Cat Hellisen's Blog, page 30

A spotlight on a review in a box

Or maybe just a spotlight, a review, and a box.

I have this broken old reading lamp that was shade of blue that just doesn't work in my house. So I'm turning it into a white flower, because I love kitsch shit, basically. Here's step one:

Lamp outside, waiting for me to spray paint like a spray painting thing:

Now white and with new bulbs, and waiting for me to get myself in gear to finish what I started:

(yeah, I haven't spray-painted much before. As you can tell. Hopefully my next adventure with an aerosol can is less…streaky. heh. Now to buy many many fake flowers and glue gun the shit out of this.)

OKAY then I promised you a review. *ahem*

Publisher's Weekly review When the Sea is Rising Red and say nice things. I am stoked!

 

Debut author Hellisen's style features evocative descriptions and unflinching detail, drawing readers into the unusual and intriguing elements that make up Felicita's socially complex world.

 

And a box. I made it. It's adorbs.

I kinda want to make some more with hand-made paper for things for book launching, but we'll see how I feel in a month's time. (Hi, I'm lazy, pleased to meet you!)

 

 

 

                                      

When the Sea is Rising Red

After seventeen-year-old Felicita's dearest friend Ilven kills herself to escape an arranged marriage, Felicita chooses freedom over privilege. She fakes her own death and leaves her sheltered life as one of Pelimburg's magical elite behind. Living in the slums, scrubbing dishes for a living, she falls for charismatic Dash while also becoming fascinated with vampire Jannik. Then something shocking washes up on the beach: Ilven's death has called out of the sea a dangerous wild magic. Felicita must decide whether her loyalties lie with the family she abandoned . . . or with those who would twist this dark power to destroy Pelimburg's caste system, and the whole city along with it.

 

"Dark, perilous, haunted. Death surrounds this courageous female hero.  I couldn't stop reading, not when I had to know more so badly!" –Tamora Pierce, New York Times–bestselling author of the Beka Cooper trilogy

"When the Sea is Rising Red is a moody, atmospheric tale characterized by a creeping sense of dread that makes for a compelling read." – Jacqueline Carey, New York Times–bestselling author of the Kushiel's Legacy series

"In this smart, subtle fantasy reminiscent of Charles de Lint or Emma Bull, dreamy prose and exquisite world-building move the reader toward a powerful and fitting conclusion." —Rae Carson, author of The Girl of Fire and Thorns

"Rich in atmosphere and romance, When the Sea is Rising Red is a compelling tale of magic, friendship, and rebellion. A stunning debut!" —Suzanne Young, author of A Need So Beautiful

Available from:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Book Depository

Takealot

Kalahari

 

Or support your local indie! My favourites in Cape Town are The Book Lounge and Kalk Bay Books

                                      

BULLSEYE

It's not exactly a crafting post but it has a colourful splodge in the middle (that's the climax, btw, heh.) so I figure it's good enough. This here is my new attempt at Getting Plot Right. Shut up, I've just started on that beauty, kids. It should get more complicated.

 

The random bird is not part of the plot, but thinking on it now, it probably should be. *adds it in*

I also changed the opening again. Because I have a problem. And I know it.

 

So the current start is this, and as usual subject to immense change:

 

We were leaving everything, but at least we were still human, still sane. None of us had died yet, not like Father, who had become a falling angel, his biomagic-wings burning up like the tails of twin comets.

Or perhaps that's just how the newsmachine wanted us to imagine his glorious end. I think it was more like this; like pulling away from my life on a train I didn't want to be on, too scared to show how scared I was, with the blanket of the future clamped down on me – thick and wet and soaked in ethanol. I wondered if he felt that same small cramping deep in his body, just under his lungs, the way I did as the station was swallowed into murky fog, and the train rattled and heaved.

                                      

Pizza!

Because pizza(!) always deserves an exclamation.

