open vein, write story

Wicked City book day

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:01:18 GMT

Well, Zephyr has landed. With any luck she’ll be at a bookstore near you (though if that bookstore is a Barnes & Noble, that will be the MAINSTREAM section, NOT Fantasy/SF—and god, don’t ask me why, the story is too long for the telling).

I am very happy to have this book finally released in the wild. I love the cover and hope that it might entice a few more people to read about my supernatural filled, “Other” Lower East Side. This book has a lot more of Gentleman Jimmy Walker, with some extreme liberties taken (It’s a supernatural New York!) It has some scenes that I’m very proud of, just because I think it’s hard to write humor, and that kind of old-school, droll quasi-British rompery is some of my favorite stuff. Hopefully a few of you will find this about as quarter as amusing as I did (being amused at my own books is one of my greatest sins).

Anyway, even if you can’t buy or read the book right now, I’d appreciate any signal boost for this that you can spare. And if you’ve read it, and have the time, please leave a review on one or a couple of the big retailer sites. It’s always a huge help!

OTHER THINGS I HAVE BEEN DOING:

There is a FREE Zephyr Hollis short story up right now on Tor.com. I am extra lucky because it got its own beautiful illustration by Jonathan Bartlett, which is marvelously moody and very twenties. It's called "The Inconstant Moon" and is a prequel story about how Zephyr first came to New York and started to rethink what she'd always been taught by her demon-hunting daddy. As this is free, it's a great thing to send to someone who might be interested in the books but wouldn't jump into the more expensive novels.

AND, potentially even better, I wrote a long essay for Heroes and Heartbreakers about one of my favorite book couples of all time: Vicky and John from Elizabeth Peters' Vicky Bliss series. I ended up re-reading all of the books, flagging my favorite sections and then painstakingly organizing my thoughts into a multi-thousand word essay featuring many quotes and even something vaguely resembling a thesis statement. I spent about ten hours writing it (after the re-read) and then had strange, fevered anxiety dreams about having to finish an essay for a class the next day. Hmmm....

I think there's a couple other guest bloggy things going up in the next few days. Perhaps I will pop in here and link you to them, since otherwise me and the blog content are not very good friends.

In even more other news, some potentially cool things are developing on THE SUMMER PRINCE front, which I will announce as soon as I can. And I'm working working on a new YA novel that makes me very happy, though it is a little tricksy. Like all the best novels, of course :)

Amazon/B&N/Powells

Do you want to win an advanced copy of Wicked City?

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:52:58 GMT

The situation:

I have four copies of the ARC of Wicked City, the sequel to Moonshine that is being officially released on April 10. They are doing me no good on my bookshelf, but I have been procrastinating in the difficult work of, uh, giving them away.

Know nothing about Moonshine? Reviews and an excerpt here. Curious about Wicked City? PW review and the first two chapters here.

The Solution:

I have four books, and I am attempting to use four different social media platforms. So I will use them in a (hopefully successful) experiment. Each media platform will give away one book. So, on Tumblr, reblog this post and I will put your name into a (virtual) hat. On Twitter, retweet it. On Facebook, comment/post to your own wall about it (liking is good, but won't get your name in the hat). And finally, on my home base, dear old Livejournal, you can comment on the post and/or write something on your own LJ (or Dreamwidth!) and link back to me. If you are on more than one social media platform, you can get your name in as many "hats" as you desire. If by some strange coincidence the same person gets drawn out of more than one "hat," I will arbitrarily re-draw for one of them, so that the books go to four different people.

The Wrinkle:

I really have no idea how many people have read Moonshine, or are really keen on reading the sequel, but just in case there are people out there who are REALLY EXCITED, as opposed to just curious, I offer you a bonus. In your reblog/retweet/facebook comment/LJ post, if you ALSO list a food or drink that Zephyr enjoyed in the first book, you will get your name put into the hat twice. I figure you'll only know that if you read the book, and that way you double your chances of getting a copy. Again, this goes for each "hat" separately. Yes, I know you can game this system; no, I won't stop you.

The Details:

My twitter is @alayadj, my Tumblr is alayadawnjohnson.tumblr.com, my Facebook page is Alaya Dawn Johnson, my LJ is here. You have from today (Monday, 3/12/12) until midnight EST on Friday 3/16/12 to get your name in the drawing.

The Winners:

I will contact you via whatever platform on which you won, and we will work out the shipping. I humbly request that all entries live in the US or Canada (or be willing to Paypal me a couple of dollars to help with shipping fees to their country). If I don't hear back from a winner after three days, I'll draw from the hat again.

