Rules for Anchorites

Evacuations

2009-11-07T01:33:29Z

Was awakened at 2 and cannot get back to sleep. Everything is very silent in our room, and my stomach is empty. How I wish the streetside blini stands were 24 hours. Oh my god, streetside blini.

One of the thoughts I kept turning around in my head today was about fantasy literature and the war. WWII is a favorite garden patch for anchoring Western fantasy in historical and moral authority, from Narnia all the way down to Hellboy. It's irritated me in the past, because it seems like a way to infantilize fantasy, to say: look! It's connected to the American idea of the easiest moral choice ever, to go to war against the skull and crossbones brigade! That means it's real, complex literature! And inevitably, those stories that do choose WWII as their adoptive parent show a monochromatic worldview of depressing simplicity. (I'm sure there are exceptions. It's 4 am, this is not a critical piece.)

Now, one of the big set pieces for American and especially British fantasy is the children's evacuation from London. That flight from the horrors of the real world into the pastoral countryside is pretty much the street map for portal fantasy. And yet.

The children of Leningrad were evacuated, too, at least a large number of them (the London evacuation wasn't complete either. Kids are hard to keep track of and for some reason parents are sort of attached.) They were sent out of a urban horror story far worse than the Blitz--and yes, the Blitz sucked, and rationing was hard, but it doesn't even compare to Leningrad and their daily 125 grams of sawdust and turpentine bread, or total lack of power in -38F winter winds, or 60% of the city population dying. No jolly Doctor Who episodes about plucky Leningraders and Captain Jack, you know?

Anyway, they were sent out into...well, it's not pastoral England. But I listened all afternoon to a woman talk about where she went, and it was like a fairy tale. A Russian fairy tale. You know, the kind where you still starve. How the orphans climbed behind the stove and giggled and shared secrets and tried to guess what was cooking by the smell. How they allotted her size 33 boots, and she cried trying to put them on because they were so big, she would never grow big enough to fill them. How she was obsessed with her teacher, who she thought might be a witch, because whenever she woke up in the morning, the teacher already had her clothes on. Whenever she went to bed at night, the teacher still had her clothes on. When did she sleep? Could she take off her clothes? And then how all the children of Leningrad were so determined to stay together, to never loose each other, but now she never talks to the others anymore. (Oddly enough, her orphanage was in Komarova, where Ahkmatova is buried, and which used to be a writers' dacha.)

For me, part of what fantasy does, part of what makes it valuable, is how it can tell a story about the real world in such a way that it jars you out of the endlessly repeated sadnesses of human life and makes you consider it all in another way. How it, mythology and folklore and fantasy, provides a set of narratives through which to see one's own experience, and understand it as part of a much bigger story of the world. Because the world likes to tell stories, the same ones, over and over. The world has fetishes. The world has kinks.

And now, in my heart of hearts, I want to write the book that starts with this other evacuation of children, this shadow-sister to the famous London one. It's a different story, a different starting point that goes to places Narnia doesn't begin to imagine. Again, I struggle with whether I am the person to write it, if it would not be better if my surname were Valentinova. If I maybe don't have the right to put that to paper. But then, I listened to Galina Sergeyevna today, I heard her story and I came to this city and I married into this family with so many war stories. Do I have any more right to write Italian war stories, because I am Italian, though I know no stories of my family during the war? I don't know. All I know is that this someone is sitting at the bottom of me right now, being very quiet and still, little Galina in her size 33 boots, and I look around this city and know I cannot be done writing about it, it is not even possible that I am ready to walk away from it.

The Affair of Leningrad

2009-11-06T17:06:02Z

Today was intense on many levels.

We walked over what seems like it must be the entire city but in reality was only about 1/5 of it. St. Petersburg is not like other European cities. It has enormous, wide streets that put California to shame, blocks that go on forever, with oddly repeating buildings so that one feels like one is on a loop, and the distances are just vast. I guess there was room enough in Russia not to skimp on the mileage here, but ye gods, my feet are killing me. Not!Leningrad combines the walkability of suburban Ohio with indifferent subway coverage. We have not tried the trolleys yet, as the scale involved only became clear to us today. The maps make it all look so close, but truly, they cajole and lie and make a fool of human hearts. Once you start walking, the city telescopes and all of the sudden you're staring down three miles of long, icy thoroughfare. Oh, look, it's only a block away! MWA HA HA. BLOCK IS INFINITE. CITY MOCKS WESTERNER.

