2014 Top Ten!

So everybody's doing Top Ten Whatevers. Here are ten things.
Also I have the flu and this is Day 18 and I have consumed A LOT of cold medicine and pain medicine and ice cream and pistachios.

2014 TOP TEN

10

This buffalo. You want to get on it now. Too bad. None of us are getting on it.

9

This amazeballs diving suit.

WTF is wrong with me in this picture.
It's like I'm dying but also enjoying getting abducted by aliens.

8

That time I thought there were going to be dinosaurs and it was a Park & Ride.

LIES.

7A

Two cats in a hamper.

7B

This sexy other cat.

6

This pumpkin my uncle carved to look like one of the Despicable Me minions.

5

These hellbeasts.

4

This hot guy at Pizza Hut.

3

TIE between this rubber frog with one eye and this lovely Easter bonnet.

2

The Dragon Wagon.

1

This hole that I had to climb into. SPOILER: Spiders.

Happy New Year, Internearthlings!

See you on the flip side!

Of this year!

WIP Character Blog Hop! Read All About It!

Hey, Internearthlings. I've been tagged in a blog hop. It's like being tagged in a game of Freeze Tag except instead of answering seven questions about character, you freeze. Wait, that might be wrong. (OK, maybe just to be safe, after you read this post you should freeze until someone untags you.)

I was tagged by Kurt D. Springs. His impressive deets are as follows:

Kurt D. Springs is presently an adjunct professor of anthropology and archaeology in New Hampshire. He holds a PhD. in anthropology from the State University of New York at Buffalo, as well as a Master of Literature in archaeology from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a Master of Liberal Arts in anthropology and archaeology from the Harvard University Extension School. His main area of interest is megalithic landscapes in prehistoric Ireland.

Kurt writes reviews on Kurt's Frontier for Invincible Love of Reading. He also has an author blog, Amazon Author Page, and is on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Goodreads, and LinkedIn. Price of Vengeance has its own Facebook page as well.

Professor Springs currently lives in Manchester, New Hampshire.

I did not go to Harvard. But this one time I was in a small chorus singing a gala for mucky-mucks and I was chatting with the woman next to me and she was super nice and funny. It happened that Henry Kissinger was there and I asked my new friend if she knew the Henry Kissinger song (she did not) and I was kind of singing it for her amusement. Then she's like, "So what do you do?" and I'm like, "I'm unemployed. How about you?" and she says, "I'm the Grand Inquisitor* at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard." And my first thought was, "Then how do you not know the Henry Kissinger song?" but then my second thought was, "I am the biggest ass ever."

*My memory may be failing me here. Or not.

Anyway, thanks to Kurt for tossing me the ball! Here's some new info on my upcoming novel, Redwing.

Please note: I don't have any more images for this post, so I'm just going to stick in random ones from my computer. If you don't say anything, maybe no one will notice.

What is the name of your character? Is she a fictional or historic person?

The protag of Redwing is nameless, although the few people who know of her existence call her by what she is, Redwing. I certainly hope she's fictional, and you should too.

When and where is the story set?

The where is a city of hissing pipes, curving temples, boiling water, and birds of burden, all perched on the side of Mol, the great volcano. The when is just before the Deep Dark, one sunless year out of every thousand.

What should we know about her?

It's a bit inconceivable that she exists, and she's certainly not supposed to be alive. Those who believe in redwings know they must be drowned as infants. The problem in real life, as Redwing's father found out, is that they just look so much like real babies.

What is the main conflict? What messes up her life?

The approaching Deep Dark stirs memories of the previous year of night, when an ugly battle shaped the country for the next thousand years. Old grudges have been simmering, plans whispered in secret places. The unique characteristics of a redwing may, in fact, be necessary to prevent the fiery death of Mol's peaceful city. Or maybe redwings, as many people believe, exist only in mythology.

What is the personal goal of the character?

Amid her countrymen's conflicting purposes and beliefs, between myth and history, Redwing must discover -- or establish -- her own identity. And, you know, prevent large-scale lava death if at all possible.

Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

The working title is Redwing, and there's a tiny excerpt on my website.

When can we expect the book to be published?

I never expect anything to be published -- I just know I will screw it up somehow, like by accidentally burning down the warehouse -- but the plan right now is for Redwing to come out in 2015 from my phenomenally awesome publisher, St. Martin's Press.

Who are you tagging?

I'm throwing the ball to the following amazeballs writers:

Stephen Bramucci, writer of travel, adventure and food, will be guest-posting at Quirk & Quill. Ronald Zupan and the Pirates of Borneo! (Bloomsbury) is coming in 2016!

Lisa Doan, author of the middle grade adventure series The Berenson Schemes (Darby Creek Publishing) and one of the funniest people I know. Visit her blog here.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann, author of Rogue (Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin) and Gringolandia (Northwestern University Press), and LEGO book launcher extraordinaire! (Don't know what a LEGO book launch is? Check out some of Lyn's work here!) Visit her blog here.

Even SSS got the LEGO treatment!

Blog Tour: The Writing Process

Greetings, Internearthlings. I just made that word up. It's a combination of "Internet" and "earthlings."

(THINGS ACCOMPLISHED TODAY: 1)

So this post is part of The Writing Process Blog Tour, which you know if you read the title. And if you didn't, you can go read it now before you either proceed to the next paragraph or lose interest and wander over to YouTube hoping to find something more glorious than John Houseman hawking Puritan Oil. SPOILER: YOU WON'T. [UPDATE: The YouTube video is gone. What are you afraid of, YouTube? John Houseman and his healthful oil will not be silenced! I found them here!]

The Writing Process Blog Tour is a Blog Tour in which Writers discuss The Writing Process. You get tagged by a writer and you then tag another writer, and soon we will all know about The Writing Process of every writer on Internearth.

I was tagged by: 

Alicia Potter! Alicia's newest picture book, Jubilee! One Man's Big, Bold, and Very, Very Loud Celebration of Peace, illustrated by Matt Tavares, just came out from Candlewick Press and Publishers Weekly couldn't wait to throw a star at it because it is that fabulous. You can check out Alicia's other books here. And then you should buy them all because her books are amazeballs, and I don't pull out "amazeballs" very often.

image

THINGS ACCOMPLISHED TODAY: 2

There are four questions that are part of The Writing Process Blog Tour. Here they are.

What am I currently working on?
My next novel from St. Martin's Press! It's a kinda steampunky, kinda mythological fantasy called Redwing and it contains boiling water, ash, and extra-big ostriches. UPDATE: I have decided that its new title is Extra-Big Ostriches.

I also have a new cat, so I'm working on smoothing inter-cat relations in the context of a small studio apartment. The transition is taking lots of patience and love, but I'm happy to say all three cats are starting to become snuggle friends. Haha, I'm just kidding. It's Catpocalypse and we're all going to die.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Um. Well, I hop genres quite a bit, but in terms of this book that's just come out, which I'll refer to as SSS (pronounced "Sssssssss . . . "), I think I've got a bit of a different take on music in fantasy. I feel like when music has a biggish role in a fantasy/magical realism novel, there's often a literal magic associated with it.

art by danbrenus

Yes, Google images of "music and magic" . . . this exactly.

But in SSS, which takes place at a music conservatory, there isn't any actual magic associated with the music itself. It's all in other places, like the homicidal space cat.

Laurie's cat

My novel totally has one of these.

Why do I write what I write?
People who read this blog (you should probably mentally put at least two of those words in quotes) might suspect that my novels are full of shenanigans, but they actually have, like, feelings and stuff in them. And sometimes violence and gore. A relative of mine came to a reading last week, which was very nice of her, but didn't buy the book, which is totally fine. In fact, I didn't even notice she didn't buy the book, but she found my boyfriend at work the next day and she and her husband made a point of telling him they didn't buy the book because of "all the violence," and then they were like, "That's what's ruining the young people today and we just won't support that." So I guess I write what I write in order to ruin the young people.

