CHALICE review
Any readers of this blog who haven’t looked it up for themselves by now, muttering about the total hopelessness of some writers of books that receive starred reviews in Publishers’ Weekly, the (ahem) starred review in PW of CHALICE is here:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6579438.html#Fiction
This should take you to the top of the ‘Fiction’ section of children’s books* where CHALICE is the lead title, but as I mistrustfully try it on more than one computer** I am finding that it seems to open fine on a big screen but tends to open halfway through the review on a small screen, so the title that catches your eye is the one following, SOVAY. (Which looks good too, just by the way, and also got a star. I’ve always loved the song.) So you want to scroll up a little. Unless it’s doing something else entirely on your screen, in which case you’re on your own.
If you want something nice and uncontroversial, this takes you to the top of the ‘Children’s’ section, and you have to scroll down through the little kids’ books to ‘fiction’.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6579438.html
I guess I didn’t make a mess of turning it into a novel after all. Or not in one reviewer’s eyes anyway. One thing that interests me, they choose BEAUTY and HERO to compare it favourably to.*** They must like short: those are my two shortest novels. And this interests me because I thought everybody is supposed to like long† this era. HARRY POTTER AND THE ENDLESS STORY MACHINE. JONATHAN STRANGE, MR NORRELL AND NINETY MILLION PAGES. I am comforted that at least you aren’t automatically penalised for short.†† There is a place for short, like in your knapsack, so it doesn’t make a hole in your sore shoulder.
And thanks to all of you who sent me these links. It is extremely ridiculous that (apparently) neither my agent nor either of my editors knew that you can just look PW reviews up on the web . . . or, as one of the friends who sent me the links by email said, Google is your friend. Um. I thought I even knew that Google was my friend. But in moments of stress I still revert. Very, very slightly in my defense, PW didn’t always hang its reviews on the web.†††. And I merely haven’t checked in . . . um . . . years. Oops. But I guess a lot of other professional publishing people haven’t either.
Furthermore . . . I did sleep last night, despite some really remarkable nettle burns. And the hellhounds ate their dinner tonight . . . not only ate it but ate it without needing to be driven out of their bed and then chased around with it first. And I rang Grandsire, if not exactly to the tower born, still, I rang the sucker as opposed to pulling frantically on my rope and waiting to be yelled at instructively. Last week I found myself on the five for Grandsire, and I’m used to ringing the three or the four or maybe the two. Not the five. But if you really know a method you can ring it on any bell. So I don’t really know Grandsire, so what else is new. It was still pretty discouraging that I could not seem to see what I was doing. This week when Wild Robert called for Grandsire again I made a dash for the five, and this week the five and I were friends.‡ I was even one of the people holding the line while others went astray, which is always great for morale. Next week–or this Friday at my home tower–it’ll be open season again with me and Grandsire however. Some day I’ll just ring it. It’ll be one of the methods that when I go to a strange tower and the ringing master asks me what I ring, I can say nonchalantly, oh, plain bob, Stedman, Grandsire. Hold that thought.
* * *
* Sigh. It’s not a children’s book. Never mind.
** And Computer Man was here for several hours today and all my computers are having competitive nervous breakdowns as a result. There’s a lot of admonishing ding!-ing going on while they querulously insist that they don’ wanna do what he has instructed them to do. I may be on the phone to Computer Man Central really early tomorrow.
*** A brief pause here while I do a little head-clutching about being shackled to early successes for the rest of one’s life. What your or anyone’s favourite book is is strictly up to you and that’s absolutely fine. Different things appeal to different people and different things appeal to different people at different times. Telling an author that thus and such is their best book, however, is a value judgement, and problematic. Telling an author that her first book is her best book is . . . at best unkind. Getting old is sucky enough.^ Being told repeatedly that it’s all been downhill since you were 25 is grisly. I don’t think BEAUTY is my best book, fortunately, but I wasted a lot of time over a lot of years worrying that it might be.
^ Mind you I wouldn’t be young again even if the devil showed up with a great offer plus a letter of recommendation from Faust. Getting old is sucky, but it beats being young. The thing about young, however, is that you have more time left to figure stuff out, and you still believe you’re going to figure it out faster than, forty years later, you have.
