Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 106

Tiny Tim: Prisoner of Love

Until I started playing ukulele I'd never heard of Tiny Tim. I was surprisingly okay with that. But now I've discovered that Kelley's stepfather, Art Woodbury, played with him on a Russ Columbo tribute album. Proof above.

Of course, I'd never heard of Russ Columbo, either. Having listened to the first couple of tracks I find I'm pretty much okay with that, too. (The band, of course, are fine. Art's played with just about everybody. Tiny Tim though is an acquired taste that I failed to acquire.) But, hey, listen for yourself.

Then, as a palate cleanser, go watch the video of another of Art's played-with-them-once musician friends, Blue Cheer, the first speed metal hair band.

Sloth in the sun

The sun shone here in Seattle on Saturday. It hit the high 50s. To a Seattleite, that's warm enough to sit outside in a t-shirt and bask. So I did. And made the acquaintance of this very fine bumble bee who was also taking the opportunity:
fluffy enough to stroke?We nodded at each other. I read Patrick O'Brian while she pondered some arcane pollen algorithm or maybe used the screen door as a bee abacus or a nifty grid map. Then, just as Jack was taking the Cacafuego (don't know what I'm talking about? Read Master and Commander!) she zuzzed to the perbs beginning to grow and inspected them.
rosemary, thyme, and (only just) chivesI imagine they're currently a great disappointment to beekind. But I'm guessing by late April (just as the lilac is blooming—see below for how the lilac tree looked yesterday) the chives will be flowering. Then it'll get busy around here.
view early morning, noon, early afternoon—lilac tree in foregroundBut yesterday was a delicious day of sloth, my first in a while. I think I might do it again today, only this time in front of the fire. All this springing forward wears a person out...

HILD available for pre-order

Hild  is now available for pre-order! Buy it from an IndieBound store, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. I'm guessing most will ship it to arrive on publication day, 11.12.13.

If you're in Seattle, I'd like to suggest you order from any of the following:
Seattle Mystery BookshopThird Place BooksIsland BooksUniversity BookstoreThe Elliott Bay Book CompanyQueen Anne Book CompanySantoro's BooksSecret Garden BooksElsewhere:
Atlanta, GA: Charis Books and MoreMadison, WI: A Room of One's OwnChicago, IL: Women and Children FirstSt. Louis, MO: Left Bank BooksBellingham, WA: Village BooksStanwood, WA: Snow Goose BookstoreYakima, WA: Inklings BookshopAsheville, NC: Malaprop's BooksDurham, NC: The Regulator BookshopPortland, OR: Powell's BooksNewberg, OR: Chapters Books and CoffeeDenver, CO: The Tattered CoverBoulder, CO: Boulder Book StoreMinneapolis, MN: Uncle Hugo'sNew York, NY: BluestockingsPhiladelphia, PA: Giovanni's RoomSan Diego, CA: Mysterious GalaxyLos Angeles, CA: Skylight BooksNew Hope, PA: Farley's BookshopAustin, TX: BookwomanAustin, TX: Book PeopleHouston, TX: Murder By the BookCambridge, MA: Porter Square BooksEdmonton, Alberta: Audrey's BooksEdinburgh, UK: Word Power BooksBath, UK: Mr B's Emporium of ReadingMelbourne, Australia: Slow Glass BooksWhere are you? Where should people buy Hild? Tell me your favourite bookshop and I'll add it to the list.

25th Annual Lambda Literary Awards shortlist

Finalists of the 25th Annual Lambda Literary Awards
Transgender Fiction
1. Being Emily, Rachel Gold, Bella Books
2. The Collection: Short Fiction From The Transgender Vanguard, Edited by Tom Léger and Riley MacLeod, Topside Press
3. Dialectic of the Flesh, Roz Kaveney, A Midsummer Night’s Press
4. First Spring Grass Fire, Rae Spoon, Arsenal Pulp Press
5. Offspring, Michael Quadland, Red Hen Press

Transgender Nonfiction
1. Seasonal Velocities, Ryka Aoki, Trans-Genre Press
2. Teeny Weenies and Other Short Subjects, Matt Kailey, Outskirts Press
3. Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies, edited by Anne Enke, Temple University Press
4. Transposes, Dylan Edwards, Northwest Press

