dragoncon...

Just a tiny selection of costumes...I could have done nothing BUT take pictures, but had to make it to my panels and eat and whatnot...

DragonCon

Just got back, minutes ago, all bleary and tired. I DO have some pics and will have them up soooon....

Highlights: (short list)

The amazing people who met to talk about Skin Hunger....wowohwow was it interesting to listen to all of your thoughts. Thanks so, so much!!!

Steam Punk...between Scott Westerfeld's amazing upcoming (or is it out? It's SOON) Leviathan, and the incredible costumes at the con, I fell myself leaning....

And then I thought....Bio Punk???
Or Pink Punk?

Mmmmmm

more soon.
yawn,
k

DragonCon!!!!!!!!!!

Very much looking forward to being at DragonCon in Atlanta Thursday-Monday. So many interesting artists and writers coming and just general Con-goodness!!

YA track schedule: http://www.yalit.dragoncon.org/schedule.html

Whole event info: http://www.dragoncon.org/

I will bring back ideas, artist's cards, adventures in mass transit, worldcab interviews, a worn-out me, and pix.

And will edit The Faeries Promise (Book 2, Wishes) on the plane.

((I owe this trip to Holly Black, Justine Larbalestier, and Scott Westerfeld who were all kind enough (I have been told) to talk up Skin Hunger when they attended DragonCon--thus tagging me on the YA track folks' map.))

They are all remarkable writers.

If you have not seen the trailer for Scott's too, too, cool Leviathan, go now and do so!

If you have not read the incredible thriller LIAR by Justine check it out. here.

Holly's amazing books are here and The White Cat is next up. It is astonishing. Trust me.

Over 600 people are reading Russet now....!!

I am adding this in Feb. 2013. Everything below is all still true, except that the experiment has become a novel in progress. I expect to finish it before 2014.


The blog below was written early in the experiment. By the time I stopped writing in tweets, there were three thousand people reading Russet.  (((I had to set it aside to write work that was already scheduled by my publishers, including my trilogy:  A Resurrection of Magic is in production now (yay)   http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2012/11/i-think-we-all-know-what-this-means-no.html 


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The original post:

Thanks so much to everyone who has been in touch. I hoped the novel would work. I never expected what it has become. Instead of writing back to everyone, here are the answers to some of your questions:

1. I don't know how long Russet will be. The train feels like the first segment to me. No, it is not close to being finished. It is just getting started, I think.

2. I don't know it if will ever be published. I am not thinking about that at all now.

3. I think it might make an interesting film, too. What is finished would be the first act.

4. Yes, there is a Coast Starlight train, I have traveled this route many times. I love long train rides.

5. Where did the idea for doing a twitter novel come from? I talked about it here.

6. What was the inspiration for the story itself? I met a woman on a plane once, who was very clearly not who she said she was...I had lived in the city she claimed to be from, and I could tell she had never been there. Then I overheard her talking to someone else in the terminal, using a distinctly different voice and accent. So that was probably the spark.

7. Yes. I have written many normal books. You can find information on them here, just scroll down a bit.

8. Today, there are about 23 typed pages of tweets. Because of the compression, it feels like about 100 pages of novel to me.

9. I have to fit it in around my published work, and my travels. So sometimes there are lags of a week or so. I apologize. Sometimes I add material every day.

10. I announce updates on Twitter @kdueykduey and FB.

Thanks again!
kathleen

The amazing SCBWI!

SCBWI .... If I didn't have a deadline banshee-big-freight-training its way toward me I would write more. The basics: SCBWI only gets better, smarter, bigger and more important. If you want to write for young readers k-YA, there is nowhere like SCBWI.org to get a start.

And as a plus, in that amazing Hollywood hotel, I always meet someone outside the conference group. My last morning, it was a pair of producers, sitting two feet away, agonizing about the cost of getting the crew and cast to Italy to film scenes with restored/replica 14th century ships--but all the people and all the equipment was in Prague. But if they filmed with minimal crew, the effects after-production costs would soar...And they had five days to figure it out. We chatted a little .One of them asked me, as a novelist, if I know the ending before I start, like screen writers almost always do. I told him..no. He said I was brave. Uh, no. Just disorganized?