† I was once fretting over some novel looking like it was going to turn out short.^ Merrilee said, short is good. Same money, less work. Very good point. Unfortunately PEGASUS looks like running long.
^I think this was DRAGONHAVEN, which, as many of you know, did not end up short.
†† Hey! This is just a dumb short story! Where’s my other eight hundred pages! I want my money back!
††† Since there was a web, I mean.
‡ In a doubles method like Grandsire, with five working bells and the sixth bell always ringing last, the five should be a good bell to ring, because every bell you have to worry about is to your right and you don’t have to keep looking frantically back and forth. When you’re on the four, say, you tend to forget about the five, which is dangerous, since you’re going to be ringing over it just as often as over the others, and on the three you could get dizzy whipping your eyes back and forth.
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Ooo! Great review! (The first link worked fine for me, btw.)
*confetti*
I’m really looking forward to this one. I’ve been hearing about it since, well, you started blogging, and it sounds great. A book about honey! I mean, other stuff… ;)
So today was better than yesterday? Sounds like it. *sends sorbet and chocolate anyway*
Sorbet and chocolate ALWAYS welcome! :)
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I should like to say I enjoyed both books (Beauty and Hero and the Crown) immensely. I will further go on to say that I have thoroughly and completely enjoyed everything you have written which I’ve managed to get my greedy little hands on . . . er, read. Your revisit to Beauty and the Beast with Rose Daughter was wonderful and incredibly imaginative. I am greatly looking forward to Chalice and any other read you graciously share with us. Thank you for all the pleasure and enjoyment that can be revisited time and time again without ever losing a single drop of that first delightful moment of reading a new McKinley.
Thank you! :)
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Such good news, great review, dogs eating, and sleep!!!!
Isn’t there a homeopathic remedy / source of relief for nettle stings?
Years ago at Kipling’s estate ( Bateman’s) I was clearing a pasture of nettles and wiped my leather gloves across my sweating face. I looked sunburned for days, first red and blistered and then peeling and it hurt like anything.
Now I seem to be hypersensitive and am faced with a nettle invasion from my next door neighbor’s garden. I usually strike back with two pairs of gloves and the tools of destruction, but sometimes I trip or the breeze blows the nettles onto unprotected skin.
I try to unearth all the little bits of root, probably a loosing proposition, and said neighbor keeps tilling them with his tiller “the Hun” (which just makes more of them). My naturopath doctor has suggested making nettle soup, but I thought it was rather nasty.
Anyway, well done and I love the quotation about the blues.
There are quite a few good homeopathic things to try for nettle rash–if you are continuingly/permanently sensitive it would be worth your while pursuing this.
Mysteriously my burns had subsided enough that I didn’t bother to try to find the right remedy–finding the RIGHT remedy being the tricky bit–as my hay fever subsides over the years (at least partly as a result of ‘constitutional’ homeopathic prescribing where it’s trying to deal with ALL of you) I react less violently to nettles too.
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I remember reading or being told quite a long time ago that dock was/is used to counter stinging nettles. I have no idea if this is true; has anyone else heard this?
Yep. See above. Life saver. But in my experience it makes bearable, it doesn’t make it go away.
I always heard vinegar solution was good for nettles… or maybe that’s jellyfish stings. (As I’ve never had vinegar available when I stumbled into a nettle patch, I’ve never put it to the test.)
Hmm. Didn’t know that one.
‘Nettle in, dock out.
Dock rub nettle out!’
is an old rhyme.
Often, dock and nettles grow close to one another. Rubbing the nettle rash with dock leaves can help. The remedy is right by the culprit! :)
Dock, yes. The only reason I haven’t DIED is because of dock. (It’s a bear to get out of the garden though. Nettles at least pull up pretty readily. Docks have TAP ROOTS.) But I find they only take the edge off, they don’t make it go away . . . although this also varies with how young and juicy they are. At the moment young and juicy doesn’t seem to be available.
Telling an author that thus and such is their best book, however, is a value judgement, and problematic. Telling an author that her first book is her best book is . . . at best unkind.
They’re ALL wonderful and ALL my favorites (albeit in different ways). Even Beauty. Though I am perhaps just a tiny bit partial to the ones with more horses. Fewer and fewer books have good horsey bits in them these days.
