Leigh Bardugo is one of my favorite new teen authors and her Grisha Trilogy is not to be missed. The second book, Siege and
Storm, is one of our Best Teen Books of June and if you thought you were eager for book two after Shadow and Bone (and if you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for!?) just wait until you get to the end of this one!
Margaret Stohl, author of another of our favorites, the Beautiful Creaturesseries (with Kami Garcia) and the recentlyhttp://www.amazon.com/dp/0316205184/ref=blogs_omni_link_YA released Icons, sat down with Leigh
Bardugo to discuss Siege and
Storm, and the Grisha Trilogy.
Margaret: Let's talk about the Darkling. You've
written arguably the greatest villain-as-love-interest we've seen in YA. It's
as unlikely as if you'd written a version of Heart of Darkness where Kurtz is the hottie. Did you have an
inspiration for the Darkling in your own mind?
Leigh: First of all, thank you, and second, I
may require "Kurtz is the hottie" on a T-shirt. But I'm always wary
of the term "villain." The Darkling believes he's doing the right
thing for his people and his country, and I think you could make a case for
most of the choices he makes, even the despicable ones. He was inspired by
every really bad badboy I ever fell for in fiction. I'm not talking about the
wounded, pouty guy who's just looking for the right girl to give him an excuse
to be a hero, but the truly dangerous guys with an agenda—Flagg (who appears in various
guises in several Stephen King books), Raistlin (Dragonlance), the Hound
(George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire), and…okay, I'll admit it, Jareth
the Goblin King from Labyrinth. (I don't know what his agenda was but it
involved very tight pants.)
Margaret: Is it a risk, allowing a character so
dark and powerful to be desirable? Do you see any strange responses to the
Darkling from your readers?
Leigh: I'm sometimes surprised by how easily
my readers let him off the hook. They seem to hold Mal and Alina to a higher
moral standard. But honestly, I think the Darkling's appeal is realistic in its
own way. Charm is a powerful weapon, so is beauty. I think it's worth asking
why we respond so strongly to those lures.
Margaret: Is it a truth? Does it speak to another
darkly honest aspect of real relationships?
Leigh: Maybe. It's always easier, at least in
the short term, to give up authority to another person. We see this play out
between Alina and the Darkling, and in a bigger way across Ravka. We want
heroes, we want saviors, we want great leaders, but it's always dangerous to
put yourself or your future so fully in someone else's hands—whether it's a
love interest or a ruler.
Margaret: Is it a trend?
Leigh: Antagonists as love interests? I don't
know. Maybe it's that we're getting more characters who don't strictly adhere
to archetype. Personally, I like heroes who struggle and make mistakes, who
have to work at being good. And I like villains who don't just walk around
twirling their mustaches. That kind of makes it sound like all villains are
hipsters. Watch out, Portland.
Margaret: The other great love of Alina's life,
Mal, is the opposite, loyal and true and supportive. In real life, would you
fall for the bad or the good guy? Darkling or Mal?
Leigh: Girrrl, you know the falling is easy. It's
everything that comes after that's hard. And that's part of the struggle at the
heart of Siege and Storm. Mal is loyal and true and he would do
anything for Alina, but he has his own demons to fight and his own journey to make.
I'm not interested in characters who only exist for each other.
Margaret: Your books are so clearly about power—supernatural,
political and emotional. I find myself writing about these same issues
compulsively, both in the Beautiful Creatures novels and Icons. Are these core issues for you personally, or is this part of
a larger teen narrative for you?
Leigh: Both, I suppose. We point to coming of
age stories and say that they're about finding your place in the world,
discovering who you are and how you relate to authority, but it's not like
that's a finite process. We still have to question what kind of power we give
up and be sensitive to the kind of power we wield. We still keep learning and
trying to get more comfortable in our skin. Maybe there's some magic moment
when you wake up and say, "I have arrived. I am an adult and a badass and
I'm going to go brew some tea and dispense wisdom." But I haven't gotten
there yet.
Margaret: Can you send your trusty Grisha wizard
beautician over to my house to live in my closet and fix me up every day?
Leigh: If only the Tailor made house calls.
Genya would be in high demand.
Margaret: Do you have one? Does that explain your
own radiant good looks?
Leigh: Ha! You should see me right now. I
haven't had a full night's sleep in a week and there may well be corn in my
hair.
Margaret: Will you sing a little something for
us?
Leigh: Always. I'm like Jane Krakowski's
character on 30 Rock. "Who me?
Sing? I couldn't poss—GIVE ME THAT MIC." But seriously, if you'd like to,
listen to the Shadow and Bone-inspired
song, Winter Prayer. Also, I take requests.
Editors Note: As you'll see from the first line of his introduction through to his last fantastic question, horror author Joe Hill has tremendous respect for Neil Gaiman's work. In this exclusive discussion of Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane--one of our own top picks for June's Best Books of the Month--Hill explores both the real and the imaginary inspirations behind some of the novels most compelling details.
by Joe Hill
You know the facts already, and if you don't, man, have you missed out:
If Neil Gaiman wrote nothing but Sandman, his award-winning comic series, he would still have the stature of a Bradbury or a Tolkien. Sandman was not just the best, most daring, and most moving comic of its time; it was and is probably the best, daringest, movingest comic of any time.
Gaiman followed with an epic, American Gods, which--along with Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and Jonathan Letham's Fortress of Solitude--shattered the artificial barrier between genre and literature, inspiring the best writers of my own generation to slip the shackles of realism and take a chance on fantasy. Godswas a kind of uncorking and a flood of fever-dreams poured forth afterward. Coraline was only the scariest book for children ever written, and it led to a phantasmagoric movie that soars like a modern Wizard of Oz. The Graveyard Book reads like if Charles Addams wrote The Jungle Book, and deservedly was awarded the Newbery Medal. And Gaiman's episodes of Doctor Who stand among the most keenly felt and inventive chapters in that show's storied 50-year history.
