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The life and times of ToddleFly
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| Holiday CHEER for all (by December 7th) |
[Dec. 1st, 2009|01:13 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Sleeping In - The Postal Service | ] |
Last year, for the first time in my life, I successfully managed to send Christmas cards to the people in my life who signed up for Christmas cards.
This year, I contemplated doing that again. Then I considered 1) the huge amount of paper I would use, not to mention the carbon spent getting them to their destinations, 2) the amount of money I have to spare for such things and 3) the fact that I am between writing projects right now.
So I'm going to write a short story and email it to people, on December 25th my time. Let me know if you want to be one of them by filling out this form. (NB: give your email address in full as it would appear in an email, not that spaced out "my name (at) website (dot) com" thing. Don't worry, no one but me can see your email address.)
Poll #1492353
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 24My email address is:
Feel free to tweet, link, etc! Unlke Christmas cards, there is no monetary boundary to my bounty.
However, there is one catch - you have to input your email address by the 7th of
December, my time (Melbourne, Australia). That will be the 6th for a lot of you.
I think that's it. Story, email, joy. Excellent!
(Disclaimer time: The story may or may not be set in the same world as GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD, but if so, there will be no spoilers. The story will probably take place around and make references to Christmas, so if that is not your cup of beverage then you may wish to avoid. Story will be produced in a room with peanuts present. Story may contain zombies. Story may contain vampires. Story may contain four pages of dialogue and a desperate stick figure drawing of a puppy.) |
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| She sulls sea shulls on the sea shoor. |
[Nov. 30th, 2009|08:43 pm] |
I did my proofing run on the ANZ Guardian of the Dead version yesterday (you guys, there are some VERY PRETTY things in there) and discovered, as one does, a few errors. Apparently every published book has at least six spelling errors. It's like a scavenger hunt!
As a New Zealander living in Australia, people occasionally make fun of my accent, since New Zealand and Australian vowels are quite different. For example we pronounce 6 "sihx" or sometimes "sux" and they pronounce it something like "seeks" or "sex". My publishers, of course, are Australian.
These things are related! Here is my favourite error, (cropped to avoid spoilers):
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| The (not quite) Perfect Boyfriend |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|10:45 pm] |
The (not quite) Perfect Boyfriend, Lili Wilkinson.
Over-imaginative Imogen has several problems - her mother, her best friend Tahni, her imaginary boyfriend from England. When a real English boy with the same name turns up at school, Tahni assumes this is Midge's Ben - and Ben saves her from total humiliation by going along with it. But secrets and lies come at a price - if not now, then later. And Midge has a lot to learn about the power of the truth.
OKAY. I am in love with Midge. Three pages in, she starts freaking out about misplaced quotation marks, she spends slow class periods picking out the spelling mistakes and misplaced apostrophes in the handouts, her claim to fame is winning the spelling bee, and every chapter opens with a word and dictionary definition. A WORD GEEK TEEN HEROINE, Y'ALL. I am there.
And as also evident in Lili's Pink (my review of which I cannot goddamn find, that'll teach me not to tag properly), there's a fantastic and sympathetic grasp of the varied geek experience. PostSecret provides narrative impetus, you guys! It's great. |
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| Bookmark Days |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|07:45 pm] |
Bookmark Days, Scot Gardner.
Farmgirl Avril and her city cousin Katie are best friends, but could hardly be more different. Avril can drive the ute and cook for twenty shearers - Katie knows what shoes go with what dress and how to make guys pay attention. And Avril is happy, where Katie is not. But the drama really starts when Avril falls for the boy next door - well, on the next farm - a member of the Carrington family, with whom her family's been feuding for three generations. Oooh, farmgirl Romeo and Juliet time, but with much less romanticised teenage stupidity.
A sometimes relevant fact about me is that, though I was never a real farm girl, I grew up in country towns, had friends on farms, and know a little bit about the isolated, hard work and absolute family commitment that goes into keeping a family farm alive. Bookmark Days rang really true to me. Of course, unless you're on one of the wee islands, New Zealand isolation is different from Australian isolation, because Australia is bloody huge. You can be a very long way from anywhere else, and completely at home.
Just in passing and in general, one of the things I am really loving about the Girlfriend series is that they all place a great deal on the importance of female friendships. Katie and Avril have some truly nasty fights, but they are both individually decent enough and collectively strong enough to rebuild. |
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| The Indigo Girls |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|04:44 pm] |
The Indigo Girls, Penni Russon.
