I’m back from our family hols (Sodwana Bay, for those who like that kinda thing. Very pretty indeed; butterflies and monkeys on the beach in the middle of winter. Hell yeah) and trying to catch up on emails and lj posts and stuff. (And failing, I might add)

This post by Scalzi made me feel a bit better about my incredibly slow path to …well…anything really.

Why New Novelists Are Kinda Old, or, Hey, Publishing is Slow

this part especially:

1969 – 1997: Time spent learning to write well enough to write a novel (28).

1997: Wrote first complete novel (28)

1997 – 2001: Life intervenes and keeps me away from fiction (32).

2001: Wrote second novel (32)

2002: Offer made on second novel, now my debut novel (33)

2003: Contract signed for debut novel (33)

2004: Editing and early publicity for debut novel (35)

2005: Debut novel published (35)

2006: Won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (37)

So basically I have five more years before I give up.  *grins*

While on hols, I finally got some reading time in and finished Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix.  It’s easy to tell that Cindy likes food and painting. Seriously.  She made me hungry a whole lot, and her writing is very visual, very painterly. Most of the time I felt I was watching the story scroll past in a series of water colours, with fresh colours and clean ink lines.

Personally, I would like to see her incorporate the other senses more to help ground me in her world. Taste and smell especially. The few times that these two senses came into play I really felt myself immersed in Ai Ling’s world. As it is, I loved the mythology, and her descriptions are wonderful , and I’m glad to see that Cindy Pon doesn’t shy away from killing off characters. (Yay!).

Ai Ling makes for a sympathetic protag and she was both believable and relatable. I loved Chen Yong, and his obvious out-of-placeness and I’m keen to read the next book and see where the story takes the two of them (if indeed that’s where the focus is going to be).

Recommended.

Via the Illustrious Slaveboy, ruler of not quite all he surveys.

Writing advice that I intend to take to heart: 5 kickass lessons books could learn from the movies.

So I know some people had a busy weekend (Nerine Dorman was one - she was at The Cape Town Bookfair) let’s hear all about it.

How was your weekend?

Lisa Mantchev’s debut Eyes Like Stars is a delightful whimsy hiding shadows beneath its painted artifice. Bertie is the unconventional blue-haired heroine of a play of her own creation, as she invents the story of how she arrived, a nameless orphan, on the steps of the Theatre Illuminata.

Mantchev has created a charmingly vivid world in the Theatre, peopling it not with actors, but with Players. Ophelia is always drowning, Hamlet is an emotastic little creep, Nate is a pirate from The Little Mermaid, and every night, these Players play themselves in another production. Flashbacks are short bursts of script, which I found to be original and fun, and Matchev didn’t overdo it, and the whole thing tied in nicely with the conclusion of Bertie’s play.

Human in a world full of meta-fictional characters, teenage Bertie does her best to fit into the Theatre, with her bedroom-set, her pranks, and her friendships with the various quasi-fictional characters. And being human, she’s bound to fail.

When Bertie is threatened with expulsion from the Theatre, she attempts to prove her place in this grease-paint world, and in doing so, begins a string of events that will set the Players free from the confines of the Theatre, release them into the real world, and in doing so destroy the only place that she has ever known as home.

One of the things I really enjoyed about Eyes Like Stars was Mantchev’s ability to take well-worn characters and bring them to life in their own right. Enter Peaseblossom, Moth, Cobweb and Mustardseed, who accompany Bertie everywhere she goes, commentating, helping and not-helping her with their own ribald, fairy take on things. Or Ariel, seductive, and menacing, then broken and pitiful (or is he really - this is always the fun with the start of a series).

Ariel’s desire to be free, and his manipulation of Bertie is symbolic of Bertie’s sexual awakening (hey, I’m going out on a limb here - that’s what it seemed like to me) and a slightly safer alternative lies in Nate the pirate. And here is where the book fumbled for me. I couldn’t completely buy the relationship between Bertie and Nate, and many of their scenes felt crowbarred in, forced to be a natural progression, and I just never felt what I think I was meant to feel.

