Inarticulations

This year just gets better.

Another friend of mine has just been offered representation. And man, he’s been hard at work at this for a while, so yeah – perseverance!

Ryan Gebhart, who writes funny, who writes boy, who writes dystopia, who writes MG, who is pretty much all round an awesome guy, is now repped by Mary Kole from Andrea Brown

So go over there and say WOOOHOOO. *

CONGRATS, RYAN!!!

*Don’t tell him he looks like Ron Weasley; it just confuses him. *g*

where the grass is green and the girls are pretty

I have been struck.

New hobverse book, here we come.

Luckily I’m not too worried about working on hob-books because each is meant to be more or less stand-alone. (think : emo humourless discworld). This one is all about the infamous bastard Mallen Gris, and his little sychophant Ives Verrel. So it’s a history. *grin*

What’s fun is that this time my bff (and hobverse fangrrl) is playing alpha-reader and reading it chapter by chapter, in its unplaned, unvarnished state. Keeps me honest, I suppose.

It’s also way too complex for a first person narrative (Hob an Lam only had three POVs and that damn near did my head in) so it’s going to be one of my few books in third past.

anyway, excerpt for those who like that kinda thing:

“Besides, what does it matter? All of this, it’s just a …dalliance. Already my father has picked out some House bitch for me to marry-”

Verrel rolled over and sat up. He stared down intently. “Who?”

“I’m sure I don’t remember.” Gris waved one hand, brushing the question aside. “It’s not as if I was paying the man any attention.” He focused on Verrel’s agonised face, and grinned. “What does it matter, you yourself are going to be tied to that Pelim spinster, that bug-eyed atrocity.”

“She’s not -” Verrel sighed. “She does have a rather unfortunate face. I’m told she’s witty though.”

“So bug-eyed and a shrew. What a catch. You must be thrilled.”

“Shut up.” Verrel grabbed his pillow and pressed it over Gris, who laughed. Denied the pleasure of a struggle, Verrel pulled the pillow away and dropped it on the floor. “Do you even like women?”

Gris sighed. “I don’t like people. I barely tolerate you, and you’re my darling scholar of E.” He looked up, serious now. “The reason you are what you are to me, is because you’re truth.”

“Aren’t you always trumpeting on about how truth is merely lies tarted up to please?”

“I am.” Gris smiled. “Do you know what the world wants from me – of course you do – they want whatever it is they think I can give them, and so they submit to me, mask their faces with a simpering smile, honey their tongues. They never truly become mine – they tell me what they think I want to hear. But you…” He lay back, returned to his examination of the ceiling.

“I?”

“You submit, but you want nothing from me that you don’t already have. So alone, of all the people I know, you do not fear to tell me the truth.”

There was a long silence, and then Verrel whispered, so softly that Gris almost missed it. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m never wrong, I believe we agreed on that.”

Aaaaaaand

My really craptastic blurb of cheesiness. You have to read this in a dramatic James Earl Jones Movie Voice ( I like to write these for focus)

Mallen Gris is a man destined for fame: wilful, arrogant, decadent, perverse – and the most gifted Saint his ruling House has ever seen. When he has a vision of his future and the end of the scriv-mines that feed his family’s magical power, he sets to creating himself a new path. In order to achieve his goals, he will do anything, including burning his own family home to the ground, murdering his dinner guests, building a new empire, and destroying the closest person he has to a friend.

Ives Verrel has always been at Gris’s side, a friend so loyal that behind his back he is known as “Mallen’s Dog”. Not fully understanding Gris’s plans, he follows along as usual, and finds himself trapped in a world of betrayal, murder, and magic. It is when Gris has Verrel’s younger brother murdered that Verrel finally understands the man he has pledged his loyalty to, and what he has to do in order to not only stop his friend, but to regain his House honour.

With the aid of his dead brother’s wife and a boy-scholar in Mallen’s household, they set in motion the events that will eventually turn House Mallen to dust, and ensure the day that Gris’s name is a curse. No longer content to be Mallen’s Dog, Verrel’s path of revenge will awaken a power greater even than Gris has ever seen in his Visions. A power that will change the face of the world.

This is my happy face

After a very uncertain and rather miserable year last year, 2010 is looking ready to rock out with its cock out.

This week’s news of awesome is my new agent – Suzie Townsend at Fine Print Lit.

I am so excited to be working with her. She’s sent me some fantastic revision notes and I am stoked to get on with beating SRR into a prettier shape.

Of course, this news also means I am now agent-bffers with the Incredible Hannah Moskowitz, who is basically the bastard lovechild of Irving and Palahniuk.

Okay, you guys can all jealous over me now, as long as you clean up afterwards.

FREE STUFF. It rocks.

Darling Grace at Gracetopia is running a competition for a reader to win a signed copy of the fabulous Suzanne Young’s debut The Naughty List. A novel about cheerleader spies? Oh yes.

naughty-list

So get over there and tell her your Secret Agent Name.

the levi jean will always be stronger than the uzi

SUN!!

I got to swim properly for the first time this year. Took my chance in the brief flash of sun between the rain.

Also took Difficult Dog for his first walk not around my garden. Went better than expected so I think he’ll settle into it.

I’m about 7k into the new book, it’s dumb as fuck but I’m enjoying it. So there.

and

You have walked 22 miles.
You have passed Green Hill Country.
It is 5 miles to the next landmark.
You have 436 miles to reach Rivendell.

