Theodora Goss

This weekend was Boskone. Have I mentioned that? I don’t remember what I’ve said here anymore. I’ve been so very, very busy, and at this point I’m completely exhausted. I can barely type. But I did want to post two things today, and then in the next week I’ll start trying to catch up.

First, The Thorn and the Blossom received a wonderful review from Publishers Weekly:

The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story
Theodora Goss. Quirk, $16.95 (82p) ISBN 978-1-59474-551-5

Evelyn Morgan is a university student struggling to lead her own life despite others’ expectations; Brendan Thorne’s troubles begin when he loses his wife to heart failure and subsequently quits his job. A chance meeting leads to their falling in love around the centerpiece of a medieval Cornish version of the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and from then on their lives and relationship seem to be a modern-day parallel of the frustrated romance between Gawan and his beloved, Elowen. But Goss (In the Forest of Forgetting) presents no ordinary linear tale: the reader is treated to both characters’ stories in parallel on alternate sides of an accordion-style book, letting the reader decide which story to begin with. The fantasy elements are light, revolving mostly around Gawan’s story and Evelyn’s visions of fairies and trolls. Overall this makes the tale align more with old-fashioned romance than pure speculative fiction, but Goss’ appealing characters and modern magic atmosphere will continue to attract a following. Illus.

And second, the reading I did from The Thorn and the Blossom at Boskone was taped! The videos are available on YouTube, but you can see them below. Reading with me is my wonderful editor, Stephen Segal, who actually came up with the idea for the physical format of the book. (I came up with the idea for the story, of course.) The first video is the reading itself, and the second video is a Q&A session we had afterward. I hope you like!

I’ll get back to blogging regularly soon. Probably some time next week, once I’ve recovered a bit. It’s been exhausting, but there’s a good reading why I’m doing all the work I’m doing. I’ll talk about it, eventually . . .

Honestly, I’m not sure how I’m going to make it through the next two weeks. I’ve been given a project to complete, on top of everything else I’m doing right now, and in order to complete it on time, I’m working whenever I can – until late into the night. I’m getting four or five hours of sleep a night, which is not good for me.

So for the next two weeks I’m going to be posting sporadically, and my posts may not be all that interesting. I apologize in advance . . .

Today, I’m going to post about something that came out online just today: my slideshow on the top ten fantasy love stories for Huffington Post. Here’s the introduction:

When you’re in love, it feels as though you’re living in a fairy tale. The prince or princess of your dreams has chosen you, and you’re going to spend the rest of your lives together, happily ever after, in a castle on a hill with singing furniture and animals that do all the cleaning. Right?

Of course, real life never works out that way (show me a mouse that does dishes, for example). But fantasy does tell us some important underlying truths about the experience of being in love. There’s a reason that romance has always had a fantasy element. (Think of Odysseus falling in love with the sorceress Circe, who turned his men into swine, or Oberon and Titania deciding the fates of lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Mr. Rochester asking Jane Eyre if she is one of the fairies). Romance is a sort of magic: it changes our perception of the world, making us believe that we’ve found the person we are meant to be with, that the two of us are truly one. It can fill us with an ecstatic sense of joy and make us feel as though the furniture could sing – if we just listened closely enough. But fantasy also shows us some darker truths about love. The modern popularity of paranormal romance has its roots in fairy tales about women marrying bears, and bulls, and other beasts, which reveal that the one we love is not, in fact, a version of ourselves, but another being – one we can never know completely. Love can overcome those differences, but they are still differences. Fairy tales also reveal that love is difficult: sometimes you have to climb a glass mountain in iron shoes or confront a bloodthirsty ogress. I think some of the truest and most important stories about love are fantasy stories, which show us both love’s power and its complexity.

Here are my choices for the top 10 fantasy love stories, both ancient and modern. Fair warning: none of them involves sparkly vampires!

I’m going to give you my top ten here, but in order to read why I’ve selected them, you’ll have to go over to the Huffington Post slideshow! So, without further ado, the top ten! (In my mind, I ranked them 10 to 1, but the slideshow allows you to rank them yourself.)