Thank you! :)
Well, there’s a horse in PEGASUS. . . .
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Yay for sleep and calmer hellhound digestions!
Re the review….. >Ages 12–up.
Phew! I’m glad I can fit into *that* category!! :p
And I would have read it at 11 anyway. ;)
Short is also good for when you want to read a book but you don’t want to be reading for 3 days straight. Because you have other things to do in life.
Sure–you’d probably have read it at nine. So would I. I read LOTR for the first time around nine. It’s the *pigeonholing* that I object to. Oh, if it’s for 12 up IT’S NOT FOR ADULTS. Rant, rant rant.
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You know, that’s interesting. Because BLUE SWORD comes up as fantasy on its listing on Fictionwise, but DRAGONHAVEN come’s up as children’s fiction. And HERO was under the children’s section in Borders the other day. SUNSHINE, alas, is nowhere to be seen.
I wonder if it’s the fact that it’s a sword and adventure thing? Fairy tales are for children but fighting is for grown-ups?
Sigh. No clue. (Haven’t heard back yet about electronic. Maybe I should prod.)
Telling an author that her first book is her best book is . . . at best unkind.
I always felt bad for Harper Lee. Once you write a To Kill a Mockingbird, you know that everything else you do is going to be measured by it (and probably found wanting) for the Rest of your Life…
Yes. Thank the gods BEAUTY did NOT win the Newbery which a lot of people kept telling me it should have. HERO was **quite** soon enough.
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interestingly, I seem to recall Joseph Heller responding when brought to task for not writing anything as fabulously brilliant as his debut novel Catch-22 with “yes, but I wrote Catch-22″.
I think that’s in the top 3 comebacks of all time.
Woo and Hoo! Go Robin!
Chalice is listed for preorder on Amazon – should I preorder to get your numbers up, or get it at my local Borders on the day? Which benefits you more? I’m going to buy it anyway and as soon as possible, so you tell me.
I don’t think Beauty is your best book either. It’s one of the best fantasy novels ever, I love it to bits, but I still like Spindle’s End and Sunshine better.
Which reminds me that at least two people have read Sunshine on my recommendation and loved it; one of them said it made her want to bake something, and she’s no cook.
Further huzzahs on the sleep, and the hellhounds’ eating, and the ringing of Grandsire.
I must away, it’s almost time to put food on my family.
Chalice is listed for preorder on Amazon – should I preorder to get your numbers up, or get it at my local Borders on the day? Which benefits you more? I’m going to buy it anyway and as soon as possible, so you tell me.
*********** I have no idea. Possibly local, to support local?
I don’t think Beauty is your best book either. It’s one of the best fantasy novels ever, I love it to bits, but I still like Spindle’s End and Sunshine better.
************** (Um, well, so do I. :))
it’s almost time to put food on my family.
************* LOL! Yes!
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There’s plenty of time to order the book. I’ll wait a bit and get it at Borders, then, assuming they’re still in business. I put it on my Amazon wishlist, just so I won’t forget.
Unless the daughters want to do another Amazon order around then – there was a grand ordering earlier this week. Younger Daughter ordered two manga and an anime soundtrack CD, Elder Daughter ordered two… Actually, I’m not sure, but I think they’re scientific philosophy or philosophical science or something. She’ll tell me about them after she’s read them, I’m sure. And I ordered the 60th anniversary edition of Goodnight Moon, because my copy is old and worn out, not to mention being in a box someplace, and I want to compare it page by page to Goodnight Bush.
Have you encountered Goodnight Bush? It’s a horrifying hoot of a book.
I think Rose Daughter is a fine version of B&tB also; different approaches, both good. All your books are most excellent, but I love some of them more.
Have you encountered Goodnight Bush? It’s a horrifying hoot of a book.
***** Oh dear . . . no . . .
As it’s my birthday coming up, my beloved-through-everything friend absolutely forbade me to order CHALICE for myself. I asked her to please preorder it through the (small, independent) bookstore where I used to work. Thus benefiting two wonderful things!
