CAMP NANOWRIMO 2020 - THE NANO CURSE STRIKES AGAIN!

I was honestly doing so well, Dear Readers. And then... the Nano Curse. For once it didn't attack me ( a refreshing change). No, it killed my computer for a whole day. A whole day. For just... no reason.

I still did longhand writing, but I couldn't input it, AND I couldn't get any other work done, so on Monday I was totally snowed under, and all I could do was type up my longhand notes and then (in fairness) divide the word total between Sunday and Monday.

This is how I was doing before:

And this is what it looks like now:

Eugh, that drop. Speaks for itself, really. *Sigh*

EDITED TO ADD: And, now, having spent the morning revising the first half of the sections that I typed up yesterday, I go to what should be the start of a new chapter and find... no new chapter. All the work I did after about 1pm yesterday is gone. Even though I KNOW I saved it. So. I don't even know. Nano Curse, you are a cunning and evil gremlin indeed.

I should have known. But I'm going to keep ploughing on anyway, because a) I've made hella progress overall and b) I love Camp NaNo's progress interface and you can only use it during July (or April) so why not? Let's hope the Curse doesn't take my fingers out next time.

How are you doing? Sound off in the comments, muffins!

A DEADLY EDUCATION BY NAOMI NOVIK - My review

Happy Tuesday, Dear Readers! I hope you're all safe and well (and if you're not, feel free to let me know in the comments, I promise to offer you comfort and virtual hugs).

Remember that THE BOOK OF SNOW & SILENCE ebook is currently available for pre-order on a special Kindle deal for under £2 just now, so get in there if you want it. And if you do buy it, please consider reviewing once you've read it, since reviews are life. Speaking of which... today's blog is a review and I am *excited*. 

Naomi Novik is one of my favourite writers working today.

She's famous for the Temeraire series: alternate history Regency-era fantasies where intelligent dragons essentially act as airborn artillery in the British armed forces as they battle against Napolean. I really liked the Temeraire books and have read all of them - but not until after that series was complete and Ms Novik published UPROOTED, which can be taken as a very loose Beauty & the Beast retelling, did I become a superfan. And I do mean a superfan. UPROOTED pressed every button that my fairytale and folklore obsessed heart possessed, and I loved it so much that I recommended it to literally every bookish person I met for the next year.

I had her next book, SPINNING SILVER, on pre-order the moment it was available on the Waterstone's website, and when it turned up and my sad, RSI-weakened hands could not actually hold it long enough to read it (it's a hardback and it's chunky, OK, and I need to be able to bring books up close to my face because my eyes are rubbish) I turned around and got the ebook, but kept the hardback anyway because it was signed. Me. This perpetually skint, compulsively thrifty person. Who even am I? This what the prospect of a new Naomi Novik book does to me.

So the female-focused folklore inspired fantasy was a pretty big departure for the author of a very, very successful and long-running series with a male protagonist. And A DEADLY EDUCATION is yet another daring swerve for the author. It's what I would call contemporary urban fantasy, or maybe contemporary alternate history (the 'everything's the same except there's a secret magical world' variety) and hovering right on the edge of the crossover market. When I saw this pop up in Netgalley I nearly dislocated my finger, I hit the 'Request' button with such fervour. Only afterwards did I notice that this wasn't another fairytale inspired novel, but something entirely different. I prepared myself to maybe not love it quite so much.

Ha. Yeah. Nope. I would still sell my immortal soul for this woman.

First, I need to get this out there: this is an absolutely bonkers book. I can't emphasize enough how barmy it is. Story. Characters. Tone. It's like nothing you've read before. But! At the same time, it IS. Because it is straight-up parodying not only Harry Potter but the parade of other 'magic highschool' novels which followed in HP's stratospheric wake.

This is a book that has set out to answer the question so many of us have asked regarding Hogwarts as we looked back at the series as adults: who in the heck would ever send their kid there, and WHY would they allow them STAY there when the kids are writing letters home saying: "Thanks for the new socks. Got an A in Transfiguration but only a B in Herbology. Oh, and there's a giant savage three headed dog chained up in one of the corridors that would kill any of us instantly - and we learned lock-picking spells in charms today! Love to Dad."

As a kid, you just imagine how damn cool it would be to get to go to Hogwarts and have adventures, but as the aunt of several nieces who just barely managed to survive to adulthood despite excellent quality helicopter parenting and notable lack of magic wands, I do wonder... why would an adult who is responsible for the welfare of hundreds of vulnerable children hide the Philosopher's Stone in their school, practically guaranteeing that Voldemort's agents would turn up there? Who approved sending eleven year olds into the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night for *detention* without even ensuring they would have adequate adult supervision when a unicorn killing monster is known to be in there? Not to mention the giant spiders? What about the Whomping Willow? Allowing school to stay in session after all the adults are damn well aware that the Chamber of Secrets has been opened again and a deadly unidentified creature is on the lose within the walls? VOLUNTARILY ENTERING KIDS INTO THE GOBLET OF FIRE???

I mean, what is WITH this place? For heaven's sake, if you didn't know any better you might almost say it's like they're trying to, I don't know, kill the kids off on purpose somehow, cull out the weak, sift the wheat... from... the... ?

Yep. That's totally what the Wizarding world was doing, isn't it? Sorry, readers, but it's true. You're lucky your Hogwarts letter never came, because chances are that you wouldn't have made it out alive (me either, for the record).

Really, only Harry Potter's bulletproof rose-tinted glasses - conveniently provided by a total lack of the proper socialisation and vital attention required by a developing child, not to mention the routine starvation, neglect, and physical and emotional abuse of his family - allowed us, the readers, to believe anything different. The cupboard under the stairs made even a life in which he was continually thrown into near-death situations by his adult caretakers and expected to save everyone seem great by comparison as long as people fed him and noticed his existence. But for anyone else... well. I think Hogwarts would seem pretty much like Naomi Novik's invention in A DEADLY EDUCATION: the Scholomance.

Scholomance is what Hogwarts was really like. No one is happy to be on this school's admission list. It's effectively a meat grinder for magical kids. You're all alone there - there are no teachers, the school itself sets your assignments and punishes you gruesomely if you fail - and if the kids kill each other off? Well, what happens in Scholomance mostly stays in Scholomance. And you're not only potentially under attack by other kids, who want to move up the rankings, oh no. You're also under constant attack by 'mals', magical monsters who slurp up the fresh and shiny life force of children as if it were Mountain Dew and which, despite the best magical protections the school has to offer, have a nasty habit of popping out of the scrambled eggs on the breakfast buffet, from out of the plugholes in the shared bathroom, and even through the keyhole of your dorm room in the middle of the night.

Now, of course you can avoid going if your parents take you off the list - but even though your odds of getting out of Scholomance alive are roughly one in four (yep, it's brutal) it's still better odds than staying out in the world, where magical children going through puberty are monster magnets and your odds are more like one-in-twenty - and that's IF your family belongs to an 'enclave', a sort of wealthy, influential and privileged Feudal compound, with powerful adults who will probably be willing to risk their lives to defend you. Once you hit eighteen or so, the monsters don't consider you particularly interesting anymore, but in the meantime, you put everyone you love, including younger siblings who aren't yet going through puberty, and older relatives who may not have strong enough magic or the right affinity to defend themselves, in danger.

And if you're not in an enclave, like the heroine of this story - Galadriel, or 'El'? Well, not going to the Scholomance is basically just hoping that when the monsters eventually DO get at you, they eat your mum (or dad, or big sister, or the neighbour lady) first and give you time to get away. This is not cool with El, whose mum is a hippy ray of sunshine, an insanely kind, positive and powerful healer who only ever uses her power to make the world a better place and refuses compensation for any of her work. She's totally alone in the world and only escaped the Scholomance herself as a teen because Galadriel's father - knowing that El's mum was three months pregnant - sacrified himself to a hideous monster to save her life. El's mum lives in a commune in Wales and is beloved by everyone who meets her. She could have the pick of any powerful 'enclave' in the world. Except. Except that El is NOT an insanely kind, positive and powerful Healer.


Oh, she's insanely powerful, all right. In fact, she can pull the lifeforce out of any other wizard she likes, no matter how strong or well-defended, at the blink of an eye, and has an affinity for enchantments of darkness, destruction and death. When free-writing poetry, she accidentally creates spells to invoke supervolcanoes. She can literally kill you with a flick of her hand, and from a small child, people who look at her are inexplicably filled with (depending on their character) fear, revulsion or awe. Her own father's family, despite having adored her deceased father and practically worshipping her mother, tried to off her when she was a kid because they, vegetarian, Pacifist Good Wizards, were convinced she would bring about the endtimes, and was better off dead.

The only reason she is not already ruling the universe 'ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR!' style is that, thanks to her mum, she actually doesn't WANT to hurt anyone. Which, predictably, drives her up the wall, because the way people, even quite nice people, treat her - as if she was automatically a horrible, wicked person - means that she WANTS to want to hurt them. She just can't bring herself to really DO it.

