A quick note to let you know that if you'd like to read Wicked City many months early, you can drop by the magick4terri auction community and bid on a personalized copy. Also, you can browse through the many other amazing things on offer, all to help out Terri Windling. Terri's work has been a huge part of my life since I was thirteen, and I was recently lucky enough to participate in an anthology set in her Bordertown world, so I figured this was the least I could do.

So I just got ten advanced reading copies of Wicked City (sequel to Moonshine) and I'm wondering what I should do with them. Right now they are sitting around my kitchen, which is lovely when I get a drink of water, but not, I suspect, particularly useful. I was thinking of maybe some kind of giveaway? But I don't really know, and it's not like this LJ gets much traffic (I know, I know, because I never post). But if anyone out there happening to read this has some suggestions or pointers, they'd be much appreciated.

In other news (since I'm here), I have been working very hard on a completely new adult novel that's set in an imagined Tenochtitlan and surrounding area (equivalent to 200 years after the Conquest, if it had never happened). This thing is going to be a monstrous door-stopper, and I probably won't finish it for the next two years (mostly because of a contracted book that I can't announce yet that I have to write first). Anyway, the research is kicking my butt, in a good way, and it's really thrilling to be doing something completely different from my previous work.

And finally, I seem to have a thing for parentheses when I write blog posts. Good thing I don't write them very often!

I am so gutted over Troy Davis I hardly know what to say. I only heard of his case late, and I have absolutely no personal connection to it, but it so perfectly encapsulates the medieval, racist, morally stunted blood circus that is the death penalty in the US. No, I don't think my country is better than this. No, I don't think we've betrayed our ideals. I think my country has been pulling this bullshit for going on a goddamned third century and I am not okay with that. I have always loathed the death penalty, but if it's possible to loathe it more, well, there you go.

The best thing that could come of this is a country-wide consciousness raising, where perhaps people finally meaningfully ask what moral logic allows them to murder another human being for anything less than immediate self-defense. Revenge is not a reason. Deterrence is laughable. It is a racist institution, a modern-day form of lynching that allows the ones who advocate it to feel morally superior even while indulging in the most immoral of actions.

This article is particularly relevant, discussing the racial aspects of how the death penalty is carried out in the United States (it's a decade old, but still damming).

This bit struck me as so bleakly relevant (Troy Davis was sentenced in '91; his Georgian prosecutor expressed embarrassment that the execution had taken so long):

University of Iowa law professor David Baldus found that during the 1980s prosecutors in Georgia sought the death penalty for 70 % of black defendants with white victims, but for only 15% of white defendants with black victims.

Prosecutors have unfettered discretion in deciding which cases become capital cases, seeking the death penalty in approximately 1 percent of all capital eligible cases. Notably among the 38 states that allow the death penalty, approximately 98% of the prosecutors are white.

But it's all about justice, right? It's just about the case, isn't it? Race and class have nothing to do with it, huh?

I want to curse a lot more than I have, but let me just say this once more, with profanity: abolish the fucking death penalty.

It takes a lot to make me overcome my inertia and actually make a blog post, internets, but that time has come.

So, you might not have heard the YA blogosphere blow up yesterday, but it did! Here are good summaries:

cleolinda makes an excellent and well-reasoned overview of the situation, complete with many links to the major players that you should follow

oyceter offers very good thoughts about where any effort at change has to start (try: everywhere)

( cut for long essay )

So, you know how sometimes your heroine will fall in love with a cad? A hustler, a deadbeat, a no-good, low-down playa? And you know how betrayed she feels when she finds out what we, the long-suffering audience, have known since episode/chapter two? She has several choices of how to behave, but generally, the reaction falls into two categories:

( Take it from Dolly Parton? )

Hello friends! Yes, I know this is one of those rare-as-unicorns posts of mine, but I have something exciting to share! First, Moonshine officially has a sequel, which is called Wicked City. It will be out in April, and I have just gotten the official cover and permission to share it with you from the publisher. I am SO EXCITED about this one, I can't even tell you. It is actually coming out as a hardcover this time (gulp). Here's the pre-order listing on Amazon--a kindle edition will be forthcoming, I'm sure. And here's the cover!

Maybe it's just me, but when mainstream, popular jerkwads like Scott Adams go off about what a shame it is that men have to suppress their "natural" urges to, uh, RAPE WOMEN, because really, the victims here are the round pegs of men who are forced to conform to the horrifying square holes of women (ya know, I hadn't realized that aspect of my anatomy)...

Is it not just a little, teensy bit terrifying?

How can someone get up in public and say, without apparent irony, that men are naturally programmed to rape? I mean, to forcibly project their penis into the orifice(s) of an unwilling partner, and that such urges are nearly uncontrollable without chemical castration? I know that this isn't true, but the ability of men like Scott Adams to say shit like this and then for hordes of other men to SYMPATHIZE with him makes me feel just a little less safe than I did an hour ago.

Even if I concede the premise that men are naturally hornier than women (a doubtful conjecture that seems implicit in his screed), I don't see how you get from that to, therefore rape is natural and its illegality causes depression and lack of fulfillment in males. Here's a novel idea: How about you express your inner horn-dog with lots of sex with willing partners? Even if you can't find one partner to satisfy all of your (consensual) sexual urges, you can find many who are all okay with the idea of multiple partners. It's not that hard. Try Craigslist. Don't rape.

