A Little Shameless Self Promotion. And Some Whining.

 

So.  Out of the blue a few weeks ago I got a phone call.  From my ex-UK publisher, who sends me account pages full of zeroes and minus signs* twice a year.  Hi, they said.  We're reissuing BEAUTY.  Thought you'd like to know.  We'll send you the cover art so you can tell us how much you like it.  It's got foil.

            Gah? I said.  Gleep.  Blah.  Ung.  Oh?  That's nice.  Thanks.

            They did send me the art, but without the foil it just kind of lay there.  Then the books arrived.  They certainly do have foil, which makes it almost impossible to get an accurate photo of one.  Right.  Now, how many of you out there on this side of the pond are frantically trying to think of last-minute Christmas presents?  Here is the answer to all your worries.**

Sadly this is only the effect of the flash. But it's way cool.

More glittery flashy flash.

And this is almost what it looks like, except the rose is red, as it is in the flashy pics.

 

And then yesterday my Berkley editor sent me a pdf*** of 'Nancy Pearl Presents:  Books That Make Great Gifts.'  It's a wonderful, quirky list—with, for example, Gail Carriger's SOULLESS and Justin Cronin's THE PASSAGE followed by THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES by Edmund de Waal and CROOKED LETTER CROOKED LETTER by Tom Franklin—and I've been a fan of the sainted Nancy Pearl since before I knew her as a dedicated promoter of SUNSHINE.  I like the way she reads all over the map and takes genre books seriously.†  And, speaking of SUNSHINE, this is the final title on Pearl's list:

Sunshine, Robin McKinley

This is, quite simply, the best vampire book for older teens, ever. I've never met a high school junior or senior who didn't love this novel.†† Set in a world quite similar to ours in the time just after the Voodoo Wars, Rae Seddon, who's nicknamed Sunshine, is driving home from a baking stint at her stepfather's café when she's kidnapped by a group of vampires and locked in the ballroom of an old house. It soon becomes clear that she's intended to be the main course of a meal for their starving captive, another vampire—the powerful, handsome, and enigmatic Constantine. But Constantine, going against everything Sunshine thought she knew about vampires, resists his powerful urge to drink her blood, and the two form an uneasy alliance against their joint captors. . . .

I know it's going to look like I'm shooting myself in the foot here.  And yes, that first line of description is a killer.†††  And yes, being on an excellent and intriguing list like this‡ and as the climax, the coup de grace, by someone with the clout of Nancy Pearl makes me shiver all over with egotistical delight‡‡. 

            But . . . Con isn't handsome.  This is important.  It's important enough to me anyway that I'm risking shooting myself in the foot about it.  Even almost-ten years ago when I was writing SUNSHINE, which was before the colossal burst of vampirature, before urban fantasy turned into its own dare I say monster genre, I was pulled by this particular story partly because the undeniable draw between Con and Sunshine is not based on the standard sexy powerful-male tropes.  He's powerful and enigmatic all right, but the kind that makes you want to throw up.  That's the point.  As soon as you say 'powerful, handsome and enigmatic' you've turned it into some other story, with Con as Mr Rochester or Colin Firth.‡‡‡  He's a VAMPIRE.  Vampires are monsters.  Vampires are undead monsters, as in ewwww.  In the McKinley version anyway, vampires are very, very, very icky.  'I didn't realise till it raised its head with a liquid, inhuman motion that it was another vampire. . . . Overall he looked . . . spidery.  Predatory.  Alien.  Nothing human except that he was more or less the right shape. . . .  Vampire skin looks like hell in sunlight, by the way.  Maybe bursting into flames is to be preferred. . . . I waited a moment longer before I turned to look at him.  Vampire.  Dangerous.  Unknowable.  Seriously creepy. . . .'  Part of the strength of the connection between Sunshine and Con is that everything about each of them except their connection is trying to drag them away from each other.

            Con is not handsome.   If you met him, you'd burst into tears and wet yourself.

           * * *

* Siiiiiiiigh.  I'm used to being an almost total professional failure in the country I live in.  I don't like it.  BEAUTY even got good reviews, as evidenced on the first inside page:  'A love story . . . that marries realism and fantasy with satisfying imagination, elegance of prose and thoughtful characterisation.  McKinley's Beauty is more than skin deep.'  Sunday Times.  'Robin McKinley has treated the tale with respect and care, and she tells is straight. . . . Anyone who appreciates prose that's poetic^ without being cloying will relish the language in which the story is written.'  Guardian 

            It still sold about twelve copies.  Well, to be fair, it's sold twelve copies several times.  The original British edition from twenty-plus years ago is one of my Most Hated.  But the earlier Random House editions, hard and paper, from 2003 and 2004, are really pretty.  They still sold about twelve copies.  Did I say that already?  Maybe it was twelve copies each.  Maybe this one will sell twenty four.  An elderly hag with dependent hellhounds can hope. 

^ Poetic?  Beauty would laugh. 

** Fourteen/forty years old, male, loves cars, beer and football?  Thirty, female, Oxbridge first [degree], maths tutor at a posh public school, reads The Economist for the laughs?  Never mind.  Stretch their horizons.  Clearly they need stretching. 

*** If anyone finds it on the web, please send me a link and I'll post it here.    http://plablog.org/2010/11/nancy-pearl-presents-books-that-make-great-gifts-pla-webinar-december-13.html says it's going to be a downloadable pdf, but maybe only for people who paid their fees?

† Arrgh etc.   

†† Author's note:  They are out there, however, I'm sorry to say.  I've had mail from a few.

††† . . . so to speak

‡ Several of which have just gone on my Book Depository list

‡‡ And the wistful hope of material gain.  Yes, I know I go on about money kind of a lot, but most writers have to.  I retweeted a quote from JD Salinger last night: ' There is a marvelous peace in not publishing.'  To which I added: Oh please. Not if you need to earn a living.  . . . To which here, unhampered by a 140 character limit I will further add:  Turkey.  

‡‡‡ Although you might want to know that I'm the only (mostly) het woman on the planet who did not find the diving-into-the-lake scene particularly interesting.  I was also underwhelmed by Clark Gable carrying Vivian Leigh up those stairs.^  So I am obviously sick and twisted, and therefore a perfect candidate for writing about icky vampires.  But I keep thinking . . . what's the scare, the thrill, the awfulness, the anything, of being seduced against your will by someone who looks like a teenage pin-up?  Like, so?  Sunshine asks Con if, at the end, a vampire's victim wants it.  There's a long pause, and Con finally says:  No. 

            EWWWWWWW.  But that's the point, okay?  I don't do graphic bleagh, but SUNSHINE is still supposed to squick you out a little. 

^ And I have yet to see a Mr Rochester that lives up to the book.