Zodiac, by Romina Russell-- zodiac sci fi!!! with interview!

I am rather fond of fantasy that uses the Zodiac as a framing device for either plot or world-building (there's a book list down at the end of this post), and so I said yes with conviction when offered a review copy of Zodiac, by Romina Russell (Razorbill, YA, Dec. 2014).    I was especially curious about this one because it is the first time I've ever seen the zodiac used within a science fictional context taking place far from earth.

Far off in space each sign of the zodiac rules a planetary system, and the people of each system live according to the qualities of their particular governing sign.   Sixteen-year old Rho is a child of the planet Cancer--a nurturing, caring, ocean planet--and though she's heard stories of the other signs and their attributes, she's only met a handful of people who are from different worlds.   

But then Cancer is attacked.  Its moons are destroyed, and a horribly high-number of its people are killed.   Rho saw the attack coming, but no one took her seriously.....until after the fact.   After the tragedy, Rho is the only person with psychic gifts strong enough to lead her people, and in the most horrible of situations, she must put aside her own feelings to save Cancer, and the other signs as well.

For an old enemy has risen again to attack, a figure out of stories--Ophiuchus, the exiled 13th sign of the zodiac.   And no sign is safe.    But how can Rho, young and inexperienced, possibly convince the other leaders that the 13th sign is real?

It's a briskly moving story, with considerable tension as Ophuchus closes in.   For those that like romantic triangles, there's a rather good one here (involving a very appealing and interesting Libran, my favorite character in the book).  Those who like speculative fiction starring young people thrust abruptly into positions of power and desperately fighting against terrible odds should also enjoy it.

But what interested me most was the whole premise behind this universe, and so when I had the chance to send questions off to Romina Russell, that's what I asked about! Her answers are in blue, as befits House Cancer....

1. Were the qualities of each house of the Zodiac clear to you from the beginning, or did you have to change things to make the story work? And related to that, did you know from the get go that Rho would be from House Cancer?

One of the coolest parts of creating the Zodiac Universe was having a cheat sheet for the world building: astrology. I basically took the traditional horoscopes for each sign and built out worlds populated with people that fit each personality type.

As for making Rho a Cancrian, I knew I wanted to explore a different kind of hero in this universe, a character whose strength was in her heart and not her body. I was interested in taking a girl who wasn’t a warrior and discovering what weapon she would use to fight in a war. I wondered how she would save the world(s)…and whether or not she could.

2. And then as a minor related question-- some of the Houses are more appealingly portrayed than others (I would not want to be an Aries in your world!).    Have any friends and family complained because you made their signs of the Zodiac unappealing?

The complaints I’ve received are that people want to meet more characters from their own Houses! Which will happen—I promise! Aries is the most ancient of all the Houses, so it’s seen more civilizations come and go than the other planets. To me, that world most resembles a dystopian Earth because Arieans use military strength to solve their problems.

I think every House is a little imbalanced in this book because they’ve strayed so far apart, and the whole point is they’re at their best when the Zodiac is united and working together. Arieans would be better off if they embraced a little more of Cancrians’ nurturing natures, just as Cancrians would be better off if they toughened their planet’s protections and were better prepared for unexpected attacks.

3. I see in your bio that you are a Virgo- were you at all conscious of what Virgos were supposed to be like when you were little?  (I've known I was a Capricorn forever, and so have always had a firm belief that I possessed all the good qualities of that sign....and perhaps acted in more Capricorn-ish ways as a result...)

Pretty much the only thing I knew about the Zodiac when I started working on this series was my own sign—we’re supposedly practical, obsessive, fussy, controlling, perfectionists…and yes, I’m beginning to see your point! So fun that you’re a Capricorn—that’s where book two begins… (So you can tell me if you approve of its characterization when you read it!)

4. Which how do you make sense of the problem of having everyone each house share particular characteristics of personality?  Is it nature, or nurture?

Because it's based on the myths and figures found in astrology, the ZODIAC world is something of an exaggerated version of ours, as seen in the clear-cut personality types. But as with our world, Zodiac personalities are a combination of nature and nurture—the only difference being that in Rho's world, it's possible for nature to collide with nurture in such a way that it sends the whole galaxy off kilter!

Thank you Romina!   And thank you, Razorbill, for the review copy.

So yes, do try this one if you are at all interested in spec fic fun with the zodiac!