 

The Elder Sprog has been nine for a while and we figured it was about time she learned to make a few meals more advanced than cereal. My evil plan is to train her up so that I can do nothing but turn into a kind of Jabba the Hutt thing that is surgically attached to my laptop, while The Spawn feed me pizza(!) and coffee. Okay not really. I like to be able to walk to the bathroom unassisted, at the very least.

 

I put forward the idea to the Elder Sprog that Wednesdays will be a day to learn to cook something, and did she have any preferences for her first go at chefdom? I will give you three guesses as to what she chose. Also, none of those guesses count.

 

Today I taught the Elder Sprog to make pizza(!) dough, and then showed both spawn how to do the toppings. Then they kicked me and The Slave out of the kitchen, and told us they were making us pizza(!) for supper.They took requests for toppings, squealed happily and worked together to produce their very first all-by-themselves pizzas(!)

 

It was the most wonderful pizza(!) in the world. And I love my strange little people who made it.

 

                                      

Flying ponies and Shiny New Books.

Tanith and I made flying ponies for the passage wall. The plan is to make new ones whenever we have nothing else to do. If I took anything from this it's that I need to be more like a four-year-old and use ALL THE COLOURS.

 

 

Today is a huge day for the Apocalypsies with three YA releases to kick off the year.

 

Marissa Meyer's Cinder:

"Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth's fate hinges on one girl. . . .

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She's a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister's illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai's, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world's future.

In this thrilling debut young adult novel, the first of a quartet, Marissa Meyer introduces readers to an unforgettable heroine and a masterfully crafted new world that's enthralling."

Cracked by K. M. Walton:

"Sometimes there's no easy way out.

Victor hates his life. He has no friends, gets beaten up at school, and his parents are always criticizing him. Tired of feeling miserable, Victor takes a bottle of his mother's sleeping pills—only to wake up in the hospital.

Bull is angry, and takes all of his rage out on Victor. That makes him feel better, at least a little. But it doesn't stop Bull's grandfather from getting drunk and hitting him. So Bull tries to defend himself with a loaded gun.

When Victor and Bull end up as roommates in the same psych ward, there's no way to escape each other or their problems. Which means things are going to get worse—much worse—before they get better…"

 

and Veronica Rossi's Under The Never Sky (LOVE that title!)

"Aria is a teenager in the enclosed city of Reverie. Like all Dwellers, she spends her time with friends in virtual environments, called Realms, accessed through an eyepiece called a Smarteye. Aria enjoys the Realms and the easy life in Reverie. When she is forced out of the pod for a crime she did not commit, she believes her death is imminent. The outside world is known as The Death Shop, with danger in every direction.

As an Outsider, Perry has always known hunger, vicious predators, and violent energy storms from the swirling electrified atmosphere called the Aether. A bit of an outcast even among his hunting tribe, Perry withstands these daily tests with his exceptional abilities, as he is gifted with powerful senses that enable him to scent danger, food and even human emotions.

They come together reluctantly, for Aria must depend on Perry, whom she considers abarbarian, to help her get back to Reverie, while Perry needs Aria to help unravel the mystery of his beloved nephew's abduction by the Dwellers. Together they embark on a journey challenged as much by their prejudices as by encounters with cannibals and wolves. But to their surprise, Aria and Perry forge an unlikely love – one that will forever change the fate of all who live UNDER THE NEVER SKY

The first book in a captivating trilogy, Veronica Rossi's enthralling debut sweeps you into an unforgettable adventure."

 

Have a wonderful release day, guys!

                                      

2012 day 2 – cupcakes

Last year was a bit of a slack year – partly because I tried focusing all my energy on writing and ended up suffering the most massive horrible burnout I have ever experienced. I still don't want to think about writing, but at least now when I do I can say to myself, "Don't go there," rather than have a panic attack.

 

Yeah.

 

The focus is going to shift a little – I'm going to record my creativity so that at the end of the year I can look back and say wow okay, I did stuff, I made things. This was a good year.

 

Whatever I make doesn't have to be anything amazing and difficult, it just has to bring me some kind of joy.

 

Today was cupcakes, the sprinkles added by The Spawn.

