Author: scott

Cool Stuff

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First among cool stuff is the fact that Justine has been boingled!

Click here to witness said boingling. (And here for Justine’s response.)

I really like Cory’s capsule reviews. They always elucidate plot and theme from an interesting angle (as seen here in his review of Midnighters). He’s an adult sf author, but it seems the new wave of cool YAs has started to draw him over to the dark side. Also, he knows the value of the pull-quote: “Magic or Madness . . . has everything it takes to be an instant classic for smart, curious kids who look to fantasy for more than escape—who look to fantasy literature to stretch their understanding of the real world.” Sweet.

And here’s few other newly learnt cool things that I forgot to mention in my post about Bologna:

1. The words “So Yesterday” translate perfectly into Finnish.
2. The phrase makes no sense in French, and the book’s publishers in France, Editions du Panama, don’t know what to call their edition yet.
3. “So Yesterday” also makes no sense in Swedish, so that edition will be called:

So what the heck does “Ute/Inne” mean? Pretty much what it sounds like if you say it in a mock Swedish accent: “out/in.” In other words, “what’s hot/what’s not,” except backwards.

Reading the tagline, “en roman av Scott Westerfeld,” I started wondering why roman means “novel” in so many Indo-European languages (including English, in loan-phrases like roman-a-clef). It was also bugging me in Bologna, where the word was all over the place; in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian, novels are called romans or some such word.

I decided to go poking around in the OED, and in retrospect the answer seems pretty obvious. The earliest uses of the term applied to “romances”—long romantic poems, that is—the precursors to the modern novel.

So if anyone ever disses you for reading a romance novel, you can always point out that all novels were romances originally. So chew on that.

Bologna Rox

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Ciao! Just got home from Italy, home of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair!

First, the travel report: Our one-hour flight from Bologna to Frankfurt took many hours, because the first flight was cancelled and the second an hour late. This left us with 15 minutes to sprint across Frankfurt airport and catch the plane to Singapore. We were so late that we’d lost our seats, and had to be seated apart for 12 hours, me in a dreaded middle seat of the dreaded middle row. In Singapore Airport we got a micro-hotel room for a shower and two hours of precious horizontality. Then seven hours to Sydney.

It was a long day—actually two days, because of the time shifts. (If I owe you email, or haven’t posted in other comment threads, forgive.)

But enough complaining. The main thing to know is that Bologna is gorgeous . . .


Bonfiglioli Images

And old. It has Roman walls around its center, but it’s the medieval buildings that rock most. In the 1200s, the city’s wealthy families competed with each other by building big towers. (To like, uh, show that they were wealthy. That was before TV.) The two most famous are above.

Bologna also has the best food evah. Blood orange juice, lots of truffles (not the chocolate kind; the mushroomy kind), and, of course, genuine SpagBol. (Which means “Spaghetti Bolognaise.” Did you guys know that? Turns out my German translator didn’t . . . Oops.)

We ate at this one place where they pour hot risotto into a giant hollowed-out wheel of parmiagiana, stirring it around so that it sucks up the cheesey goodness, and then shave truffles on top. They also put truffles on fresh mozzerella, on eggs, and on potatoes. Death by truffles.

We ate there twice. (Thanks, Eloise!)

The book fair itself was amazing. About 8,000 illustrators, editors, agents, sub-agents, scouts, and other publishing types were gathered to talk books, make deals, and decide what’s hot. As authors, Justine’s and my job was like that of lobsters in a restaurant tank: look pretty at dinner. Now, this simile has issues, given that we were wanting to be chosen, and the lobsters maybe not so much. But you get it, right? Basically, we were there to put a human face on our books, to be charming, and to let our agents and US publishers drum up interest in other lands and languages.

It was a great week. I love hanging out with book people, who are smart and dedicated and interested in the world. Surrounded by 8,000 experts, these are the things I learned about children publishing:

The history, economics, and mechanics of pop-up books is endlessly fascinating.
Sweden likes hardbacks; Brazil prefers trade paperbacks.
Translators in France earn 8-10 cents per word (US cents), plus 1% royalties.
The children’s picture book market tanked about ten years ago.
Scouts are like reverse agents: matchmakers, but paid by publishers instead of authors.
Gossip Girl is published in 29 territories.
The Italian kids/YA market is 75% books in translation.
The Dutch throw the best parties.

Okay, I haven’t even mention the SCBWI conference we taught at, or the amazing fig gelato, or that our luggage is still in Frankfurt. But jetlag is eating my brain now. Must watch mindless TV.