And as promised up at the top, here are other books that feature the zodiac, with links to my reviews:

Ludo and the Star Horse, by Mary Stewart

The Valley of Song, by Elizabeth Goudge

The 13th Sign, by Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

Which is only three.  I could have sworn there were more.....?

Welcoming Sarah Zettel, author of Bad Luck Girl!

Bad Luck Girl, by Sarah Zettel, the third book in the American Fairy Trilogy, is now out in the world (Random House, YA, May 27, 2014), and is a lovely ending to this series about a girl named Callie growing up in Dust Bowl Kansas, whose father is a fairy.  Not just any fairy, but the prince of the Unseelie Court...caught and held hostage, along with Callie's human mother, by the opposing Seelie Court.

The first two books, Dust Girl and Golden Girl show Callie caught in a world of inhuman and often cruel magic, struggling to figure out how to learn her own magical gifts so she can save her parents, while navigating the world of the United States in the 1930s--not an easy place for a girl who is half-black.  Fortunately, Callie has a true friend, a young traveler named Jack, on her side, and in true fairy tale fashion, the enemies she meets are balanced by helpers...

In this third book of the series, Callie has grown stronger and more confident, and she has saved her parents.   But Callie's confidence is a fragile thing--bad luck seems to follow her... Bad Luck Girl takes Callie and her family, along with Jack, to Chicago, where they must prepare to defeat the Seelie King once and for all.

It is Very Good Reading.   There are personal tensions and character growth nicely placed alongside the larger story arc, and best of all, there are new characters introduced (most notably the Halfers--beings who are half magic, have found/made things) who add beautifully to the magic of this alternate US!   

And so it's a pleasure to welcome Sarah Zettel here to day!  (My questions for Sarah are in italics).

You have had a full and varied career as a writer of speculative fiction for grown ups long before Dust Girl came to be!  You've since gone on to write the next two books about Callie, and you've also written the YA Palace of Spies, with its sequel, Dangerous Deceptions, coming out this November.

What made you decide to write for younger readers? 

One of the things I love most about a writer is the challenge of new projects. I love being able to explore new worlds, new times, new ideas and new characters at all phases of their lives.  As the ideas that became DUST GIRL and the other American Fairy books started to come together, they coalesced around this girl, dealing with loss and fear and discovery.  So there was that.  The decision to write the stories as young adults books was also, of course, influenced by that greatest of American fairy tales, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was a huge part of my own childhood.

Now that you are "a YA author" have you noticed people (in real life, in the book world, in the spec fic world) reacting to you any differently?  Have you gotten any dismissive remarks about writing for kids etc? (nb--I asked this question before the latest kerfluffle about YA happened!)

I never got that.  I came to YA after the J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyers revolutions when a lot more adults were not only introduced to the wider possibilities of "kids" books, but started reading YA for their own entertainment.  I know plenty of authors who did (and still do) face it however.  There is still an unfortunate assumption that anything made for kids is somehow of lesser value, weight or complexity than something made for adults.

And conversely, from the outside looking in, the world of YA seems like a place where writers can find close relationships and community--has that been your experience? 

I have been lucky in that always experienced a tremendous sense of community across the writing world.  I came up in science fiction, I've since written romance, mystery and YA and each stop along the way has been filled with great, welcoming people.  I"ve met my share of jerks as well, people who did not think I belonged in "the club" for whatever reason, but they have always been a small minority.

One of the things that strikes me about Callie is the between-ness of her--half black, half white, and half human, half fairy.  She's also betwixt and between child and young woman, and this is true of the book itself--it's a series I'd give to upper middle grade readers (11 to 12 year olds) as well as YA readers (12 and up).  My impression, again as an outsider, is that this is not an ideal place marketing-wise, and I'm wondering if you got editorial pressure to make Callie a more "fully YA" character, and push her age up past 14....or to make her younger....

The ideas of "between-ness" was something I really wanted to explore, because it seems to me it's one of the essential questions of American culture.  Our culture and our nation has a hundred different origin points.  It is constantly combining and recombining influences from inside and outside, and this history, tension and creativity gives rise to what is best in us and uniquely American.  And yet there is always a side to it searching for the one true American Way or American person and attempting to define us down to that one thing. 

As to the marketing aspects, actually, it was the opposite from what you suggest.  One of the reasons my editor chose the book was because it was different in terms of the main character's age and attitudes.  No angsting around for Callie LeRoux!