So now here is The Ocean at the End of the Lane--an overpowering work of the imagination, a quietly devastating masterpiece, and Gaiman's most personal novel to date. I had a chance to talk to him about it. Here are some things we said:
Joe Hill: Not long after a grotesque and tragic shock, the young boy at the heart of the novel meets Lettie Hempstock, her mother, and her grandmother. We soon discover that Old Mrs. Hempstock can snip bits out of time; Lettie's mother can see things happening elsewhere; and at one point, Lettie herself can be found hauling around an ocean in a bucket. These aren't the first women to wander through your stories, deforming reality as they go. Would the story have been different if it was a house of three guys? Could that even have worked?
Neil Gaiman: It would have worked, yes, although it would have been a very different sort of book. The farm men I knew as a boy were a taciturn lot, and they weren't much for talking. I like that the Hempstock women are chatty, and welcoming.
I think I got to take all the things I loved about my grandmothers' kitchens when I was a boy, the feeling that food was always there and that always somehow meant family and meant love, and transmute that into something rather stranger. And less Jewish.
I went for the women partly because I liked the idea of grandmotherly energy, and because the original inspiration for the Hempstock family, when I was about 8 years old, was having read a story of Henry Kuttner's called “Pile of Trouble” about the Hogben family, an Appalachian family of mutants--and all the Hogbens were men. (There is a Ma Hogben, but she never says or does much.) I thought about the farm down our lane that was mentioned in the Domesday Book, and wondered what would happen if the people who lived there had been there for the last thousand years. So the Hempstocks had been composting in my head since I was a small boy, waiting for their story to be told. Sometimes other Hempstocks would show up in other books, but they weren't the real Hempstocks, the ones in the farm at the end of the lane.
JH: Have there been women in your life who seemed especially prone to warping reality?
NG: My wife, Amanda, is terribly good at warping reality. She is like a bowling ball on a rubber sheet, and you find yourself living in her universe, doing things that are completely unexpected or unimaginable for you, but you blink and you're up on a stage singing, or wearing a peculiar wig, or writing a book filled with feelings and emotion, or doing something equally as unlikely.
My daughters, Holly and Maddy, are each good at warping reality in their own unique ways. Maddy's world is prettier and simpler than mine, Holly's has more hats in it.
JH: There's another woman in this story who goes nibbling holes out of our world: Ursula Monkton, who comes to work as a nanny--a kind of anti-Mary Poppins--for our hero's parents. But really, why is Ursula Monkton so bad? She only wants to help people!
NG: I agree with you. And Ursula Monkton, wherever she is, agrees with you a lot. It's just that people are fragile, and the ways Ursula wants to help them are ways that break them, or drive them to madness, or worse. It's one thing to want money, but if you find yourself choking on a coin as you wake, the money is slightly less desirable.
Ursula Monkton (or, as I tend to think of her, the thing that calls herself Ursula Monkton) was a glorious and scary thing to write, and she took me by surprise. The Ocean at the End of the Lane was going to be a short story until Ursula Monkton decided to follow our hero home...
NG: Imagine a mosaic picture of a house in the country: lots of red and blue and yellow and black and brown and white and a dozen different shades of green tiles which make a beautiful picture if you stand back far enough.
All the little red squares are true--true things, true places, true feelings. But the red squares aren't the picture. All the rest of it is lies and stories, often within the same sentence.
I hoped that I was able to write an emotional truth, but even though the landscape of the story is the landscape of my childhood, the family isn't really my family, and none of the things that happened to our hero happened to me. Well, none of the big things, anyway. I didn't even know why our white Mini went away until over thirty years after it happened.
JH: Our hero has only a single weapon to hold back the darkness--his books. What were your weapons as a child?
NG: Books. They were more of an armour and an escape route than they ever were a weapon, really, though. Books are defensive, not offensive (unless you're the puzzled adult trying to make the kid with the book interact). I loved all books that I could read, and I never knew if I was ready for it until I tried to read it, so I tried to read everything. My mother had lots of her childhood books on our bookshelves, so I read those and had great fun putting imaginary versions of them into Ocean.
There were other weapons. I was bright, and I could use that as a weapon: words can wound, whatever those sticks and stones sayings claim about them never hurting, and I could use them if I had to.
I really wanted a catapult, because kids in books had catapults, but they were regarded as things you could put people's eyes out with, and I do not believe I ever had a catapult.
JH: It was only after I finished the novel that I realized--with quite a bit of shock--that the narrator doesn't have a name. He remains, throughout, an indefinite ‘I.' And we are told early in the story that names have power and special significance; they can be used against you. Who is this guy? Does he even know himself?
NG: I'm sure he knows his name. In the first draft, in the handwritten manuscript, Ursula Monkton calls him by his name, but I took that out in the second draft. It seemed right that he's--not nameless, but has no reason to tell us his name.
Names do have power in this book, and naming things and people was something that fascinated me. None of his family have names, after all. They just have roles.
JH: There's a lot of wonderful food writing in this book. I had to put the thing down several times to rummage desperately through my fridge. Can you give us the recipe for the Hempstocks' lemon pancakes? Please don't let that part be make-believe.
NG: There is no make-believe in cooking. There were few things I took as much fun in cooking, when I was a boy, as pancakes. (I liked making toffee, too, because it was a little like a science experiment.)
Right. The night before you are going to make them, you mix:
1 cup of ordinary white flour
2 eggs
a pinch of salt
2 1/2 cups of milk and water (a cup and a half of milk and a cup of water mixed)
1 tablespoon of either vegetable oil or melted butter
(You'll also need some granulated sugar, and a couple of lemons to put on the pancakes, along with other things like jams and possibly even maple syrup because you're American.)
Put the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Crack the eggs in and whisk/fork the egg into the flour. Slowly add the milk/water mixture, stirring as you go, until there are no lumps and you have a liquid the consistency of a not too thick cream.
