Birthmarked
Road Trip with Art
By the time my daughter and I became log-jammed in two hours of traffic south of D.C., we’d had a chance to visit the Hirshhorn Museum and we were still high on having our minds boggled. I was pondering the two great elephants in the gray room, and the way I was irresistibly drawn to walk between Gordon’s screens, uneasily safe while the beasts were captive, with their natural beauty trapped in a barren, dizzying world. I liked how Samaras’s book made of needles looked both soft and… Continue reading
Sacred Marriage
Gay Pride, NYC, June 26, 2011
A purple centerline ran down 5th Avenue when I pulled into NYC yesterday around 11:30 and police were setting up the metal partitions to corral the anticipated spectators for the Gay Pride Parade. People were already gathering and opportunistic street peddlers were hawking rainbow flags and leis. By the time the leading cavalcade of slow-moving, revving motorcyclists passed the Flatiron Building around 12:30, the sidewalks were packed with cheering celebrators. All people can now marry the ones they love in… Continue reading
Q. Do You Think Social Media Matters to Writers?
A. I did not, initially, find the prospect of joining social media innately appealing. Do not mistake me for shy or insecure because I’m not, but I am rather private and low-key. I’m the sort of girl who’d rather hang out with a friend on the couch than dress up and go to a party, and social media looked like a party of strangers. Besides, I was busy writing, and I hadn’t considered that interacting socially with new people online might be worthwhile.
It turns out it… Continue reading
The Mirror Girls: Gaia at Seven
The following is a bit story about characters from the world of Birthmarked.
As Gaia’s father and his customer, a bride, stepped out on the porch, Gaia climbed down the loft ladder to gaze at the creamy yellow dress on the tailor’s dummy, admiring the flow of the gauzy fabric and the tiny, delicate embroidery on the bodice. She knew better than to touch it, but she leaned near enough to smell the trace of lavender that clung to it.
Through the sunny window, her father’s voice dropped… Continue reading
The Missing, the Lost, and the Stolen
Now and then, when I’m taking a quick break from writing, I go to WorldCat.org, the free website that catalogues books in libraries worldwide, to see if anybody’s reading my book. Birthmarked is listed in 720 libraries. That seems like a lot to me. For a frame of reference, Harry Potter I (1998) is in 5,021 libraries, and Printz-winning Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) is in 1625.
WorldCat.org NY Public Library, Birthmarked
One amusing thing about the site is that it organizes the libraries by distance… Continue reading
Cover Reveal: Prized (Birthmarked #2)
Take a look!
Here’s the cover of Prized, the sequel to Birthmarked, which is due out November 8, 2011. April Ward at Macmillan worked with Tim Green of faceout studio on the design, which I think is fantastic. If it seems like a departure from the first book in the series, take a look at what has been done for the paperback of Birthmarked, due out in October.
Pretty sweet, huh?