On the other hand, this is a first book in series, and it may be that the awkwardness of the relationship is purposeful, as more of Bertie’s past is revealed in the successive books. The Sea Witch storyline felt rather lost in among all the stuff about the Players’ connection to the Theatre, but that may also be a flaw related to the pacing of a story stretched out over several books. At first it made no sense to me, but by the end of the book, I was willing to see how later books will unfold the Sea Witch story. Coupled with the mystery of the Theatre Manager, and what exactly he knows about Bertie, and wants from her, there’s more than enough build-up to carry the story further.

Although I found the second half stronger than the first, I will most definitely be reading the next Theatre Illuminata book to see where Bertie’s adventures outside the theatre take her.

It’s a bit of a link-fest today, bear with me, you will be rewarded.

The fantastic digital art of Rodney Gee. Go see this piece over at DeviantArt. Yes yes, go. I’ll wait.

Pretty neat, yeah?

Two very cool links via Queen Bee.

Wiredonkey.co.za is the on the road diary of two South Africans cycling through America. It’s pretty damn awesome, and I can fully admit my total jealousy. Via them I learned about couchsurfung.org, so yeah, there’s a mattress on the lounge floor somewhere in South Africa with your name on it. Or something.

And on to the art of one Mark Ryden. Creepy and kitsch at the same time. I give it two thumbs up. And a wicked grin.

Besides having begun a new YA UF novel (working title Firedancer, but that’s so lame I’ll have to change it soon) I also have a gazillion choreos to learn and remember, and metres and metres of material to cut, sew, and dye.

Obviously in a fit of insanity I’ve decided to go along with my crazy idea of making myself yet another circle skirt, and this time dyeing it too. Um what?  I have a concert coming up, you say?  Oh and I’m in six dances? Um….

The men in the white coats are coming, must dash.

I think I’ll go spin ma poi instead.

Okay seriously.

I have at least 2 books to revise….

So what happens?

Inspiration strikes and leaves me running for the computer to jot down some notes and an opening.

It looks like it’s going to be a fun book (something I’ve never been all that good at. Heh) and that’s probably a good enough reason just to write.

So here you go, the first bit of Firedancer. First draft crappiness and all.

Last year, the four of us - Deets, The Eye, Oliver and me - decided to start a band. I mean, we were going to be awesome and punk and it didn’t really matter that none of us could actually play anything. Punk was all about three chords and fighting The Man.

 

 

Cero City never actually got to experience our genius (a fact, dear fallen gods and goddesses, I think Cero City is heartily grateful for), mainly because Deets got bored of not being up front and centre and just stopped pitching up to practices.

 

 

The Eye was the only one with any talent, anyway, because that guy’s voice can charm nightingales down from the frikken trees. He’s got this perfect soulful croon that cracks in all the right places. I played guitar because it didn’t matter how shit I was, I was still one up on the others, and Deets drummed because for all her ice-princess bullshit, the girl can actually keep a beat, and make it sound half-way decent. No one wanted to play bass, ’cause who gives a flying one about bass-players, so we made Oliver do it.

 

 

Out of all of us, Oliver’s the only one who still stays up practising bass, even though Rabid Squirrel Death Fest has been defunct for almost a year now.

 

 

Which kinda tells you a lot about Oliver - he’s got the crazy determination to get stuff perfect,  and I guess he’s the only one of us with the time for it, seeing as how the poor bastard has been seventeen for the last two hundred years. He’s also got issues about travelling by himself, and that’s why me and The Eye are heading to the restaurant where he’s waitering tonight.

 

 

I hate cycling in the dark. Drivers in Cero have no care for cyclists. Mostly they act like we’re targets, and I keep having to swerve onto the pavement to avoid being run over like road kill by some expensive car. People, I wear this safety crap for a reason - bright flashing vest equals cyclist; Do Not Squash. But, yeah, they don’t exactly care.