And, about not Googling first – I’m a computer programmer, and my first instinct for finding the PW review was to call the (small, independent) bookstore where I used to work and have them read it to me over the phone. Only to discover they’ve stopped their PW subscription. Silly me.
OH, I’m sorry! I like your idea better!
That’s a lovely review (even if they do pigeonhole you as YA again)
*sends Robin a plate of congratulatory white chocolate and apricot brownies*
OOoooh! [eating madly]
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*grin*
White Choc and Apricot Brownies
2oz white choc (1)
2 eggs
3oz flour
2&1/2oz butter/margarine
8oz sugar
1/2 level tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
4oz dried apricots (chopped)
Heat oven to 350F/Gas Mark 4/ 180C.
Grease and flour an 8inch square cake tin
Melt choc and butter together
Whisk eggs and sugar together until light
Add the choc mixture
Sift in flour, baking powder and salt (2)and stir in
Add the apricots
Pour into cake tin and bake for around 30 mins (3)
(1) This is one case where I’d advise against using Green and Blacks – The only time I’ve ever had a disaster with this recipe (and this is my standard brownie recipe with white choc substituted for dark and apricots substituted for raisins) was earlier this year when I used C&B white choc, and it came out as a complete flat failure which I had to throw away…
(2) or just throw in without sifting, this works too ;-)
(3) my oven is fan assisted and they generally cook in about 20 mins
White chocolate is tricky. It may just ahve been in a bad mood that day.
. . . Thank you! :)
**White chocolate is tricky. It may just ahve been in a bad mood that day.
. . . Thank you! :)**
Yes, white choc can be a tad temperamental, I seem to remember one incident when I set it on fire melting it….
Yes. Black choc has that rep which it doesn’t deserve. White choc DOES.
Great review! YAAYY!!
Who invented YA as a section anyway? Looking for many authors (you, Diana Wynne Jones) I find myself going in circles around Borders, Waterstones, etc with increasing frustration as confusion reigns over YA, child, adult… Still noticing Deerskin in child/YA sections, but vampires are obviously age-related (?!) since I’ve never found Sunshine there.
And congratulations on Grandsire – after Stedman and Grandsire, what challenge comes next on the bell ringing scale of effort?
Stedman and Grandsire BETTER.
If you find DEERSKIN in kids OR YA, take it OUT.
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Weirdly, Deerskin was the very first of your books I read–I would have been all of eleven or twelve at the time.
Oddly, I didn’t retain much of it. I mean, I remember thinking it was a really good book and I wanted to find more by you (and Oh! I found lots), but I also never went back and read that particular one again. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to or that I didn’t reread your books on a rather constant basis, I just somehow never picked it up again (which is especially odd, since I went to all the trouble of BUYING it in later years).
Then about a year ago, I read it again. Marvelous, marvelous book, but golly! I should NOT have been reading it at that age. And I was fairly precocious so I know I realized what had happened in the story. Yet when I was, say, 20, I would not have been able to tell you what Deerskin was about if I tried, except, “Really good book!” *That* I was sure about.
YOu have an extremely competent superego, or something. :) But, as I keep repeating, it was PUBLISHED AS AN ADULT BOOK.
I found Deerskin in YA, at about the age when I was reading YA… well, it was the end of high school. For some reason it was in that section in my bookstore as well. Reading fantasy can be a bit of a caveat emptor. I also read Guy Kay’s Finavar Tapestry when I was in grade 8. *That* was way too early.
(My daughter is going to have her reading thoroughly pre-tested before I let her at it)
It was published as an adult book. They could bother to check.
I got hold of Fionavar Tapestry at 16, which was still too early. Still loved it, tho. DEERSKIN at 23, also still too early and strangely right at a time in my life when I most would have wanted to avoid DEERSKIN’S subject matter. I guess the universe had other ideas….Good thing, it did me a world of good.
Congrats on a fabulous review!
I used to have a favorite but now they are all my favorites depending on the mood I’m in.
I am SOOOOO looking forward to Chalice… I feel like my toddler, who prances in place when she wants something badly…. she does this with books, actually, so it’s kind of an appropriate analogy. When she wants me to read to her, she marches over to the rocker with her book in hand and does a little stomping dance of impatience.
