final books of 2009

Okay, a super-speedy post about the last couple books I read in 2009.
First, Witch Craft by Caitlin Kittredge. Love it! I really just dig the whole Nocturne City series. Something about the gritty police procedural feeling plus the urban fantasy edge plus the great little moments of flirtation just make this series great! People, really, go buy these books!
Second: Demon Bound by Caitlin Kittredge. You know, I enjoyed this one, but as with the first in the Black London series, it just felt slightly sloppy to me. But I really, really like these ones, too. Just not as much as the Nocturne City ones.
Third: Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink. And I loved it. YA historical fantasy with a dark edge, involving family secrets and creepy prophecies. Highly recommended, to anyone at all interested in any convergence of those topics! SO GOOD! I cannot wait for the rest of this trilogy to be released so the world can experience the awesomeness in its entirety.
Anyway. Onward to freelancing. I know, someday I'll work less and have some sort of life. Or do more writing. Or both. But for now, I'm getting paid to do it, so I need to get it done.
Ta!

a few more books

I remembered a few more books from last year:
Need by Carrie Jones: This is somewhat dark YA urban fantasy, which I usually love. But somehow, this one didn't do it for me. The main character, Zara, was a little too passive and then suddenly not passive for me. And strange things got accepted quite easily, if I remember correctly. I did appreciate the fact that it was werewolves and pixies, but no vampires, but still, this wasn't a keeper for me.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. This one was interesting. It felt middle grade, but creepy in a not-middle-grade sort of way, I think. It's a story about friendship and about time travel and about game shows. I enjoyed it, but it didn't quite gel for me. Not a keeper.
Playing with the Grown-ups by Sophie Dahl. I really, really enjoyed this novel. It felt like a memoir at times, and it was so easy to fall into the emotions of the characters, to feel all the turbulence Kitty felt while going through adolescence. It's about Kitty's experience growing up with a larger-than-life family. I absolutely recommend this one.
Rampant by Diana Peterfreund. Venomous, flesh-eating unicorns! Virgin unicorn hunters! Strong-minded heroines, close bonds of friendships, a couple cute boys, and the scenery of Rome! Crazy parents! This book is awesome. 100% recommended. I love this book. And can't wait for the next one.
Anyway. 5:15. Time to run. More books tomorrow!

mid-January already?

How did that happen? And here I was resolved to be a better blogger this year . . . Well, it's never too late to start, I suppose.
So, a little late, but here are my New Years resolutions:

• more writing
• less freelancing
• more time outside
• be more healthy (re: food and drink)
• more music
• finish watching Buffy
  

I think that's doable. There's also a list of writing goals for this year:

• submit Nor
• write cupcake truck Western novel
• write first novel in urban fantasy series
• outline entire urban fantasy series
• write three short stories
• edit the two shorts I wrote last year

Also doable, if I stay really focused. I'm already partially done editing one of the shorts from last year, have done some brainstorming on the novel, have an opening for the cupcake truck, and am only days away from submitting Nor. So. Here's hoping that this is a year of artistic productivity!
There are several books I read toward the end of last year, but didn't manage to blog about as work and freelancing were both moving at a breakneck pace. To get caught up, I'll try now to just list as many as I can recall and say if I liked it.
Splendor by Anna Godbersen: LOVED it. The concluding book in the Luxe series. So good, with a brilliant wrap-up to everything!
Poems of Anna Akhmatova: Interesting Russian poetry from around WWI. Good stuff.
Persepolis: brilliant graphic novel memoir. She was so ANGRY, and it just made such perfect sense.
The Bestiary by Nicholas Christopher: a slow starter for me, but by the end I was utterly entranced and inspired to do some reading on medieval bestiaries.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman: Just utterly fantastic. Need I say more? I love that man's way with words.
Can't recall any more now, so I'll do the rest sometime this week. I ended the year at 52 or 53 books, which is great, so I'll set the goal of 50 books again for this year.
And now, editorial work is beckoning, so I'm off. Happy New Year everyone, and I'll be back soon!

