Sarah Rees Brennan's Blog, page 9
August 10, 2012
Prince Caspian Parody: Peter The Magnificent & Caspian The Super Fine
Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.
GENERAL: Lord Miraz, you have a son!
MIRAZ: Well, you know what that means.
GENERAL: Set off fireworks around the castle?
MIRAZ: Exactly! Oh, and kill my nephew Prince Caspian.
DARKLY OMINOUS CLOAKED FIGURE: Nobody will notice me sneaking into Caspian’s bedchamber.
AUDIENCE: Why not?
LIGHT: falls on Prince Caspian’s sleeping face
AUDIENCE: Oh I see. Cloaked figures slip into Prince Caspian’s bedchamber every hour of the night!
DOCTOR CORNELIUS: Actually I had to join a line. Wake up, Caspian!
CASPIAN: … ’M kind of tired after dealing with the line…
DOCTOR CORNELIUS: YOUR UNCLE IS GOING TO HAVE YOU KILLED.
CASPIAN: This is not sexy talk!
GENERAL: Fire at will!
GUARDS: riddle the bed with arrows
CASPIAN IN THE WARDROBE: I see that this is not going to be the most subtle royal assassination in the world.
DOCTOR CORNELIUS: Take this horn! Go to the woods! No time to explain! I am a sage with a flowing white beard, when have you ever known my kind to explain anything?
CASPIAN: Fair enough.
MIRAZ: Guards! Launch a hot pursuit of the prince and cut him down from his horse!
GUARDS: I see that this is not going to be the most subtle royal assassination in the world.
CASPIAN: I ride through rocks! I ride through raging waters! I get smacked in the head by a branch and fall right off my horse.
CASPIAN: Who would have thought this wood could be so full of trees?
GUARDS: Death to Caspian!
DWARFS: Death to you all, including Caspian!
CASPIAN: This is just not my night. I think I will blow this horn: what’s the worst that could happen?
LUCY: These automobiles keep trying to run me over. Cannot understand it: centaurs always braked for me in Narnia.
STALKER BOY: Hi there.
SUSAN: Welcome to Not Attractive Enough to Speak to Queen Susan-land, population: you!
STALKER BOY: So I’ve seen you at school. You know, on the hockey pitch, on the steps, through my binoculars when someone leaves the dormitory windows open a little bit…
SUSAN: This is not sexy talk!
STALKER BOY: What’s your name?
SUSAN: Leave me alone or I will cut you.
STALKER BOY: That’s a nice name.
LUCY: Susan come quickly! Peter is wrestling with two other schoolboys!
AUDIENCE: SUSAN, GO QUICKLY!
LUCY: Oh no, Susan, Edmund is wrestling with them too.
AUDIENCE: Run Susan, run!
PETER: I had to fight them because they shoved me. Also they did not bow to me or offer me tribute as their High King.
EDMUND: O High King, I offer you some tribute. It consists of these four magical words.
PETER: What?
EDMUND: SHUT THE HELL UP.
SUSAN: Let’s just face the fact we are never getting back to Narnia.
DRAMATIC IRONY: Oh really?
CASPIAN: Here I am, waking up in a strange bed. This is not really a new thing for me. Man, my head hurts, I hope whoever she is was hot.
TALKING BADGER: I will make the boy soup!
CASPIAN: OH DEAR GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE.
TALKING BADGER: Poor little mite, I have bandaged his head right up.
DWARF: Are you still working from the book where Caspian is like, nine?
CASPIAN: Actually my age is never mentioned. I could be nine.
DWARF: Then I don’t know what the Telmarines are putting in the water, dude.
TALKING BADGER: Looks to me like the Telmarines are putting sexy in the water.
CASPIAN: … I think I’m going to leave now.
PEVENSIES: Aslan seems to want us to frolic in a seaside resort. Well if that is the Lion’s will, so be it!
SUSAN: Does this place look like our old home to anyone else?
EDMUND: Don’t be silly Susan, our old home wasn’t catapulted to bits and pieces!
LUCY: Don’t you guys get it? Hundreds of years have passed! Everyone we know is dead.
PEVENSIES: … Huh.
LUCY: The Beavers! Mr Tumnus!
PETER: Weird. Hey, look at my cool sword!
LUCY: Does nobody understand? He was played by James McAvoy!
TALKING BADGER: Caspian, come back! Narnia needs you and your mighty horn!
CASPIAN: Seriously, lose my number.
GUARDS: There he is! After him!
REEPICHEEP: I am the bane of the Telmarines! I am the Dark Avenger!
CASPIAN: … You’re a mouse.
REEPICHEEP: Oh, eat steel, Telmarine.
TALKING BADGER: Wait Reepicheep, I have to tell you about Caspian’s mighty horn!
TELMARINE LORDS: So it’s interesting that Caspian went missing on the night your son was born.
MIRAZ: I know, right? You’d think I could wait a week or so. Uh, I mean – Caspian was kidnapped by Narnians?
TELMARINE LORDS: Miraz, please leave off with the usurping. And also, the crack.
MIRAZ: I have a Narnian right here! And I could kill him in front of you right now as I threaten the entire extermination of his race, but uh… Well, maybe I’ll keep him to show other Telmarines, sure, I could do that… Maybe I’ll just tell the guards to row him out to a faraway destination on the river and kill him there for no reason, what do you think?
TELMARINE LORDS: Way to overcome the stereotype, Miraz! We always thought evil overlords were cunning.
PETER: Guards are attempting to murder a dwarf!
SUSAN: Battles are ugly when women fight! Because men look so foolish when riddled with arrows.
DLF: So who are you crazy kids?
PETER: I am Peter the Magnificent!
EDMUND: I am Edmund the Just So Embarrassed My Brother Said That.
DLF: Oh my God, Narnia is doomed.
NARNIANS: We’ll kill you, Telmarine!
CASPIAN: How about instead you make me your king?
CENTAURS: You have to admit the boy’s devilishly attractive.
TALKING SQUIRREL: His profile would look good on our money!
NARNIANS: All hail King Caspian!
LUCY: You guys, I see Aslan!
DLF: Dear Narnia, may I present our legendary saviours: King Peter the Egomaniac and Queen Lucy the Crackhead.
LUCY: I think we’re going to call you DLF for Dear Little Friend.
DLF: Secretly it stands for Doesn’t Like Foreigners.
LUCY: Why are you sad, Susan?
SUSAN: I won’t get to stay in Narnia.
LUCY: Huh. Yeah, I guess you won’t. Don’t worry, though, everything will be fine. What could happen?
SUSAN: Well, my entire family could die in a trainwreck. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
PETER: I am Peter the Magnificent!
CASPIAN: I am Caspian the Super Fine!
PETER: … I don’t think I am going to like you.
SUSAN: Really? I think I’m going to like him just fine.
PETER: We can leave if you want.
CASPIAN: No, don’t leave! The only other ladies out here are centaur babes, and nobody will fetch me a stepladder.
REEPICHEEP: Oh King Peter, I pledge you my life!
CASPIAN: HEY!
REEPICHEEP: What can I say, I like blonds.
PETER: So my plan is – we catch them off guard by seizing the castle!
CASPIAN: My plan is that we all sit here and wait for the Telmarines to starve us out.
SURPRISING AMOUNT OF NARNIANS: We vote for Caspian’s plan!
PETER: What the hell?
LESS SURPRISING AMOUNT OF NARNIANS: You see, the thing is, Caspian is really, really attractive.
PETER: I ripped my shirt up once already this movie, and I may do so again at any moment.
NARNIANS: To the castle!
EDMUND: I am all alone on a tower top, on a secret mission. Like James Bond. But it’s okay, I can summon the others. (brandishes torch) I have the technology!
CASPIAN: Doctor Cornelius, wake up! I totally summoned the kings and queens of old and King Peter the Magnificently Snotty has a plan and King Edmund has a torch and Queen Susan has a fine ass! Everything is awesome.
DOCTOR CORNELIUS: I feel that on the eve of battle is a fine time to tell you that your uncle killed your father and make you have a nervous breakdown!
CASPIAN: Miraz, we need to talk! Usurping me is fine, trying to kill me, a-okay, but how could you murder my father? Have you no humanity?
MIRAZ: Nope. Next question!
SUSAN: I cannot believe I put my battle eyeliner on for this.
PETER: I blame you for not following the plan and messing everything up!
CASPIAN: Yeah? Yeah, well I blame you for not retreating when it was already obvious that I had messed everything up!
NARNIANS: Oh my God, the sons of Adam are lame. How sure are we that we need one to be king?
CASPIAN: Also I do not think you are all that magnificent!
PETER: You take that back! You take that back right now!
NARNIANS: Reepicheep for King!
NIKABRIK THE DWARF: Caspian, I totally know a way to win the war.
CASPIAN: Really? That is awesome.
MASSIVELY CREEPY WOLF IN A CLOAK: I eat entrails. And babies. And I creep about the place laughing manically to myself. And I will cause a thousand years of misery and winter. And I am super super creepy. And I never wash my fur. Or this cloak.
CASPIAN: Good to meet you!
HAG: I have a withered skull face with a creepy creepy beak and I think we should raise the extremely evil dead.
CASPIAN: That sounds like fun!
WHITE WITCH: Hi Caspian. Give me some of your blood.
CASPIAN: I’m not totally sure, but that sounds to me like sexy talk.
PETER: Caspian where are you? Are you making out with my sister?
CASPIAN: Nope! Just dabbling with a little necromancy.
PETER: Oh cool, sorry to have inter – OH MY GOD WHAT? STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!
CASPIAN: … Actually now I come to think about it, that does sound kind of bad. Help!
NIKABRIK: I won’t let you do this! I insist on raising evil witches from the dead! I will kill you all! I will pinch Queen Lucy quite hard!
DLF: That’s it! NOBODY PINCHES QUEEN LUCY. Die!
WHITE WITCH: Peter, baby, I’ve missed you.
PETER: Um…
WHITE WITCH: You are looking more magnificent than ever. Soooooo magnificent.
PETER: You are evil as hell, but I have to give you props for the sexy talk.
WHITE WITCH: Abra, abracadabra. I wanna reach out and grab ya!
EDMUND: stabs
PETER AND CASPIAN: How were you able to resist her delicious frosty booty?
EDMUND: Been there. Done that. Bought the doublet.
CASPIAN: Susan, Susan baby, talk to me.
SUSAN: ABSOLUTELY NOT.
CASPIAN: Baby, it was just a little necromancy with an evil ice witch, it meant nothing! I was thinking about you the whole time!
DOCTOR CORNELIUS: I am half a dwarf, so you should be king!
CASPIAN: Um… I think dwarf logic is different than human.
PETER: Okay, so the Telmarines are coming and basically, Lucy needs to fetch our magic lion or we’re all doomed!
DLF: I wish the kings and queens would share their crack.
CASPIAN: I have a plan to stall for time.
PETER: You still here?
CASPIAN: It’ll involve Peter displaying his magnificence to the entirety of two armies.
PETER: … Tell me more.
EDMUND: And so in summary, Peter the Magnificent, High King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, Emperor of the Lone Islands, invites you to come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.
MIRAZ: Do I look like Miraz the Dumbass to you, Prince Edmund?
EDMUND: … That’s King Edmund, and does that answer your question?
TELMARINE LORDS: Sire is obviously not hard enough. Haven’t you heard this guy’s magnificent? Magnificent and young and strong and oh so blond.
MIRAZ: I’m totally magnificent and young and strong and – Prince Edmund, tell King Peter it’s on! General, fetch me the hair dye! Hope your brother’s sword is mightier than his pen.
EDMUND: Normally I would not be commenting on my brother’s sword because that is inappropriate, but today I feel moved to inform you that it is MAGNIFICENT.
MIRAZ: LET US FIGHT TO THE DEATH.
PETER: INDEED. WITH APPROPRIATE TIMEOUTS!
MIRAZ: INDEED. They’ll only be three-minute breaks, though.
PETER: Oh, you are truly evil.
SUSAN: Lucy, let’s go find the magic lion!
CASPIAN: Um, do you want your horn back? I realise that I am no longer deserving of the mighty horn.
SUSAN: Oh Caspian. I can’t stay mad at you. Not you and your pretty face and your mighty horn.
LUCY: I THINK I AM TOO YOUNG FOR THIS CONVERSATION. Let’s go!
PETER: This is not actually going well.
EDMUND: Shhhh, smile and wave for the centaur babes.
CENTAUR BABES: Peter, Peter, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, Caspian can! Goooo Caspian!
PETER: Edmund, I have something to say to you. You’ve always been there for me! It must have been cold there in my shadow, to never feel sunlight on your face-
EDMUND: I did betray all of Narnia that one time, remember?
PETER: Seriously, I can fly higher than an eagle! You are the wind beneath my w-
EDMUND: PETER! Try to remember that we’re British!
SUSAN: Four arrows, five guards. OH CRAP.
CASPIAN: Susan, I will save you!
SUSAN: Now that’s sexy talk.
PETER: You’re totally at my mercy, Miraz! But I’ll let Caspian do it.
CASPIAN: Aw, thanks, Peter!
PETER: Who can stay mad at you, with y- Um. Excuse me, I think I need to go talk to the centaur babes.
CASPIAN: You’re totally at my mercy, Miraz. But I’ll let you live.
NARNIANS: Hooray for letting evil tyrants live in wartime!
EDMUND: What is wrong with you people?
NARNIANS: Well, Caspian’s just really, really attractive…
TELMARINE LORD: Oh for God’s sake, if nobody else is going to kill him THEN I WILL.
LUCY: ASLAN!
ASLAN: LUCY! Why didn’t you come sooner? Why didn’t you give me a call to say you were going to be late? Did you pick up milk on your way here?
LUCY: If I’d come earlier, would half our army not have died?
ASLAN: Well, we can’t be certain of that. But I certainly am all-powerful, and I certainly would have come to save the day, and…
LUCY: So you’re saying, basically, yes.
ASLAN: Basically, yes.
TELMARINES: Our king is fallen! That means Caspian is the king! KILL HIM.
CASPIAN: We have another plan. It involves earthworks. And a magic lion!
DLF: I see they’ve been sharing the crack with someone…
PETER: This. Is. Narniaaaaaaaaa!
GENERAL: Oh Caspian. I can’t kill you. You’re just really, really attractive.
TREES: We can kill you, Telmarines! Feel our vegetationy wrath!
TELMARINES: Nature has betrayed us! To the river!
LUCY: Hi there.
TELMARINES: Watch out, that little girl has a loaded lion!
ASLAN, RIVERS AND TREES: All the forces of nature suggest that you surrender.