The Fallout:

You are in no way obligated to review the book by winning this contest, but of course I would be thrilled if you do.

Good luck!

ETA: You can tweet at me about the giveaway as many times as you want, it doesn't have to be a strict RT. And since there's space constraints over there, it's no problem for the food to be separate from the rest. (Of course, no matter how many times you tweet, you'll only get 2 entries in the hat, but don't worry about cramming everything in one tweet).

The Summer Prince

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:06:12 GMT

It can finally be told…my YA debut is coming out next spring from Arthur Levine/Scholastic, and I am so excited!

You can read the announcement on PW’s Children’s Bookshelf (scroll down). Here’s the description, though:

Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince. Set in a utopian city in a futuristic Brazil, it’s a coming-of-age story about a rebellious young artist and her unlikely friendship with the city’s “summer king,” who is destined to be sacrificed after one year of rule, as they spark a revolution that threatens to overturn the city. Publication is set for spring 2013.

The Summer Prince is an odd book, which I wrote when I should have been doing other things. But the idea and the characters invaded my brain like a virus, and I basically had to write the book or suffer forever.

That probably doesn’t sound like an awesome time, but for me this is a very good sign that I’m onto something. So my life felt like it was kind of falling apart around me, but I had a book idea, and I had some Amtrak points. I decided to pack a bag and head off to the other coast and hopefully find inspiration and many, many words, in order to placate the story-virus.

There are few things on earth more conducive to story telling and story finding than riding a train across three thousand miles of America in coach. In New York I can feel like I’m at the center of the world, but in many ways I’m in a bubble. I met people on that train I never would have crossed paths with otherwise: a former urban pot farmer who gave it all up to meditate in Minot, North Dakota; a middle aged Montanan widow who played video bridge and wondered about the strange things I was furiously typing beside her; a gaunt, determined man in his forties, telling about his granddaughter who nearly died of Leukemia. I was astonished at how readily these strangers shared their stories, but in the end, it made sense: we were together for days, packed together by whatever strange circumstances had led us to take a cross-country journey by train in the first place. The narrow world of coach felt like a place out of time, where you could find a sympathetic ear and feel a little less alone. And we all traveled alone, for reasons that might get slowly shared as the sun went down over strange and unknown landscapes.

I talked, but mostly I wrote. I sat in the viewing car, with its high, long, windows, and watched the country slide past. Pink salt flats, rotating sentinels of wind farms, parched grass on flat lands, stretching for miles around us without even sight of a road. I wondered what it would be like to live in a place where a horse was still a viable method of transportation. My eyes saw the American west, but in my head I saw Brazil, my imagined city of Palmares Tres. In my present I took a train, but in my future my characters sprinted around their vertical world of shuttle pods and aerial plazas. It didn’t feel like a contradiction to me: both worlds rattled in and out of my imagination with ease, filling me with wonder and the quiet happiness of having done the hard thing, which turns out to be the best thing.

I spent two weeks by myself in Vancouver, walking around the city, watching plays, drinking amazing coffee. I wrote until I was out of my head with it, but eventually I had to acknowledge that my frenzied plans of just getting this novel out in a three week burst of creativity were impossible. My life—and my deadlines—were going to have to change again. I used the last of my Amtrak points and headed down the coast to LA— back to friends and responsibilities and delicious baked goods. I flew back home, and I wrote, and I started to feel like I had patched my life together just a bit. Just enough for a novel I shouldn’t be writing; a story I had to tell.

new things

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:01:14 GMT

Hello, world! Happy new year? Yeah, I know, this livejournal has been gathering dustbunnies lately. So of course I started a Tumblr yesterday, since what my life needs is more social media platforms I never update! Yeah! Hmmm...the idea is that Tumblr might be a little easier for me to update regularly, since I won't feel like I have to, you know, write things. But of course the first thing I ended up posting was a long essay. Whatever, life, it is weird. But since I wrote it there, I will repost it here, in case anyone is strange and is interested. Also, consider this a PSA to follow me on Tumblr if you have one, and that way I will be able to find cool people I wish to follow as well. Oh, and I discovered recently that there are people who have actually and literally drawn fanart for my books and that really needs some celebration--and a forum where I can easily repost them :)

I ought to update this LJ a little more often this month, anyway, since Wicked City is coming out on April 10, which clearly necessitates something that might vaguely resemble promotion. Or at least a method of getting rid of the ARCs I currently have sitting on my bookshelf. I'm thinking a contest revolving around drinks/food Zephyr had in the first book. This means that if you are one of the two dozen people who read Moonshine, your chances are very good for having me mail you a signed ARC! Excited? Heh.

