Author: claudia

No, I am not arguing that stalking is okay, or that a guy enforcing his presence in a woman’s life is not Deeply Creepy. What I am saying is that stalking is adorable IF AND ONLY IF your stalker is a cat.*

Those of you who follow me on Instagram** know my stalker, Lola. She is a kitty who belongs to my neighbors, a loving, attentive family who do not neglect her in the slightest. I am but the woman in the next house, who likes to pet Lola when she shows up on the porch but — being allergic to cats — offers no other closeness.

And yet somehow Lola has decided that WE ARE DESTINED.

She sits on my windowsill for hours. And hours and hours. She can stare at me for at least 90 minutes at a go; I have clocked it no farther because I can’t take any longer than that, and then I go hide in another room. Sometimes Lola perches on my car so she’ll be sure to get me on my way out. Other times she sits on the lid of my garbage bin. I never turn on the porch light until right before I go out, because otherwise she’ll be waiting at the crack of the door to dart inside.

(She has, to date, achieved House Invasion on three occasions. Once I had to fish her out from under my bed; another time, party guests took care of this. The third time, I was able to tip over a chair, effectively blocking her from leaving the front room, and after a moment she darted back out.)

Since Christmastime, Lola’s stalking has escalated to the point of murder. Yes, the victims are small creatures — birds and rats — but that is still highly disturbing to find on your front steps. They are offered as gifts of love, which I get, but honestly, a Starbucks gift card = so much nicer.

What have I done to deserve such devotion? Right now it is more cute than creepy. Will it remain so? (Much has to do with the placement/condition of any future dead animals left on my steps.)

* or maybe a chinchilla, I don’t know whether they do this kind of thing, but they are super-cute little devils.

** FYI, Instagram is the only social media where, if you follow me, you are guaranteed a follow back. I make no promises about Twitter/LJ/etc., but I will definitely give you a shot on Instagram. You can blow that shot, though; I’ll unfollow if you spam the heck out of it, but only then.

Lady Jane

1986 — starring Helena Bonham Carter (yes, Bellatrix Lestrange herself), Guildford Dudley (Westley/Dread Pirate Roberts), Patrick Stewart (make it so) and John Wood (greetings Professor Falken).

The Plot: The sort of true story of Lady Jane Grey, whom King Edward VI designated as his heir instead of his older, Roman Catholic sister, Mary. Everyone got into this situation thanks to King Henry VIII’s wandering eye and convenient conscience, which had led him to figure that OF COURSE he had to start a new church that would allow him to marry his mistress way back when. This meant his eldest daughter Mary was Catholic in a now mostly Protestant nation — the only reason King Edward’s gambit made any sense, because basically, Mary was undeniably next in line. However, for nine days, Lady Jane was hailed as Queen Jane.

The movie is of course heavily caught up in these political elements, but it is first and foremost the story of Jane’s marriage to Guildford Dudley. They were an arranged match, one intended to create political advantages for their parents. In this movie, they are a very unlikely pair — she’s scholarly, even intellectual, and so prim and proper even her parents are like, Jane, loosen up. Guildford, meanwhile, is first seen boozing it up in a whorehouse. Neither of them is one bit happy about the marriage, and at first it seems as though they’ll spend the entire time either fighting or ignoring one another. But then Jane learns why Guildford is so angry, and begins to question whether her own academic pursuits have distanced her too far from the real world. She and Guildford find the unlikeliest common ground, which blossoms into love — just as King Edward dies and their lives are transformed again, forever.

The Love: Maybe they go from mutual loathing to absolute rapture a little quickly, and I for one think Guildford was up to more in that whorehouse than he ever admits, but honestly, I bought the romance here, heart and soul. Mostly it’s because the actors are so amazing; they convince me far more than the script does. HBC actually seems delicate and unworldly enough to have no idea of how things work outside of books; Cary Elwes, as Guildford, was hitting his personal hotness apex, which was very hot indeed. There’s a lot of romantic (a) destruction of glassware, (b) conversations held while kneeling naked in front of fireplaces, (c) social justice initiatives and (d) gamboling in meadows. I am a sucker for all such.

The Best Parts: The way Jane’s firm religious convictions are both admired and tested — it would be easy to simply turn her into a faultless martyr. But the movie makes it clear that, despite her intellectual rigor, a lot of Jane’s early arguments have more to do with wordplay and dogma than sincere faith. In the end, she refuses to convert to Catholicism — but also recognizes that a Catholic clergyman has shown her more Christian charity than almost anyone else in the entire story, and decides faith may be broad enough to hold them both. Also, the Love. The aforementioned meadows. The costumes, which I am a sucker for in any period drama ever.