Zara, Mieke and Tilly are best friends for two weeks every year, when they're the Indigo Girls at the Indigo camping grounds. But this year Mieke is coming a week later, and alpha-girl Zara and pointy-brained Tilly have to work out how to operate without her as the bridge between them. In the process, they learn a lot about themselves and each other and are TOTALLY FREAKING ADORABLE ALL OVER THE PLACE.
I'm a Tilly-style girl myself, so getting into Zara's kinetic-foused brain was really awesome, particularly the descriptions of night-surfing. Hijinks also include text-stalking, costume parties, and a Brush With Death.
WARNING: Book will make you want to head to the beach immediately. |
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| Girlfriend Fiction |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|03:38 pm] |
I had been planning to go to the gay marriage rights march at Flinders Street today, but after some excitement last night I got a late start this morning. Or, this afternoon.
So I think I'm going to spend the day reading. I haven't done that for a while, and I have, courtesy my fabulous A+U editor, a bunch of the Girlfriend Fiction series - all short, girl-focused contemporary YA novels set in Australia, and so far, all utterly delightful. Which you sort of expect with people like Kate Constable and Lili Wilkinson doing the writing.
Mini-review time!
Winter of Grace, Kate Constable.
At an anti-war protest, Bridie witnesses an assault on a boy and helps to rescue him with her gorgeous bestie, Stella. But saving Jay means that he wants to save her too - he's a committed evangelist Christian, and Bridie finds herself ready and willing to welcome Jesus into her life. But her single mother, a biologist, is adamant that Christianity is poisonous lies - though she won't say why she's so very oppposed - and Stella is disgusted by what she sees as Bridie growing goody-goodness. Moreover, Bridie starts to question some aspects of her church. Does she really have to choose between family and God?
As you know, internets, I'm a committed atheist, and I have a lot of sympathy with Bridie's mother, in that I think teaching children that God will send them to hell if they're naughty is teaching them horrible lies. Believing that screwed me up for a while! But religion is certainly a huge and fulfilling part of many, many wonderful people's lives, including my mother, and I am equally unsympathetic to the viewpoint that all believers are clearly idiots, when they clearly are not. So Winter of Grace hit all the right spots for me on the religion front, and then EXTRA BONUS gave me an adorable love story, fun family interactions, and complex characterisation. |
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| AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA |
[Nov. 26th, 2009|01:52 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Die Hard - Guyz Nite | ] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) karenhealey: My Strange Horizons article just got linked on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) ohnotheydidnt.
revena: OMG
revena Don't read the comments.
Naturally, it's there because I mentioned Breaking Dawn. I don't imagine many people will be clicking through to the article, but if the ONTD juggernaut crashes Strange Horizons, um, I'm sorry about that. |
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| It Must Have Been While You Were Kissing Me |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|10:53 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth - Meat Loaf | ] |
In more exciting news of me that is possibly less exciting, the FAQ has gone live at my website. Excluding the section that spoils large chunks of Guardian*, but including a story of something dorky I did this one time.
Some of these questions have actually been asked (and maybe not the ones you are thinking) but the others are more anticipatory. Should you have a question you think might be frequent, go ahead and ask it.
In fact, ask me a question and I'll answer it here!**
*Can I just say? I am so glad Justine has now read Guardian, because now I can talk about it with her without her eyes turning into pools of lava as a low, bubbling growl issues from her mouth and echoes in my ears like the screams of the uncounted damned: "DON'T SPOIL."
What I am saying is, the woman likes to approach texts clean.
** Unless I get bored or don't want to. |
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| When I go, I'm going like Elsie. |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|10:38 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Cabaret - Liza Minnelli | ] |
In exciting news of me, my next Strange Horizons article on YA SFF* is up.
Becoming New: Young Adult SFF and the Adolescent Body talks about the transformed adolescent body in SFF as a metaphor for the actual transformed adolescent body, and how reading about the threat of zombification can be a lot more fun than worrying about becoming a mindless drone adult.