Anyway, welcome to my Tumblr, and here is the story of the very first Altered Fluid retreat to Woodstock, wherein your heroine drives a pinto in a snowstorm up a mountain:

I just came back from a retreat with my writers group, Altered Fluid. We cooked up a storm, talked to chickens, drank a lot of beer and, when we found time for it, wrote. (It is possible that everyone else wrote more than I did). This was the fifth annual retreat, and I couldn’t help thinking back over all the others. Joining Altered Fluid was one of the big events in my life, though I don’t think I realized it at the time. The first Altered Fluid retreat happened when I had just joined and was determined that we should all do something fun together. I wanted to visit Woodstock, since I’d loved visiting the town in the summer, and so I found a place and booked it. The day arrived, with a forecast of a foot of snow. But it wasn’t snowing yet, and goddamn it, I was going to my goddamn retreat! So I went ahead to the rental car place, with vague notions of just “buying some tire chains” if the snow got really bad. As I have since learned is standard practice, the rental car place had shown a picture of a perfectly reasonable compact car, but when I checked in, they dragged the smallest, saddest, oldest car out of the lot. The rental guy looked at me, looked at the car, looked pointedly at the just-starting snow, and asked if I’d like to get an upgrade to a four-wheel drive. Well, how much was the four-wheel drive? Rental Guy gave me a beatific smile, sure in his victory, and said an extra seventy dollars a day.

I took the pinto.

(Okay, maybe it didn’t look quite that bad, but it was a near thing.)

You can imagine the delight of my writer friends when I chugged up to their apartments in that thing. Why didn’t I get the upgrade, they asked? I ranted at them about car rental fraud and oily sales guys until they sighed and squished their luggage in the back. And we were off! There were supposed to be seven of us meeting at the house in Woodstock, but the passengers of car #2 had decided to be smart and wait out the storm and come up the next day. At first, things looked fine. But then the storm hit. And I got a little lost on the kind of narrow, winding mountain highway that’s tricky to drive even on a clear day. Oh, and did I mention that I’ve never actually owned a car and the longest period of sustained driving time I’ve had in my life is the summer of my freshman year in college? But No Matter! I have Courage! Determination! A tiny car with bald tires and a broken heater driving in a whiteout so thick my only hope of making off the highway alive is to tail behind a truck and pray that it can see better than I can! Awesome!

We survive the highway. Of course we do—I’m a brilliant driver. Or, you know, lucky. By the time we make it to the actual town of Woodstock, there’s at least a foot of snow on the ground. We are sliding over the tarmac like we get points if we hit the net. It turns out the rental house is up a mountain. Of course it is. A goddamn mountain, in a goddamn foot of snow, in a goddamn pinto bulging with luggage.

We try, that’s all I can say. I get halfway up the mountain before the little-car-that-could-barely gives a plaintive cry and refuses to do any more. The slope is too steep, the snow hard-packed and icy. So three of us get out of the car while the fourth gets behind the wheel. We push, trying to get the car to a place with better traction, never once wondering what would happen if the car lost its precarious grip on the road and slides back down over us. Oh, my salad days of youth.

(Salad days)

I fondly recall the sight of two of my friends bravely ascending the mountain on foot, hardly disturbing the hush of blanketing snow, with only a frail book light to guide them. Then the trees swallow even that sight and I wait for a minute or two before they come sliding back down the hill, informing me that we had better go back down. So it falls to me to back this sad little car back down the hill, since I can’t find a place to turn around. Too bad they didn’t cover backing cars down winding mountain roads covered in ice in the dark back in driving school.

Finally, one of us has a brilliant idea. We drive to the local bar, at the base of the mountain. I park and walk inside, hoping to ask someone for help. Unfortunately, this will have to be help of a non motor-vehicle variety, because everyone is fucking sloshed. A guy at the bar tells us, very earnestly, to call the Woodstock taxi. He starts rattling off a number, but halfway through the woman drinking next to him objects.

“That’s my number!” she says.

Drunk guy pauses. “Oh, yeah. I guess so.”

Okay, drunk people are a bad idea. On the other hand, this is the only bar in town. Clever little writers that we are, we park right outside the entrance and lie in wait, stranded travelers, out to snare unsuspecting sober pickup drivers on their way to getting sloshed. It works! We load our bags into the back of his pickup, squeeze ourselves into the front, and up we go, tearing up the icy roads that had stymied us for an hour in about three minutes. The guy tells us about an ex of his who lived up this road. We nod earnestly, yes, ex-girlfriends who live up mountain roads, we have much sympathy.