But honestly? I just have to shake my head and hope that I'm never alone in a room with Scott Adams.

___________

In other (far more pleasant) news, I have two new short stories currently wild and free on the internet:

1) "A Prince of Thirteen Days" in Fantasy Magazine. This is a concurrent reprint of my story in the amazing Welcome to Bordertown anthology, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner. This is my first Bordertown story, and it was a privilege to get to write in that magical, wild place, and hopefully put my own spin on things. A hint about that spin: there are biscuits.

2) "Their Changing Bodies" in Subterranean Magazine, part of Gwenda Bond's amazing YA issue. This story is...odd. I don't want to spoil it, but it involves teenagers and bodily fluids and coupling and supernatural happenings at summer camp. If you attended my reading at World Fantasy in Columbus last year, you heard the first half of this.

This is my first time ever doing this, so I'll keep it short.

Nominating for the Hugos ends this Saturday. If you were a member of Aussiecon or this year's Worldcon, you are eligible to vote. You can purchase an associate membership for this year's Worldcon and also be eligible to vote. Should you be eligible to vote, you might wish to consider my two pieces from last year:

1) My novel Moonshine

2) My short story "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (included in the wonderful Zombies vs. Unicorns anthology)

If you would like a copy of either of these things, send me a PM, comment here or email me (utsusemia at gmail dot com) and I will send it to you. It would be best if you are actually eligible to vote if you ask me for these things, but I won't police anyone about it.

Thank you!

(I'm doing an experiment with posting my thoughts. Apologies if this gets as tedious as I'm afraid it might.)

The thing is, I'm trying to finish a novel. It's been a fairly tough slog for the last few months; surprisingly so, in some ways, because I really enjoy this book and its characters. On the other hand I wrote two novels between the first Moonshine and this sequel, and I feel like that sort of thing can really put off your writerly mojo.

Which brings me to the putative topic: where I do it. On the bed, on the couch, on the kitchen table, ha ha, I know. Often, in coffee shops. Mostly by myself. I have trouble writing in groups, though it's a popular activity here in the big apple since we have such a glut of writers. My trouble is that I talk too much, so everyone benefits when I stay home. I don't have a writers desk. I do technically, but I only occasionally write there. I've discovered that I'm not one of those people who can write in a single place. Even if I'm staying in my apartment, I'll move to every possible writing space every few hours. Part of this is because I'm so procrastination-prone that I hope that I can shake off the doldrums by changing pace. Sometimes this works. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I've written nearly-ten novels, because I begin to seriously doubt my ability to do anything at all.

Lately, I've gotten a great deal done late at night, in the dark, in my bed. Sometimes I wonder if it's because on my very bad procrastination days,  exhaustion is the only thing that can make me focus. Again, I like coffee shops, but they're unfortunately very spotty in their writer-friendliness. Every "perfect" coffee shop has issues. The one around the corner from me has good coffee or bad coffee depending on who prepares it. Sometimes the music is relatively mild at mid-volume. Sometimes it's blaring. On a good day in a coffee shop, I can focus and get more work done in a shorter period of time than I can at home. But on a bad day, I'll call it quits after four hours with a hole in my wallet and just a hundred words to show for it.

Right now, for example, I'm sitting in my bed with my second pot of green tea, writing this blog post (a blog post!) instead of finishing my novel. Which is due I don't even want to say when.

Time to write, huh?

Yes, I know this LJ is woefully under-updated. Yes, lots and lots of things have been going on in my life of late, but I have a very difficult time figuring out how to write about them. Perhaps a list?

-- I finished a half marathon yesterday! My goal was just to finish, since I didn't think I was in good enough shape, but actually I ended up running the whole way and finished in 2:34, which blew past all my wildest dreams of possible achievement. The marathon was in Niagara Falls, and went right past the falls at the finish line. It was gorgeous, I discovered that running is much easier with fluids (duh!) and I think I want to do another! I blame my boyfriend for getting me into this. My family can't believe it.

Today, however, I am more sore than I have been in a decade. At least. I think the last time might have been after my Tae Kwon Do black belt test.

-- I finished my YA science fiction novel set in Bahia, Brazil 400 years in the future. I kind of love this book and here's hoping it finds a good home. Given some other news I can't quite disclose yet (contract stuff), I am cautiously optimistic that it will!

-- I am late late late on the sequel to Moonshine, but thankfully I have found my muse again (and fixed the plot) and I'm on pace to finish by the end of this year. Which means a Winter 2012 pub date, unfortunately. But what can you do?

-- I moved to Brooklyn! I love the place, though first we had to eradicate cockroaches and the other day we saw a mouse (sigh). I'm honestly a little worried about the mouse because the thought of killing it makes me sick to my stomach, but I don't want it rooting around my bedroom either! The perils of living in a 1920s era apartment building, I suppose.

AND, finally, the purpose of this haphazard, drive-by update:

I'm reading tomorrow! It will be a pretty awesome event, if I may say so myself, being a theme of African American writers of vampire fiction (me, Linda Addison, Terence Taylor and L.A. Banks). Titled, even more awesomely: Beyond Blacula. Deets are here, but basically it's at the Soho Gallery of Digital Art at 6:30 tomorrow. If you're in town and free, it should be fun!