:)
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Hooray! I look forward to making our local indie bookseller order it for me …. or maybe it’s a good excuse to travel 65 miles with the kids to visit Dark Carnival in Berkeley … hmmm … decisions, decisions! How timely too — I am celebrating a garden full of bees this summer. They love the fruit trees and lavender.
I loathe pigeonholing too — shows a distinct lack of imagination ;).
I was planning to get Chalice as soon as it’s published anyway, since I’ve been doing that with your books ever since Beauty (I told you I’m that old, didn’t I?). I just purchased new copies of Door in the Hedge, Rose Daughter, and Sunshine (which I already own, but the older copies are boxed up). My new copy of Spindle’s End went to older son’s fiancee, Door in the Hedge will go to younger son’s school library (I already bought Beauty last year) AFTER I reread it a couple more times. I gifted a friend’s daughter with Rose Daughter last year (at her request, what a smart girl!). Now, if only I was as good with regular evangelism …
(I told you I’m that old, didn’t I?).
********** WELL EXCUUUUUSE ME. What does that make me, Methuselah? :)
I am very attracted to the idea that you BUY MORE COPIES rather than unpacking boxes. :)
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Well, I was already an adult when Beauty came out for the very first time.
And, well, I’ve got about 50 boxes of books that haven’t been unpacked since June 2002 – they’ve been trucked from Fort Wayne, IN to Monroe, MI to Parker, FL to Bayou George, FL (the last two places are in Panama City, but about 20 miles apart – we had a rental when we first arrived, then bought 3 acres of land with a good, solid house). I no longer remember what boxes have which books and don’t want to spend a week unpacking boxes. Someday my hubby will build shelves … he doesn’t want me to buy them … we’ve been in this house for 4 years … and now I have to box up the graphic novels and manga that threaten to fil the place (I read them for my job) …
we’ve been in this house for 4 years …
********** LOL! Oh, how I sympathize! –I actually got some bookshelves put in at Third House and then when building regs got hold of me it turns out THEY WILL ALL HAVE TO BE TORN OUT as part of the loft conversion (because I HAVE to have a staircase. I don’t want a staircase!!)
and now I have to box up the graphic novels and manga that threaten to fil the place (I read them for my job) …
*********** Yes, I remember! And you’re POSTING any you particularly like! :)
I can’t believe it, but Jennie pointed out that my recipe for Pine nut rosemary shortbread that I posted under “Let them eat cake” didn’t include either pine nut or rosemary. So fussy. So here’s the corrected ingredients list:
My Family Nearly Lynched Me For Making Something Fattening They Can’t Resist Pine Nut Rosemary Shortbread
1 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup rice flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter (the good stuff)
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup toasted pine nuts
2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary
zest of one lemon
Thanks for noticing, Jennie! Can you tell I was playing around with my recipes a lot that day?
Yes, I saw that go by and thought, OOPS. Well, but have you mistaken borage for comfrey lately? :)
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I will concede that Beauty is not, objectively, your best work. But in spite of that, it is my favorite–because it’s the first one I read and because it’s been part of my life for so long that I think it just HAS to mean more to me.
That being said, I have no idea which novel might be your best. If forced to decide, though, I would probably go for Sunshine. I strongly approve of non-angsty vampires.
But then, maybe it’s Chalice.
Yay for links that work!
I know that my favorite book of yours is DEERSKIN, but I think that THE BLUE SWORD and HERO vie for second. THE BLUE SWORD was the first one I read, many ages ago when I was a little girl, and I’ve been a fan ever since. =)
(And just wait, one of these days I’m going to have kids, and then they’re going to become your fans too, since I’ll insist they read your books. I’d make the cat read them, except she tends to flip her tail in disdain and stalk away. Not a very literate animal. =)
don’t insist! That’ll make them HATE me! :)
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Well, this day seems to have been “more like it” – hoping hellhounds continue well!
Good review – but I’m sure you deserve better!
About the “Beuty” and “Hero and Crown” thing – it could be worse! It made me think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Preface to “The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes”:
“His career has been a long one – though it is possiible to exaggerate it; decrepit gentlemen who approach me and declare that his adventures formed the reading of their boyhood do not meet the response from me which they seem to expect.”