 

So anyway, there I am, weaving on and off the pavement, one eye on the road, and one eye on this maniac in a blue sedan next to me, when I see the shadow in the sky. At first, I’m thinking, wow, what the hells kind of bird is flying out at night? It’s not an owl or anything. It has this crazy long plumage that ripples behind it as it flies. It’s almost…dragon-like.

 

 

I skid to a halt, just as the bird-shadow disappears behind the dark clouds. One foot on the ground, I balance and watch the clouds. The moon dips behind a towering column of darkness, and the halogens flicker all around us.

 

 

“Lorin!” The Eye almost crashes into the back of my bike, and he swears. “Are you trying to kill me, you daft woman!”

 

 

“Did you see that?”

 

 

“See what?”

 

 

I stare at the area where it disappeared, willing it to come back. “Dunno. Was some crazy kinda bird…”

 

 

The Eye jumps off the Daisy Bell and wheels it up along side me. “I’m going to strangle you,” he says in a conversational tone. Which is entirely possible, I suppose, The Eye having control over air and wind, just like his darling daddy.

 

 

“Ha!” I jump my foot back on to the pedal and swerve out onto the road. “I’d like to see you try.” Technically, he’s more powerful than me, seeing as how without air, my fire charming is pretty useless, but I’m not totally weak. It would have been nice if I’d got any of my mother’s magic, but she said it doesn’t work like that. If you have a mortal parent, and a deity, you’re gonna either go one way or the other, and my luck is to take after my magician father. So I have some basic elemental skill, and no real power. Sucks.

Wooh so I’ve been somewhat absent from the internet world of late….

I blame the books.

First off, I’ve just finished reading Lisa Mantchev’s delightful Eyes Like Stars - a coherent review to follow once I’ve let the story percolate in my brain a little. What I can say is that I adore the absolute whimsy of the world she’s created with her Theatre Illuminata.

Also recently arrived in the post - Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix. It looks so beautiful. Yummy!  And Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, on the recommendation of someone  (er, I forget who…) at The Enchanted Inkpot.

After a rather rocky start to this year’s homeschooling program, Elder Sprog seems to have settled into a good routine with me, and the reading is (FINALLY!) slowly starting to come along. It was very frustrating for me as someone who could read by the time I was four, to deal with a child that just didn’t seem interested in reading. Being read to - no problem; reading the book yourself - hell no! So yeah, super-frustrating.

But with perseverence, we are getting there, and I can see her becoming more confident in her abilities, which is wonderful. I’m extremely proud of how hard she’s trying.

Beta feedback on SRR is starting to trickle in, and has been overwhelmingly positive.

This is scaring me a bit, because I don’t want to start convincing myself that agent M will love it and be able to sell it, when for all I know, the exact opposite could happen.

Instead I will tell myself that it is a book that I am proud of, and once I’ve made the changes that make it better, I shall send it off with the knowledge that whatever happens - I LIKE this damn book.

So there.

Omg I love the man with an unhealthy love.

From Galleycat:

“Novelist and musician Nick Cave wrote a sequel to Gladiator at the request of the first film’s lead, Russell Crowe. The studio turned down the draft.

According to the Guardian, fans uncovered a copy of the script, that includes Roman gods, time travel, early Christians, and ends with Crowe’s resurrected character fighting in World War II and Vietnam.”

I remember reading And The Ass Saw The Angel while rather drunk, sitting on the bed  of a Cape Town goff called Fifi. And um yeah, then I had to go read it again while sober.

Fifi is also responsible for my love of the name Jarlath.

If you have kids, I’m pretty sure you know that they have their, um, special moments.  You know, the ones where you go wait did I really sign up for this crap? And what was I thinking?

Today one of my daughter’s crèche friends is dead.

Maybe, even when your kids are driving you insane and you can’t think of one good thing about parenting, maybe that’s the time to sit down and give them a hug.

Cindy Pon, who spoke about her cover here, is probably getting horribly smashed on champagne now.

Actually, she’s more likely to be sleeping, but anyway.

Today sees the release of her book Silver Phoenix, a YA Asian fantasy. Looks like I have some ordering to do.