Sarah Rees Brennan's Blog, page 5

I’M GOING ON A TOUR! Hello, beautiful England

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

So queen of excellence Holly Black and I have set ourselves up a tour throughout England, for my Untold and for Holly’s amazing, incredible, accept-no-substitutes The Coldest Girl In Coldtown. I am super excited–a tour through England hitting non-London places! New people and their shining faces! Holly is an amazebot. I hope to see you guys there! We start off at World Fantasy in Brighton, where we do a kaffeeklatsch together (as I understand it, Holly says wise things and I throw cronuts at people’s heads with pinpoint accuracy) and then we go on… to ADVENTURE!

Monday 4th November

Dark Mirrors: Gothic Fiction with Holly Black and Sarah Ress Brennan

Where: Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EB

When: 6.30pm-7.30pm

Tickets: Free, but booking is essential. To book tickets, email events@foyles.co.uk or call 020 7437 5660

More info: http://www.foyles.co.uk/Dark-Mirrors

Tonight we journey to dark places with two of the biggest names in teen fantasy. The walled cities known as Coldtowns are the hellish creation of Holly Black, author of The Spiderwick Chronicles and now The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. Within them, quarantined monsters mingle with humans in a neverending, decadently bloody party, which, in an all-too-recognisable twist, is shown on TV 24 hours a day.

Kami Glass’s hometown of Sorry-in-the-Vale, the setting for the new novel by Sarah Rees Brennan, Untold, plays host to an uneasy blend of natural and supernatural. Conflict threatens to bubble over at every turn between the non-magical townspeople and the sorcerers who yearn to rule over them – and seventeen-year-old Kami faces her own internal conflict, as the sorcerer she’s been bound to for her entire life is torn from her.

Join us to find out for yourself how these two inspirational authors create their magical worlds, unforgettable characters and breathtaking stories, and hear their tips for creating a gothic novel of your own.

(Foyles is amazing, so I am excite!)

Tuesday 5th November

An evening with Queens of Gothic fiction, Holly Black and Sarah Rees Brennan

Where: Waterstones 93-97 Albion Street, Leeds LS1 5AP

When: 6.30pm-7.30pm

Tickets: £4 / £3 for Waterstones Cardholders, available in-store or by calling 0113 2444 588

Join us at this Bonfire Night special with bestselling YA authors Sarah Rees Brennan & Holly Black, who will be discussing their new books, work, inspirations and top tips on becoming a writer! Sarah’s new novel ‘Untold’ and Holly’s new novel ‘The Coldest Girl in Coldtown’ will also be available on the night. The evening will include a talk, Q&A and signing session.

(I have never been in England on Bonfire Night before. I hope people will come talk to us and tell us where to go after! Take us to the bonfire, we’re the kind of girls who like that kind of thing! DO NOT PUT ME IN THE BONFIRE, even though I have two different coloured eyes and am clearly a witch. Likewise I have an eleventh toe, but I shall keep it in my purse for decency’s sake.)

Wednesday 6th November

Gothic Fiction with Holly Black and Sarah Rees Brennan

Where: Seven Stories Children’s Book Centre, Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 2PQ

When: 6pm-7pm

Tickets: £3 per person (including admission to the centre). Call 0845 271 0777 ext 715 to book.

More info: http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/whats-...

Join teen authors Holly Black and Sarah Rees-Brennan for a fun event talking about all things gothic fiction. Holly Black is the US author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books, including The Spiderwick Chronicles and her new book The Coldest Girl in Cold Town. Sarah Rees Brennan is the Irish author of Unspoken, Untold, and her bestselling Demon’s Lexicon trilogy. Come along to hear all about their books, writing and inspirations – and find out their top tips on how to write a book of your own.

(I went to Seven Stories and I was like, I have to come back and do an event here. What a lovely space, and the lovely people there were like ‘We know you… and we love Kelly Link!’ So they were clearly the best people.)

Thursday 7th November

Meet Teen Authors Holly Black and Sarah Rees Brennan

Where: Waterstone’s Liverpool One, 12 College Lane, Liverpool L1 3DL

When: 6pm-7pm

Tickets: Tickets are free, but booking is essential. Please call 0151 709 9820.

Join teen authors Holly Black (US author of The Coldest Girl in Cold Town and the bestselling Spiderwick Chronicles series) and Sarah Rees-Brennan (Unspoken, Untold, The Demon’s Lexicon) as they talk about their books, their inspirations and their writing – and discover their top tips for writing stories of your own. Tickets are free but spaces are limited – get yours soon.

(I am EXTREMELY excited about this one, as my mama is from Liverpool, and my grandpa worked on the Liverpool docks with Brian Jacques all his life–not specifically all his life with Brian Jacques, the dude was too busy writing awesome mice adventure novels–and my aunt and my cousins still live there. I have never done an event in Liverpool! LIVERPOOL, I EMBRACE YOU.)

THE NIGHT AFTER I LOST YOU

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

A Lynburn Legacy present for you, my petal darlings.

Set the night after the end of Unspoken, before all the action of Untold. You have to keep moving in a Gothic mystery. But sometimes you can take a night to be sad.

Amazon has kindly provided it for reading here!

I hope you guys like it!

EVERYTHING TOLD ABOUT UNTOLD!

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

FIRSTLY, Untold is out in the world! I am super excited to talk about it! So I designate this the Untold spoiler post, and if you guys would like to talk about in the comments I am here to talk about it with you. If you’d like.

I start off discussions by sharing some reviews with you all. I always knew that writing a series very firmly centred on one girl and analysing and interrogating romance was going to be tricky critically (because our world’s stance is: books about girls are Not Literature, and books about romance are trashy trash). I did it anyway because–I do what I want, and what I want is to do interesting stuff! I drive my career wildly about as if playing bumper cars off a cliff!

So I was super pleased to see this review from the Horn Book:

‘Horn Book (Sept/Oct)

In Unspoken (rev. 9/12), Kami Glass faced down malevolent magic-user Rob Lynburn and broke her lifelong telepathic bond with his nephew Jared. Kami’s investigative journalism skills again prove invaluable as she and her allies (including the few members of the magical Lynburn family Kami trusts, albeit reluctantly) race to identify the rest of Rob’s faction of corrupt sorcerers and stop them before they attempt to gain more power through horrifying means. Meanwhile, Jared is furious with Kami for breaking their psychic bond, and her confusing attraction to his less-troubled cousin Ash only widens the rift between them. Although the first installment’s witty banter is also present here, this sequel is darker, with higher stakes and more suspense. Brennan continues to explore the complexities of Kami and Jared’s turbulent relationship; even without the telepathic connection, the two struggle to reconcile their longing for closeness and the need for privacy and independence. Heroine Kami’s competence and outspokenness—she’s also not afraid to make difficult choices—and a whopping dose of girl detective–style sleuthing make this series a refreshing take on the paranormal romance genre.’

And also, since blog reviews are awesome:

http://exlibriskate.com/untold-by-sar...

http://www.yabibliophile.com/2013/09/...

http://solittletimeforbooks.blogspot....

http://www.pageturnersblog.com/2013/0...

I also did an interview with one of said lovely reviewers: http://solittletimeforbooks.blogspot....

SECONDLY, I promised you guys an Untold music mix to go with the Unspoken music mix. http://sarahtales.livejournal.com/196...

I hope none of you were hoping that I would repent and abandon my country music loving ways, because I will never repent and abandon my country music loving ways. I decided it would be too spoilery to talk about which characters or couples fit which songs, though I have left CLUES so you may GUESS, but I talk a lot about moods and themes I was going for…

from on 8tracks Radio.

Echo, by Jason Walker

my echo, echo

Is the only voice coming back

Shadow, shadow

Is the only friend that I have

Listen, listen

I would take a whisper if that’s all you had to give

But it isn’t, is it?

–Untold is a lot about loneliness, about the fear of loss of friendship and love, about the sometimes unfair demands we place on other people, about codependence and not being able to be codependent anymore.

Kiss Me Slowly, by Parachute

She shows me everything she used to know,

Picture frames and country roads,

When the days were long and the world was small.

She stood by as it fell apart,

Separate rooms and broken hearts

–Broken homes in Untold! Also kissing, but there is a lot of lost innocence. There is a time when your home seems like your whole world, and so the whole world can be broken. (Also I can’t buy the Parachute song due, I suspect, to evil sorcery.)

Feel It In My Bones, Tiesto featuring Tegan and Sara

I feel you in my bones.