Of course this doesn’t really apply – well, all right so it has nothing to do with it:)! – but still it occured to me…
As for long or short books – I suppose I tend to like long books. If I find myself thinking that a book needs trimming, I’ve come to realize that I don’t really like it and I just don’t care two straws about the characters – and if it were shorter it might just be endurable ( – but if it were trimmed maybe the parts that I particularly dislike might be the parts that remained!) This however does not mean I dislike short books, or think all books should be long. If you wrote an 800 pages long book I would of course gladly devour it –
BUT I AM SURE YOUR BOOKS ARE EXACTLY THE LENGTH THEY NEED TO BE! –
and I would have nothing changed in that regard! As for ages – pish! There are picture books that nearly make me sick laughing (and they are not very long either!) And while I understand that the “pigeonholing” annoys you, and you obviously (!) want more people to read your books, and you equally obviously therefore won’t share my sentiments — but those who don’t read a book because it’s “only” YA (or children’s or whatever) can – can – can suit themselves! Just think what they are MISSING!
Oh, dear! I find that this comment is rather – hm – long…
LOL! Thank you! –And I like the Conan Doyle. Yes, I have **mixed feelings** about hearing from little old ladies (and occasional gentlemen) who are into their dotage and have been reading me since childhood. . . .
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That’s a really good review and should stir up a lot of interest, especially once the stores get it up on their sites. You’re right, SOVAY does look interesting (oh yes, great song–I love the tune Martin Carthy sings it to), although I don’t think the sentence the reviewer quoted sounds especially like 18th-century prose. Congratulations! And congratulations on the Grandsire-ringing, too. “Use makes master,” as they used to say.
Getting old IS sucky, but in the process one (hopefully) grows as a person and as a writer, which really mitigates against a first novel being the best of the lot. BEAUTY is very good, but I think it’s clear that it was written by a young person. I’m sure that’s the charm for a lot of readers, but you’ve moved on from that place and so has your work. You’re too good a writer to keep repeating yourself–the review people should have figured that out. BTW, I agree with you entirely about being *young*–I wouldn’t be 18 again for anything.
I’ve resented age pigeonholing ever since our small-town librarian wouldn’t let me check out books she thought were too old for me when I was a kid. I think though that really committed readers just ignore the labels. One of the plusses of being OLD–you can browse any section and buy what you want! :D
Yes; I suspect it’s the curiously modern past that is so popular in literature. :) I write fantasy because I write fantasy, but one of its corollary advantages is not having to get the history right although I do try not to have anything *too* anomalous.
You’re too good a writer to keep repeating yourself
********* Well thank you, but it’s one of those things that isn’t really up to me–I write what I’m given. I’m aware that what I’m *given* changes as I change, but it’s still not something I DO.
Oh, gosh, don’t I remember the whole librarian making you take out SUITABLE books thing!!!!!!
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I’ve always striven throughout my library career to NOT force anyone to only borrow suitable books. Since I was such a maverick reader myself (and still am), I would never do that to anyone. I think nowadays you’ll probably find more librarians who will do what they can to find something that will “speak” the right way to a particular reader. I know I’ve tried to do that for teens, and sometimes I’ve even succeeded. Such a joy when that happens! I was lucky as a kid to have never encountered a librarian who would try to discourage me from reading boys’ books and all that military history stuff I devoured from the age of 10. Hey, I’m the librarian who has been encouraging kids to read COMICS for more than 25 years. I have, since I was maybe 6 years old, and I’m a sane, normal person. Wait a minute, I’m also a pastor’s wife. Maybe I’m more nuts than I should be …
Oh, don’t be sane and normal! That spoils it! :) –And permit me to protest anxiously that I wouldn’t dream of saying that all or even most librarians are overbearing humorless line-adherers. Some of my best friends, etc. Just that when you get one of that type she or he can do some depressing damage.
Well done on the review. (Other people seem to have sent you lots of virtual food, so have a virtual Bellini made with fresh peaches from me).
I loved:
^ Mind you I wouldn’t be young again even if the devil showed up with a great offer plus a letter of recommendation from Faust. Getting old is sucky, but it beats being young. The thing about young, however, is that you have more time left to figure stuff out, and you still believe you’re going to figure it out faster than, forty years later, you have.
