The TCABSC Goes To: Zuzana from the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy

The Tiny Cooper Award for Best Supporting Character (TCABSC, pronounced Tuh-Cab-Skuh) was created to honor those special guys and gals who, while not the main focus of the book, are still extraordinary. The Tiny Coopers (Will Grayson, Will Grayson), Anitas (West Side Story), and Robins (Batman) of the fictional world may not always get the girl (or guy), but sometimes they fulfill their role of supporting or obstructing the lead character in such a phenomenal way that it deserves special notice. This attention now comes in the form of an imaginary award made up by me. Hey, they’re not the main characters, so they have to take what they can get.

This Tiny Cooper Award for Best Supporting Character goes to: Zuzana from Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Days of Blood & Starlight, and Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor.

In lieu of five other nominees, here are five reasons why Zuzana is awesome:

(spoilers for the three-book series

1) She is uber talented. Zuzana comes from a family of puppet makers, but she takes the art to a new level. Her final project for art school is a street performance where she dances, acting as a marionette, attached by strings to a giant puppet. So the puppeteer is actually the puppet! Brilliant!

Adults Are Cool Too, Right? 7 Adult Books for YA Readers

If The Catcher in the Rye is an adult novel, then why are so many teens obsessed with it? The distinction between YA and adult fiction can be as thin as to be unnoticeable to the casual observer. And such a petty thing as genre distinction will never hold back a teen who loves reading. More than that, YA author Robin Wasserman, in an excellent essay about Stephen King’s ability to write great teen characters, posits “There are some adult books that, for whatever reason, seem specially formulated to wend their way into teenagers’ brains and take root, and I think it’s because—like one of those high-frequency tones the rest of us are too old to notice—these books are whispering  secret truths certain teenagers need to hear.” These are some books that whispered to me as a teen. And then whispered again, and again, and again because I reread them so many times.

It by Stephen King

Here’s Robin Wasserman again: “What Stephen King reader didn’t fall in love with him a teenager?” I fell hard when I read It. But I didn’t reread It for the way it made me terrified to go to the bathroom or how I stayed up all night reading because I was afraid to turn out the light. I reread it because it’s about a group of friends who love each other, and how that love is the most powerful kind of magic. The young versions of the characters are just on the cusp of puberty. The book’s nostalgia for that age, as well as the late 1950s time period in which it is set, perfectly reflect a teenager’s nostalgia for their lost childhood, which seems to be an ocean of time away from their drastically different present. Also, you’re welcome for not using one of the terrifying clown versions of this book’s cover. I had the Tim Curry TV movie tie-in one, which had his picture on the spine, and I would hide it behind my other books so that he couldn’t see me. Eventually I just threw it away and bought another one, but I was still scared it was going to reappear on my bookshelf one night, Talky Tina–style. 

Why YA? Michelle Dean for the New York Times Magazine

"I suppose I'm admitting that those people who call young-adult readers "childish" are onto something. It's just not the pure desire for regression they pompously diagnose. It's a desire for stories substantial enough to withstand the ages, that are like smooth river rocks you can turn over and over again."

-Michelle Dean. Our Young-Adult Dystopia. The New York Times Magazine. January 31, 2014.

Winter Books

When you hear the words "polar vortex," it doesn't make you want to go outside. The good news is that the recent spate of low temperatures are perfect for my favorite indoor activity: reading. Here are some wintery books to remind you how good you have it while you are curled up inside your warm house.

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst
Cassie lives with her father, a scientist, at a research station in the Arctic.  When she meets a polar bear who tells her that her mother is not dead, as she had thought, but imprisoned at the end of the earth, Cassie desperately agrees to his price: marriage.  But life in the polar bear's ice castle is neither cold nor terrifying, and Cassie comes to care for her bear husband.  Until she makes a terrible mistake that sends her on a journey to save both her bear and her mother.

Sarah Beth Durst books are always lush, engrossing, and filled with pathos. This retelling of "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" effortlessly combines a coming-of-age story with romance and magic.

Why YA?

Eliot Schrefer wrote a great online column for the Times about writing YA fiction. It comes the closest to describing my personal reasons for reading/writing YA of any of the other articles of this sort that I have read. Here's the gist:

"...what Y.A. novels value above all else is storytelling. It took me even longer to realize that that needn't lessen a book's complexity -- it just prioritizes the reader's experience. Ultimately, if there's a refrain I hear from the many adults turning to Y.A., it's not that the books are any simpler. They're just more pleasurable."

