Rachel Hartman's Blog, page 44

I touch on a touchy subject

In the almost-one-year since I joined Goodreads, the topic of authors reviewing books there has come up again and again. I haven't been in on most of the conversations, and I'm not going to link to them (lest I draw the Eye of Sauron toward myself), but the upshot is usually something like this: authors should not post negative reviews on Goodreads because it will come back and bite them in the butt someday.

If you can't say something nice, in other words, say NOTHING.

This morning I read a...

It's OK to be Takei in YA

I feel like I ought to link to the current big YA brouhaha: Agent asks authors to "straighten" main character.

This is not the first time I've heard of something like this happening, and it's appalling, to be sure.

I just want to add my data point to the debate, however: my book, in all its incarnations, has always had gay characters in it. There was even a transsexual in one version (who sadly is no more, not for being transsexual but because I was having to engage in painful, artificial...

Cacophony

[This post has a sister: Symphony. You may wish to read that one first, but it's not strictly necessary.]

One of my favourite books is This Is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel J. Levitin. Levitin is a neuroscientist at McGill University; before that, he was a session musician and sound engineer. I have always been one to ask stupid questions about music — Why does it exist? How does it have the power to move me? Why do Rush songs always sound like noise to me the first time I hear them? It's...

Merry updates

* I finished a plot outline for the sequel to Seraphina on Wednesday, and am feeling quite jolly about it. It was only the fourth attempt, which isn't bad (for me). I sent it to El Señor Don Gato Editor, who appeared to rather like it, which means there will be lots of revisions.

* Yes, there would also have been lots of revisions if he hadn't liked it, except that they wouldn't be "revisions" so much as "Could you please start over and come up with an actual plot this time? What? I said...

Across a crowded room (full of books)

Here's an interesting post by Cory Doctorow on marketing, or as he puts it, "getting people to care about the products of your imagination". The article's focus ends up being on self-publishing, but I think it's relevant for any author, really.

What interested me most (because I approach everything obliquely for some reason) was the first few paragraphs where he described his early bookselling career. I've been a bookseller, too, and he's got his finger on something I often used to feel: the p...

On art

A friend recently mentioned my "Epic Fail" post on a Metafilter comment thread. I've been checking back periodically to see whether the arguments are still going or if they've died down. I am intrigued to note that the discussion seems to have veered away from feminism and toward art (well, some of it has. The part I find most interesting).

I really like talking about art. I am tempted to make myself a Metafilter account and leap right in, but I don't have the time and besides, if I want to...

Fall in love with the future!

Go check out The Intergalactic Academy, where my writer friends Phoebe and Sean have just started blogging about YA science fiction. The future's looking better already!

The Heroine's Journey

On Tuesday I was talking with a friend of mine who is a doula and a writer, among other things (I'm linking to her, because you never know! One of you might need a doula). She has recently been training to teach Birthing From Within classes.

At this point you're probably saying to yourself, "Did I click the wrong link and end up at someone's baby blog? What does childbirth preparation have to do with writing?" Read and learn, darlings!

There are lots of different kinds of birthing classes...

Tiny updates

* Still no cover yet. Don't fret: you'll be the first to know, once it's official and I'm allowed to shove the artwork in everyone's face, crying, "Look! Looooook!" So really, enjoy the quiet while you've still got it.

* I started reading Enchanted Glass yesterday, Diana Wynne Jones's last novel (unless there's something posthumous up the sleeve of her estate)(ooh, the Wikipedia page makes it sound like there is another one, or part of another one anyway). It's proven extremely easy to slip...

Symphony

I have always written to music.

It started when I was eleven or twelve. I'd curl up on the old brown couch with a spiral notebook across my knees, put on the huge, archaic headphones, and shut out the world. I sometimes suspect the "writing*" was just an excuse to wrap myself in music and ignore everything else.

* Not that I wasn't writing. My fantasy and SF novels comprised many spiral notebooks of vibrantly dreadful prose. Let it never be said I didn't produce.

I listened to records in those d...