I concur. I have never understood how people can hark back to their high school years nostalgically. Beyond the fact that mine were crap, and I was an outsider, more interested in reading that socialising, isn’t it pathetic to want to look back and most particularly to parts of your life when you didn’t know a lot (even though you thought you did) and didn’t know virtually anything about yourself. Getting old may have its sucky bits, but being happy with yourself and content within your own skin is a hard won battle and the rewards are great!
have never understood how people can hark back to their high school years nostalgically.
********* YES. SHUDDER. And who would WANT to have had their peak at 18? (Or at 25.) I am peculiar enough to feel a little sorry for tennis aces and Olympic gold medalists of 14 or 16.
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Okay, you’re all bursting my bubble. I’m headed to my 15 year class reunion tomorrow. I loved the high school I graduated from (not the normal one I started at), because I finally wasn’t any more of a misfit than anyone else there. It was a small, residential magnate school for nerds.
That said, I didn’t go to the 10 year reunion, because I wasn’t happy with where I was then. What a silly reason to avoid a party! I much prefer being 30 mumble to being 20 mumble, and I NEVER want to go back to 18. Yuck!
Most of us weren’t lucky enough to go to Nerd High. :)
Phillip Pullman is heading an effort to keep publishers from age-banding (printing age-guidance numbers on books). I think that the review for _Chalice_ is a good opportunity to think about the practice. If anyone is interested a link follows:
http://www.notoagebanding.org/
Yes, I know rather too much about this, having my ear bent from both sides. I have hugely mixed feelings. I hate the pigeonholing, that’s HATE the pigeonholing . . . but anything that may HELP get books into kids’ hands has to be a good thing . . . maybe.
Your link doesn’t work for me: page not found.
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Speaking of HERO, I saw the trade paperback edition in the fantasy section at Borders recently; the cover was so well done I had to restrain myself from buying a copy.* Lots of great comments, nice photograph of a bronze of a horse, a good (both appealing & reasonably accurate) summary on the back, and nary a breath about it being a YA book. (Insert standard YA rant.) So, “well done” to your agent & publisher. If the other reprints are as good, it’ll make for a nice grouping on the bookshelf.
ta, Dawn
*I already have a hardcover copy. My best friend has a copy,^ and our library system has several. And I had just placed an order with Amazon.^^
^Sandi & I are constantly trading books back and forth. Some things (the Harry Potters, the Laurie R. King Mary Russells) she buys, others (Lois McMaster Bujold, Neil Gaiman) I buy. It’s rather like having a second branch of a private library. Any book that we BOTH have a copy of is one that we REALLY like & is major comfort-reading.
^^The full series of Invader Zim, an older Stomp DVD (Stomp Out Loud), and the newest Great Big Sea CD, Fortune’s Favour, all of which arrived day before yesterday. I put Stomp on for my friend’s daughters earlier today. The girls spent the next two hours gathering up brooms, plastic bottles, wooden bowls, and anything else of reasonable durability, and put on a concert on the front patio. AND they cleaned up after, bless Sandi’s parenting skills.
(I assume you mean standard YA PIGEONHOLING rant. That’s the one I have off by heart . . . ) And **thank you.** I really like the ‘look’ of that reissue series, I think they’ve done extremely well. With a little help from **me.** (I have some say over things like patronising kiddie-lit quotes.) I’ll tell my editor!
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(I assume you mean standard YA PIGEONHOLING rant. That’s the one I have off by heart . . . )
A-yup, that’d be the one.Y’know, it needs an acronym (like YAR or YAP: YA Rant or YA Pigeonholing) so we can all toss around the term in a knowing and superior fashion. :-)
‘A-yup’? I know that from *Maine.*
Oooh, I like YAP. YA Peroration, possibly. :)
Well, what with the mounting general excitement for CHALICE, followed no doubt the year after by the short stories, followed on again by PEGASUS and then ALBION, it sounds as though you will not only get the new attic floor for 3rd House but also – I don’t know – 4th House? An extension and swimming pool for 3rd House? Buying out your current neighbours and knocking the two houses into one…? :)
I am so looking forward to September and I normally dislike autumn A Lot.