You’re knocking at my window.

You’re slow to letting me go.

–It’s interesting, the feeling that someone isn’t letting you go, when in fact it’s the thought of them, the memory of them, that you can’t let go.

Not Your Cinderella, by Payton Rae

Oh, I’m no Sleeping Beauty

One kiss alone won’t do it to me

I hate to be the one to tell ya

Oh, but I’m not your Cinderella

–These books are analysing romance and that means there is a lot of girls asserting themselves against false romantic ideals, that a kiss means anything but what both the people involved want it to mean, discovering that love is different for different people.

Just A Kiss, by Lady Antebellum

Just a kiss on your lips in the moonlight

Just a touch of the fire burning so bright

No I don’t want to mess this thing up

I don’t want to push too far

Just a shot in the dark that you just might

Be the one I’ve been waiting for my whole life

–BOOK TWO, MAKE OUT! I like the song because it conveys both the desperate uncertainties and wild hopes of love–how impossibly intertwined they are.

Lost and Found, Katie Herzig

I know you left me standing there

Out of the calm of the coldest air

I don’t believe the words you said

But I can’t find the words I want

–Kami is a writer: the first writer protagonist I’ve ever written, and it is always fun and interesting to write about how she feels about writing, to find where I think we would agree and where diverge. Searching for the words in life and love and literature is so very difficult. This quote of Jeanette Winterson’s always deeply affected me: ‘Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? “I love you” is always a quotation.…It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise then would I call it love?’ Talking about writing and talking about love is the same thing.

Have You Ever, Brandi Carlisle

Have you ever been out walking in the snow

Tried to get back to where you were before

You always end up not knowing where to go

–Nature, and how it intersects with life. The outside of the world in Untold reflects the inside of the characters a lot. Which leads to…

Lake of Silver Bells, Carbon Leaf

Looking past the love you face, you miss the place you never had

What you need’s not just the dream, but something on the other end

Wake up, wake up, wake up, you’re much too fast asleep

And we dance across ’til we drop, the bells keep time and never stop

–Nature, and loneliness, and the mystery of the lost bells, and love, and loneliness, and danger, and the sense there is something to reach for: there is a home to be found.

Howl, Florence and the Machine

Now there’s no holding back, I’m making to attack

My blood is singing with your voice, I want to pour it out

The saints can’t help me now, the ropes have been unbound

I hunt for you with bloody feet across the hallow’d ground

–Another aspect of love I wanted to look at was the nature of love in Gothic novels and other novels like it: how love, or the desire to possess, can lead to pain and horror.

Rotten Town, Ludo

And all the streets burned with gold,

But all my bones were so cold

–The transformation of Sorry-in-the-Vale. I feel strongly that book two should CHANGE IT UP, so from subtly-sinister-secrets home to a nightmare cage in which all is known and everyone is trapped seemed… a change…

Sparks Fly, Taylor Swift

you stood there in front of me

Just close enough to touch

Close enough to hope you couldn’t

See what I was thinking of

–WE ALL KNEW WE WEREN’T DOING THIS WITHOUT TAYLOR.

No More Wishing, Hayley Taylor

you mean more than you should mean

but I’m willing to be

the one that you put on a pedestal

the one that you see in your dreams

the one that you hide your true self from

the one you want to please

–What compromises do we make for love that we should not make? Something every one of the main characters have to consider: whether they can pretend to be different than they are, feel differently from how they feel, and whether they can be loved if they cannot pretend. False ideals, and false idols.

How Far We’ve Come, Matchbox Twenty

I started running but there’s nowhere to run to

I sat down on the street and took a look at myself

said where you going man you know the world is headed for hell

say your goodbyes if you’ve got someone you can say goodbye to

I believe the world is burning to the ground

oh well i guess we’re gonna find out

–Overwhelming fear, and facing yourself. Nothing but good times ahead!

Eric’s Song, Vienna Teng

And of course I forgive

I’ve seen how you live

Like a phoenix you rise from the ashes

You pick up the pieces

And the ghosts in the attic

They never quite leave

…And how I am sure

Like never before

Of my reasons for defying reason

Embracing the seasons

We dance through the colors

Both followed and led

Strange how we fit each other

–I do see narratives where I think ‘yikes, these two should break up and move to different countries.’ But I also see a lot of, if a character does something wrong, that’s it for them: ‘if someone who loves hurts you, they are BAD’–that leads to a world without love. Whether you are better with someone, worse without them, is something you decide for yourself. Sometimes you love someone and they love you, and they’re still toxic. Sometimes you love someone and they hurt you, and you can forgive. It’s a scary decision to make: relationships are so complicated. To quote Jeanette Winterson again, it is so terrifying, love.

THIRDLY, cool news: there is a map of Sorry-in-the-Vale, drawn by fabulous artist Theo Black and supervised by me. It is EXCLUSIVE CONTENT: it is printed in both the first edition paperback Unspoken and the first edition hardback Untold. I don’t know if it will be printed in the second printings! (If there is a second printing I do not wish to assume!) My point is, FANCY MAPS, GET YOUR FANCY MAPS WHILE YOU CAN.

(Also, I remind you if you send me (sarahreesbrennan@gmail.com) a picture of yourself with Untold and tell me your address, I will send you a signed bookplate.)

FOURTHLY, there is another Untold surprise. But it is not yet… you must wait. But not long. Soon, my pretties. Soon.

Seamus Heaney

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

Ireland has a rep: the land of saints and scholars. It’s something I get asked a lot when in America. ‘Would you have known a lot of Irish writers as a child?’ I always said that no, I didn’t know that many prose writers. Maeve Binchy went to one of my schools (I went through a lot of schools!) but I never met her and that was about it.

I knew a lot of poets. Creative artists get tax breaks in Ireland, and poets tend to make even less money than most writers. Poets get supported and celebrated in Ireland, where we tend to like poetry, and music, and… well, okay, yes, the drink. We even adopted other poets into the nation: Seamus Heaney did a verse translation of Beowulf, Frank Guinness and other poets (including me, in a rare poetic moment) translated Catullus into Irish and English. ‘Ah, love, what a waste,’ several people said to me when I talked about wanting to write filthy prose.

Seamus Heaney, whose funeral was today (and who, you know, had died beforehand) was one of the great lights of Irish poetry: was in many ways The Irish Poet. I learned his poems in school.

I didn’t really know Seamus Heaney, but I met him several times, at parties when everyone had drink taken. He was at my uncle’s sixtieth: we all went to hear him read from Beowulf. He was always lovely, and I was always shy around him, as it’s natural to be about genius, I think: you’re worried you might be stupid in front of genius, the way you might worry about breathing on a golden artefact. The thing I remember best about him in person, other than the constant sense of ‘Oh my gosh Seamus Heaney!’ was that he was always notably and touchingly devoted to his wife Marie Devlin: bringing her up in conversations when she was not there, turning to hear what she said whenever she spoke, always acting like she was the most important and interesting person in the room.

My clearest memory of him is of the Guinness Book of World Records day when the writers of Ireland were rounded up to do a lot of live readings, one after the other, until we were in possession of the record for longest continuous live reading. I was shattered, as I’d been at a wedding the day before and it was moving day at mine, but I stumbled through my reading, and then I stayed, because Seamus Heaney was reading soon and I wanted to hear him read. He did read, and it was wonderful, and then Marie Devlin did, and she was wonderful too. I remember how he said hers was the best reading of the morning.

Later at that same event…

SARAH: Great poetry.

SHORT GUY: Thank you.

SARAH: Are you a full-time poet?

SHORT GUY: Ah… no.

SARAH (blithely): Oh, what else do you do?

SHORT GUY: I am president.

SARAH: Cool, of what?

SHORT GUY: Of… this country?

SARAH: … OH MY GOD.

Seamus Heaney, a kind soul who I did not after all have to be so shy of, heard this entire exchange and valiantly did not laugh.

I always liked this poem of his so much.

Valediction

Lady with the frilled blouse

And simple tartan skirt,

Since you have left the house

Its emptiness has hurt

All thought. In your presence

Time rode easy, anchored

On a smile; but absence

Rocked love’s balance, unmoored

The days. They buck and bound

Across the calendar

Pitched from the quiet sound

Of your flower-tender

Voice. Need breaks on my strand;

You’ve gone, I am at sea.

Until you resume command

Self is in mutiny.

‘Noli timere’ – in Latin, don’t be afraid. They were his last words. He said it to his wife.