How does my individual writing process work?
I'm very linear. I start with one sentence that turns into one paragraph that (usually) turns into one scene. That's the basis for the rest of the story, and it's usually the first scene. Then I write until I get to the end.

I have to write each sentence in order, and I revise compulsively as I go. So it has happened that I've stared at my laptop for literally like three hours trying to write one sentence, even though I should have been able to skip that sentence and write stuff after it.

This came up in my search for "stare," to illustrate me staring at my laptop for hours.
And, you know . . .  it's not wrong.

Sometimes it takes me a very long time to get to the end.

But at that point I have a thing that has a beginning, middle, and end, and that's when I can figure out how everything should fit together. Or if it fits together. It's really sad when it doesn't.

This is me in sad airplane form.

Who's Next: I'm tagging Erin E. Moulton! Her newest novel, Chasing the Milky Way, comes out in June. Erin is a fellow graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she likes raspberries and hound dogs, and she has published two other heartfelt novels -- Flutter and Tracing Stars --  and if I tell you one more awesome thing about her you will probably lose your mind. OK, she lives in New Hampshire, the greatest state evah!

image

It looks like this literally everywhere and all the time here.

We're not even allowed to have houses because we don't want to mess up our rainbow trees.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

Holy cats, internet friends, I am now Officially Official on the MacMillan/St. Martin's Press site. No, really, look here.

Mindset has quickly gone from Woo-hoo! to PANIC! PANIC!

Like, what if people click the Officially Official links to find out what I'm like? And what if they then find out what I'm like?

This is literally the only thing I accomplished yesterday.

OK, OK. Here are some reasons why I am a Grown-Up, Professional person worthy of Note and not a pajama-clad cat whisperer worthy of scorn and contempt.

Exhibit A:

This recent holiday post over at EMUs Debuts, in which I discuss FREAKING ULYSSES. That's right. Me and Joyce's great modern novel, wobbling brains in unison. So scholarly.

You'll note I had to do extensive Wikipedia research in order to know what to put in the yellow box.

Exhibit B:

I have recently begun participating in blog interviews to promote my upcoming novel. I have answered questions in a measured and professional manner, and not one interview contains the phrase, "Mass Effect 3."

Come say hi! Because srsly, it makes me feel like rainbows and glitter ponies and marshmallow gumdrop potatoes when people leave comments. Even if the comment is, "You suck." Well, maybe not then. Unless there was, like, a funny picture with it or something. Like a glitter marshmallow pony wearing a t-shirt that says, "You suck." That would be okay, I guess.

Click below to see my rad interviews:

YA Reads -- 2014 Debut Author Intros

The Compulsive Reader -- Looking Ahead

OneFour KidLit -- Adi Rule: STRANGE SWEET SONG (Sh*t, this one totally mentions Mass Effect 3.)

Exhibit C:

I have a website! With pages and information and a contact form and pictures and a book trailer!

Exhibit D:

There is no longer an army of tiny spiders living in my bathroom. There are only a handful of very large spiders.

You Are Never Safe

So the contract is signed, the editorial letter has been received, and it's saaamoooooth sailin' from here on out.

WRONG.

You may recognize the creature with the menacing yellow eyes as a cat. You may also recognize the object upon which she is perched as a bathtub, complete with bath water and foot belonging to me.

This is my life now, both literally -- as I am actually taking a bath with a cat standing on the edge of the tub -- and figuratively, as my literal situation is also a metaphor for the insecurity of my writing life as a whole.

Image

This is literally the best "thumbs up" picture on the entire Internet.

For those of you unfamiliar with cats and/or bathtubs, Manic Thumbs-Up Guy will provide a helpful tutorial:

Image

Image

Image

Image/Image

No one wants a cat in a bathtub. Cat + Bathtub = Instant Bloody Razor Agony Death. But cats don't realize this until the instant they are ripping your face off in a frenzied, homicidal attempt to escape the water they just jumped into.

Getting a book deal is a little like a nice warm bath, flowery soaps, all the pencil puzzles and/or Miss Marples you could desire . . . and a cat sitting on the edge.

