Lots of people brought me cool fan art, which I’ll be sharing with you next Friday.

For you Sydneysiders who missed me, I’ll be appearing twice more in the next two weeks. The first one:

The Aurealis Awards
Saturday, May 12
7:30 for an 8PM start
Independent Theatre
269 Miller Street
North Sydney NSW 2060

The Aurealis Awards celebrate the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers every year. Kate Forsyth with be mistress of ceremonies, and I’ll be presenting the award for Best Illustrated Book or Graphic Novel.

You can get tickets here.

And the second:

Sydney Writers Festival
A Neverending Story: Fantasy Worlds
Sunday, May 20
11:30AM-12:30PM
Me, Isobelle Carmody, Justine Larbalestier, and Joy Lawn (facilitator)
Sydney Dance 4, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay

From steampunk to the supernatural, from urban fantasies to dystopian futures, our love affair with speculative fiction is all-consuming.

Three authors who create imagined worlds explore our enduring fascination with fantasy and unpick the complexities of the genre. Isobelle Carmody, Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier talk to Joy Lawn.

Here’s the online details for this event.

And finally, here’s a little promo for my sister-in-law’s new e-book start-up, SnappyAnt. Her first app is an animated and read-out-loud iPad version of a picture book called My Mom’s the Best, by Rosie Smith, with illustrations by Bruce Whatley. You know, for Mother’s Day!

It’s all about wee baby beasties interacting with their moms, and is very cute.

Note that in Australia and UK iTunes store, it comes in its original Oz-English version: My Mum’s the Best. (Fight the power!)

You can check it out at the iTunes store.

Okay, that’s it. See you on Friday for FAFF, if not sooner.

Hovercams!

A company called Helimalibu provides flying cameras for “a variety of industries such as, Residential and Commercial Real Estate, high-level inspections for electric towers or HV lines, or for land survey and construction purposes.” The film industry is considering using cameras of this type for movie-making. And, of course, police are using flying drones in all sort of ways.

For more, read this story at FastCompany.

Aviatrixes of Yore!

That’s Amelia Earhart, aviatrix, trailblazing woman, and paragon of goggled hotness. I want that jacket.

Ganked from this story at QuiteContinental.

Tunguska!

These paintings by Bill Pullman, a meteorological painter, attempt to recreate what the Tunguska Event in Siberia looked like to those on the ground. This is the meteor (or something) strike that leveled millions of trees and for which Nicola Tesla attempts to take credit in Goliath.

Flash Tattoos!

Thanks to everyone who tweeted to me about Nokia’s patent on vibrating tattoos. For those of you who missed the low-information internet storm about these tattoos, they’re skinplanted ferro-magnetic patches that respond to a device (like a phone), so you can feel a very personal buzz when you have a call/message/eBay auction to attend to.

I’m sure at some point many of us will have implanted devices to make interfacing with the internet and machines easier, but I have one problem with a ferro-magnetic tattoo. What happens if some April Fool’s Day prankster develops a “buzz broadcaster,” a device that gives everyone around them a great big vibration?

Nothing good, I’m sure.

That’s it. Have a fun April Fool’s Day, and try not to be evil.

Use the comment thread of this post to discuss Shay’s Story. And if you haven’t read it yet, GO ELSEWHERE.

I know what you’re saying. “But I’ve read the Uglies series five times. What new can I possibly learn?” Well, don’t forget that new points of view mean new information. Shay’s Story will reveal all sorts of previously unknown things!

And, as is traditional, we must always remember this comment from back in May 2006, in the Specials spoiler thread:

oh god, i read the spoiler section before i read the book. i would have read the book by now but the bookstore doesn’t have it in yet! i got the first two before the sale date. why can’t i do that now!? crap i can’t believe i read the spoiler section…crap

Let these lamentations be a warning to you. And let the spoilage begin!

1) Uglies: Shay’s Story comes out TODAY, March 6. (!!)

2) I don’t have the art for the Smoke reveal yet, but I will soon.

3) There is going to be a trailer for the graphic novel, also soon! (Not this one, a real one.)

4) I want to do a meet-up on the Forum soon, maybe a week after Shay’s Story comes out, so we can all talk about it. What time and day is good for you guys?