Fangirl for Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl

Pardon me if I’m a little weepy; I just finished reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. It’s a good weepy, the kind that lets you know that you’re not ready to let go of that amazing book just yet. Eleanor and Park, Rowell’s last book, was perfectly sparse. Each word fit precisely into place. Fangirl is just as perfect, but longer and meatier. It’s the kind of book that you disappear into while you’re reading. 

Fangirl opens with Cath (full name: Cather) leaving for college and hurt that her twin sister doesn’t want to room with together. She’s not all that excited about college, either, or anything that doesn’t involve writing fan fiction about the Simon Snow books—a Harry Potter-esque series of children’s fantasy novels. Simon has always been her escape—from her mother leaving, from her father’s mental health issues, from engaging with the world in a way that might leave her vulnerable. But her blunt roommate and her roommate’s handsome and friendly boyfriend won’t let her retreat completely. And a good-looking boy in her fiction writing class is tempting her into writing about something other than Simon. Is she ready to start her real life if it means letting go of Simon?

Lucid Dream: The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Listening to other people describe their dreams can be the most boring thing in the world. I know this. And yet I still can’t stop myself from telling people, “I had the craziest dream last night…” Dreams come straight from our raw emotional cores, which makes them a powerful experience that so colors the waking world that we need to share them with someone else just to continue our day. This also makes them extremely difficult to describe. “I saw this pink poodle, only it wasn’t a normal poodle, it was really scary,” doesn’t cover the visceral terror you felt when staring into the black, soulless eyes of a girly hell-dog. Dreams have unstable settings, as well as mysteriously vanishing and reappearing characters, and unresolvable plot holes. And yet Maggie Stiefvater’s The Dream Thieves, a book about dreaming, perfectly evokes the otherworldly feel of those nighttime phantoms while still maintaining a stable base of story.

Literary Inspiration: All Our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry

"Cass has a guillotine heart, severing ties as neatly as a whistle-sharp blade cutting the head from the body. Like any good revolutionary, she pretends that the casualties mean nothing."

-Sarah McCarry. All Our Pretty Songs. 2013. St. Martin's Press, New York. pages 30-31.

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan: I Promise I Won't Spoil the Ending

Sarah Rees Brennan is really good at endings. The conclusions of her Demon’s Lexicon books were good, with big reveals and thrilling battles. But she really perfected the art in Unspoken, the first Lynburn Legacy book, aka the novel with an ending that turned the internet into one giant shocked, crying animated gif. The ending of Untold is another doozy. But since I can’t talk about it here without majorly ruining the reading experience of those who have not yet read it, let’s discuss some other things that Sarah Rees Brennan is really good at: writing awesome dialogue and confounding narrative expectations.

To Coin A Phrase: Fangirl

Celebrating innovative use of language in YA.

Emergency Kanye Party

An activity engaged in after a painful situation--such as job loss, breakup, or school failure--occurs, that consists of uninhibited dancing to a playlist consisting only of songs by Yeezus himself, Kanye West.

Original Usage: 

"...'Emergency Kanye Party!' And then it was the other person's job to run to the computer and start the Emergency Kanye playlist. And then they'd both jump around and dance and shout Kanye West lyrics until they felt better." -Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (2013. St. Martin's Griffin, New York. p. 109)

Not Your Typical Mean Girl: Top Five Lydia Quotations from Teen Wolf

I know I’m late to the Teen Wolf party, but I am making up for my tardiness with my enthusiasm! The show is fun, soapy, and at times so over the top it feels like a fever dream. But, most importantly, Teen Wolf has brought Lydia Martin into my life, and for that I will be forever grateful. On first glance, Lydia comes off as a standard pretty, popular girl character: perfect hair and make-up, dating a star athlete, and a little bit mean. But the show gives you little glimpses behind that façade, like when Lydia somehow figures out that it is Allison’s birthday and breaks into her locker to decorate, or when she has perfect bowling form, or when she knows how to construct a Molotov cocktail using materials found in a high school chemistry lab. By the end of the first season, it is clear: Lydia Martin is a secret genius. Here are five of my favorite Lydia quotations.

Small Moments of Genius: Words as Spacers

Sometimes when I’m writing, I discover a special new way to fit words together. This may not actually be new to anyone but me, for the small moment after my discovery, I feel like a genius.

Today’s small moment of genius: using description to physically and temporally space moments in text.

