations of which words appear, and how often, in your novel, blog, or whatever. The words are sized, of course, in relation to how many times they pop up.

Word clouds great for spotting words that a writer uses too often, like my terrible habit of people frowning before they say something, or my once-rampant obsession with the word "effulgent."

They're also kind of fun for creating quasi-spoilery anticipation. And with that goal in mind, I offer you the Goliath word cloud five months before the book comes out!

Click here to see the full-size version. You know you want to.

Your sharp young eyes will no doubt note that I had to remove one word from the results. It was just too spoilerizing, and rather big as you can see. But the rest remains unaltered.

Of course, certain words that are missing (or quite small) can be just as spoilery as the ones that are there. So don't look too close unless you want to suffer from S3krit Knowledge You Cannot Forgetz.

For my own purposes, I'm glad to see that "frowned" is very wee, and "effulgent" nowhere to be found. Sadly, "barking" is smaller than I thought it would be, and "perspicacious" totally missing! (But don't worry, "Bovril" is happily medium sized.)

Best of all, the dreaded "just" is either not there or too tiny to see, so that's another bad habit of mine expunged. Yay.

If you're a writer, this old NaNoWriMo post of mine will give you a few more hints how to use word clouds in your own work.

See you on Fan Art Friday!

Dyslit Essay

Just in case you thought I'd given up serious blogging to spend all my time trolling Deviant Art, let it be known that I just wrote a real essay about Literary Things.

It was for Tor.com's Dystopia Week (to which I say, ONLY A WEEK?) and was an analysis of why teenagers like tales of dystopia.

The funny thing is, lately everyone wants dystopia essays from me, because dyslit is BIG and I am officially a famous fake expert in how teens think, especially about dystopian fiction, thanks to the whole writing Uglies thing. (Score.)

A snippet:

Teenagers' lives are constantly defined by rules, and in response they construct their identities through necessary confrontations with authority, large and small. Imagining a world in which those authorities must be destroyed by any means necessary is one way of expanding that game. Imagining a world in which those authorities are utterly gone is another.

It's little wonder, then, that a lot of YA dyslit embraces both extremes of hyper-control and of chaos, wedding an oppressive government with post-apocalyptic ruin . . .

Click here to read the rest. And then comment here or there with your gentle sledgehammers of correction. Don't let us fake expert adults define you!

And now . . . back to trolling Deviant Art! Because it's Fan Art Friday. (Well, not here in Sydney, or even in New York, but somewhere in the world. Like, say, Hawaii.)

Here's a cutie from strawberrycream17:

I mean, seriously: Awww. Happy times. Check out strawberrycream17′s stuff at DA.

And another quiet moment from Tobuishi, who, after last week's Fan Art Friday, quite understandably requested that I use a piece of hers that didn't have the word "boobs" in it:

Click here to see her other stuff at DA.

I love how a lot of fan art and fan fic shows characters doing, you know, sort of nothing. Fan artists like showing the downtime that's part of everyone's real life, but doesn't ever quite get shown in canonical texts, because doing nothing isn't part of the uber-dramatic Story we authors are telling. Believe me, if we put it in there, editors would probably edit it out!

Fans actually want to see the downtime, though, or at least imagine it, because that makes the characters more real, more like someone you could hang out and do nothing with. So downtime becomes a major theme of the para-literature of fan fic and fan art.

Maybe I'll save these thoughts for another essay about Literary Things. But you know I'm right.

And speaking of just hanging out, here's another example, by Irrel, of everyday life aboard the Leviathan:

HAH! GOT YOU! Awkward moment is awkward! (Here's the source on DA.)

Okay, some fan art is totally dramatic, telling its own fantabulous non-canonical story, or even predicting what will happen in a not-yet-published book like Goliath. This is why writing Serious Essays is a pain, because you have to keep second-guessing yourself.

Awkward, heh.

So for the next Fan Art Friday, let's do something different. Send me art that's not regular two-dimensional drawings and such. You know: fan fic, sculpture, cosplay, music, models, video, photography, or whatever else you can come up with or find out in the interwebs.

I'm curious as to how much is out there. And I think we've had quite enough of a certain couple's canoodlings!

See you soon.

Sequential Fan Art Friday

I've been getting a lot of sequential Leviathan fan art lately, series of pictures that tell a story.

You will also note that all the fan art this week has something of a THEME.

But first! Remember that the April meet-up is almost here! Come to the WesterForum and ask me all the questions you want.

For USians, it will be tomorrow (probably today by the time you read this):

Saturday, April 9 at 8PM Eastern Time, 7PM Central, and 5PM Pacific.

For you here in Australia, it will be 10AM Sunday (April 10) on the east coast, 7AM on the west coast, and 9:30AM in Adelaide.

And in London . . . I'm afraid due to all the time changes, it'll be 1AM, Saturday night/Sunday morning. Sorry, Europe!

And now for our first piece of sequential fan art, from Ana Lind:

Heh, heh. That one's from the book, but the next one is from an entirely different reality. From Sydney H:

Awhh.

So compare those two little stories: one comic, one sentimental. That's the thing about characters in disguise, you can go for comedy or for pathos, because the act of hiding oneself lends itself equally well to either. That's why crossdressing is such a popular fictional device, from Twelfth Night to Tootsie.

On another note, are you getting the THEME yet? if not, check out this more comic take from Tobuishi at Deviant Art:

Okay, that was a bit unexpected, even mysterious! But yes, lots of fan art lately in which Deryn and Alek get together somehow. I WONDER WHY.

And finally, though neither sequential nor get-togethery, a lovely portrait from Audrey E:

Tazza . . .

See you all at the meet-up!

An April Fool's Confession

Well, yes, last week's Goliath art reveal was a bit of an April Fool's Day joke from me and Keith, as many of you realized/suspected/hoped.

The comment thread of that post is excellent reading, however, because your myriad theories are awesome and amusing. (Two hundred, eleven comments and counting!) Many of you wondered if this illustration was photoshopped from lots of real Goliath art, but I shall not answer that question. You'll have to read the book to see!

Heh.

But I will say that the bride in the image is Lilit, and everyone else is basically who they appear to be, some of your more madcap theories notwithstanding. (I liked the place-switching ones. And sheeze, I LOT of you want to see Alek in a dress.)

Of course, this means that I owe you another piece of art from Goliath. And a REAL one this time.

So here it is, a piece of spot art from Chapter 23, which I aver to be entirely non-bogus and non-photoshopped. (And you still trust me now, right? RIGHT?)

Edwardian loris is Edwardian. Heh, heh.

Also:

Lots of you have noticed that the Forum is misbehaving, not letting anyone sign in. This is being worked on and will be fixed soon-ishly. Apologies!

The meetup next weekend is still on!

Goliath Reveal 2

It's the first of the month, so it's time for the April art reveal!

I won't tell you what chapter of Goliath this is from, because that might be too, um, spoilery.

Please enjoy!

Click here for a zoomable version! And then, you know, zoom some.

Don't forget the meet-up next Saturday/Sunday (depending on your time zone). I'll be there to answer all your questions.