The house is gorgeous. A picture-book perfect stone castle with an aerie and a tower room. The beds are monstrous, the linens high thread count, the well water pure enough to wish on. We savor the victory of our first night by jumping on the mattresses and talking late into the night. A writer pajama party, with the snow still falling outside, and our little car parked at the bottom of the mountain.

How will we get down this thing without a car? Who cares, let’s drink, let’s talk, let’s write.

Wicked City arc up for auction

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:57:03 GMT

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.

What to do with ARCs?

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:34:06 GMT

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!

abolish the [expletive] death penalty

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 04:09:33 GMT

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.

Gay YA: a question of intent

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:28:56 GMT

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)

I want to make a few points, because I think some aspects of this are getting drowned out. This is what Brown and Smith say happened to them in their original article:

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.

Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.”

The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series.

This is how the agent describes the exchange (an exchange, I might add, to which she was very ambiguously involved, since she wasn't the actual agent in question offering representation, but a colleague of hers):

The first bit of editorial feedback we gave was that they change the book from YA to middle grade, which would mean cutting most of the romance entirely (for both the straight and gay characters). The book included five character points-of-view (POVs). Our second bit of editorial feedback was that at least two POVs, possibly three, needed to be cut. Did one of these POVs include the gay character in question? Yes. Is it because he was gay? No. It’s because we felt there were too many POVs that didn’t contribute to the actual plot. We did not ask that any of these characters be cut from the book entirely. Let us repeat that, we did not ask that any of the characters in the book –gay or straight—be cut from the book. Also, we never asked that the authors change any LGBTQ character to a straight character.

We suggested this editorial feedback, because it’s our job, the initial step of the ongoing author/agent dynamic.

So, the agent starts her rebuttal categorically stating that "there is nothing in that article concerning our response to their manuscript that is true" and ends with a long description of the process that boils down to:

We told them to take out the gay character's POV and remove references to his sexuality [FOR REASONS THAT ARE ONLY ABOUT THE STORY AND MARKETING CONCERNS, OF COURSE]

As my mother would say, "They went in like gangbusters, and came out like we the people."

The rebuttal is a masterpiece of misdirection and subtle cues, pointing people away from the heart of this issue (a heart that Brown and Smith cogently addressed in their original piece).

Number one, Brown and Smith never accused the agency of asking them to cut the character from the book. According to them, the agency wanted them to "make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation." So when the agency makes the repeated, pointed denial "We did not ask that any of these characters be cut from the book entirely. Let us repeat that, we did not ask that any of the characters in the book –gay or straight—be cut from the book," it is meant to imply--falsely--that Brown and Smith had accused them of doing that.

But they didn't! They reported that the agency told them to remove his POV. Which, whatever the justification, no one denies. They also said the agency told them to remove references to his sexuality. Does the agency deny that? Well, no, actually: "cutting most of the romance entirely (for both the straight and gay characters)." What they offer, it turns out, are not actually denials, not actually anything that justifies that categorical statement up front "It isn't true." What they offer instead are justifications. They offer editorial and marketing based reasons that just so happen to neatly dovetail with an undeniable fact of YA publishing.

As Malinda Lo very helpfully compiled this week, queer YA comprises LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of current YA novels. I am sure this number is even more abysmal in the subgenre of SF/F, which is what Smith and Brown write.

So, to recap, Smith and Brown say a prospective agent called them up with editorial feedback, informed them that, among other editorial issues, they wished the gay character to not be a POV and to not have any references to his romantic life in the text (which would mean in effect removing his sexual orientation from the text). Smith and Brown don't give the stated reasons for this. Presumably, I feel, because they were not very relevant to the larger discussion that they wanted to have. Which is:

Systemic issues in publishing, not necessarily due to overt or even subtle homophobia on the part of any one person, still at every level of the process prevent YA with queer main and secondary characters from being published, and being supported when published.

For those who doubt this is true, for those who think that YA is one of the most queer-friendly genres, and there's no problems at all getting it represented, published and supported when published, look at those pie charts Malindo Lo put together and tell me if you think 0.6% is an even vaguely defensible number. Tell me if you think that such paltry representation (and she included secondary, non POV characters in her tally) really indicates an industry dealing healthfully with sexual diversity. Tell me if you really can sustain the illusion that it's all about the readers or just about marketability.

