She talks to wolves...

So many things to share this week, and I’m excited about all of them! Let’s jump right in.

Things that I wrote:

A review of Roses and Rot by Kat Howard, featured over at the SurLaLune Fairy Tales blog.
A review of the Stranger Things soundtrack, over at Nerdspan.
Great Cats of History, Part 2, over at Front Page Meews.

Things that I read:

“Salvador Dali and Walt Disney: A Forgotten Collaboration That Will Leave You Breathless,” being exactly what it says on the tin.
“Delightful Ways We Refer to Groups of Animals in English,” being full of great collective nouns.
“In Defense of Villainesses” by Sarah Gailey at Tor.com will make you cackle with understanding.

Things that I made:

This deliciously creepy wallpaper can be YOURS when you back the Kickstarter for Wine, which I told you about yesterday! Let me know when you’re a backer, and I’ll send you a download link for this wallpaper in a variety of sizes (including those perfect for Twitter and Facebook banners).

This week’s Whiteboard Weirdness is in honor of Seanan McGuire‘s October Daye urban fantasy series! The 10th book just came out last week, so a rose goblin seemed appropriate. This drawing is inspired by kadharonon’s cute illustration on DeviantArt.

Things that I’m excited about:

 

 

 

 

 

Click the pics if you fancy purchasing any of the above! I get a modest kickback from Amazon if you do.

And, of course, I’m terribly excited about the Wine Kickstarter! Back it here: 

Mirrored from geekdame.com. Please comment there.

You might have noticed that I rather enjoy talking endlessly about my geeky fascinations. I also have to admit that I enjoy being a bit silly. More than a bit, really. So, with my friend Lisa Stock – an equally keen and playful partner – on board, it seemed inevitable that we do an Internet radio show.

SRN: The Signal is that Internet radio show.

What is SRN: The Signal? Here’s a snippet from our press release:

Broadcasting from Siren Rock (their moveable studio on the doorstep of the Atlantic) and various live locations, these two reporting sirens will be delivering news and commentary on the SFF and mythic genres. Television, film, comics, video games, literature – all will crash upon the rocks of The Signal’s broadcast to be served up for your entertainment. Tune in for enlightening banter with regular contributor Keith Brooks, guest spots from notable creators, and a variety of music.

I had a lot of fun recording our first episode, which covers the multifaceted and seductive figure of the siren. Lisa is a wonderfully enthusiastic collaborator, and Keith Brooks is both erudite and hilarious. If you listen to the broadcast, you’ll even catch interjections from my quixotic husband, Andy – who also happens to be our producer!

This program is chock-full of playful banter, geeky references, hilarious character pieces, and music by Priscilla Hernandez and Seanan McGuire. Meet our news and weather guy, Fisherman Angus Crouton, find out where you can buy Selkie Sea Salt, and learn more about the historical evolution of the siren. There’s even a trivia question with the opportunity to win a few prizes!

I’d really like to know what y’all think – you can listen directly via the audio player at the bottom of this post, but I encourage you to check out our official posting at the SRN: The Signal Tumblr. (Follow us on Tumblr too!)

We’ll be available soon via iTunes, after we work out the technical aspects.

Oh, and isn’t our logo fabulous? It’s by the inimitable Paula Arwen Friedlander.

Without further ado, I give to you the premiere broadcast of SRN: The Signal!

Sorry, guys, but the embedded audio player doesn't work in the crossposting! You can find it on the original post, or directly accessible via the SRN: The Signal Tumblr.

Mirrored from geekdame.com. You can comment here or there.

Look sharp, everyone! Something marvelous is coming:

      

Oh, yes. Mia Nutick is back with a whole treasure trove of new Chimera Fancies, all inspired by Seanan McGuire's A Local Habitation. Goodness, not just inspired by but also made from. With her usual (but never taken for granted!) genius, Mia has taken an ARC of the second novel in the October Daye series and transmuted it from engrossing book to wearable art. Further, each piece has been signed by Seanan herself before receiving their last coat of sealant. These wee beauties are remarkable and collectible!