We all have tics as writers, words or phrases that we reach for repeatedly and then have to cross out during rewrites. One of mine: “They were quiet for a few minutes.” I find myself using this, or some form of it, pretty much constantly when writing dialogue between two characters. I don’t think it’s a bad instinct; giving the conversation room to breathe allows for a more relaxed rhythm and a break from the onslaught of dialogue (unless you want an onslaught of dialogue between two hyper, fast-talking characters, in which case, go for it!).

Opening Lines: Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine ScheidtIn

"In the happy times, in the tell-me-again-times, when I'm seven and there are no stepbrothers and it's before the stepfathers, my mom lets me sleep in her bed."

-Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt (St. Martin's Griffin, New York. p. 1)

The secret weapon of this opening sentence is the unique “tell-me-again times,” which evokes a child who has discovered something she loves and wants her mom to do it over and over, and a mother who loves her daughter enough to indulge her. The “happy” times in the past and the foreboding future presence of the stepbrothers and stepfathers let us know that the present is not as sunny as the past. Without overtly doing so, Scheidt’s first sentence cuts straight to the core of the main character in prose that promises a pleasurable reading experience.

What stories did you make your mother tell you over and over again?

Cassandra Clare: Master of Love Triangles

“Sarah, have you ever heard of The Twilight Clause?” This was Sarah Rees Brennan at a Books of Wonder reading a few years ago, quoting a piece of advice her agent gave her about her Demon’s Lexicon trilogy. The Twilight clause (I am paraphrasing from memory here): in any young adult novel in which romance is involved, sales increase if the love occurs in a triangular formation. This may be true, or it may be that everyone in the publishing industry decided it was true because Twilight sold. Either way, love triangles have become a pervasive device in the YA fiction world. And just like any popular trope, some instances of the love triangle seem to have been opportunistically dropped into a story where they don’t belong. And then there is Cassandra Clare’s The Infernal Devices series, which reminds you just how great love triangles can be when wielded with skill and mastery.

(By the way, Sarah Rees Brennan is quite skilled at triangles herself, but she tends toward subversion of the convention, which is another conversation entirely.)

MAJOR spoilers ahoy for The Infernal Devices, as well as Twilight and The Hunger Games. If you haven’t read these books, I suggest you stop right here.

World Building Skills: Days of Blood and Starlight

It’s hard to build a world from scratch. So when I see great examples, I take notes.

Book: Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

World building skill: Common Expressions

Don’t sheathe your claws: a chimaera saying that means “don’t hold your breath,” but with an undertone of preparing for coming danger.

Spoilers ahoy!

Micro Skills: Writing Emotions

Micro skill: a writing technique used to create an element of a novel that, although small, contributes with other small elements to the bettering of the novel as a whole. When employed masterfully, micro skills can transform a novel from “The writing wasn’t great, but I really enjoyed it” into “That book totally changed my life.” See also: macro skill, e.g., plot, character, setting. Micro skills form like a Voltron to create macro skills.

Today’s featured micro skill: conveying a character’s emotions in a fresh, interesting, and clear manner.

J.K. Rowling: Master of Plot

A few weeks ago, Buzzfeed posted J.K. Rowling's outline for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and it further cemented my belief that she is a master of plotting. Let's take a closer look. (Click on the photo to see the original large image from at Buzzfeed.)

Warning: this post reveals plot points from book 5 of the series.

Awkward Beauty: Real High School Romance in Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park

Most teen romance novels are complete fantasy. And that’s OK. Who doesn’t love a good fantasy once in a while? Especially when the alternative is the sweaty, awkward, or even nonexistent reality that most of us endured in high school. But Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park manages to use the standard romance format to tell a high school romance story that is realistic, in all its cringe-inducing glory, while still managing to be swoon-worthy.

Days of Blood and Starlight: Laini Taylor Strikes Back

Last year, I had a conversation with a friend about Book Twos in trilogies, how often they are either boring retreads of Book One or sacrificing excitement and plot for Book Three setup. “I think you have to go full Empire Strikes Back with it,” I told her. Hyperdrive doesn’t work, Han gets captured and frozen in carbonite, Luke loses a hand; in other words, everything goes wrong. So I was overjoyed to see Kevin Nguyen of Grantland call Days of Blood and Starlight “Young adult fantasy’s Empire Strikes Back…” And after reading it, I have to agree wholeheartedly.

Reasons to Write Every Day

Because if you don't work on your novel every day, you forget what it is about.