NaNoWriMo Approacheth

It’s the end of October, and that means…

Halloween?

Actually, for a lot of people, it means the imminent arrival of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

If you’re debating about whether to participate, read this: Should You Do NaNoWriMo?

If you already know that writing 50,000 words in November is not going to work for you, consider piggybacking on all that enthusiasm and think about 5 Ways to Make NaNoWriMo Work for You.

And really, here’s what NaNo is all about (for me at least, your mileage may vary, etc., etc.): NaNoWriMo Manifesto.

As for me, I’ve done NaNo multiple times, then took a break, and will be doing it again this year — with a YA novel set in space — for the first time since 2011. (I’m wonderer over there.) Due to my recent wrist scare, I’m not going to push too hard for 50,000 words. My initial goal is 30K, and that will be revised as necessary. If I can knock out 1000 words a day, I’ll be thrilled!

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In other news: happy book launch week to Megan Crewe! Megan is launching a YA science fiction trilogy called Earth and Sky. It’s about a girl who uncovers a conspiracy of time-travelling aliens who are messing with our world…what’s not to like? Here’s the cover of the first book — isn’t it pretty?

Your turn! Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? Do tell!

All Hallows Read

Halloween is coming up again, and that means it’s time for All Hallows Read!

But what is it, you ask? Here’s Neil Gaiman to explain:

I have a few suggestions for scary books to share. For starters, I’m finally getting around to reading The Passage by Justin Cronin. It’s not terribly horror-ish (actually a plus for squeamish readers like me) but it’s about a vampire apocalypse, which surely counts as Halloween-appropriate. Be prepared: it is looong, and something happens a third of the way through (end of Act I? Why yes…) that turns off some readers. But I kept going, and I’m glad I did. It’s really well-written. I may have to go an apocalyptic literature kick now…

Where was I? Ah yes, scary book suggestions.

As I said, I’m a lightweight when it comes to horror, but here are a few authors/books who creep me out without keeping me awake for the rest of the month:

• C.J. Cherryh – Rider at the Gate / Cloud’s Rider
• China Miéville (discussed on the blog here and here)
• Halli Villegas – The Hair Wreath and Other Stories (reviewed here)
• Peter Watts – Blindsight (and hey, there’s a sequel out now, Echopraxia!)

I’ve also written a horror-lite short story myself, which you can read for free at Turtleduck Press: The Dangers of Creation; or, A Machine to Rival Man. (It’s not the only horror-leaning story among our freebies, either.)

Here’s a post on YA Gothics from last year, and another about women in Gothic novels. There’s lots more over at the All Hallows Read website. But now…

Over to you! What scary books would you recommend?

Autumn in Montreal

If you’re looking for a fall vacation, Montreal is a great place to go, and here’s why…

Trees on Mount Royal

It’s close to everywhere — a short plane hop from NYC and the northeastern states, and a totally doable — and picturesque — train ride from Ottawa (1 hour) and even Toronto (4 and a half hours, if you play your cards right). The province of Quebec borders New York State, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, so you can even drive there if you’re lucky. It makes a great weekend getaway.

On the train between Montreal and Toronto

But it makes you feel like you’ve been somewhere else. There’s the prevalence of French, of course (though you can certainly get by without it), but not only that — Montreal has its own distinctive architecture, fashion, and cultural scene. And good public transit, too.

(Hit the jump to see more fall foliage photos and more reasons to go…)

Reading the World

As you may have noticed, I have a fascination with other countries. No single country in particular, though there are some that exert more of a pull on me more than others — rather, the whole world intrigues me.

But I don’t read nearly as much international literature as I’d like. I’m going to guess you’re the same way.

Here, then, is a starting list of (mostly) fiction I’ve read from countries other than Canada, the USA, and England. It’s very 101-level for the most part, but still, I hope it’s helpful! If you have recommendations from countries not your own, in translation or otherwise, please chime in…

• Albania – Ismail Kadare, The Successor (literary)
• Argentina – Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand (magic realism)
• Belgium – Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin (comics)
• Columbia – Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold (magic realism) and Living to Tell the Tale (autobiography)
• Czech Republic – Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (science fiction play)
• Denmark – Hans Christian Andersen (fairy tales)
• France – Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, Paris in the Twentieth Century (science fiction and/or adventure); Albert Camus, The Stranger (literary)
• India – Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (literary)
• Ireland – James Joyce, Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners (literary)
• Italy – Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before (magic realism)
• Lebanon – Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (spiritual)
• Nigeria – Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (literary)
• Norway – Knut Hamsun, Hunger (literary); Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter (historical); Henrik Ibsen (plays)
• Poland – Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress (science fiction)
• Russia – Ekaterina Sedia, The Secret History of Moscow (urban fantasy); Sergei Lukyanenko, The Night Watch (urban fantasy); Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (science fiction); Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (literary)
• Sweden – Astrid Lindgren (children’s books)

That’s 16 countries. As you can see, there’s a serious tilt towards Europe and away from genre fiction. That’s because I read most of these in school. If you can expand the horizons of this list, please do!

Further reading:

A Year of Reading the World

Women in Translation Month

Another time I’ll share with you the (much longer) list of international books that are on my radar but that I just haven’t gotten to yet…

Your turn! What books/authors can you add to this list?

 

Health Update and Book Sale!

First, a health update: My wrists are still causing trouble, two weeks after this all started. I’ll know more tomorrow, I hope, but in the meantime I’ve been trying to minimize non-job-related computer use. (My job involves being on the computer all day, most days, so that doesn’t help….)

Funny how I spend so much time avoiding writing, and now that I’m avoiding it for health reasons, I’m getting really antsy to start writing again. Oh, brain, why must you be so weird?

In the meantime I’ve been busy with story intake instead of output, if you get my drift. I zoomed through Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown in a week (that’s pretty fast for me these days) and am now making my way through Justin Cronin’s The Passage (which is taking me longer, because that sucker is huge). And I’ve settled down for — finally — some dedicated watching of Doctor Who. So it’s definitely not all bad.

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Second, the happy news — Turtleduck Press is having a book sale! All of our books are 99 cents from now until October 7. For details and recommendations, drop by the book sale announcement on our site.

I happen to think everything we’ve published is pretty cool, but if you’d like to support me in particular, pick up our latest anthology, Under Her Protection — or one of our other anthologies. I have stories in each of them, but if you like…

…Gothic steampunk about mad cellists, read my story in The Best of Turtleduck Press, Volume I

…post-apocalyptic steampunk with crash-landing dirigibles, check out Seasons Eternal (which also has a cool premise for the anthology as a whole: each of the authors wrote a story about a different season on a planet where the seasons have stopped turning)

…secondary-world fantasy based on Inuit mythology, try Winter’s Night (all winter-themed stories — and hey, Christmas is coming! *ducks barrage of rotten fruit*)

Enjoy!