I'm also curious about Callie being bi-racial--obviously, this ties beautifully in thematically with the book as a whole....but did her dark skinned father come first, or did that aspect of his identity, and by extension Callie's,  develope as the story grew?

That grew out of the variations I wanted to work with in the Seelie and Unseelie courts. When I started thinking about fairies in America, I settled pretty quickly on the idea that the Seelie Court was going to find its strongest inroads through Hollywood.  After all, this was the 1930s.  Where was more intensely glamorous than Hollywood?  But what about the Unseelie?  Magic, in my stories, was going to be attracted to creativity, to beauty.  The Unseelie Court is supposed to be the opposite side of the Seelie.  What was the flip side of Hollywood?  I was grousing about this problem to my husband, and he looked at me and said.  “You want a court?  Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Lady Day…”

Of course the Unseelie Court was jazz, that incredibly popular music that was at the time also seen as incredibly dangerous, and so clearly originated in America.  But as soon as I knew that, I knew Callie would have to have a background that included an African American parent, because you cannot present jazz as a source of magic and power and ignore its essential roots in African American culture.  This also allowed me to within the course of the books talk about race, and identity and media imagery, and to include figures like Paul Robeson and Count Basie in the story, so it was all to the good. 

Did you have trouble with Callie's parents while writing Bad Luck Girl?  Callie has been on her own, surviving great dangers and learning about her magical heritage, for the first two books, and now in this third book she has her parents back in the picture,wanting to tell her what to do.   It's a source of tension for the three of them, and I was wondering if that tension spilled over into the writing of them!  Callie gets away from them for a good part of the book, but were you ever tempted to gently but firmly move the grown-ups off stage even more than they are?

That was a challenge, because it really changed the dynamic within the book.  In BAD LUCK GIRL, both Callie and Jack have to finally come to terms with their families, both the good and the bad of them.  It wasn't always easy to write, but I felt it was important to address this aspect of both of them becoming full and independent adults.

Your magical North American is not just fairies transported from European mythology--although those fairies are the focus of the book (given Callie's circumstance!),  myths and stories of other peoples that are made real here as well, including those of African Americans, and Native peoples of North America.  Was that something you wanted to put in from the beginning of telling this story, or was it a realization while the book was in process? I was very glad that, although your books don't go far beyond the magic of Europe, at least that magic isn't all there is!

Thanks.  This was a decision I made fairly early on.  Again, when talking about what is unique to America, you have to talk about the different origins points for the people here, and how the myths, legends, religions and cultures of all those people have fed into one another (or been stolen, or borrowed, or simply passed back and forth) to create us.  One example here is the character of Aunt Nancy in BAD LUCK GIRL.  When enslaved peoples were brought to North America, of course, their stories came with them.  As their original languages were changed or lost, the stories changed to fit the new Anglacized languages and different conditions.  So, over time, the trickster figure of the spider "Anansi" transformed into a new figure named "Aunt Nancy." It's Aunt Nancy who shows up in legends from the sea islands of Georgia, and in at least one of the Brer Rabbit stories.  So, it was Aunt Nancy who Callie meets in Chicago.

I didn't have the time, space or background of learning to fully address the legends of the First Nations in Kansas, but I wanted to be sure I acknowledged them as a vital part of the warp and weft of the fantastic in America.

Thank you Sarah!  It was a pleasure having you here today!

Nightingale's Nest, by Nikki Loftin-- with interview, link to giveaway, and excerpt!

Way back in November I went to Kidlitcon in Austen, and had the pleasure of meeting Nikki Loftin.  This was lovely in and of itself, in part because I had enjoyed her first book, The Sinister Sweetness Of Splendid Academy, but as an added bonus she gave me an ARC of her new book, Nightingale's Nest (Razorbill, Feb. 2014). Nightingale's Nest is a reimagining of Hans Christian Anderson's story, "The Nightingale," but though there are clear parallels and echoes enough to please those who enjoy reimaginings for their own sake, this new story stands alone just fine.  

It tells of two hurting children, and the unforgettable summer when their lives intersect.  12 year old "Little John," as he is known, is working side by side with his father for the first time, on a massive landscaping project for the rich old "emperor" Mr. King, owner of a chain of Texas stores.  Money for John's family is tight as all get out, but deeper than that worry is the grief they are living with--John's little sister falling from a tree, and his mother has been driven almost mad with sorrow.