Photo by Debbie Ridpath Ohi, with permission, and thanks!!

SACRED SCARS: NOW AVAILABLE!!!!

SACRED SCARS released: http://bit.ly/11CPB7


I just received the first review of SACRED SCARS, from Kirkus, and it’s lovely:
(I am editing out some spoiler-ish things...)




“Thrumming with dense, meaningful tension from first page to last, this middle installment in the Resurrection of Magic trilogy follows the two plotlines established in the first volume, Skin Hunger (2007), through despair, oppression and rare moments of hope. Sadima’s thread begins in the caves, where she’s repeatedly hand-copying sociopathic Somiss’s research on ancient magic and (ostensibly) teaching caged boys to write. The second thread, interwoven, follows Hahp through indeterminate years in the caves, in an epoch far later than Sadima’s early section but possibly matching the end of her later one. The text so successfully portrays Hahp’s experience in this grueling, cold-blooded wizard “academy”—isolation, starvation, abuse and constant, unsolvable puzzles—that readers may absorb his strain, confusion and desolation themselves. A single detail implies that Sadima’s thread will converge with Hahp’s in a heartbreaking way, but it could be a red herring. Absorbing and unwaveringly suspenseful.”



New review of the first book in the trilogy, SKIN HUNGER
http://bit.ly/118sUx

Sacred Scars

Just got the the ARCS and am so pleased with the cover. Also the size. It's 200 pages longer than Skin Hunger.

A /SF/F Editor/ tribal elder called me to tell me I am going to need four books, not three. We'll just see, Charles...

It looks good. Weighty. I love the smell of new books. I love this job. Sacred Scars will be released in August.

You can read an excerpt here: http://www.ipulpfiction.com/

It's free, of course. You have to sign up for an account, (free, and quick!) choose my book, click BUY (for free) Whooosh...it goes to your library page, click the cover and five pages of excerpts--some from each story, come up.

Ipulp is growing fast. Keith Shaw wants to make downloadable stories as easy and available as downloadable music.

((He is looking for writers/content, too!))

Dinner.

I am writing so much that I barely have time to eat. Good thing I love writing. And it won't be this tight too much longer. I will soon be back to my normal overload. It will feel like coasting....((at first))

STAYS is getting really interesting...

TWITTER...my very own personal account.

Because Russet:One Wing http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/ has taken over my twitter account, I have opened a personal one.


You can find me at http://twitter.com/kdueykduey with, like, no followers, floundering, lonely, save me...

the website re-do begins

In the next week or so, I hope to begin a complete re-do of my antique website....

Theo Black (The Black Arts) and his staff will be doing it.

I think I will be using some of my photos as some of the backgrounds.

Actually, I am pretty sure of that part. Little else.

Design-wise, it'd be so good if I only wrote for one age group. But no. I write for K- YA. So there have to be three sections: One for educators/parents/librarians, one for the youngest readers, and one for teens.

So the design challenge is to make each part feel appropriate for the audience and still, somehow, not end up with a crazy-quilt for the whole site.

Updates and maybe a few sneek peeks (you know you can't wait?) will appear here.

Two amazing things:

Cyn Smith let me guest blog about the experimental aspect of the Russet novel today.

and...

Here is the faculty lineup for SCBWI 09 in LA. I can't believe I am on a list with these people.



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The German translation of Skin Hunger is out. It's always an astonishing thing, being translated, to know that the story transcends the original language...

The Random House German editor really loved the book--which is so wonderful!! their catalogue

Just back from Wisconsin schools. Thanks, Steven's Point and Tigerton. Dearest teachers and librarians: you were all wonderful, and your schools are full of capable, smart kids who care about their world. I admire teachers so much. And librarians. They keep this place running.

((Maybe we should pay them more?))

I will speak at Wisconsin State reading Association 2010 and hope to see you all then.

At last, Russet has his own blog:

http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/

It's a twitter novel. He talks, I type. (Yes,that is a little weird.)

((Writing is a little weird.))

Phone-chatting with a YA librarian yesterday, I explained the uneven rhythm of work that rules my life and sometimes consumes me--and I apologized for not being able to talk. She made an odd whooping noise. It startled me into taking the phone off my ear and staring at it for an instant. Then I listened again, catching her midsentence. "...wonderful! I'll tell the kids more books are hatching."