 

                                      

2012 Debut Author Challenge

Okay gotta get in on this one. It's an excuse to buy new books instead of trawling the 2nd-hand bookstore.

The original idea is over here – The Story Siren and the objective – "To read & review a minimum of twelve young adult or middle grade debut novels between the dates of January 1, 2012 – January 31, 2013."

 

I think 12 is a good number for me, one YA a month will hit the spot. I'll pick one from every month's debuts.

 

So, here's my list, although titles may change depending on availability

 

Jan:  The Alchemy of Forever -Avery Williams

Feb: Born Wicked – Jessica Spotswood

March: Croak – Gina Damico

April: Kiss the Morning Star – Elissa Janine Hoole

May:  The Nightmare Factory – Lucy Jones

June: The Shadows Cast by Stars – Catherine Knutsson

July: Something Strange and Deadly – Susan Dennard

August: Auracle – Gina Rosati

Sept: Touching the Surface – Kimberly Sabatini

Oct: Venom – Fiona Paul

Nov: Through to You – Emily Hainsworth

Dec: Pivot Point – Kasie West

                                      

ZOMBIES (oh and me having some wangst)

December 2nd? Really, Cat, that was your last post?

 

I am a slacker.

To be fair, I blame the constant partying. (This is a joke). It's summer here in Cape Town so there's much braaiing and drinking going on. That's the theory, heh.

 

December is a weird month for me. It's the time I've reached total and utter burn-out but somehow I need to get in gear for the summer holidays and prep presents and food. Normally this is doable but now I have this book-thing looming over me. Somehow I need to do promo and organise launchy things and write blog posts that are semi-coherent and stuff. Halp.

 

And I'm terrified and panic-stricken. It's beyond ridiculous. The book is done and I can't change things now. All that's left is for me to stand on the sidelines. But as much as I'd like to divorce myself from what happens now that the book is making its first forays into the wild, it's hard.

 

Yes, I read the reviews. Yes, I get sad when people don't get what I was trying to do and miss the point completely. On the flip-side, seeing people totally understand what the book is and falling in love with it – that's awesome. That makes it worthwhile.

 

Whatever happens next, I can at least say that I got this far. Maybe it's as far as I'm going to get, maybe I'll go on to sell more books – who knows. But at least the years of writing really shitty books paid off as my work slowly began to improve and I learned stuff about novel writing. (Osmosis and critique and writers' groups and books and books and more books. Oh and writing. LOTS of writing. In case you want to know the secret formulas.)

 

Now I get to learn stuff about disengaging from a published project and accepting that I have no control over how people react to it. All I can do is go and write and revise new work.

 

Oh, and I can order this book and get my Moskowitz fix, because it released YESTERDAY and I am dying to read it.

 

                                      

Zombies are people too.

Today's guest post is from Sarah Lotz, one half of mother+daughter writing team Lily Herne, on what inspired Cape Town zombie novel Deadlands.

 

Ten years after Cape Town was destroyed in the War with the living dead, zombies ramble free in Cape Town's suburbs (known as the Deadlands), and the remaining living are either in fenced in on farms or in urban shantytowns.

The living are watched over by the mysteriously robed Guardians, a race of humanoid figures who appeared at the end of the War and who keep the living dead at bay, albeit for a steep price. Every year the Guardians stage a human Lottery and select five aspiring teenagers to be whisked out of the enclave for a secret purpose. To be one of the chosen five is a highly sought after and prestigious accolade.

No one (yet) knows why it is that the Guardians prize teenage bodies so highly, how they control the zombies or what they look like under the robes that cover their bodies…

 

Deadlands is a fun zombiepocalypse romp, that manages to be both grim and witty at the same time, a poke at pop-culture and politics that fizzes along irreverently, rather like Sarah Lotz herself.