TELMARINES: … okay.
NARNIANS: Hooray for our new and dazzling king! Hooray for Caspian the Super Fine the Tenth!
PETER: Um, actually, I was the one who defeated the tyrant, and Lucy fetched the magic lion, and-
NARNIANS: Caspian looks so dashing in his shiny crown!
ASLAN: Time for you kids to get along home. By the way, Peter and Susan, you can’t ever come back. Because of puberty.
SUSAN: Little late for that…
ASLAN: I am watching you, young lady! Don’t think I haven’t noticed you and your coquettish ways!
CASPIAN: Farewell, Susan the Magnificent!
PETER: HEY!
SUSAN: Actually my title’s Susan the Gentle.
GHOSTS OF A THOUSAND SHOT-UP TELMARINES: Say what now?
CASPIAN: From now on I dub you Susan the Kickass. Or Susan of the Fine Ass. Whatever works for you.
SUSAN: Oh baby, that’s sweet. But it’ll never work. I am 1300 years old.
CASPIAN: And I am nine.
SUSAN: … Well that’s terrible news! But let’s make out anyway.
LUCY: Why are Susan and Caspian making out? I don’t understand.
EDMUND: Um, I kind of understand, but I don’t want to make out with Caspian.
PETER: WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY, EDMUND.
EDMUND: Nothing, O Magnificent One. Let’s go.
STALKER BOY: Hey there, baby! I saved you a seat.
SUSAN: Oh God, I left Caspian the Super Fine in Narnia!
EDMUND: And I left my torch.
PETER: Well, I’ve got my magnificence right here. Oh yeah.
August 9, 2012
Who Made You, Nancy Drew?
Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.
‘The girl sleuth is the supreme role given to females in juvenile fiction.’ (The Girl Sleuth, Bobbie Ann Mason.) And Nancy Drew is the supreme girl sleuth.
I’m not American, and while Nancy Drew was around in Ireland, she wasn’t an institution like she is in America. I’d seen the film starring Emma Roberts but I hadn’t read the books, and yet as soon as I announced that I’d be writing up posts about girl sleuths, people asked me ‘Will you write about Nancy Drew?’ She’s the go-to girl sleuth: she’s part of the lexicon.
So I decided I would sit down and read all the Nancy Drew books. FOR YOU GUYS. How deep is my love, y’all.
Then I read the Nancy Drew novel The Secret of Red Gate Farm, which begins ‘”That Oriental-looking clerk in the perfume shop certainly acted mysterious.” Holy God, I almost dropped the book. But I read the whole thing, in which Nancy suspects an Asian lady of selling her, um, Oriental perfumes at too high a price, and then Nancy’s suspicions are further raised by the sight of a man in a (horrors) foreign made car! Of course they’re all counterfeiters. Should’ve driven a Ford, buddy.
After reading that I knew that I could not possibly read all the Nancy Drews without going completely doolally. And yet Nancy Drew is still an important girl sleuth… some would say the quintessential girl sleuth.
So I thought I would concentrate on Nancy Drew in the real world. The elements of Nancy which have inspired and influenced people, and the world and the women who produced Nancy Drew.
Because Nancy Drew was chiefly the product of two pretty remarkable women.
So list to the tale of Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson. (Mildred was also remarkable for her truly terrible name, but she didn’t let it hold her back.)
Let’s start with Harriet.
Her father Edward Stratemeyer started the Stratemeyer Group, which was based on getting a bunch of writers to write up stories that Edward had thought up under several different pen names. One of his most popular serieseses was the Bobbsey Twins, which was a mystery series. (Many people thought of having factories of writers doing their bidding before James Patterson did it. In fact… excuse me, I have to go rent a warehouse…)
Edward said ‘Almost as many girls write to me as boys and all say that they like to read boys’ books (but it’s pretty hard to get a boy to read a girl’s book, I think).’ He wrote this in 1905, and in 2012 still nobody knows how to get boys to read ‘girl’ books as if girls are… also people. I FEEL U, ED.
By 1929 the Stratemeyer Group was so successful, and the ladies were so uncatered-to, that Edward decided he’d commission a writer to write a girl detective series he intended to be big. He planned to call her Stella Strong, Diana Dare or maybe Nan Drew. He hired a lady named Mildred Wirt to write the Stella Strong Stories. More on her later!
But Edward was not feeling quite the ticket, and the Nancy Drew stories (as they became) were much helped along by his secretary. Harriet Otis Smith (Different Harriet. Many Harriets were involved). In May 1930, twelve days after Nancy Drew’s first book came out, Edward died with no dude left to run the Stratemeyer Group.
THE WORLD: Bad news, your father’s dead.
HARRIET STRATEMEYER, HER MOTHER AND HER SISTER EDNA: Sucks to be us. Time to sell the company.
THE WORLD: Bad news, welcome to The Depression.
HARRIET: … What is a weak woman to do but…
HARRIET: RUN THE COMPANY HER OWN DAMN SELF!
Nancy Drew might have died there, except for Edward’s eldest daughter, Harriet. She was married, and she moved the company to New Jersey so she didn’t have to leave her kids too much, but she still had to sort out childcare issues in a time when people thought a crèche was a pastry.
She was a LADY CEO in the 1930s. That just did not happen.
‘Oh, it was a radical thing to do all right, and some of my friends didn’t think I should work. But my children turned out all right, so I guess I was right.’ (Harriet Stratemeyer Adams.)
With the help of only her sister Edna and her father’s super-capable secretary The Other Harriet, Harriet started writing blurbs, and reading about her father’s methods and implementing them, and introducing innovations.
One change these three women made right away was give Nancy Drew two girl friends, Bess and George, total opposites who were enormously loyal to Nancy.
In April 1934 there was an article about Harriet and the Stratemeyer Group in Fortune, which was a leeeetle condescending but had to admit that they were geniuses and that Nancy was an enormous phenomenon.
‘How she (Nancy) crashed a Valhalla that had been rigidly restricted to the male of her species is a mystery even to her publishers.’
Harriet wrote some of the later Nancy Drew books, and still more were written to her increasingly strict specifications. She spent decades fighting the press about her company and Nancy’s integrity, and referred to Nancy as her fictional daughter. She also believed Nancy would totally have gone to Wellesley, her old college.
Harriet Stratemeyer Adams was the woman responsible for Nancy Drew’s survival.
But Mildred Wirt, as she went by when she started the books, was the woman most responsible for Nancy Drew’s creation.
And Mildred Wirt was a genuine sassy girl reporter.
She was the first woman ever to graduate from the Iowa School of Journalism in 1927. She also answered an ad put up by the Stratemeyer Group, and wrote for Edward Stratemeyer a series called the Ruth Fielding series, in which a girl was torn between mysteries and marriage. So when time came to write Nancy Drew, it was clear who to call to write under the false name ‘Carolyn Keene.’ It was Mildred Wirt, legend has it, who put in the most daring things Nancy said and bold things she did.
‘While Nancy hesitated, uncertain which way to turn, her mind worked more clearly than ever before.’ (The Secret of The Old Clock.) No damsel in distress Nancy. As written by Mildred, she could arrange flowers, ace college tests, and be a bareback ballerina in a circus on demand.
Harriet and Mildred met maybe twice and totally seemed to like each other, but they had obvious conflicts.
HARRIET: Uh so we’re cutting wages because there’s this thing called the Depression, maybe you’ve heard of it?
MILDRED: Um as someone who is not a CEO and who is supporting her invalid husband… YES YES I HAVE.
HARRIET: While I like Nancy, she is a well brought up young lady! Walk softly and carry a big stick, know what I mean? Little less sass, what do you think?
MILDRED: I think I love sass.
Harriet and Mildred worked together for a while, then Mildred wouldn’t write at a reduced rate, then Harriet hired a dude to be Carolyn Keene for three Nancy Drew books, then Harriet got tired of rewriting the books to be less dudely so she re-hired Mildred. And back and forth they went, until Harriet mostly took over—but Mildred had a lot to do with the creation and evolution of Nancy Drew.
In 1944 Mildred joined the Toledo Times as a beat reporter.
EDITOR: That the war has brought us this low is a horror to me. As soon as the war is over you are super fired.
MILDRED: Yeah we’ll see.
EDITOR: You will be the FIRST ONE to be SO INCREDIBLY FIRED.
MILDRED: Fifty-four years later, when I am STILL WORKING FOR THIS PAPER, I am going to laff and laff.
When the war ended she was given a permanent post. She said it was because ‘I could always get the story.’ Mind you, she also said she was ‘running scared for about forty-nine-and-a-half years.’ So little job security for the ladies!
She supported her sick husband until he died, and then she married a fellow reporter.
HARRIET: Are you telling me you became a reporter and got married and had a baby and never said and met all your deadlines?! CHILL, LADY.
MILDRED: Mildred never chills.
HARRIET: Well as a lady CEO I guess I am in.
In the 1950s, however, Harriet just took the Nancy Drews into her own hands, and after twenty-odd years with Nancy, Mildred went on with her reportering, her own books, and her family. Her new husband was a whiz in the kitchen and liked going home to cook and look after the baby while Mildred always stayed late in the office.
Mildred also got her pilot’s license at the age of fifty-nine and began flying about the place for kicks. She only had two jobs: had to have something to occupy herself with! She wrote a column called ‘Happy Landings’ and wrote about competitions organized by Amelia Earhart’s women-only flying groups. Their motto was ‘We hope men will enter—but let the best woman win!’
In 1980, due to the Stratemeyer Group changing publishers amid a storm of publicity, there was a lawsuit over who had written Nancy Drew.
HARRIET: Well me obviously.
MILDRED: koff koff
HARRIET: My bad. I totally thought you were dead.
Harriet won the lawsuit, but Mildred survived Harriet and became the go-to for Nancy Drew knowledge and opinions from the ‘real Nancy Drew.’ In 1985 she gave an interview saying ‘I do believe in equality. Which, by the way, women still do not have!’
In 1998, aged ninety-three, Mildred breezed out of the office telling a fellow reporter ‘I gotta go interview some old fogey.’
‘They’ve tried to change me for a whole generation and I am impossible. There’s only two things I believe in—well, a few more things than that—but I believe in absolute honesty and honesty in journalism.’ (Mildred Wirt Benson at a press conference.)
In 2002 when Mildred died the Washington Post acclaimed her as ‘the original Carolyn Keene, the one who gave Nancy her personality and her keenness.’
So who made Nancy Drew? Well, both of them.
Mildred was the snazzier figure, with her lady journalism and being a daring pilot. But lady CEOs need love too: without Harriet’s business acumen Nancy would not have survived.
And the thing is… Nancy Drew is hugely compelling because she’s a lot of things at once. She’s conservative in some ways and privileged, the cosseted only child of a lawyer with her own car who dresses extremely well, but she’s also independent and curious and groundbreaking. She’s a lot of things because she was created by a lot of people. ‘Our heroine-gunning down the highway after a gang of crooks—is a sweet young lady who dresses nicely and enjoys having tea with little cakes… Nancy is a paradox, and she is also the most popular girl detective in the world.’ (The Girl Sleuth, Bobbie Ann Mason.)
She also started out as a blonde, but they quickly sassed her up to be a redhead. Has Nancy been dyeing her hair all these years, like Emma Stone? (Can Emma Stone play Nancy Drew in a 1930s-set movie? Please say yes.)
Mildred kicked off Nancy Drew and gave her derring-do and snappy repartee and discomfort with romance. Harriet made sure Nancy Drew continued, and always argued for her courage and firmness: possibly there was something of Harriet, surpassing her father Edward Stratemeyer who started the company, in Nancy’s relationship with her father.
‘ ”Dad, that man stole a purse!” Nancy whispered excitedly. “I’m going after him!”
Before Mr Drew could recover from his surprise, she scrambled past him.’
Too slow, Mr Drew!
Other dudes in Nancy’s life were mostly criminals who wanted to bop Nancy over the head, tie her up or mess with her car. Nancy had a boyfriend, Ned, but Mildred was always pretty against her being rooomantic.
“Anyway,” said Ned, “there’s one puzzle I wish you would solve for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Why you always change the subject when I talk to you about something that isn’t a bit mysterious!”
Nancy smiled and said, “Ned, someday I promise to listen.”
(The Mystery of the Tolling Bell).
I think Ned maybe wanted to talk about making out? And also, I think Nancy is in charge. She was also in charge in the 1938 movie Nancy Drew: Detective, in which she made Ned (called Ted in the movie) dress up in drag as a nurse to break into a nursing home. Nancy’s boyfriend Ned introduced himself in his very first appearance with “‘I’m Ned Nickerson,’ he declared with a warm smile. ‘Anything I can do?’” Here was a hot guy who was happy to be supporting.
You go, Nancy. Four for you, Drew.
In the Mystery of the Ivory Charm, Ned is like, Nancy don’t go to India, it’s so far, baby! And… ‘Perhaps,’ Nancy agreed, smiling. ‘But I would go to the very ends of the earth to find another mystery.’
Nancy was always smiling and being very polite. AND SUPER FIRM. ‘Perhaps it was a daring plan,’ Nancy admitted with a pleased little laugh… ‘but it worked, and that’s the most important thing.’ (The Clue in the Diary.) Nobody puts Nancy in the corner! She was able to sort things herself: at one point Nancy saves damsel in distress Bess from drowning and Bess hurls herself into Nancy’s arms. Ned tries to break out of a dungeon where he and Nancy are immured, and Nancy murmurs ‘Oh Ned… you’ll break a bone.’
Nancy is really feminine, and uses her femininity for her own devices. ‘Nancy did not want to answer questions. To avoid them she pretended to faint. The act was well timed, for the man, frightened, immediately rushed into the hall for help. The young sleuth smiled.’
You see? Always smiling, our Nancy. The Mona Lisa of Crime Solving!
It was 1964 when Nancy Drew was first recognized as an icon, in a nostalgic fashion shoot in Mademoiselle magazine. By then thirty million Nancy Drews had been sold: girls who read Nancy Drew as kids were all grown up.
In 1973 Ms. magazine ran a first-person essay discussing Nancy’s effect on women who would grow up to be feminists. ‘Even though Nancy Drew was sixteen and I was only nine, I knew we were kindred spirits.’ The New York Times covered Nancy, and sales boomed as more and more new books came out, changing slightly (never too much, as Nancy is about nostalgia) with the changing times.
In 1974 (maybe inspired by the Ms magazine coverage) Ned Nickerson got kidnapped in The Mystery of the Glowing Eye. Nancy, of course, was on the case and rescued her man. And in the Double Jinx mystery, a girl of Asian heritage Nancy is suspicious of (Nancy, Nancy why) turns out to be a cool lady and an awesome new friend.