5) And finally, here’s a list my previous blog entries on Shay’s Story, just to whet your appetites.

Here’s how we worked together to create the manga.

An interview with Girls Read Comics Too.

A WesterForum meet-up in which I answer a LOT of questions.

And here are all the reveals:
Rusty Ruins
Dr. Cable
David
Tally
Zane
and Croy!

And here’s, you know, the cover:

Pre-order Shay’s Story at Indie Bound, BarnesandNoble.com, or Amazon. Or buy it at a bookstore or comics store starting NOW!

Update
Nook owners can buy Shay’s Story by clicking here.

For iPad owners, the Shay’s Story page on iTunes is right here. It says you can read it on your iPhone, but you’d better have pretty good eyes, because it’s fixed width format. iPad is way better.

Australians wishing to shop online can get it pretty cheap from Fishpond.

This is that thing:

You can also watch it bigger on YouTube!

Sorry about no FAF last week. But there will be FAF this week! And more THINGS of this nature.

You can pre-order Shay’s Story at Indie Bound, BarnesandNoble.com, or Amazon. Or buy it on March 6 at a proper bookstore or comics shop!

Artist Jeremy Zerfoss created a tableaux of fanciful monsters, and each writer chose one to write a short description about.

Click here to see the full-size work, and click on any monster for its description. See if you can find mine!

From that page, you can donate to Shared Worlds or register if you think attending would be fun. It’s open to 8th through 12th Graders.

Here’s the press release from Shared Worlds:

Neil Gaiman, Lev Grossman, Scott Westerfeld, and thirty-seven more of the most imaginative writers from around the world have contributed to Shared Worlds’ “Critter Map,” a webpage of fantastical beasts. Their whimsical descriptions of imaginary creatures created by pop artist Jeremy Zerfoss are in support of the Shared Worlds registration and fund drive for 2012. Every summer up to 50 teen writers come to Shared Worlds SF/F Teen Writing Camp at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, from as far away Japan to participate in this unique camp. This year, registrants include teens from all parts of the United States as well as Germany and Indonesia. Wofford College provides a structured, supervised environment in which the students can excel and demonstrate their creativity.

At Shared Worlds, the students form teams in classrooms to build entire fantasy or science fictional worlds in the first week and then write stories in those worlds the second week. Top professional writers are on hand to provide feedback and to conduct workshops. The guest writers for the 2012 include New York Times bestsellers Julianna Baggott, Naomi Novik, and Tobias Buckell as well as Prix Award Winner Karin Lowachee and Hugo Award winner Ann VanderMeer. The teens also get to attend author readings, take fieldtrips to bookstores, and create videos about their imaginary worlds. Shared Worlds also publishes an annual book of the students’ writing.

“For many of our students, Shared Worlds is a transformational experience,” said the camp’s assistant director, fantasy writer Jeff VanderMeer. ”They not only learn more about writing, they also get to have fun solving problems in in the world-building groups, and they form what will probably turn out to be life-long friendships with like-minded teens.”

The “Critter Map” is the cornerstone of a donation drive intended to ensure that attending the Shared Worlds Teen Writing Camp can be a possibility for all registered students, no matter what their financial need.

Click here for more info about Shared Worlds.

So we are delaying Fan Art Friday (often known as Fan Art Sunday) for the Tally character reveal.

Remember that Shay’s Story (AKA “The Uglies Manga”) is all from Shay’s POV, and therefore starts about six months before the events of Uglies, back when Shay and Zane are pals. So Tally doesn’t enter until Zane and Shay have planned to run away and then “chickened out.” (That’s what they told Tally in Pretties, but it’s more complicated than that in reality.)

But when Tally appears, we are fully into the same events as Uglies, so some of the scenes below will be familiar. It’s kind of interesting, duplicating some Uglies scenes almost exactly, but in an entirely new context and from a different point of view.

Of course, there are some times when Devin and I decided to skip over a lot of the scenes in Uglies, using the wonder of montage! You may recognize these flashes from the book, when Tally and Shay are getting to be friends.