10. The Myth of Eros and Psyche
9. Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire in The Time Traveler’s Wife
8. Richard St. Vier and Alec Campion in Swordspoint
7. The Ballad of Tam Lin and Janet
6. Tristran and Yvaine in Stardust
5. Morgon and Raederle in The Riddle-Master Trilogy
4. The Legend of Tristan and Iseult
3. Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings
2. The Fairy Tale of Beauty and the Beast
1. Westley and Buttercup in The Princess Bride

Do you agree with my choices? Disagree? I’m interested in finding out . . .

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I know, this is the way I always start nowadays: I’m very tired! But this has been a particularly tiring week.

I had a wonderful time at the reading on Tuesday night, and then a wonderful time meeting people at the Concord Bookshop today, and I’m going to post pictures. I’m also going to link to some of my favorite reviews of The Thorn and the Blossom.

But maybe tomorrow night. Tonight I’m too tired, and so I’m going to write about an issue that was raised on Tuesday night. An audience member asked me, how do you handle reviews? Because whenever you write a book, there will be positive reviews, and there will be negative ones. And as I told him, I don’t think writers ever develop thicker skins. We can’t. We have thinner skins than most people, and I think we need to be that way: it’s what gives us the sensitivity to write, to create art.

So how do you handle reviews? Well, I read mine. Even the negative ones, partly because I find that I learn from them. When they’re done well, they’re like getting feedback from a critique partner. The good negative ones, I appreciate. And then there are the ones that say “This just wasn’t my sort of thing” or “The book was stupid.” Those I can’t really learn from. (Make my next book not stupid. Got it.) Those are also the ones you need to put into perspective.

How, you ask. (Even if you didn’t just ask that, you did. Trust me.) Here’s what I do.

1. Go to Goodreads.
2. Look up James Joyce.
3. Read his one-star reviews.

Did you know that Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has (as of today) 2423 one-star reviews? This is JAMES FREAKING JOYCE. If he’s going to get that many one-star reviews, I don’t think I’m going to worry about mine.

Here’s what some of those one-star reviews say:

This book is a very dry, written version of the Dead Poet’s Society without Robin Williams.

I almost felt as though I was reading something written by someone with a severe case of ADHD, with an inability to focus on any central point for more than a moment.

The only reason I am giving it 1 star is because I didn’t want anyone to think that I just forgot to rate it.

This review is based on a partial reading of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man because I really couldn’t force myself to read more than the first 25 pages (and page 99, to see if it had improved).

He may be the master of moderist lit and stream of conscious narration, but every time I try to have a Joyce appreciation moment, I flash back to an ex boyfriend who would call me at 4 a.m. to sigh into the phone for an hour before finally offering, “I feel abstract.”

This was much more enjoyable than Ulysses, which is saying almost nothing.

There was no climax and that also bothered me.

I found it extremely difficult to get through (and this is coming from someone who read Atlas Shrugged in a week) and filled with the sort of run-on sentences that make children grow up to hate reading.

I read the beginning and chose to stop. I would rather read Vogon poetry, or stab myself repeatedly with a fork, than read Joyce.

That’s probably enough, right? (I actually cleaned up some of the punctuation.) After all, you can go read them yourself. I should be clear and say that while I don’t like everything James Joyce wrote equally, I do consider him a genius and one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. And a man capable of exquisite prose. For example, here is the final paragraph of “The Dead”:

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

The final sentence makes me shiver.

I’m not going to comment on those comments (and my opinion of Atlas Shrugged is unprintable), but I think they’ll help you put reviews into perspective. Because we’re talking about JAMES FREAKING JOYCE and some people aren’t going to like him because they’re looking for a climax.

As for ratings, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has a 3.54, which is lower than Twilight, which has a 3.67. I’m not even going to comment on that one. But this is possibly worse: it’s rated lower then Stephen Hero, which has a 3.64. Now that’s just stupid, but it’s also predictable because the people who read Stephen Hero are already Joyce fans, while Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is read by most high school students. If only your fans read you, your ratings will be higher.