It also started snowing today. Which was beautiful, and soft, and lovely.

We started out at the Anna Ahkmatova museum--now, normally, I hate museums. I am skirting the idea of skipping the Hermitage. I know this makes me a bad person and fit for reviling, but the thing is, museums are dead, enshrined culture, and I would so much rather make my way among the living, tasting and breathing the real and alive city, trying to scry out its heart. I see images online all day. The difference between that and a long white antispetic hall with more images hung on it, often the same images I've seen in other media, is less than you might think. With so little time in any one place, I'm always loathe to spend it in a closed space where I cannot touch anything, or smell anything, or even hear anything, usually. I live enough of my life in a purely visual realm.

But for my darling poetesses I make exceptions. Because it's her house. Where she lived, when she lived here, before the war, before she was evacuated in 1941. My passion for Ahkmatova's work has only grown over the last several years, and sitting in her room, looking out on the golden autumn garden with the first snowflakes drifting down past flitting crows to settle on glistening red rosehips--I had to go. I had to be there. It is an amazing place. I try to imagine it filled with people, with writers making inside jokes and getting drunk and being afraid and giving each other jokey awards and just being kids, the way I and my writerly friends are kids, only Anna and her friends were under a shadow, and most of them were killed, including her husband and son. Everything about Russia seems to start out as a story Americans would find familiar--raconteur writers, dashing, charismatic poetess at the center of it all, city on the verge of war--and then goes to a place so unimaginably awful that even telling the story of what happened here in those days is an act of bloodletting that most westerners avoid entirely.

So after that we went to the Siege of Leningrad museum. Now, there's almost no translation there, but I've seen all those photographs before in my research, and I knew what most of the exhibits were. We saw Tanya Savicheva's diary, and a preserved bread ration which made me feel ill--so tiny, and made with little more than sawdust. But that's what you expect in a museum dedicated to an atrocity committed in wartime.

I didn't know that the guides, the guard, even the coat check woman were all Blockade survivors. (Or as the guard kept calling it: the Affair of Leningrad.) We sat quietly by with Dmitri whispering translation as a PhD student (who turned out to be a fellow Edinburgh University grad) interviewed the guard. She laughed at some of the questions: didn't they teach you about the war in school? I was only a child. Ask the tour guide, she remembers more. Then we followed her to the coat check room, where the woman who remembers the most, having been a teenager, had the day off, and Galina, who was three, and evacuated with the children of Leningrad, told us the very little she remembers, and much more about her orphanage and life bouncing from one family to another after all but her much older sister were killed in the Blockade.

It is very, very hard to keep from crying when those stories are told. When Galina herself teared up talking about the first victory day celebration twenty years later. How she doesn't remember her parents' faces. She was so beautiful and serene, and yet this thing that happened when she was three dominates her entire life.

We walked in the cold after that, down into the impossibly deep subway, where underground, marble pillars and bronze stars shine, polished and bright. Through the streets on Vasilevsky Island, with their sherbet-colored cathedrals and apartments, everything ice-cream and custard colored, yellow and pink and pale green with white piping. We ate solyanka and cabbage and sausage and looked out at the Neva, which is close enough to freezing to have that extra sheen of water that wants to go to ice but can't quite manage it yet. I thought a lot about how much I hate American WWII movies and the whole narrative of that war for us, which ignores so much and rearranges everything else so that it all ends with a lantern-jawed GI hero stomping a cartoonish Hitler single-handedly. American cinema and politics love WWII because it was an easy war for us--the bad guys were nice enough to wear black and twirl their mustaches. It wasn't an easy war here, and people are still living in the same places, the same apartments where it happened. Galina told us that after the war she and her sister just came back and lived in the same apartment. Palimpsests on palimpsests, writing and rewriting a city.

We watched streetdogs all day, handsome black gentlemen, nosing carefully for bones. We watched the night fall suddenly, utterly, and talked about the old days, how they never really end, or begin, but just keep going, forever, like a dark street.

Go East, Young Man

2009-11-06T16:17:16Z

I've been sitting on this news for a really long time, and while I am recuperating from a day of walking all over Not!Leningrad, which is NOT LIKE EUROPE in that it is absurdly enormous, with gargantuan streets and map scales that mock mortal feet, I finally get to announce it. Plain old good news, instead of craziness.

