Recap: Author Extravaganza
For those of you who missed it, we had a spanking good time today at Books of Wonder. Authors Holly Black, Tiffany Trent, Cecil Castellucci, Craig Laurance Gidney and Beth Bernobich, along with their editor Steve Berman, sat at an extra-long stretch table and read from their anthology of magical short stories, Magic in the Mirrorstone.
I must confess, I hadn’t gotten to read the whole thing before I attended the reading. But in a sense, that made me totally ripe for the event. Because I was completely sucked in as each author read from his or her story. Seriously, I didn’t fidget, or look around, or think about whether purple monkeys would be better than brown monkeys. I just listened.
So I’ll be getting right onto that reading asap. First, though, here are some pictures:
Craig Laurance Gidney, left, with Beth Bernobich. Both of these writers are giants in the world of the short story.
Tiffany Trent, author of the Hallowmere series, with editor and fellow writer Steve Berman
Holly Black, left, author of the Spiderwick and Tithe series. Cecil Castellucci, right, whose works include Boy Proof, The Queen of Cool and the graphic novel Plain Janes.
Cassandra Clare had also planned to attend, but she was ill. Holly said that Cassie had an IV sticking out of her arm as we all sat around at Books of Wonder, and that she wouldn’t have missed the event unless something was very, very wrong. Best wishes, Ms. Cassandra Clare, for a speedy recovery!
All right. Back to what you missed: The authors all talked about what kinds of cheeses they’d be, if they were cheese. This was because the audience members were too shy to ask questions. Holly said she’d be a gruyere with peppercorns, Tiffany said she’d be stilton with lemons, Steve said he preferred to eat cheese — but when forced to pick a kind to be eventually said he’d be toe cheese. Cecil said she was something French. I couldn’t quite hear her, as she had a bad case of laryngitis (but read like a champ, all the same). Craig was brie with black truffles, and Beth was an extra sharp cheddar.
I did not make that up. I took copious notes. On what kinds of cheeses the authors were. Seriously. CHEESE, my friends. This is how far I will go for you.
Peter Glassman, who owns Books of Wonder, eventually took over as master of ceremonies and general questioner. The authors chatted about the absence of sci fi in the YA world, though Holly pointed out that writers like Scott Westerfeld have made what she calls “social science fiction” extremely popular. I noted, but didn’t say, that Cory Doctorow’s recent work, Little Brother, also counts as sci fi. Essentially, if it’s not already as big as fantasy, it may soon be.
The writers predicted upcoming trends in YA: contemporary romantic fantasy will be big, they said, as well as steampunk. Steve Berman said there are a lot of zombie books coming out, at which point Holly recoiled. She’s fine with vampires and ghouls and all sorts of other creatures, she says, but she draws the line at zombies. Both she and Cecil say the shambling/shuffling thing zombies do totally freaks them out.
Let’s see. What else happened? The authors were asked what music best matched their work, and their answers were all things I didn’t understand because apparently I’m totally behind on music. But, for the record, Holly listened to a techno remix of “The Last Unicorn” while writing her story for this book (which, incidentally, is about unicorns). Tiffany was all about “Paper Doll,” which according to Google is a song by the Mills Brothers and was a Billboard hit in 1943. Cecil said she listened to, or at least thought of, the entire soundtrack to all three Lord of the Rings films. Craig proclaimed he was a Brian Eno fan. Note that Craig was also wearing a Smiths T-shirt, which in my mind made him pretty cool before he ever opened his mouth. Beth, however, said she doesn’t think of music when she writes. She thinks of colors, and for her story in this anthology she thought of purple and emerald. Awesome.
I asked the authors what YA they’d read when they were kids. There was a whole big long list, more than I could get down, but everyone loved Madeleine L’Engle and Lloyd Alexander, and people also mentioned Tolkien and Katherine Paterson and Frances Hodgson Burnett and … well, it’s just clear that they as authors were inspired by other authors.
Tiffany told a particularly heartwarming story about how she wrote a letter to Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time, in case you don’t know, and if you haven’t read it you need to do it right now) when she (Tiffany) was a girl.
“I don’t think I would be a writer if Madeleine L’Engle hadn’t written back to me,” Tiffany said. Cecil said she too had written to Madeleine L’Engle and been excited to get a response — though Cecil apparently waited until she was 25 to write her fan letter.
Peter Glassman wrapped it all up with a quote better than any I could invent in my own head:
“We are all standing on the shoulders of people who came before,” he said. Not to get all serious and weepy on you, but that’s so, so true. If this entry weren’t already seven hundred pages long, I would end it with a list of every single classic YA author you need to read. But I’ll save the sermon for another night. It is, as usual, past my bedtime.
Much love, and sweet dreams,
brina
EDIT: Tiffany Trent has corrected me about the song she mentioned, which is Rachel Yamagata’s version of “Paper Doll” from Happenstance. Question: Is Rachel Yamagata covering the 1943 song? Or is it a whole other song? Must look this up on iTunes.