Friday evening

Happy weekend everyone!

it's been a while

Sorry about that, everyone. Every so often, life gets too busy for this sort of leisurely pursuit! And, as always, I only have a minute before I have to run. Sometime soon I'll get around to blogging about the books I've read recently, and the two Broadway shows I've seen. For now I'll just say that life is good, although BUSY. Work is good, although REALLY busy. Thanksgiving was great, with my sister visiting as well as a surprise guest from Oregon. There is enough food still in my fridge to feed an army!
We're rapidly approaching the end of the year and there is still so much I want to accomplish. I need to remind myself that I've still got a month, and that's really plenty of time.
Well. Time to go meet a friend for a jaunt through the holiday market. I'll be back sometime this week. Happy December!

dreams

A couple dreams last night. First I dreamed that a bunch of people including me, my sister, and my parents were on some sort of spaceship that crash-landed on an alien planet, and we were trying to figure out how to survive. Scavenging for food and for debris from the crash, dressed in rags, that sort of thing. This older guy tried to get me to sleep with him but I ran off, and found a fridge mostly full of food from the spaceship, which everyone was really excited about. Then something weird happened and I was really briefly beamed home where my younger sister still was. I was in the house, and went into her room where she was going to bed, and there was a man there named Mr. Chebb who was staying with her to make sure she was okay (he had bug-eyes and these weird conical things coming out of his head). I sat down on the bed and we both cried and cried because she missed all of us and I couldn't stay. That dream made me really sad, when I woke up from it.
The second dream started with me just wandering the streets of some large city (London, maybe?). Then I went into a house that I somehow knew was my house even though I'd been gone for years and years. There was a teenage boy in the shower and I knew he was my twin brother, even though I was a good decade older than him, so I called out that I was home and he knew it was me but told me to fix myself, or something. So I left and did something to turn myself into a teen again, and my brother was very excited when I came back the correct age but was still in the shower. So he told me to go into the back room and check the reflection in the mirror. Which, of course, I didn't do. I went to the front room, it was a bedroom with a little closet of a bathroom attached. It was dim in there, and I sprinkled some sort of powder into the water in the toilet bowl and had a vision of flames. THEN I went to the back room and looked at the tarnished mirror on the wall (the whole place was very lovely with a slightly Eastern feel, but sort of decayed and tarnished). I realized that I could trigger the room's memories, so I did and the memory showed this pull-cord coming down from the ceiling so I asked the room to let it down now and it did. I pulled the left-hand tab attached to the bottom of the cord. And down from the ceiling dropped a lantry, which is apparently a teacher spirit capable of some shape-shifting. It ran outside on all fours, had an excited back and forth with a dog out there, and told me what it was when I asked. Then it ran around the side of the house.
I wish I could remember more of both of those dreams. I feel like there was more to both of them. Maybe it was all really the same dream and I've just forgotten some of the transitional material? I don't know.
Anyway. Time to get home and get to the freelancing. Have a good night!

another friday

I can't believe it's November already! This year has gone by so fast!
I had lunch with a friend today whose book is out on submission with a bunch of publishers. I'm really excited for her! And talking to her about it really just brought home how much I want to get Nor out there. I need to make time to work up a query letter, and a synopsis, so I can get an agent. Soon, soon. I've got a lot of freelancing on my plate because of complicatedness at work, but overall I am really working on balancing my time better. I feel like I'm getting somewhere, slowly but surely!
Neil Gaiman blogged about Argleton, a town that mysteriously seems to exist only online. How intriguing, don't you think? That's just begging for some speculative fiction!
Recently I went to the Spectrum exhibit at The Society of Illustrators here in NYC. I love good fantasy art, and this was two rooms full of really amazing work. Some artists I really like contributed, like John Jude Palencar, Kinuko Craft, and Michael Whelan, as well as a ton I'd never heard of before. I wish I could copy and paste some of the art in, but that's a no-go, so you'll just have to go here instead.
I think that's going to have to be it for now, sadly. It's time to head home and get back to freelancing. The sooner I knock out some work tonight, the sooner I can work on that query letter. . . Have a good night, my sweets!