It's cryptic reveal time once again as I am massively proud to announce that I am SpartacusErin Hunter OLIVIA CHASE, author of Demon Hunters: Trinity. And the book comes out IN ONE MONTH'S TIME!
OMG, LOOK AT THAT COVER THOUGH, ISN'T IT STUNNING? (C) HACHETTE
Blurb time:
For fans of Cassandra Clare, this kick-ass new series will keep you on the edge of your seat . . .
With an occult detective for a dad, Diana's normal life has never been too normal. Uprooted by investigations, she finds herself on a long train journey to Edinburgh, sitting next to a boy who makes her heart melt. Or something melt. Anyway, she's melting. Maybe a new life in Scotland won't be so bad, after all?
But when Di's recurring nightmares start to come true, her destiny changes for ever. After her dad goes missing, she becomes part of a Trinity of Demon Hunters. Along with her two new friends, she needs to face down death, rescue her dad and save their city. Because that's what Demon Hunters do, right?
There's only one question left to answer: how do you kill a dead man?
This book has everything, if by 'everything' you mean action, sarcasm, moths, great female characters and the odd severed head.
Olivia is an amalgam of myself and the fantastically twisted editors at Little, Brown Young Readers. We've been working on Trinity and its sequel together and it's been a huge blast. I can't wait to unleash Diana and her demon hunting friends on the world!
RuPaul is excited too. RuPaul would want you to buy this book. (Statement not endorsed by RuPaul) (Yet)
Trinity comes out on September the 8th. You can pre-order it at all the usual places (Amazon! Hive! Your local bookshop!) and it's on Netgalley for you bloggers and reviewers. And there's some cool stuff coming in the next month so look out on Twitter for that (@rosiejbest and @LBkidsUK).
It's here! Publication day for Dead of Night, book two of Survivors: The Gathering Darkness by Erin Hunter - written by yours truly!
This was the cryptic clue for Survivors! It's a golden deer, because there's a golden deer in it... (c) dreamstime.com
I finished the book this time last year so this reveal has been a looooooong time coming!
For any readers who might be here from Twitter or Google or the Meet Erin Hunter page (where I am! Look it's me!) here are some FAQs:
Who are you?
I'm a writer and editor professionally, and a singer, gamer and all round general nerd in my spare time. I have three cats, Misty, Midnight and Imp. I live with my girlfriend in a little house on the edge of Cambridge.
It me! And Imp! (c) me
How did you start writing Survivors?
I've actually
worked on the Erin series in some capacity or other for nearly ten years,
starting out by helping Vicky out with the Warriors fanmail! I've been an
editor on Survivors since the beginning.
I got involved with writing when we realised that Inbali Iserles wouldn't be able to write for the second series of Survivors (she was super busy with a baby on the way as well as launching her own wonderful fox fantasy series, Foxcraft!). Having helped create the first series with Gillian, Inbali and my fellow editors, I knew the characters and the mythology really well, so HarperCollins decided to give me a chance.
I am so happy that they did. I absolutely love this series, and it's a thrill being trusted to come on board at a moment of such high drama - I won't spoil it for readers who may not have read A Pack Divided yet, but the darkness is well and truly gathering.
What's it like working with the other Survivors Erins?
It's awesome. I love Gillian and Inbali's writing - I was Gillian's editor on Mysteries of Ravenstorm Island too, we had a lot of fun on that one - and the whole editorial team are seriously clever people with seriously cool ideas.
Favourite Survivors character?
It has to be Sunshine. I love Storm very much (and Bella, Sweet, Martha, Mickey, Twitch, Arrow and Daisy, to name a small selection of my faves) but Sunshine is the dog who stole my heart. I just love her enthusiasm and the way she's gone from a slightly annoying character and a bit of a burden on the Pack to a dog who not only has a role to play but brings dignity and joy to being the lowest ranked dog in the Pack.
Is that really Whisper on the cover of Dead of Night?
Yep. He plays a pretty major role in the book so we thought, why not? The others are Rake, Twitch and obviously Storm. Whisper is a mongrel but he looks like there's a lot of blue heeler in his background. I think he's gorgeous! Poor Whisper...
Who's the traitor?!
That's a cheeky question and I like having secrets. (c) ITV
Which Survivors books are you writing?
I'm writing The Gathering Darkness books 2 and 5 and Gillian is doing 1, 3, 4 and 6.
What other books have you written?
My first novel published under my own name was Skulk - a dark YA urban fantasy about a girl who gets the power to shapeshift into a fox.
For younger readers, I've also written two middle grade trilogies for fiction packagers, writing under pseudonyms. Secret Ninja Spies (as 'Alex Ko'), is a funny action series about a pair of twins who discover their Japanese grandmother is secretly a ninja, and The Last Apprentice (as 'Imogen Rossi') is a fantasy adventure about a girl who uses magic painting techniques to travel between pictures and solve the mystery of her master's poisoning.
Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: comics, Wembley, Eden, pods, eyeballs
This is going to be a fairly quick one. Thing 1: Rat Planet
I finally read two awesome comics I've been meaning to get to for ages - Rat Queens and Bitch Planet. They are both great. Rat Queens is funny, filthy, bloody fantasy about a gang of rowdy adventurers battling trolls and trying to find out who framed them. Bitch Planet is a sci-fi dystopia about the prison planet where women are sent when they commit 'crimes' that are non-compliant with the ruling patriarchy. Both of them are NSFW and feminist and diverse. Bitch Planet particularly made me fall off my chair with horrified glee. It's not subtle, but that's kind of its charm. It takes real world sexism that we're all deeply familiar with, dials it up to 100 and throws a giant lampshade on it.
One of the more SFW bits (c) Image Comics and Kelly Sue DeConnick
It is the horrifying patriarchal dystopia of my heart. If you only read one horrifying patriarchal dystopia this year, make it this one. Thing 2: Hello Wembley, goodbye Birmingham
I've done my Hans Zimmer gigs. They were freaking amazing.
Until they take the videos down (and they seem to be far more tolerant this time than last time actually), you can see quite a bit of it by plugging 'Hans Zimmer Live' into Youtube or Instagram. I particularly recommend Interstellar and the Lion King! I didn't know the Interstellar music at all before we started rehearsing for this and now wow, that ending, I, wow.
Anyway, here is our sort of signature moment, a Crimson Tide medley that turns into the fiendishly hard and a+ perfectly named 160 BPM from Angels and Demons.
Sadly, my last Zimmer Live gig was the one in Birmingham on Tuesday. Happily, I'm going to have plenty more fun weird choir stuff for these posts in the next few months.
Speaking of which... Thing 3: Rowing in Eden
The next actual CEFC concert with the full 100-strong choir which we've been working up to for months and months is finally here! It's on Monday the 18th in the Barbican Centre at 7:30pm.
Also, bloody hell, look at this stunning thing, I kind of want this image framed to hang on my wall (c) CEFC
If you are in London, you should come. We're doing Poulenc's Gloria, which is fun and weirdly cheeky for a piece of classical music (one movement was inspired by monks playing football...), Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music which is gorgeous, and John Adams' Harmonium which is utterly amazing and strange and knocks 160 BPM into next week in terms of heart-pounding difficulty. Thing 4: Bangity Bang, Hello to Jason Isaacs, Shut Up Phone, It's Just Us Here, What's Next?
I love the Cornell Collective.
Actually, I love podcasts in general. I have a real podcast problem: when I subscribe to a new podcast I like to listen to all of it. When it's something like the Nerdist, which seems to put out an episode every day and stretches back into the depths of history (like, 2010) this is a real problem. I've been working my way through the back-catalogue of the Pharos Project (Doctor Who and dirty jokes), What's The T with Ru Paul (drag, life and dirty jokes) and The Indoor Kids (video games and... wow lots of these podcasts are really filthy). Plus I'm obviously keeping up to date with the vital ones, your Wittertainments and Empire Movie Podcasts and Adam Buxtons and Answer Me Thises and West Wing Weeklys (Josh Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway rewatch and review the West Wing one episode at a time. No massively dirty jokes yet, but they're only on episode four, there's still time.)
The only drawback to my massive podcast habit is a) that there are so many more I will probably never get to (Song Exploder, The Black Tapes, even Serial, they're on the list, I just haven't had the chance), and b) that if I hear another advert for Squarespace I think I might rip my own ears off and feed them to the nearest podcaster. (Not that I am not very grateful to all the advertisers for providing me with more free quality entertainment than I could ever possibly cram into my brain, but... seriously.)
ANYWAY - this was meant to be a fairly simple rec entry, so let's just say one of the good things about the Cornell Collective, Paul Cornell's wonderful geeky creator podcast is that it's monthly and has been going for less than a year so it's possible to catch up. Also, it's wonderful! And geeky! And stars creators from the worlds of TV, film and comics, talking about geeky things and usually some Doctor Who! If you like these things, you should listen to it.
Here you go: http://cornellcollective.geekplanetonline.com/podcast/the-cornell-collective-01/ Thing 5: [Eyeball squick warning]
Jessie tore her cornea last weekend. It was awful. She's much better now, and I know where my local A+E is and how to get there, so that's a tiny silver lining. Just a word of advice, for anyone who is thinking of getting hit in the face with a tree branch and tearing their cornea: don't.
Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: secrets, Instagram, endings, UV16, Pixar Thing 1: [redacted]
I am a woman of many secrets at the moment.
