Rachel Hartman's Blog, page 19

Sunburst Award!

As some of you may have heard already, Seraphina has been awarded the 2013 YA Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. A big thank-you to this year’s jury, and congratulations toMartine Desjardins, winner of the adult award, to all the runners-up, and to Lesley Livingston, who won the Sunburst Society’s Copper Cylinder Award. I got to meet Lesley this past weekend, and she is a fabulous human being.

In fact, I have an amusing tale to tell you. This past weekend I gave a reading...

Happy Turkish book birthday!

If any of you read Turkish, you’re in luck! Seraphina is now in Turkish too.

I’ve been to Turkey, so this was an international sale I was particularly tickled about. Someday I can regale you with tales of how the Basilica Cistern gave me the massive heebie-jeebies, or how we got unbelievably lost and dehydrated in Izmir. Or how I ate olives wrapped in anchovies and was thirsty for the next three days, or how the music-store clerks scoffed at our super old-fashioned taste in baglama music.

Good...

Dragon Con!

This coming weekend I will be a guest at Dragon Conin Atlanta. I’m very excited, not least because the con has such an apropos name. Back in my comic book days, I went to a lot of conventions, but I never made it down to Dragon Con. Nice to be able to rectify that omission years later.

For those interested in seeing me there, I’ll be participating in six panels:

YA at Its Finest

Description: YA authors discuss the how-tos and wherefores of writing forthe YA market.

Time: Sat10:00 amLocation: Emba...

Going through my head today

Steve Howe’s merry guitar tune, “Clap”

I had understood the title of this song to be “The Clap”, as in the STD, but according to Wikipedia, that’s wrong. I just checked our antique tape of The Yes Album, and there it is, wrong. How annoying would that be, to write a jolly little song in honour of your son’s birth and then some album-cover designer renames it after gonorrhea. I’d be a little upset, I have to admit.

But what a happy song, and what an interesting video of it. I’m so used to the ce...

A nautical feast!

I would like to give credit where credit’s due: this was all my husband’s idea. He planned it, he researched it, he (and my son) did most of the cooking. And although I won’t say this was the most delicious meal I’ve ever eaten, it was one of the most fun.

They started out yesterday making hardtack, not just for us to eat straight, but because figgy dowdy is made mostly of hardtack. Hardtack itself is made of flour, water, and a little salt, then baked at a low temperature until it is hard as...

Our continuing culinary adventures

You may remember that we steamed a haggis ’round these parts onBobby Burns Day back in January. Well, we’re up to no good again, this time in the form of 19th century nautical cuisine. My husband has been reading Patrick O’Brian’s novels – basis for the movieMaster and Commander, if that’s more familiar – and he’s grown increasingly intrigued by what the sailors eat.

And who wouldn’t want to try figgy dowdy? I maintain he’s got a point.

And so, yes, we’re diving in. Today he and our son will be...

Hello, old friends

Why yes, it has been forever — or maybe half of forever, which is close enough. I hope you weren’t worried. I needed to step away from this space for a while. I may do it again at some point, with or without warning. Well, THIS is your warning, I guess.

I think it’s fair to blame the sequel for pretty much everything. The way it ate my brain, the way it had me so stressed out in April that I would freeze up when I sat down to write. This sequel has, on occasion, been very very mean to me.

Or I’...

A pair of book birthdays

I’m early for one and late for the other, but let’s just pretend it’s Presidents’ Day and celebrate both together! Here’s the cover for the Brazilian edition of Seraphina, which came out in April:

Hurray! I hope Brazilian readers are enjoying the book!

And then, coming out at the end of May, we’ve got the Indonesian Seraphina!

My Indonesian translator informs me that this is original art by Martin Dima. I love how it’s reminiscent of the North American cover – sepia tones, Medieval city – while...

Two weekends, two events

Last weekend I did a reading at McGill Library in Burnaby, where my madrigal choir (plus an extra musical guest) very kindly agreed to sing, and where my friend Els very kindly agreed to take some pictures.

I started off reading excerpts from Seraphina and fielding questions from the crowd. And it was one of the biggest crowds I’ve had:

I talked a lot. It’s a well-known fact that I can go on and on:

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“Well, now, let me tell you a little story about THAT…”

The second half was devoted to our musical...

I am sitting in a room

My friend John told me about this recently, but it took me a while to work up the nerve to listen to it. It’s an interesting bit of experimental music. It’s also 45 minutes long, so don’t feel you have to sit through the whole thing. You get a pretty good idea of where it’s going just a few minutes in. I was astonished how distorted it was by about seven minutes, utterly unintelligible at twelve.

I’ve got it running in the background. Right now, it sounds like blurry chords.

It’s an interesting...