Bisexual Literature
1. Axel Hooley’s Death Watch List, Scotty-Miguel Sandoe, CreateSpace
2. Girlfag: A Life Told In Sex and Musicals, Janet W. Hardy, Beyond Binary Books
3. History of a Pleasure Seeker, Richard Mason, Random House / Alfred A. Knopf
4. In One Person, John Irving, Simon & Schuster
5. My Awesome Place: The Autobiography of Cheryl B, Cheryl Burke, Topside Signature

Gay General Fiction
1. A Horse Named Sorrow, Trebor Healey, University of Wisconsin Press
2. The Absolutist, John Boyne, Other Press
3. Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, Benjamin Alire Saenz, Cinco Puntos Press
4. The Lava in My Bones, Barry Webster, Arsenal Pulp Press
5. Lovers, Daniel Arsand, Europa Editions
6. The Paternity Test, Michael Lowenthal, University of Wisconsin Press
7. Sighs Too Deep For Words, William Jack Sibley, Createspace
8. Spreadeagle, Kevin Killian, Publication Studio
9. These Things Happen, Richard Kramer, Unbridled Books
10. Unbuilt Projects, Paul Lisicky, Four Way Books

Gay Memoir/Biography
1. The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard, Ron Padgett, editor, The Library of America
2. Fire in the Belly, Cynthia Carr, Bloomsbury
3. Intolerable, Kamal Al-Solaylee, HarperCollins Canada
4. Midstream: An Unfinished Memoir, Reynolds Price, Scribner
5. My Husband and My Wives: A Gay Man’s Odyssey, Charles Rowan Beye, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
6. Twelve Views from the Distance, Mutsuo Takahashi, author, Jeffrey Angles, translator, University of Minnesota Press

Gay Mystery
1. Bokassa’s Last Apostle, Rod Shelton, Paradise Press UK
2. Dos Equis, Anthony Bidulka, Insomniac Press
3. Fires of London, Janice Law, MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
4. Lake on the Mountain: A Dan Sharp Mystery, Jeffrey Round, Dundurn
5. The Yellow Canary, Steve Neil Johnson, Clutching Hand Books

Gay Poetry
1. Appetite, Aaron Smith, University of Pittsburgh Press
2. He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices, Stephen S. Mills, Sibling Rivalry Press
3. Looking for the Gulf Motel, Richard Blanco, University of Pittsburgh Press
4. Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, Patrick Donnelly, Four Way Books
5. Slow Lightning, Eduardo C. Corral, Yale University Press

Gay Romance
1. The Celestial, Barry Brennessel, MLR Press
2. Don’t Let Me Go, J.H. Trumble, Kensington
3. Kamikaze Boys, Jay Bell, Jay Bell Books
4. The Nothingness of Ben, Brad Boney, Dreamspinner Press
5. Toughskins, William Masswa, Bold Strokes Books

Gay Erotica
1. Coming To: A Collection of Erotic and Other Epiphanies, Lukas Hand, Lethe Press
2. The Facialist, Mykola Dementiuk, JMS Books
3. Raising Hell: Demonic Gay Erotica, Todd Gregory, ed., Bold Strokes Books
4. Secret Societies, William Holden, Bold Strokes Books
5. Strawberries and Other Erotic Fruits, Jerry L. Wheeler, Lethe Press

Lesbian General Fiction
1. Carry the One, Carol Anshaw, Simon & Schuster
2. The Last Nude, Ellis Avery, Riverhead Books
3. The Raven’s Heart, Jesse Blackadder, Bywater Books
4. Theft: A Novel, BK Loren, Counterpoint Press
5. Wonder Girls, Catherine Jones, Simon & Schuster UK
6. The World We Found: A Novel, Thrity Umrigar, HarperCollins Publishers / Harper

Lesbian Memoir/Biography
1. A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet, Judy Grahn, Aunt Lute Books
2. All We Know: Three Lives, Lisa Cohen, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
3. Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. Before the Rain, Luisita Lopez Torregrosa, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, Sarah Schulman, University of California Press
6. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson, Grove/Atlantic

