Me in 3D

Oh, and if you've ever wanted to see Maggie in living color, I've been captured in photograph and film at Poe Middle School, where I did book talks all day yesterday.

The Ultimate and Final LAMENT post

So . . . here it is, I guess. The LAMENT post to end all LAMENT posts. It is the day before LAMENT's official release day and also a Tuesday, so today we get the last ever twisted Tuesday teaser (with the characters from the LAMENT scene cunningly disguised as animals to keep from being spoilery) and then . . . then the book is out!

It feels so weird, guys, to be here right now after a year of waiting. And after starting these teasers a few months ago . . . now I'm at the last one. Just whoa. WHOA.

So here's the week's festivities, for those who are interested.
Virtual Launch! Tomorrow (Wednesday) is the virtual book launch over at Enchanting Reviews, 9 pm EST. If you e-mail me before the virtual chat launch and tell me what song is mentioned on page 27 of LAMENT and then make an appearance at the chat, you'll be entered into a drawing to win cool swag like signed copies, homicidal faerie T's, and more.

Over at Merry Sisters of Fate today is Lamentiganza (I hope I'm spelling that right) all day today with the other sisters from the Merry Sisters of Fate writing fun posts about the top ten reasons why you should read LAMENT and other things .

I'm also guest-blogging a couple of places, and I think those will be up tomorrow. I'll be at Miladyinsanity, SeaHeidi, and David Bridger's blog. Oh, and there will be a (possibly embarrassing) podcast interview of me up at Les Bonnes Fee, where they've already reviewed LAMENT and said:

... Lament’s true strength lies in Stiefvater’s characterisations. Deirdre has a wonderfully authentic teen voice, Luke (the gallowglass) is tortured but not whiny, and James (the best friend would-be boyfriend) is wise-cracking and kind-hearted without being puppyish. Even Stiefvater’s supporting cast, a collection of fairies, family, and surprising new friends, are well-rounded. Moreover, she deftly side-steps the first-time author trap of painting the story black and white, with “villains” who are anything but flat, dry, and uninteresting.

Les Bonnes Fee already has an excerpt up as well as some mp3s of music I wrote to go with LAMENT.

And of course there's the physical book launch in Carytown, Richmond, VA on Friday. Woof. I think that's all. I'll be other places too, but I'll mention them as I remember them! Onto the teaser:

Three Tips on Kicking Artist's Block to the Curb

Since I wrote about writer's block for one of my guest blog posts this week, I figured it would be appropriate to write about Artist's Block for my tips post. They're rather related -- sort of evil kissing cousins and it's easy to believe when you're in the grips of one or the other that you will never do anything creative ever again.

So what is artist's block? It's when you've got the time, the materials, and sometimes even the commissions lined up, but you just can't bring yourself to put pen to paper or brush to canvas or Sharpie to wall or glue to trash.

And here are three tips for shaking it.

1) Immerse yourself in someone else's art. There are some amazing websites out there for Safely Dead Artists. For instance, I was a huge Monet fangirl when I was a teenager. I had Monet posters all over my bedroom walls. Sadly, back then, they didn't have this amazing site. Definitely lots of fodder for thought there. If you can, get to a local museum. The idea is to remind yourself what you found exciting about art in the first place.

2) Give yourself permission to create something unuseful. I used to get artist's block a lot when I was creating art for a series or doing a lot of portrait commissions. Every piece of art I did had a distinct purpose and deadline, and I knew before I started that I not only couldn't mess it up, but also that I pretty much knew what it was going to turn into. Giving myself permission to do something entirely not useful in the general scheme of things (like "The Summer Girls" at right) always got my juices flowing again.

3. Switch media. When I get stumped with my colored pencils, I pull out my acrylics, and vice versa. They both offer such a different experience -- one offers total control and the other total freedom and messiness.

Joy in art, for me, is really connected to learning and changing as an artist. So when I'm stumped, it's almost always because I've let myself plateau and get stale.

And that's our three tips for this week! I've got to go Febreeze a dog. Anyone else have tips for shaking off Artist's Block?

Friday Five and New Scene for LAMENT

1. First of all, since this is the last Friday before Lament's release date, my Friday fiction over at is a new, never before scene from LAMENT (it's not spoilery for those of you who haven't read it yet).