I have been sent a thing to read. I have been sent things to watch. I have been told about a thing I might get to sing. I have written things and sent them off to be read and/or sold.
Once again, I find myself either explicitly forbidden to talk about the things or uncertain about whether it's politic to talk about the things, so let's play another round of Rosie's Cryptic Clues! (And... no, I still can't do the reveal on any of the previous clues, so don't ask.)
In no particular order (ie not the order I listed them above, ooh I'm sneaky):
Aliens (C) James Cameron, angels (c) William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), meme (c) The Internet, lights (c) the Internet
Thing 2: I hadn't actually logged on to Instagram in about three years
But now I have! I am rosiejbest over there and am using If This Then That (which is mostly working) to repost pics to Twitter and Facebook so now you can enjoy pictures of my cats in triplicate all over your internet. You are welcome.
And also the odd - very odd - selfie (c) me
Thing 3: these two articles about lesbian and bisexual women on television
Warning: this one is a little depressing, especially if you are LGBTQ and you like television. It's also inherently spoilery, so don't click if you're averse to hearing about character death. Lots and lots of character death.
I was talking to a straight friend who was thinking about writing a lesbian romance just the other month. She asked me for advice. My one and only piece of serious advice: please, whatever you do, don't kill off your lesbians. She seemed surprised that this was a Thing. So let me just put this out there for anyone else who may have missed this: Bury Your Gays IS A THING.
By the current Autostraddle reckoning (though they keep updating it, both numbers have been going up) I'm going to need about a hundred more happy endings before I'll accept another death without major side-eye.
Get on that, TV writers. Thing 4: Undiscovered Voices 2016
Another SCBWI Undiscovered Voices anthology has just been released, hopefully launching the careers of another twelve writers and nine illustrators! I know we have agent news from at least four of the writers, and the winning illustrations were featured on the Guardian website.
Congratulations to all the winners, all the longlisters, and all the organisers - it was another brilliant year for undiscovered talent, here's hoping that you all get discovered very soon if you haven't been already! I know there are several of these books I am dying to read.
Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: utter loathing, a silver lining, and three random nice things
Thing 1: I hated Only Ever Yours, and here is why
[Trigger warning, and spoiler for what I'm about to say: fictional sexual and emotional abuse, but mostly self-image problems and fatshaming, so much fatshaming I can barely breathe, so much I swear it has given me an actual crick in my neck from spending so much time recently feeling furious and upset.]
Only Ever Yours is The Handmaid's Tale for teenagers, so you know it's going to be pretty grim. And it is: this is a universe in which terrible, terrible things are completely normal. This is a universe where girls are groomed literally their entire lives to be perfect, submissive, blank slates. When they turn 16 they will become either wives who are killed at 30, or sex slaves who last less long than that, or sexless teachers who impose these same things on younger girls until they drop dead...
And the absolute worst thing the main character or anyone else in this world can imagine happening to them is to end up looking like me.
KILL IT WITH FIRE (c) Louise O'Neill. This is presented out of context by necessity, but also I think reading it out of context may be the closest you can get to experiencing it the way I did...
I understand that the book is meant to be condemning this attitude, making it so extreme as to be ridiculous, mirroring the thoughts of an anorexic person onto an entire culture to show how absurd the whole thing is. I understand that it's a dystopia and in that context of course the main character would feel like that. I understand.
But excuse me if I don't care. Excuse me if I can't quite focus on the worldbuilding while reading the point of view of a character who believes I am so disgusting I do not deserve to live.
This is not theoretical. When it's as constant as this, it just stops being about the context. I don't care what the author was trying to do. What she actually did was write phrases like 'nobody will ever love a fat girl' over and over and over again. What she did was have her main character be so obsessed with her weight that she does herself an injury, and violently humiliate girls who put on a few pounds (leaving me wondering what the hell these people would do if they saw me - quite possibly have a heart attack and die, which would be fine by me).
You are god damn right I'm taking this personally.
I think the real problem is that when it comes to this aspect of the book, this is not some wild dystopian fantasy she's presenting here. This is what people really think.
If you are not fat, you might not know this, or might not care. But this is exactly what people think about people like me. And it's not just airbrushed supermodels in all the magazines and hateful scum on the internet: in a Yougov survey I took recently, about 70% of respondents agreed that people like me should be refused medical care until they lost weight.
Refused. Medical. Care.
I respect people, especially other fat people, who can read this book and simply see its obsession with how disgusting we are as a cautionary tale of where society could go. I totally respect people who can be disturbed by the book as a whole, and tut, and say how awful, we should feel sympathy for these girls because they are victims.