Possible some of you remember the source of the icon in this post. Once upon a time, long ago, I was planning an epic fantasy trilogy based on the myth of Prester John, arising out of my Interfictions 1 story, A Dirge for Prester John. (Speaking of, the IAF Auction to support Interfictions 2 is on now, and there is a wonderful piece based on my PJ story over there. I'll also be reading from the story at the Boston IAF spectakular next Friday at 7:30 at the Lily Pad in Cambridge, accompanied by Brian Slattery's amazing musical troupe!)

I'm deliriously pleased (having nothing to do with the pleasure of being off one's feet) to announce that I've sold the trilogy to Night Shade Books. First book should come out sometime next year.

Which means it finally gets to exist! Yay!

On top of that, my new novella, the California-punk Arthuriana Under In the Mere, is finally in the world and ready for purchase. I need to do a big post on this but I just haven't had the time, hopefully understandably. I'll make my traditional OMGNEWBOOK post when I get back on Tuesday. In the meantime, if you haven't ordered it, hie ye hence, and if you have, the first (reasonably in-depth, not single line) review posted online will receive an Arthurian gift package from me, which will include some original jewelry and other gee gaws.

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

2009-11-05T22:54:54Z

Well, that's it. One night in St. Petersburg and I'm a little in love.

Trying to squeeze the most out of our reduced time here, we immediately set off walking through the city, stopping to eat pelmeni and my first borscht, as well as coffee and rum and hot wine as the cold got to us. It's only about 30 degrees here tonight, but it goes right through you.

The night was bookended by babushki--grandmas. At the pelmennaya, this amazing old woman sat at her table, right out of every Russian movie you ever saw, with her scarf and all, slurping borscht with almost violent gusto. She then wiped her mouth on both her sleeves and heaved a huge bag over her shoulder before stomping out of the place.

At the last place we went to, a club that has a "Back to the USSR" 80s night on Sunday that WE WILL SO BE GOING TO, another old woman got up and started bumping and grinding on the dancefloor to a techno remix of One Night In Bangkok. Just wow. (Also I note that about half the restaurants in our guide go something like "amazing shashlik, dumplings, fish, great atmosphere, and oh by the way topless waitresses, just saying.")

So we walked over to Gorokhovaya Street, which is where I put my heroine's house in Deathless. I chose the street more or less at random, because I liked the sound, but it turned out to be a fabulous choice, as it's an iconic St. Petersburg street, with beautiful residential buildings, in addition to meaning "pea," and thus connected to "the days of Tsar Gorokh," which is a way of saying "back in the day." So we walked along it, looking at houses that might have been Marya Morevna's, peering through the dark at long, silent, cold canals, and I spent a lot of time reading cyrillic at the approximate speed of a toddler.

The thing is, this city feels so familiar. Part Paris, part freezing version of Rome--and I've been trying to imagine it for so long for the book, that now that I'm here, it all looks so much like I thought it would, and I have such good associations with Russian food, Russian language, even Russian faces. Everyone here has their Very Severe Face on, which is what I normally look like, except that everyone thinks I'm angry if I'm not smiling. But here, I blend! Sort of. Once we were out of the airport, the immediate switch to English upon seeing my face wasn't so bad. And justbeast gets that too, from time to time.

But I love it and we've only seen a slice of it, in the dark. The seaweed coming up out of the black canal, the color of sour cream floating in borscht, the occasional hammer and sickle still topping iron fences, this odd palimpsest of old and new city. I can't wait to see it in the light.

Back in the USSR

2009-11-05T16:45:10Z

Who's in Saint Petersburg?

WE ARE, BABY!

Everything went smoothly, we got our luggage, are ensconced in our hotel, not even three blocks from the street where I put Marya Morevna's house in Deathless.

We are gonna make these next days count.

So many, many thanks to all of you. See icon like whoa.

Also, apparently it's something of a tourist activity to look for long lines akin to the Soviet days. The guidebook says where to find them. I find this bizarre and hilarious.

Just Wow

2009-11-05T10:12:23Z

The events of the past two days have been embarrassing and heartbreaking--but also humbling and heart-lifting.

You guys are amazing. The power of the internet for good is astonishing. I had no idea I knew so many people in Germany.

