Cat Hellisen's Blog, page 35

Open bracket arc tour close bracket

When the Sea is Rising Red is coming out in something crazy like 30 weeks. (You'd be surprised at how quickly thirty weeks passes)

I'm going to steal a very cool idea from the incredible Hannah Moskowitz, who did an ARC tour with a difference. It turned the book into an idea, into a moment of sharing, and dear god I love shit like that SO DAMN HARD.

What's going to happen is I'm going to read through my ARC and mark up stuff like inspirations and cool things that relate to the book.

And then I'm going to post it on to the next person, and they can do their bit of communal defacing (and reviewing. Sorry, gotta ask that if you participate you also review. See, I am being all business-minded now (ew, it'll stop soon, I promise)). You can put in stickers, underline bits you like, smiley faces, OH NOES, I don't mind (as long as the next person can still read it, heh).

And then the poor thing will eventually limp back to me, tattered and weary and travel-stained, but with so many stories to tell.

So here's the deal.

1) If you have a review blog/goodreads and are willing to read in a fairly timely fashion (like, a week, kids), write a review, and send the book winging its way on to the next person in the chain. (The last person in the US chain who has to post pack to South Africa – I will find a way to reimburse you, or make some kind of plan, don't worry)

2) Like secondary-world Young Adult fantasy with a darkish tone and a romantic bent (seriously, if you don't, you will not enjoy this book, so yeah, fair dues)

3) Like sparkly pens and highlighters, and/or commenting in books

4) If you are in South Africa or the USA. (I would like to do this EVERYWHERE but reality is, I can only cover so much postage overseas)

and 5) If you comment here and tell me you'd like to get involved. (and leave me some kind of contact email)

Then we shall get this baby arc tour off the ground.

When we've got a bunch of people on board, I will work out logistics.

                                      

no more no less you try to learn the universe

Cape Town seems to have forgotten that it's winter, so that's great.

 

It also means it's going to make the second half of Lud easier to revise because it's the summer part of the novel (yes, my works are seasonal, that's how I write, don't ask me I don't know) .

 

I think once this round of revisions is done I'm going to take a break and catch up on reading. I find it hard to read while I'm deep in writing a book, it messes with my sentence rhythm. I need to work in cycles.

 

The musers were discussing the cyclic nature of writing the other day, and I definitely go through three distinct phases.

 

The most active is the one where I can't write at all. I can't even think about writing. I need to do *stuff*. Hike, paint, cook, go to movies or concerts or house parties. ANYTHING but face a blank screen. This is the phase where I have a clean house and well-fed children and something that resembles a life.

 

Then comes the withdrawal. I'm still not ready to write, but I live in a kind of constant dream-state. I become totally absorbed in fictional worlds: sometimes my own, but more normally other people's. This is where I dream about characters and watch 276 episodes of a single anime in 2 weeks. Yeah. It's like that. (Children state: unfed, wearing whatever clothes still fit them. House state: Laundry piling up, dishes taking over every available surface.)

 

The last stage is still a fugue, still dream like, but now it has a new urgency. Now the characters are mine, and the words roll out unfettered, fucked-up, bent back on each other like acrobats and whores. The words get spat out so that I don't have time to doubt them. Everywhere around me things fall apart, but I sit in the middle and write. (Children state: they have learned to feed themselves and have resigned themselves to knotted hair and old clothes. House state: What house?)

 

So how does writing and life work for you -  do you deal with them in stages, or do you have a more manageable way of combining the two?

                                      

When the Sea is Rising Red – cover reveal

It's feeling more and more real.

 

The design team at FSG have made this beautiful, moody cover for my book, When the Sea is Rising Red.

 

I am so full of nnngghhhh right now.

 

(and no, I was not planning three blog posts in one day…)

                                      

My unicorns are different.

pic by Geographer at wikipedia

How's that for a lie?

 

Because if anything, my unicorns are the most unoriginal you'll ever see. They're my memories of childhood stories – beasts with goat-hooves and tails, a beard, slitted eyes, the twisted horn. In my local library there were books with titles like Mythological Beasts or Fantastic Animals, which I would spend hours reading, and in none of those tomes did the unicorns ever look like gentle ponies with glittering manes and jewelled eyes.

