Sunday, April 21, 2013

Still trapped under heavy stuff

I'm still getting quite a few pageviews despite not having posted anything since November (that's when my editing business really started taking off), so I decided to stick my head in the door and update the three of you who may be following this blog on a regular basis.

First, I'm still working on my own YA sci-fi, but extremely slowly as other people's edits are currently taking precedence. They're paying me, after all.

The promised YA post hasn't materialized yet--I agonize over every word, so these posts actually take awhile to craft before I feel they're worthy of being read.

Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane comes out June 18 (cover your ears while I let out a fangirl squeeeee). Okay, I'm done. He is such a generous author; anyone who ordered an advance copy (me!) gets an autographed first edition. Links here (containing advance reviews and tour dates). Denver, where my sister lives, and Seattle, where my daughter lives, are on the list. He's not going to be anywhere near enough my neck of the woods, unfortunately *sadface* and here. The second link is an earlier post, from which you can order advance copies. Oh, that reminds me: I have to go order Unnatural Creatures and finally get around to reading Anansi Boys. 

ALSO: PIMPING MY TABS:

I worked very hard on the Characterizations posts as well as the Revision Strategies, although the latter can certainly afford some tweakage now that I've been editing semi-professionally for awhile. But I am quite proud of the Characterizations essays, particularly as concerns female characters. So, in the absence of new posts every week, you can always read these.

AND: BEST STUFF READ so far THIS YEAR:

Just finished A. L. Kennedy's The Blue Book and Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. Literary/realistic fiction is my first love and it was nice to come back to them.  Our school is participating in the 50 Book Challenge; of course the teachers are encouraged to participate as well; but having been fed a steady diet of YA most of this year, I decided to be a rebel and choose what I wanted to read for the last two months of the school year.  So there. I write reviews of most books I read, so if you want my take, head to my Goodreads "READ" shelf and see what I wrote. Review of Kingsolver forthcoming, since I only finished it yesterday.

Best YA read this year:

Far and away, hands-down, leaves-all-others-in-the-dust: Jellicoe Road the US title for On The Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta.  Doesn't condescend, handles teen sexuality tastefully but realistically, the prose is lanky but controlled.  Worth reading twenty-five other mediocre books to have found this one.

Thanks for stopping by.