K.A. Laity's Blog, page 169

Publication: Wild Desire

My essay on Johanna Sinisalo's Troll: A Love Story is up on the new magazine for the Mythic Imagination Institute. "Wild Desire" was originally a conference paper given at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts a few years back.









Here's a snippet:



Wild Desire: Gendering the Other in Sinisalo's Troll: A Love Story

by K. A. Laity



Trolls have long had a firm grip on the Finnish imagination. While written records do not reach far enough back to find its roots, no doubt the...

Thank You, Boojums!

It doesn't take much to make me smile. Just a thoughtful little thing like this:





Yep, it's a lovely congratulatory post card of a Polly Thayer painting from my pals and affixed to the back? A ticket stub from a performance of Good Evening with my idol, Peter Cook and (my almost idol) Dudley Moore. As you can see from the note, it was found in a library book (I love how so many of my friends work in libraries) about Russian icons (?!).



Little stub, big smile. Thank you, Boojums.



ADDENDUM p...

Unikirja Book Trailer

Here's my new video, featuring the beautiful music of Ulla Suokko, whom I'll be celebrating this week over at The Women's League of Ale Drinkers, part of the month long festival of creative women. I'm trying to focus the rhetoric of these trailers on opening up the sometimes obscure titles of my books to give a sense of the flavor of the stories. You can tell me whether I'm succeeding.





I've kind of had the feeling lately of needing a dump truck to unload my head, so it's been good to work o...

Cover Me

With stunning speed, here's the cover already for my as-yet-unedited novel The Mangrove Legacy, forthcoming from Tease Publishing in November or December:





Thanks to the fabulous Stella Price, who is not only the art director for Tease, but was also the person who encouraged me to try submitting something to them. I love the background photo of the Gothic folly and the woman on the sofa kind of picks up on the theme of dreams. I loved writing all the surreal dream sequences. It's hard to cap...

BitchBuzz: Hate Cute

My latest column:

Mainstream Media Realize RomComs Hate Women Suddenly everyone in the media seems to have noticed what women have been talking about for years: how rom-coms seem to really hate on women.



 The high profile story is Maureen Dowd's back-and-froth with social historian Sam Wasson about "Why romantic comedies now reek." It's a fairly entertaining exchange with highlights like Wasson saying, "Every time I see Jennifer Aniston's or Jennifer Garner's face I wince...

Contracted: The Mangrove Legacy

Good news! I sent off the contract this morning: Tease Publishing will be releasing The Mangrove Legacy in November or December of this year. Initially, it will be an ebook, but if sales are brisk enough, it may see print in 2011. Now I can reveal that the "author" of the book will be Kit Marlowe. Thanks again to the fabulous Stephanie Johnson for designing Kit's portrait, based on a photo of me and a very cool hat I found trawling the internet. Very Georgette Heyer, eh?



One of the immediate...

More Jane Quiet!

Drop by the Jane Quiet site to see the new developments -- gotta get back to work on that script! Elena's catching up to me.

New Journal!

I'm really pleased to announce that the Women's League of Ale Drinkers has decided to start a journal to share with the world the fabulous women who support the League.  You can see the details over at the League's site, but here's a precis:



And that is the mandate of the new journal for the Women's League of Ale Drinkers, for which Vicky will serve as editor. We seek only work that meets these criteria, the output of creative women who may feel that their vision and passion has been...

Advertisements for Myself

I'm beginning to doubt their usefulness and they seem to cause nothing but headaches in the making, yet here I go again: a general book trailer using my new "branding" concept, as developed in conversation on this blog: hard to spell, easy to read!















The music is courtesy of my friend Gerry Luoma Henkel, who built my first kantele, Louhi. Gerry makes amazing instruments and beautiful music; not surprisingly, he tells me some of his music is going to be be featured in a play as well as in...

BitchBuzz: Joan Rivers

My latest column:



Still making the rounds slowly is the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Do yourself a favour and check it out. Yeah, I know what you're thinking: argh, the red carpet embarrassments! Criminy, Celebrity Apprentice?! And yikes, the plastic surgery.



True enough; no argument here. But if you have any inkling of what a tough gig comedy is and triply so for a female, you will march yourself and all your friends to the theatre to see what that really...