I have been lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the entire batch, and I am absolutely intoxicated by the colors, textures, and evocative phrases Mia has woven together. She never ceases to astound me, or to inspire me creatively. (Just like Seanan, as a matter of fact, whose awesome accomplishments as a multi-talented creator regularly infuse me with renewed energy in my own endeavors.)

I really cannot exhort you enough to keep an eye on chimera_fancies tomorrow and Saturday for the sale: even if purchasing one isn't your goal, these poem-pendants are more than worth the viewing. Think of tomorrow as a virtual and revolving art exhibit opening!

They'll go live in batches over the next two days, hopefully allowing a wide spread of people the opportunity to snag a favorite. These pieces tend to go fast! So, while you're hanging around looking for those sale posts - and after you've perhaps requested one of your own - come back here and tell me which ones are your favorites. I'm curious to know.

To see past examples of her work, feel free to scroll through my Chimera Fancies tag, or look through Ryan's Flickr gallery.

This entry was originally posted at Livejournal. You can comment here or there.

This past week has been a mess: my stepdad died and my family is devastated.

I have been scarce, but I did manage to put some content up for your poetry-reading and interview pleasure at Cabinet des Fées to celebrate the tail-end of National Poetry Month. For previews, check out cabinetdesfees.

For now, I'll just tell you that Seanan McGuire has stopped by, along with Amal El-Mohtar. Oh, and I believe that a certain Cat (of the Valente genus) isn't far behind...

As always, you can find the posts at Cabinet des Fées.

This entry was originally posted on Livejournal. You can comment here or there.

A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire is officially out in stores today! All of you folks interested in urban fantasy and fairy tales should go out and buy it. Now. Don't worry, I'll wait. If you're in a Barnes & Noble, look for the standee! If you haven't yet gotten your hands on Rosemary and Rue, the first book of the series, go ahead and buy them both.

Oh, yes, my friends. They are that good.

Let's steal a peek at the book blurb from Seanan's website, shall we?

After spending fourteen years lost to both the fae and mortal worlds, only to be dragged back into Faerie by the murder of someone close to her, October "Toby" Daye really just wants to spend a little time getting her footing. She's putting her life back together. Unfortunately, this means going back to work for Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, doing her duty as a knight errant. That isn't the sort of thing that exactly lends itself to a quiet existence, and before she knows it, Toby's back on the road, heading for the County of Tamed Lightning in Fremont, California to check on Sylvester's niece, January.

Things in Tamed Lightning turn out to be a lot stranger than they seemed at first glance, and Toby's talent for finding trouble isn't doing her any favors. With Quentin—a young foster from Sylvester's Court—in tow, and the stakes getting higher all the time, it's up to Toby to solve the mystery of Tamed Lightning, or face a failure whose cost will be too high for anyone to pay.

Mystery! Suspense! Danger! Also: dryads! Bannicks! Cait sidhe! And probably more coffee than you can shake a stick at.

And, now, an endorsement from my cats:

The time has come for more Wicked Girls icons! As before: Comments are keen. If you use, feel free to credit talkstowolves. And I am totally open to requests!

If you have no idea what this is all about, see this post.

And now for the previews:



( Twelve more icons behind the cut! )

In order, this particular run of Wicked Girls icons stars: Eowyn (as portrayed by Miranda Otto, from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, of course), River (Firefly), Zoe (likewise Firefly), Yvaine (as portrayed by Claire Danes, from Neil Gaiman's Stardust), Yvaine again (this time as drawn by Jeff Smith & Eric Olive, and Michael Zulli), Rose Marshall (from Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road, drawn by Amy Mebberson), Ace (Doctor Who), Mina Harker (as portrayed by Winona Ryder in Dracula's Horror Bordello), Talia (from Jim Hines' The Stepsister Scheme &c), and Snow White (from Jim Hines' The Stepsister Scheme &c).

