Charlie Jane Anders's Blog, page 40
February 7, 2016
Here’s the bookcase over my bed. Including a LOT of Doris...
Here’s the bookcase over my bed. Including a LOT of Doris Lessing, Iain M. Banks, Nalo Hopkinson, Ursula K Le Guin, Doctor Who, and random anthologies. I took this picture for Shelfie.
February 6, 2016
You know what’s awesome? The Phantom Tollbooth is...
You know what’s awesome? The Phantom Tollbooth is awesome.
Talk about a great story of personal discovery and magical weirdness and giddy
playfulness. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster kicks so much ass, and it
had a huge impact on me when I was a kid.
February 5, 2016
Can my teenager read All the Birds in the Sky?
I keep getting asked this question, since the book came out
last week. People want to know if they can give All the Birds in the Sky to
their 13 or 14-year-old kid. And there’s really no easy answer to that
question. It depends on the kid.
First off, I should mention up front that there’s one sex
scene in the book. And a lot of swearing. And a bit of drug use. Plus violence,
of course.
But as a friend of mine told me the other day, the correct
answer to this question is always, “You know your own child best.”
And some kids will be able to handle some sexuality and adult themes at age 13,
while others might not be ready for that same level of adult material at age
16.
I do know that another friend of mine gave All the Birds in the Sky to her
14-year-old son last week, and he read it in one sitting—apparently he enjoyed
it, except the sections set in middle school gave him unpleasant flashbacks to
his own recent experiences. I also know that the 14-year-old me would have been
into this book. But like I said, some kids may not be ready for it, and I
totally get that. I didn’t think of this book as being specifically aimed at
teens, just because it has some sections where the main characters are 13 or
14.
Maybe favorite encounter thus far was a mom who asked me if
the book was appropriate for her teen, and I mentioned that there was a sex
scene. She flipped through the pages, and said, “Found it.” A moment
later, she saw that the word “condom” is mentioned prominently in that
section, and was like, “Sold!”
This question, of whether my book is appropriate for teens, has led to some
pretty fascinating conversations among my friends. I’m kind of amazed how many
people read Clan of the Cave Bear at
a very young, formative age. I obviously missed out on a huge rite of passage,
because that book apparently was a major revelation to a lot of people when
they were going through puberty. And apparently that is an interesting book to read at an impressionable age. Also,
Flowers in the Attic!
Top image: Clan of the Cave Bear!
February 4, 2016
I’m Coming to Los Angeles!
I’m doing a reading tonight at Skylight Books in L.A. and I hope you can stop by! It’s at 1818 N. Vermont Ave., at 7:30 PM. I haven’t been to L.A. in ages, and my image of the city is always about half based on the actual place and half based on noir novels by Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler. I always half expect to stumble into some unbelievable scene of squalor and self-deception, on the heels of a dead body. But on the plus side, my imaginary L.A. has some amazing haberdashery.
Top image: Paul Narvaez/Flickr
February 3, 2016
A Somewhat Indecent Proposal
Don’t worry, I’m not going to offer you $50 to play miniature golf at midnight in a Chuck E. Cheese costume or anything. This is a slightly different proposal, one I’ve been thinking of for a few months now.
When I was writing All the Birds in the Sky, I went through a bunch of drafts before I whipped it into the shape it’s in now. And for a long time, the ending was drastically different–not so much the final chapter, but the stuff that leads up to it.
In a lot of ways, this other ending was cleverer. It tied together a lot of the story threads and subplots in a really neat way that might have seemed really cool. It included a huge, surprising reveal, that would have changed everything you thought you knew. It would have built up to a much bigger action-packed climax. I spent months working on this other ending, and the stuff that led up to it, and in some ways I really loved it.
The reason why I scrapped that ending, and went with the one in the book, is the same reason I made a lot of other painful changes: Because it took away from the central story of Laurence and Patricia. There was just no way to give the two of them the emotional resolution they needed, and the payoff to their relationship, while also doing a big, clever, action-packed blowout ending. So in the end, I went with a much simpler climax to the novel, and I have no doubt that was the right choice.
In a couple weeks, I’m going to start posting “deleted scenes” from All the Birds in the Sky, including a lot of really fun stuff that I cut purely for length reasons. But I’m probably not going to post the alternate ending, because there’s so much of it, and it would be kind of a pain to reconstruct. Unless.
Here’s where the indecent proposal comes in. If the book actually hits one of the newspaper bestseller lists, then I will absolutely post the whole alternate ending, as soon as I can get it together. This seems like a total ridiculous longshot, but I figure there’s no harm in throwing it out there.
February 1, 2016
I have a Daniel Pinkwater fridge magnet on my refrigerator! This...
I have a Daniel Pinkwater fridge magnet on my refrigerator! This is a source of great happiness to me every time I open my fridge. Marilyn Wann (fat activist and author of the great book Fat! So?) made this magnet out of one of Pinkwater’s business cards. When Marilyn helped me move into my apartment 10 years ago, she gave me this magnet as a housewarming gift. It was the coolest thing ever, because Pinkwater’s work had a huge impact on me when I was younger. His stuff is so funny and weird and humane… his YA novel Wingman is an underrated adventure classic, too. And I really want a business card of my own that reads “Serious Person.”
January 31, 2016
Another sketch I drew in the notebook when I was writing this...
Another sketch I drew in the notebook when I was writing this novel longhand. Here’s Laurence (still without quite such a big chin) being forced to play volleyball at Canterbury Academy, with a banner that says “SCHOOL SPIRIT” behind him.
January 30, 2016
Sometimes limitations make things better
For most of the time I was working on All the Birds in the Sky, it was WAY too long. Like, ridiculously long. It was going to be like a George R.R. Martin book, only with less descriptions of food. It makes sense – trying to have a whole story about these characters as kids, followed by a whole story about them as adults, was a lot to pack in.
Some stuff was super easy to cut, like there were sections that clearly needed to go. And some of it was just trimming the extra junk here and there, which adds up. But also, I had to get creative. And in some cases, that turned out to be kinda fun.
Like, in the middle of the book, I had a long-ass section where Laurence, one of the two main characters, is thinking about how frustrating people are. Why are people so confusing? Why can’t people just say what they mean? What’s the point of even trying to talk to people? Maybe one day we’ll have the Singularity and everyone will get uploaded and become cybernetic gods, and then we can actually have an honest conversation. Etc. etc. Anyway, this long section was just kind of a lot of hot air, and when I stared at it for a few hours, I realized I could cut it down to just:
One day the Singularity would elevate humans to cybernetic superbeings, and maybe then people would say what they meant.
Probably not, though.
And those two sentences said everything I was trying to say with this three-page internal monologue, except they were just two sentences. So sometimes having a hard limit actually makes you work harder. And that can be kind of a good thing.
Top image: The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku
January 29, 2016
Science fiction bookstores are the greatest places
Tonight I am at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, and tomorrow afternoon I’m at Borderlands Books back home in San Francisco. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be ending my week on the road at a couple of science fiction bookstores. Because science fiction bookstores are the most incredible places on Earth.
Seriously, some lucky cities still have a whole store that’s just speculative fiction! That means not just a better selection, but access to the whole local community of SF fans. there are all these cool fans and writers and assorted geeks, hanging out and getting into arguments. Any time I go into Borderlands’ adjoining cafe I know I am going to run into half my favorite people. I’m so glad that Borderlands was able to stay in business after that scare last year (and I’m proud to be a Borderlands sponsor!) Bookstores, in general, are my total happy place. But I especially love specialty bookstores, ever since I was a little kid driving the guy at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Bookstore in Harvard Square totally insane with my questions.