If I was capable of squeeing I would, believe me! :)
Well, I do have to WRITE them, you know. PEGASUS isn’t through first draft yet. No, after the attic floor is the RIPPING OUT OF THE KITCHEN AND BATHROOM–oh yes and all the ceiling lights: actually I can probably afford to do that–no I can’t, what am I THINKING? Ceiling lights all cost a fortune–and then the acre outside of town with the hellhound proof fence. :)
I love autumn! Why don’t you like autumn??
I think typing ‘squee’ counts. :)
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“Why don’t you like autumn??”
I suppose mostly the steady and inexorable disappearance of light and the sun and knowing that winter is ahead. There are some lovely autumn days and I do enjoy them but mostly I start feeling a looming dread. Maybe I’ll be better about it when I’m no longer a wage slave and can be out and about during the daytime, while it’s light still. These years, I can practically feel myself dying back into my roots, with what’s left visible being all crunkly/miserable. I function, I’m just not particularly happy then. :)
Anyway, how could I have forgotten the hellhounds running area as a future affordable item…! Perhaps with a few game bird automata for them to leap around after…? :) I have total faith that this will be achieved.
Well, if every reader of this blog bullies, um, how many friends, relatives, total strangers, into buying a copy of CHALICE–? :) Definitely some pheasant ‘bots. The REAL ones sound like robots.
Autumn always makes me restless, I want to find the edges of things and then push on them. I know what you mean about the dying of the light, though–it bothers me more every year as I get older. And I’m not even a 9 to 5er.
Congratulations on the great revue, and I’ll look forward to reading it. I remember being somewhat put off by Sunshine (cover price of the hardcover perhaps, I was/am poor) and delayed reading it for far too long. Remedied this with Dragonhaven, and have enough to be able to afford buying Chalice it in hardcover.
I noticed the above comment about ordering from Amazon, I was just curious if it makes a difference to you financially as to where we purchase out six copies (self, spare to lend out, four friends minimum) from?
Cheers, Sean
Sorry, don’t know above comment, how I read behind the scenes doesn’t link to what you see very well. so far as I know it doesn’t make a difference in my royalties, and I use amazon too, but I prefer to support live on the street retailers when I can. Thanks for asking–way too many people still think authors are all wealthy. [very hollow laughter]
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For what it’s worth, I like Beauty, but I love Rose Daughter. I love the richness of it it, which is almost entirely a matter of taste, but while I won’t go so far as to say Rose Daughter is “better,” I do think it is more skillful and more ambitious. Once and awhile Beauty seems content to fall back on the fairy tale and be carried by it. Everything in Rose Daughter feels thought/felt out, as if you were writing your story with the fairy tale as a medium rather than retelling the fairy tale. I also think the timing and balance is better in Rose Daughter.
In the earlier books there are a lot of really wonderful sentences that nonetheless trip me up; somehow they just don’t give me the sort of clues that would tell me how to read them. I don’t know what it is makes the difference, but I don’t come across many of those in your more recent books. I hope I learn what to do about sentences that act like that someday. There isn’t a secret, is there: some hidden forth option beyond fix it, cut it, or live with it? No, I didn’t think so. Sigh.
Now that over-thought things at you for awhile I suppose I ought to say ‘hi.’ I’ve been reading the blog for awhile and it helps remind me that I really do want to write. Very useful, on those days when the story isn’t helpful.
Thank you very much! That’s–very much–the way I think about BEAUTY and ROSE. They are both what they are and are as good as I could do by them . . . which is never good enough for any book . . . but BEAUTY really is a direct riff off the fairy tale and ROSE . . . well, it’s turned a few corners too. :) I personally find ROSE more satisfying, but some of that is *remembering* myself at 24 when I was writing BEAUTY . . . which is pretty awful. :)
I’ve always had a slightly . . . unusual . . . approach to sentences, grammar, punctuation. I HOPE what you’re seeing is just that I’ve been doing it longer, so whatever it is, it’s made its connections and worn its grooves. Thus freeing me to make a few more connections and a few more grooves. So I guess what I’m telling you is the horrible old cliche of ‘practise, practise, practise.’ I feel the same way about, oh, piano and bell ringing.
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