2. I talked at Robinson High School in Fairfax on Wednesday and Thursday and yoiks that place was huge. 4200 students under one roof. Jenniferohcious from LiveJournal caught me on film there wearing my Dr. Seuss Old Navy shirt and she also fed me lots of cookies. I don't know what I'm smiling at in her photos, but I look happy, or something.

3. Holy. Crap. People, this is my last weekend before Lament is out in bookstores. Did I say that already? Holy. Crap.

4. I converted Jeannine Garsee, author of Before, After, and Somebody Inbetween, who is a non-fantasy person, to the dark side. After reading Lament, she said,

"this is an awesome, contemporary-yet-otherworldly story with one KICKASS heroine who wishes to be anything but ordinary--and gets her wish in a complicated and very disturbing way. "

And was Karen Mahoney was "blown away" by Lament. I think in a good way, not in the way that characters were in that Jeff Bridges movie called Blown Away. The one where the IRA guy sings along to U2 songs while he builds bombs.

5. I watched Juno with Jenniferohicious these week, by the way, and I'm afraid people are right. I do kinda look like Ellen Page.

Twisted Teaser Tuesday

A very hasty Tuesday Teaser today because I'm getting ready for my school talk at Robinson High School in northern VA tomorrow. If you're in the Fairfax area, there will be signed LAMENTs at Aladdin's Children Bookstore on N. Harrison Street.

Anyway, because there are um, only . . . two Tuesdays . . .wait . . . one Tuesday? until Lament comes out, this is the second to last teaser. As usual, the characters have been replaced with animals to keep them from being spoilery. See y'all on Friday when I get back!

Three Tips on Photoshop for Artists

I know I swore I was going to be mirroring my writing blog over here from now on, but that didn't sit well with me -- because I want to talk about art and writing. So I figured out a compromise: during the week, I'll be mirroring my Livejournal blog's contents over here, but every Sunday, I'm going to do an installment in my new Three Tips series.

The Three Tips posts are going to be short (like me) but hopefully a little useful (like me). The sort of thing that can be read over a cup of yogurt or a bowl of dog food on Monday morning.

So this week is Three Tips on how Photoshop can help you as an artist. Now, the tips in this post can be used in other photo manipulation programs, as the functions I'm pointing out here are not advanced creatures.

Many of you probably already know these techniques, but they were invaluable for me as an artist starting out. We're going to use a photo of a pelican rummaging around in his feathers that I took at the zoo earlier this year.

1. Photoshop allows you to easy change your references into grayscale. For me, I simply go to Image>Mode>Grayscale at the top of the screen. Why do you want that puppy in grayscale? Because instantly you can see the true values of all the brilliant colors. As a newbie artist, I would've been tempted to make that brilliant blue background really light -- I would've mistaken intensity for value. But in actuality, that blue background is a very dark midtone. The grayscale makes that pop out at us.


2. Let's see your true colors, baby! Another problem I had as a novice artist was identifying the real colors of my reference. Color, like value, is relative -- our eyes can see the same color or value differently depending on what color or value it appears right next to. So while I could easily look at an isolated color and tell you exactly which colored pencil I need to pick it up, I have to train my eye to be able to see it when it's surrounded by other colors. Photoshop lets you isolate a color with the eyedropper tool. It's in the hovering toolbar (which I have cleverly and amazingly provided for you here at left). See the one I put in the red box? That's the eyedropper.

Selecting that option will transform your cursor into an amazing weapon of power that will tell you what the true color is of anything you click on. Ohhhh, the power!! So you can see how I took Mr. Pelican and clicked on the area that I've boxed in red, on the right. And you can see how it isolated that color for me there on the toolbar on the left. That's nice peach color. Mmm. I know exactly which pencil I would pick up for that. I've internalized the whole process now, but I taught myself with the eye dropper.

3. Our last tip is exaggeration. As an artist, one of the things we do is change the photo reference. We stylize it, make it more our own. Make it look better than real life. There are a lot of different tools in Photoshop that can help you mimic the effects you'd use, before you even try them on your finished piece. One of my favorites is adjusting the contrast. I do that with Image>Adjust>Brightness/Contrast. Another good one is Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation. Play with the sliders to get different effects.


And that's our three tips on Photoshop. Over and out!

Sketchbook Giveaway Winner!

I have a winner! I'm going to email them since their name isn't incredibly obvious from their subscription address -- and I don't want to put their email all over the internet.

But the first part of the email is sandimac

Congrats!