——-

 

I became a zombiephile at age ten after my brother and I managed to convince the bloke who ran our neighbourhood video store to let us rent Lucio Fulci's X-rated gore extravaganza, Zombie Flesh Eaters (one of the original 'video nasties'). We'd sneaked out of the house during the school holidays while our parents were at work (we did this often), and when they came home they found two traumatised kids sitting frozen with horror in front of the telly. It's a bloody terrible movie, but it scared the crap out of me, gave me nightmares for weeks and made an indelible impression on my brain. Even now, thirty years later, I still find zombies fascinating (I even have a just-in-case zombie apocalypse plan in place – clearly I need to grow up.) Of course, unlike my ten-year-old self, I now know for sure why I find zombies so terrifying: they're the walking embodiment of how we're all going to end up, and even though they look like people (well, they are people, and there's nothing scarier than people) they can't be reasoned with or stopped.

And, you know, maggots.

 

So when Penguin SA suggested that I write a paranormal-inspired YA novel for their list, I knew it had to feature the walking dead. My co-writer on the Deadlands novels – my daughter Savannah – isn't as enamoured with the shambolic brain-scoffers as I am, but she let me have my way. But it's all very well deciding to write a zombie series set in South Africa, we needed a strong storyline (and hopefully one that hadn't been done to death).

 

We started by batting around 'What if?' storyline ideas, and some of our initial thoughts -zombie scarecrows! what if the book is narrated by a zombie? lesbian ninja zombies! etc -were rubbish and fraught with plotholes. It was George R Romero's masterpiece and fine commentary on brainless consumer culture, Dawn of the Dead, that gave us our first spark of inspiration. Anyone who knows even the slightest thing about the Hollywood-style zombie knows that where there's a mall, there's bound to be a crowd of walking dead shoppers. So, we thought, what if we completely destroy Cape Town's infrastructure, shove our survivors in a shanty-town enclave, and leave just one building intact – the massive Canal Walk mall? What could be more horrific than that? And what if it's still fully stocked and only a select group of teenagers are able to avoid the zombies milling around it and shop to their heart's desire?

 

The rest of the plot flowed from this idea.  It was a no-brainer coming up with Lele, our protagonist. We knew for sure we had to have a strong female narrator who could drive the action rather than sit back and let stuff happen to her (the last thing we wanted to do was write an insipid Bella Swann type heroine). And as our apocalypse occurred during the 2010 World Cup we were able to include a colourful cast of characters who were stranded in SA when it all kicked off. As soon as our characters were locked down, we were off – the characters drive the action in the novels – and Sav and I have learned to sit back and let them get on with it.

 

But what we really loved creating was the political set-up. In the first novel, we had to build a society from scratch, the slate wiped clean. Human nature being what it is, we knew that even a fledgling society would be fraught with power-struggles, corruption and those with the biggest mouths and propensity for greed would rise to the top. Inspired by the rise of the horrendous Tea Party movement in the US, we decided that the dominant power in the enclave would be right-wing, implacable, corrupt and fuelled by fundamentalist religious fervour. We're currently working on the third in the series, The Army of the Left which is set in Joburg, and this one has been inspired by events closer to home. We've considered Jozi's mall culture (in this novel, it's the survivors who live in the malls), the volte-face attitudes of many of our politicians, and the staggering rich-poor divide, and it's been fascinating creating a post-apocalyptic set-up that's such a contrast to what we built in the first novel.

 

Bizarrely, while the initial inspiration for the Deadlands books was most definitely the walking dead, it turns out that zombies are the least of the problems our characters have to face. In fact, when we finished the second in the series – Death of A Saint – we realised that while the lurching stars of Zombie Flesh Eaters, Dawn of the Dead, and World War Z may have sparked off an initial idea, they pale in comparison to the real monsters we're writing about: ordinary people and the lengths they're prepared to go to control others.

—

                                      

Love and Haiku and Road Trips, Oh My!

