The Inner Truth of Teenagers

Why do teens love dystopia?  Well, according to Patrick Ness, best known for his extraordinary Chaos Walking trilogy, “Arbitrary authoritarian rulers. Nothing makes sense and there is no escape.  The grim social order is relieved by flashes of personal connection here and there...

Read more!

Building a World

The best fiction is like a pyramid mostly submerged in water; only the very top pokes above the page but it must give us the sense that we will find a solid, three-dimensional creation no matter how far down we dive to explore it. This is true whether you're writing about aliens with three genders and lavender tentacles, twelfth-century Scots clansmen in kilts, or just a bunch of kids hanging out behind a 7-11 in Cranford, NJ.

The question is, how far do you have to go to create that sense of reality, of faithfulness?

When it comes to research, no one could say I'm a shirker. My WIP is a fantasy novel based on Jewish folklore, so for years now I've been reading everything from the Biblical books of the Prophets, medieval wonder tales, the novels of Isaac Baashevitz Singer, Hasidic tales of the Holocaust, collected Jewish folk tales and Apochrypha, scholarly treatments of ancient Jewish magic and the like.

But now that I've gotten my characters to my fantasy world, I'm having trouble imagining myself there and I couldn't figure out why...until I read Jane Yolen's wonderful essay, Turtles All the Way Down (first published in Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Isaac Asimov and published by St. Martins Press in 1991). The prolific Yolen, no slouch at building worlds herself, suggests that we base our fantasy worlds on landscapes we know intimately. "In fantasy, outer landscape reflects inner landscape…. If the place is real enough, then the fantasy creatures and characters--dragon or elf lord or one-eyed god or the devil himself--will stride across that landscape leaving footprints that sink down into the mud. And if those creatures are also compelling, having taken root in the old lore and been brought forward in literary time by the carefully observing author, those footprints in the mud can be taken out, dried, and mounted on the wall."

How do YOU make your writing come to life? How do you build a world?

Read more!

Read any good books lately?

My WIP is fantasy so I must, simply MUST, read everything new and noteworthy in the children’s fantasy genre. (Or at least that’s my excuse!) Here’s my latest favorite.

THE CABINET OF EARTHS by Anne Nesbet

In the time-honored tradition of children’s books, our heroine Maya’s mother is very ill. To fulfill the mother’s fantasy, the family moves to Paris for a year. There, all roads seem to lead to a mysterious Society of “beautiful people” who sniff a heady substance called anbar, live in houses with brass salamander doorhandles, and, as it turns out, are all connected to a shimmering Cabinet of Earths. In the midst of Maya’s ordinary problems of adjusting to a French middle school without speaking French, her little brother James goes missing. When the Cabinet chooses her as its next keeper, she must decide whether to sacrifice her brother’s essential personality or her mother’s shot at immortality.

I love fantasies and I read so many of them that it's exciting to find an original vision like this one. For one thing the magic is French and it's set in Paris--a refreshing change from the English magic trope. For another, the "earths" themselves represent such a interesting reworking of the classic theme of magically preserving a life. And the book is beautifully, whimsically, even deliciously written. I read this in a waiting room while my husband was having surgery and it was like having a friend there to entertain me and keep me company.

Have you read any kid’s books recently that you would recommend to the rest of us? If so, why?

Read more!