El is Bellatrix LeStrange, if she had been brought up to have an unshakeable moral compass. Killing people and being wicked, cruel and villainous would be a piece of cake for her, and in order to be good, she has to work about ten times as hard as a normal person, because every time she uses magic it wants to twist into something dark. And she knows that if she gave into that urge, even once, she would end up respected, feared, unstoppably powerful, and SAFE - but also, on the path to becoming the monster she's determined never to be. She's bitter, caustic, antagonistic, and perhaps the most purely decent and moral character I've ever read. I LOVES HER MY PRECIOUS.

So much for our setting and protagonist: this is where people reviewing fantasy books usually talk about 'the magic system'. Personally I hate that phrase. Look, you have a drainage 'system', don't you, and how it works is that it's made out of metal pipes, and when you turn a tap it runs, and if it breaks down then you call someone with a spanner who will replace a part and it will work again. Magic, being the "non-meat by-product of existence", something fundamentally non-classifiable, illogical, elemental, spiritual (thank you, N.K. Jemisin) may have rules or ideals or spells, but if it has a 'system' - for instance, the one in Harry Potter, where you wave your wand a certain way and say certain words and unless your wand is broken or you got the gesture or words wrong, you get the same result every single time, just like flushing the toilet - pretty much bore me to tears.

This is why I always see questions in reviews for *my* books asking why the 'magic system' wasn't better explained and why didn't we get all the consequences explored and classified and why didn't I put down exactly why and how it all works? BECAUSE IT'S BORING! It's not a supposed to be like a magic trick, where there's a logical explanation for everything and the rabbit was up his sleeve all along. It's suppposed to be actual magic. And with actual magic, just like art, sometimes you do all the right things and it turns out awful, and sometimes the power of love is enough to fix everything and sometimes the power of love is enough to ruin everything, and somethings the thing you hated and sweated through and got wrong in every way is the best thing you ever did.

A DEADLY EDUCATION has *that* kind of magic. The good kind. The kind where there are certainly rules and spells, but where, just like in Garth Nix's or Lois McMaster Bujold's work, effort and intention are what powers your magic, and your dread and fear or even joy can warp reality (just like Heisenberg said! Well, sort of). I love how this kind of magic can have all kinds of unexpected effects and the interaction of differing factors can invent something entirely new.

The writing is absolutely smooth as silk. Not fancy, or lyrical, but just utterly competent and powerful and brilliant. You barely notice you're reading, it's so smooth. It feels like when Neo gets a programme for martial arts downloaded into his brain and just KNOWS how it works. And as a result the story is totally unputdownable. Gripping is an understatement. I downloaded it and began reading it at about 4pm and finished at 11 at night, having taken the smallest and most rushed breaks possible to eat, shower etc., each one of which felt like waking up from a dream I couldn't wait to get back to. However! I can sense that some readers - ones not as enamoured of Ms Novik's writing as I am, or as into the MC's unique, spikey narratuon - might find some of the exposition a little heavy, especially to start with. Ms Novik plays that trick of dangling something incredibly juicy at you and then using the tempting tidbit to lead you through a few pages of necessary information. Personally I'm all for that; I love worldbuilding. But if you're not, I recommend that you just push through it. It is WORTH it, trust me.

Secondary characters are a real strength in this, sketched with humane deftness, humour, and compassion, from the tentative friends to the out-and-out villains. We understand them all, even if perhaps we might wish not to.

I do note, though, that Orion Lake, the unlikely best friend the heroine makes basically against her will - and the character who gets the most screen time next to El - is probably the one I felt I knew the least. I wonder if that's because he's so clearly there as the Harry Potter analogue: the heroic Chosen One who always charges in to save everyone without thinking twice about his own life, or the consequences, but really just wants to be treated as human. I felt as if we were already meant to know him. But the thing is, he WASN'T Harry. For one thing, he comes from a life of immense privilege, not one of poverty, abuse and neglect - and he completely takes that privilege for granted, ending up totally shocked and bamboozled everytime El is forced to bitterly point it out to him. And every now and again he would do something deeply NOT HARRY-ish and make me really keen to get to know him better. But I never really did? Hopefully future books take care of this. Actually, I can't wait!

Overall - as is absolutely no secret by now - I adored this, wish I could go back in time immediately and read it again for the first time, and would be willing to read another five to ten books of it - preferably right now? This is a solid gold 100% recommendation from The Zoë-Trope. A DEADLY EDUCATION is out at the end of September. Run out and pre-order or put it on hold/request at your library instantly, or a maw-mouth will get you!

(Language Geek Alert: maw-mouths are the worst monsters in this book. I laughed for five minutes straight when I saw the name, and I like to imagine Ms Novik cackled in a similarly unhinged fashion when the name occurred to her, too. You see, a maw-mouth is a creature that has a lot of mouths. Thousands. And the word 'maw' just means mouth. So their name basically means 'mouth-mouth'. But the word 'maw' is pronounced 'more'. So they're mouth-mouths and more-mouths at the same time - and that's literally what they are! GENIUS).

PLOT EMBRYO VIDEO

Hi everyone! Happy Tuesday to all. Various exciting and/or nervewracking things are happening here at Casa Zolah (or, more accurately, in London and Wales, but directly affecting Casa Zolah) over this week and next week (and maybe the week after, Iunno), and I basically can't talk about a single one of them, which is making it... a liiitle tough to know what to blog about right now?

BUT! I have found this great new YouTube Channel (belonging to the author Rachael Stephen) and one of her videos is already making me have a big-ol' writer-crush on her because it is BRILLIANT.

So here it is. Check it out and see if it helps you the way it helped me today when I came across it!

 

In other news, my Patreon is still steadily ticking over with updated content every week. I'd love to see some new subscribers, but although I only have three right now I very much appreciate each and every one of them, and the fact that they're motivating me to re-read, update and improve so many essays I've written in the past. It's fun!

If you can't subscribe but you've found my writing and publishing advice useful in the past, or have had questions answered by me, please do share the page to your Facebook, Twitter, or wherever and maybe some other folks will have their memories jogged or their interest piqued and decide to subscribe themselves or share too.

Read you later, my lovelies!

HELP CHOOSE MY HAIR

Hi guys, I hope you're all having a good week so far. I'm feeling a little miserable - missing Finn a lot, to the point where I nearly burst into tears over a friendly dog in the street this weekend - so I'm going to make a change. Specifically, a hair change.

This is me now (apologies for resting angry face):

And this is basically how my hair has been for the last five years. I have been super lazy. For at least a couple of years I didn't even get it trimmed. At the beginning of 2016 my hair was long enough to sit on (and let me tell you, that's not as much fun as it sounds) so I cut a foot off to send to the Little Princess Trust, but that's the most dramatic change I've made in years. It's really been annoying me lately, though, and I'm hoping that a proper restyle might make my life a bit easier and cheer me up at the same time.

Here are some ideas as to what I could do with my hair.

OPTION ONE:

The least extreme option - keep it long but cut another foot off the bottom, and go for a few subtle layers. This is the sort of thing I'll end up with if I chicken out on the day, basically. Pros: I'll still be able to braid my hair, put it in a bun, and can probably continue to use all my existing hair tools and products, which are geared for use with long hair. Cons: it's not a big enough difference to really excite me, and will still get caught in car doors and under my bag strap, not to mention tangling up with every gust of wind.

OPTION TWO:

The Lob - or long bob. This is a blunt cut, one length version, which is the kind I like - I would hate to have one of the heavily graduated A-line ones because they prevent you from being able to so much as put your hair in a ponytail without those super-annoying snags of short hair falling down at the nape of your neck. Pros: Hopefully long enough for various updoes still, and long enough that I could still hide behind it, maybe play around with it a bit in terms of styling, and it probably wouldn't get caught in any doors. Cons: Would probably still be a bit tangly and would still catch under my bag strap. Without graduation, might end up looking like a weird square shape (my face is already square enough)?

OPTION THREE:

The classic bob, sometimes now referred to as a clavicut because it's long enough to graze the collarbone. I like this version because you can see that it has subtle layering which would make it easier to manage, while still giving the impression of lots of hair. Pros: I think it would be a real, proper change for me and would hopefully be versitile and give me an excuse to play around with new straight and wavy looks. Would be unlikely to catch in or under anything, but ought to be long enough for that vital ponytail, if I made sure it was a low one. Cons: Updoes would be out. I'd definitely be unable to use any of my current styling tools - even my hair ties and bobby pins (all heavy duty ones designed for super long hair) would be useless.

OPTION FOUR:

The most extreme of them all - the chin-length bob! I've rocked this look before and I liked it, but at this length my hair can become super unruly and start to take on bizarre, physics defying cowlicks during the night. I had to use my GHDs literally every day (sometimes twice a day) just in order to get it to hang downwards instead of sticking out horizontally from the sides of my head. On the other hand, bendy, messy hair is in right now, so maybe I could make it work for me? Pros: Would take, like, five minutes to wash, condition and dry, would never get tangly and would not get in my way.... except... Cons: too short to tie back into even the most stubby of ponytails in order to put on/take off make-up and wash face/brush teeth, and would therefore be in my face pretty much all the time, even with a hairband. Would need to reinvest in all the specialist bits and pieces that girls with short hair must have, and would take at least two years to grow back to anything approaching long. Would probably, no matter how much I'd like to pretend otherwise, require some form of styling everyday if I was to avoid looking like a deeply eccentric person.