Lesbian Mystery
1. Ill Will, J.M. Redmann, Bold Strokes Books
2. Jacob’s War, C.P. Rowlands, Bold Strokes Books
3. Lemon Reef, Robin Silverman, Bold Strokes Books
4. Molly: House on Fire, R. E. Bradshaw, R. E. Bradshaw Books
5. Rest for the Wicked, Ellen Hart, Minotaur Books

Lesbian Poetry
1. fault tree, kathryn l. pringle, Omnidawn Publishing
2. Letters to Kelly Clarkson, Julia Bloch, Sidebrow
3. Sea and Fog, Etel Adnan, Nightboat Books
4. Snowflake/different streets, Eileen Myles, Wave Books
5. wine for a shotgun, Marty McConnell, EM Press

Lesbian Romance
1. Appointment with a Smile, Kieran York, Blue Feather Books
2. Dark Wings Descending, Lesley Davis, Bold Strokes Books
3. Love Match, Ali Vali, Bold Strokes Books
4. Month of Sundays, Yolanda Wallace, Bold Strokes Books
5. Runaway, Anne Laughlin, Bold Strokes Books
6. She Left Me Breathless, Trin Denise, Ragz Books USA
7. Sometime Yesterday, Yvonne Heidt, Bold Strokes Books
8. Survived by Her Longtime Companion, Chris Paynter, Blue Feather Books
9. Tactical Pursuit, Lynette Mae, Regal Crest Publishing
10. Third, Q. Kelly, Ride the Rainbow Books

Lesbian Erotica
1. Girls Who Score: Hot Lesbian Erotica, Edited by Ily Goyanes, Cleis Press
2. The Harder She Comes: Butch/Femme Erotica, D.L. King, Cleis Press
3. One Saved to the Sea, Catt Kingsgrave, Clasp Editions; An Imprint of Circlet Press

LGBT Anthology
1. For Colored Boys, Keith Boykin, Magnus Books
2. Here Come the Brides!: Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage, Edited by Audrey Bilger & Michele Kort, Seal Press
3. No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics, Justin Hall – Editor, Fantagraphics Books
4. Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, AK Press

LGBT Children’s/Young Adult
1. Adaptation, Malinda Lo, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
2. The Adventure of Tulip, Birthday Wish Fairy, S. Bear Bergman and Suzy Malik, Flamingo
Rampant
3. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Saenz, Simon & Schuster/ Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
4. Ask the Passengers, A.S. King, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
5. Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, Kirstin Cronn-Mills, Flux Books
6. Every Day, David Levithan, Knopf Books for Young Readers
7. Kiss the Morning Star, Elissa Janine Hoole, Amazon Children’s Publishing
8. The Miseducation of Cameron Post, emily M. danforth, Balzer + Bray
9. Personal Effects, E.M. Kokie, Candlewick Press
10. Silhouette of a Sparrow, Molly Beth Griffin, Milkweed Editions

LGBT Debut Fiction
1. Desire: Tales of New Orleans, William Sterling Walker, Chelsea Station Editions
2. The Dream of Doctor Bantam, Jeanne Thornton, OR Books
3. The Evening Hour, Carter Sickels, Bloomsbury
4. Incidental Music, Lydia Perovic, Inanna Publications
5. Love, In Theory: Ten Stories, E.J. Levy, University of Georgia Press/Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
6. Makara: a novel, Kristen Ringman, Handtype Press, LLC
7. Monstress, Lysley Tenorio, HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco
8. People Who Disappear, Alex Leslie, Freehand Books (an imprint of Broadview Press)
9. The Summer We Got Free, Mia McKenzie, BGD Press
10. Three Cubic Feet, Lania Knight, Main Street Rag

LGBT Drama
1. Edith Can Shoot Things And Hit Them, A. Rey Pamatmat, Samuel French, Inc.
2. Falling In Time, C. E. Gatchalian, J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing/Scirocco Drama
3. The Myopia and Other Plays by David Greenspan, Marc Robinson, University of Michigan Press
4. A Strange and Separate People, Jon Marans, Chelsea Station Editions
5. Thunder Above, Deeps Below, A. Rey Pamatmat, Samuel French, Inc.