Here’s a close-up of a familiar scene in Uglies that gets swept past in this montage:

This scene is also directly from the book, but here only lasts one frame. It’s quite illuminating to see Steven’s vision of it:

What’s interesting is, when you read the book, Tally is the protagonist and is therefore the center of attention in this scene. But in the version above, you can see that Shay is the featured character. She’s literally foregrounded.

And finally, here’s an argument between Tally and Shay at a certain key point in the story:

Click here for a bigger version of this one.

The dialog is directly from the book, but as you can see, Tally has her back to us and we see Shay’s expression.

I didn’t realize any of this (at least, the visual aspect of it) until I started to look for shots of Tally, and realized that there were very few of her. Most of the time, she’s in the background and Shay’s doing something. Because the comic is all about Shay.

But there is a great shot of Tally from near the end of the book, when they’re in the Smoke. So here’s frizzy-haired, not very confident, under-suspicion Tally:

Hope you like her.

All SOPA-offending elements, such as the remixing and recasting of copyrighted characters and situations, have been censored for your viewing pleasure.

Let’s start with this lovely image by CatieKay:

Pretty sweet, huh? How about those two random people having a possibly intimate moment atop an entirely generic (and thus non-copyrightable) flying whale-beast! Sure, we can’t SEE what they’re doing as the lightning flashes, but at least no one’s interfering with my ability to generate income from this touching narrative moment.

And here’s a lovely piece of fan art from Unforgiven-Unloved:

This one’s very sweet, but of course it would be WRONG to let you see these characters drawn by anyone but Keith Thompson, the only registered and approved artist for the Leviathan series. The dialog is pretty cute too. But let’s face it, only I may legally put words into the mouths of Deryn and Alek.

And here’s some cool Xmas ornaments from AvistheArtistGeek:

Aww. Tiny Deryn and Alek getting ready to climb the ratlines of Avis’s Christmas tree! Too bad that these characters belong to me, and thus her entire Xmas is non-SOPA-compliant! I just hope she takes her decorations down before my lawyers get there.

Ahem.

Most of you have probably seen that Wikipedia is dark today, and that Google’s banner page is sad. In fact, a ton of sites on the interwebs are shrouded in various ways. This is, of course, to protest the SOPA and PIPA legislation being considered in the US Congress.

“But wait!” you may be asking. “Is SOPA really so evil?”

It’s supporters certainly don’t want you to think so. After all, the purpose of SOPA is to protect copyright laws, by which filmmakers, musicians, and novelists (and the corporations that publish them) make money from their work. And that’s me!

But as you may have noticed, the internet is a place in which copyright is treated in a rough-and-ready fashion. People gank photos without attribution, create fan fiction and art based on others’ work, and make lip-sync music videos without paying for the right to do so.

Gee, how horrible. All those babies dancing to “Single Ladies” FOR FREE.

The problem is that SOPA and PIPA are written only with us copyright owners in mind. The lobbyists who wrote these bills don’t care about the rest of you (us, actually, because we all re-mix culture).

Here’s one example: PIPA allows companies to sue websites for the crime of linking to other websites that infringe copyright. So if I link to Deviant Art, and someone on Deviant Art (say, jett-wolfe98) has ganked a photo and added Deryn and Alek to it, like so:

Then I can be sued! Not for the image of Alek and Deryn, but for the underlying photograph of the room, which is, after all, a copyrightable thing.

In other words, everyone on the web will become responsible for the behavior of all the sites they link to, always and forever. Deviant Art will be totally gone, as will everything else cool and interesting.

(By the way, if your fan art is here, don’t be sad! It will return in its non-censored glory on Friday. Sorry, guys, for using your lovely work to make a point!)

These bills are, of course, absurd at a legal level, and as a practical matter they are nothing less than an attack on the structure of the web, its complex web of links and connections, and upon the content of the web, with its rich culture of re-mixing and re-purposing copyrighted works, like the fan art and fan fiction that appears on this blog. For which, under SOPA, I could sue you guys and everyone who links to you IF I WERE A COLOSSAL ASS-HAT.

But in an effort to fight ass-hattery, I’m joining in this protest today. Not by blocking my site, but by offering you the above edition of Fan Art Friday that meets SOPA’s standards, with all the copyright-offending materials blacked out.*

Do you like this version of Fan Art Friday? Would you like everything on the internet to work this way? I think not.