At the edge of the emperor's property, he meets Gayle, perched high in a tree--a foster child with sadness of her own.   She has lost her parents, but can't stop hoping they will find her again.  Just as they told her too, she has made a nest for herself, up in the tree with her small treasures, and she waits for them to hear her singing and come find her again.

And the magic of Gayle's singing, and just her own sweet self, start to bring some measure of healing to John and his father.  But Mr. King has heard Gayle's song too, and wants it for his collection of recordings.  And he will pay John for it, money that John needs to save his family, and John must decide whether or not to betray Gayle's trust....and the sadness of it all gets ratcheted up and up.

I had to put it down here and there, and go off and do other things, and I wondered if it was maybe too sad for the target audience of 10-12 year olds.  But I think it is a sadness that will be harder for grown-ups than for kids to read about--the child reader might well feel sorry, and be truly moved, but the grown-up reader (judging by my own personal reaction) will want to fix things, which of course is impossible.  That being said, it might be too much for younger children who are either strongly empathetic and/or vulnerable themselves, and though the ending resolves things in a hopeful way, it might not offer quite enough security and comfort to off-set the sadness (but again, this might be just my personal reaction!).

But in any event, it is a lovely book, moving and powerful.  Fans of fairy tale re-imaginings should definitely seek it out, and so should fans of magic mixing with the real world, and so also should those who love books that hit the heart full-on (but not so much those who want light fluffy escapist fun!).  And though the cover shows a girl, and though girls will like this book just fine, I hope it finds its way to boys too--it does, after all, have a boy as the central character...

And now, the interview!

Hi Nikki!  So Nightingale's Nest started out as a picture book, called The Treasure Nest.  What made it grow into a full-fledged novel? Did you keep coming back to it over the years, or was there a sudden surge? And how did the writing of The Sinister Sweetness Of Splendid Academy fit into it?

It took years, long painful ones! I think maybe every author has a story or two they must tell no matter what, and this was one of those for me. I could not stop thinking about that picture book, even after agents, editors, and critique partners had all gently let me know it wasn’t going to fly. I revised it as a picture book again and again. Then I tried writing it as a novel, but without any fairy tale connection. That didn’t work either.

All the while, I was doing school and library visits, talking about my debut novel, The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, and my favorite fairy tales. Hansel and Gretel was at the top of the list, but The Nightingale was a close second. When I was messing around with the failed novel draft one day, I wondered if I could do something like I’d done with Sinister Sweetness, reworking a fairy tale in contemporary America. The Nightingale seemed a natural fit. I began to weave Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale loosely in with my initial story of a girl who climbed a tree and built a nest, and a boy who was afraid to climb up to join her… and once I realized it was the boy’s story to tell, it worked! I wrote the draft of Nightingale’s Nest in less than three months, and that draft is remarkable similar to the one that will be published.

Is The Nightingale a story that had particular meaning for you, as a child or an adult?

I was raised in a family of musicians. Our house was filled with instrumental and vocal music, and like reading, I don’t remember a day when I didn’t sing or play. (I played violin, cello, ukulele, and piano, all with varying degrees of skill.) So the idea in The Nightingale that the most beautiful thing in the whole of China was a song? I liked that as a child.

As an adult, I had a career for a decade or so as a Director of Family Ministries in the Presbyterian Church. One of my jobs every Sunday was to interpret the week’s scripture for the children, and present it in the children’s sermon. The act of thinking deeply about concepts like grace, forgiveness, and redemption, and distilling them for kids, left its mark on my brain. As an author, I found myself drawn to the selfless act of the nightingale in Andersen’s story, and in the way I saw grace at work there. I wanted to explore it further, and the form of a novel gave me the space to do that.

And did you ever have your own treasure nest? 

I still do, sort of! The desk I write at has these little shelves where I keep things that are significant to me: a picture of my grandma when she was young, my favorite childhood toys (two Weebles and a Raggedy Ann doll), a rock from a beach in Normandy, and love notes from my sons, among other things. I’ve always collected small items that meant something to me, little talismans against forgetting what really matters.

Was it hard writing a book in which the main characters were hurting so badly? (I imagine that you must have had to hug your loved ones more than usual....)