Then put the mixture in the fridge overnight.
Grease or butter or oil a non-stick frying pan. Heat it until it's really hot (377 degrees according to one website, but basically, it has to be hot for the pancake to become a pancake. And these are crepes, French style, not thick American round pancakes).
Stir the mixture you just took from the fridge thoroughly because the flour will all be at the bottom. Get an even, consistency.
Then ladle some mixture into the pan, thinly covering the whole of the base of the pan. When the base is golden, flip it (or, if you are brave, toss it). Cook another 30 seconds on the other side.
For reasons I do not quite understand (although pan heat is probably the reason), the first one is always a bit disappointing. Often it's a burnt, sludgy, weird thing, (always, in my family, eaten by the cook) (which was me). Just keep going, and the rest will be fine.
Sprinkle sugar in the middle. And then squeeze some lemon juice in, preferably from a lemon. Then wrap it like a cigar and feed it to a child.
(You can experiment with other things in the middle, like Nutella, or jam, or even maple syrup--but remember that these pancakes are not syrup-absorbent like American style pancakes.)
This is a very peculiar interview, Joe. Let me know how the pancakes come out.
Philipp Meyer's 2009 debut novel, American Rust, earned numerous accolades (including a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship) and marked him as a writer of exceptional potential. With The Son--a 150-year saga of family, oil, and power set against the birth of Texas and the modern West--Meyer has seemingly fulfilled that promise. He took time to answer a few questions about the new book, including some of his unusual things he did during the course of his research, and violence as an inseparable reality of North America's past.
The Son is available May 28.
The Son is an immense novel, spanning generations,
a wide swath of Texas (and American) history, and incredible cultural change. Did you always intend for it to be this
ambitious, or did it grow out of a more particular idea?
I always knew it was going to be an ambitious book. The
problem, when I began writing it, was that I didn’t know nearly as much I
thought I did about the history of Texas and the history of the American West.
And the more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know, and the slower the
writing became. There were a lot of moments of slapping my head and realizing I
needed to research a whole new period of history before I could write the
things that belonged in the novel, and at some point I realized that the book
was basically going to take place over two hundred years. That was exciting but
also a bit depressing—I was thinking I’d finish this book in three years, like
my last one. It ended up taking five years.
The Son is thoroughly entertaining (and
revelatory) in its period detail and vernacular, especially Eli’s experience
with the Comanches. How much—and what sort of—research was required to achieve
such a level of realism?
There was so much research that it all became a blur. I know
I read at least 350 books, though I likely read more; I took weeks of animal
tracking classes, spent a month at Blackwater (the private military contractor)
learning combat skills and soaking up the warrior culture for the sections on
both the Comanches and the early Texas Rangers; I taught myself to bowhunt and
killed several deer, ate them, tanned various deer hides. I shot two buffalo
(whose meat was destined for restaurants and grocery stores) and because the
Plains tribes sometimes did it for survival purposes, I drank a cup of warm
blood from the neck of one of the animals. Not recommended. And I spent months
in the woods, mountains, and deserts of Texas—I slept outside, hiked, or hunted
almost everywhere the book takes place, took careful notes on and pictures of
all the plants and animals I saw, then realized that the ecology of Texas had
changed so enormously over the past 150 years that my notes weren’t necessarily
valid. So had to go back to the historical and archeological record to research
about exactly how and where and why it changed—the plants and animals I was
seeing between 2008-2013 were not necessarily the plants and animals that were
there in 1850 or 1870 or 1915. Texas used to be a much wetter place—much
of what is now desert or brushland was grassland in 1850. The landscape has
changed radically in a very short period of time.
There’s a lot of violence in this book, and scenes that
might make some readers uncomfortable. That’s part of the tale, of course,
given both the era and setting. Did you have any reservations about not holding
back? Is there intent to the way you want readers to face that violence?
I’m reluctant to talk about this too much, and to make too
big a deal of it, but here goes:
I’m not sure the book is any more violent than any other
book set in this time period, but I made an effort to not glorify it or gloss
over it. A lot of books about the American West, about our creation myth, are
full of blood and gore but there is no real sense of loss—they are like Quentin
Tarantino movies. I wanted to address that tendency. I wanted the reader’s
sympathies to shift from one side of the conflict to the other. I wanted the
loss on both sides to be real.
That said, the politically correct part of me definitely
considered toning it down—especially the scenes of combat between the Comanches
and the various settler groups. But doing so would have come at such a cost to
truth and accuracy that I couldn’t bring myself to do it—the historical record
was too clear. The Native Americans were at war for their very survival and the
European-American settlers were at war to make their fortunes and expand their
country. Neither side committed any atrocity that has not been committed at
some other period in history—whether earlier, during the Spanish Inquisition,
or later, during the big wars of the 20th century. And I was careful that
whatever violence there is in the book—whether committed by Texas Rangers,
ranchers, or settlers, by Comanches or U.S. soldiers—was based on real events.
It was not me imagining how things might have been.
It’s important to remember that people have been living in
America for 15,000 years; thousands of cultures have risen and fallen here in
that time, and, while no one was taking notes, it’s not that hard to guess that
most were overthrown by force. In Texas alone, since the Spanish arrived and
began writing things down, the Apaches came in and overthrew most of the other
tribes and then the Comanches came in and overthrew the Apaches (and to some
extent, the Spanish). The land we live on is quite literally soaked in blood; you
can’t really understand American history, and what we come from, until you come
to terms with that. And equally until you come to terms with the fact that,
regardless of the winners or losers, the degree of brutality was basically
equal on all sides. I think it’s easy to say that this brutality—the
ubiquitousness of it—is the great point to be taken from human history. But
that is not how I think of it. The point is that despite all that bloodshed,
here we all are, still breathing, still falling in love and having children,
still living our lives.