Edited to add: if this sucker isn't claimed by Monday morning, I do the drawing again! Please check your spam filters!

LAMENT Book Launch Parties

it is now officially so close to my book launch that it's time to talk about the launches themselves.

That's right, plural. For the discerning future-fan (I coined that egotistical phrase all by myself), we offer two choices: the physical launch, for the Virginia-inclined, and the online launch, for the proximity-challenged.

Here are the details:

PHYSICAL LAUNCH PARTY

Where: Creatures N'Crooks Bookstore, Richmond, VA
When: Friday, October 3rd, 7:00 p.m.
Why You Should Venture into Supah-Cool Carytown for the event:
1) Me. I'll be there, dressed as . . . me.
2) I'll be signing books.
3) I'll be giving away fun prizes.
4) I'll be bringing my harp Rory and a fiddle, with a fiddler attached to it.
5) We will be three doors away from a French pastry shop.

VIRTUAL LAUNCH CHAT PARTY

Where: Enchanting Reviews Chat Room
When: Wednesday, October 1st, 8:00 p.m. EST
Why You Should Venture into Virtual World for the event:
1) Me. I'll be there using chat language.
2) If you come and chat and can tell me what song is mentioned on page 27 of Lament (you'll have to preorder a copy before the event), I'll enter you in a drawing for free prizes.
3) I will send out signed, personalized bookplates to all chat participants who want to affix them lovingly in the copies of their books.
4) I'll be talking about Lament, book biz, and writing! And other random things!

So, um, please come? I don't want to be all lonely or nuthin' . . . .

Tuesday Teaser

All right. It's now getting dangerously close to when Lament is going to be appearing in stores -- three Tuesdays to go. As per usual, here's a teaser scene from the novel, with all spoileriness removed by virtue of the characters being disguised as animals.

Tomorrow I'm going to be posting details of my online and physical launch day events, sooo . . . stay tuned.

Sketchbook Giveaway Addendum for Bloglines subscribers

A clever subscriber asked if being subscribed through bloglines counts. Ze answer is nein. That means no.

Well, I take that back. What it really means is that I can't see your email address to enter you in the drawing if you're subscribed through bloglines. I also can't see it if you're subscribed anonymously through feedblitz.

But far be it from me to let a technical difficulty show me who's boss. If you're subscribed but think I won't be able to find your name/ moniker/ email address to throw you in the hat, drop me an e-mail with the subject line "Sketchbook Giveaway" and I'll make sure you're entered.

If you're subscribed normally through Feedblitz, you're cool.

Onwards!

Sketchbook Giveaway Time!

lrighty then. My most recent sketchbook (a nice fat one, 100 pages, for the record) is full and it's time for the giveaway as usual!

Here are some of the examples of sketches (including the A there on the left).

The rules are simple.

1) Subscribe to this blog to be entered in the drawing. If you're already subscribed, no worries, you're automatically entered.
2) Check back at 9 p.m. EST on Friday, September 19th, to see who has been chosen!

And . . . . go! Good luck!

The Reason for my Disappearance REVEALED

So I know you guys think that I've abandoned you and this blog for Lament, but it would take more than that, my dear readers. I've had a good reason since back in May, I just couldn't announce it until now.

But it's official in Publisher's Weekly now, so here it is:

Abby Ranger and David Levithan at Scholastic prevailed in a multiple-round auction for world rights to Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver in a two-book deal with Laura Rennert at Andrea Brown. This YA novel describes the first love between a 16-year-old girl and a mysterious boy who spends his winters as a wolf and is fighting to stay human as the temperature drops. The 26-year-old Stiefvater has a YA novel, Lament, just out from Flux, with a sequel to follow. Shiver will be published in fall 2009.

This means that I've been working hard with both editor Andrew at Flux and Abby & David at Scholastic since then, and the amount of the deal means that I'm doing it full-time -- no art at all for income purposes. I'm still pinching myself on that front.

But that also means that this blog is going to have to change. I've given a lot of thought to this, and I think this is what I'm going to do, unless someone else has a better idea. Tomorrow, I'm going to officially announce the date of my sketchbook giveaway for blog subscribers and announce the end of this blog as a purely art blog.

From Wednesday on, this blog will mirror my blog on Livejournal, which is a mix of writing, life, and art. I understand if it loses me some subscribers but right now, that's what my life is. I'm planning on doing more close artistic studies later in the year, but for now, the emphasis is definitely on my writing.