Yes, it was ridiculously hard, emotionally. I cried buckets of tears writing it, many of them sitting at various lunch tables in Austin with my mom! (She lives close by, and I figured she was about the only person in the world who would listen to me blubber on about how horrible Little John’s life had been. I have the best mom in the world - she listened without complaint for all three of those months!)

and finally---what's next? 

Wish Girl! I just turned in my editorial revision for my third book, another middle grade with Razorbill. This one is also magical realism, with a bit more magic and humor, and less tragedy (although it has some of that, too). It’s about a boy who runs away to a valley to be away from people – and bumps into a girl who seems to think her wishes come true, and who may need the boy to save her life if they don’t.

I will look forward to it--congratulations!  Thank you so much for stopping by, Nikki!


Here's the scene from Nightingale's Nest when John first meets Gayle:

She just started humming under her breath, the same tune she’d been singing, but this time, it was softer. It still brought tears to my eyes.

At least I thought that’s what was happening. It must have been, because as I watched her, and listened to the music, the singing that got louder and louder, clearer and higher and purer, she got… fuzzy around the edges. Her outline was against the sun, I thought, that’s why she seemed to blur. It was awful hot; maybe it was just the flickering mirage of heat lines.

I wiped my eyes again, and squinted up at her. The more she sang, the more she seemed to shimmer against the sky, her edges feathering into the background blue.

Her voice was loud now, so loud I couldn’t have stopped the sound even by plugging my ears. Through the melody, though, I heard something squeal and slam behind me, on the other side of the fence.  A door.

Someone else was listening.

I turned and saw the Emperor, a hundred yards back, standing outside his back door, a deep purple, velvety robe flapping around his bony legs. He was staring at the tree, mouth wide open, watching the girl. The sunlight glinted on his wrinkled, wet cheeks. I wondered, for a moment, at the sight of a grown man crying. But her voice… it was the kind that could bring tears to anyone, I figured.

Cra-ack! I knew the sound of a branch cracking. I whirled back around.
That’s when I realized the girl had to be touched. She hadn’t started to come down at all—she’d started to climb out on the branch, toward me. She was perching, hopping like a wren, further and further out on one of the limbs that wouldn’t hold her.

I knew what was going to happen next. She was going to go out too far on the branch, and it would snap under her. She would fall, screaming, in a shower of small branches, leaves, and bark.

It was the nightmare I had every night.

I wouldn’t be there to catch her. I never made it to the base of the tree in time, my legs too small, too short, my hands reaching out at the ends of arms too weak to hold her anyway.

And I would have to watch her snap like a bough herself, on the ground, the blood as red as a cardinal’s wing.

It was the nightmare I’d lived once before. 

And the reason I had devoted my life to cutting down every tree in the world.

Every last murderous tree.

The girl screamed as she fell, and I raced to catch her, knowing I would be too late.

You can enter to win a copy of Nightingale's Nest, and a paperback of Sinister Sweetness at this blog tour giveaway.


Final note--uttermost kudos to Razorbill for the beautiful cover--there's nothing I noticed in the text that signifies Gayle's ethnicity, so it's a lovely thing they chose to show her as a shining, lovely, black girl.  More covers like this and no-one will bat an eyelash because  Rue in the Hunger Games is black (I hope).

So because I think it would be a good thing just for that reason (and not just because it's a good book) if lots of people bought Nightingale's Nest, here are all the on-line places you can get it:

Amazon

B&N

Books-a-Million

Indiebound

Google Play

Itunes

Texting the Underworld, by Ellen Booraem--review, interview, and giveaway!

Texting the Underworld, by Ellen Booraem (Dial, Middle Grade, Aug. 15, 2013), deserves the star it got from Kirkus--this is a smart, funny, fantasy, set primarily in the real world, but with a most diverting excursion to the Underworld!  It's the story of what happens when a (relatively) young and inexperienced Banshee, Ashling (who once was an Irish girl from the Dark Ages), shows up at the Boston bedroom of a somewhat timorous 12 year old Conor.   The arrival of a Banshee means that someone is going to die...a frightening thing for anyone, but for Conor, to whom the world already seems dangerous and difficult, it's especially distressing!  And to complicate matters further, Ashling is in no hurry to scream and leave; no, she wants to stick around in 21st century Boston, as a sort of supernatural exchange student, quite visible, quite audible, and quite difficult to explain to friends and family and the school principal.

