C.L. Anderson's Blog, page 3

It’s Book Day!

Happy Book Day to all who celebrate! In honor of the release of DANGEROUS DECEPTIONS, not to mention the paperback of PALACE OF SPIES, I thought I’d post the lovely trailer the folks at HMH created to help introduce the world to Peggy Fitzroy, spy, card sharp, housebreaker, impersonator of persons of quality and maid of honor to Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales…

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Maleficent at 47

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!

You read that up there about the spoilers right? Right. Okay.

I saw the original Disney Sleeping Beauty in the movie theater. I was 9. Disney was doing one of it’s periodic re-releases of its classic animated features, and Mom took me as a reward for having memorized my multiplication tables up to 6. I never saw the ending (at least in the theater), because Mom also had to haul me out of the theater because when Maleficent turned into the dragon I started screaming...

That Old Time Feeling

Writing is, by necessity, a profession of emotions. Emotions are at the heart of character, and character is at the heart of story. And at the heart of the human brain is a quirk that by describing a feeling, you invoke it in yourself. So, there’s no part of writing a novel that is not going to put the writer on an emotional roller coaster. And people wonder why we tend to drink so much…

But there are other ways that the work itself gets emotionally involving. One comes at the very beginning....

On Diversity

This is going to be short and to the point:

We need more diversity in US publishing. There is no question. This is not limited to the very real need for more writers representing the full spectrum of the native and immigrant peoples of the USA, but we desperately, desperately need people from across a far wider range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds as editors, publishers and marketers. Because it is only when the institutions that create the books that most people still buy and read change...

Encounters with the Fantastic — A Fantastic Doll’s House

Any fantasy author can talk about encounters with the fantastic in the real world. We’ve all had them, or we wouldn’t write what we do.

Usually, I blame my choice of profession, and subject on the fact I learned to read out of The Wizard of Oz. But there were other influences. One of the strongest was, and still is, in Chicago.

My grandparents lived in Chicago, and we used to go visit a couple of times a year. My mother, who was really hoping to raise pratical minded children who understood the...

City Magic

I have a love-hate relationship with “urban fantasy.”

On the one hand, I love cities. I think they are magic by their nature. When I was a little kid, we lived in Buffalo, New York. I could walk, on my own, to school, to ballet class, to the stores (especially Herzog’s Drug Store which had orange creamcicles), to the movie theater (saw Godzilla vs. The Thing at the Granada before I was 8. Life was good), to Parkside’s Ice Cream (which had peppermint stick ice cream, the only substance known to...

Sweet Home Chicago

From the time I started thinking seriously about the American Fairy books, I was sure Callie and Jack were going to end up in Chicago. It was, in fact, one of the first things I knew about their story.

Fairies and magic have always been linked to beauty, creativity and glamor. For a story set in the 1930s, it was easy to take this and run with it so that the Seelie Court — the bright, beautiful, literally glamourous fairy — would gather in and around Hollywood. Once I realized that the focus f...

My Romantic Times — Day 1

There’re a lot of reasons for an author to go to the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention. For starters, it’s packed with readers who love all kinds of books. Second, it’s packed full of all kinds of great pros.

This year, the third reason was it was in New Orleans.

For me, the trip did not start on a high note. The flight down was as pleasant as a flight can be these days, even though we had to set out at OHMYGODWHOSEIDEAWASTHIS-thirty in the morning. Even though we had to change planes in Cha...

SF Mistressworks Project

THE SF MISTRESSWORKS PROJECT is an excellent list of SF written by women. And I’m not just saying that because Fool’s War is #92.

The post SF Mistressworks Project appeared first on Sarah Zettel.

RIP Mickey Rooney

I am a huge fan of movie musicals. I am an unabashed romantic. I adore old movies, and vaudeville. This would make me a natural fan of Mickey Rooney’s work. He was a genuine trooper. He fought hard against his demons and in the end, he won.

Given all that, though, my absolute favorite piece of work by Mr. Rooney, was his star turn in the Twilight Zone episode, Last Night of a Jockey. Sad, lonely, utterly creepy, and all at the same time:

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