Lev Grossman wrote an interesting article on ratings and reviews that I will discuss tomorrow. But I hope today’s brief discussion of ratings and reviews has been helpful. Remember, I read my reviews, even the negative ones, and try to learn from them. But you can’t take them entirely seriously.

I’m so tired! Honestly, if I didn’t have a reading tomorrow, I’m not sure I would even try to write a blog post tonight. But I do have a reading, and then a signing later this week. (You can imagine that for an introvert, it’s these public events that are so difficult. They make me want to find a cabin in the woods and just write. But when I do them, I do end up enjoying them, partly because I genuinely like meeting people. And I think it’s good for me to do things that are difficult.)

So, here are the events.

The reading is tomorrow night, Tuesday the 7th at 7:00 p.m., at the Boston University Barnes and Noble in Kenmore Square. There is more information on the event on the Quirk Books website, as well as a Facebook page for the event.

And then, on Thursday, I’m going to be at the Concord Bookshop in Concord, Massachusetts, from 2:00-3:00. I’ll be signing books and just generally hanging out, so come talk to me! The Concord Bookshop has an event page for the signing.

So there you have it, my two events for the week.

It’s late and I don’t have time to write more tonight, so I’ll leave you with a sanctuary. (Sanctuaries are places you can go when the world seems too much with you. Some sanctuaries are physical, some are mental. This one is mental.)

It’s the song “The Bonny Swans” by Loreena McKennitt:

I’m looking forward to both the reading and signing, but this is going to be a long week. And to be honest, I’ll be glad when it’s over.

Today I’m feeling a little envious.

Several days ago, I read a lovely interview with Margo Lanagan, the Australian writer. In it, she talked about her writing day. I’m always fascinated by accounts of how other writers do their work. If you’re a writer, go read it. Here’s a description of how she starts her day:

“Get up as early as possible and, before I’m awake enough to attack myself with criticisms, start writing (I write the first draft of everything longhand, in biro on lined bank-weight paper). If I can get in a couple of hours before breakfast, that sets me up for a productive rest-of-the-day.

“Breakfast, then head off to my rented Writing Room, two blocks from my house. Install myself there, immerse myself again. I still aim for ten pages a day – I’m not allowed to beat myself up about it if I don’t make the count, but I do have to try. I’ve found that if I’m on a roll and write substantially more than ten pages, I’m in fact stealing words (and likely slightly sloppy words) from the next day.

“Sometimes the ten pages are done by 11 a.m., sometimes it takes a full 8 hours to get them. Whatever’s happening, don’t let anxiety leak into the process. Keep it as enjoyable and hopeful as possible. Writing snacks: raw carrots, Vita-Weats, anything crunchy – but low fat (don’t want to get sleepy!) – I literally chew my way through plot glitches. If I can, stop writing at a point in a scene where something interesting’s about to happen, to make it easy to start again next day.

“Walk away from it and do unrelated things. Exercise is the best; rinse out my brain with oxygen. Put the book out of mind until just before going to sleep, then just gently prod at the scene I’m going to tackle in the morning, get it ready to take up on waking.”

Doesn’t that sound nice? It does to me. But of course, I was comparing it to what I was doing that day, which went something like this. I wake up at 7 a.m., get dressed, commute for forty minutes to the university, sit in my office and prepare for class, teach four classes in a row, sit in my office and hold office hours, commute back for forty minutes, pick my daughter up from school, and make dinner. Then, I sit in front of my computer and do whatever I need to – often, answer emails, type up a blog entry, do any writing work I need to (by which I don’t mean writing – right now I have an interview, a guest blog post, and an afterword to write, which I need to get done sometime this weekend). If I have any time afterward, I may try to write something, but honestly, lately I’ve just been too tired. Not every day is like that: I don’t teach on Tuesdays or Thursdays, so those are days to catch up on marking papers, but they will also soon be the days I schedule mandatory conferences with students.

It’s kind of a miracle that I get writing done at all.