What do you think, Dear Readers? Any foolproof ideas for girls with unruly hair and square faces? Any stunning pictures of amazing hairstyles that I've failed to consider? Let me know! I will look at any suggestions and report back with pics when the deed is finally done.

Read you later, cupcakes.

AGE OF UGGGH

*ALERT* *MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD* *ALERT* 

I'm not kidding, seriously, so many spoilers! 

Tune out now if you haven't seen the film or don't want to know details! 

*ALERT* *MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD* *ALERT*

This post is basically a rant, and those of my Dear Readers who aren't into superhero films may find some or all of it incomprehensible/boring/pointless. Apologies in advance for that. I just have to get it off my chest before I explode.

So yeah, I wasn't... impressed with AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON.

In fact, from here on out I'll mostly be referring to it with a title that feels more appropriate to me: Age of Ugggh.

OK, some background. I am a huge Marvel fangirl. I am a Marvel GEEK. Pretty much since the first IRON MAN movie came out, I have disappeared deeper and deeper into that rabbit hole. I got addicted to the comics, I educated myself on fifty years of backstory and canon, I got the animated films and the cartoon series and the anime stuff, I collected the Funko POP! figures. I spend half my life reblogging Marvel gifsets on Tumblr. When I am stressed, I read Marvel fanfic. I subscribe to all the comic geeks channels on YouTube. The last film that my dad and I ever went to the cinema to see together, before he got too sick, was AVENGERS: ASSEMBLE (and we loved it and watched to together on DVD, along with the other Phase One films, probably thirty times).

So AGE OF ULTRON - the official end of Phase Two and the follow up to one of my favourite films ever - was such a big deal to me, you can’t even understand. I watched every teaser, trailer and featurette multiple times and squeed over them at length. I booked the cinema tickets the moment they could be had, and literally arranged an entire day around going to see it, including travelling three hours roundtrip on the train. The prospect of being able to immerse myself in this universe again has kept me going through months of rough, cr*ppy, sh*t in my life.

And sure, I saw some commentary about the film that wasn't positive, and it came from sources that I trusted. But even though there was a horrible snafu with the main actors making disgusting sexist remarks about the lone female lead character, and even though I heard whispers of some misogynistic characterisation in the movie itself, I remained determined to keep an open mind.

And now I kind of wish I hadn't seen it at all.

What is the actual point of this film?

No, no - aside from making Disney $2billion and stroking Joss Whedon’s ego by allowing him to utilise the Ultron character that apparently he always wanted to - ASIDE FROM THAT.

Like, the actual purpose of the thing as a narrative within the Marvel Comics Universe? A film supposedly adding to and expanding the universe of the MCU and improving our understanding of the characters within it?

I’m really serious here. What - who - within the MCU was actually meaningfully affected by this film? I feel like the answer is a big fat zero. Because you could literally have gone straight from the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier to the forthcoming Captain America: Civil War without any of the events of Age of Ugggh having been screened for us and it would make NO DIFFERENCE whatsoever.

SHIELD was already down at the end of CA:TWS. If it was important for us to know that the Avengers had reunited in the wake of that in order to root out the last remnants of Hydra and raid rogue Hydra/SHIELD facilities (which, actually, I'm not sure it was - BUT IF IT WAS) we could have been shown that with a single establishing scene at the beginning of Civil War. You want to explain Bruce’s absence at the beginning of CW and that his leaving destroyed a burgeoning romance with Natasha? You have someone ask ‘Where’s Banner?’ and have Natasha answer: ‘In the wind. He bailed six months ago after an… incident…’ and have Scarlett Johansson’s face tell the story before she quickly turns away.

Is it important to know that Tony’s ‘quit’ (ha ha ha, yeah, that’ll last) the superhero business? Well, technically he already has - you know, since there was that whole film about it, called IRON MAN 3? But if you want us to know that he’s the one who’s funding the superhero business now? Then after you’ve shown the New Avengers Facility (with the same caption we got in Age of Ugggh) you have Steve say ‘At least Stark didn’t take his funding with him when he tapped out.’

Wanda and the Vision? What about them, you ask - surely Age of Uggh had value because it introduced them? Well, no, actually. Neither of them got any meaningful characterisation in Age of Ugggh anyway. They were effectively minor characters who were shoved forward into the limelight with lots of fanfare without ever being given anything interesting to do or any depth.

This is particularly true of Vision, who apparently had astonishing ultimate powers but demonstrated a) an ability to fly (wow!) and b) an ability to 'burn Ultron off the internet' in a two second sequence (much wow!). I know Vision's backstory, and I was really interested to see how they would make it work here, with Tony as his creator and Jarvis as his 'soul' but he basically floated around being vaguely new age and extremely pink and made practically no contribution to the plot apart from giving Tony and Steve a reason to have a vicious yet ultimately pointless argument which was the most cack-handed foreshadowing for Civil War possible. A complete waste of Paul Bettony's talent AND of the much-beloved character of Jarvis. If Vision had gotten squashed like a bug at any point in this film I would have felt nothing except sadness that Jarvis wouldn't be in Tony's HUD making snarky comments anymore.

So we’re clearly going to have to figure out who these two really are in Civil War (and with the Russo Brothers' able guidance it’ll probably work). But if the point of Age of Ugggh was to create any kind of a bond of sympathy or attachment between the audience and those two, it failed.

Given this, they could easily have been introduced as mysterious and powerful new characters to intrigue us in the opening scenes of Civil War, instead. Two seconds after we’re shown the New Avengers facility and Steve mentions the funding, we meet Wanda and Vision on the training mats along with Falcon, where Natasha’s ‘beating them into shape’. 'This is the new team!?!' someone says, as Wanda accidentally hexes Falcon and Vision disapparates out of the way of Sam's falling body. We’d get to find out about their backstory and abilities in a way that felt meaningful and interesting, as they trained to become a team with the other members of the New Avengers (and fell in love).

Nothing within the existing universe and no one within the existing cast has been left meaningfully altered by the events of Age of Ugggh. The only difference from the end of of A:A is that this time it’s Banner who’s been shown going off on his own instead of Steve. The hostility, distrust, and fundamental difference in world view that divides Steve and Tony? Already established at the end of A:A. SHIELD down? Established at the end of CA:TWS. The world a more dangerous and murky place where the actions of ‘heroes’ might face unfriendly scrutiny? Established at the end of AA and CA:TWS. Tony not actively superheroeing anymore? Established at the end of IM:3. Thor no longer a part of the team/more concerned with living a human life with Jane? Established at the end of Thor:TDW.

There is one thing this film did that wasn’t already done (and better, too) by the other Phase Two films or which couldn't have been done in a single establishing scene at the beginning of CA:CW. And that was to give the earth-based characters - not us! We already knew because of Thor:TDW and Guardians of the Galaxy - knowledge of the Infinity Stones and show Thanos finally getting his big purple *ss off that floating throne and deciding to work for a living.

I wish I was missing something that further rewatches will reveal to me, but I really don’t think I am. The only point of this multi-million dollar, nearly three hour long production was the two minute explanation of the Infinity Stones and the mid-credit scene. Oh, and the destruction and defamation of most of the characters that we liked and empathised with (I have never liked any of them less than I did here, honestly).

We had Tony as a spoiled, petty man child with all the emotional intelligence and perspective of a toddler, who throws apocalyptic tantrums whenever Steve tells him 'no', and constantly deceives and uses his team to get his own way. We had Steve as a one-dimensional block of a man who tells his team off for using bad language (hilarious! Soldiers in the Second World War totally never swore and just said 'Gosh' and 'Gee' while liberating death camps, you know) and who one moment is sacrificing Natasha without a single backward glance, and the next is telling us that he won't sacrifice a single person even if it means the end of the world (that is incredibly bad writing, right there). Bruce was painted as a feeble coward. I barely recognised him, and that was so disappointing because I love Mark Ruffalo and loved his of portrayal of Bruce in A:A. Thor? Well, he had a single personality trait, and it was: loud. Hawkeye was given a massive, awkward wodge of backstory that would actually have been endearing and heartwarming if it hadn't felt so utterly out of place, like it belonged in a different film.

And Natasha? My God, why would you DO this to Natasha Romanov, aka the Black Widow, aka one of the most compelling, complex, fascinating female characters the MCU has? Age of Ugggh basically portrayed her as Fay Wray, a female character whose main worth lies in taming or unleashing the power of the beast - in this case, the Hulk.

I am a shipper, man. I'll ship anyone with anybody, and after the hints in the trailers I was 100% there for some Brutasha. I love both these characters, and I thought it would be nice to see some tenderness between them. But it fell completely flat on screen. Not only was there zero romantic or sexual chemistry between the actors (and that's a feat, since both of them are beautiful and fantastic actors - I'm blaming the direction there) but the romance diminished Natasha. It was her whole arc. That was it. Natasha Pines For Bruce: The Movie.

