balance is grace standing still

I'm here to talk about a book. Not just any book, either. I've read a lot of good books so far this year, and I've read a couple exception books. But number 30, the halfway mark in how many books I'm going to read this year, is the best book I've read this year. And that's saying a lot.
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater is that book. It absolutely blew my mind. The language is luminous and beautiful and lush. You can feel the ache, the yearning in the main characters for something that they know they will never have. It hurts to read this book, in the best possible way. Sam and Grace read like people I would want to hang out with, and the relationship between the two of them is hard. But . . . I don't even know how to say all the things I feel about this book. I was trying to tell a friend about it and she said, "So, it's what Twilight was trying to be." And that's sort of right. I mean, in a sense, yes, it is a teenage love story between a mortal and a supernatural being. But Twilight felt trite to me. An emasculated vampire who wants to be with (and eat) a girl because of how she smells? Yikes. Shiver, on the other hand . . . Oh, it gave me chills. It's visceral and raw and full of hardship and wanting and confusion. I held my breath for most of this book, and wept at the end. It's that good. This is one of those books that I think everybody should read, regardless of whether or not you usually read YA or paranormal. This transcends all of that, and is really just an amazing love story.

off in the night

Well, it's been too long, once again. I've been busy, of course. Isn't that always my excuse? There are a couple posts I've been putting off writing, but it's time to nail them down and let them go so I don't get buried in things to talk about. . . .
I'm sure all of you know this by now, but my cat, Abigail, passed away on June 23. She was fourteen years old, and had been with my family for most of them. She was a great cat with a big personality (and a big appetite, until the end!). When she lived with me, she slept either on or behind my knees almost every night. There are still mornings when I wake up expecting her to be there. I left her behind when I moved to the big city because I couldn't bear to force her into living her life indoors, and I wish that I could have seen her more than once or twice a year since then. I wish she'd held on for another month, then I could've seen her one more time. Ah, well. Wherever she is, she's happy, and not suffering. She's probably in kitty heaven with the other cats my family has lost in the last few years, looking down at us while she eats her favorite foods and smiling.

she climbs the mountain

Official word count on YA novel: 51,375 words!!! Yeah!!! Good progress. My goal is currently a little crazy---80,000 by the end of July---but right now, I feel like I can really do it.
Now on to a little freelancing, and a little writing for a radio play episode. Regularly scheduled blogging will recommence soon, I promise.
Happy Wednesday, everybody!

more books

Without further ado . . .
26) Whitechapel Gods by S. M. Peters. I enjoyed this; it's sort of steampunk/revolution noir. But it's not a keeper for me. The story was well constructed, I was fascinated by the religion Peters created, and the action was exciting, but I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters. If you dig steampunk books, give this one a shot.
27) Achilles by Elizabeth Cook. A reimagining of Achilles' life. I enjoyed this quite a bit, and would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes classic literature. But I probably won't reread it, so it's not a keeper.
28) The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. There's a lot I could say about this one. It won a Nebula Award, which is partially why I picked it up. The futuristic vision of Bangkok is great, the political strings running throughout the story were great, as was the underlying commentary on the concept of genetically engineering plants/diseases/people. But. I'm not sure what the overall point of the story was. And I really felt like the male characters were well fleshed out while the few female characters present were stock characters. They felt flat to me, and somewhat cliche. That frustrated me. I wanted those women to make choices, to act. Instead they just reacted, over and over again. So this one is not a keeper for me.
29) Daemon's Mark by Caitlin Kittredge. The fifth and final book in the Nocturne City series. Loved it! Good story, and I love the characters. I also appreciate the fact that everything is not all neatly tied up in a bow at the end. Things are still messy. The main character, Luna, still has some big issues to work through. The happyish ending in this book was much more realistic than a happy ending would have been, and I'm glad that the writer was ballsy enough to let the ending be the way it needed to be. I dig this whole series; anybody who likes urban fantasy should definitely check out Caitlin's books.
There is one more book I've read, but I think it needs its own post. I'm still reeling from it. But I've hit thirty books before the end of June, which puts me on track for reading sixty this year.
Oh, important milestone: I hit 40K on my novel last night. Halfway there!
Next time I blog I'll talk about more than just books. I'm not really ready to discuss anything else today. Have a good evening, everybody!