I’m sorry he is gone. But it seems to me one of the best ways to go: to change the world with words, and end with love and courage.

THE VERY LAST UNTOLD SNIPPET

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

Untold’s out next month, which is very very soon, so here, my lovelies, is the last Untold snippet…

“The way Jared talked about having a source,” Ash said softly, “it sounded nice. Never being lonely again. Having someone to support you.”

Kami was becoming familiar with the feeling of desolation that came upon her now, turning her cold even while her cheeks still burned. She wished she had never learned to understand loneliness, and that Ash had not brought it up.

Where are you? she asked Jared in her mind, sending love and loneliness and fury at him, contradictory emotions that she could not express in words. They used to be able to understand each other, even when they made no sense.

Sometimes she could not stop herself from speaking to him like this, even though he would never hear her again.

“‘Nice’ is not exactly how I would describe it,” Kami replied, and was horrified to hear her voice shake. The corners of her eyes burned, and she was even more horrified to see a teardrop fall on the brown cover of her book.

“A lot of power comes with being a source,” Ash said. “Maybe enough to help turn the tide against my father.”

“It didn’t help much against him when we had it, and we don’t have it anymore.” Kami’s voice was not friendly. “We have to do without it.”

“Maybe not,” said Ash.

“What do you mean?” Kami asked. “Is—is there a way to get the link back?”

If they had to reestablish the link to save other people, to save the whole town. If they had to.

“Sort of,” Ash replied. Kami stared at the closed book and the wood grain in the surface of the table. “You broke the link with Jared,” Ash went on, as if she didn’t know that. “There’s no way to make another link, once broken, without more power than any sorcerer has unless he or she completes the Crying Pools ceremony.”

Kami looked up. “He’s not trying that again!”

When Ash saw her face, he let out a low exclamation, got up from his chair, and rushed over to her side. He went on his knees on the stone floor beside her chair, fingers light against the side of her face. Ash never had any trouble touching her. His fingers lingered, as if he liked to do it.

“Kami,” he said, “you’re crying.”

“No, I am not,” Kami lied. “I got something in my eye.”

“You got something in your eye.”

“Yes. Possibly a speck of dust,” Kami said, and broke down. “All right, possibly my feelings.”

Ash smiled a little, sympathetically and tentatively, until she smiled too.

“You don’t understand what I’m asking you,” he murmured. “It has nothing to do with Jared. He is not the only sorcerer in Aurimere.”

“What—” Kami began, but before she could form the question properly in her mind, he had answered it.

“You and I could do the spell together. You and I could save the town together. You could be my source.”

PACIFIC RIM: DATING IN THE APOCALYPSE

Hello, my beloved internet! It's been kind of a rough time between us lately, and I've been feeling crappy and anxiety-filled, but instead of flailing about I wanted to do something positive instead, so I thought I'd make you something nice.

I saw Pacific Rim with my best friend last week, and I really loved it! I did not expect to really love it, as giant robots are not really my thing, but we all know how I feel about psychic bonds. I saw mention of a great Japanese heroine here: http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/post/56817485482/okay-this-is-the-thing-about-pacific-rim-for-me and then I saw more and more recommendations for it, and I ended up wanting to see it, and I ended up enjoying it even more than I thought I would.

So, to express my love... This one's for you, internet. I hope you enjoy it.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: How do we deal with all these attacks by enormous creatures from the sea?
RUSSIA: How about... we create giant robots which are powered by two people who have a psychic bond, and the robots BEAT THEM UP!
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: Go home Russia, you are DRUNK. Who has any better ideas?
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: *crickets*
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: What were you saying again, Russia?

RALEIGH: You wouldn't have picked my brother Yancy and me to be heroes.
AUDIENCE: Well no. YANCY and RALEIGH? Your parents were clearly sadists.
RALEIGH: But we turn out to be awesome at mind-melding and punching sea monsters while in a giant robot suit. Yancy wake up let's fight monsters together! My character could use development, but my abs are already pretty great.
YANCY: ... As a non-morning person, I object to being roused to fight giant lizards by someone this gleeful. As the less aesthetically attractive sibling in a movie, I object to my imminent demise.

MARSHAL PENTECOST, KING OF THE GIANT ROBOTS: Do not do this thing I am telling you not to do.
YANCY: We're going to do the thing, because we are mavericks who play by our own ru-
YANCY: *dies*
MARSHAL PENTECOST: I told you not to do the thing.

RALEIGH AND GIANT ROBOT: *stagger to their fainting surf*
OLD MAN AND LITTLE KID: Uh...
RALEIGH: Fetch robot smelling salts.


INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: We finally had a better idea than the giant robots! We're going to build a big wall and surely the monsters will not climb it or reduce it to toothpaste.
MARSHAL PENTECOST: Do not do this thing.
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: We're going to do the thing.
MARSHAL PENTECOST: Why does everyone do the thing I tell them not to do? Have they not noticed I am played by IDRIS ELBA?

MARSHAL PENTECOST: I'm not listening to them. Canada was in on that call, and nobody listens to Canada!
CHOI: Ten-four, Marshal. By the way, what are you eating, sir?
MARSHAL PENTECOST: Plot Point Pills Which Indicate Imminent Death of A Hero's Mentor Figure.
MARSHAL PENTECOST: I call them Death Mentos for short.

FIVE YEARS LATER

RALEIGH: I am building a giant wall so that somebody will feed me.
AUDIENCE: Why is there a food shortage if the monsters are only attacking the coast? Are the monsters eating the food? Are the monsters fiending for a Krispy Kreme?
RALEIGH: Marshal Pentecost, I see that while I have been mourning you have acquired a natty outfit!
PENTECOST: Kind of you to notice. I have also been protecting humankind from extinction, while looking so fly. Now come help pilot a giant robot.
RALEIGH: That's not a good id-
PENTECOST: What part of 'do the things Idris Elba is telling you to do' is everybody finding so difficult?

RALEIGH: I'll never copilot a giant robot again my heart is dead!
MAKO: Hi.
RALEIGH: I HAVE JUST MET YOU & I LOVE YOU.

MAKO (in Japanese): He's not what I was imagining.
RALEIGH (in Japanese): Better or worse?
MAKO: Worse, but would hit it.

RALEIGH: Whoa, sparks & rust.
IDRIS ELBA: We're a resistance! And half the budget goes on my tailored coats.
ALL: MONEY WELL SPENT.
RALEIGH: So that's a clock counting from the last kaiju attack? And it's called... a War Clock?
IDRIS ELBA: The resistance is long on handsome, short on naming prowess.

IDRIS ELBA: Please meet our scientists. They are very quirky. You can tell because they are played by actors who do not attend the gym.
HERMAN: Hey.
NEWT: Hello I have accurate depictions of the giant lizards of death who are rapidly bringing our world to an end tattooed on me!
AUDIENCE: Accurate nerd observation. Would trust movie to nerd again.

RALEIGH: Hey girl you know what I like to do with a foxy lady?
MAKO: Uh, no.
RALEIGH: RESPECT HER and her awesome kill scores and her fearless observations! Also maybe pilot giant robots with her?
MAKO: I like your answer but I have to pass.
RALEIGH: And maybe... braid her hair and sing her love songs while she makes up her mind?
MAKO: Pass.
RALEIGH: Okay I'll be waiting just across the hall if you change your mind.
MAKO: Gotcha.
RALEIGH: Waiting... shirtless.
MAKO: Goddamn.
RALEIGH: If you like it then you should put a giant robot on it!

IDRIS ELBA: I cannot help but see that Raleigh has been hanging about the place shirtlessly. Somebody get him a fetching sweater from my private 'fitted to be fly' wardrobe.
SILVER FOX AUSTRALIAN: Hey Raleigh looking good!
RALEIGH:...I don't know where this sweater came from.
TOTAL BRAT AUSTRALIAN, SILVER FOX'S SON, ODDLY NAMED CHUCK: You're old and ugly.
SILVER FOX: Son, that's not true, you can clearly see he is a youthful chiseled beauty.
IMPROBABLY AUSTRALIAN CHUCK: Well, you suck.
SILVER FOX: That's not true. He is a very skilled giant robot pilot, second only to the most skilled robot pilot of them all, whose name is a mystery but let's face it, when you're talking about who's the most awesome at something, you're talking about Idris Elba. We're talking about Idris Elba.
IMPROBABLE AUSTRALIAN: Well you don't have a bulldog.
RALEIGH: That's true, and hurtful.