The smirking, morally conflicted, flawed-yet-fighting Natasha of CA:TWS, who left Steve and went out on her own to figure out who she really was now that all her covers were blown, was utterly subsumed by a woman who, apparently, had figured out that who she was and all she wanted to be was Bruce Banner's girlfriend.

And when Bruce told her she was out of her mind for wanting to be with him (thanks, Bruce, your sensitivity to mental health issues was totally appreciated there) and that he was a monster, who probably couldn't have sex and could never have children (why would you assume that Natasha is too stupid to realise this, or that children are the most important thing to her anyway?), Natasha responded to him with a terrible story about how, as part of the systematic torture and abuse of her childhood in the Red Room, she had been sterilised, and then said 'Still think you're the only monster on the team?'

Yes, that's right. Apparently the filmmakers are totally comfortable with having a female character label herself as monstrous because she can't have biological kids. Natasha Romanov - former child assassin, current superhero, woman on a mission to discover her own true identity and make the world a better place - is a monster BECAUSE SHE CANNOT GIVE BIRTH. Apparently, a baby would be '...the only thing that might be more important than a mission' (???) and not being able to have babies '...makes everything easier. Even killing'. It's official! Being infertile erases a woman's conscience, while while having babies renders them incapable of performing their missions.

I guess all that stuff about red in the ledger was basically a euphemism for menstruation.

This is so blatantly, hatefully misogynistic that I am still in a haze of disbelief that it could possibly have screened in 2015, written and directed by a man WHO CALLS HIMSELF A FEMINIST.

Ultimately, Age of Ugggh was an empty spectacle that only worked to lessen the MCU's established characters, and weaken the quality of their overall work. I'm so glad that Joss Whedon is departing at this point, and I really, really hope that the writers and directors who follow him don't allow themselves to be unduly influenced by his continuing role as an advisor to Marvel. Because this film blew so badly that, thinking about it now, I kind of want to cry.

NaNoWriMo. SORT OF.

Hello, oh lovely readers, and welcome back! As our blog title for the day suggests, this year I'm attempting to participate in NaNo. Sort of.

Due to all the personal and health issues I had this year I never got around to running or even attempting to do my own International Creative Writing Month (sorry, anyone who was looking forward to it!). In May and July, when I'd normally have set that up, I was just about managing twenty minutes or maybe half an hour of computer activity per day before a headache set in, and that was while wearing sunglasses. It just wasn't going to work. But I still feel bummed about it. So when I sent my edits for Frail Mortal Heart back a few days shy of the end of October, I thought - why not try NaNo this year?

I should... probably have known better than to do that, really?

Well anyway, I knew that I couldn't actually sign up to take part as an official NaNo-er because the book that I'm working on in November is the Beauty and the Beast retelling I talked about here, usually referred to on twitter as #BaBBook. I've already written a chunk of the book and that means it's not eligible to be a NaNo novel. But I did intend to stick to the rules otherwise and commit to writing a certain amount each day in order to get to a certain word total by the end of the month. My goal was to produce ten handwritten pages of notes six days a week, for a grand total of 240 pages by the end of the month (I didn't count the first Sunday of the month because I was spending that day with my nieces). That would significantly progress BaBBook and give me a shot at getting a first draft finished early next year. All good.

As usual, Fate, the Muses, and the Writing Gods laughed at this plan of mine. As soon as I opened my draft document to look at the chapters I'd already written (I'd planned to skim-read them to get myself back into the correct voice and mood) I began to get a sinking feeling. I hadn't looked at this piece of writing for a month, since I'd been focusing on the aforementioned edits for TNotB #3, and it seemed that the distance had thrown some serious problems with the opening of the novel into sharp relief. I'd been feeling pretty good about those chapters and now I definitely was not. They just weren't up to scratch at all.

Fine. OK. Don't panic. The first day was just going to have to be re-writing so that I could fix this and move on feeling confident. And I know that goes completely against the NaNoWriMo principle of pushing on regardless, but I just *couldn't* OK? I had to get my ducks in a row first because otherwise the very important section I needed to write next was going to be weakened by the feebleness of what came before.

So I put in what felt like a fruitful day's work revising those chapters and getting them up to a standard that felt solid enough for me to move on, and was feeling OK about things until I got to the end of the document and realised there were pages missing there. Pages I knew I had written. Nearly a full chapter. What was going on? Had I failed to save at the end of my last writing session a month ago or something or... or... Oh. My. GOD.

I had been working on the wrong version of the manuscript.

I have two computers now - a slim laptop that travels with me, and a heavy old PC replacement that lives in my Writing Cave. I also have a flashdrive which I ferry back and forth between them, updating whatever computer I'm using with the most recent version of #BaBBook. And obviously at the end of last month, I hadn't updated the file on the Writing Cave computer with the newer version from the flashdrive. No wonder those chapters hadn't seemed good enough. They were from the middle, not the end, of September.

ARGH.

The urge to trash the room, rock 'n' roll style, was definitely rising, but after a few moments of deep breathing and staring at the calming picture on my wall, I was able to get it together. There was nothing to be done but print out the pages that I had revised, update my computer using the flashdrive and then hastily leave the room in order to watch classic anime until the urge to sacrifice myself on the alter of an elder god and then rise again as a eldritch tentacled monster of vengeance had passed.

Today, then, has been spent looking closely at the correct version of #BaBBook and inputting quite a lot of the changes that I'd made to the older version of the book's opening onto that, since many of them are still good. Two days of NaNo (during which I should have written twenty new pages, remember) down and not much to show for them, except a slightly more polished version of the first few chapters. And also a strong feeling that the last chapter, which I wrote at the end of September, needs to go in the bin and be completely rethought because it just feels rushed and wrong. Dammit.

So. Hopefully I'll get on that tomorrow and manage to construct a lead-in to the next part of the book that feels right and works. And then Thursday, I will actually start NaNo. Right?

Right?

*Sigh*

GET THAT GIRL OUT OF THE FRIDGE

Hello, lovely readers! Today, I bring you, not so much a post, but more a bunch of thinky thoughts inspired by my recent watching of the two Spiderman reboot films - THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN and it's imaginatively named sequel THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2.

WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS

Seriously, don't read this if you haven't seen the films and you don't want to be spoiled. Because I am spoiling All The Things here. Okay?

Okay.

So, I liked the first film - I enjoyed it. I thought that the story was a little incoherent and that the filmmakers failed to explain certain elements sufficiently in their quest to avoid imitating the Tobey Maguire version. But I loved Andrew Garfield's young, vulnerable rendition of the character. And I adored the female hero of the piece - smart, funny, brave Gwen Stacy, brought to life by Emma Stone.

Note that I call Gwen's character here a female hero rather than a 'love interest'. That's what she is. Her first speaking scene in the film is where she puts herself between Peter and Flash, who is kicking the cr*p out of Peter outside their school while the other students look on with various levels of amusement and concern. Gwen is the one who helps Peter sneak into the Oscorp facility to find out about his parents (albeit she just thinks he's there for the love of science). Gwen is the first and only person Peter tells about his abilities. Gwen goes up against the frankly terrifying villain, the Lizard, without any superpowers at all, twice. Once to defend Peter and save his life by distracting the villain at a crucial moment. Once to try and hide a piece of equipment vital to the Lizard's plan and to synthesize an antidote to stop him, and also to evacuate the building where she knows he's about to go on the rampage.

Gwen has agency in this story. She is the one who first talks to Peter, she is the one who asks him out. When she's in the lab that the Lizard is about to break into, and Peter orders her over the phone to 'get out of there', Gwen ignores him, triggers the blast shutters to buy herself some time, and keeps on doing what needs to be done. Her actions, in fact, save the entire city - without the antidote that she risks her life to create, the entire of New York would have ended up as giant green lizards. Gwen may not get to do cool stunts in a fancy yet implausible superhero costume - but she is so much more than a 'plucky', 'fiesty' (eugh) love interest. She's the female protagonist of the film. She's a hero.

In the second film, her heroic nature is less well utilised because she and Peter break up right at the beginning of the story. Peter is haunted by his memories of Gwen's father, the police chief who died fighting by his side at the end of the first film. His last words to Peter were to beg him to break up with Gwen to keep her safe. Peter actually wasn't able to stay away from Gwen like he promised, but by the beginning of ASM 2 Gwen is so sick of Peter's guilty attempts to make her decisions, 'for her own good', that she breaks up with him for good.

Peter then spends a worrying amount of time stalking her around the city, and pinning multiple pictures of her to his wall. It's not great behaviour for a hero, but sadly we're all long innured to the fact that Hollywood thinks stalking is hot. In the meantime, Gwen moves on with her life in a very heroic way, applying for a scholarship which will allow a remarkable student to study at Oxford in England.

While Peter meets - and forgets - Max, the man who will become electrically-fuelled villain Electro, and tries to support his friend Harry Osborn over the death of Harry's father from a genetic illness which, sooner or later, will probably kill Harry too (Harry will later become the film's second string villain the Green Goblin) Gwen is discovering shady goings on at the Oscorb lab where she does her work-study, and offering Peter friendly support whenever he barges back into her life. Just as she is about to leave for England, Peter comes after her and tells her that wants to be with her, but he won't hold her back. If she's going to England, he will follow her. Still a tiny bit stalker, but a sweet sentiment anyway.