Also this movie contains Patrick Stewart. I am always sort of guilty at book readings, etc., when people ask me who is hotter, Rob Pattinson or Taylor Lautner or some similar matchup, and the fact is — guys, I’m too old for them. I see that they’re very attractive, but because I am nonpervy, men almost two decades my junior just do not do it for me as a general rule. (Although I may call a one-time exception for Nicholas Hoult. Ahem. Moving on.) Patrick Stewart in the 1980s, though? In period costume?

YES THAT IS WHAT DOES IT FOR ME SHUT UP.

The Worst Parts: The ending. Don’t get me wrong — it’s powerfully acted and filmed, and the final scene is still one of the most affecting I’ve ever seen. But remember how in history class, you never studied Queen Jane of England? Well, there’s a reason for that. And you probably did study how Tudor political disagreements usually ended. Not with handshakes.

There is also a pretty high cheese level to some of it, but I think of it like a lasagna — incomplete without the cheese, but all the tastier for it.

Historically Accurate? Yes and no. Jane’s final words in the movie are taken almost verbatim, and the political factions and religious debates are correctly portrayed. Do not for one minute tell me that men did not wear hats like the one Patrick Stewart has on, because if that’s true, I don’t want to know.

But Jane wasn’t a social reformer in real life, and nobody’s really sure whether Jane and Guildford ever fell in love. They may not even have liked each other in real life; certainly their beginning was as rocky as portrayed here, and she did refuse to have him crowned king as some (including his politically powerful father) had hoped. But if you’ve ever toured the Tower of London, you’ve walked through the cell where Guildford was imprisoned; he carved Jane’s name three times in the stone. I’ve never understood why he would do that if there was really nothing there.

But when it comes to this movie, I don’t care about the history that much. It’s a rapturous period romance, if you’re in the mood for the same.

**

I need to get a new default icon, don’t I?

When I write a book, I always create a soundtrack. Usually the process goes something like this:

1) I choose some movie scores to tie it all together; IMHO, movie score music is the absolute best for writing to. Usually I patch together some songs from the scores of two or three movies. The EVERNIGHT series, for instance, relied heavily on the scores for “Interview With The Vampire,” Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow” and “Pan’s Labyrinth.” I hit on those because I knew I wanted something that would be lush and dreamy, and yet also deeply eerie; each of those scores fit the bill. Those I kept throughout the entire series. Now that I’m working on the SPELLCASTER series, I’m using the scores from Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” “Twin Peaks” and — of all things — “Tron: Legacy.” (All I can tell you is that it works.) There I always wanted some scariness, but a little more humor and action, plus that small-town-gone-very-bad vibe that “Twin Peaks” provides. In the case of BALTHAZAR, I kept some of the scores from the EVERNIGHT series but also tossed in the score to “Inception,” which worked about a thousand times better than I would ever have thought.

2) I also want songs with lyrics, though — including some songs that the characters could conceivably be listening to. So I begin throwing in things I’m listening to currently, and I add and subtract as I work. Now that I’m writing this post, I find that I’m not wholly sure how, exactly, I find the songs I’ve never listened to before — and yet I always do find them, and they always wind up being favorites I adore long after the book is done. BALTHAZAR almost hinges on “The Crow and the Butterfly,” and both Bat for Lashes and Vienna Teng are playing a huge part in the SPELLCASTER series so far.

The one book I haven’t touched on in the above is FATEFUL — by far the hardest to assemble a score for. I mean, the movie score was kind of obvious (thanks, James Horner!), but I had to find the songs that Alec and Tess would have been listening to and enjoying. I.e., I had to find popular songs from 1912 in recordings that I could listen to the several dozen times I would hear them while writing. So what was hip in 1912? George M. Cohan, for one — and I did listen to “Give My Regards To Broadway,” which would have been the hottest thing going around them. “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now,” “I Want A Girl Just Like The Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad” — it is harder to find zippy versions of these, to say the least. But one I found that I adored was “The Glow Worm,” covered by Count Basie, with lyrics obviously celebrating the days when electric power was still shiny and new.

One happy fact: the popular songs of that era included a lot of tunes about the moon. “Shine On Harvest Moon,” “By The Light Of The Silvery Moon” — what works better for a book about werewolves?