Because at any moment, for no reason, it could all go horribly, horribly wrong.

If you would like to read about my editor jumping into the bathtub with me, head on over to EMUs Debuts.

THIS IS WHY VIGILANTE JUSTICE IS A THING

This week, an online friend of mine exacted vigilante justice on a stranger who threw eggs at him from a moving vehicle. While it is not my story to tell, let's just say it ended with a punch in the face.

Today, I also felt vigilante anger.

As you know, I lead a stressful and important life. On any given day, I may have to write something, get dressed, stay in a crappy hotel, or take pictures of my cat.

Sometimes I just need to get away from it all. This is why I do pencil puzzles in the bathtub. But today, internet friends, my relaxing pencil puzzle bath time was absolutely basulaned.

You see, I was working on a puzzle called "Letterbox." You're given several boxes with two letters each, and you must combine them to make words in a box shape.

Here's my progress:

I'm usually pretty good at word puzzles. Not a master, but no neophyin either, and it frustrated me that I wasn't getting this one. I puzzled and stared and rearranged and puzzled some more. The bath water grew tepid, then cold, as I made no move to remove myself to more comfortable surroundings, like a reverse lobster. The lavender bubbles died small, quiet deaths. Still I puzzled. The dog and her gas decided to keep me company, and I puzzled on.

Finally, immersed in flat, cold water and surrounded by dog farts, I decided to do something I never do.

I decided to look at the answer.

It's not that I never give up. I often come across puzzles I'm too stupid to finish, but I just leave them incomplete. Utterly baffled, I turned to page 89, and the truth was revealed to me:

It's enough to make even a mild-mannered person like me go into a neckspin. Or punch someone in the face.

My Indefatigability is Inspiring

As I work on my next post, in which I have, like, actual stuff to say about words, I thought I would fill you in on the heroic life I have been leading this month. First off, yes, I used the word indefatigability in the title of this post. That in itself is inspiring, even though I got it from the Thesaurus under "perseverance," which I spelled wrong. You're welcome.

I got so much stuff done this month. I did a bunch of freelance editing. I designed some ads for clients. I went through my fonts, and you should know that I have amassed awesome fonts. Don't even talk to me unless you have the Thundercats font, and we'll start from there.

I took this picture of my cat, Bert. I Gordon, who just sneezed cat boogers all over me as I typed that.

It kind of looks like he has five legs.

Then I got plague, which my body decided to fight by coughing up everything inside itself, including what I believe were a couple major organs and possibly a femur. And because comedy is everything, my body decreed that this process would be accompanied by the whimsical call of the Canada Goose, emanating from my ravaged esophagus. But fear not, dear ones -- because of half a bottle of Ny-Quil my indomitable spirit, I realized that, instead of being diseased, I was actually being enhanced.


I was being granted the powers of the Canada Goose.

Ah, the majesty.

Then Goose Plague and I went to the city to sing the Beethoven Missa Solemnis at a copyrighted location I like to refer to as "Flarnegie Hall."

It was kind of a weird couple days.

We sang in the back row of the chorus, right on top of the enormous speakers for the organ.

WE HEARD A LOT OF ORGAN.

Then home again, jiggity jig, at which point I decided to play Mass Effect 3 broker world peace, which I think we can all agree is working out nicely.

My latest triumph in the face of adversity has been dusting off my bootstraps, or whatever the young people are saying nowadays, after possibly having been rejected by my favorite blog.

That's right. I submitted a portrait to Nic Cage As Everyone, and it has yet to appear. In fact, I have yet to even receive a response to my inspiring email: "This is Nic Cage as a molecule of adamantane."

And yet, my friends, we persevere! We indefatigate! We suffer the honks and arrows of outrageous organs!

Yeah, Bert I. Gordon says it's bedtime.

If My Cats Went As Gary Busey For Halloween

Inspired by this Regretsy post.

A Gift to the Internet Community

I just thought you should all know that the following URLs are AVAILABLE:

www.catslickingtheirballs.com

www.catslickingballs.com

You're welcome.

Go make your millions.

My cat, Bert I. Gordon.