In the final third of the film, Gwen is the one who gives Peter the answer that allows him to Electro-proof his web-slingers. He responds to this by once AGAIN trying to take away her right to make her own choices, webbing her hand to a car so that she can't go with him to try and stop Electro. Gwen manages to cut herself free, and it's a really good thing she does, because when Electro shuts down the entire city's power grid, putting thousands of people's lives in danger, she's the one who figures out how to restart the system and put Electro down for good, which she proceeds to do, with Peter's help.

She also gives Peter a great speech about how no one, including him, has the right to make her choices for her, that she has made the decision to be there, and how she will not stand for him acting the way he has been anymore. It's fantastic. I nearly stood up and cheered, especially since the film supported her words by having her immediately save the day.

AND THEN.

Then the filmmakers shoved Gwen Stacy right in the fridge.

What does this mean? It's slang for when writers or producers basically throw away a female character - by killing her or having her 'ruined' (blech) in some fashion, which is often a sexual assault, or a catastrophic loss of agency - in order to motivate a male character to greater depths of manpain. It disempowers the female character, turning them from a person into a symbol whose real worth, traits, and possible suffering are meaningless in the face of the overwhelming, sacred pain of the male character who has lost them.

Why does Gwen's death count as a fridging, you ask? Haven't I just spent this entire post talking about how awesome and heroic Gwen was? Maybe the writers really loved her and felt she deserved a grand and heroic death?

Yeah, except she didn't get one.

Gwen didn't die heroically putting herself between Peter or some other innocent person and danger, or saving thousands of people. She died at the last minute, after being snatched up by the Green Goblin, the film's second string villain. He didn't even know Gwen. But he knew that she was Peter's girlfriend - and he wanted to hurt Peter. That was all Gwen was to him, a female piece of meat whose destruction would upset the object of his ire. So he dropped her from a great height, and Gwen died because Peter failed to save her.

This completely undercuts Gwen's fantastic strong stance on her right to make her own choices about where she wants to go, what she wants to do, and the risks that she intends to take. By killing her right then and in the way they did, the filmmakers are retroactively validating Gwen's father's passive aggressive interference in her life, and Peter's constant attempts to keep her out of danger by taking her choice away. The filmmakers are basically saying that Peter's behaviour was warranted. Gwen didn't have the right to make her own choices after all, because look what happened - exactly what Peter told her would happen. She died.

She died because of him.

I think that's actually the worst part of all. The blaring message that Gwen died because of Peter. Not because she was a hero, putting herself in danger to save thousands of people - people in planes and hospitals, people who without a doubt WOULD have perished if she hadn't been there to take action.

No, Gwen died because Peter didn't protect her well enough. Didn't manage to take her choices away from her, wrap her up in cotton-wool, and keep her out of the conflict well enough.

Literally nothing in the scene where Gwen died reflected Gwen's bravery, heroism and intelligence. They stripped her of everything and left her dangling from one of Spidey's webs like a classical damsel in distress. Her father got to die fighting. He got to offer up some last words. Gwen got to fall, photogenically, and then lie there photogenically in Spiderman's arms while he expressed his beautiful grief over her lovely corpse.

After Peter has finished crying (but not making any attempt at CPR - that wouldn't have been photogenic, after all) we get a brief flash of Gwen's mother and brothers at her funeral, and then lots of shots of time passing as Peter, having given up his web-slinging ways, broods, alone, over her grave. What we don't see is any acknowledgement of a hero's passing. There's no speech from Peter at her funeral about how brave and amazing she was. There's a news bulletin about how the people of New York miss Spiderman, but nothing from anyone about how Gwen Stacy, Chief Stacy's little girl, turned out to be just as great a hero as him in saving the city of New York from Electro. No one seems to know or care that if Gwen hadn't been there that night, the power grid would not have been restored and Electro might well have killed Spiderman and still be terrorizing the city.

Even when Peter watches Gwen's valedictorian speech, which he missed at the beginning of the film, the part of the speech that the filmmakers chose to use is a section which falls squarely under the heading of 'supportive girlfriend', in which Gwen tells the listener not to give up hope, and that they are enough. We saw the beginning of this speech earlier on and it was kickass and heroic, with Gwen stating that life is precious because it is finite and that we have to chose to be brave even knowing we will all fail along the way - but they didn't use that. Why? Because by this point in the movie Gwen is no longer a hero.

Gwen doesn't get to talk about bravery anymore. Peter is the Lonely Hero standing at her grave filled with a manly pain that no one - not his aunt May, who lost her husband, not Gwen's family, who lost a husband and father and a sister and daughter in the space of a year - can possibly understand. Gwen herself couldn't understand it. She's been reduced to a symbolic saintly girlfriend, a sacrifice. She's safe. She's blonde and pretty and smiling softly in the pictures on Peter's walls. 

Because that's why Gwen had to die here. She was too strong, Too heroic. Gwen was going to go to England and take Peter with her, and we couldn't have that, now could we? She would have been taking Spidey away from NYC! When the filmmakers decided to kill her off in such a meaningless way, I'm sure they felt it was 'for the best' and that they were doing her justice by making sure she looked tragically gorgeous the whole time she was falling to her death and being a dead body.

In fact, they stripped us of a heroine and gave us a dead damsel in distress. They stripped Gwen Stacy of her soul before they did her body in. They took away the tragedy of the fall of a hero and made it into the tragedy of the loss of Spiderman's girlfriend. As Peter is kneeling over Gwen's body, with a tiny trickle of dark blood coming out of her nose, the filmmakers don't want you thinking: Poor Gwen. You're supposed to be thinking: Poor Peter.

Probably the reason why Gwen was allowed to develop into such a strong, funny, brave, kickass female protagonist in the first place is that the writers and producers always intended to transpose Gwen's death from the comics into the films. They had the confidence to allow her to be ballsy and unapologetically clever and ambitious because they had her meaningless, pointless fridging to look forward to. Ultimately, Gwen was never going to be allowed to truly influence and change Peter's life. She was never going to be acknowledged as a hero or get to die as one. Everything was always going to be about Peter, in the end.

She was always intended for the fridge.

Look, as a writer, I know full well that sometimes characters have to die. Sometimes female characters have to die. But what doesn't have to happen to female characters (and ONLY female characters) is for them to die solely to motivate a male character into a long, dark night of the soul. If you create a female character with the endgame of killing them off, let their death be more than a prompt for manpain.

Let them die the way they lived, whether that is heroically or stupidly or utterly mundanely.

Do not make a female character's death all about the man in their life.

For the love of God, at least allow her DEATH to be about HER.

If you can't do that, if there's no other reason to kill her off than to stimulate manpain, or if there's not enough of her as a character to make any kind of death meaningful other than one motivated only by and meaningful only to the men in her life? Please, please... think again.

GETTING BACK INTO THE SWING OF THINGS

Hello, and happy Monday, Dear Readers!

I know, I know - I've been neglecting the blog (and you) pretty shamefully for a few months now. What's been going on? Well, honestly, I've been in kind of a black hole for a while. I couldn't find the energy to work, I didn't want to hang out with friends, and I didn't want to interact much online. Even managing to drag myself out of bed in the mornings was a struggle. I tried to push past it and keep doing all the same things as normal, and at first that worked, but after a while pretending things were just the same as before began to make me feel even worse. Trying to Keep Calm And Carry On will only take you so far before you get to an edge that you don't want to fall over. I found myself on that edge due to a combination of factors right about the time of my birthday in April this year, which was six months to the day after my father died. I chose to back away - and that meant backing away from all of you, as well.

This sounds quite scary and serious, but in fact it what it came down to was taking care of myself. My brain and my body were demanding that I cease running at full speed and just stop for a while. In order to cope, I pretty much had to allow myself the space to be alone, be quiet, and mentally and emotionally try to work through everything that's changed in my life over the past twelve months and where that leaves me now.

So I've been gone. And I just had to trust that you guys would be waiting for me when I felt strong enough to come back.

I'm starting to get better now - better enough that daring to say that doesn't feel like jinxing myself - but I'm still working through a few problems. Mostly this is my complex thoughts and feelings over my dad's passing last year, which is only just starting to seem real to me, but a lot of it is also problems with my health which prevented me from being on my computer for more than a few minutes, some days, without triggering ferocious migraines.

I don't want to make promises that will be like stones on my back as I try to climb out of that hole, but I do hope to be around online and more available to my friends and Dear Readers in the coming months. At the very least, I owe you updates on where I am with all my ongoing projects and what's coming up next. I'll make an effort, anyway.

Now before we all get really emo and start crying into our teddy bears (which I freely admit I've been doing plenty of recently) let's have AN EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT!

In October I'm going to be doing a panel event and signing at the High Street Waterstones in Lincoln - my first public event since my dad passed on. Fellow YA writers Kerry Drewery (author of A Brighter Fear and A Dream of Lights) and Emma Pass (author of ACID and The Fearless) will be joining me for an evening event - 6:30 onwards - which celebrates the fabulous heroines of teen literature. I'll not only be answering questions and autographing books, but also giving out prizes and possibly spoilers about future work.