Both of your novels have a strong sense of geographical
identity: American Rust in Pennsylvania and The Son in Texas. How
does location shape your books? That is, does the story grow out of your
experience of a place, or do you start with a story that you want to tell?
With the story. I didn’t grow up in Pennsylvania or in
Texas. I just knew that this is where those books were going to be set. So I
had to go and learn those settings. The location is crucial—you have to
understand the economic history, the natural history, the philosophical history
of a place before you can write about it. You have to know how the people look,
speak, think, move, what they hope for, how they vote, how they eat, where they
sleep, what they do for work. You have to know everything. Not
necessarily when you start the book, but definitely before the book is done.
Who are your greatest
influences? Do you read for inspiration for your own work, or to take a break
from your own work?
Overall my biggest influences, and the people who I see
myself as learning the most from, are the modernists, basically Woolf,
Faulkner, Joyce, Hemingway, Welty, etc. But I will read anything I find
compelling. I’m going through a Vargas Llosa kick and right now and just
finished a few books by Lobo Antunes. As a reader, there is nothing more
satisfying than coming across an under-appreciated master, or a new book by an
emerging master.
As for the way I read, what happens when you cross the
threshold after which you are a practitioner, or a working artist—whatever you
want to call it—is that you don’t really read the same way. Probably not so
different from the way a professional athlete watches a game. You are
constantly observing, learning, zooming in and out on what people are doing.
You’re not quite as lost in the magic of it, because you’re thinking: “holy
----, how did she/he do that!” Maybe that’s a loss. When I say it out loud, it
seems like it. But in truth it doesn’t feel like it. I guess it feels like the
natural evolution of my relationship to writing, or art, or the world. Somehow
the pleasure of writing has supplemented or augmented the pure pleasure I used
to get from reading. The amount of happiness is the same, but it comes from a
slightly different place.
When eight-year-old Robert Chatham loses everything to
the fast waters of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, he lights out across
the country, a refugee seeking shelter with (and from) a Homeric cast of
misfits, hucksters, and ne’er-do-wells: the ladies of a "hotel" of ill repute;
a piano player whose talent for the blues matches his seemingly supernatural
powers of healing; a close-knit clan of trappers, living in swampland itself marked for flooding, behind the wall of a WPA dam. Wherever he finds himself,
Robert's gripped and propelled by his fear of the devil closing in
behind. Cheng's novel fits comfortably
in the tradition of the Southern Gothic, but such simplification shortchanges
the power and originality of its language, the artfulness of its voice.
Southern Cross the Dog is one hell of a debut.
Cheng took the time to answer a few of our questions about his book, the blues, and the origins of the phrase Southern Cross the Dog.
You’re from New York,
and Southern Cross the Dog is about
as southern as a book can get. What inspired you to write about that part of
the country?
I started this novel as a kind of offering to
country blues music. I wanted to be able
to re-create in story the kind of experience I feel when I listen to someone
like Son House, for example. For me, the
only way to do that in a way that felt sincere was to set it in Mississippi,
during the era of the prewar blues. Set
the book someplace else and at some other time, and it would've been like I was
trying to get around something. And you
can't do that if you want to write a book you’re proud of.
Your story begins 85
years ago at the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, moving through the early
1940s. Was there something about that particular era that interested you,
something that you could build a novel around?
The Great Mississippi Flood was a great starting point, from
a storytelling perspective. There's a
largeness to it, and its impact shadows the characters throughout the book. For Robert and his family, the flood marks
them in a way that's irreparable. The
flood and the Mississippi River also occupies this amazing space in the
music. There are so many songs about the
river, about the levee camps, and about the flood. The idea first came to me when I was
listening to John Lee Hooker sing and play "Tupelo." It's absolutely haunting.
How did you conduct
your research for not only the finer details of the culture, but also the language
of the period?
I think there’s a misconception about how writers research
and how the research is used. Or at
least, on my part, I don't think I do the work of going to a library for a long
period of time, digesting the information, writing the book so that it is faithful
to reality.
The small facts that open up
the world of a novel are important and can be like manna to a writer, but the real
value in research, in sitting with materials, is that the path of your research
reinforces the writer's path through their novel. By which I mean, the way you direct your
research tells you what it is you want your novel to be about. You're discovering the world of your novel,
not the real world as it can be represented in a novel.
But to answer your question, I read aggressively everything
I could about blues and blues music. I
listened to blues music for close to a decade before I started the book.
Southern—or Southern
Gothic—is a literary genre in itself. Did you
have any trepidation in stepping into such a rich tradition?
I didn't really think about it going in—which I think was
lucky; it would’ve been paralyzing
otherwise. Now that the book is done,
I’m a bit cautious of comparisons that are being made now. They’re very complimentary and gratifying to
hear, but they also saddle a young writer with a terrible responsibility. Excruciatingly beautiful books have come out
of this part of America, but I can't say sincerely that my name has any place
next to giants like William Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor.
Does one book set in the American South now make me a southern writer? Is it enough to admit
me into one of the richest American literary traditions? It's one book. When it’s put to me that I "wrote a book about the South" I think
on some level that's wrong. I didn't write a book about the South. How could I have? To me, the book is about something
different. Something more.
That said, are there southern writers
(or writers of the South) whose work you admire most?
It almost seems besides the point to go on about William
Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor or Cormac McCarthy. Their contribution to the world of letters
will be felt from now until the last eye has fallen across the last word of the
last book. But I would like to single
out the late Larry Brown and the New York-born Peter Mathiessen, whose books are
visceral and exciting and make me proud about wanting to write books.
What is the meaning
of the phrase Southern Cross the Dog, and what is its importance to the
novel?
Where the Southern Crosses the (Yellow) Dog is a place where
two railroad lines—the U.S. Southern and the Yazoo Delta—cross in Moorhead, Mississippi. The place is referenced in blues music, and
in my mind, it seems to reference a place of final rest and peace. A kind of coming home. Which is, in a sense, what I believe Robert
Chatham wants.