(And as a disclaimer, it's probably a lot better in YA than it is in romance, for example, or other genres, but relative difference doesn't make the situation here awesome.)

The probable objection to the foregoing is that the justifications matter because it de-emphasizes the remove-the-gay aspects of the critique if they were also asked to remove-the-straight. But that, I think, combines a certain element of naivite with a dollop of why does it matter? Because it's not like there's some dearth of straight people in YA. And Smith and Brown say they explicitly objected on the basis of the effect these changes would have on the queer character. Stampfel-Volpe's reply relays nothing of what Brown and Smith said about these changes, and that's probably because what they said has a strong resemblance to their report in PW. And if we want to get into details, then: why would MG mean removing all references to the gay character's sexual orientation? Not a crush? Not a hand-hold? If there are too many POVs, and the authors like the gay character's, why not suggest removing one of the straight character's POVs instead and thus giving the gay POV more plot to move (the stated objection to his POV)? My point is that in the rebuttal, Stampfel-Volpe displays a willful ignorance of the real life effects of editorial notes that result in the marginalization of a gay main character, even if that was not their intent. She fails to realize that in a case of systemic prejudice intent doesn't matter, especially not in a rebuttal to a piece that explicitly pointed this out.

The one overt contradiction in the accounts of Smith and Brown and Stampfel-Volpe is the issue of just flat-out "mak[ing] the gay character straight." That is actually a he said/she said, and I guess in this instance it might be useful to think of the rest of the context. First, I repeat that the agent writing this account and rebuttal was not, in fact, the agent suggesting changes. They are colleagues. It is not explicitly addressed how Stampfel-Volpe was involved in these discussions, but there's a reference to a speaker phone. We don't know if she was actually sitting down with the manuscript with her colleague and going through these points, or if she was overhearing the conversation from down the hall. I think it is telling that Stampfel-Volpe does not make her role in this explicit, and relays a conversation her colleague must have been primarily engaged in as if it was one she had herself (many people had that misreading of her piece).

So it is then quite plausible that making the character straight this was mentioned as a possibility of overcoming the Middle Grade-friendly issues, and Stampfel-Volpe wasn't involved enough to remember. It's also plausible that Smith and Brown interpreted the repeated statements of the need to remove the gay POV and removing overt references to his sexuality as a de-facto straightening, but the agents themselves didn't see it that way.

Either way, I think you can grant that given the rest of the context, this is some serious hair-splitting, and you could easily concede that Smith and Brown were never told to "make the gay character straight" and still come away with the idea that this was a deeply reactionary stance for the agency to take.

It's telling that the agent never directly addresses what is probably the crux of Smith and Brown's account of the conversation: "The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series." Well, did this happen? She categorically denies everything, but as we see, that categorical denial gets a little fuzzy in the details. So to the original agent: did you suggest this? Stampfel-Volpe doesn't say either way.

It is also telling that the post focuses on Smith and Brown's credibility and the implication that they have manufactured a controversy (or a hoax!) to bolster their own careers at the expense of an agency that they took great pains to never identify. From Stampfel-Volpe's reply:

One of our agents is being used as a springboard for these authors to gain attention for their project. She is being exploited. But even worse, by basing their entire article on untruths, these authors have exploited the topic. By doing that, they’ve chipped away at the validity of the resulting conversation.

Given that this is a response to a post that never identified the agency, and spent all of three paragraphs discussing them explicitly, I feel that this is needlessly personal and dismissing. It also leads into this:

So let’s continue this conversation, and let’s base it on the truth, which is:

There are not enough mainstream books that depict characters of diverse race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and physical and/or mental disabilities.

Changing this starts with the readers. Scott Tracy has a great post about this on his blog. If more people buy books with these elements, then publishers will want to publish more of them. Sounds simple…yet, it’s not so simple.

Right there, we have our giant derail. Smith and Brown's post focused, quite explicitly, on things everyone could do to help the problem, starting, yes, with consumers buying the (0.6% of) books, but also focusing on what agents and publishers can do to solve the problem. And I think we need to go farther: agents and publishers have no business discussing this issue by fobbing the responsibility back onto readers, the people in this equation who have the least amount of power to change things. The publishers have the most. They're the ones with the money that makes the system run. Even more importantly, they're the ones who choose what to market with their dollars, and that, in turn, has a monstrous effect on a book's penetration among the plebes like us who just buy the things. Beware when a person at the high end of the power dynamic see-saw tells the person below them that they have to "start the change." Beware white people telling black folk that all they have to do is give their babies sensible names and learn to speak properly and they'll be invited into the riches of equality. Beware the IMF telling poor third world countries that all they have to do is privatize their water supply. Beware BP telling poor Americans that all they have to do is wear sweaters and use energy efficient light bulbs. And beware agents and editors implicitly rejecting the idea that their greater power gives them greater responsibility to address these issues about which they claim to care.