I listen to soundtracks most of the time I’m writing. First they set the mood; later, they recapture it for me — get me back into the same emotional/psychological place I was when writing earlier. Everything gets tied together through the music, eventually, and usually if I don’t feel like I have the soundtrack the way it should be … it’s a sign my thinking about the book isn’t the way it should be. It’s one of those mysterious things that shouldn’t work but does.

I promised you guys some BALTHAZAR tour dates for March, and here they are!

SOLO EVENTS

Tuesday, March 6th

Time TBA
Doylestown Bookshop
16 S Main St
Doylestown, PA

Wednesday, March 7th

7:00 PM
King’s English Bookshop
1511 South 1500 East
Salt Lake City, UT

Thursday, March 8th

4:00 PM
Square Books
160 Courthouse Square
Oxford, MS

GROUP TOUR WITH LAUREN OLIVER AND DAN WELLS

Friday, March 9th

6:30 PM
Books & Books
265 Aragon Avenue
Coral Gables, Fl

Saturday, March 10th

2:00 PM
Barnes & Noble
7331 N Point Pkwy
Alpharetta, GA

Sunday, March 11th

4:00 PM
Vroman’s
695 E. Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91101

And after that comes second Australian tour! I am so excited about getting to return to Australia — something that could not have happened without my US publisher, HarperTeen, and both Lauren and Dan being super-flexible to make it all possible, so I’m hugely grateful. I don’t have as many specifics about Australia yet, but I can confirm that, between March 13 and March 23, I’ll be appearing at the Somerset festival, as well as events in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth! Obviously I will work to get you guys the details as soon as possible.

**

My New Year’s Resolution this year: Blog more.

You see, one of the reasons I’ve never blogged that much is that — I’m not sure what to blog about. Sure, there is the occasional tour info, and we’ll have some giveaways leading up to the BALTHAZAR release in the US (March 6 — two months from today, can you believe it?), but other than that, I have sometimes felt at a loss. Others blog so much better about writing/YA lit/etc. than I do, that I’ve never known quite what to say.

But I’ve finally decided — maybe my blog can be as weird and random as my brain. (Well, maybe not THAT random. But close!) So look for more, and weirder, posts coming soon.

(And also look for me to be concentrating much more on the blog proper than the LJ posting interface I’ve used up until now; LiveJournal’s management has gotten weird, so I’ll be transitioning out at some point. But your bookmarks should still work — )

To my horror, I realized today I hadn’t shared this with you guys, and I’ve nobody but myself to blame. But if you are available in Seattle, LA, Denver, Boulder or Chicago this week, then you need to come out and see me and the fabulous Amy Garvey, Kiersten White, Jocelyn Davies, and Anna Carey on the Dark Days tour! Need more details?

Wednesday, Oct. 12 :

7 pm, Barnes & Noble
19401 Alderwood Mall Parkway
Lynnwood, WA

Thursday, Oct. 13:

7 pm, Barnes & Noble
7881 Edinger Avenue
Huntington Beach, CA

Friday, Oct. 14:

7 pm, Tattered Cover
9315 Dorchester Street
Highlands Ranch, CO

Saturday, Oct. 15

1 pm, Barnes & Noble
2999 Pearl Street
Boulder, CO

Sunday, Oct. 16

2 pm, Anderson’s
123 West Jefferson
Naperville, IL

Despite the extremely late notice, I hope to see some of you guys there!

FATEFUL is arriving in bookstores any day now — September 13 if you’re in the US, August 29 in Australia (for other countries, check with your local bookseller.) I’ve been so caught up in my big move that it seems like I turned around and the launch date was here. BUT that doesn’t mean we don’t have time for some contest fun. I’ll be running some smaller Twitter-only and Facebook-only contests in addition to those here on the blog, so if you’re not already following me there, no time like the present to get started!

But wait — first, a refresher on FATEFUL, for those of you who might not be familiar with the premise:

The story revolves around a servant girl named Tess in 1912, who wants to escape from the house where she works, and most particularly the horrible family she has to work for. But that’s not her biggest problem. While on a voyage to America, where she plans to escape and start a new life, she meets Alec, who’s ruggedly handsome, fabulously wealthy, intelligent and yet so clearly troubled that she’d rather not fall for him, but she does. That also is not her biggest problem. Alec, it turns out, is a werewolf … one cursed to change every night, unless he surrenders his independence and joins the Brotherhood, a pack of violently misogynistic werewolves who have been tracking him for months. You’d think that would be their biggest problem, wouldn’t you?