A lot of people talked about how Nancy never made a fuss about being able to do anything—she just performed amazing feats and made them feel they could too. ‘I didn’t realize how feminist they were because I sort of figured that’s the way the world was,’ said a fan (Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, Melanie Rehak). 1970s singer sensation Janis Ian described Nancy as the epitome of self-confidence.
Two women who had worked their way up from secretaries to producers went on to produce Hardy Boys (also the Stratemeyer Group) and Nancy Drew TV shows. The TV shows weren’t successful, but for kind of awesome reasons—fans expected more from Nancy. For instance, they disliked Nancy’s boyfriend Ned and commented: ‘You don’t make a female character strong by playing her opposite a buffoon. You just make her strong.’
In 1980 Nancy Drew had a fiftieth birthday party attended by celebrities like Bette Davis (which I like because of the song Bette Davis Eyes: ‘all the boys think she’s a spy… she’s got Bette Davis eyes’) and Barbara Walters, who said ‘seems to me I read all of them (the Nancy Drew novels).’ Real-life lady journalist inspired by Nancy Drew!
While Mildred was mostly bothered by Nancy Drew fans in her later years, I hope Barbara Walters would have pleased her.
I was with Jennifer Lynn Barnes and Ally Carter, both writers of young adult fiction with very strong ladies, when I wrote this. Jennifer Lynn Barnes remembered her mother giving Jennifer her own old Nancy Drews, and Ally Carter remembered that the Nancy Drew mystery about a fake ghost on a ranch, The Secret of Shadow Ranch, was the very first book she ever remembered reading and wanting to never end.
Nancy Drew is still influencing and inspiring people. So, thanks for Nancy, Mildred Wirt Benson and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. Thanks for changing the world.
One more thing about the girl sleuth–her world is populated by criminals faking supernatural phenomena, like the ghosts of The Secret of Shadow Ranch. I wanted to write a book in which a girl sleuth, and a fairly girly girl sleuth (loves great dresses, can still handle herself), actually had to deal with real supernatural phenomena in Unspoken.
How would Nancy have handled real magic? I bet real well. Sort of Nancy’s way.
And smiling.
July 31, 2012
Gothic Heroines & Snow Leopards!
And our parody of the day is of...
Merlin’s Keep
by Madeleine Brent
Here’s something kind of cool about Gothics: they were seen as written by and for the girls so much that dudes used female pseudonyms to write them. In every other genre except romance, it’s the other way around.
But Peter O’Donnell had to pretend to be Madeleine Brent.
He chose those initials because he was also the creator of a comic strip about an awesome lady adventurer, rich from a life of crime, performing occasional good deeds for the British secret service. She went by the fetching name of Modesty Blaise.
I’ve read more than one Madeleine Brent—the first I read was Moonraker’s Bride, in which the heroine Lucy is raised in China. She’s not Chinese though: the girl who holds off attackers and protects the orphaned children with Lucy is, and I wished she got to be a heroine too. It reminded me of Victoria Holt’s House of A Thousand Lanterns, also partly set in China but with the stars all not Chinese.
But in Merlin’s Keep the heroine Jani is raised in Tibet, and she is biracial: her mother was Indian. She’s not at home in her Tibetan village, but in the English village of Larkfield where she ends up after Various Adventures, people are suspicious of her as well. She’s in a slightly uncomfortable position wherever she goes… but everywhere she goes she also finds people who are worth her time. And Jani being extremely well travelled, independent and speaking many languages means she’s able to deal pretty awesomely with the Gothic mystery when it shows up.
JANI: Maybe we’d fit into Namkhara better if you’d learn the language, Dad... I presume you’re my father since you’re an English soldier who raised me in the Himalayas.
SEMBUR: Nope, no learning heathen tongues for me!
JANI: Omigod Dad you are so embarrassing.
SEMBUR: By the way I’m not your biological father, your origins are mysterious!
JANI: Wait, what?
SEMBUR: Shh, honey. Good talk.
JANI: Care to tell me why you have a secret cache of jewels while we labor in our tiny Himalayan village?
SEMBUR: Sweetie, it’s called a Gothic MYSTERY, not a Gothic I-Was-Raised-Fully-Informed-Of-My-Heritage, okay?
JANI: Uh, the Oracle says a demon is coming to kill you?
SEMBUR: Oh, probably not a demon. Probably just my enemies who think I am responsible for a terrible crime.
JANI: What enemies? WHAT CRIME?
SEMBUR: No time to explain, gotta pack!
JANI: Please tell me about my mysterious origins!
SEMBUR: I will tell you one thing and one thing only. Your mother was a stone cold fox.
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: Hey have you seen an English soldier anywhere around?
JANI: Uh, I think he went that way?
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: Which way?
JANI: In the direction of far.
JANI: Quickly, adopted dad, let us flee!
SEMBUR: I wanted better things for you than escaping across the Himalayas in a blizzard. Could things get any worse?
JANI: Oh look, there’s a very ironic bear.
SEMBUR: Also, I’m having a heart attack.
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: Due to the fact you are now hiding out in a cave with the escaped criminal I was chasing, I believe you were less than honest with me earlier.
JANI: I am a fibber it’s true!
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: So Sembur, do you confess to stabbing the Maharani and her husband to death with a bayonet?
SEMBUR: Yep, I totally did it.
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: … I hate these people.
SEMBUR: It is my dying wish that you look after Jani!
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: Wait, your what wish?
SEMBUR: *dies*
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: Oh, spit.
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: Well, I’ve just had to bury your father and nurse you through diphtheria, so I think we should all have a nice rest…
JANI: Time to go snow’s coming down just tie me to a horse!
JANI: For heaven’s sake let me bargain for lodgings you are useless!
JANI: Also I can tame snow leopards.
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: How old are you?
JANI: Twelve.
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: … Good Lord.
HOLY MAN: I see your future. There will be a Gothic damsel in distress in red, and a Silvery Gothic Villain.
JANI: Can’t wait for the manor.
NUN: Hi Jani, welcome to a hospital. Turns out diphtheria and cross country travel are two tastes that taste lethal together!
JANI: Holy wow I’ve never seen a blonde before.
NUN: … Glad to broaden your experience.
JANI: Where did the Mysterious Hot Dude go?
NUN: The young captain was shipped off, but he left you with a medallion inscribed with a Hindi message that I believe reads ‘Back When You’re Legal.’
ENGLISH ORPHANAGE: Gross, Jane, you’re half Indian.
JANI: My name’s not Jane. Oh, is that the time?
ENGLISH ORPHANAGE: Is what the time?
JANI: Seems to me like it’s kicking the orphanage bully around the yard and then ruling this place o’clock.
ENGLISH FARM: Welcome to service, Jane.
ENGLISH FARMER: Welcome to my busy hands, Jane.
JANI: My name’s still Jani and I think it’s ‘run away, sleeping in ditches, across the English countryside to find work where I’m not getting bad-touched,’ o’clock.
ENGLISH FARMER’S WIFE: Godspeed, I packed you a sandwich!
ENGLISH SCHOLAR: Dear child pray do not approach me as I am currently being threatened by a dread serpent!
JANI: Jani grabbing a snake and throwing it into a ditch powers activate!
ENGLISH SCHOLAR: What a remarkable young lady you are. Could you take me home? I fear I have the vapours.
JANI: Hey, nice Gothic manor you live in, sir.
ENGLISH SCHOLAR: It’s called Merlin’s Keep. You may know the name from the cover of this novel. I’m sure no sinister mystery will ever arise here!
LADY IN RED: I am the English scholar’s daughter Eleanor and in no way part of any Gothic Mystery Prophecy!
ENGLISH SCHOLAR: Call me Mr Lambert, child. Housekeeper, please fetch this child a snack, and also let us adopt her as a daughter of the house!
ELEANOR: Well, we could always use someone to save Dad from snakes and also act as my secretary.
JANI: Okay, but there’s this issue you might have heard of called racism which might have an effect on how this adoption is viewed by your small English village?
MAJOR IDIOTFACE: A child of mixed blood!!!!
ELEANOR: I don’t think we give a fig about any such ridiculous thing?
MR LAMBERT: And not a single fig was given that day.
MAJOR IDIOTFACE: I’ll just go then.
JANI: Now that I am eighteen, accepted in my small English society and totally legal for any Hot Mysterious Dudes from my past, I’m sure my life will be uneventful!
ELEANOR: I am sure the most excitement we will ever see is me completing my fascinating book on wildflowers!
MR LAMBERT: ‘Sembur’ is probably a babytalk word for ‘RSM (Regimental Sergeant Major) Burr. Weird super-official way to refer to your father…
JANI: Yeah, he wasn’t my father, and he was hiding some dark secrets and also some jewels? But I’m sure that mystery will never come back to haunt us.
MR LAMBERT: *dies*
ELEANOR: Jani, I’m going to go on a botany holiday to be alone with my grief, okay?
JANI: Well, I don’t see how someone going off alone feeling all emotionally vulnerable can go wrong…
KINDLY VETERINARIAN: You seemed weirdly unhappy when we were putting in a cow’s womb together, Jani! I can’t understand why, because I know cow wombs are your favourite thing.
JANI: Don’t worry, to me the womb of a cow is still a barrel of laughs. It’s just that Eleanor’s letters keep mentioning a strange Englishman at a hotel with her, and maybe him hypnotizing her to throw herself in the Corinth Canal?
JANI: … I was kind of hoping for postcards that said ‘Wish you were here.’
JANI: Oh look a hidden letter from my dead adoptive father!
SEMBUR: Dear Jani, I bet you’ve been wondering about your mysterious origins! So here’s the thing: your mother was an Indian princess, and your father was a colonel in the English army. Your father controlled the army for your mother while she ruled the land! All was pretty awesome until your wicked uncle poisoned them both and your mother lost her mind with pain. Your father begged me to kill them both and protect you, so I did it, took your mother’s jewels and ran with you. You are the rightful ruler of Jahanpur and I think I have PTSD. Lots of love, your adoptive father.
JANI: … All the letters I get these days are very upsetting.
JANI: So, kindly vet and Major Idiotface, could we clear my adoptive father’s name? And could we make it quick because I think I need to go to Greece and rescue Eleanor from a Gothic villain?
MAJOR IDIOTFACE: All hail the Indian princess!
JANI: … Oh lord, here we go.
MAJOR IDIOTFACE: Let me go clear Sembur’s name immediately, Your Highness.
JANI: Well, I guess you do have your uses after all.
JANI: Oh another letter from Eleanor.
ELEANOR: Dear Jani, I have married a Gothic villain with the power of hypnosis called Vernon Quayle. Soon we will come back to the Gothic manor where, in keeping with tradition, I believe my new husband will shortly murder me. Can’t wait to see you, make sure the beds are made! Love Eleanor.
JANI: … I think I’m going to just stop opening letters in the future.
ELEANOR: Jani I love you and I am terribly frightened and everything is all fuzzy and-
QUAYLE: Please excuse my wife, you know how women are. Evil hypnosis disagrees with them.
JANI: Ah, you’re wearing all silver, just like in the Gothic Mystery Prophecy!
QUAYLE: Beg pardon?
JANI: Um… your silver suit of evil is very dapper.
QUAYLE: Thank you, it’s evil designer.
ELEANOR: Never leave me, Jani!
JANI: Holy God what is going on.
QUAYLE: Nothing’s going on, right, Eleanor?
ELEANOR: Nothing. Is. Going. On.
QUAYLE: Can I have this room in the Gothic manor for my study of evil alchemy?
ELEANOR: Let’s. Go. To. Evil. Ikea. And. Fix. It. Up. Real. Nice.
QUAYLE: Awesome. What else?
ELEANOR: Should. I. Cluck. Like. A. Chicken?
JANI: I’m no doctor, but my diagnosis is ‘super hypnotized.’
JANI: Help it’s awful Eleanor is super submissive to her husband and has given up her writing!
ENGLISH VILLAGE: When you said ‘awful’ you probably meant to say ‘awesome,’ right?
JANI: … I am in perfect command of the English language. Also I can do hand gestures, see?
ENGLISH VILLAGE: Rude.
QUAYLE: Did you learn any evil spells in Tibet, Jani dear?
JANI: Nope!
QUAYLE: Look into my eyyyyyyy-
JANI: Nope!
QUAYLE: You’re fired from this house.
JANI: I’m not actually a servant.
ELEANOR: You. Are. Fired. From. Our. Lives.
JANI: I still love you hypnotized Eleanor and I’m going to save you!
QUAYLE: I had my evil manservant pack your bags. Please depart Merlin’s Keep, which is now populated entirely by the evil and hypnotized!
JANI: So now I’m living in a cottage, Eleanor is in the grip of evil and… even worse… another letter has arrived!
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE’S PARENTS: Dear Jani, We were wondering if you could visit us in London and you inform us of the whereabouts of our estranged son, mysterious hot captain Adam Gascoyne. Love, Mysterious Hot Future Inlaws.
JANI: I’m afraid I haven’t seen him since I was twelve. And that was a while ago, because as you can see, I am now totally, totally legal.
MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE’S PARENTS: But he gave you his magic medallion! Surely you must have some information!
JANI: Well, I do know an evil magician who might help me track him down. I mean, up side: magic, down side: evil.
QUAYLE: I’d be delighted to help you, for my own reasons.
JANI: What reasons?
QUAYLE: Evil, unspecific reasons. Eleanor, my sweet wife, let me hypnotize you into giving us all the answers.
ELEANOR: Ten-four, evil master! The mysterious hot dude you seek is near Tower Bridge.
JANI: So which Tube stop should I take?
QUAYLE: Evil magic store is CLOSED FOR THE DAY, missy.
JANI: It seems Mysterious Hot Dude is living in a filthy thieves’ den in the East End becoming an alcoholic! Well, time to rescue him.
ADAM, FORMERLY KNOWN AS MYSTERIOUS HOT DUDE: Who’s that? Molly? Jimmy? Cutthroat Clive?
JANI: … Also he’s blind. Dammit, Edward Crazypants Rochester, you have a lot to answer for when it comes to Gothic heroes.
ADAM: Jani?
JANI: HUG TIME!
ADAM: Uh, I do not wish to be uncouth, but, uh, you sure do feel legal.
JANI: So I’m an Indian princess and my only friend is a Gothic maiden trapped in a manor by a villain with the cute pet name of ‘Eater of Souls.’ And how have you been?
ADAM: Uh, I think you need to stay away from people called ‘Eater of Souls.’
JANI: Nope, I’ll be rescuing Eleanor right after I rescue you.