take a breath, dive back in

It's been over a week since my last post. Sorry about that; I just have a hard time sitting down and documenting, I guess. So, life since the last time we spoke . . .
K's visit was great. She was here for a week filled with sunshine and thunderstorms, museums and walks in the park, medical appointments and lazy mornings with big cups of coffee. K is one of those friends who is so comfortable, so easy for me to be with, that it's like we've never been apart. And it'd been almost two years since we'd seen each other last, so it was really nice for her to finally make it out to NYC. It was her first time here ever, so it was really entertaining to show her around the city! We also went to a concert. Concrete Blonde. They were AMAZING, as always! This year is the twentieth anniversary of Bloodletting so it was a greatest hits concert, of sorts. They played every song I could have possible asked for. The night before that I saw Patty Griffin---equally good, but totally different. Much more mellow. Concrete Blonde rocks pretty hard.
The best part of seeing K? I'll see her again in August, when I'm in Seattle, and I'll see her probably one more time later this year here in NYC again.
Ah, books. There've been a few, and I've been remiss by not talking about them. And here I am running out of time, so I'll just hit one or two. 25) Interfictions, edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss. Full disclosure, I submitted a short to this collection, so was really looking forward to seeing what stories did get chosen for inclusion. And I have to be honest and say that I was not impressed with most of it. I understand why most of them got chosen, and the interstitiality of them. But I didn't think all the writing was very good. Sometimes the story was better than the writing, and sometimes it was the other way around. A couple stories really caught me, like Catherynne Valente's and K. Tempest Bradford's, but there just wasn't enough in this collection that I really loved, so it's not a keeper for me.
Happy Litha, everyone! It's that time of year again; Summer Solstice, when the days are longest in the whole year. According to the old calendar, this is actually Midsummer (which makes sense if you look at the length of the days).
And now it's time to go. More books next time, but now I'm heading home to play my clarinet and do some writing!

overdue post

So I can't get my pictures to cooperate for some reason. I was going to post a picture of my huge pile of books from BEA, but no . . . Oh well.
BEA was great! As I said before, I met a number of really nice people. I got some books that I'm really excited about, including Ascendant by Diana Peterfreund (sequel to Rampant; killer unicorns!), Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution, Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon, The Beastly Bride edited by Ellen Datlow, and Melissa Marr's Radiant Shadows. Yes, it was a big YA year. But the biggest score on my bookshelf is Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare. I haven't read it yet, because I'm working through my book club reading right now, but Cassie's book is absolutely next on my list. So, two days, five tote bags, a ton of books, and one cab ride later, I would say that BEA was a total success for me.
Last weekend I went to the Renegade Craft Fair, which I hit every year in Brooklyn. It was wicked, as always. I got a great green skirt, a darling cloche hat with a pink flower on it, a cross-stitch necklace, and a seven-year pen. I also got a onesie and a hoodie for my nephew and niece, respectively. My partner-in-crime bought three t-shirts, too. All in all, a great afternoon in the sunshine checking out arts and crafts! There was really a lot of cool stuff this year. I could've bought a couple different shoulder bags, a lot more clothing, some cute arm warmers, some AMAZING blank books . . . the list just goes on and on. It was great.
Now a good friend of mine from the west coast, K, is in town for a week. We're having a fun time just meandering around the city. She's never been here before, so it's all a really new, fresh experience for her. Today? The American Museum of Natural History. As soon as I'm done with this post. So I should probably go.
Another post soon, I promise, about the last few books I've read, how the novel is coming along, and life in general in the Big Apple.

lunchtime ramble

I'm sitting in my office eating a bowl of raw veggies drizzled with fig-infused vinegar, giving my busy brain a five-minute break from work by checking out some blogs I recently bookmarked. Like this one. And this one. Somehow they make my soul breathe a little sigh of relief, and keep me going through the rest of the crazy afternoon. You know why I think that is? Reading blogs such as these is like looking through a secret peephole into the mysterious creative lives of these strangers. It's a breath of fresh air in the monotony of my office job. (Not that I don't love my job. I do. But lately I've been REALLY craving more time for me and my personal wants/needs/desires.) If there were a color printer at work I could use, I would print some of the pictures from those blogs and tape them onto my office walls so I could be surrounded by that feeling all day.
On a slightly more down-to-earth note, I'm about 26,500 words through my YA superhero fiction. Which isn't nearly as far as I wanted to be, come June. But hey, at least I'm sitting down to write almost every day. At least there's progress. And even if I don't finish it by the end of June (which I'm still aiming for, by the way), this will still be the fastest I've ever turned out a draft. I also had most of a short story show up in my head on Sunday, which was a pleasant surprise, so I'm partway through writing that.
I dreamed last night that my sister J and I, along with quite a few other women, were trapped in this asylum-type place. We fled one day from our captors at the asylum, and on our way through the grounds, our captors began throwing things at us. They caught J in the side and she was bleeding awfully but we all managed to make it to this huge sprawling university campus. We went into a large building and hid in the rabbit-warren of rooms we found there while someone went to look for a doctor for J. The blood kept coming. And then I too went to look for a doctor and rounded a corner in the building and one of the other women screamed at me. And it startled me so much that I woke up, with a racing heart and panicked gaze in the darkness of my apartment.
There are books to write about, and I know I owe you a long post about BEA, but neither of those things are happening right now. Right now I will eat the rest of my veggies and wander dreamily through another blog or two, then get back to the (enormous) pile of work on my desk. More blogging to come soon, I promise.