RALEIGH: Hello assorted hopeful robot pilots! My name is Raleigh Beckett, and my turn-ons include Mako Mori, being flipped to the ground by delicately built ladies, ladies with blue in their hair, and giant robots. My turn-offs include piloting giant robots with anybody but Mako, and when turned off I hit people with large sticks.
MAKO: Commander Fitted Jacket, let me fight him!
IDRIS ELBA: Okay, but only because it makes daddy so proud when you bring grown men to their knees.
MAKO: Did it hurt when you fell on your ass after I flipped you to the ground?
RALEIGH: Did it hurt when you fell from robot copilot heaven?

RALEIGH: Have you ever thought just maybe, you belong with me?
MAKO: I have thought that I respect my commanding officer's decision not to let me play with large toys or large fluffy blond men.

IDRIS ELBA: Listen up, Maverick Officer Fluffy Duckling Touchy Feely, I got rules.
RALEIGH: ???
IDRIS ELBA: No touchy. No feely.

RALEIGH: It's a love story baby just say yes!
MAKO: No. Commander Hot Dad Cool Coats forbids it.

RALEIGH: I get it, Mako is like a daughter to you.
IDRIS ELBA: Exactly, and that is why she can't psychically bond with anyone and have them thinking sexual thoughts about me. That would be very scarring for her!
RALEIGH: Why would they be--
IDRIS ELBA: Oh please. I am Idris Elba.
RALEIGH: Well I'm certainly not--
IDRIS ELBA: Oh please. I am Idris Elba.

DOOR: knock
MAKO: RALEIGH WITH A BOOM BOX!
IDRIS ELBA: Hello.
IDRIS ELBA: Sorry I've never... seen this expression on anyone's face when they opened a door to find me there? Disapp... Disapplontment?
MAKO: Disappointment, Dad. Sorry, Dad. This is just not what I was hoping for.
IDRIS ELBA: Really? Because Raleigh respected your choice to say no to giant robots without pushing, and now I shall give you my blessing. You may have Raleigh Beckett's hand in giant robot war.
MAKO: This is just EXACTLY what I was hoping for.
IDRIS ELBA: They always want such weird things. My Little Ponies. Blond dudes.

IDRIS ELBA: Remember when you were a little girl, and I turned on a street, and a halo of light surrounded my head, and angels sang and you regarded me as your own personal saviour?
MAKO: That's basically every day, Dad. You're gonna have to be a little more specific.
IDRIS ELBA: I was talking about the day we first met when I saved you in a robot. Anyway, I'm proud of you! *wipes tear* My little girl. All grown up and punching seamonsters.
IDRIS ELBA: You're never quite ready for the day when they leave the nest, and meet a man, and pilot a giant robot with him to avert the apocalypse.

MAKO: Hi.
RALEIGH: I'm going to keep quiet because soon we'll have an unspoken love connection through a giant robot and we don't need words.
RALEIGH: So I'm not going to say much because I'm the strong silent type.
RALEIGH: Damn girl you look fine.
RALEIGH: If I said you had a beautiful mind would you hold it against mine?
RALEIGH: Let's do this thing.
RALEIGH: We're doing the thing!
RALEIGH: This is for real!
RALEIGH: Mako? Mako?
RALEIGH: Wait has this gone wrong and it's all my fault?
MAKO: You finally get a guy in robot, and he turns out to be a talker.

RALEIGH: In some ways that could have gone better.
IDRIS ELBA: You both totally and humiliatingly failed.
RALEIGH: Yes, 'succeeding' is one of the ways in which it could have gone better.

NEWT: I bonded with a piece of a dead lizard's brain!
IDRIS ELBA: You what? Are you high?
NEWT: The sea monsters attacking us are space aliens from another dimension!
IDRIS ELBA: Are you concussed?
NEWT: They used to be dinosaurs, of course. Dinosaurs with turquoise blood from another dimension! GOD IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.
IDRIS ELBA: Are you highcussed?
NEWT: Obviously I need more dead lizard brain to further evolve my theories.
IDRIS ELBA: Absolutely! You should do that. Get right... on that. Please leave.

PACIFIC RIM: Pollution sucks.
AUDIENCE: Sure, because of global warming, ice caps melting, many animals and insects going extinct--
PACIFIC RIM: Also it will cause the giant lizards to come and eat us all.
AUDIENCE: ... Interesting new perspective.

IMPROBABLE CHUCK: Hahaha, loser.
RALEIGH: Whatever, loser.
IMPROBABLE CHUCK: Your mother smelled of elderberries!
RALEIGH: You think you smell great? Dude, it's the seamonster apocalypse.
IMPROBABLE CHUCK: Mako's hair isn't that shiny.
RALEIGH: I'M GOING TO KILL YOU! I'M GOING TO PULL YOUR LIVER OUT OF YOUR NOSE! I'M GOING TO PULL YOUR SPLEEN OUT OF YOUR EAR! AND YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHERE I'M GOING TO PULL YOUR KIDNEYS OUT OF!

RALEIGH: You must have been snow in a former life to make me feel so Drift compatible with you.
MAKO: Thanks, dude.
RALEIGH: Can you feel the giant robot love tonight?
MAKO: Yes, but we are fired for incompetence.

NEWT: Hello, I was looking for a dude called Chau?
CHAU: Did you expect someone Asian?
NEWT: Uh... silly me?
CHAU: Anyway I'm a shifty black market dealer!
NEWT: I'm a dude looking to get up and personal with a dead lizard's brain. No judgements here.

RUSSIAN ROBOT: *dies*
CHINESE ROBOT: *dies*
AUSTRALIAN ROBOT: *it ain't looking good*

IDRIS ELBA: You guys are hired again.
MAKO & RALEIGH: Woohoo!
IDRIS ELBA: On account of everyone else is dead.
MAKO & RALEIGH: We'd like to modulate that to a quietly mournful 'woo.'

SUDDEN GIANT LIZARD ATTACK: attacks.
NEWT: *chased across city by giant lizard*
SAVAGE GIANT LIZARD: Have you ever thought just maybe, you belong with me?
NEWT: In retrospect, I've made some poor life decisions.

MAKO: Fortunately I have built a giant sword into the robot.
SARAH: This is better if you know her family were swordmakers.
AUDIENCE: How do you know that?
SARAH: Internet addiction--sometimes a curse, sometimes a blessing.
RALEIGH: How did I not know you'd built a giant sword into the robot?
MAKO: Bubbles, I love you, but sometimes you talk too much and you don't pay attention.

CHAU: How did you escape the giant monster?
NEWT: Escape? We had coffee, talked about how to make an interdimensional relationship work...
CHAU: Oh, I getcha. Interdimensional relationships are tough.
NEWT: Back to my previous list of demands! 1. Lizard brains. 2. Lizard brains. 3. Some sort of lizard brain container, that stuff is nasty.

CHAU'S SHIFTY DEALER COMPATRIOTS: Something's up with this dead lizard. Oh my god, it's pregnant.
NEWT: I swear, we only met today.
BABY LIZARD: Mommmmmmmyyyyyyy.
NEWT: I flee! I flee my own inevitable fame in a reality TV show called 'Bringing Up Lizard.'

IDRIS ELBA: I am dying of handsome and narrative inevitability, but the Death Mentos will hold it off a while. Unless I get in a giant robot, then I'm toast.
RALEIGH: So when are you getting in a giant robot?
IDRIS ELBA: Well, now that I've said that, I'll be lucky to make it ten more minutes. Goddamn, I am toast with marmalade.

IDRIS ELBA: Okay here's the plan: CANCEL THE APOCALYPSE.
CROWD OF THE RESISTANCE, WHOSE JOB IS MAINLY TO LOOK SAD, CLAP AND POLISH THE ROBOTS: *clap*
CROWD: Goddamn we are lucky to have Idris Elba. Can you imagine some of these lines said by other people? Let's clap some more.

IDRIS ELBA: Since Silver Fox Australian is out of commission, I will join Improbable Chuck on a suicide mission. Fetch me my tailored robot suit.
LITTLE BULLDOG: Sometimes I feel things for Idris Elba... what little bulldogs are not meant to feel.

SILVER FOX AUSTRALIAN: Goodbye Improbably Named Chuck.
IMPROBABLE CHUCK: I love you Daddy. I love you more, bulldog.
SILVER FOX AUSTRALIAN: I'll miss him, but I've known pain before. My real-life name is Max Martini.