Should readers who care about this issue try to buy more of these books? Yes! But the buck just doesn't stop here, and it strikes me as possibly the most disingenuous aspect of a disingenuous defense for her to imply, by removing those important aspects of the original call, that it does.

Narrative Pet Peeve

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:51:29 GMT

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:

[Sister Cantrell preaches: "Spend until the last dime for all the hard times...Because revenge is better than love."]

or

[Sister Parton begs: "Please don't take him just because you can!"]

You know, I can't fully endorse maxing out your cheating boyfriend's credit cards, but it sure as hell beats begging the lady he's sleeping with to take pity on you.

Seriously, it is astonishing how much modern TV and fiction still has its heroines doing the Dolly Parton two-step instead of picking up their shit and telling the man to get out. How hard can this be? It isn't like your man cheated by accident. And yet, over and over, heroines are far more likely to blame and confront the women involved in an affair than their own significant other. I was just watching a television show I otherwise really enjoy, with an incredibly strong female lead (lady doctor in late Victorian London). I was honestly shocked when the huge cathartic confrontation scene involved her cad's new wife. And the cad? Oh, she doesn't blame him. It was her fault for being too distracted by doctoring.

[redacted]

Sorry, that was me screeching.

So, the next time you find yourself writing a juicy sexual drama, with betrayals and recriminations and the jagged remains of hearts littering the pavement, keep this in mind: the "Jolene" scenario is condescending and degrading to women. This is true even if she's gone over there to beat Jolene up, not beg her. It's infantilizing to always have women engage other women in antagonistic ways over their male partner's sexual peccadilloes, as though the central issue isn't the betrayal of the original partner by her significant other. The Other Woman is, at best, marginally involved. Leave her that way, and let your heroine vent her anger on the asshole that done her wrong.

Pretty Cover!

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:22:46 GMT

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!

I don't have a publisher's blurb, but this book involves more djinni antics, a huge political fight over the "vampire liquor" and our intrepid heroine finding herself on the wrong end of a police investigation. So...I'll just post a decent blurb when the publisher sends me one, how about that? :) I am planning to write a novella this fall, which is loosely supposed to be Zephyr's "origin story." I'm going to use it as an either free or very cheap ebook teaser, so if you already like this series, hopefully that's something to look forward to. But I'll post more about that when I'm closer to having it finished.

I also have some other awesome news I will hopefully be able to announce soon. In the meantime, I had a great time at Readercon this year. I met some very interesting people, had conversations about subjects dear to my heart (Mexico! Urban design! The gentrification of DC!) and learned a few things that I think will be very helpful to me in my writing. I came away furiously thinking up story ideas, which is a good way to leave any convention.

Ain't nothin' but a hound dog

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:32:14 GMT

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.

Hugo Voting For Your Consideration

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:05:33 GMT

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!

where I write

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:35:38 GMT

(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?

Reading tomorrow

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:13:32 GMT

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!

Zombies vs Unicorns: the debate!

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:59:25 GMT

Should have mentioned this earlier, but I will do so now! I'm at the beach at the moment, scrambling like mad (read: lying on the beach and pondering the lifestyle of seagulls) to come up with arguments for this event I'm doing in NYC tomorrow...

Thalia Kids' Book Club: Zombies vs. Unicorns

Thu, Sep 23 at 6 pm
Leonard Nimoy Thalia
$15; Members $12

Even though I wrote a story for Team Zombie in the book, I've been recruited as a turncoat for this debate, so, along with the fabulous Holly Black and Naomi Novik, I will be debating Maureen Johnson, Libba Bray and Justine Larbalestier.

Yes, if Team Unicorn wins, I think it might be despite a certain sun-kissed zombie writer ;)

But come if you can! I need a few people in the audience who will laugh at Very Bad Jokes.

Full listing here.

Review in Locus

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:40:40 GMT

Because writing has been hard lately and I really needed some cheering up, I will share with all of you this truly amazing review Faren Miller just did of Racing the Dark and The Burning City in the August issue of Locus. Here's some excerpts, with a pre-emptive squee!!!!

Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Racing the Dark (opener of the Spirit Binders trilogy) would certainly have made my recommended list for best first novels, if I’d seen it when it came out in 2008. At least I can say something about it now, because it sets the stage for new sequel The Burning City.

...

The writing is eloquent and unflinchingly vivid, enough to retain a reader’s interest even amid this labyrinthine state of affairs, while the culture and its forms of magic are sufficiently offbeat (not European-medieval) to lift the book well above all those generic fantasies of youngsters coming into their Powers.

What may be most traditional about this trilogy is the mood change in book two: rapidly increasing darkness, as adversity becomes something far worse. Ever since Lana struck a bargain of her own to save her mother’s life, she’s been trailed by an avatar of Death – a creature who develops its own personality over the course of The Burning City. A confrontation with Wind, the one spirit that has already escaped its bonds, has transformed her into a strange winged hybrid known as a ‘‘black angel.’’ Though she and another hybrid (something like the son of Water) have fallen in love, their brief moments of bliss can’t last long. And the great city introduced in volume one suffers from its own horrors. Ravaged by a volcano when Fire nearly broke free as well, it now comes under the rule of a psychopath.

Johnson finds ways to bring us close to everyone – human or otherwise; good, bad, or somewhere in-between – as she works outward from the original circle of Lana’s family and acquaintances to their friends, enemies, and lovers, plus a few unrelated characters who strive to hold together an increasingly threatened world. She uses the same straightforward, informal style – peppered with modern slang – for a ‘‘novel within a novel,’’ the Black Book, even though it’s set a millennium in the past, at a time when the notion of spirit binding was new.

Here too, we get up-close and personal with young people struggling to find their way in unfamiliar environments. I would have liked at least a smidgen of the archaic in these episodes, to differentiate present from distant past, but The Burning City is more interested in the connections. Whatever the era, life is a continuum of personality and experience – the Eternal Now of some philosophers, or the ceaseless intimacy that drives so much YA? More likely the latter, yet at this midpoint the Spirit Binders trilogy has a style all its own: unflinching, sophisticated, imaginative enough to please (and jolt and challenge) even jaded adults. We’ll just have to wait for volume three to see how it all comes out.

1995-2010

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:29:37 GMT

My sister wanted to call him Pepper, but when my father and I had to fill out the forms for his first trip to the vet, we agreed: it had to be Atanie. We justified our high-handedness with the thought that she would thank us later for not giving him such a silly, generic name (especially to a wheaten terrier). For years afterward, Lauren would guilt us for changing the name of her dog behind her back. We asked her if she actually still preferred Pepper. No, she'd admit, but it was still a lousy thing to do to a ten-year-old with her first pet.

Atanie was rail-thin all his life, though he loved food. His dog bowl always stayed full; he subsisted on human leftovers: grated cheese dropped to the floor during dinner preparations, cantaloupe sliced and given to him as a treat. Once I tried to make cheese garlic biscuits, but the baking powder had gone flat and they turned out as over-salted cheese/garlic hockey pucks. I was about to throw the whole mess away when Atanie came nosing over, jumping up and down in his eagerness to have some human food. We were bad dog owners, I guess; we gave him our food all the time. I broke off a chunk from one of the hockey pucks and tossed it on the floor. If Atanie had been excited before, now he was rapturous: he ran around the kitchen, panting and whining for more. I gave him the rest of the biscuit. He launched himself through the air to get at it faster--doggie acrobatics for food joy. My sister came into the kitchen and stared at him, amazed. Atanie had a few favorite foods (Did I mention cheese? And no crappy American for him, either. He wanted the good stuff--full fat, extra sharp cheddar or nothing at all). But I don't think we'd ever seen him quite so excited. When Atanie was happy, he would move: absurdly fast sprints around the house, culminating in leaps down short staircases. He would jump and stand on his hind legs--both to be affectionate and to be in a better position to scavenge good food. He spent the whole next week running and jumping for joy every time someone took another one of those biscuits from the fridge.

His name was Atanie, but we called him "crazy dog" almost as much. And he would wag his tail and beg for cheese and oatmeal cookies and sprint back and forth and roll over at the slightest hint of a belly rub and always prove us right.

BP vows to protect endangered Gulf Coast...walruses

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:14:53 GMT

This just in, from the latest tale of evil, venality and criminal corruption perpetrated by our government and the corporations it works for.