Music—especially the
blues—pervades the book. Was that a starting point or something that grew naturally? Do you have favorite blues musicians?
It was a starting point. It was more than a starting point. It was there before I even conceived of the book. It was there for years, settling inside of
me, carving me up in quiet unknowable ways.
As for favorite blues musicians, I have too many. Far too many.
I think Lightnin' Hopkins might make it on top of the pile. Big Bill Broonzy, certainly. The problem with naming names is that I’ll
always come up with another likely candidate for first place. I list a slew of them in my acknowledgments.
This is your first
book—how long did it take to write? Was it a larger (or more difficult) project
than you imagined?
About three years to get a first draft. During the editing phase, I think I cut about
a hundred pages out of the book, and then fed some more pages back in. The book wasn't an easy book to write,
certainly, but that’s part of the joy of being a writer. Solving problems. Working on sentences. Building worlds and populating them. Difficult is good. It keeps things interesting.
Are there more novels
coming from you, and will they all be this dark? Are you interested in nonfiction projects, as
well?
Hopefully there will be more novels coming from me. Knock on wood. And I hope they won't all be dark, but my
writing does tend in that direction. I
think I'm pretty light-hearted in person though. As for nonfiction, I like doing essays,
op-eds, journalism pieces—that sort of thing. It's a different discipline, requires a different kind of thinking, but I
like seeing what comes out.
What are you reading
right now?
The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. It's
also set during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and it looks like it has a
more central role in the book than it does in mine. I've only just started it, but it promises to
be an amazing book.
Rick Yancey's new book, The 5th Wave, sucked me in and pulled me under from the first page to the last with it's terrifying and thrilling story of an alien invasion like you've never seen. We made it our Best Teen Books of May Spotlight pick, and past Teen Best of the Month author, Marie Lu (Legend trilogy) is also a big fan. In this Omni exclusive, Lu chats with Yancey about The 5th Wave, movies, and, of course, aliens.
Marie Lu: Everybody loves
aliens--myself included! But in your opinion, how
has Hollywood gotten the “alien invasion” idea wrong?
Rick Yancey: I understand that movies are made by humans to be watched by humans, and
depicting anything less than total victory over the bug-eyed swarm would be a
bit much to ask for. The simple and, to my mind, undeniable truth is that life
forms thousands, if not millions, of years more advanced than us probably
wouldn’t view humans as anything special, or at least nowhere near as special
as we view ourselves. I think we would be more like pesky insects to them,
which raises the question (from their angle): Can we coexist, like humans do
with cockroaches, or should we simply drive the disgusting infestation from
existence? So I don’t believe that, if they find us, it’ll play out anything
like the stereotypical alien drama.
They won’t come to teach us anything (Contact) or save us from ourselves (Close Encounters, The Day the Earth
Stood Still) or pluck leaves and go home
(E.T.). And they’ll be smart enough
and careful enough not to damage too much of their new home (Independence
Day) and they will remember to take their
flu shot (War of the Worlds).
ML: The 5th Wave
has been optioned for film, which is hugely exciting! Anything you can tell us
about it?
RY: Under the terms of my
contract, not much! I can tell you producers Graham King (Argo) and Tobey Maguire are on board, which is totally cool.
ML: Alright, the alien
invasion is nigh and you're in survival mode. What would be in your survival
kit?
RY: Toiletry kit (seriously, you’d want to keep yourself groomed. It grounds
you. Also you better have a way to keep your teeth clean. You don’t want a bad
tooth – check out Castaway if you doubt me). Basic
first aid stuff, including penicillin and antibiotic ointment. A means of
making fire. Solar-powered flashlight. A good hunting knife. A handheld mirror
(to check yourself out and also to check around corners). A compass. Water
bottle. And (speaking only for myself) enough medication to ensure an overdose
in case the absolute worst comes upon me. If my end was inevitable, I’d make
sure it was on my terms, not the alien bastards’.
ML: The five waves you
outline in the book scare the bejeezus out of me. Which one frightens you the
most?
RY: By far the 3rd Wave: the super-virus developed by the Others
from Ebola Zaire. I won’t go into all the details here – there’s plenty in the
book – but if you’ve ever read The Hot Zone, you know what I’m
talking about. A slow, agonizing, horrifying way to die. Your organs liquefy.
Your brain turns to mashed potatoes. The other waves are terrible, but they’re
quick.
ML: Can you give us a
sneak peek at what we’re going to see happen in Book 2?
RY: Did things seem a little desperate in Book 1? They get worse. We still
haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink in order to rid the Earth
of the human infestation. And we haven’t yet seen the heights to which the
human spirit can reach. Certain characters introduced in Book 1 will come to
the fore--and others will face the ultimate test. The Others will give their
answer to Cassie’s defiance.
In the last few years we've seen great examples of two popular authors coming together in one novel and giving fans the best of their combined talents--Will Grayson, Will Grayson and The Future of Us are among my favorites, what are yours? David Levithan (Every Dayand the aforementioned Will Grayson, Will Grayson) and Andrea Cremer (Nightshade series) seemed like an unlikely pairing to me, that is, until I actually read Invisibility (one of our Best Teen Books of May) and watched the video below.