LGBT Nonfiction
1. Communists and Perverts under the Palms: The Johns Committee in Florida, 1956-1965, Stacy Braukman, University Press of Florida
2. Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America, Christopher Bram, Hachette Book Group/Twelve
3. Far From The Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity, Andrew Solomon, Scribner
4. Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas, Dale Carpenter, W. W. Norton & Company
5. I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, Michael Long, Editor, City Lights
6. Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, Sarah Schulman, Duke University Press
7. Out Spoken: A Vito Russo Reader Reel One and Reel Two, Jeffrey Schwarz, Mark Thompson and Bo Young, White Crane Books
8. Real Man Adventures, T Cooper, McSweeney’s

LGBT Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror
1. Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction, Brit Mandelo, Lethe Press
2. Chocolatiers of the High Winds: A Gay Steampunk Romance, H.B. Kurtzwilde, Clasp Editions; An Imprint of Circlet Press
3. Green Thumb, Tom Cardamone, Lethe Press
4. Heiresses of Russ 2012: the Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, Connie Wilkins and Steve Berman, Lethe Press
5. In the Now, Kelly Sinclair, Blue Feather Books
6. Night Shadows: Queer Horror, Greg Herren and J.M. Redmann, eds., Bold Strokes Books
7. The Survivors, Sean Eads, Lethe Press

LGBT Studies
1. Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of Pleasure, Sara Warner, University of Michigan Press
2. Depression: A Public Feeling, Ann Cvetkovich, Duke University Press
3. Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America, Tracy Baim, Prairie Avenue Productions and Windy City Times
4. How To Be Gay, David M. Halperin, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
5. The Invention of Heterosexual Culture, Louis-Georges Tin, The MIT Press
6. On Making Sense: Queer Race Narratives of Intelligibility, Ernesto Javier Martínez, Stanford University Press
7. Out of Africa: LGBT Organizing in Namibia and South Africa, Ashley Currier, University of Minnesota Press
8. Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics, Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, University of Michigan Press
9. Pray the Gay Away The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays, Bernadette C. Barton, NYU Press
10. South Africa and the Dream of Love to Come: Queer Sexuality and the Struggle for Freedom, Brenna M. Munro, University of Minnesota Press

The winners will be announced at a gala ceremony in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City on the evening of Monday, 3rd June. See LLF's website for more info and tickets to the 25th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, including the reception and after-party.

25 years, people! It's going to be great. Be there! I plan to.

I am not on the cover of my novel

From: Ed Hall

Damn. Is it my imagination, or have you wound up on the cover of another of your books?

Detail from cover of Hild (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Nov. 2013).You're the fourth person in four days to ask this. But, no, it's not me. For one thing, I'm considerably older. For another, much shorter-haired. And for yet another, I don't own any spiffy metal coifs. (Though I do have a seax.)

I've never been on the cover of a novel, mine or anyone else's (to my knowledge). But people do see me there anyway. The book I've had most Ha! That's you really, isn't it? comments about is Slow River :
UK and US first editions.And with this one—the US version at least—I can see a slight similarity. A very flattering one. Plus it's kind of cool that the break in the image goes right through my real-life broken nose.

But the confusion that really made me scratch my head was with the Aud on the cover of  The Blue Place . Er, no. It was marginally easier to understand with Stay . After all, that could be anybody.
Both US editions. Because none of the Aud books has appeared in the UK. Yet.Sadly (idiotically) I made the Aud/Nicola confusion worse by bleaching my hair white in between publication of The Blue Place and Stay. I just didn't think about it. It's one mistake I'll never make again... By Always I was back to my original colour.
Now. And then. By Jennifer Durham and Kelley Eskridge respectively. Unless I have a personality transplant and my publishing team loses their collective mind I will never be on the front of one of my novels. But I bet you a pint that this won't stop sometime in the next month saying, Whoa, that's you on the cover of Hild!

HILD cover reveal

This is the cover of my novel  Hild , which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 12 November 2013. (Why, yes, that is 11.12.13.)