RALEIGH: You know Mako, I've been living for so long in the past, when my brother was alive, and I was a biker, and I was banging Littlefinger from Game of Thrones--
MAKO: WHAT?
RALEIGH: I've had a varied career. But I never thought about the future before, and the kind of wedding I want, and that maybe the bridesmaids' dresses could be teal, and today is a bad day to start embroidering for my hope chest, but--
MAKO: Settle down, my plan is a Vegas chapel shaped like a robot.

HERMAN: Let's psychically connect to this dead baby lizard's brain together.
NEWT: That is the most romantic thing anybody has ever said to me.
HERMAN: By Jove, we will own this bad boy for real!
NEWT: ... By Jove? Nobody says that. English people don't say that. If you are a time traveller, you can tell me. I will believe you, and chances are I will also find it totally hot.

NEWT: Stop everything! You know the bit in the heist movie where they need an evildoer's fingerprint to get into the high security building?
AUSTRALIAN SILVER FOX: Yes?
NEWT: This is exactly like that except replace 'fingerprint' with 'giant lizard carcass' and replace 'high security building' with 'alternate dimension.'

IDRIS ELBA: Time to sacrifice ourselves for my beloved adopted daughter and baby badass, Mako. And Blondie too I guess.
IMPROBABLE CHUCK: Sir, it's how I always wanted to go... beside a man who looks like Idris Elba.
IDRIS ELBA: Me too.
IMPROBABLE CHUCK: You wanted to die with a man who looks like me, sir?
IDRIS ELBA: Oh no. No, I wanted to die as a man who looks like me. And success.
IDRIS ELBA: This robot is now diamonds.
IDRIS ELBA: And so I die as I lived, handsomely, authoritatively, and wearing close-fitting garments.

RALEIGH AND MAKO: *defeat the evil lizards through love and punching, pass into alternate dimension*
RALEIGH: Whoo we did it Mako that one was for real baby nobody punches robots better though sometimes I wish someone could, nobody punches robots half as good as you, baby baby, you're the best.
MAKO: Please don't talk so much we are losing oxygen.

RALEIGH: You know the womenfolk, and their delicate lady needs for 'oxygen.'
RALEIGH: As a chiseled blond dude who is faking an American accent, I am too manly for any such requirements.
RALEIGH: First, send precious beloved badass Mako to safety!
RALEIGH: Next, set precious beloved giant robot to blow up alternate dimension.
RALEIGH: Is there anything else I forgot? Did I leave the iron on in the other dimension, well, plenty of time to--
RALEIGH: Augh augh just remembered CAN'T BREATHE...

MAKO: Wake up in a tiny raft in a metal bodysuit, this reminds me of a trip to Tijuana--oh my God, Raleigh ain't looking so hot. And that is VERY UNUSUAL for Raleigh.
MAKO: Check for a pulse? Raleigh must be dead because he isn't talking!
MAKO: Wake up Raleigh! I have lost Idris Elba and that is enough loss for a lifetime!
RALEIGH: You make good points. I will live! For you, and Idris Elba!
AUDIENCE: Sounds like a pretty good battle cry to *me*.

Not as funny as some, I don't think, because I did find this a touching tale, robots and all: 'only connect' the movie suggested, and you can do anything. But I hope you guys enjoyed it!

The Contest Winners and Untold Chapter One

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

I am home at last, and it is at long last time for me to announce the winners of the Untold Contest. Dear lovely winners, please contact me at sarahreesbrennan@gmail.com, and I promise to send you your copies of Untold IMMEDIATELY.

1) The winner of the Picture Challenge is a draw between Erin and a team. Erin may be the cat. http://anakisa.tumblr.com/post/514910...

I love the pictures because they tell a story and are hilarious, though this was difficult as I have so many gorgeous readers in improbable places. Special mention to the lovely lady in the throne from Game of Thrones!

The team made a whole collection of startling and super fun Unspoken pictures.

http://unspokenisawesome.blogspot.ie/

2) The winner of the Words Challenge is pumpkinonwheels, for writing Angela coming out to Rusty. There were a lot of amazing entries, both prose and poesy, but this one said a lot with a little, and it fit in to my head canon so well that I can no longer imagine anything else she would have said, or he would have. http://pumpkinonwheels.tumblr.com/pos...

3) The winner of the Art Challenge is iceramyst–because of how much this picture incorporates about the characters and the story, as well as the beautiful art.

http://imgur.com/a/orFSj#nm3tq2P

4) The Surprise Me Challenge was SO HARD and, though I was so wooed and torn by the beauty of the Lynburn dagger rendered in real life and the hopscotch to the Sorry-in-the-Vale song and the piano soundtrack and Kami’s orange bra and the beautiful song Unsaid, I decided to award to Sarsie’s Kami Badge–not just because felting is lots of work I don’t know how to do, but because it is wearable art that I’d love to wear, and so vivid and celebratory of Kami the character.

http://sarsie.deviantart.com/art/Unsp...

I am also giving an extra prize to bluerose99 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaiNp5... – whose song, pictures and art all together definitely surprised me!

I would give out more advance copies, I swear, if I only had them!

And a big thank you (and their choice of a signed TEAM HUMAN or a signed DEFY THE DARK) to Allie(the-cat) and Gillian Berry, for their Untold Celebration and snippet art, which has made the countdown to Untold’s release in September so much fun, and to yabooknook, whose tumblr entry made me smile for days.

http://yabooknook.tumblr.com/post/518...

Thank you all SO MUCH for my beautiful, beautiful contest entries, and for your patience in waiting for me to choose. I have been much harried this year (writing two books for next year and another for the year after as well as the Bane Chronicles is a lot, and I do not want to let anybody down!), but it was also just terribly difficult to choose–friends had to be press-ganged into helping, and love and vanity made me look at the same things over and over. I feel so privileged to have readers like you, who would take the time and expend the effort. I have tried to tweet and tumblrify this appreciation, but also I thank you all from the bottom of my heart, and this present is for all of you: not a snippet, but chapter one of Untold.

PART I

IN THE DARK

And lonely as it is, that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less. . . .

—Robert Frost

Chapter One

The Scarecrow Trials

Welcome to Sorry-in-the-Vale. It’s a Magical Place (and We Mean That Literally).

by Kami Glass

Let’s not front. We all know magic is real.

You know. Or it’s time you knew. It’s time someone told you.

I always said that every town has a story, that even our sleepy Sorry-in-the-Vale must have one. I was so sure that I could find a story hidden somewhere under the chocolate-box prettiness of our town. I thought finding a story would be like bird-watching in the Vale woods, waiting for bright eyes and a burst of wings. I thought it would be like finding gold.

It wasn’t like that at all.

I was searching for a story, and then the Lynburn family returned to the manor above our town: the sisters Lillian and Rosalind, their sons Ash and Jared, and Lillian’s husband, Rob. They had been gone seventeen years, but as soon as they returned there was blood in the woods.

They were not here long before a girl died.

The Lynburns are sorcerers. I have seen magic with my own eyes. I saw Jared Lynburn turn himself invisible. I saw Ash Lynburn make objects fly. I saw shadows come to life, and come for me.

It was not Jared or Ash Lynburn who killed someone. Jared Lynburn may be, in this reporter’s completely unbiased opinion, the most infuriating idiot in the land, but he was not responsible for this. Lillian, Jared, Ash, even Rosalind, are not the ones who want to make Sorry-in-the-Vale again what it once was: a place where the magicians were our lords, demanding our blood as their right.

Rob Lynburn killed Nicola Prendergast. She was my age: she was seventeen. We were friends when we were children. I do not know how to talk about her death, that she died so a selfish lunatic could have more power, but I know I must talk about it. There are people in this town who already know the secrets of Sorry-in-the-Vale: people who are not talking and not acting because they are afraid. But hiding from the truth will not make it go away.

The Lynburns aren’t the only sorcerers. They are the leaders, but there are others. There are police officers who are sorcerers. There are teachers who are sorcerers. There is magic on every side. Rob and Rosalind Lynburn left Aurimere House two weeks ago, and we know Rob was recruiting sorcerers to kill with him months before that. He has not been seen or heard from since he left, but that means nothing. He is a sorcerer and can walk unseen, gathering more sorcerers to him and making his plans.

We have to plan too. What can we do to fight magic? What power do we have?

Knowledge is power. Knowing this is power: me telling you this is power, for me and for you.

Try to be as strong and know as much as you can.

The magicians are coming for our town. Let’s be ready for them.

“Well,” said Kami Glass to herself, staring at her computer screen. “That doesn’t make me look mad as a bucket full of hedgehogs at all.”