Now, I will mention that President Obama has come out against SOPA/PIPA in its current form. That’s a good thing, but it never hurts to keep the pressure on. He will be president for, at most, five more years.

And throughout your lifetime, there will always be people who try to turn spaces of sharing and collaboration into places of buying, selling, and lawsuits. Stay ready to fight them, or you will leave your kids a world where most stuff sucks.

Click here to learn more about SOPA, or to contact your representatives in congress.

Non-SOPA/sucky Fan Art Friday will return on Friday, with the art above and more, uncensored. Like the internet should be.

*Yes, the legal status of fan art and fan fictions is complicated, but if SOPA passes, we’re heading toward a world where that status will probably become simpler, and not in a good way.

Yes. He was THAT cool.

The image in the upper right of the letterhead is one of the remote control boats with which Tesla tries to repel the German walker attack in Chapter 39 of Goliath. They were totally real!

In case you’ve forgotten, here’s Keith Thompson’s version:

Of course, the central image in the letterhead is Wardenclyffe Tower, as it was to have appeared had it ever been completed. Note that Keith and I cheated a bit to make it more spectacular:

But as you can tell from the letterhead, it was pretty awesome anyway.

So keep this image on your phone or whatever, so that if you ever get transported back to the early 1900s, you can get in touch with Tesla. (As you can see, his phone number is “8080 Bryant.” I’m not sure how you dial that.)

And while we’re on the subject of mad scientists, I’ll take the opportunity to reveal my new author photo:

Photo from Moonie Baloonie. It no doubt took all day in Photoshop to get my eyes that red. Appreciate it!

As we approach the month of November, many of you are no doubt getting ready for National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo! In this yearly ritual, tens of thousands of bookish folk declare their intent to write a whole novel in a mere thirty days. (Or at least 50,000 words, which is certainly on the way.) Doing NaNoWriMo is a great way to take a stab at finally writing that novel in your head, or to test your own discipline, or simply to understand better what your favorite novelists go through on a daily basis.

Thinking about doing it yourself? Go here for NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program, and sign up!

Two years ago, Justine and I did a whole month of writing advice posts in honor of all you brave NaNoWriMoers. We’re too busy to repeat the effort this year, but below is a handy set of links to all our advice of 2009.

The odd-numbered posts are mine, and the evens are Justine’s.

Best of luck to you all!

(Also, I just signed a metric buttload of books at Books of Wonder here in NYC. Click here to mail-order these signed copies. There are some of every series I’ve ever written, so call them if you don’t see the one you want.)

And now here at the tips!

Nano Tip #1: Dialog Spine

NaNo Tip #2: The Zen of First (Zero) Drafts

NaNo Tip #3: Dialog Spine Analysis

NaNo Tip #4: Word Count is Not Everything

NaNo Tip #5: Write Your Way Out

NaNo Tip #6: Emergency Unstucking Techniques

NaNo Tip #7: Stealing from Chandler

NaNo Tip #8: Square Brackets

NaNo Tip #9: Meta Documents

NaNo Tip #10: Don’t Skip the Tricky Bits

NaNo Tip #11: Passages of Disbelief

NaNo Tip #12: Turn the Internet Off

NaNo Tip #13: Pace Charts

NaNo Tip #14: Procrastination Can Be Your Friend

NaNo Tip #15: Take the Day Off

NaNo Tip #16: Edit As You Go

NaNo Tip #17: Making Writing a Habit

NaNo Tip #18: Breaking with Stereotypes

NaNo Tip #19: Read Out Loud

NaNo Tip #20: Don’t Wait for the Muse to Strike

NaNo Tip #21: Writers Re-Read

NaNo Tip #22: Read Bad Books

NaNo Tip #23: Change Your Brain

NaNo Tip #24: Writing While White

NaNo Tip #25: Read it Backwards

NaNo Tip #26: Giving Thanks

NaNo Tip #27: Word Clouds

NaNo Tip #28: Take Care of Yourself

NaNo Tip #29: Finish Everything

NaNo Tip #30: Rewriting