I'm a tiny bit nervous about this event, since I've been living like a hermit for a while. But I'm also really keen to get out and about as well. I'd love it if any Dear Readers who can make it would show up so I can shower them with hugs and swag. Lincoln is a gorgeous city that's well worth a visit any day, and between us Kerry, Emma and me have most of YA Lit covered, so we ought to be able to entertain you really well.

I'll be blogging more about the event and my fellow authors as the event gets closer, but for now, I just wanted to let you all know what's *been* going on and what *is* going on. Much love to all of my babies - and I hope you read you later.

Zolah xx

HEY, SUMMIT! I FIXED YOUR DIVERGENT POSTER FOR YOU!

So, has everyone seen the official poster for the film version of Veronica Roth's DIVERGENT? I really loved the book. I read it way before it came out, after being lucky enough to win an ARC from the author's blog (which I still have, and much treasured it is, especially since Veronica filled it with wonderful notes that gave insight into her writing process). There's controversy surrounding the novel, and controversy surrounding the film and its casting, but I've been pretty much willing to keep an open mind about it. Until this:

Whut.

So... this is a film about a young hero, and her journey to both physical and emotional strength. About her battle to reconcile basic decency and kindness with courage and necessary ruthlessness. About the terrible things human beings do to one another, and about freeing your mind from preconcieved notions and prejudice and daring to think for yourself.

And this is what Summit Entertainment give us for the film poster. "Hi! My name is Tris Prior - but my love interest there, the guy with the giant gun? He is clearly more important than I am, since he's right at the front of my poster. In order to show that I'm not one of those awful, unsympathetic, domineering women, I'm going to stand behind him, completely unarmed, with my back to you, while coyly looking over my shoulder. But enough about ME! The important thing here is that you can clearly see my boobs AND my butt! Do you like my butt? They lit it specially, defying all the normal laws of light and shadow, and placed it at the exact centre point of this poster!"

I don't know what the film is going to be like. But I do know that this is an awful poster. Egregiously bad. Exasperatingly terrible. This is not the poster that DIVERGENT should have. This is a poster for some other film about a boy and his giant gun, and his girlfriend with the shiny bum. Here. I fixed it:

Much better.

THREE THINGS ON TUESDAY

Happy Tuesday, Dear Readers! Welcome to a mid-week feast of randomness from yours truly.

Thing the First: The very first blog review of The Night Itself! From the delightful Laura at Sister Spooky. This review contains a line I absolutely adore, because it perfectly sums up the book: 

Mio is transitioning from child to adult and finding it hard to fit in, even in her own skin and having a demon after your flesh and the fate of the city in your hands is a tad much for anyone.

How right Laura is! My poor Mio. Not only do her boobs stubbornly refuse to grow, but now she has to deal with the apocalypse too? Not cool, man. Not cool.

Laura is one of a small group of bloggers who got an early ARC of the book to review, because they're taking part in a special, The Night Itself-related project which is the brainchild of Lovely Lass. This is going to be very, very cool, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to share it with you all soon (but no promises, because it's Lovely Lass' baby, not mine).

Thing the Second: My second lot of music recommendations in as many weeks. I've listened to a lot of new artists over the last month - new to me, that is - and I've been finding a lot of inspiration in being surrounded by new voices, new sounds, new songs. So here are a couple of songs I've recently discovered and love, and have been singing in the shower.



In searching for these on YouTube, I discovered that half of them have apparently featured on The Vampire Diaries. I find this really odd. I am not a Vampire Diaries viewer, and yet about 50% of the time when I find a new song that I love, it turns out to have been on this show. Perhaps their musical director is my song-soulmate? Well, the songs are great anyway.

Thing the Third: This is me right now. Pretty much literally. My eyes are doing that exact crossing-thingie and I too am finding it all too easy to sort of wibble myself into a heap on the floor. Send me love and smoochies, you guise. I need all the help I can get.

RETROTHURSDAY: RESPONDING TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE

Hello, Dear Readers! Happy Thursday. Some entries for the Mega Exclusive The Night Itself Giveaway are still trickling in (some of the best ones have come in the last couple of days, actually - I'm really humbled) so I've decided to let the giveaway roll over until next week. If you haven't entered yet, or you'd like to get another entry or two in, you've got until midnight on the 29th, so get a wriggle on there.

Today's second order of business is to congratulate my friend and fellow Author Allsort, Emma Pass, on the publication of her debut YA novel: ACID. Happy Book Birthday - and Many Happy Returns, Emma! Here's my mini-review, in case you'd like to know what the book is about. 

And now onto today's RetroThursday post - or rather, RetroThursday rant. I decided to post this one again because I'd forgotten all about it until a quote from it showed up on my Tumblr dashboard and I did a double-take and went 'Huh. I wrote that, yes. I was a bit cross at the time, clearly...'

These issues are still coming up again and again in mainstream coverage of YA, but these days I'm much more wary on clicking the links, because spending the day fuming and coming up with searing rebuttals is bad for your word target AND your stomach lining. So let this stand as my response to all such sillness, once and for all.

RESPONDING TO THE WSJ ARTICLE

When I woke up this morning to find my Twitter feed being eaten alive by references to an article in the Wall Street Journal about YA literature, my first reaction was confusion, because that article came out ages ago. Didn't it? Oh, no - this was a NEW article from the WSJ, ANOTHER article belittling my genre and chosen medium as an artist. Did a YA author kick the editor of the WSJ in the ankle on the train recently or something? These guys just don't seem to like us. But then, thinking about it, no one really seems to like us, do they?

Pretty much every other day YA writers have to put up with another condescending article in which the entire field of young adult and children's writing is compressed down to the sparkly vampire elements so that the journalist can smirk. Or a comment from some lauded adult literary writer who thinks anyone who bothers writing for people under the age of eighteen is mentally defective. Or an article like this one, that bemoans the debauched, depraved tone of YA literature and compares it unfavourably to the books of the writer's own childhood.

The first thing most of these articles do is to point out how new YA is. And they're right. Young Adult only got its own shelf in the library or bookshop sometime in the late eighties or early nineties. Before that, there was just children's and adult's. And not long before that, there was adult, all on its own, and children read the Bible and classics and that was it. A lot of people seem to wish for a return to this state of affairs - or, at least, that's how it seems to those of us who keep finding ourselves under attack for daring to see young adults as a worthy audience with high intelligence, enquiring minds, and their own particular experiences and concerns, who deserve books specifically written for them.

In the minds of these article-writers, new = bad. Just as, apparently, truthful, intense, dark books which explore the real world young adults share with the rest of us = bad. The YA haters, whatever their stated concerns, always seem to be looking back, longing for some past Golden Age of Innocence, when books for younger readers were bright and cheerful and happy and uncomplicated. A hazy, non-specific 1950's lite period, when kids were respectful to their elders, no one had to lock their doors, child abuse was unheard of. When children never cried alone, or hurt themselves or others. When, presumably, young people themselves were bright, cheerful, happy and uncomplicated.

Here's a little newsflash for you. That time never actually existed.

It is a product of the adult imagination. Nothing more than convenient fantasy. Weak and feeble nostalgia. And kids know it.

The world has never been bright, cheery and happy and uncomplicated. Kids have always been abused. They have always suffered in silence, hurt themselves and others. Children have always, always, always partaken of the pain and agony of humanity. They have always had to live with the same darkness, the same wars, the same nightmares as adults do. In fact, they've normally caught the worst of it. Take a look at childhood and infant mortality rates in any third world country if you don't believe me. Actually, take a look at child poverty statistics for the U.S. right now. Still feeling nice and cozy there on your moral high ground?

One of the most heart-breaking parts of Meghan Cox Gurdon's article is the way that she dismisses Scars, a novel by Cheryl Rainfield. Ms Cox Gurdon thinks the subject of the book - a girl who cuts to help herself cope with years of systematic abuse by her father - 'normalises' self-harm. That the topics it covers are 'lurid'. She criticises the cover with it's photograph of a 'horribly scarred forearm'. Apparently all this stuff is just too 'depraved' for teens.

Does Ms Cox Gurdon realise that Cheryl Rainfield herself was ritually and sytematically tortured by her parents as a child? That the forearm she dismisses as horrible actually belongs to Cheryl? Here, the author uses her own experiences to write a book that reaches back to her childhood self, reaches out to the thousands of other children who are going through what she went through, and tells them 'You can survive this. Don't lose hope.' Scars is an artistic act of the highest courage possible and one I admire more than I can say.

But Ms Cox Gurdon, like others of her kind, does not care about the children whose lives might be saved by this book. Or the thousands of other children who, through reading such a book, will gain understanding, empathy and compassion for the survivors of abuse and become better, more rounded individuals. She wants to pretend that bad things don't happen to anyone real - especially kids - that 'normal' people don't find this stuff relevent, that no one she knows or cares about could be damaged and hurting like the character in Scars.

Let me now address the YA haters directly - for my own satisfaction, but also in hopes of getting through some seriously thick skulls:

The reason you feel free to attack YA this way is because you think it's a soft target. You think it's valueless. You think no one takes it seriously. You think the YA field is a fleeting flash in the pan, getting undeserved attention and success. You think if you sit in judgement in your safe little corner, it'll all go away and proper literature (that's the stuff you like) will eventually take its place.