Now it all makes sense. Invisibility is the story of what happens when a boy who has been invisible to everyone (including himself) is seen for the first time by a girl who's tough exterior hides a multitude of secrets. Don't be fooled by the familiar he-said, she-said style, this one is anything but cliché and the twists are surprising and exciting all the way to the end. Here is an exclusive video of Cremer and Levithan goofing off (check out Cremer's great boots!), teasing each other, and talking about Invisibility:
If you keep your ear to the food-world ground, you may have heard that Anthony Bourdain--chef, storyteller, tastemaker, traveler, and fearless eater of Parts Unknown--is launching a line of books. Aside from rumblings of a Mark Miller kickboxing memoir, he's mostly (no surprise) focused on food. His inaugural offering, The Prophets of Smoked Meat, comes from Daniel “Barbecue Snob” Vaughn of Full Custom Gospel BBQ blog fame. It's aptly billed as a "rollicking journey through the heart of
Texas Barbecue." You'll find the occasional recipe, but it's much more of a guidebook and tribute to the holy men of Texas meat than a traditional cookbook. It's also on my list of May picks for the Best Books of the Month in Cookbooks, Food & Wine.
Here, Bourdain gets the low-down from Vaughn on all things BBQ. Enjoy. --Mari Malcolm
Bourdain: Why Texas BBQ? Why not NC or KC or Memphis?
Vaughn: There is only one state where the barbecue culture holds the brisket up to the highest regard, and that is Texas. The brisket is the hardest of the smoked meats to master and the hardest to do well consistently. In Texas we celebrate great brisket by not messing with it. If it's done right then you slice it pencil thick and slap it on a piece of butcher paper. It's naked, quivering and vulnerable, so it has to stand on its own.
Bourdain: Is enough ever enough BBQ for you?
Vaughn: I recently took a road trip to North Carolina just for barbecue. On the first day we ate at seven different barbecue joints across the eastern side of the state and came back to Raleigh where we were staying. We were stuffed, but wanted some pie at Poole's Diner. At the counter there we learned from another diner that a place down the street did North Carolina pulled pork empanadas. It was midnight and we were beyond the uncomfortable point, but we paid our bill and immediately went to order barbecue empanadas for our real nightcap. The short answer: No, I don't get sick of barbecue, especially good barbecue.
Bourdain: Define "the cookie"; also, "pink ring."
Vaughn: The sugar cookie is the intersection of fat, salt, smoke and time at the corners of a brisket slice. When the fat starts to render and contracts it concentrates the flavors of the rub and the smoke and the fat nugget even tastes a little sweet like a buttery sugar cookie. The smoke ring is the pink line just beneath the crust of smoked meat. It doesn't taste like smoke, but it does show that the meat has been cooked at a low temperature for a long period of time with good air (smoke) flow across the meat while it cooks. When those all come together a smoke ring forms and chances are the meat will taste good and smoky.
Bourdain: Competition BBQ or stationary: what's the difference? What's better?
Vaughn: I prefer the discovery of barbecue joints around the state and the country rather than eating bite after bite of faceless barbecue at a competition. Learning the stories of who is cooking your meat and how it ended up on your plate the way it did is part of the fun, and that connection isn't possible in the blind tasting setting of a competition. I'm also a bit of a purist, so simple seasoning with salt, pepper and smoke is what I prefer on my smoked meat. Loads of brown sugar and squeezable margarine that are common on the competition are no way to treat a defenseless brisket in my opinion.
Bourdain: What are some warning signs which definitely indicate imminent arrival of sub-optimal BBQ?
Vaughn: If you don't see a stick of wood around the property, there's really no need to get out of the car. Barbecue joint signs that include 'catfish' or 'salad bar' are also dubious, but I still try to go most anywhere that serves smoked meat.
Bourdain: Does anyone in NYC come close to "great" BBQ by Texas standards? Anywhere else up north?
Vaughn: I haven't eaten at a barbecue joint in New York that comes close to the greats in Texas, but I'm hopeful that something will come up in my search when I visit again in May. Smoque in Chicago is the furthest north that I've eaten great brisket.
Bourdain: Is wrapping brisket or ribs in foil EVER okay? Why not?
Vaughn: Foil is known as the "Texas crutch." Once the briskets are wrapped, it's hard for them to dry out because they steam inside the foil package. This might result in tender brisket, but it sacrifices a great crust and can easily lead to slightly smoky pot roast instead of well smoked brisket. It's hard to condone, but there are a few places out there that can still use it successfully. The best joints either don't wrap at all or wrap them in butcher paper.
Bourdain: Sauce or no sauce?
Vaughn: Good barbecue does not require sauce. Period.
Bourdain: When Australians refer to the “Barbie,” what the hell are they talking about?
Vaughn: I have no idea. I think I've only seen American actors with fake Australian accents refer to the "Barbie," but I think it has something to do with grilling, which isn't barbecue.
Bourdain: Which BBQ joint would you currently choose to die in?
Vaughn: Franklin Barbecue. When I die I want to be forever preserved in a brisket fat confit from Aaron Franklin's brisket.
Bourdain: What is the best beverage to enjoy with BBQ in an ideal situation?
Vaughn: I love beer, but I don't love it with barbecue. I'd rather have something sweet, so give me a Dr. Pepper or a half sweet, half unsweet iced tea.
Bourdain: What's the most egregious misconception about BBQ?
Vaughn: The most egregious misconception about barbecue is that every pitmaster has some sort of secret ingredient or sauce that makes their barbecue superlative. To a true pitmaster the rub is about as important as the brand of sandpaper is to a master wood carver. If you think knowing that "secret" will substitute for having the skill and experience of a master, then you're an idiot.
What if you didn't see a movie until you were fifteen? Or were forbidden to listen to popular music when you were a teenager? Sounds a little like Footloose, but, in fact, that was Aaron Hartzler's life. And we get to read about it in his fantastic book, Rapture Practice.
Hartlzer grew up truly excited for the Rapture, playing the piano in church, and following the plan his parents, particularly his father, laid out for his life. The snake in Aaron's Garden of Eden came in the form of bible camp--as unlikely as that seems--and the apple was The Hunt for Red October.
Hartzler's coming-of-age memoir is funny, laugh-out-loud funny at times, and his slide into "sin" is fraught with a combination of thrill and guilt because his love for his parents and desire to please them is 100% genuine. We picked Rapture Practice as our YA Best Books of the Month spotlight for April and after reading it I wanted to hear more about that first movie experience, so we asked Aaron Hartzler to write a little something for us. The picture of the ticket stub you see below? That is THE ticket. Read on...