ADAM: Rescue me? But my life here as a blind alcoholic in a filthy thieves’ den is awesome!
JANI: …
ADAM: … Yeah, I’ll get my things.
ADAM: Did I mention I totally have an Irish mistress? You know how the Irish are. Saucy minxes.
IRISH MISTRESS: I’ll be exiting stage left but let me assure you, Adam’s still got it!
JANI: … I MUST HAVE HIM.
JANI: So let’s reunite you with your parents.
JANI: Also I’m going to bargain with your Chinese employer so you get better paid for ivory carving.
JANE: Also control a wild horse so you are safe.
ADAM: … Girl you are a hurricane.
JANI: Does that mean you like me? Check yes or no.
ADAM: I need this note in Braille.
ADAM’S FATHER SIR CHARLES MYSTERIOUSHOTDUDE: Jani, you are now a recognized princess and here is an enormous pile of gold from the British government who are hoping you will not go back and reclaim your crown.
JANI: I wasn’t planning on going back to reclaim my… Understood. Thank you for my enormous pile of gold!
ADAM’S MOTHER LADY MYSTERIOUSHOTDUDE: Jani, I hope you marry my son. And not just because you have an enormous pile of gold.
JANI: I would enjoy that because honestly I would like to rock him like a hurricane, but I’m not sure he like-likes me, plus I have a maiden to save from a Gothic manor.
ADAM’S MOTHER LADY MYSTERIOUSHOTDUDE: Augh, stupid Gothic responsibilities getting in the way of my matchmaking!
ADAM: Jani bores me.
JANI: I am going back home to buy a farm and rescue Eleanor.
ADAM’S PARENTS THE MYSTERIOUSHOTDUDES: Curse Gothic situations and stubbornly cruel but attractive Gothic sons getting in the way of our matchmaking!
KINDLY VET: Maybe we should get married, Jani. Married on the rebound!
JANI: I think we both still have complicated feelings for other people.
KINDLY VET: So last night I went to the Gothic manor and saw Eleanor naked in the garden-
JANI: Okay that sounds like a sexy dream!
KINDLY VET: And Gothic Villain Quayle was there pointing a wand at her and I tried to shoot him and instead due to his dark magic shot myself.
JANI: … Okay, that’s not sexy at all.
JANI: Oh no something even worse has happened!
KINDLY VET: WORSE THAN ME BEING SHOT BY AN EVIL MAGICIAN?
JANI: Definitely worse than that. I’ve received another letter.
KINDLY VET: …
JANI: NO GOOD COMES OF LETTERS!
QUAYLE: Dear Jani, please come to the Gothic manor to assist with an evil magic ceremony. Love, Your Gothic Villain.
JANI: What’s up, you lovebirds? Still respectively evil and hypnotized?
QUAYLE: You bet!
ELEANOR: You. Bet.
JANI: Mostly it’s a relief Eleanor’s dressed. So what spells are we doing today?
QUAYLE: We’re doing a spell to restore Adam’s sight.
JANI: I have to say, so far all your evil spells are really helpful as regards my love life. Evil magicians, better than match.com
ADAM: JANI I CAN SEE! And you are super hot! And you were super hot when you were twelve!
JANI: … Okay, rein it in, Adam, I know you’re excited but it’s getting creepy. And I thought you said I was boring!
ADAM: I only insulted you for your own good so you would marry the kindly vet and leave me to die alone in despair!
JANI: Gothic heroes are such idiots.
JANI: Oh well. Kiss me, you Gothic fool.
KINDLY VET: Someone should stop Jani from going to the Gothic manor!
JANI: Hahahahaha. ‘Someone should stop me.’ You’re hilarious, kindly vet.
ADAM: Hi Jani and I are here to bargain for Eleanor’s freedom? Also we couldn’t help noticing you killed your last three wives.
QUAYLE: Killed is such a harsh word! … But accurate, obviously, yeah.
JANI: WHY IMMA RIP YOUR FACE OFF AND-
ADAM: Easy, honey bear. So, Eleanor’s freedom?
QUAYLE: Well you two crazy kids, basically I want you to combine forces to steal a magic jewel from a Tibetan temple. And then I will free Eleanor.
JANI: Okay, to Tibet! But first, kindly vet, you kidnap Eleanor.
KINDLY VET: …
JANI: And you, Adam! I like it and Imma put a ring on it. I’m going to rock that boat to Tibet with you every night!
ADAM: I’ve found it’s best to let her have her way.
JANI AND ADAM: Cool, we stole your magic jewel. I’m sure you’ll honorably keep your terms of the agreement!
QUAYLE: Kill them both, minions!
JANI AND ADAM: This is terrible news.
QUAYLE: Please consult the dictionary definition of ‘Evil.’ Then consult the dictionary definition of ‘Duh.’
JANI: You jerk, I’m stealing back the magic jewel and riding like the wind!
ADAM: I’m being swallowed up by a magic avalanche!
JANI: Oh, my poor sweet Adam. He never was as good at adventuring as me. Well, time to hide from Quayle in the cave where my adoptive father died and Adam nursed me back to health… oh, hey, Adam!
ADAM: That magic avalanche was just a hallucination you had because the magic jewel is in an evil jewelry box.
JANI: Oh my God, who curses jewelry boxes? Who does that? I am so sick of that evil magician guy!
ADAM: Now the danger’s over, let me and these handy British soldiers dig up your dead adoptive father so we can re-bury him with military honors elsewhere! You just stay here unprotected on this lonely mountain while the villain wanders loose, there’s no way that can go wrong!
QUAYLE: Hi Jani. I kill you now?
JANI: My sweet Adam. So pretty. Not so bright.
JANI: Super Jani asking for help from snow leopards powers activate!
SNOW LEOPARD EX MACHINA!
ADAM: Jani, my darling! Thank heavens Quayle was unexpectedly and very luckily bitten in half by a snow leopard.
JANI: Yep, just one of those lucky snow leopard twists of fate.
ADAM: Oh look, darling, another letter!
JANI: Oh no, I’ve had enough!
LETTER: Dear Jani, Eleanor is feeling much better now she is no longer under evil hypnosis. She and the Kindly Vet are getting married. Also, you have inherited your mother’s big pile of jewelry. Maybe you can keep it with your enormous pile of gold? Love, England.
JANI: Maybe all letters aren’t so bad.
The book wasn’t perfect by any means: Adam got literally magically healed and India was painted as a strange and sinister land in many ways. But Jani was a very cool heroine, and a step forward for the modern Gothic heroine.
While Jani has moments of being Threatened by the Evil Magician, she really isn’t the one in danger, and it isn’t a case of Jani protecting children either: Eleanor is older than Jani is. Yet Eleanor is the one in the Gothic maiden position: someone definitely is trying to kill her, and it definitely is her husband.
I really liked seeing the heroine of a Gothic novel as not necessarily the vulnerable one, and I played with the idea of another character trapped in the Gothic manor in Unspoken. (Today I link to the UK edition in honour of my newly released UK cover!) The US and UK editions of Unspoken are out September 11, which as of tomorrow will be in A MONTH!
I am as excited as Jani seeing a snow leopard approach to eat her enemies.
July 24, 2012
THE UK UNSPOKEN COVER!
Whose fault is the delay, dear readers? Mine. I was a horrorshow about this cover. Thank you, Simon & Schuster UK, for bearing with me: they gave me a photoshoot (SO FANCY! I am so not deserving) so we could have a shot with a girl who looks like Kami with a boy who looks like Jared, they bore with me going 'brighter! More! Different hair? What if we...'
They bore with EVERYTHING. We went through at least ten versions of this cover. And here it is, indisputably the most beautiful, for your viewing pleasure!
I hope you like it!
I am also in the midst of a Major Website Overhaul And Enbeautifying which is taking longer than I hoped (but is going to be so enbeautiful!) So here is where I am going to be in the next couple of weeks, JUST SO YOU ALL KNOW.
July 28th
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Tulsa event with Ally Carter and Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Barnes & Noble
Woodland Plaza at 71st Street in Tulsa
(I am already in Oklahoma, as it happens, and planning about spies and werewolves and skittles with Ally and Jen Lynn. We are all going to read from our unpublished books, and I am attempting to get Jen Lynn to read the passage I want her to from her new book NOBODY. The passage is where assassin meets girl. ;))
August 2nd
Barnes & Noble Stony Creek Marketplace
August 2, 2012
6:00 – 8:00pm
17090 Mercantile Blvd.
Noblesville, IN 46060, Saundra Mitchell & Christine Johnson.
Five Mad Women in the Loft
The Book Loft
August 3, 2012
6:00pm – 8:00pm
631 South Third Street
Columbus, OH 43206
Featuring Sarah Rees Brennan, Rhonda Stapleton, Lara Zielin, Christine Johnson and Saundra Mitchell. Talking books, answering questions, and sharing our experiences as authors.
Beachy Keen at Joseph Beth
Joseph Beth Cincinnati
August 4, 2012
1:00 – 3:00pm
Featuring Kristina McBride, Sarah Rees Brennan, Rae Carson, Christine Johnson, Julie Kagawa, Julia Karr, Katrina Kittle and Saundra Mitchell
Talking books, answering questions, giving away prizes, being wild and crazy on our last summer hurrah for 2012!
At every event I will be giving away advance copies of Unspoken, reading aloud from Unspoken or Team Human on request, and telling scandalous stories.
July 3, 2012
Team Human
I've never had a book come out that wasn't part of the Demon's Lexicon trilogy: I've never had a standalone come out! I've never had two books out in one year. (And September and Unspoken are not so very far away.) I'm unsure of what to do, other than throw confetti in the air and hope you like the book!
And... present you with THIS BOOK TRAILER. I've never had an official book trailer before, so thank you Harper Collins for making me feel exceedingly fancy.
I always like talkin' about books, and I am talking about Team Human on twitter TONIGHT! The official chat hashtag is #THChat. The chat will begin at 6PM EST.
If you are not a twitter person, the Figment Chat will be Sunday, July 8, at 8PM EST. All you need to do is follow this link here when The Time Comes!
And while I am linking you guys to STUFFS, here are some more linkies I hope you enjoy.
Here is me and Justine discussing Team Human on chat, as an INSIGHT into our PROCESS
Cory Doctorow, praising Team Human on Boing Boing. (So fancy!)
Me, being interviewed about Team Human here
The first of the Team Human events I will soon be doing in America, but not the last (details to come!) is as follows:
Event announced here!
Official statement, with my, um, less than official commentary on that statement. ;)
Start: 07/15/2012 4:00 pm
This event will be held at Oblong Books & Music, 6422 Montgomery St., Rhinebeck, NY.
RSVPs are required for this event. Please RSVP to rsvp@oblongbooks.com
Holly Black (Black Heart), Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls), & Sarah Rees Brennan (Team Human) come to the HVYAS!
A monthly series, the HVYAS brings the best and brightest YA authors to the Hudson Valley in a memorable and fun party-like “literary salon” atmosphere, with refreshments, conversation, and giveaways for attendees.
Holly Black is the bestselling author of contemporary fantasy novels for teens and children. Her books include The Spiderwick Chronicles, White Cat, and Red Glove.
Cassandra Clare is the author of the bestselling Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices series. Her books include City of Bones and Clockwork Angel.
Sarah Rees Brennan’s newest book, Team Human, is co-written with Justine Larbalestier. Sarah is also the author of The Demon’s Lexicon.
——-
We’ll be reading, signing books, and answering questions. I’ll bring something special to read, be it the draft of Clockwork Princess or even a scene or two from The Dark Artifices!
I am going to be there, because I am Sarah Rees Brennan, and the announcement says I will be.
AND! I am going to be giving away advance copies of UNSPOKEN, my imaginary-friend-is-real-boy Gothic romance!
And I can’t wait to see you guys there! Holly and Cassie are a very good time. And I, uh, I have a… unique charm. It’s quirky. You might like it OK. I’ll do impressions of Holly and Cassie’s characters. They might hit me with their shoes.
It’ll be an ADVENTURE!
A new book always is an adventure. (Yes, I do impressions on request. I once did a Harry Potter/Twilight fusion impression I feel may have been my best work.)
And to end this very bizzy post, a beautiful, beautiful picture.
I met Street Angel at a signing I did in London with Cassandra Clare, and told her how much I liked her art, and she gave us CUPCAKES!
... I will be honest. She gave Cassie cupcakes, but I ate some, even though they were NOT MINE. I am a shameless cupcake thief.
So you see she is a very kind lady.
And she drew me, not only the Kit and Mel Team Human comic I have showed you guys before, but a SERIES of fantastic TEAM HUMAN pictures.
Follow this link for even more beautiful art!
I am surrounded, both off and online, by fantastic people: I have a new book out: I am very lucky. Talk to you all soon!
June 28, 2012
KATE DANIELS AND THE SLEUTHING IDENTITY CRISIS
"Sure. Annoy the people involved until the guilty party tries to make you go away.”
Nancy Drew did not have to solve supernatural crimes. The Scooby Gang mostly found out that the evil ghost was secretly Old Mr Jenkins. Veronica Mars had a lot on her plate, but not magicians.
So I wanted to do a supernatural lady sleuth.
Lucky for me, there are a lot of heroines who get on the solving crime in urban fantasy scenarios. Anita Blake of the Laurel K. Hamilton novels, Jill Kismet and Dante Valentine of the Lilith Saintcrow books, Toby Daye in the Seanan McGuire novels.
I really like that kind of novel! Lots of magic, lots of noir-y feelings, stars a lady who tends to be awesome at her job! There is a dudely example—Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden novels—but I’ve seen more ladies.
And I have a favourite. She is Kate Daniels of Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series, starting with MAGIC BITES and continuing on (one hopes to infinity but so far with four more books, MAGIC BURNS, MAGIC STRIKES, MAGIC BLEEDS and MAGIC SLAYS).
Kate’s job is a plotline. Not only that—it’s not a plotline with ups and downs and promotions and a boss she doesn’t like—I mean she changes jobs three times in the series.
But she is always, of course, sleuth-y. (That's a legit term.)
She starts off as a mercenary. A lone wolf drinking hard lemonade. It’s very noir: she’s living in a world that has been partially destroyed by magic and in which magic shuts down technology periodically. Kate’s future version of Atlanta may count as a dystopia, though it’s hard to say when there is magic involved. What I think it counts as is some cool world-building.
Kate uses noir turns of phrase all the time – ‘She had wailed loudly enough to wake the dead and make them call the cops.’ And the first case of her first book is, of course, a case where This Time It’s Personal: her guardian Greg has just been murdered. He died thinking Kate disliked him, when he was the only person she really had to care about. ‘Greg Feldman was my only family… I’ll find who or what killed him.’ We are thus introduced to Kate at a deeply low point in her life… but it’s clear Kate’s life has always been hard, and solitary. The life of a Lone Maverick Detective is not glamourized.