Luckily, Justine has put up a rather more coherent post than mine.

So let me just say thanks to everyone who bought us dinner, lunch, or drinks, or just told us cool stuff.

Ciao!

Posted on by scott

It’s 6-something AM, and I’m blogging from my hotel room. How geeky is that?

Very.

But there’s a couple of interesting things. An interview with me in Children’s Bookshelf, which is part of Publishers Weekly. And a review/interview of Peeps in the Brisbane Courier Mail.

Argh. Jetlag and exhaustion sweep over me again, but I will say this: The Alps are pretty from above.

Midnighters Comics 3

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More comics have arrived from Brianne! (Remember the ones in this post and this one?) Anyway, she’s delivered more scenes from behind the scenes of Blue Noon.

And, as usual, they rock:

Click here for the big version.

So, I’m headed off to Bologna, Italy for the book fair and SCBWI conference. I don’t think I’ll have much internet access for a week or so, but I will have interesting tales to tell when I get back to Sydney.

I hope.

Uglies on TV

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I stumbled across something interesting today. It’s a review of Uglies by something called the Deabeat Club. But it’s not a “text-based” review; it’s internet TV!

The Deadbeat Club is a Vermont public access show made available on the internet by a TV network called Chantz TV.

To see their video-collage homage to Uglies, click here.

It’s gloriously lo-fi (thank you, YouTube compression), but you can see that a lot of care and intelligence has gone into choosing the images. I especially love the way they use current-day footage to evoke the cultural and emotional terrain of Uglies and Pretties. (Which means you’ll see lots of, ahem, Paris Hilton. And some bonus strains of Mad Max!)

Like all home-grown media, it takes a minute to get used to the grainy video and uneven sound. But really, you’d never see anything this interesting on regular TV. Not about some book, anyway.

Now I’m going to poke around and check out more of their stuff.
Here’s their blog.

Books of Wonder!

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Those of you in the New York area, don’t forget the big event tomorrow!
[UPDATE: This event has already happened. Thanks to those who came.]

Justine and I will be signing and talking at Books of Wonder.

Here are the details:

Who
Scott Westerfeld Blue Noon
Justine Larbalestier Magic Lessons
Markus Zusak The Book Thief
Sarah Durkee The Fruit Bowl Project
Linzi Glass The Year the Gypsies Came

Where
Books of Wonder
18 West 18th St.
New York, NY

When
12PM-2PM
Saturday, March 18, 2006

Can’t come? Buy them anyway!

PS Thanks to all the great kids at UNIS and the Bronx Library Center for the last two days. We had a great time!

Magic Lessons

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News Flash! My first ever book-jacket photography credit appears in stores today!

Allow me to explain:

Exactly a year ago, my lovely wife Justine’s book Magic or Madness came out. In that year it has received mountains of rapturous praise. In fact, before I go on with the story, let me be a proud spouse and share my favorites blurbs with you:

“Larbalestier has wrought beautiful and fearsome magic in this novel . . . this radiant gem stands alone, but expect readers to be impatient for the rest of the trilogy.”
—School Library Journal

“In this fierce, hypnotic novel, character, story, and the thrumming forces of magic strike a rare, memorable balance.”
—Booklist

“A vivid and uncompromising portrayal of magic and the consequences of power.”
—Holly Black

Wonderful stuff. And even better, it comes out today in paperback and can thus be bought for a pittance.

But that’s not the point of my story, which is about me.

You see, my photo credit is in Justine’s second book, Magic Lessons, which also comes out today. Here’s how it all happened:

Justine was asked by our publisher for ideas about the cover. There’s this scene set in a wonderful and strange cemetery, one that really exists in Sydney. We tried to describe its crooked, broken headstones and giant Moreton Bay fig trees to the designer, but he couldn’t grasp what we were talking about. For one thing, he had never seen a proper Aussie fig tree before.

So we went down to the cemetery and took a bunch of pictures. Little did we know, they would wind up using our actual pictures! We rule.

One of Justine’s lovely tree photos is on the cover, and my headstone shots adorn the back. Here are the two books together:

Beautimous, eh? Here’s all the pictures we took in their raw form. (As you can see, it really is the most awesome cemetery.)

To read more about Justine’s series, go here!