 

They were goatish and wild. They looked tricky, skittish, too wise and too stupid at the same time.

 

They scared me.

 

When I wrote my first Hobverse book, I knew there would be unicorns in it. They'd be huge, shaggy, ill-tempered, in-bred. They'd be as magical as toads. Three-eyed toads, possibly, but toads nonetheless. They'd be beasts of burden, they'd be meat and fur and blood and powdered horn. They'd be that most mundane of all things – currency.

 

But while I was reading through my galley pages, I got nervous that people would just see the word unicorn and latch onto this:

 

 

And I admit, I died a little inside.

 

But I guess it's cool, in its way. People will take what they take from what I've written, but in my head the Hobverse unicorns will still be what I imagined. It's a good lesson to remember – it doesn't matter if I've described them as goatish and slit-eyed with horns that sweep backward, what matters is that I can only put down the words. I can't make people read them with my personal set of memories and references.

 

The reader always brings their own interpretation to your work. And that's okay. Not only that, it's good. That way books become conversations, and not lectures.

                                      

Sharing Writers: Suzanne Young

It has occurred to me that I am surrounded by a wealth of talent.

 

Shush, I know, it sometimes takes a while for the obvious to sink in.

 

I'm surrounded by the most fantastic people, people I like and love as people, and it's only later I kinda twig to just how amazing they are at what they do. I mean, I already know they're amazing, I just sometimes forget that they're also hella talented. I know writers working in fantasy, contemporary and literary genres, I know poets and photographers, editors, crafters, musicians, film-makers, dancers and designers.

 

Everywhere I go I meet people so inspired by the world around them that they are driven to create. To share.

 

So I want to do a series of posts introducing some of these people to you.

 

If I go back to my poor old gmail, one of my very first emails was from a writer called Suzanne Young. We'd met over on the AbsoluteWrite boards, and I'd offered to beta her novel Ginger Snaps (Suz, stop cringing, I loved that book). We were both agent-hunting, sharing our laughter and mutual grief at the publishing industry. She still had her dog as her avatar. Hahah the things I remember.

 

Many things have happened to Suzanne since then, but the years of hard slog have paid off. Because hello, look at this gorgeous book:

 

 

Nnggghh, right? Now, somewhat unfortunately for me, because I live on the arse end of the universe, I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive. So no reviews yet, but over on goodreads this is what people are saying. And just linking to that made me want to go track my order. COME ON BOOK, I NEED YOU.

 

Suz is just one of the amazing people I know, and I'm hoping to introduce you to some others in the weeks to come. This is gonna rock.

                                      

Book Review: The Mall, S.L. Grey

The Mall is the twisted psychotic baby of Louis Greenberg and Sarah Lotz, writing together as S.L. Grey.

It's the story of two misanthropes and their descent into an alternate reality shopping hell. Rhoda is a junky, out to score a fix at the local mall, when she loses the kid she's babysitting. Dan is a wage slave at the local bookstore. The two are both cheerfully revolting human beings – Dan is every spineless spoiled emo-brat blaming the world for his troubles, and Rhoda, the scarred and vicious junky is only marginally more likeable. The two unlikely companions are thrown together when Rhoda pretty much kidnaps Dan at knife point, and forces him to help her find the kid she lost.

While looking for the missing child, Dan and Rhoda end up in an empty part of the mall, left unfinished after funds ran out. And that's where reality ends. For those who like their horror set squarely in the real world, you're going to have to have to swallow a healthy amount of disbelief. This is where things veer off into the territory of Stephen King at his most coked-up. Rhoda and Dan are taunted by increasingly bizarre and sadistic cell-phone messages, while some nameless thing chases them through the subterranean network of service alleys and tunnels. They've become trapped in a bizarre game, one where they either crack the code and survive, or end up dying in one of several messy scenarios.

Finally, the two come out of the network of tunnels and parking lots, thinking they've finally escaped, only to find themselves in a bizarre parallel world where they are the "browns", the undesirables.

In this hell-world, the Mall above is reflected back at them, warped by the truth. McDonalds is renamed McColon, the actors in the movies are fat and balding, the shop assistants are chained to their counters, and the shoppers are a horrific breed of desperation – amputated, anorexic, plastic surgery disasters or obese mountains of greed.