‘When I come crawling home, bleeding and filthy and exhausted, the house is dark and empty. Nobody keeps the porch light on for me. Nobody hugs me and says, ‘Hey, I’m glad you made it. I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried.’ Nobody cares if I live or die. Nobody makes me coffee, nobody holds me before I go to bed, nobody fixes my medicine when I’m sick. I’m by myself.’
But Kate doesn’t stay the solitary noir detective. Kate is a deconstruction of the lone wolf protagonist, too strong to need anybody else--or any urban fantasy protagonist who only needs herself and maybe a love interest. She evolves, despite a very hostile environment and having to solve all the crimes in it.
‘In a perfect world, Joshua’s vertically gifted murderer would’ve had himself a monologue before rampaging, during which he loudly and clearly would’ve announced his full name, occupation, religious preference, preferably with his god’s country and time period of origin, his goals, dreams, and aspirations, and the location of his lair. But nobody had ever accused post-Shift Atlanta of being perfect.’
So, ruins of the cities where we live now everywhere, life is uncertain, werecreatures prowl the streets, our knight errant Kate sometimes has to ride a horse and always carries a sword. I was going to say Kate is like Han Solo (mercenary who answers to no one!) but then I was also going to say she’s like Decker in BLADE RUNNER (noir detective in a world where technology has run mad!) and at that point I began to worry people would picture Kate as Harrison Ford.
Due to events following her investigation of her guardian’s death, Kate then officially becomes a liaison for the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid (the team you call when you have a harpy on the telephone pole) and a friend to the local Pack (assortment of were-people), but there are many policy disagreements between her and the Order. Bureaucracy does not really suit Kate.
“Any messages for me?" Usually I got one or two, but mostly people who wanted my help preferred to talk in person.
"Yes. Hold on." She pulled out a handful of pink tickets and recited from memory, without checking the paper. "Seven forty-two a.m., Mr. Gasparian: I curse you. I curse your arms so they wither and die and fall off your body. I curse your eyeballs to explode. I curse your feet to swell until blue. I curse your spine to crack. I curse you. I curse you. I curse you.”
In the end she is forced to choose between loyalty to the Order and her guardian’s legacy and the lives of werewolves. Her boss says ‘We’re people. They’re not’ and Kate goes to help them anyway, because of course they are people, and because she thinks it is right.
And then she sets up her own detective agency, with a loan from the werepopulation of Atlanta. But this isn’t back to a lone noir actually-a-detective-now situation, because over the course of these books Kate has picked up people to be her family.
We see the building blocks of Kate, who was raised to be a lone predator but who also has from the start had the potential to build friends and family around her.
Kate says of her adoptive father, who trained her to be a lone wolf expert warrior: ‘His training had a fatal flaw: he cared. He asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner. He knew I liked green, and if he had a choice between a blue sweater and a green one, he’d buy the green one for me even if it cost more. I like swimming, and when we traveled, he made it a point to lay our route so it would go past a lake or a river. He let me speak my mind. My opinion mattered. I was a person to him and I was important. I saw him treat others as if they were important… He helped people, when he thought it was right.’
Kate meets her best friend Andrea, a tiny blonde who loves guns and romance novels, at the Order in the second book, MAGIC BLEEDS. Andrea insists on eating lunch with Kate and Kate finds herself suddenly and decisively befriended: Kate’s struggle against this lasts about as long as it takes for Andrea to get in trouble, and later Kate woos Andrea to join her detective agency. “Would you like to work here with me? We have no clients and the pay is shit.”
Andrea raised her hand. “This is the hand that slapped Aunt B (the leader of the werehyenas).”
“Maybe you should have it gold-plated.”
“Here, you can touch it, since you’re my best friend.”
Kate doesn’t just have a best friend. She has an adopted child, Julie, who is eleven and has a missing mother when Kate is asked to guard her for an afternoon. Kate’s been orphaned too: Kate instantly dedicates herself to finding Julie’s mother. ‘Hold on, Jessica. I’ll find you. And I’ll keep your baby safe.’ But the next time she promises to keep Julie safe, she calls her ‘my girl’ and when the leader of the werepeople Pack offers to take Julie in she says ‘I’m taking my kid and leaving.’ She has known Julie for one day.
“I'm a substitute mom."
"You're more like a crazy aunt who only gets called when somebody needs bailing out of jail.” – And these words turn true. Kate is Julie’s ‘Aunt Kate,’ though she refers to her as ‘my kid’ continually and almost from the start. When Julie’s mother turns out to be dead Kate does adopt her, worries about her at school, saves her life at some pretty terrible and morally grey cost but also has Julie’s pictures plastered up around her house. Kate’s in her mid-to-late twenties as the series progresses: an adolescent is a lot of commitment to take on! But Kate does it, and Kate clearly loves Julie: Julie just as clearly loves Kate back.
Kate gets a sidekick, too. Every good sleuth has at least one: he’s a young werewolf called Derek who is introduced before Andrea or Julie, who acts as the small end of the wedge when it comes to getting Kate to let the world in. (Fact: all werewolf stories are improved by werewolves called Derek. I have statistics that will back me up on this.) The detective agency also has a fifteen-year-old werehyena sex fiend intern.
Kate even gets a pet—‘my attack poodle,’ Grendel. She gets all the things she describes herself as not having (well… not the sex fiend intern, he’s an unexpected development), the things she believes she cannot have, over the course of the series. And it doesn’t solve anything, but you can see it making her stronger and making it all more fun, even though it further complicates her life and gives her so much more to lose. It is worth it.
While we speak of emotional connections: I love that Kate is not only given companionship through romance, and that Kate isn’t all about romance, but I should perhaps mention Kate’s Significant Other. Curran, the king of all wild things. Or in other words, the leader of all the werepeople in Atlanta.
Curran is a werelion, and depicted as a lion on all the book covers. This led to my mother asking me personal questions.
MOTHER: So you really like these books about a woman... fighting Aslan?
SARAH: She's not fighting him! THEY'RE IN LOVE!
MOTHER: ...
SARAH: He's not Aslan!
MOTHER: So when you were reading the Narnia books, how did you feel about Aslan?
Their initial reaction to each other is irritation with a side helping of noting that this being of the other sex is cute. (Obviously after Curran turns into a person. Kate is not like ‘Get a load of that lion’s ass.’) Their basic attitude is: ‘You are an attractive person. Good work you. Now cease immediately to be an obstacle in the path of my doing my job because I am very career-oriented!’
“What kind of woman greets the Beast Lord with 'here, kitty, kitty'?”
… My kind of woman. And, as it emerges, Curran’s kind of woman, too.
‘ “His Majesty needs a can-I girl anyway. And I'm not it."
"A can-I girl?" Andrea frowned.
I leaned back. "'Can I fetch your food, Your Majesty? Can I tell you how strong and mighty you are, Your Majesty? Can I pick your fleas, Your Majesty? Can I kiss your ass, Your Majesty? Can I..."
It dawned on me that Raphael was sitting very still. Frozen, like a statue, his gaze fixed on the point above my head.
"He's standing behind me, isn't he?"
Andrea nodded slowly.’
But as they bicker, fight (like physical fighting, sparring with each other, battling on the same side, and also once in an arena… Kate and Curran’s lives are complicated…) they learn to respect each other, to want to take care of each other, to want to negotiate a relationship that isn’t perfect but is exactly what they need.
The books continue on after Kate and Curran are together, dealing with being together: “You snore worse. At least I don't turn into a lion in my sleep."
"I only did it once."
"Once was weird enough, thank you.”
You know. Normal couple stuff!
Two things Kate says in a time of romantic crisis:
‘ “If you come back to me, I'll never leave you", I whispered into the furry ear. "I'll make you all the pies you could ever eat.” ‘
‘ “Know this: if you come to remove me, come in force, because if you try to separate me from him, I will kill every single one of you. My hand won't shake. My aim won't falter. My face will be the last thing you'll see before you die.” ’
She can kill everybody: she can make really great pie. Both those things are awesome.
Her man is the one who makes the move for an emotionally committed relationship, but in a scary lion way.
‘His voice was a ragged snarl. "I miss you."
This wasn't happening.
"I worry about you." He dipped his head and looked into my eyes. "I worry something stupid will happen and I won't be there and you'll be gone. I worry we won't ever get a chance and it's driving me out of my skull."
No, no, no, no...
We stared at each other. The tiny space between us felt too hot. Muscles bulged on his naked frame. He looked feral.
Mad gold eyes stared into mine. "Do you miss me, Kate?" ‘
Basically imagine if in this scene Matt Damon was turning into a lion.
‘I gave him my hard stare. “You're a control freak and I fight all authority. And you want us to mate?”’
… Aw, maybe Kate is Han Solo after all, and Curran is Princess Leia. Meant For Each Other! Plus, let us face it, a man who references the Princess Bride to his lady is a winner.
There is a lot more awesome to Kate from the very start, before her evolving career and support system.
Kate has a mysterious background that reads to me as epic, the kind of backstory more usually given to a dude—she’s the daughter of Roland, and there’s a dark tower involved of course, a Sauron-esque figure we haven’t seen but who kills all his children. She’s Zeus, and he’s Cronus who swallowed all his children but this one. And her mother, the beautiful long-dead mother of many stories, is more complicated than Kate knew at first: Kate’s mother was a trickster protecting her child, like Rhea in the legend.
But Kate isn’t just the Chosen One, with special blood and a destiny.
Kate has skills – ‘Kate's Speciality: Killing things, with much bloodshed. Talking trash, infuriating authority. Driving Beast Lord crazy.’
She is prompt, which is essential! ‘I had an appointment with a sexual deviant and I didn’t want to be late.’
‘Maybe if I prayed to Miss Marple, she’d hook me up with a clue.’ (Excellent instincts Kate! Praying to Miss Marple is always the answer.)
"Clear out!" I barked.
They paid me no mind. Asshole innocent bystanders.”
Kate has boundaries – ‘Cute. I think I would prefer to be stabbed in the eye rather than be called cute.’
She is not all-knowing but she is sassy. "Becker the Gory? Lighthouse Keepers? Boston?"
"I would've preferred Becker the Easily Surrendering or Becker the Quite Reasonable, but beyond that his name tells me nothing.”
As you can see, she’s funny, she’s loyal and loving, and so far, she’s solved every case. Which as will emerge in Unspoken, is not so easy. Supernatural shizz can really derail an investigation.
So. Kate Daniels, my favourite urban fantasy sleuth. There she is, and there’s why.
Do you guys have favourite urban fantasy sleuths of your own?
June 26, 2012
MAY DAY, MAY DAY. THE KIDS ARE HELLA NOT ALL RIGHT.
That is exactly the opposite of what you get with Gothic novels, where if you are under eighteen everyone you know is like ‘So you’re possessed by ghosts/being stalked/the centre of an assassination plot, but are you ACTUALLY BURIED ALIVE? No? Then quit whining. Kids today…’
Or, how I came up with my Gothic heroine-who’s-a-boy, Jared Lynburn.
THE TURN OF THE SCREW is one of the Gothic novels which feature Children In Danger, because sometimes a threat to her own life just isn’t enough for the Gothic Heroine. It is also one of the few Gothic novels with truly unhappy endings: the other bad-ending I parodied was THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. Also written by a dude! Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James, dudes, why do you have to be such buzzkills?
DUDE: Do you wanna hear a scary story?
EVERYONE: Do we ever!
DUDE: So my sister had this hot, older governess. Yeah, I can’t tell my friends cause they will laugh. I love a member of the staff.
EVERYONE: …
DUDE: So she may be thirty-three. But that doesn’t bother me. Yeah, you can call me crazy. But I know that she craves me.
EVERYONE: … This is not the story we were expecting.
DUDE: I am getting to the ghosts, OK? Jeez.
DUDE: Anyway my sister’s hot governess wrote me a letter.
SEVERAL PEOPLE: Dude, TMI!
SEVERAL OTHER PEOPLE: LET THE MAN SPEAK.
DUDE: This is actually about the ghosts.
EVERYONE: Oh, right.
EVERYONE: … Do go on.
HOT GOVERNESS: Dear Cute Young College Student I Feel Super Close To, let me tell you about my first job. I was hired by a total hottie—
SEVERAL PEOPLE: Oh for God’s sake—
HOT GOVERNESS: Who asked me to take a position out in the lonely moors of Hell and Damnation House, cut off from all human contact, and not to bother him with stuff like ‘my imminent death’ and ‘floating axes in the hallways.’ Naturally I took the job.
EVERYONE: … Seems like a bad employment decision.
HOT GOVERNESS: Well, it paid really well. Plus the dude was a stone cold fox. I have this problem saying no to super attractive people.
HOT GOVERNESS: Hell and Damnation House is so pretty!
HOT GOVERNESS: New pupil Flora is adorbs!
HOT GOVERNESS: There is no way any of this can go wrong!
NARRATIVE INEVITABILITY: Heh heh heh.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER (THERE’S ALWAYS A KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER): Oh hey letter for you.
HOT GOVERNESS: Holy Lord Flora’s brother Miles has been expelled. For mysterious doings which may have involved chasing people around with an axe, and setting fire to the school, and doing medical experiments on fellow students without anesthesia, and burying a couple kids alive under the cricket pitch.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Boyish larks! He means no harm! Wait till you see him! He’s just as cute as Flora!
FLORA: Hiiii.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: They are so cute and blond! They could be in a Benetton ad.
HOT GOVERNESS: A Benetton ad FROM HELL.
HOT GOVERNESS: Just out of curiosity, why did the last governess leave?
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Oh, you know staff these days. Always dying mysteriously. Unreliable, I call it.
MILES: Hiii.
HOT GOVERNESS: Oh my god you are cuter than a basket full of kittens in tiny pirate hats.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: You see!
HOT GOVERNESS: Let’s not talk of disciplining him for killing other students with his teeth ANY MORE!
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Boys will be boys!
HOT GOVERNESS: Just saw a mysterious stranger in the empty house where I and two young children under my care live!
HOT GOVERNESS: Best not to mention it to anyone. I know how touchy rich families can get about the insane relatives they keep it in the attic.
HOT GOVERNESS: No use crying over escaped lunatics, as my mother used to say!
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: So you’ve now seen a lurky stranger lurking around our house twice. Why did you not mention this before?
HOT GOVERNESS: Oh you know… reasons…
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: …?
HOT GOVERNESS: ….