I am not that person. I hated this book and I hated all the characters, and it was a reaction of pure self-preservation, because they hated me first. If I had bought it in paperback instead of ebook I would probably burn it, not because it was a bad book that nobody should ever read, but because I feel the need to exorcise it from my life.
(I really didn't need the abrupt and shallow gay panic section either - yet another example of 'oooooh look at my fancy subtext' without anything to back it up - or the utter lack of any redeeming features in any of the female characters who we actually get to spend any time with, that is until the one good boy comes along and shows the painfully stupid main character the error of her bitchy ways. To be honest, the nihilism of it all struck me as profoundly unfeminist in places. But y'know, mostly the fat thing.)
Thing 2: the silver lining
I've read more in the couple of weeks since I finished Only Ever Yours than I have in ages. I don't know if it's because my day job and my sideline both involve so much written fiction, or what, but reading for pleasure had started to feel a bit of a chore. But in the last week I devoured The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman, which I adored and which made me cry in the good way, and I'm a good chunk into Wake by Anna Hope, which is also really great so far. I think that Only Ever Yours has reset the bar for books I read so incredibly low that I'm finding a whole new joy in it now.
Thing 3, 4 and 5: three things to cheer me up after I've made myself tense and sad writing about this
I had some really good related news last week and also this video is really pretty and soothing (c) Bandana Glassworks
Good advice, Mister J (c) via alias-milamber on Tumblr, I don't know who made the image but the cosplayer is Anthony Misiano
Pure joy (c) Walk The Moon, too many movies to list and MsTabularasa on Youtube
Thing 1: A Thing
I saw a thing. I'm absolutely not allowed to talk about it.
Having secrets is kinda fun actually.
My face when I got that one email (c) Cybill/the internet
Thing 2: Beautiful music in beautiful places
The next CEFC concerts are coming up really quite soon, like much sooner than I realised, and I need to knuckle down and practice my ppp top Es and my Old Slavonic Russian Ls (unfortunately, I think I biologically cannot do the Ls the way they're meant to be done, but maybe I can learn to fudge it...)
Thing 3: The Return of the Fancy Cannibal
This won't be news to anyone who follows me on any social media, but for anyone who missed it: a long time ago back in the mists of time (Things and Stuff #8 to be exact), I recommended the marvellous Cleolinda's wonderful Hannibal recaps. I stand by that rec, especially for people who don't think the show itself would be for them, but now I have a follow up rec, and it is this:
Watch Hannibal.
Restless Hugh Dancy gif and amazing comment both (c) NBC's Hannibal Tumblr account which is a work of genius all by itself
I was only reading the recaps back then, but then Cleo had to take a break from recapping and I needed to know what happened next, so I started watching.
This show is my jam, you guys. It's just come back for its third season and stuff is happening and people are dead and people are not dead and the fandom is already making plushie versions of people's horrifying visions and the queerbaiting continues to be beautiful, frustrating and hilarious in pretty much equal measure, and it's all so great I swear if you haven't given it a chance yet, you need to. (I also still recommend Cleolinda's recaps, Storify posts and entire twitter feed basically as a way to help you process all of the amazing stuff you are about to witness.)
Like this beautiful nonsense (c) NBC
I have no looming book deadline so I might be spending a chunk of this weekend making Hannibal fanvids because that is how much I mean this squee. A Lot, is how much.
Thing 4: Researching the research
I've come to the point in my current work-in-progress book where the hero needs to encounter the villain for the first time. Unfortunately, even though I have most of a plot in mind, my villain is distinctly vague. I know all sorts of things about him already - it's just his motivation and methods that are still a little fuzzy. Hmm.
So I've spent this week doing a lot of Googling around the setting and themes of the book trying to research some of the directions I could go off in looking for a really good evil motive. It's exciting, because at the moment it could be almost anything, but intimidating for the exact same reason.
Thing 5: Morning Pages
Morning pages is this exercise from The Artist's Way, which is a whole big hippy scheme of how to improve your life and creativity which you have to buy the book or videos to actually access in full - I haven't ever done that, I could, but I'm pretty sure it would be a form of procrastination for me, and I'm not sure how much of the hippy crystals stuff I would be able to stomach anyway.
But I saw morning pages recommended on a blog a couple of weeks ago and I thought I'd try it out. Basically, every morning before you do anything else (at least, before you do any work) you write three longhand pages of whatever rubbish passes through your head. As mundane or silly or angsty as you like.
Basically like this (c) Eddie Izzard
It's supposed to help you sort your thoughts out and get down all the little things that are hanging out in your head so that they're codified and not so scary when you've finished. And it does kind of work, sort of. I haven't had any huge revelations of my inner self or fantastic flights of imagination - but I have also definitely had a few better days because I've written down what I expect to have to deal with that day and how I feel about it.
So yeah, I recommend it as a thing to try. You might not like it. But you might.