Then she checked the time on her computer, saved the document, and made a grab for her bag and her orange jacket with the lace cuffs.

It was Halloween, and if Kami didn’t hurry she would be late for the Scarecrow Trials.

∗

The sun was setting in crimson slashes and gold ribbons over Sorry-in-the-Vale. Night was falling and Kami had a lot of scarecrows to get through.

“I hear in the big city, girls dress up like sexy witches and sexy vampires and sexy Easter bunnies, and go to parties where they do all sorts of scandalous things,” Kami said. “Lucky you and me, we walk around our town looking at our neighbors’ gardens and remarking ‘My, that’s a good-looking scarecrow’ to each other. I guess this is why our natures are so beautiful and unspoiled.”

“My, that’s a hideous scarecrow,” Angela drawled. “Are we done yet?”

“No, Angela,” Kami said patiently. “This is our first scarecrow. I’m going to write an article on the tradition of the Scarecrow Trials, and I’m going to put a picture of the winning scarecrow on our front page so everyone can say to themselves ‘Fine figure of a scarecrow.’ For the preservation of our sacred journalistic integrity, we have to see every scarecrow in town.”

“I can’t figure out how I got roped into this mess,” said Angela, who looked all scarecrowed out. “Obviously, I’ve made some very poor life choices.”

Kami fell silent. She had roped Angela into much more than the Scarecrow Trials. She was the one who had told Angela that she heard a voice in her head, and that the voice was a real person. She’d drawn Angela into her investigation of the murder and magic in Sorry-in-the-Vale. She had caught the attention of Rob Lynburn, sorcerer and murderer. Kami knew it was due to her that Angela had almost died in the woods two weeks ago.

Kami and Angela were on the west edge of town, at the top of the steep slope of Schoolhouse Road. Kami looked down at the old yellow cobblestones shadowed with the coming of night. She traced the line of the road with her eyes, to the sloping roofs and spinning weathervanes of Sorry-in-the-Vale, then to the woods waiting beyond.

Kami did not know how to talk to Angela about that, or how to tell her she was sorry. Misery and uncertainty kept flooding through her, tides that had been turned back all her life by a secret voice. Now the voice in her head was silent.

Angela, her brilliant dark eyes almost hidden by her veil of black hair, gave Kami a sidelong glance. Angela looked annoyed, which was Angela’s default, but Kami could see a hint of concern lurking underneath. She knew that her new hesitance was freaking Angela out.

“You know what?” Kami asked with a grin. “Mrs. Jeffries at the post office tried to slip me a little somethin’ somethin’ to praise her scarecrow in The Nosy Parker. It’s shocking how corrupt the Scarecrow Trials have become. What about honor, Angela? What about the craft?”

“How much did you get?”

“Well, okay, she slipped me some free stamps,” Kami admitted. “Still, my first bribe as a journalist. I’m feeling pretty fancy.”

Sorry-in-the-Vale didn’t have a local paper, and Kami had been proud when she saw people without kids reading the paper she edited, aptly titled The Nosy Parker.

At least she was succeeding at something.

Kami and Angela stopped at the Greens’ house, one of the few old houses not made of golden Cotswold stone but of granite and slate. It was a gray crumbling edifice that seemed bound together by the dry brown briars of climbing roses growing over it. The Greens’ scarecrow was lopsided on its stand; its yellow gloves, stuffed fat with straw, seemed to wave feebly at them.

Kami clicked her tongue. “Poor effort,” she said, taking a picture with her phone and making a note to that effect in her notebook.

“Might scare off a few thrushes. Possibly a pigeon. But it’s not a hardcore scarecrow.”

“I’m uncomfortable checking out scarecrows,” Angela said. “I don’t swing that way.”

It was Kami’s turn to give Angela a sidelong look.

That was something else they hadn’t talked about. Kami had found out secondhand that Angela had tried to kiss their friend Holly. Kami must have been more or less the worst best friend in the world if Angela had not felt like she could tell her that she liked girls.

“Have you . . .” Kami cleared her throat. “Have you had a chance to talk to Holly?”

“No,” Angela snapped. “Been chatting much with Jared?”

“We often have special moments where I come into a room and he immediately leaves,” Kami said. “I treasure those times.” She swallowed, the knot in her throat as sharp as if she had swallowed a rose, the thorns raking on their way down.

“I don’t mean to—to make you feel bad,” Kami added, hating that she had to say it. Words felt so clumsy when she was talking about feelings and not facts. “I just wanted you to know that you can talk about it. If you want.”

“I don’t want,” Angela told her flatly.

They followed the curve of the road until it became Cooper Lane, fringed by pale buildings and dark trees. Kami concentrated on the scarecrows going by and scribbled: “Write in your notebook to avoid this awkward moment!”

Angela said, after a pause, “But I know I can.”

Kami nudged Angela, which, considering their relative heights, meant she elbowed Angela in the thigh. “Life sucks sometimes.”

“Thank you for that amazing journalistic insight,” Angela responded, very dryly, and Kami felt a little better.

Cooper Lane turned out to have an eclectic mix of scarecrows, from the traditional cloth and straw to the experimental: there was one scarecrow with a balloon for a head, and one made of papier-mâché. Kami liked the scarecrow in the pink flowered hat at the Wrights’ because there were so many scarecrows who were clearly guys. Kami felt ladies should represent in the scarecrow movement.

“A papier-mâché scarecrow is cheating,” Kami observed judiciously as they passed through the town square at the end of the High Street, heading toward Shadowchurch Lane. “And the cardboard cutout scarecrow was just sad. Enough to make a true scarecrow connoisseur weep.” She was mostly talking to distract Angela from the group of guys standing at the foot of the statue of long-ago town hero Matthew Cooper. In the middle of the little crowd, Kami glimpsed Holly’s golden curls.

Kami quickened her pace, and they soon arrived at the church and Shadowchurch Lane.

It was almost twilight, the sun a bloody smear on the horizon, the pale blues and greens of the sky fading into gray and indigo. Across from the stone horseshoe- shaped archway of the church entrance was the Thompsons’ house. Their garden was fenced, unlike most gardens in Sorry-in-the-Vale, the black iron bars making a shadowy cage of their front lawn. The scarecrow who stood in that cage wore a black suit. The sack that was its face had been whitened with chalk, and it glowed in the darkness.

“Vampire scarecrow?” said Angela.

“Undertaker scarecrow,” was Kami’s verdict. Her voice came out less assured than she wanted it to.

The next house belonged to Sergeant Kenn, the police officer Kami had talked to after Nicola Prendergast was murdered. The same police officer she had seen coming to help Rob Lynburn the day Rob tried to kill Angela. Kami slipped her hand into the crook of Angela’s elbow and held on.

Since the Kenns’ house was beside the church, the church spire cast a black triangle on the ghost-gray grass. The scarecrow on their front lawn was slumped on its wooden frame, its black-hatted head hanging. Something about the way it was slumped, the fact the body was a little too realistically proportioned, made a chill crawl down Kami’s spine. It reminded her of someone dead. But she was being ridiculous. She was imagining things because of whose house this was. She could see the straw sticking out of the scarecrow’s cuffs. Keeping hold of Angela and drawing her along, Kami set one foot in the dark wet grass and stooped down, peering to see the scarecrow’s face.

In the shadow of its hat, the scarecrow’s eyes shone, not with the glint of metal, but with the wet gleam of something alive. Kami’s fingers clamped down on Angela’s arm. There was a flicker of darkness, the gleam of the scarecrow’s eyes vanishing for a moment, and Kami realized what had happened.

The scarecrow had blinked.

“Angela,” Kami said in a low, extremely calm voice. “I think it might be a good idea to run.”

The scarecrow began to move, sliding its stiff arms off the wooden frame where it rested. Kami watched with paralyzed fascination as it stretched out a leg and took a step toward them.

“Kami,” Angela said, in an equally low, calm voice. “I think it might be a very good idea to look around.”

Kami looked and saw that every garden on Shadowchurch Lane was stirring into life. The undertaker scarecrow in the Thompsons’ garden was already off its wooden frame and climbing its fence, round pale face shining like a small horrible moon, coming through the darkness at them.

The air was filled with the whisper-like rustle of straw. Behind them, Kami heard screams and the sound of people running. She let go of Angela’s arm and grabbed hold of a branch from the Kenns’ yew tree. The bark rasped cold and harsh against her palms, and Kami wrenched at it as hard as she could until it snapped off in her hands.