A hundred times thank you for all your support, for rozk 's Facebook group, for charyvna 's superpowered ability to get us a night in this hotel for free, for the Fairyland donations and calls to Expedia. Apparently at some point Expedia stopped needing to be told what the situation was as practically the entire company has heard about it from all of you.

Can you even imagine that? That as a group, in the middle of the night, you can make such a difference.

The update is this: with a little luck, we will be on a plane this afternoon. We have visas and unless something goes really wrong, we'll still have a few days in Russia. (Communal activity for the somewhat ironic win.)

Expedia, to their absolute credit, emailed us this morning and admitted whole heartedly that their agent was at fault. They'll be refunding our trip and offered us a credit toward future travel. That's more than we ever expected, and they really did go out of their way to make it right. I want to especially thank the employee (who asked to remain anonymous) who due to her own honeymoon experiences took a personal interest and made this happen.

Seriously, you should all be proud of yourselves--your collective power is amazing. And your collective kindness towards us. Let this, certainly, be a lesson to all, especially us, not to believe someone just because they are a human being and work for travel specialists. We've had an object lesson and won't forget it--I hope this helps others not to make the same mistake.

Hopefully, all benevolent gods of travel willing, we'll be gawking at cupolas come evening. And holding all of you close in our hearts, our tribe, who never lets us stay in the dark for long.

Fairyland

2009-11-03T20:49:51Z

Having some free time on our hands, the penultimate Fairyland chapter is up.

Chapter XXI: Did You See Her?

Donations are, as always, appreciated, and especially so right now. I don't feel comfortable putting up a tip jar, but Fairyland has always run on the donation model, so if you feel moved, it is there as it has always been.

There is a Facebook group that's started a phone campaign to Expedia--it's here.

Thank you all for your support. I'll keep you updated.

National Day of Unity??

2009-11-03T19:32:47Z

This is getting to levels of awful I can't even describe.

We got a visa invitation. All we need is to take it to the Consulate.

Which is closed tomorrow for a holiday. Meaning the earliest we could get to Russia would be Thursday night. Giving us at most three days.

And we're out of money. This has cost more than half of what the whole trip cost, and we've been penalized severely for changing our flight, on top of it all.

Both of us are just sitting here with our heads in our hands. We don't know what to do. We just wanted a honeymoon and now we're stranded, with no money, in a strange country, and fucking Expedia refuses to help us. Do we just turn around and go home? This hotel is so expensive, and we can't afford another night. I just don't know how to Pollyanna this.

Fuck. Everything seems pretty fucking dark right now.

Nothing But Net, Expedia

2009-11-03T13:18:32Z

I guess you can't have a wedding go as amazingly well as ours did and not pay some kind of cosmic price.

We are currently stranded in Frankfurt, Germany.

When we booked the honeymoon to Russia with Expedia, we were told that we did not need visas.

Did this seem odd to us? Yes. So we called and talked to Expedia in person and were assured that we did not need visas. We had no reason not to believe this information.

Only to arrive in Germany, attempt to board a plane to Russia, and be informed that boy howdy do we need visas.

We have been here for almost six hours, dumping euros into the phone to try to fix this somehow. Because justbeast is fluent and was born in the Ukraine, he managed to talk the Russian consulate into some kind of exception, if we could get a visa letter of support from Expedia.

Who refused.

We found another company to provide one. Theoretically, we spent the night in Frankfurt and pick up our visas at the consulate in the morning (as they are busting their asses over there, with 10 am to 1 pm business hours). Theoretically. Any number of things could still go wrong.

We are both beyond exhausted. We have been traveling for more than 24 hours. We need showers. My legs and feet got all swollen on the plane from not moving. I've cried a little. If I never see the inside of Frankfurt airport again it'll be too soon. And on top of that, we have to pay a truly obscene amount of money for a hotel room tonight, of which Expedia grudgingly agreed to cover less than a third, as they have no documentation of someone telling us we didn't need visas when we did. Funny how you might not write something like that down.

I hope we'll be laughing about this tomorrow. Right now, I ache and just want this Brazil bullshit to end.

But the wedding was so wonderful. I'll post about it, when I'm no longer marooned.