The two go their separate ways and Dan becomes a wage slave, back at work in the warped bookstore echo of the one he used to work at in the real world. Rhoda, however, becomes a Shopper. A person who quite literally shops till they drop, whose only point is to consume, no matter what. And this is where the book began to lag a little for me, I enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek satire of consumerist culture, but there were certain scenes where the horror went from deliciously creepy to cheestastic schlock (The hamburger at McColon springs to mind) .

The two finally rejoin forces to work their way through the Mall, trying to find a way out of this nightmare. When Dan and Rhoda manage to escape, they discover that the reality they knew is dulled now, greyer and somehow more boring.

Without spoiling the events of part 2 of the book I'll say that a lot has been made out of how unlikeable the two protagonists are. I didn't find it an issue. In fact, it's their very unlikeableness that keeps the conclusion satisfying.

The book as a whole was tension-filled, and I kept turning pages even in the slightly flaccid middle section. I thought Dan and Rhoda made a great team, but a lousy couple, and that section of their relationship was disappointing. Luckily it's a very minor subplot and doesn't detract from the main story.

Certain things made me grin (I used to work for a certain SA bookstore, I feel like I also worked for a Bradley-Clone) and the two writers switching POVs worked very well for this novel. I'll be looking forward to reading their next release.

All in all, a fast-paced read, claustrophobic, disturbing and satirical.

To win a copy of The Mall, leave me a comment and I'll put your name in a hat. Because I'm chill like that. Yeah.

 

 

                                      

Deadlands Winner

And the winner is…

 

 

Congratulations, Kirsty!

 

Please email your postal addy to cat at cathellisen dot com

                                      

Win a copy of Cape Town zombie novel, Deadlands

I have in my hands an extra copy of Lily Herne's YA zombie novel, Deadlands.

 

All you have to do in order to win is comment (here, or my lj if you read via flist) and I will stick your name in a hat. Yes, yes I will.

 

Because I am feeling flush, this is an International competition, open to all.

 

                                      

A Public Service Announcement, of a kind.

If you're lucky enough to have a book picked up by one of the big pub houses, or you've won an award, or you got an unheard of advance and your book is falling off the shelves and into people's shopping trolleys, that's great. It's awesome. In fact, it's utterly fantastic. And I am happy for you like you don't understand.

It does not, however, make you a better person than the guy whose career has taken a different route. You are not inherently better than the person writing m/m erotica for the ebook market, it doesn't make you better than the woman who publishes dense literary novels with a small press to a niche market, it doesn't make you better than the guy who decided to take self-publishing head on.

You are not even better than the poor schmucks who got scammed into Publish America. Luckier, certainly. Better informed, probably. But not better.

Perspective, guys. Let's keep some.

Everyone takes their own route into publishing, and what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other. We're all working toward our own goals, across different genres. Let's just try cut down on the snobbishness. A little bit. Pretty please?

And now back to regular programming where I talk about shit.

                                      

pillow people, or dreaming things that shouldn't be.

There's this anime that I absolutely adore – Mushishi – and in the fourth episode, The Pillow Pathway, Ginko meets this guy whose dreams are prophetic (or come true, and there is a distinct difference between the two thoughts, as you will see if you ever watch the show. (Watch the show, it's amazing.))

In one scene the guy destroys his pillow because it's the repository of his soul (and dreams). The concept, very loosely, is that you spend half your life on your pillow, dreaming, and so it holds your soul, kinda. I love this. It is one day going to work its way into a story that is ready for it.

So yeah, with that little story in mind, I present to you the sight that greeted me when i went to go tuck the Younger Spawn into bed.

Ignoring the fact that she is moving on artistically from paper to cloth, that is one disturbing pillow demon thing. I…do not want to know what goes on inside her head. Interestingly, she claims not to have done it, that it was done by Mr Nobody. (*shakes fist* Damn you, school curriculum, for doing that poem).

And it's things like this that give me ideas for new stories. I mean, how can I look at that, and know the little folklorish bit of soul/dream/pillow stuff, and NOT want to write something?