Darkling-Slaying Crop Circle

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On the vast Midnighters spoiler comment thread, someone was asking what a tridecagram (a 13-pointed darkling-slaying star) looked like. So I was poking around on Google and discovered this:

That’s a thirteen-pointed crop circle! That’s right, even aliens are into darkling protection. (Aliens with lots of spare time, anyway.)

Here are some more crop circles, including the one above. They’re really quite beautiful. And frankly, they’re a lot cooler if mischevious humans make them by stomping around with compasses than if aliens whip them into existence with their stalk-cracking ion drives.

Or maybe midnighters make them, under the strict instructions of polymaths.

That would explain why they just appear in the middle of the night, after all.

Uglies in the NY Times

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Naomi Wolf has an article in the NY Times today, in which she disses the heck out of Gossip Girl and its spin-offs. Also, Uglies gets a positive mention (see below).

She starts by warning parents:

They carry no rating or recommended age range on the cover, but their intended audience—teenage girls—can’t be in doubt. They feature sleek, conventionally beautiful girls lounging, getting in or out of limos, laughing and striking poses. Any parent—including me—might put them in the Barnes & Noble basket without a second glance. Yet if that parent opened one, he or she might be in for a surprise.

Oooh, scary. But one question: Does anyone buy books “without a second glance”? Really?

And another: Is Naomi Wolf calling for parental advisory labels on books? I hope not. Probably this is more of a “hook” than an argument. It’s like when the local TV news says, “Some scientists think that this common household cleaning product can kill you! Details at eleven.”

Because teen culture is just like chemicals: to comprehend it you have to be some sort of gnarly expert. And it’s dangerous! Terribly dangerous! So I’m sure there are people out there who do want warning labels. Reading stickers is easier than, you know, talking to your kids about what they’re reading.

What Wolf is really obsessed about it the lack of judgement these books take against their shallow, vain characters. She says they’re “like Lord of the Flies, set in the local mall, without the moral revulsion”? And it’s true—there is no moral revulsion on the page in GG. There’s ironic detachment, but you have to bring your own revulsion.

But you know what? My guess is that teens do bring their own value system to these books. No doubt some read them in a totally shallow way: “I wish that was me all beautiful, dripping with Prada and ruining some other girl’s life.” But I know for a fact that others read them as satire, as an attack on the shallowness they portray. And some read them simply as a tacky pleasure. (I sort of like excessively self-centered characters, just like I sometimes enjoy excessively top-loaded ice-cream sundaes.)

I’ve only read one GG, and I liked it that there’s a bulemic character, but without bulemia being the central arc. It’s just something that happens, something unpleasant, but not The Plot. (Sort of like having a character in a wheelchair, but being in a wheelchair isn’t the whole friggin’ point of the book.)

GG did bore me with its relentless brand names. (Stephen King does too.) My eyes bleed when books employ brand names instead of adjectives and dramatic exposition. But this isn’t a moral failure; it’s an artistic one. You can read brand-name overload as satire, wish-fulfillment, or product placement.

So instead of worrying about the lack of moral instruction in GG, maybe parents should focus on knowing what kind of people their kids are—the subversive kind, the kind who like a good trashy read, or the kind obsessed with status. And instead of warning that YA packaging doesn’t give adequate parenting info, maybe Wolf should encourage parents to talk about books with their kids. (Strangely, this suggestion never comes up in her article. Not once.)

The Good News

Of course, we all know that my books are chock full of moral-icious goodness. And to prove it, there’s a sidebar to Wolf’s article that lists eleven decent and uplifting books. Uglies is the very last one. (Damn you, alphabetical order!)

So I’m curious. How many of you guys have read the Gossip Girl and A-List, Clique books? And what do you think they did to your moral fiber? And how many of your parents talk to you about what you’re reading?

Midnighters Comics 2

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First off, the signings went well, and were blogged by Alia-Cat and Claire. Unfortunately, Justine was a bit sick, but she soldiered bravely on. (And is much better now, thank you.)

When we got back to NYC, what should be waiting in my electronic mailbox but more of Brianne K’s excellent Midnighters comics, which you may remember from this post. How happy-making!

These comics are based on Blue Noon, but they don’t give any of the plot away. Click here for the big version.

Brianne’s comics have a cool way of reflecting the books without lifting any actual scenes or dialog. It’s sort of like she’s drawing the stuff that happens between the chapters, during all those times when the Story isn’t in motion. As a writer, that’s a pretty cool thing to see. It’s sort of like my characters are really alive, and doing stuff without me.

Which is, I guess, what having readers is all about: making the world real enough to exist in someone else’s brain.