I love it.
Cover designer: Charlotte Strick (art editor of the Paris Review, art director at Farrar, Straus and Giroux).Cover artists: Anna and Elena Balbusso (multiple award-winning Italian twin sisters who have done some cracking work illustrating classics by people like Pushkin and Atwood).This, obviously, is a JPEG so the colours are a wee bit unreliable. The physical object, though, will be stunning: uncoated, textured coverstock with the main title in gleaming gold. Drop-dead gorgeous.

I love the way Hild looks directly at her audience, utterly self-contained. I particularly admire the Botticelli-like face, and her hair, which is the exact shade of chestnut I'd imagined.
So, as I say, I love this cover—which is a miracle considering I had only one suggestion regarding the illustration: No representation of Hild! My editor, Sean McDonald (who has been my editor since Stay and, for some reason, seems to think I'm worth the aggravation) sighed and said, basically, The book's called "Hild." She needs to be on the jacket.

I got a bit definite. No, I said. The novel starts with Hild aged 3. It closes with her aged 19. And she's a singular girl-woman who lives at the very edges of the constraints of her time—but is still constrained. How the fuck are you going to convey that? No. Absolutely not.

The response? The magisterial silence of an Editor Who Knows Best.

And, the thing is, in this regard I think he's right. Hild is in every single scene of this 200,000-word novel (though not every scene is from her point of view). She is the book; the book is her. She has to be on the cover. Just because that's impossible doesn't mean we shouldn't try do it anyway. After all, that's what I did in the writing. So why not in the illustration?

So in the end I explained how I wanted the cover to look—lush, forceful, dangerous (the way the weather is dangerous), stern, rich, luxurious, spare, clear...and other (often paradoxical; Hild's like that) things I don't remember—and put it from my mind.

And then I got this. A girl-woman with the thousand-yard stare of someone who has faced death and made terrible decisions since the age of eight, who looks out with the clarity of one who knows life is an undiscovered country full of joy and patterns to be understood. She was born in very difficult circumstances and survives because she has an extraordinary mind and a will of adamant.

What do you think?

I am now an American citizen

I took the oath yesterday. It was a surprisingly moving ceremony.
I'll blog all about it in a few days. Right now I just want to loll about and bask in the glory that is dual citizenship. And—wonder of wonders!—there's actually sunshine here in Seattle. The perfect way to begin.

The Next Big Thing: Authors Tagging Authors

An excuse to talk about HILD...
My research blog Gemæcca began in 2008 with a medievalist blogger's meme game about favourite historical characters. I got tagged by Michelle of Heavenfield. I desperately wanted to talk about Hild, the main character of the novel I was working on but I had no blog. So I built one. It is oddly satisfying to get tagged five years later for another meme just after I finished working on the copyedits of that novel, Hild.

I was tagged by the fantastic Karen Joy Fowler who talked about her new book,  We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves , which I'm most definitely looking forward to. Karen was tagged by Ruth Ozeki, whose A Tale for the Time Being I've already started (it's excellent).

So here are the ten meme questions (I admit I edited some of them, just a bit) and my answers, followed by links to two other writers I'm tagging.
1. What is the working title of your book?
The final title is Hild. But it began as Beneath (I wanted to turn over all the early medieval stones and look at what was wriggling on the underside). As I progressed the working title morphed from Light of the World to God in the Nettles to Butcher Bird to As It Must. But in the end my agent said, "Why don't you just call it Hild?" And I couldn't find a good answer: the book, after all, is about the formation and rise of Hild, a child and then woman with a matchless mind who was at the heart of the changes that made England.

2. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
From my publisher's catalogue copy: "A brilliant, lush, sweeping historical novel about the rise of the most powerful woman of the Early Middle Ages: Hild."

But I started off with this: "In a time of warlords and kings, when might is right, the three year-old Hild, along with her mother and sister, is homeless, hunted, and without material resources. Yet by the end of her life she is the first great abbess of the north, teacher of bishops and counsellor to kings: universally revered. This is how she did it." In other words, I built the seventh century then grew Hild inside it to see what would happen. That's what I do: write to find out.

3. Where did the idea come from?
On some level I've been working towards this since I began my very first novel. Hild is the sum and summit of all I know—in terms of writing and life. But I can tell you the exact moment I became aware of Hild's existence.