Unless
Jesus comes back in the next two minutes, I am going to break one of Mom and
Dad’s biggest rules. My cheeks are hot. I feel out of breath. A drop of sweat
trickles down my back, but the girl behind the glass doesn’t even look up at
me. She has no idea what is happening in my head, what a big deal this is for
me. She couldn’t be less interested.
I slide a five‑dollar bill under the window. She
hands back a small yellow ticket between neon nails so long they curve.
I didn’t see a movie in a movie theater until I was 15 years
old. My mom and dad felt that most movies were not pleasing to God, so I wasn’t
allowed to go. And yet, when I stood on that curb at the theater with all of my
friends from camp that summer, all of those warnings were no match for the
thrill of taking my seat in a darkened room, and watching the opening credits.
My heart was racing, and my hand was sweaty as I clung to that little yellow
ticket stub.
I saved the tickets for every movie I saw that summer. They
looked like little carnival ride tickets back then—the kind you win playing ski
ball and trade for prizes. This was before they printed the name and date of
the film on the ticket, so I wrote it on each one. Eventually, I lost the rest,
but I still carry that first little yellow ticket around in my wallet. It’s a
symbol of the day I started to make my own decisions—for better or for worse; the
day I knew my life was going to be different than the one that had been
imagined for me by others. That little yellow scrap felt like more than just a
ticket to a movie; it felt like a ticket to freedom.
In children's books there are those rare gems that come out of the gate like the
literary equivalent of a coveted holiday toy, but unlike those talking Elmo's and Cabbage Patch dolls (for those of you old enough to remember) these books are also destined to stand the test of time. Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site is one such book. It came out in 2011 and was one of our Best
Picture Books of the Year--it hasn't slowed down since. Today, the newest book from the same author and illustrator team comes out, Steam Train, Dream Train, and it is wonderfully different. In fact, Steam Train, Dream Train, our Best Picture Book of April, has, in my opinion, the potential become even bigger than it's predecessor. It's rhythmic, engaging, and beautiful.
Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site was the first book by an author who was by profession a graphic designer, but also the mother of two young boys. We wondered what life has been like for her, winning such high acclaim and success with her first book. Sherri Duskey Rinker had this to say:
In
2009, I was a typical, exhausted working mom. I had a three year old and a
seven year old; I was sleep-deprived and stretched too thin.
As
a graphic designer for more than twenty years, I was SO over it: budgets,
corporate politics, marketing speak, revisions, hot deadlines, late hours, disrupted
weekends and vacations—all of it. What was once a lovely career was now
drudgery (kids change everything, right?), and I was often grumpy and resentful
about the whole thing. I sometimes prayed for a better option, but I often felt
like my pleas just scattered to the breeze, unheard.
My
boys were the bright spot in every day. I was awful about honoring bedtimes—evenings
were the only time I really had to spend with them, uninterrupted. My husband
scolded halfheartedly, but we laughed, played, talked, cuddled, and, finally—way later than we should— settled in to
read before bed.
Still, I was exhausted. I
felt like those dolls that close their eyes when you lay them down, as though
only the distance to the nearest horizontal surface stood between me and
unconsciousness. But my little one, especially, wanted to talk. About trucks. (Inspired
by our reading, of course.) He thanked God for them (ALL of them, by name, each
and every one), asked which was my favorite, and wondered how much each one could
lift or carry. Remember that cool one we saw today? He’ll drive that when he
gets big. How much longer ’til he’s big? Don’t forget about that new one he
wants for his birthday. He needs to remind Grandpa he wants the yellow one not
the red one. One is broken; Daddy will need to fix it. He needs another loader
for a job he has tomorrow; he’s working overtime on a big project. Can we buy a
new loader? Aren’t crane trucks super awesome? . . . And on, and on . . .
One
night, after I’d fallen asleep in his bed and, hours later, stumbled across the
hall into my own, I received a gift: It occurred to me that what we needed was
a truck book melded with a goodnight book. The idea for Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site hit me like a fastball
(title and all), and I got a total adrenaline rush pondering it.
SO: I wrote it, I sent it,
I signed a contract—and it sold. And sold BIG. (Really big.) Like, #1 New York Times bestseller big.
Now
it’s 2013. It’s hard to express how much has changed. I visit schools to talk
about my books and my life.
Teachers
give me introductions that I’m sure must be meant for someone else. Little
girls hug me on their way out, and little boys ask for my autograph and high fives.
Kids make me thank-you cards out of construction paper and color pictures for
me to take home and hang on my fridge.
AND,
I get paid. Seriously: How can you beat that?
I
see my name on bestseller lists with amazing, talented, legendary writers. No
one has yet realized that I’ve infiltrated their group without credentials, so
I’ll be acting like I belong (and excitedly e-mailing the lists to my dad)
until I’m caught and exposed as a fraud.
I’m
signing books NEXT TO LOIS EHLERT, author of the famous and fabulous Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (which, btw, was
the first baby thing I bought when I found out I was pregnant). Okay, I’m sure
she still has no idea who the heck I am, but that’s not the point.
I
email one of my idols, Judy Schachner
(writer/illustrator of the FAB SkippyJon Jones), AND SHE EMAILS ME BACK. Really — I kid you not.
Taye
Diggs tweets that he and his son love my book (insert teenage-girl shriek here)!
A
friend of my mother-in-law calls to tell her that she has just seen my book
mentioned by an actress in an article in Good
Housekeeping which creates quite the commotion, and elevates me to a B-level
big shot among the suburban grandmother crowd.