Angela walked, empty-handed, across Shadowchurch Lane to meet the Thompsons’ scarecrow. She kicked it in the stomach. That did not wind it, or even make its stride falter. Another scarecrow came tottering down the road, bleeding a trail of straw, making straight for Angela. Kami ran out into the street wielding her branch.

Angela whirled and grabbed one of the Thompson scarecrow’s arms. It ripped its own arm off and launched itself at her, so light it seemed like it was flying. Angela launched herself right back, no finesse or any of the self-defense moves Rusty had taught them now, just fury and clawing, as if Angela planned to shred it to pieces with her bare hands.

The new scarecrow Kami was keeping at bay with her branch was getting braver, its sackcloth feet shuffling in the mess of straw it was bleeding, feinting first one way and then another. It had a turnip for a head, which was wagging obscenely at her as it lunged. Kami stared into the dark hollows of its eyes and got an idea. She stepped forward, advancing even though every muscle in her body was urging her to cringe away, and jabbed her branch as hard as she could into its grinning face.

The face shattered, turning into vegetable pulp as she hit it again and again. The scarecrow’s hands touched her, rubber gloves filled with crackling straw fumbling at and catching her throat. Kami forced back a scream and struck until the turnip fell off and the scarecrow tumbled down in an inert heap of straw and cloth.

Kami whipped around still clutching her branch, with a cry on her lips for Angela. But Angela had seen what to do already. She was crouched on the road, ripping at the creature’s neck until the sackcloth gave way with a horrible tearing sound, and Angela rose to her feet with its chalk-whitened head in her fist like a trophy.

Her eyes met Kami’s and she dropped the head. Kami reached out with her free hand to grab Angela’s. It was only when she found Angela’s palm clammy, and Angela held her hand back hard, that she knew Angela was scared too.

Then she heard a choked-off scream, and both their heads turned. Kami thought of the screams and running she’d heard behind them. In the square. She should have known Holly wouldn’t run anywhere but to them.

Holly was still in the square, still in a crowd, but the boys were gone and the crowd she stood in now was a jostling, rushing crowd of scarecrows. Kami saw Holly’s bright crown of hair disappear among them, swallowed up. Angela’s immediate race forward was checked by the scarecrow from the Kenn house lunging in front of her. Kami ducked down and scythed its feet out from under it with her branch.

At least, that was the idea, but instead the scarecrow’s straw legs sagged forward, bowing instead of falling. This still gave Angela plenty of time to dodge around it.

“Go,” Kami said. “I’ve got this.”

Angela hesitated for an instant, then nodded and ran, her black hair streaming behind her.

Kami had told her to go. She had not expected to feel quite so abandoned and alone, the only human left in a street full of horrors.

The light from the Kenns’ windows gleamed in their scarecrow’s eyes, and Kami saw they were marbles that had transformed into something that glistened as if they were made of the same stuff as human eyes but stayed small, swirling colors at their center.

It had a plaster face that had turned waxy and a little flexible. Kami saw its mouth move infinitesimally, grin stretching. It flexed hands in black gloves, and Kami heard tiny wooden pieces click inside the leather. Rob Lynburn and his sorcerers had made all these creatures come to some semblance of life. Kami had known as much already. But this scarecrow was specifically designed to last longer, to be more capable of hurting her.

It was horrible that there was a light on in the Kenns’ house. She wondered how many people were awake in the houses along this lane, knowing nothing or hiding in fear, or standing at the windows watching the chaos they had created.

A hand touched the back of Kami’s neck, so terribly light, like a glove filled with nothing but air. Kami spun, trying to keep both scarecrows in her line of sight and jabbing her branch at the new one.

It was the scarecrow in the pink sunhat. Kami felt a little betrayed.

She hit it and the branch caught on the ruffled material of the scarecrow’s dress. Kami stabbed the branch in deeper and then yanked it out, ripping the scarecrow in two pieces.

The Kenns’ scarecrow grabbed at her arm, its grasp firmer than the other scarecrow’s, feeling slick and strangling-strong on the bare skin of Kami’s wrist. Kami wrenched away and saw that there were other scarecrows very close now. One with a little whittled wooden face, its nose a knot in bark, was suddenly at the Kenns’ scarecrow’s side like a henchman.

A couple of houses down, there was a dark shape lying splayed in the grass. Kami felt her stomach turn, cold and sick, as she realized it was a scarecrow so badly made it could not stand.

It was crawling to get her, on its belly like a snake.

Kami dived for the scarecrow with the wooden face. The Kenns’ scarecrow crashed into her, heavier than a scarecrow should have been, as if it had a wooden skeleton buried underneath its straw, and caught her off-balance.

Kami fell heavily onto her side, elbow catching the edge of the pavement. The Kenn scarecrow’s leather shoe slammed down toward her face. Kami rolled to avoid it, and ended up flat on her back in the wet grass of the Kenns’ garden. The scarecrow’s waxy face and living marble eyes glistened above her, impassive and terrible, and Kami lifted her branch in both hands to ward it off.

In the black shadow of the church spire, light was born. First an orange glint ran along the dark wood of her branch; then Kami caught the sharp smell of smoke and heard a crackle nothing like the sound of straw.

Kami kept tight hold of her branch as light raced along it, sparking between the forked ends, and watched it burst into burning life.

By the sudden light of fire, she saw there was someone with her in Shadowchurch Lane.

Jared Lynburn, one of the sorcerers. Rob Lynburn’s nephew, the real boy she had once believed was her imaginary friend.

He was standing back, arms crossed over his chest, watching her. His face was mostly shadowed but the stark line of the scar on his face was white as moonlight, firelight catching the sleeping gold in his dark-blond hair and setting twin lights burning in his pale eyes.

The boy who used to live in her head.

But not anymore.

Kami lifted herself on her unhurt elbow and plunged the burning branch into the Kenn scarecrow’s body. Its coat caught alight, and Kami scrambled to her feet as it scrabbled at the branch with its leather gloves. She shoved the branch into its straw breast and watched it burn from the inside out.

She was not surprised when she looked for the scarecrow with the wooden face and saw its face already a charred ruin. She was surprised when she looked across the street and Jared was gone, twining shadows and moonlight where he had stood.

Firelight burst in the corner of her eye. Kami turned and looked down the street. There he was, a shadow passing through forms bright with burning. Some of the scarecrows writhed as they burned in a ghastly parody of a dance. Jared stopped at the garden where the ill-made scarecrow lay, a humped-up shape in the grass. Kami watched him watch it, weakly rolling in the grass as it burned, and thought she saw him smile.

She could have followed him. He would not exactly have been hard to track, what with his blazing path of destruction and all. But Jared obviously did not need her help. Angela and Holly might.

Kami turned away from him and ran, clutching her burning branch, down to the town square.

Angela was standing beside the statue of Matthew Cooper. Holly was sitting at the base of the statue, short skirt riding up her purple tights as she put her boots back on. Beside her boots was a metal sign from one of the High Street shop fronts.

Standing diffidently on the other side of the statue was Ash Lynburn, Jared’s cousin and Rob’s son, his camera around his neck and piles of cloth and straw all around him.

“How’d you do that?” Kami asked. It was the first thing she had said to him in two weeks, since the day she found out his father had persuaded him to spy on her, and almost persuaded him to kill Angela.

Ash blinked and smiled at the sight of her. “It’s easy,” he said. “You just undo the spell put on them in the first place—it’s like undoing a knot in your mind.”

So setting them on fire and watching them burn was an entirely unnecessary and insane thing to do, Kami thought. But she did not say that. Instead, she said, “Everyone all right?”

Angela nodded. Holly looked up and smiled too, her smile more shaky and thus more real than Ash’s. “I’m okay,” she said. “I see you are too. I also see you have a weapon that is on fire.”

“I’m badass like that,” Kami said, putting the branch down on the cobblestones. It was still burning. She had no idea how to put it out.

“My mother’s up by the woods, dealing with the gardens there,” said Ash, as if Lillian Lynburn was trimming hedges rather than killing scarecrows come to life. “Jared’s—”

“I saw him,” Kami told him shortly. She jerked her head toward the road past the church, and the burning trail Jared had left. She went to sit at the foot of the statue beside Holly.

Holly linked arms with her. Kami leaned in close, sharing warmth as they looked around the nighttime square and past it to the rest of their town where there were still fires burning and straw men moving through the dark.

They had known it was coming: Rob Lynburn’s first move to terrify the town into submission, to make it a place where sorcerers ruled again, where they could kill for power and nobody would stop them.