When I was reading the interview, I also envied Margo’s writing room in an old Victorian house. I have a writing space of course, but it’s in a corner, and I can usually hear whatever else is going on in the house. And it’s also where I prepare for teaching. Before I go on to what I think of all this, I’m just going to say that Margo is a wonderful writer and has a book coming out, which I’m going to read as soon as it’s available. Here it is:

It’s all about selkies, and I love selkie stories. So I’m really looking forward to it. I’m very glad that Margo has a lovely office and the time to write books for me to read!

But her interview also made me think about my own life and the way it’s organized. I don’t like envying other people. For one thing, there’s something unworthy about it. If I want something that someone else has, I should figure out how to get it for myself, rather than envying that person. What will envy get me? (A blog post, evidently.)

What I envy, of course, is time and space, and there are many writers who have that. (Yes, I envy them as well. And I know perfectly well that, although they have more time and space than I do, they also have to do the same writing work, and often freelance work as well.) So how can I get that time and space? Those are the questions I’m thinking about right now. I don’t have answers for them yet, but at least they’re on the agenda.

Today, I did two things that made me happy. I went to one of my favorite antiques stores and bought a small sewing cabinet, sort of like a table with drawers. It’s old and elegant and mahogany, and I’m going to use it as a jewelry chest. And I bought two scarves. I don’t know why scarves always make me feel elegant: perhaps because they’re not utilitarian. I do have a sense, finally, of who I am and where I want to go. I just don’t see, yet, how to get there. But it will happen.

I’m so tired! I’ve been working all day, and will probably be working late into the night. There are a couple of things I want to post. First, there’s a lovely review of The Thorn and the Blossom up at A Word’s Worth:

This is a book unlike any I’ve read before: it’s literally a two-sided story. Pick it up, think it’s like any normal book. Then you realize: it’s accordion-folded. Read through one perspective, then turn the book over, and start reading again – from the other perspective. If it sounds a little odd, don’t worry: once you have it in your hand, it makes a lot more sense. And you will probably be a little in awe, if you are anything like me. So much for the book format, but what about the story? Well it’s pretty much as amazing as the format. Have you ever read a book, told from one character’s perspective, and wondered what the other was thinking? Especially when it’s a love story? Theodora has given us a chance to see the same story play out from two wholly different points of view: Evelyn’s and Brendan’s. I read Evelyn’s story first, and found myself emotionally invested fairy quickly – I devoured her story. When it ended, I almost got really sad: it was over! And then I remembered I still needed to flip the book and read Brendan’s side of things. Happiness! And wow – what an experience.

If you click on the review, you’ll see that there’s also an interview with me, and a giveaway! So if you want to win a copy of the book, go enter . . .

Second, I’ve been so tired recently, and working so hard, that I’ve felt the need to retreat, to find a sort of refuge. But of course I don’t have an actual physical refuge, so instead I’ve been looking at pictures. Like these, from Domythic Bliss:

Third and finally, I’m going to include a song that’s been going through my head over and over again, I’m not sure why. But here it is, “Winter Song” by Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know what I’m doing. You know that this is a sort of spell, that I’m summoning something to me. I don’t know what, exactly. But that’s what these words and images and music are. They’re a way of saying, dear universe, you know that I’m tired, and that I need something. And you’re usually better at giving me what I need than I am at knowing what it is. So I’m asking: whatever it is, just go ahead and send it my way. All right?

I’m so tired tonight! So I’m going to include some links, and then I’m going to mention a few things I’ve been learning recently about publicity.  This won’t be a long post. Here are the links.

First, I was featured in an article in the Boston Herald today: “‘Potter,’ ‘Twilight’ Feed Generation’s ‘Hunger’ for Fantasy Lit.” The online version includes a picture of me, and the print version also includes a picture of The Thorn and the Blossom. Here’s part of what I say in the article:

“When I was growing up there was a fantasy section of the bookstore and a literature section. Now mainstream literature and fantasy are coming together,” said Theodora Goss, 43, a 2008 World Fantasy Award winner and Boston University writing program lecturer.

The Lexington resident’s recently released novella The Thorn and the Blossom, a romance following star-crossed university students, blends Arthurian legend, fantastical elements and the modern age.

