Book Review: The Hair Wreath and Other Stories by Halli Villegas

This is a review of The Hair Wreath and Other Stories by Halli Villegas.

There’s a subgenre all about dissatisfied suburban couples, families breaking apart or struggling to hold together, the emptiness in people’s lives. Think Margaret Atwood, or in film, American Beauty.

Now imagine this subgenre with a touch of the fantastical. Sometimes it might feel more like horror, sometimes magic realism, sometimes pure fantasy, once in a while science fiction, other times straight-up realism.

That’s what it’s like reading this collection.

Reading Recap: 2012

Time for a roundup of the past year of reading! I’m going to start out by sharing my favourite books of the year, then go into some geeky stats on my reading and buying habits in 2012. Hope it’s interesting, and/or helpful to those of you who, like me, are trying to make money in the industry. Please chime in!

Year in Review

Favourite Books of 2012

I’m perpetually behind in my reading. I don’t pretend to have a handle on “genre fiction in 2012″ or even “fantasy fiction for adults in 2012″. So I’m not even going to try for that. What I’m giving you instead is a very personal list of the books I liked best this year (never mind when they were published), and an explanation of why.

The Best Christmas Stories Ever

What are your favourite Christmas stories?

Even leaving aside the ones in the Bible, plenty of stories have been written about this time of year. Not surprising that it would be an inspiration to writers, given all the folklore and family traditions and emotional associations that are tied up in December 25.

I remember a pile of children’s books that my parents used to bring out every year. They were about shepherd boys and woodcarvers, drummer boys and miracles. Tomie A. de Paola wrote picture books based on The Legend of Old Befana and The Friendly Beasts. Barbara Robinson wrote The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. One picture book that I found as an adult, and bought because I liked it so much, was The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski.

Book Nostalgia: Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

Quick anthology update: I was recently over at author Shay Fabbro’s blog talking about how we created the shared world for the anthology. And that’s it for promo today.

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In this week’s installment of my Nostalgia series, I’m looking at the first of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books. (More to come in a future Nostalgia post!) Sailing, camping, pirates, and treasure…what’s not to love?

In case it’s been a while, here’s a quick summary to jog your memory. Swallows and Amazons features two groups of preteen siblings, each crewing a small sailboat on a large lake. The four Swallows, exploring the lake for the first time, are thrilled to be allowed to camp alone on an island…until the two Amazons arrive, and war ensues. There are night raids, an attack on a pirate houseboat, and the discovery of a treasure chest.

Writing a Short Story for Seasons Eternal

Today I’m talking a little bit more about Seasons Eternal, the second SF&F anthology from Turtleduck Press. (The first one is here.) I’m the editor there, and I also publish short stories through them. When we put together an anthology, I get to do both at the same time.

For this year’s anthology, we chose a shared premise — what might happen to a world where the seasons stopped changing? Each side of the planet is frozen in a different season. A century later, various societies have evolved to cope, but they’re still struggling under the pressures of the change.

But you can’t write a story about a society. Stories are about people.

Weekend Link: Seasons Eternal Anthology

Happy weekend!

Seasons Eternal, the anthology I mentioned earlier this week, is out today, and we’re excited…

It’s available at Amazon (Kindle format) and Smashwords (just about any other ebook format you like), and there will be a print version out soon.

You can read all about it at Turtleduck Press.

That’s all for this week. See you back here on Monday!

Anthology Announcement: Seasons Eternal

I’m excited to announce that Turtleduck Press is releasing a new anthology on December 1. Seasons Eternal is based on a shared premise: what if there were a world where the seasons stopped turning?

We opted to set very loose rules about the world to encourage variety among the stories, and variety we got in abundance. Each of the four authors has chosen a season and taken a different approach — science fiction, fantasy, or a little of both.

And the stories are…

World Fantasy Convention 2012, Part 2

Last week, I blogged about this year’s World Fantasy Convention. I promised to share more about the panels, so here are some tidbits from one panel on urban fantasy and another on maps in fantasy literature.

Urban Fantasy panel

This panel was interesting because it included Tim Powers, Charles De Lint, and Tanya Huff, three people who have been writing more-or-less urban fantasy since before its recent reincarnation as “the subgenre formerly known as paranormal romance”. Also on the panel were David Hartwell, Ann VanderMeer, and Farah Mendlesohn (moderator), all editors who have their own familiarity with urban fantasy.

A few highlights:

Convention Report: World Fantasy Convention 2012, Part 1

I just got back from attending the World Fantasy Convention for the first time. World Fantasy 2012 was in Toronto, luckily for me. It was a pretty awesome experience — the hotel was packed with top-notch SF/fantasy/horror writers and publishing types, the room parties spilled out into the hallway, the dealers’ room was like a giant SF/F/H bookstore.

And…we got bags of free books to take home. I heard rumours that some bags contained the latest books from Mercedes Lackey and Tanya Huff, but didn’t see any myself. I did score a copy of The Lives We Lost by Megan Crewe (YA dystopian, the sequel to The Way We Fall). Pretty pleased, since it won’t be in stores until February!

I’m not blogging just to brag, though. I also went to some great panels, and I wanted to share some of the highlights…

Things We’ve Forgotten: Make-Believe

Did you have a vivid fantasy life as a child?

I just finished reading Jo Walton’s Hugo-winning novel Among Others, and one of the (many) things that struck me about it was how real make-believe can be for kids. I’m not talking about the fairies in the book — those are meant to be read as real — but about the names Mori and her twin use in their playing. Osgiliath, Glorfindel…of course on one level they know they’re conflating stories with reality, but on another level, those names are true in their heads.

When my sister and I were children playing explorers or servant girls or pirates, we had much the same experience. We knew our snowy backyard wasn’t the Arctic, but it didn’t matter. We knew the playground near our house wasn’t a sailing ship surrounded by sharks, but at the same time, it absolutely was. (Or a robber fort, or a medieval castle, depending on what we needed it to be.) We hadn’t yet learned to fear cognitive dissonance.