In my early twenties, I was living in Hull, a depressed (and depressing) industrialised city on the river Humber (the southern boundry line of Deira, which became part of Northumbria). For a break, my partner and I went north up the coast, to Whitby.

The first thing I saw at Whitby was the ruined abbey on the north cliff. It's an astoundingly gothic silhouette, mesmerising. I didn't wait to unpack but climbed the hundred and ninety-nine steps with my gear on my back. It's difficult to describe how I felt when I first stepped across the threshold of the ruin abbey. It was as though the history of the place punched up through the turf and coursed through me. I knew my life had changed, I just didn't know how.

This photo (used as the author photo on the jacket of my first novel) was taken at Whitby in 1991:
After that, every year, sometimes twice a year, I visited Whitby. I walked the coastline. I roamed the moors. I spent hours at the abbey. I started picking up brochures and leaflets and imagining how it might have been long, long ago. Even after I moved to the US and started work on what would become my first novel, I came back once a year.

On one visit to England, I picked up a battered 1959 Pelican paperback edition of Trevelyan's A Shortened History of England. I started reading it on the plane on the way back. I read about the Synod of Whitby in 664 and, frankly, don't remember the rest of the flight. This, I thought. This Synod was a pivot point in English history.

Two or three years later, I stumbled across Frank Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England. And I was off. For the last ten years I've been groping my way through ever more modern scholarship. I've been reading bilingual versions of Old English and Old Welsh poetry, absorbing the latest translations of Isidore's Etymologies, thumbing through translations of Bede, thinking, thinking, dreaming in the rich rolling rhythms of another time and place. This is the most absorbing project I've ever embarked upon.

4. How long did it take you to write the first draft?
Three or four years.

5. Who or what inspired this book?
Hild herself. Plus I loved the fact that I was born about three miles from where Hild was probably born, growing up where she grew up—in what was Elmet, a part of Yorkshire. As a child I might have walked the hills she walked, climbed the same kind of trees she climbed, poked sticks in the same streams, watched the same shaped clouds, listened to the same seas on the same coast.

6. What genre is it?
Literary fiction. Epic page-turner. Historical fiction. Bildungsroman. Political thriller. An ethnography of the seventh century/ethnogenesis of the English.*

7. What other books would you compare yours to?
I was born in Yorkshire in the twentieth century, but as a teenager I rode the stony slopes of Mary Renault's Macedon in winter and gazed out over the fjords of Sigrid Undset's Norway in summer. Alongside Alexander I led bronze-age cavalry and clashed with my father; with Kristin Lavransdatter I managed a fourteenth-century household and refused to behave. I lived their story as deeply as I lived my own; their lessons were my lessons. And from the moment I realised I would write about Hild, I wanted her story to be as powerful to readers as Alexander's and Kristen's had been for me. I wanted readers to live and breathe the seventh century, to reach the end of the book and nod: Yes, that's how it was.

8. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The book was represented by Stephanie Cabot of the Gernert Company and will be published November 12th by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (In hardcover for $28—according the very nifty app isbn.nu—and, I assume, in a variety of digital formats. No info yet on audio or foreign editions.) So far this has been the best experience of my life, publishing-wise. At FSG I feel part of a smart, agile, committed team. Everyone is behind the book. It's deeply exciting. This is how publishing should be.

9. Which actor would you choose to play your character in the movie?
I haven't a clue. Several actors would be needed to play Hild. The book opens when she's three and closes when she's nineteen. But—and it's probably heresy to say this, oh well—I think the novel is too long for a movie. It might make for a splendid premier cable series though: murder, intrigue, starvation, religion, war, sex, love, betrayal, lust, ambition, change...

10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
Here's my hope: that Hild will do for Saint Hild and seventh-century Britain what Hilary Mantel did for Cromwell, Patrick O'Brian did for Aubrey and Maturin, and Mary Renault did for Alexander—bring a whole world to life for the reader through the lens of a singular character who changed history, who did so by acting at the very limits of the constraints of her time.

Also, I like to think admirers of British nature writers—Roger Deakin, Rupert Macfarlane, Richard Mabey—might find something to enjoy.