Ashling doesn't particularly want to be a harbinger of death, and Conor most emphatically doesn't want anyone in his family to die, so the two of them (with help from Conor's grandfather and his little sister) hatch a plan.  They'll visit the Underworld from whence Ashling was sent, and try to sort things out there....But the Underworld is a twisty and dangerous place, more so even than middle school, and Conor, deeply reluctant even in real life to visit places that aren't mapped,  has to find the bravery and determination to face the supernatural challenge of  lifetime.

The story zips along zippingly, the premise and its various ramifications are fascinating and fun (and even chuckle out loud funny at times), and there's lots of engrossing detail in both the characterization and mythological mayhem!  Added to this is a thought-provoking subtext about living  life in the face of death that gave it depth, and the author doesn't shy from delivering an appropriatly powerful emotional punch at the end.  In short, I liked it lots, would recommend it to both kids and MG SFF reading grownups, and was very happy to have the chance to ask Ellen questions about it!

The Interview (with me in bold)

I adore the title. Was it there from the beginning as part of your whole conception of the story, or did it come to you at some later point in a flash of inspiration?

I didn’t realize how big a role texting would play until I was well into the story, so the title was more of a last-minute endeavor. And I can’t take credit for it, except that I knew I wanted to combine the mundane with the otherworldly. (At one point I wanted to call it Death & Jelly Beans.) I emailed ideas back and forth with my editor, Kathy Dawson—we had lists and lists and LISTS of possible word combinations—and she’s the one who came up with the winning combination. 

Conor is a scaredy cat, and somewhat neurotic—not your typical hero (which, of course, is the point—this lets him have a character arc). I found that he teetered just on the brink of being too unheroic at the beginning of the book, and felt you walked a fine line between making him realistically an anti-hero and making him so much so that he becomes unsympathetic. How did you approach this conundrum? Was this something that caused difficulties in the writing of the book? 

It’s always a problem making sure your characters are realistically flawed and yet likeable. Fortunately, fearfulness is a more likeable trait than obnoxiousness, which was the problem I had to overcome with Conor’s predecessor,  Mellie in SMALL PERSONS WITH WINGS. Being afraid of things is such a familiar feeling to all of us that we usually can empathize with it. Also, most of Conor’s fears are also mine, so I definitely was on his side when I was writing him!

There are so many zestily entertaining aspects of the book. I especially loved Nergal (one of the denizens of the Underworld--a Babylonian god of death). Was there any part or character who gave you special enjoyment?

I’m fond of Nergal, too, and I was so glad when he showed up—he’s a nice, sensible guy, compared to most of the others who help run the Underworld. I like that he’s eager for knowledge and not content with the status quo the way so many in the Underworld are. 

I came up with him after I realized that my afterlife could not be just Celtic—I mean, the Irish aren’t the only ones who die, are they? So I started looking into death deities from other cultures, and there was Nergal, the Babylonian Lord of the Dead. He’s half lion, and for some reason in my mind that meant dignity and kindness.

I enjoyed writing the Underworld scenes in general. Another favorite character was the Cailleach, the unpleasant, black-robed portal guard, who is based on a Scottish/Irish goddess of winter but actually turned out as a weird combination of dementor, Ghost of Christmas Future, and every ill-tempered old lady I’ve ever met.

How did you come to write middle grade, as opposed to YA or adult, books? I'm wondering, for instance, if you assayed attempts at those older type books and found they just didn't work for you, or if you always knew you wanted to write MG. 

In my twenties I concentrated on short stories for adults (none of which ever got published, thank heavens). I started writing for younger readers because of characters my partner, Rob Shillady, a painter, had developed on a whim in art school. He put Medford (his alter-ego) and his sidekick the Goatman in paintings he did for friends, and I decided in my mid-30s to write a picture book based on them. It stopped being a picture book almost immediately, and over the next 20 years years (15 of them spent in a desk drawer) it finally turned into THE UNNAMEABLES.

I don’t have a specific age group in mind when I start books—they turn into middle grade all by themselves. The voice and the themes that resonate most with me apparently lend themselves to that “tween” age, when we’re first struggling with the issues of who we are and where we fit in the world.

I am sitting here trying to think of a comparable book to T. the U.--one that has a contemporary setting, and an ordinary hero (ie, not the son of a god), and one in which the stakes are personal, or at least familial, but which has fully flowering mythological/fantasy mayhem. My mind is blank. Can you think of any?