But no. Their biggest problem is that they’re aboard the RMS Titanic.

So, as you might guess from the fact that I wrote this, I LOVE DISASTER MOVIES. And disaster books. Disasters on television shows. (Fictional disasters, mind you: I’m not some weirdo who likes real ones, which uniformly suck.) If you’re interested in this book, chances you have a weakness for these too. The first contest is going to celebrate the whole fictional-disaster genre.

THE RULES

1) Send an email to evernightclaudia at gmail dot com with the subject line “FATEFUL Contest #1” or similar.

2) In this email, tell me your favorite movie, book or television episode about a disaster. It can be a real life disaster like the sinking of the Titanic, or one made up for purposes of the story. And tell me why you love it so much!

3) Also in this email, give me a name and email address I can use to send you your prize.

(What is your prize? FOUR lucky winners will receive $25 gift certificates to the online bookstore of their choice!)

4) Tell me the online bookstore you’d choose!

5) Do this before Tuesday, Sept. 30, when four winners will be chosen at random.

Good luck to all!

So, it’s been a while since I got to update the blog … but in my defense, I moved (from Chicago to New Orleans) and had plenty of other exciting things going on too. I poked my head up from the boxes and piles of stuff to realize that FATEFUL is only just over a month away from its US release. Time flies when you’re having fun, or when you’re desperately trying to figure out which box you packed the silverware in. Either way.

I thought I’d answer a few basic questions first:

Q: What is FATEFUL?
A: FATEFUL is a stand-alone novel, a YA paranormal. Here’s the official summary —

In Fateful, eighteen-year-old maid Tess Davies is determined to escape the wealthy, overbearing family she works for. Once the ship they’re sailing on reaches the United States, she’ll strike out on her own. Then she meets Alec, a handsome first-class passenger who captivates her instantly. But Alec has secrets….

Soon Tess will learn just how dark Alec’s past truly is. The danger they face is no ordinary enemy: werewolves are real and they’re stalking him—and now Tess, too. Her growing love for Alec will put Tess in mortal peril, and fate will do the same before their journey on the Titanic is over.

Want to read some awesome, nonspoilery reviews? Check out those links.

Q: When is FATEFUL released?
A: It comes out Sept. 13 in the United States. As for international release dates — I’m afraid I don’t know. Often authors are the last to find out these things! Your best bet, if you live outside the US or Canada, is to check with your local booksellers.

Q: How are we going to celebrate the release of FATEFUL?
A: With contests! I hope to have plenty of ARCs of other awesome books to give away, but the grand prize will be (as it’s always been) the chance to name a character in an upcoming book of mine. We’ll start the contests in earnest next Tuesday.

Q: What do we do until next Tuesday?
A: I’d love to hear from you! What other prizes would be awesome for you guys? What other information would you like about the book? Let me know, via email (with the subject line “FATEFUL Wishlist”), via blog or LJ comment, or via Twitter.

I hope you have all had an awesome summer (or winter, if you’re reading this in the Southern Hemisphere).

No time like the present to announce the winners of the contest for ARCs of ENTHRALLED, the paranormal romance anthology from all the writers taking part in this fall’s “Smart Chicks Kick It” tour! So congrats to the victorious Jean B., Keri N., Osasere A., and Kayla P.! You’ll all get copies of ENTHRALLED in the mail, signed by me … and if you want to get the other fabulous authors’ signatures, you’ll have to join us on the tour this fall. (More dates and details coming soon!)

The contest asked you guys to reveal whether or not you’d want to be able to read minds and thoughts (like one of the main characters in my story for ENTHRALLED, “Giovanni’s Farewell.”) Most of you said no — pointing out that people’s thoughts aren’t always kind, and it might be too easy to judge everyone based on their whims or worst moments instead of by what they actually do. But there were plenty of people who voted yes, because it would be undeniably useful! And probably you’d learn to deal with it over time, right?

Well — you’ll have to see what Cairo makes of it, in the story.

I haven’t updated the blog much lately, and won’t be doing so tons over the next couple of months. Right now I’m gearing up for the big move from Chicago to New Orleans, and that’s pretty much going to eat my free time for a while. But don’t worry: You will still be able to find me on Twitter (and Instagram, and Facebook), and we’ll be back for a whole new set of contests this fall to get you guys ready for the September 13 release of FATEFUL (aka Werewolves on the Titanic.) Everybody have a great summer!