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: … Okay whatevs. Please describe this ghastly spectre!
HOT GOVERNESS: Red hair, yea high, dressed fancy.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Oh that’s the master’s valet, Quint.
HOT GOVERNESS: Oh thank God. Oh what a massive load off my mind! Oh I am so relie-
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: He died last year.
HOT GOVERNESS: NEXT TIME TELL ME THAT PEOPLE ARE UNQUIET SPIRITS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE BEFORE YOU GIVE ME THEIR JOB DESCRIPTION.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: So what did the ghost do?
HOT GOVERNESS: Well, he just stared.
HOT GOVERNESS: … Intrusively!
HOT GOVERNESS: I super want to get the hell out of dodge, but I cannot abandon my charges, and I must face down this horrible spirit.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Very commendable! I will be right behind you.
HOT GOVERNESS: Thank you!
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: … Only further back. Way in back.
HOT GOVERNESS: Please tell me everything about this valet.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Well he used to polish the master’s boots with champagne, which honestly was a bit extravagant-
HOT GOVERNESS: Please tell me everything about the valet relating to the fact he is now haunting the kids I governess.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Yeah, he was always hanging around Miles in a creepy fashion.
HOT GOVERNESS: Oh, ew, ew, ew.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Also he was a bit too chatty with his superiors, such as myself, know your place is what I say—
HOT GOVERNESS: But less about his manners and more about his creepiness with children?
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: You are always banging on about the children. There are two of them you know! We’ve got a spare!
HOT GOVERNESS: So how did the valet Quint die?
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Oh oh I know this one! Mysteriously!
HOT GOVERNESS: How many mysterious deaths have occurred in like, the last year?
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Oh, I can’t even deal with you, lady. ‘Investigate mysterious deaths’ ‘protect helpless children’… I can’t do everything all the time, okay! I’m keeping house here! The mortality rates may be high but the linen is spotless!
HOT GOVERNESS: Flora and Miles are really the ideal kids, aside from the whole unearthly apparitions problem. Whatcha up to, Flora?
FLORA: Not much, not much! Just entertaining the eldritch shade of a woman in black by the lake. How’s you?
HOT GOVERNESS: Oh sweet waffles covered in maple syrup from the underworld. Another ghost.
HOT GOVERNESS: So, eldritch shade of a lady just appeared. I presume it’s our mysteriously dead governess.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: … Probably a safe bet.
HOT GOVERNESS: Governess and the valet were banging, I presume?
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: They were pretty much banging everybody, is the thing.
HOT GOVERNESS: Everybody? Like, who?
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Here’s the town register.
HOT GOVERNESS: … Right. What about you, kindly housekeeper?
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Look it was just one time, I’d had a bit too much sherry, and they were as hotass as they were evil. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
HOT GOVERNESS: …. Uh, I meant, do you have any advice for me at this time?
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Nope, not really, kind of at a loss about how to deal with the staff right now. First they have an orgy in the town square, then they die mysteriously and haunt the children. So hard to find good help these days…
HOT GOVERNESS: So tell me stories about Miles.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Other than hanging around with the Valet of Doom and lying about the Valet of Doom and the Governess of Evil’s love affair, he is a perfect little angel and always goes to bed on time!
HOT GOVERNESS: Seriously do you think he killed somebody at school or what?
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Hard to say but he looks darling in his little waistcoats!
FLORA AND MILES: Hug hug hug! Let’s read Shakespeare! Let’s play charades! We love you hot governess! Pay no attention to that evil ghost behind the curtain!
HOT GOVERNESS: I must say Miles is very accomplished for his age.
MILES: It’s almost like I’m being tutored by a damned soul from beyond the grave!
HOT GOVERNESS: Say what?
MILES: Treacle tart?
EVIL GHOST VALET: Hey girl you look fetching in your negligee.
HOT GOVERNESS: COME AT ME BRO.
EVIL GHOST VALET: I like a girl with spirit.
HOT GOVERNESS: Too many ghost puns rushed into my head all at once! Cannot cope!
FLORA: Hey governess I was just wondering where you were? Got kind of disturbed from my sleep.
HOT GOVERNESS: BY WHAT?
FLORA: Not unquiet spirits, that’s for sure! Maybe a mouse.
HOT GOVERNESS: Oh flying monkeys of damnation both the kids are out of bed.
MILES AND FLORA: We’re just in dark communication with evil creatures from the depths of hell, lady, go back to sleep.
HOT GOVERNESS: Okay, so the children are in evil communion with the undead, and may at any moment be lured to their own destruction, and either die or spiral into madness. Actually I feel as if I’m spiraling into madness myself! Muahahaha! Muahahahaha!
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: So… if lives are in danger, should we alert the master or what?
HOT GOVERNESS: No way, lady. I have my pride.
FLORA AND MILES: We are awesome at arithmetic.
HOT GOVERNESS: This is very suspicious. I am a really bad teacher! They must be getting maths lessons from beyond the grave! Oh will nobody stop these gifted academic fiends?
MILES: So maybe it would be nice if our uncle came down and saved us from the ghosts.
HOT GOVERNESS: Send him a postcard. ‘THE DEAD ARE COMING BACK AGAIN. NOBODY WILL BE SPARED, NOT EVEN THE CHILDREN. WISH YOU WERE HERE, XOXO.’
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: It’s possible he might be interested to hear Miles was expelled. And also about the fearful spectres from hell.
HOT GOVERNESS: Okay, okay, I’ll write a note.
HOT GOVERNESS: Miles it would be great if you could tell me, just so I know, do you want to escape the evil ghosts or die and become a hideous imp of hell? Also did you kill someone at your school or burn it down or what?
MILES: Let’s not worry about murders past or future! Jenga?
ICE-COLD WIND OF HELL BLOWING THROUGH ROOM: puts out candle
HOT GOVERNESS: Holy mole and toad and wolverines!
MILES: Didn’t feel a thing! Are you chilly?
HOT GOVERNESS: Come quick Kindly Housekeeper I think the Vile Governess Ghost may be trying to drown Flora in the lake!
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Where’s Miles?
HOT GOVERNESS: He’s playing piano upstairs with the Valet of Doom. I don’t even care. He is an imp from hell, he and the Valet of Doom can start a band called DAMNED AND LOVIN’ IT. To the cuter child!
FLORA: Hey. I was just sitting about in a copse playing with dead plants. Normal eight year old stuff.
HOT GOVERNESS: Okay let’s all just drop the act. Where’s the Evil Governess?
EVIL GOVERNESS: Did someone mention me?
HOT GOVERNESS: Back restless spirit! Go back to hell from whence you came!
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: I can’t see anything…?
FLORA: Nor can I. I totally super can’t see a thing!
HOT GOVERNESS: You know you are much less adorable than I originally thought.
HOT GOVERNESS: Now let me collapse in despair, terrified that I am crazy but also by all the goddamn evil ghosts and their dread chill enveloping me in eldritch horror!
MILES: Mind if I sit?
HOT GOVERNESS: Nope.
MILES: My allegiance is unclear but our lives are pretty terrible, huh?
HOT GOVERNESS: Yep.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Flora says she feels sick, that you are crazy, and also that you have a poop face. But I believe you that the ghosts exist.
HOT GOVERNESS: How come? I mean, lady, it ain’t the most plausible story I ever heard.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: She called you a ho fo’ sho’! Clearly dark forces are at work.
HOT GOVERNESS: Fair enough. Take that brainwashed devil child up to her uncle. I am going to face down the ghosts and try at least to save Miles.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: We could both go…?
HOT GOVERNESS: Nope!
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: Seriously I have a train timetable right here we could go right now…?
HOT GOVERNESS: I scorn your train timetable.
KINDLY HOUSEKEEPER: I could pack us a lunch it would be no trouble!
HOT GOVERNESS: Ghostbusting or bust!
MILES: So, just you and me here. Having a nice dinner. Awfully jolly.
HOT GOVERNESS: Yep. I’m just staying here to spend time with you.
MILES: Very thoughtful! Very thoughtful!... How are the green beans?
HOT GOVERNESS: Delicious. How are the dark spirits from Hades?
MILES: … This is so awkward.
HOT GOVERNESS: Anything you want to tell me about anything?
MILES: I might have some stuff to tell you but first I gotta see a ghost about a hellhound.
HOT GOVERNESS: Hold up. You know my postcard that said ‘SEND HELP STOP THE UNDEAD ARE COMING STOP CHILDREN SUPERNATURALLY GOOD AT MATHS STOP’?
MILES: Yep.
HOT GOVERNESS: You steal it?
MILES: Boy did I!
HOT GOVERNESS: You steal stuff at school?
MILES: Nope. Just talked to my friends about ghosts from hell.
HOT GOVERNESS: Aw, Miles! It was a cry for help! You didn’t even set the badminton court on fire or anything!
MILES: … Er… no…
MILES: I know I’m possessed by a hideous spectre, but lady, you really have a vivid imagination.
VALET OF DOOM: Did someone order a ghastly apparition at the window?
HOT GOVERNESS: Certainly not!
MILES: Oh cheddar cheese on a cracker, is that the Evil Governess?
HOT GOVERNESS: Yes you admit there are ghosts! No it’s the Valet of Doom. Don’t worry Miles! Go back to hell, you can’t have this sweet relatively innocent child! Back I say back!
VALET OF DOOM: Okay, okay. Jeez, I know when I’m not welcome.
HOT GOVERNESS: I SAVED THE DAY!
MILES: Bad news: I think being un-possessed killed me. : ( x__x
HOT GOVERNESS: … Oh, I am hella fired.
AUDIENCE: The true mystery of the Turn of the Screw is how the hell Hot Governess ever got another governessing job.
THE TURN OF THE SCREW is, as you can see, hella depressing, Being sad after reading it can be cured by reading Jenny Crusie’s MAYBE THIS TIME, an updated romcom version of The Turn of the Screw, in which the lady is not a smitten 20-something but a cynical 30-something, the dude who offloads the kids on the lady has to come back and man up, and the dead previous ingénue plays an important part. (How much do I love updated romcom versions of classics? As much as I love Jenny Crusie, who singlehandedly introduced me to contemporary adult romance novels with her book BET ME.)
‘I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one's own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and I—well, I had THEM.’ Unlike Jane 'Criminally Careless Babysitter' Eyre and like Linda in Mary Stewart’s NINE COACHES WAITING, the never-named governess is set on protecting her charges, and they will do sketchy things in order to do so. I wanted to do something with that—the bad decisions that people will make, trying to look after the kids when Gothic secrets threaten on every side.
Yet the Hot Governess of THE TURN OF THE SCREW doesn’t just want to protect the children in her care… she’s afraid of them. Linda in NINE COACHES WAITING is a bit afraid of Philippe, too, who is after all one of the Scary Gothic family ‘tigers breed true’ she thinks as he is like ‘Let’s hang my uncle!’ In The Turn of the Screw matters are much worse: the governess is really scared of the kids as well as scared for them, scared that they are utterly corrupted by the supernatural goings-on and scared of what Miles might have done at school.
Still, the kids of THE TURN OF THE SCREW and NINE COACHES WAITING are just that: kids, too young to be super scary unless you want to go with Full-On-Devil-Child, too young to be held entirely responsible for their actions. Teenagers are both extremely capable of menace (thugs and vandals!) and extremely capable of being menaced (they have to go to the Gothic manors their parents take them to or be homeless, they have secrets kept from them for their own good, few people will take them at their word because teenagers are silly/overly dramatic/exaggerate/whatever reason people use to dismiss those who aren’t quite adult). Teenagers and the Gothic fit hand in glove.
In Barbara Michaels’s WITCH, which I’d be totally parodying if it wasn’t for the fact that would mean I’d be parodying FOUR Barbara Michaels novels (and no, WITCH isn’t my favourite… you’ll see, I’m parodying my favourite), the Gothic hero is Tim, a teenage boy who everyone thinks is mad, bad and dangerous to know… he doesn’t end up with the heroine, she is a single mom who used to do volunteer work with kids and feels bad for him but uneasy about him. She’s really sorry for him, and seeing him in danger upsets her… and she is constantly thinking ‘Thank God my teenage daughter can’t see him, this boy is a stone cold fox and obviously not boyfriend material due to being extremely crazy.’
Tim is both a child who needs protecting and adult enough to be feared: he’s described as tall and impressively muscled for his age. Tim is in fact being framed for many a crime, is a sweetie who loves kittens, and is in extreme danger, making him both Gothic hero and heroine. I thought it was cool to have a middle-aged heroine, and Ellen is awesome, but Tim—and Ellen’s daughter Penny, who does show up and is instantly on Tim’s side, because cheekbones—are kids in danger who nobody trusts. Because they’re children, who are sometimes—but not always when they absolutely need it—protected.
I thought it would have been awesome to see some of their story, or see some of NINE COACHES WAITING from Philippe’s point of view, or THE TURN OF THE SCREW from Flora or Miles’s point of view. They know they are in danger… and they know, as surely as any Gothic lady in a nightgown, that even if they have phones in their pockets, they are on their own. Because nobody will believe them.
Because they are not adults, they are still in the powerless position women were in back in the Gothic heyday—and not just any women, but governesses and poor relations—people who were in a very precarious position.
The Gothic set-up being ideal for YA, the desperation of people to protect children and the desperation of the children who can never be entirely protected, is part of why I wrote Unspoken, because those are some interesting questions--what would you do, to protect the helpless? What would you do to protect yourself? And of course, how helpless are the people we see as helpless, really?
June 13, 2012
My Face, Out In The World
I always find it a little disconcerting to see pictures of myself and videos of myself. 'Oh my good God, I look like such an idiot, my face should be banned! Ban it! BAN THAT FACE.'
Generally writers are people who think to themselves 'Ideally, I would live in a very comfortable cave and imagine up people.' They are not like actors or models, who (in my imagination anyway) wake up and say 'Great face girl/guy! It would be a crime not to show this to the world!'
Which is not to say I haven't met many writers who are both super hot and super suave in person. I have. I have met many writers who have it goin' on. But it is not a requirement of the job. (WRITER RESUME. Skills: Very competent prose. Rockin' bod.)
This is in fact not the only Video-y Thing I will be doing this week. I am also doing a reading, the Irish Writers' Centre celebratory marathon reading, 'Read for the World' in which we try to set a Guinness World Record. I will be reading to a live audience at 8.45am on the morning of Saturday, June 16th, at the Irish Writer's Centre 19 Parnell Square and it will be livestreamed at www.writerscentre.ie.
... Holy Methuselah on a bicycle, let me not go into a fugue state and pretend to be a zombie for the purposes of being hilarious. Seamus Heaney's going to be there reading. I must try for class.