The ones that first come to mind are some books by Diana Wynne Jones, whose work I just love. Many of her heroes are of the Harry Potter variety—normal kids who discover they have supernatural powers—but she also has some protagonists who are just regular kids in a fix of some kind. EIGHT DAYS OF LUKE’s David Allard, for example, is dealing with unpleasant relatives as well as a bunch of Norse gods, and the children in THE OGRE DOWNSTAIRS are contending with a new stepfather and the effects of a magical chemistry set.

But you’re right—it’s far more common that the hero in a “domestic” fantasy like mine turns out to be supernatural in some way.

Easy one next--what were your favorite books as a child? Were you any that you feel have exerted an particular influence over your writing?

To my constant surprise and chagrin, no one’s ever heard of the formative book of my childhood. It’s THE DAUGHTERS OF THE STARS, published in 1939 in England by an American author, Mary Crary. It ran afoul of World War II, and was rushed to publication before the country ran out of paper and ink. As a result, it only has two of a planned set of Edmund Dulac illustrations, which are utterly gorgeous, of course. My copy was a ninth birthday present from an elderly lady in my neighborhood (definitely not one of the models for the Cailleach).

The story is about the bureaucracy that runs the natural world, meaning the stars, the wind, the rain, the oceans, and so forth. Astrella, the younger Daughter of the Stars, is named Luminary of Two Continents and has to transfer from one post to the other for a time. She takes her young daughter, Perdita, on a hazardous journey across the heavens. In the second half of the book, Perdita has adventures of her own.

In a foreword, the author complains that she’s sick of reading stories in which the mother is dead, so she created one in which the mother is the only parent in evidence. The heavenly bureaucracy, moreover, is pretty much run by women, usually in their own right but also as the power behind the throne. Astrella and Perdita are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves with no knight in shining armor coming to their rescue. 

I loved all that, and as well as Crary’s sense of humor.  Her book has been important to me both personally and professionally. I realized after the fact that my concept of a bunch of bureaucrats running the Underworld probably owed something to THE DAUGHTERS OF THE STARS.

 (Me:  I shall add it to my Christmas list!  It sounds great, and I love Dulac).

And finally, another easy one---what are you working on now?

I have two middle grade books and one for younger kids in various stages of development—and the one farthest along might never see the light of day so I probably shouldn’t talk about it.  Suffice it to say that I’m always working on something!

Thanks for the interview, Charlotte—this was fun!

 Thank you, Ellen, for writing both the book and your answers to my questions! 

The Giveaway

Penguin is offering two copies of Texting the Underworld to two winners (US only); please leave a comment to be entered!  Ends next Wednesday (August 14) at midnight.

And if you want even more, Ellen has shared the scene in which Conor and Ashling meet for the first time here at Scene 13ers!

The next stop on Ellen’s blog tour for TEXTING THE UNDERWORLD is YA Books Central. See you there!

 

Interview with Sage Blackwood, author of Jinx

I am thrilled as all get out today to present Sage Blackwood, author of the excellent middle grade fantasy, Jinx (my review).  Jinx is the only book I have re-read this year, and I can easily imagine happily reading it a third time.  Since re-reading is the highest level of personal favor I can give a book, this is saying a lot.

So when Sage Blackwood asked if I might be interested in hosting her for her first interview, I said yes, with quick conviction!  My questions are in bold.

The most important question first:  Will there be a next book, and can you tell us anything about it?  I want to know what happens next!  I am hoping for more about Sophie and her world...  

Yes! A sequel, Jinx’s Magic, is due out from HarperCollins in January, 2014, and yes, there will be more of Sophie and her world. Jinx will go to Samara and, of course, get into all kinds of trouble. And Sophie… well, you’ll see. (She said annoyingly.) 

And speaking of Sophie, one of things I loved about Jinx was the sense that there is lots of backstory to her, and to others in the book, that is very nicely implied without being spelled out.   Because the characters give such a full feeling of lives lived outside the pages of this particular book,  I'm wondering which people from Jinx actually became known to you first, and in what imagined context(s) did they first appear? 