I did actually cheat a bit and include icons made from requests placed on the original post, but I hope you'll forgive that! And, as always, thanks to Bauble for the icon table generator.

This entry originally posted at Livejournal. You can comment here or there.

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire (Daw, 2009).

Full disclosure: I am a friend of the author. However, as a committed and ethical reviewer, I ask you to understand that I will be a consistently critical reviewer in spite of any personal relationship. If I am unable to be impartial, I do not review a work.

It's such a tried-and-true formula in urban fantasy: mythical creature and/or fantastical society live one step to the left of humankind's mundane existence. There are a million hidden interstices that most of us never notice, and we'd be grateful for this if we knew, for the fantasies lurking beyond our sight are more often fanged and dangerous than sweet and friendly.

October Daye, a cynical and perpetually caffeinated lapsed PI, is a half-faerie attempting to keep her head down and lead a mundane life in San Francisco. The novel proper begins after some significant torture and personal losses, so she's pretty dedicated to this drama-free lifestyle. Unfortunately, as a knight still in the service of Sylvester Torquill and a friend to some of the more powerful local faerie denizens, Toby isn't allowed her wish. The death of Evening Winterrose, hated friend and beloved irritant, and her last, powerful curse drag Toby back into the wonderful nightmare-world existing in tandem with our San Francisco: a world of cat-like rose goblins, doors into the Summerlands, runaway changelings, and an ancient sea witch. It's a world where one wrong step - political or otherwise - could kill you. Or worse.

As you can see, this debut novel from Seanan McGuire plays to type; yet I can say, without a doubt, that this is the best urban fantasy novel I've read in five years. I make this assertion drawing from a pool of novels by Charlaine Harris, Tanya Huff, Emma Bull, Patricia Briggs, and others.

One important element to any urban fantasy is the urban aspect: it's not enough for the narrative to take place in any city, where the urban center is poorly described and becomes passive background. The city must become as much a character as any changeling investigator, with clearly described locales and an affecting atmosphere. McGuire succeeds in spades here: I have never been to San Francisco, but the city came to life for me in this novel and the immediacy of that understanding heightened my immersion in the story. Rosemary and Rue was clearly written by someone who has walked many miles in that city and is intimately acquainted with its heart.

McGuire's main character, October Daye, is as strongly and uniquely portrayed as San Francisco. Toby, as a halfblood and a PI, could so easily have become a bland cipher; instead, she is a believable, strong, and yet flawed heroine with a nuanced voice. Toby is almost perpetually annoyed and sleep-deprived, spends most of the novel subsisting on caffeine and sheer stubbornness, and yet her perspective never devolves into tiresome whinging. She is a deeply-hurt woman who is stumbling toward a measure of recovery while trying to do right by a friend and, incidentally, save her own life. The resulting journey is fascinating: the perspective is truly first person limited, so Toby sometimes does seemingly stupid things and is blind to things the reader may think are apparent - but things aren't always so blazingly clear, are they, when you're the one experiencing some serious and real drama?

Beyond developing a compellingly dynamic protagonist and portraying San Francisco in an absorbingly realistic manner, McGuire succeeded in creating a three-dimensional fabric of reality: the other characters in the narrative aren't just background for Toby to interact with. They are people who have lives and backgrounds that are clearly important both to the current story and whatever is to come. The King of Cats has a long history with October, the moonstruck-mad Queen wasn't always so, and the kitsune duchess seems to tend secrets as much as roses in her underhill home. They are all worlds unto themselves. This is the best sort of debut novel: a window into a reality ready-made for exploration, where causality is as much a force as it is in our real lives.

