Just wanted to announce that Leviathan has won the Locus Award for Best YA Novel of 2009. w00t!
Congrats to the other winners, which include the wonderful Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, which won Best Novel. It was blurbed by me as follows:
A steampunk-zombie-airship adventure of rollicking pace and sweeping proportions, full of wonderfully gnarly details. This book is made of irresistible . . . it totally pushed all my buttons!
Also winning for Best First Novel was Paulo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. Paulo just came out with an awesome YA novel, Ship Breaker, which, by happenstance, I also blurbed:
A riveting tale of adventure in a broken world. Gritty and real, yet full of wonders, Ship Breaker is the best debut novel I’ve read in ages.
Click here for more about Windup Girl and here for more about Ship Breaker.
By the way, you should have all realized by now that I only blurb books whose titles rhyme with “Zombie Staker.” It’s just a thing I do.
As a special surprise, those of you in the NYC area will get to see both me and Paulo this week! Joining us will be Jon Armstrong, author of another wonderful first sf novel, Grey.
Here are the details:
Time:
Thursday, July 1
7PM
Place: McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince St.
(b/t Lafayette & Mulberry)
New York, NY 10012
212.274.1160
Event details here, and here’s a map.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who voted for me in the Locus Awards. It’s great to see people from the adult science fiction world reading and thinking about YA. And if you don’t know Locus Magazine, you should check it out. It’s a the best source for news about sf and fantasy publishing.
And now, because I missed Fan Art Friday last week, here are some Intentionally Enplasticized Reproductions, otherwise known as Lego Midnighters!
These are by Ean, who can be found here on Flickr. Cool, huh?
Justine and I are back from a lovely tour of Britain, so thanks for not wrecking the US while we were gone. I didn’t do any public events there; sorry about that!
But we did get see lots of beautiful countryside:
And amusingly named towns:
And olde worlde pubs:
And, of course, many wonderful and welcoming schools:
So thanks to everyone at Simon & Schuster UK for having me, and special thanks to all the schools and the Scottish Book Trust. By the way, the tour was for the paperback release of Leviathan, which is out NOW in the United Kingdom, and looks like this:
I love the new look. (Here’s the old one for comparison.) It’s very Victorian wallpaper-ish, and quite close to the hardback USian and Italian covers. It’s been weird seeing how the cover has changed as the book moves across the world.
Speaking of which, I’ll be releasing the Behemoth cover very soon!
Ciao for now.
BONUS FACT
Deryn Sharp has been nominated as Best Hero in the Indigo Teen Reads Awards! Check it out and cast your vote now. NOTE: Only Canadians are eligible to vote.
I’m headed on a mini-tour of the UK next week, one that will include many school visits but no public appearances (not my fault!). In this time I may or may not be posting here, but I wanted to inform you about the following meet-up on the Forum tomorrow!
Sunday, June 12th
US-EST 5PM
London 10:00PM
Australia 7:00AM Monday (um, sorry)
Come one, come all, and talk about stuff. Alas, I won’t be able to participate. But I do drop by to answer questions on most meet-ups.
Here’s a list of the rest of them scheduled for this year. Note that the Australian times are always the next day. (Aussie fans, you can always organize meet-ups yourselves to avoid the early morning thing. Let me know if you do, and I’ll blog them!)
2010 WesterForum MEET-UPS
July 10th (7 pm US-EST) Aussie (9:00am) London (9:00pm)
August 14 (5 pm US-EST) Aussie (7:00am) London (10:00pm)
Sept 11 (7 pm US-EST) Aussie (9:00am) London (MIDNIGHT)
Oct 9 (4 pm US-EST) Aussie (7:00am) London (9:00pm)
Nov 13 (5 pm US-EST) Aussie (9:00am)London (10:00pm)
Dec 11 (4 pm US-EST) Aussie (8:00am) London (9:00pm)
TWO MORE THINGS
1) Peeps fans might want to check out Witch Doctor, a web comic by Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner. It has some of the same vampires-as-parasites science-y goodness of peeps, but in graphic form. Click here to read the prototype issue.
2) The cast list on the Uglies movie IMDB page has turned out to be a hoax. There is no word yet on casting.
Okay, see you when I get back.
A few months ago, Disney announced something called “The Mechanical Kingdom,” a set of collectable pins featuring steampunk versions of Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, etc. Here’s the wallpaper:
You can get more wallpapers right here.
Of course, once a massive entertainment consortium like Disney gets involved with something alternative and kewl like steampunk, it gets sort of, I don’t know, Disneyfied, and certain people will decide it’s totally over. Check out the debate raging here at Brass Goggles.
But here’s the thing: Disney has always been at the forefront of steampunk, even before there was such a thing. In our panel discussion from two posts ago, Cherie Priest and I both confessed that our nascent fixation with steampunk was inspired by 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And we weren’t talking about Vernes’ novel or even the movie, but the frickin’ ride. And let’s not forget Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Oops: CCBB was not made by Disney,it just feels like it was), The Rocketeer (1991), Around the World in 80 Days (2004), or even the vine-and-coconutpunk stylings of Swiss Family Robinson (1960)!
I mean, we’re talking about Disney, an organization that owns multiple mechanical Abraham Lincolns! How steampunk is that? About this much:
Image by Scott Wegener and ganked from here.
So let me put it this way: everyone who’s complaining about Disney’s “Mechanical Kingdom” had best step off and go learn some history. And also get used to the fact that subcultures don’t just start off cool and then go mainstream to die. Rather, cool stuff bounces back and forth between alternative and mainstream in ways that are both unpredictable and awesome.
I, for one, welcome our new mouse-eared overlords. After all, they’ve been here all along.
____________
People who know much more about this than me and have written about it more eloquently include Cory Gross and Mike Perschon. Go read them.
Really, the headline says it all: Leviathan rap. In Italian.
It’s by Mondo Marcio (autotranslated Wiki page/original Italian), and I TOTALLY have to learn the language now.
For more about the Italian edition, published by Einaudi, click here.
Needless to say, anyone translating any lines from this will win my undying gratitude.
As you can see, my website has had its first makeover in many years. This is to celebrate the fact that my first new series in years, Leviathan, comes out this autumn. (October 6, to be exact.)
Things may be wonky for a while as we play around under the hood. But I hope you enjoy the new look. Let me know what you think!
Click here to contact Scott Westerfeld.
Jill Grinberg
Jill Grinberg Literary Management
info@grinbergliterary.com