Envision
giant pain-in-the-ass client, the one that makes your stomach sink just seeing
their name appear in your inbox: “Hi, Celia, thank you so much for your
interest in utilizing my design service for your project, but I’ve been rapidly
phasing out my graphic design business in order to focus more on my
books/writing/appearances.”—And, in case you were wondering, it feels JUST AS
FABULOUS to hit that “send” button as I always dreamed it would! Goodbye,
Sunday Night Dreads!
My best friend calls to
tell me that my book is a question on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.” I’m pop
culture?
A few splurges: an Hermes scarf . . . or two . . . or three (But, hey, still eBay
. . . I’m still me.) an adorable (and arguably functional) little Louis Vuitton
bag (again, eBay); afternoon tea with (surprise!) an overnight stay at the Ritz
with my husband, both boys and both grandmas, including an amazing view, room
service EVERYTHING, and my little guy’s first sighting of a bidet. (Which he
now thinks is a household essential, and he cannot believe we will not get one.)
I’m
heading out on a national promotional tour for my second book, Steam Train, Dream Train. (I just like
to say that because I think it sounds cool.) This time, the creative process
was far more collaborative between Tom and me, and I offered feedback on the
sketches, as he did on the verse. And, beneath my calm façade, there are
moments when I hear myself internally gush: “Tom Lichtenheld’s actually asking
my opinion!”
I
still clean the house and pick up socks. I still spend half my life in a car
driving the boys everywhere. I still help with homework, fret over what we’re
having for dinner and make the calls that go, “Doctor, I need to bring him in.
This rash does NOT look good.” We still laugh and cuddle past our bedtime, but it’s
no longer because I haven’t seen them all day.
I haven’t lost sight of the
fact that I’ve been amazingly blessed. I’m grateful every day for my wonderful family
and an incredible new career. I’m just stunned and thrilled beyond belief to be
standing here, and the only thing I know for sure is this: I can’t wait for the
next chapter.
Escaping a vicious arranged marriage, learning your dad is Saint Mortain (the God of Death), training as an assassin at a mysterious convent, AND falling in love--what could be better than Grave Mercy, the first book in Robin LaFevers trilogy? How about an exclusive lost chapter, a prequel of sorts, to book two.
Sequels are tough: if I love a first book I look forward to the second with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. Maybe it will be even better than the first...but what if it totally sucks? In this case, Dark Triumph, the sequel to Grave Mercy, is the former not the latter, and made our Best YA Books of April list. Book two tells Sybella's (another of Saint Mortain's assassins who we meet in book one) story and trades the political for the personal. Revenge, murder, passion, history--it's all here. And now we are left waiting another year(!) for the last book...boo.
LaFevers is a kind soul and took pity on us (or didn't want to hear us asking--okay, whining--for the next book over the next 365 days) so she agreed to throw us a bone and write a special 'lost chapter' from Dark Triumph to share with our Omni readers. Here is a brief introduction from the author and a little taste of the chapter--the rest is after the jump. You can also check out the whole chapter in PDF form here .
From Robin LaFevers:
There has always been a lot of
mystery surrounding the character Sybella ever since she first showed up on the
pages of Grave Mercy. She was so guarded and secretive that it even took
me a while to get to know her.
In order to understand Sybella
well enough to tell her story, I had to go back to the beginning and see her
arrive at the convent where she trained to be an assassin. I had to see what
sort of pain and baggage she brought with her, even though I knew there would
be no place for it in the finished book.
This ‘lost chapter’ from Dark
Triumph is Sybella’s introduction to the convent, a much more rough and
tumultuous beginning than Ismae experienced in Grave Mercy...
When the cart stops moving, I open
my eyes and see the boat; suddenly, I know exactly what is happening. The hedge
priest has tricked Old Nonne and is not taking me to safety as he promised.
Instead, he has delivered me to one of the night rowers, one of the desolate,
bound sailors who must carry away the forsaken souls whom God and the church
have deemed unworthy.
“No!” I scream,
certain there has been a mistake. It is my father who has committed evil, not
I. My mind is sluggish and thick, like a heavy fog, and those memories
disappear beneath the weight of it. But I am certain I do not want to get in
that boat and be ferried across the Passage de L’Enfer to where I will have to
reside in hell.
I throw off the
heavy weight of the blankets that hold me down, and sit up. The world tilts
alarmingly and my stomach heaves, trying to cast out whatever potion they have
been pouring down my throat. Even so, I lurch to my feet, but before I can
climb out of the cart the hedge priest and the sailor are there. With callused
hands they hold me still and try to soothe me with their deep, clumsy voices.
“It’s no use,” the old sailor grumbles at last. “We’ll have to tie her up or
she’ll tip us all over.”
The hedge priest
gives a curt nod, and as if by sorcery the sailor produces rough hempen ropes, which
he uses to bind my wrists and feet. I thrash and call for help. “Hush her,
before she calls every busybody around.”
Mumbling an
apology, the hedge priest places a scrap of filthy cloth in my mouth and binds
it around the lower half of my face. I panic, not able to draw a full breath.
The entire world tilts dizzily as the sailor takes my feet and the hedge priest
my shoulders and I am lifted into the boat. They place me on the damp wooden hull,
where the smell of salt and old fish fills my senses. I fear I will gag, and if
so I will surely suffocate. I concentrate all my will on trying to calm myself
and think.
I feel a gliding
motion as the boat slips out from between jagged rocks and into the dark blue
water. We move soundlessly through the waves, as if Death Himself has silenced
our movements so none will know of our passage.
My heart thuds
against the wooden hull under my breast and I twist and flex my hands until my
wrists are raw, but the cords hold tight. After a while, my heart calms
somewhat, matching itself to the steady sounds of the slap of the water and the
creak of the oars.
A while later—I
have no idea if it is moments or hours—there is a crunch followed by a jarring
sensation as the boat runs up against a rocky shore. A voice calls out—a
woman’s voice, for of course, as the priests have warned us all, hell is filled
with women. “What have you brought us, Father Guillame?”
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