Or:

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

From an awesome investigative article in Rolling Stone, which you should read in full:

Nowhere was the absurdity of the policy more evident than in the application that BP submitted for its Deepwater Horizon well only two months after Obama took office. BP claims that a spill is "unlikely" and states that it anticipates "no adverse impacts" to endangered wildlife or fisheries. Should a spill occur, it says, "no significant adverse impacts are expected" for the region's beaches, wetlands and coastal nesting birds. The company, noting that such elements are "not required" as part of the application, contains no scenario for a potential blowout, and no site-specific plan to respond to a spill. Instead, it cites an Oil Spill Response Plan that it had prepared for the entire Gulf region. Among the sensitive species BP anticipates protecting in the semitropical Gulf? "Walruses" and other cold-water mammals, including sea otters and sea lions. The mistake appears to be the result of a sloppy cut-and-paste job from BP's drilling plans for the Arctic. Even worse: Among the "primary equipment providers" for "rapid deployment of spill response resources," BP inexplicably provides the Web address of a Japanese home-shopping network. Such glaring errors expose the 582-page response "plan" as nothing more than a paperwork exercise. "It was clear that nobody read it," says Ruch, who represents government scientists.

A web address for a Japanese home-shopping network. I laughed, but it makes me feel like crying, too.

Book (2) day!

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:04:01 GMT

Today is the official pub date of The Burning City, a/k/a Book 2 of The Spirit Binders trilogy. I sweated blood to finish this thing, and I can't tell you how happy I am that it's finally out.

two posts up

Wed, 26 May 2010 12:56:23 GMT

So you know those blog post things where I dispense my opinions on subjects in paragraph form? The ones that I tend to write, oh, about twice a year?

I have two of them up as guest posts today! It was a struggle, let me tell you, but hopefully I didn't come off as a complete idiot. Both are about various aspects of vampire fiction, as this week I'm blog touring for Moonshine.

My possibly-guilty love of bad boys and anti-heroes for Fangtastic Books.

Social engineering vampires for Vamp Chix.

If you have nothing else to do at work or something, you could check them out.

As for me, I'm off to BEA!

home grown oil disaster solution

Tue, 25 May 2010 14:39:19 GMT

Is it just me, or does this seem...really clever and cool?

http://www.wimp.com/solutionoil

(sorry I don't know how to embed this kind of video, but it's definitely worth checking out-- these two dudes demonstrate that you can get rid of a ton of oil from the water just by putting hay in it).

vote for...someone?

Tue, 18 May 2010 15:47:53 GMT

Color me surprised, but I'm back for more shameless begging. You might remember that I posted a few months ago about nominations for an award for best online fiction, called the Million Writers Award. Well, a few kind souls among you did in fact nominate me for that award, which I was really grateful for. And then, even more surprisingly, both of the stories I published online last year ended up on the long list! I figured that was the end of it, but (huh? seriously?) one of those stories has been selected for the top ten short list.

This is where the begging comes in.

Because the eventual winner of the prize is selected by public vote. Which means, ah, people other than me. Like you. So if you have a moment, and you don't hate my story (A Song to Greet the Sun, published in Fantasy Magazine), could you vote? For me?

Or for one of the other great stories on the list, including but not limited to a story by my friend and fellow Altered Fluid member N.K. Jemisin.

Anyway, it's amazing to be on that list, but I figured I had to at least ask :)

Oh, and that other book...

Wed, 12 May 2010 14:22:19 GMT

So, THE BURNING CITY comes out June 1. I have four galleys. Keeping in mind that "uncorrected proofs" means just that, would anyone (preferably people who have read RACING THE DARK) like me to send a copy? Since I have so few, if you can write a review of some kind on some venue, that would be nice. I'm so busy with MOONSHINE stuff that this book has been kind of overwhelmed by it, but I did write it, I'm cautiously proud of what I did with it, and I guess I'd like it to not vanish completely.

So, if this interests you, comment on this post. I'll PM you (or email) about mailing addresses, etc.

MOONSHINE day!

Tue, 11 May 2010 16:02:32 GMT

It's here! It's here!

I have talked about this book entirely too much here, so I'll keep it brief. Read it? Write a review--Amazon and B&N especially appreciated. Haven't read it? Well, you might pay your local bookstore a visit. Or read the first chapter and see what you think.

In the meantime, I'll be celebrating by, ah, doing the laundry.

best book party ever

Sun, 09 May 2010 17:15:32 GMT

Well, that went better than I expected. Here's some photographic evidence of Friday night's debauchery:

Thanks so much to those of you who came for making it such an amazing night!

Moonshine is out on Tuesday ;)