Fairyland will update when and if we get to our hotel. I am sorry--the situation was out of my control.

yuki_onna @ 2009-11-01T09:00:00

2009-11-01T13:00:55Z

09:04 Wedding folk: hashtag for the wedding is #beastlybride, upload photos to the pool at: bit.ly/2gCeWl #
09:07 I feel we should have made con tags for this wedding. #
10:53 Hey twitter, how come the flags are at half mast? #
01:04 Oh my god, so much awesome in one night, so many people, so much crazed beauty. Bachelor/ette party for the record books. #beastlybride #
01:17 @justbeast's niece Nika wins Halloween. Came out in Little Mermaid costume, looked at me very solemnly, then took out pair of vampire teeth. #
01:25 #beastlybride The wedding weekend feels like it's going so fast. #

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Coke and 2030

2009-11-01T06:09:35Z

I wrote this yesterday but didn't finish--I still want to post it the night before my wedding, thinking still about all this, while so many people I love are here.

***

It's very early in the morning on Friday, the first day of wedding celebrations. I can't sleep. I'm not really nervous, it's mainly that I drank two cans of Coke so as to stay up and arrange the reception playlist and make baubles for justbeast 's bachelor party. And now I'm all wide awake. I have to leave at 7 to meet my mother, grandmother, and aunt for breakfast on the east side, so it seemed like a good plan to just get up and take a shower, eat some leftover blini and read some excerable gossip blogs.

And think about everything. Because, you know, weddings always come at the end of a story, they are the culmination, the reward. Lizzie and Darcy speed toward death from that point on. It's not like that, outside books and movies, but books and movies are half my world, so I can't help considering the many stories that are going to end and begin on Sunday.

Somehow this all ties into How I Met Your Mother for me. I've only ever watched it here with theferrett and zoethe , but what strikes me about it is the credit sequence, the faded future photographs of people we watch living in the present, a kind of predetermination in sun damage. Half of me says: images don't deteriorate like that anymore. Sure, digital photos degrade, but there is no golden glow seeping up from the bottom, that old chemical dance of time. Half of me can't help but think: I am 30 now. When my mother was 30 I was 5 already. I remember my father's 29th birthday. I remember my uncles, who seemed like titans to me, but they were so young, really, only in their late teens and early twenties. It's this mobius strip of generations, and as I have no children of my own yet, I only see it in my memories of the young family that raised me, and who they are now, and who I am now, grown up, around and around.

I know I will get older and in 2030 I'll tell the story of how I met my second husband. I think of it like those photographs, existing in some celestial closet of time past and time future, growing more and more golden as everything ticks by. But right now, oh, right now I feel so young, and so strong, and so in love, and so ready for the rest of my life, so able and excited about the world. I am so glad I am going into marriage feeling that way, just as I know it won't last forever, that there are knees yet to go and more fallow years and suffering enough to go around. I want to hold onto this feeling, that 30 was really the beginning of the life I wanted to have, and the final break with the bad old days I had to live through to get here. (It shows so starkly in the state of this wedding compared to my first--surrounded, now, by so many loved ones from near and far, family, clothes and jewelry and so many things made by my heroes and friends, and a man next to me who actually wants to marry me, who wouldn't want to be anywhere else.)

Tonight, I feel more vital than I ever did as a teenager, clear as cut glass. I think that might mean I'm ready to get married.

yuki_onna @ 2009-10-31T08:00:00

2009-10-31T12:00:57Z

19:23 Oh halp. Today threatens to overwhelm me. One hour of sleep, six cups of coffee, 90 minutes to go before have to be calm & beautiful. #
01:20 Overheard at the wedding party, re polyamory: "In my family it's a bigger deal if you do drugs or write mainstream fiction." #

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yuki_onna @ 2009-10-30T08:00:00

2009-10-30T12:00:54Z

11:15 ZOMG @parrishrelics wedding jewelry came and it's SOOOO beautiful! #
11:29 If you are coming to my bachelorette party please remember to bring a photo of yourself as a baby! #
12:56 All my weather witches: think sunny on Sunday! #
14:57 @rosefox Icon pix are fine. #
21:10 @tithenai and my plan for the night: eat BooBerry cereal and play Rock Band. #
03:54 I can now confirm that BooBerry cereal is completely foul. #

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yuki_onna @ 2009-10-29T08:00:00

2009-10-29T12:00:55Z

09:45 Big day--Mom, @tithenai, and dressmaker arrive today. #
13:59 It looks like the only thing that just fell through entirely was the cake topper. Ah, well. #
14:45 @sheryl67 First one was steampunk robots, second was steampunk horse and carriage and moon. Both fell through. #
16:10 After an hour's annoying paperwork, can haz marriage license. Celebratory lunch at Waffle House. #
22:46 what is the latin term for the breaking of the bread in Roman wedding? #