“I think that there’s a deep and sentimental reason why we are reading more fantasy and why it is coming into the mainstream. More and more we are living in a fantastical world,” Goss said.

For the rest of what I said, go read the article!

Also, several lovely reviews have appeared recently.

Sofia Samatar: Goss is a writer’s writer; her characters are often artists, or people who are trying to become artists, or who wish they could be artists. The Thorn and the Blossom is, as its description advertises, a love story, but it’s also a work story. It’s about people finding the great passion that will make them happy, and for the lovers Brendan and Evelyn, that’s passion not just for each other, but for meaningful work. For enchanting work. They seek out enchantment like knights in the Forest Sauvage, and we want them to find it. [ . . . ] There’s no extra ornamentation on The Thorn and the Blossom, which may take some getting used to for readers who reveled in the more baroque language of Goss’s electrifying collection, In the Forest of Forgetting. But I feel that in this book, once again, Goss writes her process through her characters. Brendan and Evelyn seek the right literary form to express the magic they’ve experienced, and they both write unexpected things as a result. As for Theodora Goss, she’s left the weirder and creepier aspects of her work behind to write a curl-up-on-a-winter’s-day love story in The Thorn and the Blossom.

(Full disclosure: Sofia is a friend of mine, and a writer herself, as you can probably tell from her review. You can also probably tell why I love this review so much: it’s always amazing when someone totally gets what you were going for.)

Oodles of Books: This book was short and sweet, just like it sounds. The unique format is what intrigued me at first, and since I like anything with a love story, I was really looking forward to see what this would be like. Like mentioned, this is a two-sided love story which I thought was great because we got both sides of the story. How often does that happen? [ . . . ] I definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a short fairytale to quickly dive into.

Cheap Black Pens: The novel is a quick read, but it’s quite sweet and clever. The book is written with the perspectives of two star-crossed lovers who bond over an Arthurian legend, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Shared dialogue is obviously the same, but it’s great to read how Evelyn and Brendan have similar thoughts about situations. [ . . . ] I’m choosing this as my guilty pleasure read.

And finally, and I think this is really special, the book is featured in the New York Public Library gift shop as a Valentine’s Day gift book! It’s actually the only book included among the Valentine’s Day items. Honestly, it’s an honor to have the book chosen in that way by one of the greatest public libraries in the country. (I could say the greatest, but I have to show loyalty to the Boston Public Library, where I did some of my most important dissertation research!)

I was recently asked about how to work on publicity by a new writer, and I do have some thoughts on that. I’ll be writing about it over the next week or so, as I publicize my own book. Tonight, I’ll just share a few observations.

First, publicity is crucial. It’s not about telling people how wonderful you are, or your book is. It’s about telling people that your book exists. You have to actually get the word out.

You should already have done all the easy things. If you’ve published anything at all, you should have an Amazon author page, and you know what? You should also have an Amazon UK author page. Yes, you have to create those pages separately! Here’s my Amazon author page, and here’s my Amazon UK author page. As far as I can tell, you can’t yet create an Amazon CA author page. But remember that we’re living in an international marketplace. Your book will probably be available anywhere English is spoken (and many places it won’t).

You should also have author pages on Goodreads and LibraryThing. Here is my Goodreads author page and my LibraryThing author page. The one on LibraryThing isn’t very developed yet. I’m still trying to figure out LibraryThing, to be honest. It doesn’t feel quite as intuitive as the others. At some point I should probably join Shelfari as well. Of these three, Goodreads feels the most important to me, because so many people use it. But each of them has a different function.

The point of all this is simply to be present where people buy and talk about books. It’s not even to publicize anything in particular, but to have a presence. And then, when you do want to publicize something, you have a place to do so. Notice that I have a reading coming up at the Boston University Barnes and Noble on February 7th, at 7:00 p.m. I’ve already posted it on Facebook and Goodreads, and tweeted about it. But I had all those venues set up long before I ever had a reading planned.

I’ll write more about this tomorrow. Tonight, I still have work to do. And yes, it’s publicity.