Rachel Hartman's Blog, page 16

I fathom the bucket

I thought I would escape the ice bucket challenge unscathed, since everyone who knows me personally lives in fear of my basilisk’s glare. However, fellow writer and alert reader Amanda Fowler has called me out, so here I am getting silly in support of ALS research. I sing. You’re all doomed.

You’ll notice I didn’t explicitly tag anyone in the video. My camera operator (who came down with the giggles there at the end) BEGGED me to challenge him and has just run to the gas station for ice, so he...

Shostakovich’s Fifth

An astute reader recently asked me whether I’d had a particular song in mind for the “Invocation” Seraphina plays at Prince Rufus’s funeral. I did, in fact: there’s a moment late in the first movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 where a flute plays a plaintive melody, echoed by French horn.

If you’re not familiar with Shostakovich’s Fifth, here’s a decent interpretation by our old friend Lenny Bernstein:

If you’re the impatient sort, the flute/French horn duet is at about 14:00. That said,...

Shadow Scale cover!

It’s on Amazon already, so I’m overdue posting it here:

Oooh! Pretty! And I’m told it will have a sheen to it, like the purple Seraphina cover.

Yes, the wood-block print is by the same artist who did Seraphina‘s cover, Andrew Davidson.

The Amazon listing describes it as “a companion to Seraphina,” which is already causing a little confusion over on Twitter. Let there be no doubt:Shadow Scale is a sequel, plan and simple, told from Seraphina’s point of view. It begins about three months after the...

Midsummer madrigals

So my lovely Madrigalians gave a concert yesterday evening, and it went wonderfully well. Each member of the choir was “piece monger” – meaning chooser, conductor, and ultimate arbiter of taste – for one song. That meant we sang as many songs as there are members of the choir, which was a lot of music to learn!

Anyway, it occurs to me that I can give you a virtual concert right here, or nearly. None of these recordings are us, of course, but here’s what we sang, in order:

Belle, qui tiens ma vi...

Filling up

Ahhhh… you know what I missed being able to do while I was working on the sequel? READ. Ye gods. I felt guilty any time I did, and even when I had time and leisure it was hard to really dig into anything. I just didn’t have the energy and mental resources to spare, so what I read slid off me, water off a duck’s back (the exception being non-fiction, which I would read because it was relevant).

Now I am afflicted with Cookie Monster Brain. I don’t merely want books, I want to eat them noisily a...

Rested and ready for trouble

After three weeks of aggressive laziness, I find myself feeling all squirrelly and full of vim today. I spent much of the last week on the floor with a heating pad after throwing out my back; I’m sure it’s no coincidence that I’m feeling better today.

Long ago, my grandmother advised my mother to spend time every day sitting in a chair, getting used to being old. My mother, ever the contrarian, did not follow that advice, but that’s how I’ve felt for the last week, like I was practising senesc...

Symbolism and the subconscious

I read thisarticle at Paris Reviewabout a high school student in 1963 who surveyed famous writers about their use of symbolism. The impetus seems to have been an argument with his English teacher about whether writers put symbols into their work intentionally. The answers the writers give are varied and fascinating, and I think I want this quote from Ray Bradbury tattooed on my bicep:

I trust my subconscious implicitly. It is my good pet. I try to keep it well fed with information through all...

DONE.

The sequel. Written. Sent.

All out of words.

Ce moys de may!

The jolly, jolly month of May! Here’s how I’m feeling right now:

Five days ’til Le Grand Deadline, darlings. I am so close to done, I can taste it. I really am ready to come up out of this hole I’ve been living in and go biking and singing in the sunshine.

Back soon!

Did it February where you are?

Because it seems not to have Februaried on this blog. Hm. Extraordinary.

I’m not really here. Or more accurately: I am here but briefly, giving myself a break from writing. As if blogging weren’t writing.

I hit my Jan. 31st deadline hard, with a hammer, and then I was tired. I rested for a couple-or-three weeks, until my editor started slipping me revisions again. They’re GOOD revisions, and I can’t underscore what a relief that is. However, that means I am in the throes of work again, at least...