So . . . um . . . yeah. That was longer than I planned for it to be!

Remembering

It's 9/11, so I'm going to be doing radio-silence today aside from this post. Even though it's been 7 years, I can still remember the moment I heard about the plane hitting the Pentagon. Not the NYC ones. I must have heard about the NYC planes sometime when I was driving to my morning class, but I don't remember it.

I do remember hearing about the Pentagon plane, though. That was when I pulled into a gas station and found a pay phone. There was already a line of people waiting to use it, and when I got to my turn, I called my new boyfriend, who was a paramedic. I knew he'd be called to help at the Pentagon and who knew what else would happen there -- what if there was another plane? I'd just started dating him a month before but I was insanely in love and all I could think was that I'd just met him -- I wasn't ready to say goodbye yet.

Seven years later and he's still my husband. Seven years later and a lot of other people had to say goodbye that day.

Wednesday Whoops Teaser

Grr. My computer is being ulcertastic this evening, so my Tuesday Teaser didn't get uploaded until today.

Anyway, as usual, here's is my twisted teaser for my upcoming novel Lament. It feels weird to say that I'll be posting a teaser every Tuesday until its release, since it's already shipping from Amazon, but the truth is that it doesn't hit major bookstores until Oct. 1st, four Tuesdays from now. So. Here's another teaser, relieved of spoilerness by the simple device of replacing the human characters with octopi.

More lovely reviews over the weekend, by the way, but I figure you're tired of them by now. We'll just go for the greatest hits:

"Lament was, to put it mildly, simply fabulous." - Julie Kagawa.
"Watch out Melissa Marr and Holly Black, there is a new faerie Queen in town!" - the Story Siren.
"ooooh, the smooching scenes. I cannot wait to read the sequel, Ballad." Robin Bridges

and of course
"Overall, this is a really fun book, genuinely hilarious and smart and sad. If nothing else, you've gotta love a book that begins, 'You'll be fine once you throw up,' and then uses the phrase 'puke arc'; in a way that is actually funny and not disgusting." - Skirmish of Wit

Moose, Revisited

"Guess Who?" - 8 x 16" colored pencil on gessoboard.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.

As I haven't had a Moose-the-Cat piece available in a long time, I wanted to let you guys know that one of my old Moose pieces; the owner is selling it on eBay. It's one of criminally insane Moose hanging off the back of my computer desk while I worked.

If you're interested, it's here.

The Greatest Invention Ever

So today was a monumental day in Maggiedom. I know what you're thinking. You're waiting for me to announce some book thingy (which is true, today is the day that Lament's Amazon pre-orders shipped, apparently) or some art thingy (sort of true, today I started on my first full sized piece in a long while). But the truth is far bigger.

Today was the first day of school.

This is the sound of me lifting off with little wingies of freedom and loads of time and three days a week of being able to not only work on writing and art, but also do things like load the dishwasher.

Amazing.

This morning, the kids were both more excited than me in a chocolate chip factory. I snapped this photo (they were saying "SCHOOL!" instead of "CHEESE!") and then aauaguhghghg

Ginger just farted.

I'm sorry, but it was bad. I may have to leave the room.

Cough. Anyway. They were both very excited, so we dropped them off and I went home, where I played my stereo really loudly and did more work than any woman should be able to get done in a 6 hour period.

Then Cop Husband and I picked them up and the teachers told us how good they were, except for when Victoria got into a fight with Will and screamed loudly enough that the entire school heard her. No kidding. I know the stories are true because the front receptionist said that an older child had actually run down the hall and out the front doors to escape the sound, and she'd had to chase him and bring him back in.

That's loud.

For some reasons, the teachers seemed very . . . not concerned by this. Does this happen often in preschool?

Preschool, for the record, is a great invention.

Teaser Tuesday and Sketchbook Update

Once again, 'tis Tuesday! First of all, I wanted to say that I am four pages away from finishing my latest sketchbook (which I will photograph later), which means I'll probably be holding the drawing for the sketchbook giveaway sometime next week. I'll also be posting about value sketches at the same time, because guess what it's full of? Fun times . . .

Anyway, Like all previous Tuesdays, I'm posting a non-spoilery scene from my upcoming novel LAMENT. Only FIVE more Tuesdays to go until its release date. And holy heck that's soon.

So why are the scenes not spoilery? Because the characters have been safely replaced with animals to protect their identities. This week, dinos, baby.