Teaser Tuesday

Okay, by my reckoning, I have twelve more Tuesdays until LAMENT's release date. I wracked my brains to think of ways to talk more about it in the upcoming weeks (okay, not really. Really I just drank some sweet tea and listened to some City Sleeps and decided I like to draw bears doing funny things), and I decided that what I want to do is feature a teaser from LAMENT every Tuesday from now until its release.

But one would not want to be spoilery. So these teasers will be . . . slightly obscure. So for today's teaser, I'm featuring an important scene from LAMENT, but to keep from being spoilery, the characters have been replaced with Bears.

No, there are no bears in LAMENT.

Well, there are now, I guess.

Dispatches from my Belly Button

My belly button hates me.

Yesterday, I innocently took my kids to the beach. Not even a real beach. Colonial Beach, which is like, not even a real beach. It's is 90% pebbles the shape of the hole on the bottom of your foot they made and 10% sand. Anyway, Thing 2, my son, dumped some sand over me. Which was lovely, but aside from a braful/headful of pre-glass, I was still pretty okay fine.

Until (bah bah bah -- that's supposed to be scary music cue) today when I realized my belly button felt . . . nope, that's it. I could feel my belly button. That's not normal. So I checked it out, because belly buttons are fun. They go on forever, and they can hide stuff in them. Like in this case. There were two grains of sand stuck in there. So I took them out. I thought that would be the end of this sordid tale.

But no, my belly button hates me.

So now I'm sitting here typing with a bright red belly button which Dr. Dad informs me is infected. In 24 hours. People. Seriously. Who gets an infected belly button from two grains of sand?

My love slave called me this evening from the Cop-Phone in his car.

LOVE SLAVE: Calling to find out how you are, with your infected belly button and all. See if you're pulling through.
ME: It's all red. I can see something down there. I think it's calling my name.
LOVE SLAVE: It would be a shame to lose you to something like an infectious belly button.
ME: That's great. I'll try and hang on.

So I'm trying to hang on, despite the fact that my belly button hates me. To think I took care of it all these years and didn't even stick anything in there to see how deep it went . . . it's betrayed my trust. Deeply.

The Girl Who Couldn't Grow Up

"Will in Sepia" - 8 x 10" sketch on Artist-x board.
copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater.


This week, I was talking creative writing to a few dozen teens at a creative writing camp, and one of them said something that I'd always deeply suspected but never heard vocalized quite so clearly. The teen came up to me afterwards and thanked me profusely for coming and talking, and then she said that she'd always been afraid of growing up, but now she was fine . . . because she saw now she didn't have to.

Basically it was a nice version of my husband telling me that I'm juvenile. I've frequently wondered if my complete Peter Pan complex is going to result in my children being completely dysfunctional. After all, I eat cookie dough, listen to my music loud, and do cartwheels for the heck of it. Will this cause

a) brilliant children
b) children who move out as soon as possible in search of a mother-figure
c) thousands of dollars in therapy for my offspring

At least I'm not wearing a face mask and riding around in a wheel chair like Michael Jackson. There are indeed worse role models than myself.

Oh, oh, oh. I should squeal. Have I told you guys about this yet? The advanced reviews of LAMENT have started coming in, and now we have three official blurbs for the book cover and my website. All pretty staggering stuff when you consider that these are people that don't have to say nice things about me! And they still did! Whooooo! Here they are:

"Chock-full of the fierce and the fey, Maggie Stiefvater's Lament is musical, magical, and practically radiating romance. A blood-fresh reinvention of old traditions, perfect for engaging sharp minds and poetic hearts." - Cynthia Leitich Smith, author of Tantalize and writer of the hugely successful Cynsations young adult fiction blog.

"With her lyrical writing, Maggie Stiefvater reimagines myth and legend to bring the world of Faerie to our own." - Richelle Mead, bestselling author of Vampire Academy and Frostbite.

"Teens will love this thrilling modern twist on fairy folk-lore. The characters are real and compelling folks you wish you could meet." - Tiffany Trent, author of the Hallowmere series.

October 1st, the release date, seems so soon. I think I'm getting an ulcer . . .