After some time they crossed the Water, west of Hobbiton, by a narrow plank-bridge. The stream was there no more than a winding black ribbon, bordered with leaning alder-trees. A mile or two further south they hastily crossed the great road from the Brandywine Bridge; they were now in the Tookland and bending south-eastwards they made for the Green Hill Country.

Tuesday Teaser? Hmmm.

I’m in the mood for a tuesday teaser, only…it’s Wednesday.

I am such a rebel.

From the new super-sekrit project:

The tram hurtles on through the night, until finally we level out. At the third stop I hop off, wave a fake-cheery goodbye to Marietta, and trot down the darkened street to my flat. There’s a small pizzaria on the corner of my building, and the smell of garlic and cheese slaps me, leaving my face greasy.

I head inside to the cigarette machine and buy myself a pack of Llamas.

“You staying for a beer?” Lou the owner is rolling out dough, and his arms are dusted white. The place is pretty quiet. A couple are pressed head to head over their shared Four Seasons, and a bored mother bounces a toddler on her hip while she waits for her take-out.

I wasn’t actually going to stay for a drink, but it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

“Yeah,” I say. “Actually no, fuck it.” I only drink beer because it’s cheap, but I’m not really what one would call a fan. “Make it a vodka tonic.”
Lou’s nephew runs behind the small bar and set me out an ashtray and quickly makes my drink. I take a seat and let the fizz and bite of the tonic play across my tongue. On the small corner tv, Tomas’s latest poem is getting the full treatment. Some doe-eyed crooner is singing in his girl’s voice about love oh oh oh, and hordes of scantily dressed women gyrate in time.

Ugh.

And this is the shit that goes to the top ten? Kinda makes you lose all faith in humanity.

“Another one?” says Lou’s nephew, and I nod.
It’s going to be a miserable night.

I keep meaning to do this but I’m a laaaaazy wench, but Here! Now! I’m walking to Rivendell.

You have walked 7 miles.
You are at Last View of Hobbiton.
It is 11 miles to the next landmark.
You have 458 miles to reach Rivendell.

I think I have a fair trek ahead of me.

She shoots, she scores!

A wonderful writer friend of mine, after much rewriting, hand-wringing, revising, querying and general hard work, has scored herself a fabulous agent.

Elissa has signed with Sarah Davies of Greenhouse, so go over to her blog and read about it and say congrats!

Ruthlessly pursuing ravens

Eeeh the chances of my new netbook arriving sometime this week just shot up by about 98%.

*rubs hands together in glee*

Also, the official first pass of the new book is underway.

It’s just note-taking and grammar/spelling straightening at the moment, but it gives me hope that I won’t abandon this one.

I still haven’t written the climax. I know what happens, and I keep having pretty vivid dreams about it, but I’m also terrified to actually write the damn thing in case I fuck it up.

And I’m lazy.

Okay, now I’m going to go read.

Review: Let The Right One in by John Ajvide Lindqvist

I saw the film; loved it, loved the fragmentary glimpses that we get hinting at Eli’s background, the levels and layers to the sexuality of vampires, playing with the tropes, but also embracing them in a way that was utterly affectionate and not a parody at all.

So I decided to read the book.

The feel of it is different. The horror is more visceral – more important to the story line, the loneliness and patheticness of Oskar played up (the Pissball is an example of this) and the bland hopelessness of the suburb of Blackeberg more palpably desperate, especially as seen through the other characters in the story. Look at the way alcoholics Virginia and Lacke’s story contrasts and echoes Eli and Oskar’s – all in all it’s a very bleak picture the author has painted.

The stories of the minor characters weave through the main narrative wonderfully, and I really felt like I learned something form that as a writer.

The layers of sexuality present in the movie are also added to when we discover the real reason behind Hakan becoming Eli’s ‘handler” And yes, there are certainly things in the book that were cut entirely from the film. For a start, the film felt more like a coming of age story than the book which I felt panned out more a s a straight horror, and the focus seemed to shift remarkably between the two mediums.

Naturally, the thing that hooked me the most is the genderqueering of the relationship between Eli and Oskar. I love it. The book certainly doesn’t play as coy as the movie about Eli’s view of himself, and it’s so heart-wrenching to read – how Eli has lost even the basics of human cleanliness, and it’s his friendship and love for Oskar that ultimately give him back both a semblance of humanity, but also destroys it furthur. And Eli …Eli trying so hard to be what Oskar wants, to not be a murderer.

Eli’s loneliness is made so obvious – this is no sparkling immortal vampire plucked at the age of perfection – he’s a child, trapped forever in a state where she must rely on others, and her note to Oskar telling him how much she liked him actually had me tearing up. It was just so…utterly childlike and lost. Eli is not the vampire teen goths dream of becoming; her life is small, dirty, agonsingly lonely. And because of this her love for Oskar is such a careful and brittle thing. Guh. I am floored.

Obviously, I read the translation, so I don’t know how it holds up against the original but my god there are some perfect perfect moments where so much is said with the simplest of words

A silence fell between them. The kind of silence that is particular to

hospitals and that stems from the fact that the very situation—one person

in the bed, sick or injured, and a healthy person at her side—says it all.

Words become small, superfluous.

Twilight has nothing on this.

well it has dead pig in it….

Spar was alarmingly short on meat – no trotters, alas (although there was a rack of chicken feet left, but I dunno if I’m ready to go there yet) – so I’ve gone with making pozole instead.

Because I am a good parent, I decided not to use the flesh of my enemy prisoners children, and went with pork as a substitute.

pozole recipe