Of course, in the Team Human video, Justine Larbalestier is there to provide the class. So I can rattle on about the vampire books I like, and the pros and cons of vampirehood. In fact, this is basically how I I handle being (in a tiny way) a public person: I try not to be self-conscious, to have fun and to be as much of a goof as I actually am, to talk about things I'm truly interested in and try to keep the interest of others that way. If someone is watching me do anything, they're probably into books, and if they're into books, they're a potential friend. So I talk the way I do to my friends.
Returning to the specific issue of Team Human, I am giving away signed Team Humans, so if you’d like one come to twitter and vote #GoTeamVampire or #GoTeamHuman.
I hope you enjoy the video. Even… my face…
May 30, 2012
Team Star!
I was so happy to receive the news--from a writer friend, meaning I got to tell my publisher and co-writer, so I felt fancy--that I have my very first Publisher's Weekly starred review. Behold it!
Larbalestier (Liar) and Brennan (the Demon’s Lexicon trilogy) affectionately poke fun at vampire tropes and, in the process, create a memorable story about love, prejudice, and the lengths to which people will go in service of both. High school senior Mel Duan is not impressed when a 150-year old vampire (who looks like a teenager and talks like a 19th-century poet) enrolls in her school. Sure, New Whitby, Maine, is known for its large vampire population, but the vamps and humans keep to their own. Mel finds Francis merely annoying until her best friend Cathy falls for him and decides to become a vampire herself, at which point Mel shifts into full-blown protective mode. This smart and entertaining novel—part Nancy Drew with vampires, part thoughtful and provocative story about assumptions—fully blooms in the second half. Themes of honest friendship and freedom of choice mix with zombies, accidental romance, a diverse and complex cast, and sharply funny dialogue to create a thoroughly enjoyable read with a core of unexpected depth. linky
You may recall that Kirkus also wowed me by giving Team Human a starred review!
VOYA, who have a different system from stars but this review as you can see is shiny!
4Q 5P J S
Larbalestier, Justine, and Sarah Rees Brennan. Team Human. HarperTeen, 2012.
Mel is a realist in an unreal town where vampires and humans have learned to cohabitate in relative peace. Unlike some of her fellow citizens, Mel does not yearn to work with or date vampires. In fact, when a vampire is a new student at her high school, Mel would like nothing more than to avoid him altogether. Unfortunately, Mel’s best friend, Cathy, starts to fall for the new guy. Throughout, Mel remains team human, even as she comes to better understand the vampires who are so important to the people around her.
What is interesting about this book is that the authors both uphold the conventions of the contemporary vampire romance and comment on it. The book remains sympathetic to the popular vampire story; however, antithetical to the Twilight saga, Mel, our teenage female protagonist, is critical of the romantic vampire mythos, especially the pederastic relationship between centuries-old vampires and real teenage girls. In the end, like so many readers, Mel begins to better understand the appeal and her inevitable connection to vampires, though she remains committed to human endeavors.
Reviews in trade (publishing and generally book-ly, the reviews official-like) magazines are a sort of sign to me: a beacon or a smoke signal. Your book is COMING! Here is what some people THINK of it! Because really, what people think of it is what matters.
I haven't been this nervous, in this way, since waiting for reviews and thoughts when the Demon's Lexicon was published three years ago. In fact, I wasn't this nervous back then, because now I am twice as nervous: for Team Human and Unspoken both, for the verdict of public opinion. The new book is another country: people might see you differently there.
It is also strange, to go from nobody having seen something you've written, to a few people, to what you've written being out there in the world, available to anyone. Strange and awe-inspiring, and terrifying. It does feel a little bit like waiting in a court room for a verdict to be pronounced: Good Book or Bad Book, happiness or sorrow, victory or defeat. Possibly this is not how all people feel: sound off about the importance of others' views or lack thereof below. ;)
But I'm very, very happy that people like Team Human so far. The book is coming! The book is almost real! The best is yet to be.
May 8, 2012
Nine Coaches Waiting, Or Linda Does France
Meet Unspoken's Angela.
Now let us speak of Nine Coaches Waiting, and its unusual Gothic hero.
LINDA: I have always dreamed of going back to my childhood home of France!
LINDA: Now that I am in Paris, I realise that home is where you make it, that wherever I go I bring myself with me, and that you cannot hope to revisit the past!
LINDA: Oh no, I got my epiphany over with in the first chapter, this book isn’t about my voyage of self-discovery through the beautiful sensual land of France at all, isn’t it?
LINDA: Now I come to think of it, the mistress of the lonely chateau to which I am going was oddly specific about her new governess not knowing the language of the country in which she was about to be stranded. And my parents knew Leon de Valmy, who manages the estate for his nephew, and my parents totally hated him and were glad he got paralyzed in a terrible accident…
LINDA: … Oh no. This is a Gothic novel, isn’t it?
LINDA: I would have much preferred to star in LINDA DOES FRANCE.
CHATEAU VALMY: Great big lonely remote isolated mansion!
LINDA: Oh well, it’ll allow me to get in touch with nature!
MADAME DE VALMY: So you totally don’t speak French fluently, right?
LINDA: I’m sure she has a perfectly innocent reason for wanting me to be helpless in a foreign country!
LINDA: Okay, so Leon de Valmy is disabled, be chill, he’s probably in a lot of pain, he’s probably a poor, helpless, suffering… SEXY BEAST. Yowza!
LEON: ’Sup?
LINDA: Code silver. Code silver. We have a SILVER FOX ALERT.
LINDA: Leon de Valmy reminds me of like, the Demon King.
TRUSTY HOUSEKEEPER: Kind of sinister? I hear you.
LINDA: Actually I meant… totally smoking.
TRUSTY HOUSEKEEPER: Wait till you meet his son Raoul.
LINDA: I can’t wait to meet Raoul! Hey, maybe this book is going to be LINDA DOES FRANCE after all.
TRUSTY HOUSEKEEPER: And now let us meet your sickly, neglected charge! The darkly dangerous Leon and Raoul would inherit all this if he died! Leon turned off his last governess because he really wanted an untrustworthy foreign stranger who wouldn’t understand anything that was happening around her.
LINDA: … Ten-four. I completely understand.
LINDA: Crap, this is definitely a Gothic novel.
PHILIPPE: I miss my Kindly Uncle Hippolyte! I don’t like my Murderous Uncle Leon!
LINDA: One brother was called Hippolyte and one was called Leon? I guess they knew who was going to be the hot brother from birth.
PHILIPPE: I know Uncle Leon is tres foxy but he is still plotting my death.
LINDA: There, there. Wanna play toy soldiers and establish a bond so that I will be emotionally attached to you and the reader will fear at every turn for your life, helpless child?
PHILIPPE: Awesome, toy soldiers!
PHILIPPE: This is my house, all the stuff in it is mine, everything you love rightfully belongs to me!
LINDA: Phlippe, as your governess: X-nay on speeches that might drive people to urder-may. Kids, eh?
LEON: Can’t live with them.
LINDA: There’s a second part to that saying.
LEON: Not in France, cherie.
LINDA: Can’t live without them?
LEON: … Oh, I think I could.
LINDA: What’s that you say? Master Raoul’s coming for a visit? Oh book, please be LINDA DOES FRANCE, please please don’t be JANE EYRE…
LEON: Hey, Jane Eyre.
LINDA: I was just thinking about Jane Eyre.
LEON: We’re so simpatico.
LINDA: You’re SO HOT. But so clearly a murderer. But SO HOT.
LEON: That’s Gothic novels for you. Basically a whole lot of underwear models twirling axes.
TRUSTY HOUSEKEEPER: I should let you know that young Master Raoul is a degenerate gambler who won a fancy car at roulette.
LINDA: Is it hot in here? Maybe there’s a heatwave coming on. I feel like there’s something super hot on its way.
TRUSTY HOUSEKEEPER: I’m just going to lay it out there. Raoul seduces nuns. Raoul is a nun-seducer!
LINDA: Yeah I’m on a governess’s salary, OK, I can’t keep replacing my underwear when it goes on fire like this.
LINDA: Philippe must love his cousin Raoul, he keeps running out on the Rickety Dangerous Balcony of Death whenever he hears a car!
TRUSTY HOUSEKEEPER: No, Philippe’s just constantly on the lookout for his dead parents. He’s very traumatised. Raoul and Philippe have no emotional connection whatsoever!
LINDA: Didn’t they see each other in Paris sometimes?
TRUSTY HOUSEKEEPER: Let me give you a clue about who Raoul sees when he’s in Paris. The clue is ‘hookers.’
LINDA: That’s not really a clue.
TRUSTY HOUSEKEEPER: The answer is LOTS of hookers.
LINDA: Just a quick trip down to the village for a refreshing beverage and to buy some sleeping pills for Madame de Valmy that may be used to incriminate me later. It’s a beautiful day!
WILLIAM BLAKE: Hello there ma’am. Let me introduce myself: I’d like to be considered for the role of dependable, non-murderous love interest.
LINDA: That’s interesting information. But not sexy information.
WILLIAM BLAKE: My address is Very Lonely Hut in the French Mountains, on the slopes of I Have No Pride, just take Use Me Baby lane… so call me maybe?
LINDA: Yeah, we’ll see, I haven’t even met Raoul yet.
LINDA: I’m about to be run over by a car! Whoa, nice callback to Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester’s first meeting when he’s on a hor--
CAR: GET OFF THE ROAD LADY!
CORNER OF NARRATIVE CONVENIENCE: THIS IS A NASTY TURN!
RAOUL: Holy God, lady, you okay?
LINDA: … Bow-chicka-wow-WOW. I sure hope someone’s notified the gendarmerie there are explosives in this area, because baby, you’re the BOMB.
RAOUL: You were not practicing road safety.
LINDA: I’m going to rename you Hurricane Raoul, because you just blew me away.
RAOUL: No but seriously, any bones broken?
LINDA: You must be a highly skilled electrician because you are turning me on!
RAOUL: … So this is a concussion situation, is what you’re saying.
LINDA: Has anyone ever told you that you look just like your daddy? Rawr.
RAOUL: Great-Aunt Jemima didn’t add the ‘Rawr.’
LINDA: See, I mean, your dad sort of has this smooth suave swerve going on. But you’ve got thirty good years on him, you’re almost definitely bendier, and you have your very own ‘je ne sais quoi, je suis a tiger in the sack’ thing.
RAOUL: Your French is super good. Especially considering your concussion.
LINDA: Oh please don’t tell anyone I speak French I’ve been deceiving your whole family for weeks! I know it sounds weird, but well, we’re in a Gothic novel, that’s par for the course.
RAOUL: There, there, poor girl. You bumped your noggin. You’re all confuzzled!
LEON: Please do not kill our governess with a speeding vehicle until I can frame her for murder!
LINDA: It was all my fault. I was just walking along in the darkness. Thinking Gothic thoughts. I was not practicing road safety.
RAOUL: The road’s totally safe. I know because you spend all the money from our actual estate on this estate. Also, you can’t drive. Also, you can’t walk. Also, I hate you, Daddy, and I am going to go to my room and listen to heavy metal! You don’t understand me!
LEON: … Raoul and I have a somewhat strained relationship on account of our tempestuous Gothic natures.
LINDA: … I would never have guessed.
LINDA: Philippe almost got shot in the woods! I presume someone mistook his singing for a very musical squirrel.
MADAME DE VALMY: That… must be what happened. Oh no, Leon’s going to be so upset Philippe didn’t get killed.
LINDA: Come again?
MADAME DE VALMY: Uh… oh no, Leon’s going to be so upset Philippe almost got killed…
RAOUL: Holy wow, the kid almost got shot, and you seem really shaken up. Let me take you out for a nice night on the town.
LINDA: Are we going to a wild moor where you can shake me and kiss me madly?
RAOUL: No, I thought we’d maybe go out for dinner…
LINDA: If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?
RAOUL: Sure, we could go dancing also.
LINDA: If Hotsville was a town, you should be mayor.
RAOUL: Thank…. you.
LINDA: And if the SS Hot-tanic was a ship, you should be captain.
RAOUL: So… you wanna go out on a date?
LINDA: …. Maybe.
RAOUL: Well, dinner and dancing was nice, but how’s about doing something naughty?
LINDA: You read my mind, you beautiful beast.
RAOUL: And by that of course I mean a casino!
LINDA: Dear Diary, I was not ravaged on the moors, but I think I am in love! I like it when they play hard to get.
WILLIAM BLAKE: Fancy a coffee?
LINDA: What’s your name again?
WILLIAM BLAKE: … So how have you been?
LINDA: Same old, same old. The child I care for got mysteriously shot at. All pretty quiet, really.
WILLIAM BLAKE: Jeez, Raoul de Valmy is home for one day and a mysterious stranger tries to shoot Philippe?
LINDA: … What are you implying sir! Everyone knows that super foxy people do not commit crimes!
RAOUL: Were you just on a date with someone else?
LINDA: This interrogating me is highly suspicious behavior!
RAOUL: I just thought we had a nice time last night…
LINDA: The dude who I was having coffee with thinks you tried to shoot Philippe. What do you have to say to that, Murderino de Hotass?
RAOUL: I’m going to make out with you!
LINDA: So accusations of murder turn you on? … Man alive, the French.
LINDA: I may be hot beneath the petticoat for him, but I did not give him permission to make out with me! Very angry. I hear the claws of fury scritching on my heart!
PHILIPPE: Nope, that’s me. I am outside clinging to a ladder.
LINDA: So in a wholly unexpected turn of events, the Rickety Dangerous Balcony of Death collapsed beneath Philippe! Lucky I put a ladder under it, or he would have been killed!
MADAME DE VALMY: I am overcome with disappointment!
LINDA: …?
MADAME DE VALMY: I mean… that other thing. Relief.
RAOUL: Dear Linda, I brought you a pretty party frock for the upcoming dance! Sorry for snapping at you when you accused me of murder, guess I was in a mood. Hope you are not mad about the making out. Hope we can do it again! Love Raoul.
LINDA: … Does this mean he like-likes me? Dammit, Raoul, check yes or no!
RAOUL: Hey sexy, looking good in your party dress!
LINDA: Don’t look at me, I’m hideous, your father called me Jane Eyre!
RAOUL: He called you the heroine of a Gothic novel who gets the guy she wants?
LINDA: This is no time for literary quibbling, Raoul. This is the time for kissing with tongues.
MADAME DE VALMY: Alors.
KINDLY FAMILY FRIEND: You do know that Raoul is kind of the wham, bam, thank you ma’am type? Except usually without the thank you.