Yes. Exactly. I am setting eggs.

Russett: a Twitter Novel, is updated almost daily:

http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/

((It's kind of amazing, I think, how well the little bursts work.))

An update, of all things

Here's the scoop.

Garden, mostly planted, weeds, mas o menos under control.

The second Faeries Promise book is mostly written--another week or so.

Sacred Scars needs a few more hours in response to the final copy edit and it's off to production.

Russet (see post below) is ongoing and absorbing. I usually write fast and furious, but this is totally without a net and I can't explain how great that feels. How real.

Free Rat is stalled, but it won't stay that way. The science is burgeoning. My premise becomes more and more probable.

STAYS is growing into a great book. Should have the first 60 or so pages together by month's end.

The Unicorn short story (currently titled The Third Virgin) is lined up for revision...is all marked up with notes from my amazing editors' astute comments.

What else. Oh, a new thing, at the talking stages with my oldest and dearest friend. We spent a couple hours Monday walking in long circles in my little town, talking into my dinky digicorder, laughing like loons, doing the writers'-speed-flash-concept-brain-party thing. We have a *great* idea.

Back to work.

Russet: It's a book, I am almost sure. A book in 140 character bites.

Russet:

Here's a catch-up, with the tweets in order. It's turning into a book. I expect it will take a year or so. It's a few tweets per day... when Russet feels safe enough to update me. Anyone wanting to get Russet's story from the beginning, in order, can start   HERE

reading the future

Elizabeth Delumba and others are writing about the future of books and reading today here

In 2007, Simon & Schuster asked me to write about why I had begun writing, to talk about books I had read, other influences—they wanted text they could use in a trifold hand-out for teachers and librarians. After a few days of turning out drafts lauding favorite teachers and naming novels and picture books that had inspired me, I suddenly remembered the real reason. And so I wrote this…

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Colorado, fourth grade, morning recess:
It was a clear-blue winter day with one of those buffeting prairie winds that flattens the wheat fields before it bashes into the Rocky Mountains. We were indoors, desks in a circle, listening to the windows rattle. Then Mrs. Fredericksen began to read a story. It was about small town kids.

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Usually, I closed my eyes, but that day I watched faces. One by one my classmates looked dreamy. Then, in unison, we were irritated at a mean city kid in the story. He had just moved in, and we were all angry when he stuffed snowballs down kids’ shirts and made up insulting nicknames.

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When he was invited to go sledding—and the kids he had picked on ditched him in the woods—we all smiled. He deserved it. But when they circled back to find him, they couldn’t. It was late afternoon in the story—night would bring bitter cold.
I glanced around the circle. The whole fourth grade looked worried.

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In the story, the kids ran for help. The sheriff didn’t scold them. He hit the volunteer fire siren. The kids sprinted for the grange hall to lead the volunteers. Hundreds of people came, wearing parkas and snow boots. They walked through the pine trees in lines, twenty feet between the searchers, all of them calling, going slow, looking into thickets and behind boulders.

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We were all leaning forward in our desks. What if the mean kid was hurt? What if they didn’t find him? But finally, in the deep dusk, the boy was found. And he was all right, just scared and cold. I sat back in my chair along with everyone else—relieved, still listening to the story as apologies were traded, and the cold, tired volunteers headed home.

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I slowly came back into myself, back into the classroom. We were all still a little breathless from running for help, being scared that a prank we had laughed at was going to turn into something terrible. And we were all proud of those kids and that little town—it was so much like our own.
And it suddenly seemed like magic to me, how a story could turn plain words into feelings. Anger, worry, fear, relief—everyone in the classroom had felt all of that and more. All at once, all of us.

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Then Mrs. Fredericksen told us a little about the author—and I was changed forever. I had never once wondered about the people who wrote the stories I loved. That night, listening to the wind, I lay awake thinking. People wrote books? The next day, I started writing. I have never stopped.