Unfortunately for you, this attitude betrays you. It makes clear your true feelings about young adults, the very people for whom you profess to have such concern.

You think young adults are valueless. You don't take them seriously. You dismiss their feelings and experiences as fleeting and shallow. You think if you just din your own personal values and beliefs into young adult heads hard enough, you'll be able to drown out their questions, their inconvenient new ideas, their worrying complexity, and produce a Mini-You, an adult in teenage clothing.

Never gonna happen.

YA is too dark for you? Too bleak? Too sad, and challenging and REAL? You think we should all collude in some kind of mass hallucination in which we pretend bad things never happen, and kids exist in a perpetual state of rosy-cheeked glee and laughter? Well, I'll tell you what. You build yourself a nice spaceship, find a new planet and create that ideal, shiny world. Invite your family and friends. I'm sure it'll be just swell. But the rest of us are stuck HERE. Including those of humanity who are too young and vulnerable to have voices of their own. They look to the writers of YA fiction to speak to them, to speak the truth. To write books that are brave enough to touch them in their isolation and loneliness.

We're not going to stop. We're not going to abandon those kids like you want us to, and sweep their experiences under the carpet.

In spite of you, and everything you do to tell young adults that they don't get a say, that their experiences are lesser, that if they just ignore the pain it will go away, that none of it matters and in years to come they will look back and laugh? They will grow into the people they should be. They will grow into new writers and artists, trail-blazers, kicking the status quo in the teeth and telling things like they are.

Young adult literature is new. It's raw and brash and brazen. It's trashy, silly, funny and beautiful. It's stomach-churing, harrowing and dark. It's subtle, complex, transformative and brave.

It's ART, for God's sake. What do you expect?

And when young adults dive into it, they will find all these horrors and wonders - and they will find themselves.

If you don't like it? Your spaceship awaits. Bon voyage!

THE EDIT DIARIES: Day 20

Hello, Dear Readers. I hope that you're all well on this fine Tuesday.

Before I start properly, here's a link to YA author Marie Lu (who's books I have not read yet, although I plan to) talking about that pet peeve of mine, the idea of 'Boy Books' and 'Girl Books'. Gnargh. Go get 'em, Marie!

Now onto me. As normal at this point in revisions (roughly midway through, I would guess? When you're cutting chunks out and then writing new chunks and pasting them in it gets tricky to really know), I am starting to feel the frail bonds of sanity unravelling from around my brain. I mean, I sometimes literally I can feel this happening - like a sort of slithering and then a snap, like an elastic band snapping? In my head? Oh dear. That's not good, is it? So it's going to be tough to get sense out of me before I've sent this off back to Wonder Editor. But I'll do my best with what few wits I have left at my disposal.

Luckily, despite the post title, today's blog is not about my edits and my swiftly deteriorating mental state! I'm basically just here to give you a heads up that Thursday's post will be EXCITING.

"How will it be exciting?" You cry eagerly.

Oh ho ho, I will give you a hint, my little duckies. It will be exciting in a The Night Itself sort of way. A way which involves rare and exclusive goodies of untold wonder which I am preeeetty sure you will very much want to get your hands on, especially months and months before anyone else does. Oh, yes. It is, in fact, an advanced proof-copy sort of excitingness.

And that's all you get!

(I was going to put that .gif here of the Wicked Queen from Snow White disppearing under the floor, but I couldn't find it. So just imagine it. This is me... disappearing under the floor. Mwaaaha hahh ha ha ha!)

TRILOGIES BITE

Hi everyone! As Tuesday rolls around again I am moved to meditate upon an important fact, a fact which has slowly been born in upon me over many months. The fact is this: trilogies bite.

You guys know how much I love The Name of the Blade. It's my sugar-coated-unicorn-angel-baby and I adore it. But writing it is KILLING ME. My constant refrain now to everyone I speak to, from Wonder Editor and Super Agent, to my friends in my writing group, to my mother, is, 'If I ever say I'm going to write a trilogy again? Please slap me upside the head/lock me away for my own safety/kill me and end my suffering'.

I sort of think about the story told throughout The Name of the Blade as one big book. Yes, each individual book that you, the reader, will pick up, needs to have a distinct atmosphere and each one needs its own arc - in plot and characterisation - and each one needs a sense of emotional resolution at the end. I know this. But because it's very tightly plotted and the whole thing takes place over one week of storytime (a challenge I set myself because I intended this book to be truly different from my high fantasy, which often takes place over *years* of storytime, and I wanted to see if I could tell a breathless thriller a bit like John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps) it always just felt like one grand story to me.

As a result of this, I had kidded myself that writing it wouldn't be all that different from writing, say, Shadows on the Moon, which is over 100,000 words long and has three distinct acts, each of which has its own atmosphere and character arc. I ought to be able to replicate the same thing on a slightly larger scale, right?

No. No, no, no.

It is not the same thing. It is not in any way the same thing. This is what I have painfully discovered. For me, a trilogy of books is fundamentally - essentially - different from one book, no matter if that book has a three part structure. I mean, I had no choice about this story being a trilogy, and I realised that almost straight away. It's not like I could have done anything differently even if I had known it was going to kick my *ss. But my own initial sense of chirpy optimism - which, let me tell you, constantly rears its head in all the synopses and plot diagrams and notes I made back at the beginning of planning this thing - is so annoying to me now that the urge to build a time machine for the sole purpose of travelling back to 2010 and giving myself a right telling off is kind of overwhelming.

Although what I'd actually do with a time machine would be to go forward to 2015 when the whole trilogy will be out, buy the books and bring them back so that I can copy them in the present, therefore cunningly bypassing all the suckiness of writing a trilogy. Speak not to me of paranoxes! I prefer the quantum inevitability theory of time travel!

I have put far too much thought into this.

Anyway. I had this idea that writing a trilogy would be just like writing one really long book, OK? And the thing about me is that I'm the sort of writer who hates writing beginnings. I find them really, really hard going because much as I know all the facts about the characters and the world, I haven't really gotten inside them and learned them properly yet. I can only do that by doing the writing. So it's basically a process of slogging through all the actions that I've already decided the characters will take without any real input from them, hating every minute of it, and hoping and praying for the moment when the characters suddenly spark to life and begin pulling their weight.

This is why, generally, writing the first third of a book takes about half (or even more!) of the time that I spend writing a book in total. And I think this is also why, generally, I spend the vast majority of editing and rewriting and revising time - both on my own and in conjunction with my editor - on the beginnings. Knowing that doesn't help much with the slogging, either.

So, with my one-book theory, I thought that once I had written the beginning of The Name of the Blade - that is, The Night Itself - I would be on the homeward straight, coasting downhill all the way. And writing The Night Itself was a pretty darn joyous experience, even when we came to edit it and those edits turned out to be slightly more extensive than originally planned. That surely meant books #2 and #3 would be even more joyous and delightful, right?

No. No, no, no.

Guess what? Turns out that the beginning of a second book in a trilogy? Is TWICE AS HARD to write as the beginning of a normal book. I mean, dude, I didn't even know that was possible. (And what this says about how the final book will go, I don't even want to contemplate, and if anyone chimes in about it with the obvious conclusion in the comments I will come after them like a berserker baboon because I AM IN DENIAL OK do not take my denial away from me it is all that is keeping me AFLOAT right now).

Maybe the reason for this is that, if you've done it right, the events of the first book should have profoundly affected all the characters and changed their world? They're almost new people, who have new perspectives and goals and new knowledge and new ways of interacting with each other and their world. But there's just enough of a sense that you *should* know who they are, that it makes it all more difficult because you *expect* them to act a certain way and then they do something they never would have done in the first book. Or, worse, they don't react at all, and it's back to slog, slog, slog...

But the middle also seems to take a different sort of effort than a normal middle. Even the ending, the blissful part, is more difficult and sort of sideways than with a standalone.

I spent most of the weekend (that I didn't spend working on a new beginning for book #2 of the trilogy, because once again my beginning basically stinks) working on this factsheet thing. I filled in, in chronological order, all the facts about in-world-mythology and backstory that the characters (and readers) learn in The Night Itself. And then I filled in, in chronological order, all the facts about in-world-mythology and backstory that the characters (and readers) need to learn in the final, as-yet-unwritten book. And then I tried to figure out what that meant for this middle book. And eventually I ended up with something which I hope will help me.

And today I finished the new first chapter of bk #2. So I feel like have made a start on the start. But trilogies still bite, and I'm still recruiting volunteers to smack me, lock me up or assassinate me if I ever suggest writing one again.

What? You thought there would be some kind of a point to this post?

No. No, no. no.

*Unhinged laughter*

INSTA-LOVE AND THE NIGHT ITSELF

Happy Tuesday, Dear Readers! I hope your weekend and Monday were good, because today I have something to confess.

Here goes. There is a love story in THE NAME OF THE BLADE TRILOGY.  There is a love story in THE NIGHT ITSELF.