LINDA: How dare you suggest that I, who am about to be fired for consorting with my womanizing employer’s son, do not know how to run my own life?
RAOUL: I have only known you three days and I have kind of a hideous family life, so I dunno about love.
LINDA: That’s OK, a family friend just told me you would use me and toss me aside like a soiled glove!
RAOUL: Is it the look in your eyes or is it this dancing juice? Hey baby, I think I wanna marry you.
LINDA: Sold!
RAOUL: I am practically penniless because Dad spent everything on this estate, which Philippe will inherit. Which of course he will, because nobody’s trying to murder him, am I right? Will you still marry me?
LINDA: Totally. I don’t want you for your money, baby.
RAOUL: Awesome.
LINDA: I want you for your body.
LINDA: I promised to go visit Philippe with a midnight feast!
RAOUL: I’ll come with, my betrothed!
PHILIPPE: Hey y’all. I kept myself awake through not drinking my hot chocolate!
MADAME DE VALMY: Hi Philippe! Oh God, no!
RAOUL: Stepma, it’s just a few crackers. Maybe some prawns. Okay, a trifle, but nothing to get upset about.
MADAME DE VALMY: He didn’t drink his hot chocolate! All is lost!
RAOUL: … She’s really into hot chocolate, isn’t she?
LINDA: I think she’s on drugs. I saw her messing about suspiciously with pills earlier.
PHILIPPE: My ot-hay ocolate-cay is oisoned-pay.
RAOUL: Your English is really coming on, little buddy!
PHILIPPE: You’re all tres stupid. I’m going to sleep.
HOUSEMAID: Hey Linda thanks for letting me have your party dress so I could go out dancing!
LINDA: No prob!
HOUSEMAID: You know what I let the evil butler have? My maiden flower!
LINDA: Couldn’t you have given it to the honest stablehand, or even the slightly shifty-looking butcher boy?
HOUSEMAID: What can I say? Evil’s just sexier. So I have a question about pillow-talk.
LINDA: What is it?
HOUSEMAID: Do dudes always confess to being bribed to murder little boys? Because the evil butler said he got paid by the Valmys to murder Philippe tomorrow, and I have to tell you, it put me right off Round Two.
LINDA: OK. OK. Let’s be calm. Let’s be calm!!!!! Pull yourself together housemaid!!!!!! So Leon and Madame de Valmy are conspiring to mur-
HOUSEMAID: And Raoul. He tried to shoot Philippe in the woods.
LINDA: Maybe that’s a misunderstanding. One of those hilarious misunderstandings that involve guns.
HOUSEMAID: I don’t think…
LINDA: Look, you already got yours, okay?
LINDA: Right, a child’s life is in danger, I’m calling the police!
HOUSEMAID: But then what happens to my true love the evil butler?
LINDA: Girl, U 4 real?
HOUSEMAID: Evil’s just sexier!
LINDA: Valid point.
HOUSEMAID: Also I will deny everything, because if I accuse the master of a murder plot, I and my whole family will be dismissed. The fear of the absolute power of the feudal lord is the threatening shadow implicit in most Gothic novels and I’m going to make it explicit!
NARRATIVE WEIGHT: She’s right, you know. The gendarmerie are not welcome in Gothics!
MADAME DE VALMY: I am sleepwalking out of guilt!
LINDA: Is Raoul in on your vile murder plot?
MADAME DE VALMY: Here is a tip about interrogations. Interrogate conscious people.
LINDA: Wake up Philippe!
PHILIPPE: Oh hi. I poured my hot chocolate down the sink. I always do. Because it’s not good for me.
LINDA: Good instincts, honey! Okay, let me break this to you gently. Your Uncle Leon… I would say that you’re not his favourite relative.
PHILIPPE: Um, yeah, he wants me dead.
LINDA: Hush while I break this to you gently! I would say that your Uncle Leon maybe isn’t going to get you a birthday present this year. Or even send you a birthday card.
PHILIPPE: Yep, he’s trying to murder me. Let’s get him guillotined.
LINDA: Cold-blooded and bloodthirsty family here.
PHILIPPE: Madness runs in the family! It goes with the excellent bone structure. Let’s blow this popsicle stand, governess.
PHILIPPE: So the plan is to run through the woods at midnight to a dude called William Blake who lives at Very Lonely Hut in the French Mountains, on the slopes of I Have No Pride, and stay over at his place until my Not As Hot But Virtuous Uncle Hippolyte returns tomorrow to save us.
LINDA: Exactly.
PHILIPPE: Let’s hope this dude didn’t give you a false name. I mean, William Blake?
LINDA: There’s a whole tiger theme going on in this book. I keep comparing your family to them. Not just in the ‘Easy, tiger! Rawr.’ way.
LINDA: … Though also in that way.
PHILIPPE: … I am nine.
VERY LONELY HUT IN THE FRENCH MOUNTAINS: *is deserted*
LINDA: Well, at least we can nap here.
EVIL BUTLER AND RANDOM FRENCHMAN: Let’s search this very lonely hut in the French mountains!
LINDA’S LUCK: is horrible!
PHILIPPE’S LUCK: is much worse!
EVIL BUTLER: I know they are here but I do not wish to alert Random Frenchman, because even the most random of Frenchmen is bound to be taken aback if I kill a nine year old in front of him.
ATMOSPHERE: is menacing!
RANDOM FRENCHMAN: Do you think Raoul banged that governess?
EVIL BUTLER: LIKE A SCREEN DOOR IN A HURRICANE!
RANDOM FRENCHMAN: Why are you talking so loud?
EVIL BUTLER: NO REASON! LET’S TALK MORE ABOUT HOW RAOUL HUMPED AND DUMPED THE GOVERNESS! THAT RAOUL, AM I RIGHT? HIS MIDDLE NAME IS ‘HOOKERS.’
RANDOM FRENCHMAN: I thought it was Edwin.
LINDA: Quickly Philippe, the evil butler will be back in a jiff! We must flee through the woods!
PHILIPPE: Man, another night-time race for my life.
LINDA: It’s almost morning!
PHILIPPE: Man, another early-morning jog for my life.
PHILIPPE: Look Cousin Raoul’s car, we’re saved!
LINDA: We’re hiding in a ditch.
PHILIPPE: Seriously? Is every relative I have trying to murder me?!
LINDA: This will be a great saving on Christmas cards when you grow up.
PHILIPPE: Aren’t you guys dating though? Why do you suspect him of murder?
LINDA: a) Because that is how Gothic novels work, Philippe!
LINDA: Also b) because you are a helpless child with only me to rely on, and I cannot take any risk with your life.
PHILIPPE: Aw, Linda, I’m really touched. That’s so…
LINDA: I’m definitely not reporting any of this to the police while my boyfriend might be involved, though! I’m just going to keep you alive and hand over the whole situation to your Less Hot But Virtuous Uncle.
PHILIPPE: … sweet of you.
LINDA: Hey, I’m only a lady. And ladies got needs.
LINDA: Let’s sneak into town so I can leave a garbled phone message for William Blake!
PHILIPPE: Seriously?
LINDA: I’m going to need moral support when we break the ‘Everyone in your family is a murderer’ news to your uncle. And since Raoul is probably a murderer, I’m going to need a new boyfriend.
PHILIPPE: Again I say seriously?
LINDA: Two birds, one stone!
LINDA: And now nothing will stop us from hiding out in Less Hot But Virtuous Uncle Hippolyte’s lovely safe mansion!
PHILIPPE: Except the savage guard dog.
RAOUL: Hello? Hello, Linda, Philippe? Anyone around?
PHILIPPE: … And my probably murderous cousin.
LINDA: Let’s go nap in the freezing boat house, Philippe! And huddle together for warmth.
PHILIPPE: Well, this is all very traumatizing and draughty.
LINDA: You’re telling me. Of all the de Valmys to cuddle with for warmth in an enclosed space…
LINDA: Now I sneak into Less Hot But Virtuous Uncle Hippolyte’s house to make a telephone call!
WILLIAM BLAKE: Baby, is it true that you’re in mortal danger?
LINDA: Yes!
WILLIAM BLAKE: And is it true that you’re now single?
LINDA: Yes!
WILLIAM BLAKE: I’ll be right there!
PHILIPPE: So we’re finally safe, and all we have to do is wait for my uncle to come home! Oh, I think that’s him now.
RAOUL: Found you!
LINDA: RUN PHILIPPE!
RAOUL: …. What?
PHILIPPE: Uh-oh. Seems like Cousin Raoul maybe isn’t a murder.
PHILIPPE: Aaaaawkward.
PHILIPPE: So I’m just gonna go chill in the library. Catch you later, dudes.
LINDA: So how’s your day been, Raoul?
RAOUL: Well, I got home and my dad told me he was plotting to murder my cousin, who is a helpless little kid. And that my fiancée and my cousin were desperately running for their lives. So of course I told Dad that I would kill him if he touched either of you, because a) murdering kids is uncool, and b) we’re getting hitched so I knew you were counting on me!
LINDA: Mistakes were made. Also accusations of murder.
RAOUL: But it turns out that my fiancée thinks I’m planning to kill her. Which honestly, I find hurtful.
LINDA: Try not to be so sensitive.
RAOUL: So all my relatives are evil and the woman to whom I pledged my eternal devotion thinks I’m a child murderer and my cousin is clearly going to be in therapy for the rest of his life. ALL IN ALL, IT HASN’T BEEN A GOOD DAY.
UNCLE HIPPOLYTE AND MADAME DE VALMY: … Are we interrupting something?
LINDA: Hey, Uncle Hippolyte turns out to be pretty hot after all!
LINDA: … Not as sexy as Leon, though. Evil’s just sexier.
UNCLE HIPPOLYTE: So, Raoul, my boy, want to maybe sum up things for me? Your stepmother’s story didn’t really hang together.
RAOUL: That’s because she’s trying to murder Philippe.
UNCLE HIPPOLYTE: Wait, who’s trying to murder Philippe?
RAOUL: Dad, my stepmom, the evil butler… Basically everybody’s trying to murder Philippe except me. Dad tried to get me to conspire in the murder this morning, but I said no, because I have this unusual and quirky belief that KILLING CHILDREN IS WRONG.
MADAME DE VALMY: I did have a few doubts about murdering Philippe, but in my book ‘Men are from Childkilling Mars, Women are from Accessory to Murder Venus’ it said that you should try to share your man’s hobbies.
MADAME DE VALMY: And he’s really been an excellent trustee aside from the small matter of the murdering. I mean, the roads are in superb condition!
WILLIAM BLAKE: I’m here to save you Linda!
EVERYONE: *is crying*
WILLIAM BLAKE: Aaaaawkward.
RAOUL: And who, excuse my French, the hell are you?
WILLIAM BLAKE: I don’t know French but let me introduce myself: I am the third side of your love triangle!
RAOUL: My what? I’m in a what?
RAOUL: This is the worst day of my life. I need a drink.
MADAME DE VALMY: I feel it’s my duty to entertain the guests. Let me explain how we, your family, were going to frame Linda, the woman you love, for a child’s murder!
RAOUL: … I need some heroin injected into my eyeballs.
RAOUL: I’m going to go visit Dad.
LINDA: Quickly William Blake, after that handsome Frenchman!
HIGH SPEED CAR CHASE: *ensues*
GOTHIC NOVELS: Yeah this Gothic’s so modern.
EVIL BUTLER: *blackmails*
LEON: *suicides*
LINDA: *faints*
RAOUL & WILLIAM BLAKE: *drink*
LINDA: Where am I? More importantly, where are the handsome Frenchmen?
WILLIAM BLAKE: Dunno. Anyway, so the day is saved and I wondered if I could pop by Hippolyte’s and take you out sometime…
LINDA: I see you have misunderstood. Raoul is innocent of murder and thus no power under God will stop me hitting that like Thor’s hammer hits the unsuspecting sky. Banging like a door in a hurricane, scoring like it was the Super Bowl. If Raoul were honey, I would be a bee. If he was peanut butter, I would be jelly. If I were airport security, I would frisk him every time.
WILLIAM BLAKE: I’m just going to… go, then…
LINDA: If Raoul was head cheerleader, I would be the quarterback. If-
WILLIAM BLAKE: Catch you later.
RAOUL: Je suis outtie, kindly housekeeper.
LINDA: I am going to throw myself down a hill and stand in the middle of the road at the Corner of Narrative Convenience! I’m going to do France if it kills me! I mean this entirely literally!
RAOUL: WHY DID YOU THINK MY DAY NEEDED ME TO RUN OVER A CHICK TO MAKE IT COMPLETE?
LINDA: Listen to me, baby. I did suspect you of murder. I admit that. But, in fairness… your name IS Raoul.
RAOUL: … It is.
LINDA: You know, being raised in a Gothic family was probably pretty hard on you, wasn’t it?
RAOUL: … It was.
LINDA: And we’ve both had a bad day. Don’t you think it’s Getting It On In Your Sweet Ride O’Clock?
RAOUL: … It might be.
LINDA: *finally does France*
Mary Stewart is a fantastic writer, but her heroes usually drive me up the wall. They constantly keep super-important secrets from the heroine for her own good (TOUCH NOT THE CAT – why would you want to know the identity of the man you’re psychically dating? and AIRS ABOVE THE GROUND – Should I have mentioned before we got married that my entire life is a lie? Nah, I’m sure it won’t be important) and direct contact with them often makes her heroines, smart, competent, great ladies for the most part, start thinking about the weakness of women and how strong and manly manly men are.
But I actually really like Raoul, who is a pretty sensitive portrayal of a Gothic hero. Growing up in a Gothic family would be a nightmare! Being suspected of murder by the woman you love would be unspeakably horrifying and hurtful, but very few books engage with that.
…. So Mary Stewart made me think about Gothics, and what I wanted to do with a Gothic hero, in a different way.
The Gothic novel had come a long way from JANE EYRE, where nobody ever even discusses the fact that Jane’s charge Adele has been living in the same house as a bitey pyromaniac with a drunk guard for ages.
As ladies became less helpless, someone else had to be in danger. And that someone else could be a kid. So Philippe is really the Gothic maiden in NINE COACHES WAITING. Kids in danger, and being protected and rescued by the intrepid heroine, also feature in Jennifer Crusie’s super-modern (published 2010) MAYBE THIS TIME.
So, kids in danger. All kids are extremely vulnerable before adults—they can be moved to Gothic manors, they can be hurt, they can be afraid with that particular sense of powerlessness, they can be unloved without the possibility of divorce. Gothic novels and young adult fiction, man. It seemed a perfect fit.
So Gothic heroes in distress and kids in danger are a big thing in Unspoken.
