Category: livejournal entry

— who named EVERNIGHT one of her Top 10 Reads in 2008!

I was talking with a friend about how my beloved Cary Grant chose his stage name. (His birth name, Archibald Leach, was clearly not going to work.) Originally he wanted to be “Cary Lockwood,” but the studio vetoed that; finally, he decided on Cary Grant because the “CG” initials had worked out so well for Clark Gable.

“So is that why you named yourself Claudia Gray?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “but OH MAN, I wish I’d thought of that.”

I like this idea so much I declare it to be retroactively true. Just pretend I’ve been saying that all along, okay?

Mine is to be a better blogger! Though I guess the holidays get to all of us, I fell crazily behind in virtually every way. But I shouldn’t have to travel anywhere for about four months at least, and I’m about to go into book mode (book four of the EVERNIGHT series is about to get started), so things should be a bit quieter for me. Hopefully this means more frequent posts.

Besides, with STARGAZER coming out in just three months (time flies!), I’ll have more news to share, I think.

Some bits of preliminary information — not quite news yet, but maybe worth knowing:

1) I should be going on tour again this summer. That’s absolutely all I know at this point: no cities, dates or anything else confirmed. I have minimal input into where I go, but I will try to let the publisher know where there’s interest.

2) This is very uncertain, but it looks like IMMORTAL — aka, the vampire anthology that somehow never got into bookstores ever — might get a rerelease in 2009. This rerelease would involve the anthology actually reaching bookstores this time. If it comes together, I’ll definitely let you all know right away.

Hope everyone out there had a great holiday season!

PS: It has come to my attention that there’s some EVERNIGHT fanfic out there. I just wanted to take this opportunity to say that, in my opinion, this is awesome.

— brought to us by the genius at Dinosaur Comics.

Hee!

Thanks for the good-health wishes, all. Though I am still under the weather, I think I am finally beginning to get over this rotten cold.

I’ve been fighting off a truly, truly wicked cold for nine days now — ugh — and as such all productive activity (writing, blogging, cooking, Christmas shopping, housecleaning) has ground to a halt. This is mightily annoying, as is the cough, but there’s this one weird side effect to being super-sick: All of a sudden, my brain is FULL of story ideas. Within the nine days, between doses of cough syrup and Nyquil, I’ve come up with a number of different, intriguing ideas, at least three of which I think I want to pursue.

The funny thing is, this has happened to me before. Last year, while recuperating from surgery, I came up with the rough version of the idea that I’ve now spent the past couple of months working on, as well as another couple concepts that, while backburnered for now, are solid story ideas.

And I was just saying to myself about two months ago, “Wow, I haven’t had a new book idea in a while.” But I reminded myself then that, for me at least, these things come in waves: I have no new ideas for ten months, then during the next two come up with more concepts than I could follow if I were a full-time writer for the next five years. What I never realized before was that apparently the waves all come when I’m sick!

Does this happen to anybody else? Would a cure for the common cold (or, in this particular case, uncommonly vicious cold) end all creative thought as we know it? Or is this just the meds talking? Will I come down from my Robitussin high and realize these story concepts are all so much jibberish? Only time will tell.

Technically, this post by Merlin Mann is about photography. But the advice he gives applies equally well to writing and, I suspect, to any other kind of creative endeavor. It’s all about having the courage to fail — to take a picture that doesn’t come out, or write a story that doesn’t sing, or whatever else it is you’re afraid of doing. A quote that might get you to click and read the whole thing:

All I know is that sticking with things that don’t arrive with instant mastery does have its own reward, even if you’re the only one who ever collects it. Because the more you push through the barriers for these little avocations, the easier it becomes to remember you always have everything you need to just keep banging until you’re satisfied with any work that’s thrown at you.

There’s some of what TV censors would call “adult language” in the original post — just FYI.

How is everybody doing post-Thanksgiving? I miss the home cooking already.

Packed clothes: check
Packed incredibly bulky hiking gear: check
Packed books: check
Packed iPod: check
Packed recharger for iPod … Uhoh.
Arranged only flights that were not insanely expensive, even though they were at crazy times: check
Arranged to stay at airport hotels night before and night after, because still cheaper than other flights or cabs: check
Hauled heavy bags on subway to go to work in pouring rain: check
Found out that hike is off and bulky hiking gear is in suitcase to no purpose: check
Hoping against hope that flights will go smoothly tomorrow: check

Everybody send good vibes for the voyage, okay? And have a great Thanksgiving!

The single greatest element of Twilight‘s box office success this weekend:

“Teen girls rule the earth,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. “If you look back at the `Hannah Montana’ movie, how well that did, and now this movie, the teen girl audience will never be ignored again or underestimated. It was always teen boys who were the coveted ones, but someone finally caught on to the idea that girls love movies, too, and if you create something that they’re into, that they’re passionate about, they will come out in big numbers and drive the box office.”

This was the biggest opening weekend ever for a female director, for an adaptation of a book written by a woman, for young women, with a young woman as the main character. Here’s hoping the teen girl audience — and the whole female audience — really will never be ignored again.

Thanks to counteragent for the links!

.. though you could be forgiven for thinking so, after the incredibly long time I’ve gone without blogging. I got so incredibly behind on answering my reader mail that I kept thinking, Right, I’ve got to get all that done FIRST THING, and I’d get part of the way there and then get busy again, and .. well, you know the drill. And I am still not caught up on the reader mail! Though I am much closer. And will get done this weekend. Or else.

Anyway, things have been predictably mad on this front, but I do have a few goodies to offer: if you check out the website‘s main page, you’ll see that (a) there is an excerpt from Stargazer now available for your reading pleasure, and (b) a link to the Pitch Black tour website! The tour is over, but the website fun remains, including a quiz that will tell you which Evernight character you are.

This weekend, it is going to be cold and rainy. Perfect excuse to spend the whole time inside writing and drinking cocoa, right?

We are home at last from the Pitch Black tour, which was an exhausting and wonderful experience. Every single event went just wonderfully, and it was so much fun meeting so many of you! I now think I can recite my chosen reading from Evernight (i.e., the sequence where Erich is after Raquel in the woods) by heart, or close to it. 🙂 As much fun as I had, though, I am tremendously happy to be home at last.

It’s Halloween, which means it’s time to announce the winner of the Immortal contest! This contest’s winner came from MySpace: Congrats to Patricia! I chose the winner at random from all the entries, but her answer amused me, so I am reproducing it here: When little kids dress like old ladies, heh. Because, you know, that IS fun.

I hope I get to see some costumes when I head out of here in about half an hour; I am too pooped for serious Halloween partying, but a friend and I are hosting some scary-movie-watching and wig-wearing hijinks at her place downtown. So I am about to get my Sydney Bristow on and hit the subway. I think I remember how to use the subway. Or have I gotten used to cars again? Will report.

We’re in Southern California in a beachside hotel, with a balcony and a view and everything. I could almost believe that being an author is glamorous — if I hadn’t been lumping my bags through the Boston airport at OMGearly this morning. However, I am having a lot of fun on the tour, especially getting to meet so many of you. And I haven’t dropped dead of fright during even one of the readings so far! (You might well ask how I could possibly do this more than once, but given that these are vampire books we’re talking about, and it is the week of Halloween, let’s not make any rash assumptions about death being a one-time thing.)

It’s time for me to get ready for the Huntington Beach reading tonight, and then Redmond is tomorrow. It’s all rushing by so quickly! But I hope I get to meet more of you soon.

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