So far, so not-very-surprising. What kind of a confession is this, you ask yourselves?

Patience, my muffins; there is more. For the romance I depict in this trilogy is a kind which is often disrespected and dismissed. This love is a love that few will approve. Many find its very existence shameful. Even the kindest, most open-minded of you, especially the ones who like to review books and are therefore immersed in popular reviewing language, are going to take ONE LOOK at this love story and - in your shock and disgust - put a certain label on it.

You will call it insta-love.

Quelle Surprise! Quelle Horreur!

Guess what else? I did it on purpose.

While you're still reeling from that one, here's another confession. I'm known (where I'm known at all) for my loathing of the term Mary-Sue. It is a term which is infinitely worthy of my loathing for many fine reasons. But over the last couple of years I have grown to hate the term 'insta-love' even more.

Accusations of insta-love are the last thing any author wants. It makes you cringe instinctively. The very term is dismissive and insulting. To have a relationship in a book labelled as insta-love implies all kind of nasty cr*p - not just about the quality of your book but also you, as a writer. It implies that you're using cheap and dirty tricks, that you have resorted to stereotypes, that your characters are ciphers with no real connection to each other. If you've written insta-love you're either a talentless hack who only put a romance in there to pander to commercial demand, or a talentless hack who can't write a 'proper' love story.

Bad author. No cookie. No cookie for you or your cr*ppy insta-love book.

And you know what? I really effing hate that. Maybe I'm just a cranky, contrary madam, but the moment that people start coming out in droves to condemn anything - any literary device that resides in my toolbox as a writer, any narrative choice that a storyteller ought to have the right to select if they feel it works for their story - and saying how terrible, awful, no good and downright WRONG it is? That is the moment that I fling up my skirts, click my heels together and gleefully cackle:

THAT IS WHAT I AM GOING TO WRITE NEXT AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME OH NO YOU CAN'T MWHAHAHHAA IN YOUR FACE!

Established wisdom condemns lengthy descriptions? I'll describe the *ss off this book. No epilogues, says the writing forum guru? Have one and a prologue too! Dream sequences are bad juju! Guess I'll make them a main feature of my story, thanks very much! If you tell me I can't have that writer's tool it 'cos it's naughty and unfashionable and bad for me and my book? Even if I never had any desire to use it before, I will literally come up with a story idea specifically to allow me to write that very thing. All the tools in my writer's toolbox are mine to select or reject and if you attempt to smack my hand when I reach for one of them I will BITE YOUR FINGERS OFF.

Ahem. Well, I admitted to cranky, and contrary, right? What did you expect?

I've talked about insta-love on this blog before, with the very able co-conspirator R.J. Anderson. However, the main focus of that piece was the way that many instances of unconventional or slow-burning love were being *mis-labelled* insta-love because readers weren't picking up on the subtle cues throughout the earlier parts of the book that Ze Romance, She Is In Ze Air!

My point today - and really, in the way I developed the relationships in THE NAME OF THE BLADE (yes, 's' - brownie points for noticing! I'm not just talking about one) - is that insta-love isn't necessarily a bad thing. 

I mean, the term iself certainly is, what with the aforementioned sneering dismissiveness and all that. In fact, I'd like to take the phrase insta-love by the hand, gently lead it out the back door, and kindly - even tenderly - blow it to smithereens with a sawn-off shotgun. Which is to say that, personally, I prefer to use: love at first sight. 

See how, straight away, that makes such a huge difference? The words 'love at first sight' simply describe the literary device in question without implying a value judgement.

This is the thing. You and I and everyone else has the right to feel whatever way we like about whatever tropes we like or don't. We all have the bullet-proof kinks and, on the other hand, the hot-button tropes that make us want to chuck a book straight across the room the moment they rear their heads.

However, in critiquing books which contain these hot-button tropes I have to bear in mind that if my dislike of the entire book boils down to 'The writer chose THIS TROPE, this PARTICULAR TROPE which I DON'T LIKE, why, why, OH GOD I HATE THE TROPE SO MUCH', then I'm not actually judging the book based on how good it was, how well it executed the goals it set out to achieve. I'm only judging it based on how well it specifically met my specific needs, and I'm treating any way in which it did not do so as a failure.

Its kind of like going me going into a Chinese restaurant, picking up the menu, and crying, 'Why is there rice on this menu? And noodles? I don't like rice and noodles! Where is the pizza? I wanted pepperoni or maybe a stuffed crust!' After realising no garlic bread is forthcoming, I grudgingly eat some noodles and rice, muttering and grumbling, and finally storm out convinced that this is a terrible restaurant because they have nothing edible on their menu, and what is wrong with THEM with their disgusting unnatural RICE and NOODLES, ughgh!

It's possible the food the restaurant offered me was great quality and delicious. It's also possible that it was awful. But because I have an indelible enmity against rice and noodles, I am completely incapable of judging the quality of any rice and nooldes, let alone the rice and noodles I ate there. When I complain that I didn't like them, it is not a value judgement of how good those specific noodles and rice were, it is a rejection of all rice and noodles, ever, everywhere. And it assumes that every other right thinking person has the same deep-seated - possibly pathological - hatred of noodles and rice that plague me.

(Psst, I really love rice and noodles, please don't take them from me Food Gods! Also pizza. Don't take that either!)

This is what the term 'insta-love' does. It assumes that this development - love at first sight - is a bad thing regardless of the context or the characters involved. It assumes that regardless of how well it's done, love at first sight is a lapse in the author's skill and judgement, or a lapse in their integrity. It assumes that the last thing any author would ever deliberately do was set out to write a romance which others would recognise as love at first sight - regardless of whether the author did in fact set out to write love at first sight because they happen to like that trope or simply wanted to explore its implications.

How on earth did this literary device - formerly a perfectly respectable if somewhat challenging storytelling choice, used by such luminaries as Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer and Hugo - become the ugly red-headed stepchild of YA in general and paranormal romances or urban fantasies in particular? How did 'love at first sight', a neutral descriptive term, become 'insta-love' with all its implications of 'just add water!'?

The general idea is that love at first sight has been horribly overused in YA fiction, so we're all sick of it. But when I actually came to examine my reads over the last few years, even if I *just* think about the paranormal romance, I really can't think of all that many 'imprinting' type romances. I can think of a bunch with passive heroines who let jerky heroes walk all over them, sure - and that's problematic. But it's not the same thing. And I can think of a lot of books that had reviews *saying* they were insta-love and scorning them appropriately, but often when I read them I found myself thinking (as mentioned in the blog with R.J. Anderson) "Huh. Clearly we have different definitions of what 'insta-love' means, because for me this reads as a classic enemies-to-lovers/slow-burn/friends-to-lovers/fill-the-blank-here type romance."

I don't read All The Books. So it's entirely possibly I'm wrong here. Maybe there ARE scads of books where the hero and heroine fall in love at first sight and instantly declare their feelings and spend the whole book in unwavering devotion to each other without ever finding out anymore about each other than mutual hotness. But just because those authors did a bad job of using love at first sight, does that mean love at first sight itself should be forever exiled to a desert island to fight for its life against feral adverbs and raging advectives? Seems a tad unfair.

So then maybe the problem isn't over-USE of this device, but over-popularity and exposure. Maybe it's all Twilight's fault! Only... no. I'm not going to blame Twilight. You may gasp - but the story of Bella and Edward isn't a story of love at first sight in any way that seems reasonable to define it.

Yes, there's a chapter called 'First Sight' in the first book. But Bella's first sight of Edward only tells her that he's whoa-hawt-hubba-hubba-touseled-bronze-hair-mmmm-gimme-some. Her next sight of him (which is when he's, you know, trying awfully hard not to snap her neck and eat her in the biology lab) confuses, frightens and insults her.

In fact the romance between these two is a fairly clear-cut slow-burning type, progressing through initial hostility and misunderstandings to eventual blissful acceptance. I think people call it insta-love because Smeyer, bless her heart, cocks the execution of this up rather badly and so Edward comes off, alternately, as a threatening psycho, and a smug, arrogant jerk, and Bella appears as a relentlessly negative null-character, which makes their mutual attachment seem completely inexplicable. Yes: it's less than brilliant writing. No: it's not love at first sight.

And most people ALSO agree that the baby vampire-teenage werewolf imprinting romance is gross and doesn't count as love either, so that can't be the source, surely?

I'm just going to throw my hands up here and say Heck If I Know. But what I do know is that love at first sight is getting maligned left right and centre. Even when you write a completely different kind of romance people will often signal their disapproval of it by calling it insta-love, because that's just about the nastiest thing anyone can think of to say about any kind of fictional relationship (borderline abusive stalking? A-OK. Insta-love? NO WAY).

So I wanted to try to take 'insta-love' and strip some of those unfair implications away. I wanted to show that the device of love at first sight itself is neutral, neither good nor evil, although it can of course be used for either.

It will be up to readers to say if I've succeeded or failed; whether they personally can learn to love this trope, or at least the way I've chosen to relate it. But whenever I see insta-love used as a pejorative, I shall mentally replace the phrase with 'love at first sight' and feel much better about it.

Because that's what I set out to write. On purpose. And there's nothing wrong with it.