The summer after high-school graduation, a year after her mother's tragic death, Anna has no plans – beyond her need to put a lot of miles between herself and the past. With forever friend Kat, a battered copy of Kerouac's DHARMA BUMS, and a car with a dodgy oil filter, the girls set out on an epic road trip across the USA. Maybe somewhere along the way they'll prove or disprove the existence of God. Maybe they'll even get laid . . .It's a journey both outward and inward. Through the Badlands and encounters with predatory men and buffalo. A crazy bus ride to Mexico with a bunch of hymn-singing missionaries. Facing death, naked in the forest with an enraged grizzly bear . . . Gradually, Anna realizes that this is a voyage of discovery into her own self, her own silent pain – and into the tangled history that she and Kat share. What is love? What is sexual identity? And how do you find a way forward into a new future – a way to declare openly and without fear all that lies within you?

Coming Marshall Cavendish, Spring 2012

 

 

I can't wait to read this – I've read snippets here and there and the writing is just gorgeous.
Today Elissa Janine talks about the inspirations behind her book, Kiss the Morning Star.
—-

Sometimes I try to trace the path that brought my story from brain to book, this story of Anna and her best friend Kat—and the road trip that changes them both.

 

My biggest inspiration has been the road itself.  There is almost nothing lifted directly from real life in the trip my characters take, and yet their journey follows at least part of the path of a summer-long ramble that my husband and I took ten years prior to writing Kiss the Morning Star. There were, in fact, several scenes I wanted to steal from life and put in the book, but it was funny.  They didn't work, as fiction.  They were too weird, too random.  Too completely unbelievable.  Yes, we went backpacking in Glacier National Park, and yes, I even saw a grizzly bear on the trail.  The memory of that shaggy head lifting above the vegetation still makes the breath catch in my throat, makes me recall the awe-struck poem I wrote about the experience.  But no, I wasn't naked at the time, and yes, my pack was always properly stored a safe distance above the ground, suspended between two trees in a well-researched and fastidiously knotted configuration.  (I was not, however, the researcher or the clipboard-carrier as Anna is…that honor belongs to my fellow traveler.)

 

I've written a lot on my own blog about my interest in Kerouac, and it's true that on our road trip, D. and I had almost every Kerouac book in the Duluoz legend in the trunk (which is saying a lot, since we had a strict book ration, despite the fact that my 1987 Mercury Grand Marquis had a pretty spankin' huge trunk) and this gigantic copy of Some of the Dharma sat in our back window so long that the cover is all faded in stripes (though I confess I've only read bits and pieces of it).  We almost wore out our Kicks, Joy, Darkness tribute CD, and we composed little Kerouac-style haiku and recited them for each other along the way.  My notebooks from the time have inspired me throughout my writing process, both for remembering what it was like to journey westward and what it was like to fall deeply in love with my traveling companion.

 

Love is at the heart of Kiss the Morning Star, the way it can be so simple and so very complicated in a single moment—the way it can feel certain and forever at the same time it feels fragile and precarious.  How it can hurt to lose someone you love, or to watch someone faltering whose strength and guidance has always been a pillar holding you up.  Anna's journey still breaks my heart to read, even after all the time I've spent with her, and writing the ending of this book took me so many tries—maybe because I can see so many possible directions for her love to lead her.

 

Looking for a way to end this post, I pulled my old journal off the shelf, and, as Anna and Kat do with their battered copy of Kerouac's Dharma Bums, I flipped to a random page, jabbing my finger at the faded ink.  "I guess all things worth writing hurt, in that deep way—between the waters of your heart and mind," I wrote.  I hope that readers of Kiss the Morning Star will enjoy Anna's journey as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

 

 

Elissa Janine Hoole has a longstanding love of road trips and beat writers.  It was a summer-long ramble out West that inspired her debut novel, when she and her husband set off across the country with a backpack full of Kerouac books. Now settled in her home in northern Minnesota, Elissa teaches middle school English full time and writes until midnight, sipping cold coffee and ignoring the laundry. She is represented by the extraordinary Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary Agency.





She still suffers from acute wanderlust from time to time, but road trips now involve a mini-van and a chorus of "Are we there yet?" from two small dharma bums-in-training.
KISS THE MORNING STAR, Marshall Cavendish 2012

elissajhoole.com

www.twitter.com/elissajanine