Really Whale Down Those Colors

Whew. I'm back from my two-day colored pencil workshop at the Apple Tree in Springfield. It went really well. Much caffeine was had by all. As it's the last workshop I'm teaching for awhile, I thought I'd reveal a few of the secrets of the world here on the blog. Well, secrets of my workshops, anyway.

Here they are -- do with them what you will.

• We spend half the workshops getting over the fear of failing. The path to success is littered with bodies. For every successful colored pencil piece I turn out now, there are at least twenty quite hideous colored pencil things (not even fit to be called 'pieces') laying moldering in some garbage pile somewhere
• We do three versions of each piece. A two minute value sketch (like the black and white sketch of the books), a 10-15 minute color sketch (like the color version of the books) and a final piece that takes 2-4 hours (like the portrait of Moose at the top)
• All the time that you spend staring at your art, trying to decide what to do next or what color to pick up -- that's time you could be using to slap some color down. All those "ums" "ahs" and "ers" really add up. That's what preliminary sketches are for.
• I have discovered that if I were made into a doll with a pull string on the back, I would say the following phrases: "push those dark values." "Whale down those colors." "Super sharp point on that pencil, ladies." "Do I need to come over there and heckle you?" and "Pick out some wild colors!"

ARC Giveaway!!!

Okay, folks. I have ARCs of LAMENT to give away. Well, almost. They're winging their way through the postal system to me and will be here within days (I had to give away my last one to high schoolers -- you can see in the photo that the loss was painful to me). Two of these beauties are going to blog readers and I have used my animal cunning to devise a way to distribute them. As you all know, every week, there are three pieces of short fiction by me and my two critique partners up at Merry Sister of Fate.

If you'd like to be in the running for an ARC of LAMENT, here's the deal. You have to read all of June's fiction up at Merry Sisters of Fate (stop whining, it's only nine stories under 1200 words each) and then leave a comment here or at Merry Sisters. Tell me which story you like the best and why so I know that you read it (and if you just pick one randomly and comment, I will so hex you). And then I will use a random number generator to pick two of the commentors to have brand new baby read-it-before-you-can-buy-it-Laments.

And in case you're wondering what this LAMENT thing is about, here's a blurb: Dee Monaghan is a painfully shy but gifted musician. She's about to find out she's a Cloverhand -- someone who can see faeries. When a mysterious boy enters her ordinary suburban life, seemingly out of nowhere, Dee finds herself infatuated. Sucks that he's a faerie assassin, and she's his next mark.

Basically, Dee's life is a lot like a lot of real-life teens' experiences -- except hers has homicidal faeries, make-out sessions with a hot soulless guy, and more four-leaf clovers than a box of Lucky Charms. It's good times. You know you want it.

ETA: I'm doing the drawing on Friday, June 27th!

Saturday Snippet

I don't normally post my writing on this blog, but I figured I'd post my weekly short story from my group writing blog at Merry Sisters of Fate to let you guys know what I'm doing with a lot of my time these days. If you like what you read here (and there -- every Friday is the day for my new fiction to be up), I'm going to be having one advanced review copy of Lament to give away to a blog reader probably next week. Stay tuned.

And the good news for my art is that I'm just finishing up the first draft of Ballad and I'll be free to twiddle with my pencils a bit. In fact, I'll have to, as I'm doing a piece for this giant Equine Mural Mosaic and it's due to be done on the 25th.

Now onto the fiction! _______________________________________________

"Death's Diner"

At the diner, Death ordered a chocolate milkshake, so I knew someone was going to die.

“What can I get you to eat, honey?” The waitress smiled at him, all dimples upon dimples upon dimples.

Death dramatically flung the single-side menu down. “I don’t care. The tuna. Is the tuna good today? No onions. Does it come with onions?”

“Strawberry milkshake for me,” I said sweetly, because it was pink. After the waitress had gone, I turned to Death. “You’re so unattractive when you pout.” I pushed a pink nailed finger into his bottom lip and wiggled it. “Fish lips. It’s what you get when you pout.”

Death glowered around at the other people in the diner. His words were slurred because my finger was still pushing on his lip. “Why do they have to come here to die? This was my place. They’re ruining my happy memories.”

I removed my finger and smiled at him. Death was so sentimental. “So, who is it?”

The waitress pushed our milkshakes in front of us. Death seized his and circled it with the cage of his arms. “I just want to drink my milkshake. If I think about it, I won’t enjoy it at all. And God knows I deserve a few small pleasures, right?”