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yuki_onna @ 2009-10-28T08:01:00

2009-10-28T12:01:58Z

11:24 @adampknave I'm not throwing it. I hate that tradition. #
23:31 @adampknave I have this vision of me totally biffing the throw and embarrassing myself. It fills me with terror. #

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yuki_onna @ 2009-10-27T08:00:00

2009-10-27T12:00:48Z

12:07 New #Fairyland Chapter--only two left! www.catherynnemvalente.com/fairyland/chapter22/ #
01:57 twitpic.com/n48sp - Corsages for family members--i can has glue gun burns? #
02:00 twitpic.com/n490d - Wedding bouquet final--with moar glitter and typewriter key ribbons #

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New Fairyland Chapter!

2009-10-26T16:12:45Z

New chapter up! Only two left!

Chapter XX: Saturday's Wish

The Marid lay on the floor of a cell, his hands bound behind his back, his mouth gagged. Terrible bruises bloomed purple and black where the lion had bitten him. His eyes were sunken and sallow.

(We'll update all the missing audio once the wedding is over--neither one of us have a minute to spare, and we apologize profusely.)

yuki_onna @ 2009-10-25T08:00:00

2009-10-25T12:00:22Z

14:47 Omg I'm having orange julius at the mall AND IT'S AWESOME #
01:53 Paranormal Activity was certainly jump-scary, but I wish there were more of a /story/ there. #

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yuki_onna @ 2009-10-24T08:00:00

2009-10-24T12:00:24Z

15:22 Anyone local to Cleveland have a hot glue gun? #
15:48 twitpic.com/mmozf - Wedding bouquet! #
16:05 The roses are made out of pages from my books. #
19:01 Yes, I have set my zombie story in Augusta. #
22:55 @greygirlbeast I somewhat shyly want to let you know that I named the protag of the New England horror short story I just wrote Caitlin. #

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yuki_onna @ 2009-10-23T08:00:00

2009-10-23T12:00:29Z

13:15 Bid on a lunch with me to save Dave's house: bit.ly/18SmiU #

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Sing, Sing, Sing

2009-10-22T23:06:37Z

After not posting for so long, being occupado with Deathless, (which is now firmly named that, by the way, as the longer the book became the clearer it was that the thing was just plain called Deathless), it's hard to get back on the saddle. What if everyone forgot me and doesn't want to hear what I think now? Also: oh god, moar typing.

So I will ease back in. Wait on the essays I want to write til, you know, my wedding is over. It's only 10 days away. Which is really amazing-it's always been so far in the future and now it is emphatically here. I even got my hair all princess-ified yesterday to practice for the event. And mourned my inability to get my hair that beautiful by myself.

I'm working on a zombie story right now--I know right? But I think it might be a good one. Who knows. The anthology is tapping its wristwatch and looking pointedly in my direction, and this is the idea I got. Am still trying to decide if And Death Shall Have No Dominion is too obvious a title for a zombie story.

But mostly, theferrett and zoethe have been sick--but somehow my super immune system of doom has managed to not even catch a little of it. Last night we drank amaretto and watched cheesy musicals--Hairspray, Mamma Mia, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Meet Me in St. Louis. Between that and playing tons of Beatles Rock Band, I kind of want to sing ALL THE TIME NOW. Perhaps incoming wedding people will join in the musical joy? (Speaking of, still making the wedding playlist, which is really hard.)

Other than that I'm just sort of flatlined. Desperately needed mental rest. I'm reading The Brief History of the Dead and loving it so far. I knitted a hat for Leningrad but it was too big so I'm unravelling it but sine it was a complicated cable pattern it's not unravelling as normal and takes forever so now I stare balefully at the mess of a former hat on the nightstand. I really want my mom and

tithenai and everyone else to be here, but especially justbeast , who gets back into town on Saturday.

Tonight, we're having Indian food and I would imagine watching movies while the convalescents continue to convalesce. I have a craving for cocoa.

Calm before the storm--I can't wait for the wedding, but I also just want it to come off and everyone to have a good time. And sometimes I stress myself out thinking they won't. And I'm running on all my animal drives right now, due to mental exhaustion: want food, chocolate, boy, music, pretty lights, warm covers. Fire bad. Tree pretty.