A handful of people have already read it:

"Nicola Griffith is an awe-inspiring visionary, and I am telling everyone to snatch this book up as soon as it is published. Hild is not just one of the best historical novels I have ever read—I think it's one of the best novels, period. It sings with pitch perfect emotional resonance and I damn well believe in this woman and every one she engages. I finished the book full of gratitude that it exists, and longing for more." — Dorothy Allison

"An enthralling tale from an extraordinarily talented writer. It drew me into the volatile, dangerous world inhabited by the real Saint Hild fourteen centuries ago. The historical setting feels so real that it seemed that I was walking across the living landscape of seventh-century Britain. The characters are utterly believable in their time and place. Historical accuracy alone would make this novel a remarkable achievement, but the author has given us a thrilling story, too. Brilliant stuff!" — Tim Clarkson, author of The Picts (2010), Columba (2012) and other works. 

"What a fabulous book! Although finely detailed, with complex characters and a beautiful evocation of the natural world, the tensions of the gathering plot made Hild feel like a quick read. Too quick! I fell into this world completely and was sorry to come out." — Karen Joy Fowler

When I pondered who to tag in return, I asked women: I've taken the Russ Pledge to promote and support women writers. But all the writers I considered were out of the country/unavailable to check with, had already played, were wilting under deadlines, didn't know who to tag in turn, or didn't want to for other complicated reasons. And given that I've already been dilatory (so many things to do in support of Hild, even at this stage) I turned to men.*** And I'm delighted to report that two are willing to take up the challenge:
Dennis Mahoney, aka @Giganticide, whom I met on Twitter just a few days ago. We bonded over Patrick O'Brian's 21 Aubrey/Maturin books which, as I've said before, is basically one long novel—a novel that begins to thin out a bit around book 15 but, until then, is practically perfect. Anyone who likes O'Brian probably writes stuff I'd enjoy reading, so I'm looking forward to reading his new novel, Fellow Mortals, just out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Matt Ruff, aka @byMattRuff, my friend and author of Tiptree-winning Set This House in Order, and the bad-girl-who-is-not-isn't-entirely-what-she-seems thriller Bad Monkeys (recently optioned by Fox to be a TV series). Matt's most recent novel is The Mirage which come out last year but is just out in paperback last week from HarperCollins.---*    I'm not supposed to say this. My editor and publicist turn pale.**  advance reading copy These are essentially private editions of the book printed for reviewers, booksellers, etc. It's a publicity tool.
*** There's a phrase you won't see me use often.

Project decisions

An evening of this:
Leads to noodling like this:
And the begins of a decision. If you know my work worrying well, you probably have a clue what I've decided. Now I just have to figure out whether I go the traditional or the crowd-funded route. Hmmmm...

My new author photos

Today for your delectation and delight, three recent (January 2013) photos of me by Jennifer Durham. (You can see bigger versions by clicking through.)

The first is my new official Author Photo: the picture that goes on the book jacket of Hild and accompanies reviews (should one be lucky enough to get any in places that run author photos as well as cover graphics). I was artfully lit and photographed by Jennifer--who also artfully smoothed out some of the dings and dents and creases acquired in my 50+ years of standing on the surface of a planet that hurtles through the cosmos at a bazillion million kilometers per hour, and as a result of not always eating what's good for me and almost always drinking what's bad...
Photo © Jennifer DurhamThis one is probably my favourite, the one that most resembles my interior picture of myself. It won't work for a book jacket--readers, apparently, prefer their authors to look right at them--but I sent it to my publicist at Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the hope that, one day, some fabulous book-focused journal will run one of those juicy long profiles about me and/or Hild, and that this might make a good accompaniment.

Photo © Jennifer DurhamAnd then there's this. It was an experiment in lighting. Jennifer is really, really good at knowing how to emphasise and sharpen (and soften and hide) with light, and she wanted to see what a black and white face-only thing would look like. The proofs looked okay, perhaps a bit stark, but then I said: why don't we leave my eyes their real colour and see what happens? The contrast is surprisingly subtle. Most people I've shown it to aren't keen. "Freaky!" they say. "Weird!" But I kind of like it.

Photo © Jennifer DurhamAlso, I've seen the first pass cover art for Hild. It is going to be a knockout. But that's all I can say right now. But I'm chortling...