So excited to bring you the book trailer for The Female of the Species!
A MADNESS SO DISCREET Wins the Edgar & Also I Put On Makeup & A Dress
This past week I was at the Edgar Allan Poe awards in NYC, which was an amazing experience. So many talented published and aspiring authors in one room kind of made my head spin. The champagne may have contributed to that.
Wednesday night I had a panel at Books of Wonder, along with the other 10 nominees in the categories of Middle Grade and Young Adult. My librarian ears were perking as the others read from their books, and I made a few purchases on the plane home as a result. I also managed to get a whopper of a migraine right in the middle of the panel, so if you were there and saw me constantly massaging the back of my own head, it's not because I have an itchy scalp.
The boyfriend and I walked back to the hotel from BoW, while I stifled a deep urge to vomit. He told me to just do it on the street. "We're in NYC," he reminded me. "Nobody will really care. If you did it at home it would be a story for years."
He's not exaggerating. I hit a skunk with my car when I was 17 and the car smelled for weeks afterward and it still comes up in conversation occasionally... and that was 20 years ago.
I felt better the next day - thank goodness. I had my hair and face done, accidentally walked through a movie shoot (that doesn't happen at home), and ate a tuna melt that put all other tuna melts to shame. And... it was time to go.
I had to take a quick shot of the dress and shoes because I had no idea how to answer anyone who asked me about my dress other thank to say, "it's black." That is the true extent of my fashion sensibilities.
This is Edgar, and my awesome editor Mr. Ben Rosenthal. Also my boyfriend's uneaten cheesecake. You can see my wine glass is empty.
And then I ended up in a room with lots and lots of famous, talented people, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which was completely unexpected. I found my awesome editor, Ben Rosenthal, and my equally awesome agent-lady Adriann Ranta, using Kareem as a reference point in the room. Then we all ate dinner and the boyfriend shared his story about a guy in front of Grand Central Station who had decided he just didn't like my boyfriend. Seriously I have no idea what that was about. He called him a scumbag, and then remembered him when we walked past later and said, "Hey, I called you a scumbag earlier."
I told boyfriend to be flattered that apparently he stands out in a sea of New Yorkers.
And, because I think it's important to destroy any mystique I may have garnered, here is a picture of me in my element at home, courtesy of the boyfriend.
And then, long story short, I won the Edgar. Kind of crazy. The lovely and talented Lyndsey Faye read my name out of the envelope and I went into a little bit of shock and touched my nose for a few seconds (this is how I center myself) before getting up. So basically I came to New York and touched parts of my own skull at major public events.
The Freedom of Fantasy
If you're a faithful reader it's pretty obvious to you by now that I'm a genre jumper. My first two novels were post-apocalyptic, the third a historical, my upcoming fourth novel THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES is a contemporary. Hot on the heels of that - coming from Putnam/Penguin in April of 2017 - will be the first in my fantasy series, GIVEN TO THE SEA.
Any author, regardless of genre, will tell you that every novel presents its own unique issues. When I felt the tiny seeds that were to become my fantasy series starting to bud in my mind, I was ecstatic. I'd just come off of writing A MADNESS SO DISCREET which came about after nearly two years of research, followed by a frantic writing period that nearly killed me.
I thought writing a fantasy was just what I needed. No rules. No boundaries. No having to worry what type of lighting would be in use in 1890 so that one person could correct me on it. No more ten minutes of research before finishing a sentence because I need to know what a cop would have been called in 1890 in Boston.
Pure freedom. Or so I thought.
Instead what I discovered is what Janis Joplin could have told me a long time ago. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Or, in my case... freedom's just another word where nothing is assumed.
Yep. That's the catch with fantasy. If I'm writing a contemporary and I tell you that my main character goes to a wealthy private school, that's all I need to say. You know what that school looks like. You know what her house probably looks like. You have a good idea of her culture without me saying much more than that.
If I tell you that my main character in fantasy is the Given, you're like, "Cool... um, what?"
So I have to explain that. And underneath her role as the Given lies an entire cultural mindset which the reader is entirely unfamiliar with. Yes, I get to create my own world and make my own rules, but I also have to paint it for you, and - even more difficult - sell it to you. I can't rely on any assumptions because this is an entirely new world for the reader, even if I have been inhabiting it for quite some time in my own mind.
I've been working on GIVEN TO THE SEA for over a year now, and it's consumed me in an entirely different way than any of my other books have. Yes, there's freedom in fantasy - one that I've been enjoying a lot. But there's also a lot of responsibility and heavy lifting in the world building.
Here's hoping I got it right.