Oh, great question! The characters wandered into my head at different times, over the course of several years, before finally hooking up with each other. The first character was the Urwald… the fairy tale forest which I think is inside each of us. I wanted to evoke it, hopefully in a way that begins on the page but ends in the reader’s imagination. Then came Elfwyn… a girl in a red hood who was smarter than history has given her credit for being. Elfwyn would not have any difficulty distinguishing her grandmother from a wolf.

Next was Simon Magus, a legendary figure about whom we know very little… and from what we know, it’s not really clear if he’s good or evil. Simon Magus had a wife named Sophie. Or possibly Helen. But Sophie seemed like a better name for the character. I forgot that it was also the name of the protagonist of Howl’s Moving Castle.

I was on my front porch drawing pictures of these characters when another one showed up—Jinx. There’s a rather enigmatic comment in the Simon Magus legend: that he got his power from a boy who had died a violent death. (The boy in the legend doesn’t actually seem to be dead, though, violent death notwithstanding.) So I planned for the first scene to be Simon strangling Jinx. When I actually sat down to write the scene, though, Simon refused to do that. So I had to figure out what really happened, as it were.

So I doodled some more, and eventually drew a picture of a boy, a troll and a wizard in a forest. And there the story begins.

Jinx is a book with tons of appeal for those of us adults who still sincerely love reading (good) fantasy for kids.  Are you yourself one of those?  When you were writing Jinx, did you consciously recall books you loved when you were the target audience?  Or to put it another way, what books helped shaped your writerly experience?  And are there any favorite books of yours that you could recommend to the reader (young or not so young) who enjoyed Jinx?
 

Oh yes, I’m definitely one of those!

My favorite author is Diana Wynne Jones. My memory insists I have loved her since childhood, when I came across a copy of The Magicians of Caprona at the village library. Unfortunately the publication date doesn’t back me up on that. Apparently I was 15 when the book came out. Anyway I sat down on the little bench in the children’s section, opened the book, and was hooked.

You know what’s different about Ms. Jones? It’s that her characters live in a real world. They’re not too noble to be irritated by life’s little annoyances. They’re not too concerned with truth and justice to care who gets the last brownie. And that makes her heroes more heroic, not less.

Books I’d recommend: All of DWJ, but especially Drowned Ammet (sheer brilliance), Cart & Cwidder (especially to writers), The Homeward Bounders (more brilliance), The Lives of Christopher Chant, The Magicians of Caprona… I feel as if I’m forgetting something important, so everyone please insert your favorite DWJ book here.

I highly recommend Terry Pratchett too, but to your blog readers, that’s probably like saying I highly recommend breathing. Of his children’s books, The Amazing Maurice is my favorite.

I know that my personal representative of the target audience (in this case, a 9 year old fantasy loving boy) enjoyed the adventure/danger/questy part of the story most, whereas I (and I bet more of the other grown-ups who've read Jinx), enjoyed the more personality-driven first half (although I could be wrong!).   Which part of the book was more fun/more challenging to write? 

I’m so glad to hear he enjoyed the book. I really enjoyed writing the first half, with its focus on character and everyday life. I think a lot of people like reading about everyday life, which is why Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana books are such a hit.

It was a lot of fun creating the Urwald, and creating Simon’s house, both of which are somewhat archetypal so it was largely a matter of writing my way into familiar places. And of course it was fun getting to know the characters. Then of course the story developed out of who the characters are.

My impression so far is that children like the idea that Jinx can do magic. They would like to do a bit themselves. They like the action, the monsters, the scary stuff at Bonesocket, and they think it would be pretty cool to live in a wizard’s house.

And just dragging Sophie back into it, I don't think I'm alone in feeling that if you ever felt like writing Sophie and Simon stand-alone stories they would be welcomed....

Simon’s and Sophie’s backstory! I’d love to write that. Not sure if I’ll ever get the chance. It’s a bit darker than Jinx’s, so it might not make good middle grade material. 

If there are any questions that I didn't ask, that you have answers to all ready to go, do feel free to ask them of yourself!

Oh, thank you! I do have one of those, and no one is ever going to ask it. So here goes:

Some have called Jinx’s ability to learn foreign languages a form of magic. But isn’t it an application of second language acquisition theory, meaning that pretty much anyone could do what Jinx does, and isn’t this a rather loaded question?

Yes!

Thank you so much, Sage, for the fascinating answers to my questions!  I'm so glad there isn't going to be a long wait for the next instalment.

The winner of the giveaway was alibrarymama.