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There were three happy years in that three-room school house. It had been built almost a hundred years before the day Mrs. Fredericksen read the story about the bully. The building had been planted, red-brick solid, on the edge of what later became a wheat field on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. It was a piece of history. It still had a hitching rail. People had been fighting to close it for a decade or two before I went there, because it lacked modern teaching aids. My class was the last to use it. It is a museum now.

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The book that made me want to write was a book: Paper and ink and pasteboard. Remembering Mrs. Fredericksen’s wonderful, changeful, reading voice, her insistence that I write a story a week (no one else, just me), the smell of the classroom, the Colorado snowstorms—it was astonishing how clear all the memories around that small-town story were for me.

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I closed my eyes and I could see the book in Mrs. Fredericksen’s hands, the angel-wing double curve of the spine and deckled pages. And I suddenly realized I hadn’t read the story about the bully. I had absorbed it via the oldest story-delivery system of all: Voice.
I sat, staring at the text on the monitor before me, wondering if the delivery system mattered. I wrote my thoughts and kept typing, watching words pile up on a screen using technology I didn’t begin to understand.
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Everything is changing. Some of my books are becoming e-books. And while most of my work is with Simon and Schuster and Penguin Group, I will soon write a story for a small company with a commercial space on itunes—where the stories will be downloaded. I work with another small company producing traditional looking baby-animal storybooks that come with a DVD of wildlife footage narrated by a child actor reading a script I have written, extending the character the child has met in the storybook . In the sleeve with the DVD is a secret pass code that opens a website with reading–readiness games based on the animal and its habitat. It’s huge fun to see kids’ reaction to the various elements of the story.
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I am old enough to wish things would slow down a little—but I don’t wish that. I am excited by the possibilities and all the ways readers can get their stories. I’m on Face Book, MySpace, I keep a blog, and I am writing a twitter novel—a real story in 140 character bursts. It will take a year or more.
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This year is busy. I'm chest-deep in a collaboration that includes a visual voice along with the words—not illustration, voice. My fantasy trilogy has two protagonists, the stories going back and forth every other chapter—two hundred years between the stories. It’s a complex and interesting thing and I am enjoying the reactions of readers raised with the flickering alertness of screen culture. Whoohoo! The media are mixing. Haven't the separations always seemed artificial and limiting?

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I agree with others that bundling versions of the story—book, ebook, audiobook, and download and other methods yet to be discovered—is likely in the near future. The story-delivery system doesn’t seem to matter.
Stories can be serious, silly, erudite, stupid, inspiring, spooky, discomfiting, affirming, illustrated, designed, storyboarded, filmed, read on an e-reader, absorbed through earbuds, sung, recited by parrots, broadcast through a system of routers aimed at the skulls of future students who will take them in, whole, and glance at each other, ready to discuss.
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Every story-delivery method will enhance something and lose something. Each story will touch some so deeply they never come all the way back, leave some cold, make some think, convince others the author is nuts, or brilliant, cruel... And ten years later, many will find they have different opinions of the same work when they re-listen, re-beam, re-absorb, re-whatever the story. Just as they do now when they reread.

This isn’t new.
Artists are just being handed new tools.

YAY! Let the fun begin.
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PS:
I don’t have a Kindle. Yet.

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I travel a lot and I hate lugging books. I am acclimated to reading on screens. So I am considering it. The biggest drawback will be not buying books from my local stores. And by local, I mean independent.

We need to figure that one out, and maybe the bundling of story versions will work. I hope so.

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Having only McBooks’ franchises is a very bad idea. So are underfunded libraries. Narrowing choices will hurt literacy and America and the world and humanity. So as we all wallow happily in new ways to get our story on—we just need to make sure there are LOTS of stories available. Saving a little money short-term, even now, is not worth the risk of waking up to the morning the last independent bookstore closes its doors.

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Paris will get too crowded if we all have to move at once.

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Many more thoughts about about the future of reading will magically appear if you click here!

Russet and Twitter

Russet has been whispering in my ear for a long time. I have given him my twitter account. He is on his way to the beach now...not to have fun. To hide.

http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/

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Springmingle Tut-ness

There is nothing like a trip to a museum with a knowledgeable (and brilliant) friend-docent, hundreds of astounding Egyptian artifacts, canopic jars, statues--and the sudden ending of a sudden snow storm--to bring out the silly....