Maybe someday I will feel human again.

yuki_onna @ 2009-10-22T08:00:00

2009-10-22T12:00:22Z

16:03 I has princess hair! (practice for wedding hair today) #
16:25 Bobby pins, like my secret army of robot zombie nano-clones, are infinitely expanding and self-replicating. #
20:14 What's your favorite song to dance to? #
23:52 @sam_hands Thank you! #

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yuki_onna @ 2009-10-21T08:01:00

2009-10-21T12:01:01Z

20:38 Help save Dave's house from foreclosure: bit.ly/1R1lOi #

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yuki_onna @ 2009-10-20T08:00:00

2009-10-20T12:00:35Z

11:01 New #Fairyland chapter! In which all is revealed. www.catherynnemvalente.com/fairyland/chapter21 #
11:46 Deep breath. Ready for that awesome Monday news? #Fairyland + a sequel sold to Feiwel & Friends. OMFG! *has the vapors* #
11:57 @sinboy Not sure yet but looks like it. #
13:31 Everyone is sick in this house except me. Oh man, I cannot get sick. #
16:35 twitpic.com/m5ufu - All this packaging for a wedding ring. UPSFAIL. #
01:37 @greygirlbeast What an excellent point, re: the punks. #

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All Things Fairyland

2009-10-19T15:42:52Z

Firstly, there's a new chapter up today.

Chapter XIX: Clocks

And I'm not excerpting anything because this is the Big Giant Answers chapter where you find out everything you ever wanted to know about what the hell is going on in Fairyland. Obviously, I would LOVE to hear what you guys think of all this. Check out the community, onaleopard , for discussion. (Only three chapters left!)

Secondly, I said I had something big and awesome to announce. Well, do I ever.

As of last week, Fairyland has sold to Liz Szabla at Feiwel & Friends, which is a YA imprint of Macmillan. Not only Fairyland, but also a sequel.

Can I get an omg?

This is a huge landmark in my career and my first YA deal. It's real and it's happening--which I have to keep telling myself. And in large part it is due to you guys, your enthusiasm, your reading every week, your loyalty, your love. Thank you so much. This has been overwhelming, one of the most amazing trips in my life. And it strikes me as wonderful and astonishing that something so very, very Web 2.0, born and bred and thriving online, can be so embraced by the traditional publishing world, can become a hybrid of the old world and the new, so very like Fairyland itself. Obviously this is not the first book to travel such a route, but it is still a road neither paved nor well-marked, and I'm so proud of the universe I live in, where such things can happen, which hath such people in it. I've been sort of reeling all weekend. It was a whirlwind process, so fast, so suddenly like a fairy tale of publishing, where everything goes to plan and you feel like a farm girl at the ball.

Now, I'm reasonably sure that you, and I, and a significant portion of the internet are about to have a conversation about e-publishing and traditional publishing and whether or not this is the future of everything. It is a good and worthy and necessary conversation to have. However, since I already field emails every week about whether it's a good idea to chuck any hope of a publisher and just put everything online, I'd like to make the first volley in that conversation. I would like to point out that before I wrote Fairyland, I had a significant traditional publication history, a pre-established fanbase, and several literary awards. If I had not, I doubt anyone would have cared much that I was posting a book online. I am extremely cognizant of how lucky I am, and how many ways this could have gone wildly wrong.

The fact is, signal-to-noise ratios have always been an issue in online publishing, and the signal-boosting around Fairyland was tremendous. The sale to Feiwel was made possible because of that online support, but also because I have an amazing agent, who is capable of miracles. Agents and editors and the apparatus of publishing are still good things--and ones that do not, contrary to popular belief, automatically stomp on anything original and experimental.

It remains harder to sell a book that is already available online than to sell one that is not. I think something like this hybrid approach is the best of all worlds--and the best of all worlds remains a pretty tough thing to plug into. This kind of thing, which has happened to John Scalzi and through a slightly different vector to Cory Doctorow and a few others, is not yet anything like the normal way of doing business. It's more like courting lightning. It is not a repeatable experiment, really, because the results are still entirely unpredictable. This was a perfect outcome. Therefore, it is an outlier.

Of course, it is an awesome outlier, and I'm utterly beside myself. I need to install a confetti machine in my ceiling. Enough of the sober writerly advice.

OMFG!