“I should’ve been Death,” I observed. I stirred my pink shake. It was the exact same color as my lipstick. And that made me very happy. “It wouldn’t put me off my feed a bit.”

“Well, Love is cruel.” Death glowered past me at a young couple in one of the booths. They were laughing and feeding each other french fries. The boy leaned across the table to playfully blow the girl’s bangs up. Death mashed his straw into his milkshake a few times and looked away.

“Oh. So they’re the lucky ones? Boy or the girl?”

“Please be quiet. You’re giving me an ulcer.”

I leaned over and sang in his ear, “Which one iiiiis it?”

He growled at me. “Unfortunately, not you.”

I smiled at him. Death was so melodramatic.

“What is that?” he demanded. He was looking at his plate, which had just arrived.

I took it. “Pickle.”

“Remove it from my sight before I’m ill.”

I ate it and leaned against him. “Delicious.”

He clung to his stool to keep from falling off. “You disgust me. This diner disgusts me. Why did I get a milkshake? Why are they getting up? They’re not supposed to get up yet.”

But the boy and girl were getting up, tossing their napkins down and taking each others’ hands. And they were looking at us.

“He’s supposed to choke,” Death told me. “On a hot dog. Where’s his hot dog? Why didn’t he finish his hot dog?”

The couple walked straight to us, and the girl rested her hand on Death’s arm. “I just wanted to tell you that you two are such a cute couple. So cute the way you are together.”

Death stared at her.

“Thanks,” I told them. “Have a nice day. And loads of babies.”

Death watched them push out of the diner, leaving the uneaten hot dog on the table. The hot dog was pink, too, which also pleased me. It sort of rounded the day out.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Love is insidious,” Death told me. He pushed away his chocolate shake. “Let me have some of your milkshake.”

Death is predictable.

___________
Author's Note: I love diners. Mmmm milkshakes and tuna fish sandwiches . . . this is heaven.
*photo courtesy MBK (Marjie)

Rocking from the Depths of My Studio

I threw out the coconut shells today. It was deeply traumatic. I had to convince myself that I really didn't need flower pots made of coconut shells, bras made of coconut shells, or candle holders shaped like coconut shells.

They just looked so useful.

So, onto my current obsession. I have decided that what I really want for my birthday in November is an electric guitar (and for Christmas I want a tortilla press, but that's off topic). Now, stick with me as I do the reasoning. The instrument I loved to play most of all was the bagpipes. And what are bagpipes?

• loud
• obnoxious
• quite horrible if played badly
• rockin' if played right
• totally and completely in your face
• able to be heard the next state over

I would still be happily playing the bagpipes if my teeth hadn't gotten bashed in by a woman driving on a suspended license (for DUI several times over)(with her kids in the car)(grrrr). No teeth, no bagpipe-playing. It's a long and boring explanation.

Anyway, I play the harp, but the harp is just . . . not me. It's pretty and soft and fits into every occasion. Does this sound like me to you?

I didn't think so either. I also play the piano and some acoustic guitar, but they are likewise Not Maggie-Like.

So let's make a list of the attributes of the electric guitar.

• loud
• obnoxious
• quite horrible if played badly
• rockin' if played right
• totally and completely in your face
• able to be heard the next state over

I think I'm onto something here.

I want a black one. A shiny black one with a white stripe (does this not sound like a girl picking out a car?). And I will Rock on it. And the neighbors will wish that they'd told their dogs to stop barking overnight. I've already begun to page slowly and meaningfully through Fender's website. And plan long trips to our local guitar shop, where I will annoy the guys who work there by refusing to make a decision until November.

I think I'll name my guitar Angel, short for Dark Angel of Doom Coming Down with Massive Decibels Upon Neighbors Who Should've Put Their Dogs in Overnight.

By the way, you might've noticed that my sketches from my list of topics have not materialized yet. I've discovered that my interest in sketching objects is . . . um, well I don't have any. I'd rather be sketching people. And it's tough to do that when you're currently holing yourself up in your studio working on a novel deadline than looms in two weeks.

So goal one: finish novel.

Goal two: find people.

I haven't been out of my studio in a long time. Is the earth still populated by homo sapiens?