Further, McGuire's depiction of Faerie and its denizens reveals that an incredible amount of accrued knowledge went into the world of Rosemary and Rue. She delves beyond kitsune and selkies, beyond even Daoin Sidhe and Cait Sidhe, into coblynau and Tylwyth Tegs: while the specifics of her society and much of these faeries' interactions may be all McGuire, each of these creatures exists in folklore. Anyone interested in faerie lore and folklore, especially of the United Kingdom (in this novel), will be incredibly delighted by the breadth
and depth of the author's research.

Rosemary and Rue isn't without its flaws - at times, the exposition overbalances from stage-setting to distracting, and the mystery does seem to wander a bit aimlessly in the middle - but the exhilaration of getting to know this particular San Francisco and this particular Faerie more than compensate for any of those drawbacks. Moreover, these are flaws that I don't expect will continue past this debut: the occasional over-exposition was due to initial worldbuilding, and any issues with plot pacing are overcome with experience. Considering that DAW is poised to release two more titles in the October Daye series and that the author's blog indicates she is currently working on the fourth and fifth titles, McGuire is daily gaining more experience as a storyteller. I look forward to each Toby novel being better than the last, and can't wait to get my hands on them. Honestly: if you're an appreciator of urban fantasy and you're looking for some new blood that's actually vital, it's imperative that you pick up Rosemary and Rue.

Originally posted at Livejournal. You can comment here or there.

Rosemary and Rue by seanan_mcguire is the October book* for Publishers Weekly's Genreville's Book Club. Each month, Rose Fox and Josh Jasper lead discussions focusing on plot, setting, characterization, style, and how well the novel fits into the urban fantasy genre (or the given genre of the chosen book, I presume).

I wish I felt up to taking part in the discussions, but unfortunately I've either been too absorbed by this semester's classes or fighting the plague (just a viciously bad cold, I hope, I swear). I likewise wish I had been able to write my own review of Rosemary and Rue by this point, but I rather think that will have to wait for December when I'm finished with my classes.

However! If you've read Seanan McGuire's debut novel, you shouldn't hesitate to hie you over and discuss your thoughts! Here, I'll even link each of the discussion posts for you:

Day 1: The Plot
Day 2: The Setting
Day 3: The Characters
Day 4: The Style

Also, in case you haven't heard, Seanan has declared that she will shamelessly make a fool of herself record a performance of the "Hey, Mr. God" monologue from The Middleman (yea, even that short-lived TV show) if Rosemary and Rue is the October best-selling book at Borderlands Books in San Francisco. If you haven't bought a copy yet, therefore, I recommend you go ahead and do so. ;) Borderlands Books accepts telephone and Internet orders. Just sayin'.


* I know! How appropriate!

I need a new planner. This planner is exceedingly necessary to schedule work, school, and the copious number of projects I never seem to make any headway on because I stare at how many there are and get stuck that way. Stare. Stare. The proverbial deer in headlights.

Anyway, when I do manage to snag a new planner, one of the first dates going in there is SEPTEMBER 1st, 2009. I will probably draw a little doodle, such as a jack-o-lantern or a wee flying fairy. Or maybe a consternated cat. It might even have thorns rather than fur.

Why?

I'll tell you why (or, rather, Seanan McGuire will):



(Psst, you can pre-order Rosemary and Rue at Amazon.com or your local bookstore. See Seanan McGuire on the Internet at her website.)

Also, I made an icon, because I just really can't seem to control myself:

First, seanan_mcguire is giving away another ARC of Rosemary and Rue for the price of one comment. If you're a fan of urban fantasy, detective stories, fairy tales, or bad-ass Fae... you want to read this book! Comment here for a chance to win. Check out her website to learn more about the series.

Secondly, ysabetwordsmith has put up an interesting poll on cyberfunded/crowdfunded fiction, asking questions about what creators prefer to create and what consumers prefer to consume. If you engage in crowdfunded projects or read them (such as haikujaguar's Spots the Space Marine series or catvalente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making), please do participate in the poll!

Which reminds me: If you like young adult fiction, especially such excellent fare as Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan... you should really check out the following serialized novel:


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Updates every Monday!