They didn’t know who most of Rob Lynburn’s followers were, but some people who didn’t follow him must have seen what was happening. Nobody had come to help. Kami shivered in the night air, and felt Holly shiver too.

When they saw someone walking toward them down the High Street, they both jumped.

Angela ran past them both, and when she reached her brother she punched him in the shoulder. Rusty’s shirt was torn: he put an arm around his sister, and looked at Kami over Angela’s head. His often-sleepy hazel eyes were bright and intent.

“Cambridge?” he requested, using his silly nickname for her. “A scarecrow just tried to choke me. I don’t wish to seem overly inquisitive, but do you have any idea what on earth is happening?”

Kami looked at Holly and Ash, who were both silent and totally unhelpful. “Well,” she admitted, “I might have some idea.”

“You’d better tell me,” Rusty said.

Kami looked around the square at the remains of scarecrows in the moonlight. “We’d better go to your house first,” she said. “It’s not safe here.” She didn’t know if anywhere was safe. She didn’t want to go home, so there was nowhere to go but Rusty and Angela’s place. She wasn’t welcome at the Lynburns’.

Kami lifted her eyes to Aurimere House, which stood outlined against the sky. Its windows reflected the lights of fires burning all over her town.

An Irish Appearance At Last!

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

This very Friday.

READING WITH TED DEPPE

Friday 19 July

7:30 PM – 8:30 PM

Dingle Bookshop

Green Street

Dingle

Co. Kerry

IRELAND

http://www.dinglebookshop.com/

books@dinglebookshop.com

It is the first public appearance I have ever done outside of Dublin, which I think is kind of excitin’, and Dingle is meant to be beauteous! There are meant to be dolphins there. (MY NEW DOLPHIN FRIENDS, as I think of them.) So, I am excite. And for those of you who are Irish but cannot make it, I am happy to sign a thing for you if you let the bookshop know you’d like me to.

DEFY THE DARK

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

Two blog posts in one day, Sarah?

(Well, I like to keep you guys guessing.)

This is a cool thing that you will ENJOY, I think. There are prizes.

So, this week the anthology DEFY THE DARK was released. It is all darkly haunting tales by Rachel Hawkins, Carrie Ryan, Aprilynne Pike, Malinda Lo, Courtney Summers, Beth Revis, Sarah Ockler, and many more: I am not sure WHY I was asked, given the super cool lineup, but hey, I’ll take it. I love writing short stories! I love the screaming from my editors about the exact definition of ‘short.’

The editor was the amazing Saundra Mitchell, who is both a good friend and the author of many brilliant novels, including the just-released The Elementals, which she explains all the awesome things about better than I ever could here: http://diversityinya.tumblr.com/post/...

It also has a story from a brand new author in it, which I think is pretty cool, as we all know there are a thousand new authors with amazing stories to tell, waiting for us to discover them.

Not only did we have a contest and chose a fabulous new author, Saundra (she can do magic, I’m telling you!) read every one of the thousands of entries and chose other authors to highlight as well. They will be at http://defythedark.com/emily-skrutskie/ and http://defythedark.com/taure-shimp/. Emily’s story is AFTER ILLUME, a ship-bound SF tale, and BOGWATER by Taure Shimp, a wonderful southern gothic.

Everyone else’s stories are super cool, guys. There’s baby spider people and creepy Southern towns. And there is my story, I Gave You My Love By the Light of the Moon, and I HOPE it’s cool.

The theme was what happens in the dark, and I love the Vampire Diaries, and a particular couple I love on that show are Tyler the angry jock werewolf and Caroline the cheerleader vampire, blonde and bubbly and bright-shining-heart-of-gold Caroline who teaches him to be a better man by being amazing and tenderly shepherding him through his supernatural chaaaanges because she knows better. I also love Vivian the lady werewolf from Annette Curtis Klause’s Blood & Chocolate, and I feel she could have lit up the life of many a gloomy fictional vampire of my acquaintance. Basically, I like vampires and I like werewolves. They’re extremely different creatures of the night, often painted as in opposition (and what’s not to love about Furry Romeo and Fangy Juliet? Maybe Edward and Jacob could have made it work together, is what I’m saying, I don’t judge…) and they both say a lot about what it means to be human.

So I wrote my story about Berthe, who loves lacrosse and camping and was just bitten by a werewolf, and the weirdo hipster she meets in a cafe.

You defy the dark by living in the dark with love. Or that’s what I was going for, anyway.

How’s about you tell me about fictional couples you enjoy–either ones that actually happened, or characters you’d like to see get together? I will enter you for a draw, and the winner will get a copy of Defy the Dark, a copy of Unspoken, wristlets and bookmarks, and my super secret extra addition… my very last ARC of Untold. (The others are earmarked for the CONTEST WINNERS, about which more soon…)

But first, let’s defy the dark, and dish on fictional couples.

June Untold Snippet…

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

This super beauteous art inspired me to put up this particular June snippet…

In the shadows moving behind whispering leaves, in a place seen through a glass darkly. Jared was there. She had been able to reach him across an ocean: she had to believe she could find him now.

“You don’t understand,” Ash said hopelessly.

“I understand this,” Kami returned. “Think of where he is, conjure it up, bring it closer. Open a door for me, or I swear to God I will break through a wall.” She stood up and reached a hand across the pool to Ash, whose fingers closed around hers, unexpectedly strong.

His eyes went wide. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going in after him,” Kami said. “Don’t let go of my hand.” She took a firmer hold on his hand, and jumped into the pool.

It was like taking a tumble into the night sky. She felt like she was falling through fathoms of airless darkness lost beyond recall.

Ash’s hand stayed tight clasped with hers, though it made every muscle in her arm scream to hang on. She struck out with her free hand, blackness all around her, skin burning with cold and lungs burning from lack of oxygen. This was a nightmare eager to swallow her whole, but if Jared was here, some part of her could survive here. She was not going to give up until this place surrendered what was hers.

She reached out again and again, fingers finding nothing, and then she clawed through nothing. She kept searching: she’d pulled him out of this pool once, he’d saved her from drowning once. Jagged pieces of memory slid through her mind, and she felt that if only she could put them together, she would understand how to get to him.

Except that she did not know how. All she knew was that she was not giving up. Darkness was blotting her out, but she made the thought of finding him her last light and chased it until even that was winked out and was lost.

Kami could feel her fingers again when she felt another hand brush hers, and knew whose it was. She held on with all the strength she hadn’t known she had left, entwined her fingers with his, clinging so hard that they would be drowned or saved together. She hung onto him and hung there in space, numb and almost content.

Then she was drawn up through the water, inch by painful inch. When she surfaced, her lips opened and she breathed in mingled air and water. She choked and held on to both boys’ hands so fiercely her fingers felt as if they might break.

Ash was saying something, murmuring words of horror and relief, as he helped Kami out of the water. She knelt in the cold dirt and felt Ash’s hands through the soaked material of her shirt.

“Help me,” she rasped, pulling their white linked fingers apart and plunging her now-free hand back into the water.

Ash reached into the water again too, grabbing fistfuls of Jared’s shirt. Together they dragged him out of the pool and laid him on the moonlit-white broken grass.

Jared lay still as the dead. He should have been dead, Kami realized.

The tiny gold lines of his eyelashes were kissed by frost. His hair in her lap was glittering with ice crystals. But he was still holding on to her hand, grasp sure and strong.

“Jared,” Kami said, desperate and commanding.

Jared opened his eyes suddenly. They were paler than she had ever seen, white and treacherous as the winter ice she had shattered to get to him.

“Jared, can you hear me? How long were you down there?”

Jared’s lips moved, shaping her name. Drops of water landed on the silvery lines of his face. Kami could not tell if it was lake water dripping from her hair or tears.

She bent over him as he shook in her arms and started to breathe like a human being again, in shuddering gasps as if he might live.

“You can’t keep acting like this,” Kami told him fiercely. “You cannot continue to be this stupid.”

Lightning flashed overhead like an answer to her, that he would keep being this bitter sorcerous stranger, that perhaps he had never been anything else.

It bleached the whole world white, the pools turning into diamonds. The drops of water on the planes of Jared’s face, on the pale line of his bared throat, gleamed like broken glass.

Kami covered her eyes with her trembling hand and thought: I can’t keep acting like this. I cannot continue to be this stupid.

Hope you enjoyed! Contest winners announced very soon, and all of Untold awarded to some, er, lucky winners…