It probably comes as no surprise that some of my favourite young adult reading, then and now, is that which deals metaphorically with the tumultuous changes of puberty and adolescence. It's not hard to divine the fears and hopes bound into a story about a girl changing herself into a new, magical being at the same time she becomes aware of her sexuality, or a boy trying to cope with superstrength, or a group of teenagers who discover that their parents are all supervillains. But such metaphors make those hopes and fears one step removed, allowing them to be sympathetically explored in all their complexity, without beating the reader over the head with ideas they may shy from if presented up front.
(Of course I talk about The Changeover. Shall I ever stop talking about The Changeover? I shan't!)
* Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. Pronounced yuh-skiftasy! |
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| Faro's Daughter. |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|08:06 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | books | ] |
| [ | music |
| | You Belong With Me - Taylor Swift | ] |
More in the series of Great Stuff I have read lately!
Faro's Daughter, Georgette Heyer.
Fair warning that I am about to just spoil the shit out of this book, but it's been out forever, so I don't think it counts. PS) Hamlet dies, Peter marries Harriet, and Snape kills Dumbledore.
Okay, where were we? Oh, yes: introducing the hero.
HERO: Hello, I'm Mr. Ravenscar.
ME: *laughs for twenty minutes*
HERO: RAVENSCAR IS A PERFECTLY APPROPRIATE NAME IN REGENCY TIMES. Ahem. Anyway, my puppy of a cousin is apparently enamoured of a young lady who helps her aunt run a gaming house and he may actually attempt to marry her! Of course such a marriage would scandalise Society and ruin him forever.
HEROINE: *is gay and charming and has no intention of trying to marry the puppy*
HERO: She seems so noble! Oh well, I had better accuse her of being a golddigger anyway and attempt to pay her off.
HEROINE: He seemed so noble! And yet he insinuates I am a whore! I had better pretend that I want to marry the puppy and won't accept ANY PRICE. That'll show him!
HERO: TWENTY THOUSAND POUNDS.
HEROINE: BITE ME.
HEROINE'S AUNT: We could really use that cash to pay for all our debts.
HEROINE: No!
HEROINE'S AUNT: Or you could at least marry the puppy!
HEROINE: Oh, aunt, you are joking! How dear and funny you are!
HEROINE'S AUNT: Ahahahahaha yes. By the way, the hero has bought all our debts and probably intends to pressure you into swearing off the puppy or he'll sell the house out from under us.
HEROINE: The CAD!
HEROINE'S CRIMINAL FRIEND: So you want me to kidnap him.
HEROINE: Yes.
HCF: Okay!
HEROINE: But don't trick him into coming somewhere alone by saying I want to talk to him! That would be dishonourable.
*HCF tricks HERO into coming somewhere alone by saying HEROINE wants to talk to him.*
HERO: Ow. Oh, great, I'm in a cellar. Tied to a chair.
ME: !!!
HERO: BONDAGE IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE IN REGENCY TIMES. Ah, Heroine. I shall never submit to you!
HEROINE: Oh, your poor head! I'm so sorry they tricked you! How dishonourable!
HERO: ... huh.
HEROINE: Anyway, sign those debts over to us right now or I'll leave you in this cellar.
HERO: Never, whore!
HEROINE: Then rot, assface!
HEROINE'S BROTHER: The richest man in town is locked in our cellar? GIVE ME THAT KEY.
HEROINE: You don't understand! He called me a whore!
HEROINE'S BROTHER: Terribly sorry about this, sir, I'll have you out of here in a jiffy...
HERO: Didn't your sister say I called her a whore?
HEROINE'S BROTHER: Oh, you know women. They say all sorts of things!
HERO: I did call her a whore. Don't you want to fight me for that insult?
HEROINE'S BROTHER: I'm sure you were provoked!
HERO: LOCK THAT DOOR IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN THE KEY TO YOUR SISTER WITH MY COMPLIMENTS, YOU PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A MAN.
HEROINE'S BROTHER: ...I'm not quite sure what just happened there.
*After many awesome misunderstandings that could totally be averted by a sensible conversation between sane people, plus a daring escape, a rescue, a horse race, an elopement, and a fistfight, HERO and HEROINE are UNITED AT LAST*
HEROINE: Wait, won't people care that I used to run a gaming house?
HERO: MARRYING WOMEN OF LOW REPUTE IS PERFECTLY ALLOWABLE IN REGENCY TIMES.
HEROINE: Then kiss me, you Regency fool!
*He does, and it is totally hot*
THE END.
ME: RAVENSCAR. |
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