Spectra Pulse

[ellenkushner]

Thank you all so very very much for all the encouraging posts on The Privilege of the Sword! Also for the info on area bookstores. It allows me to boast to my editor, "My spies are everywhere." I've always wanted to say that.

In return, I offer possibly the most fun set of interview questions I've ever been asked - by the gang over at Bantam Spectra, in the August issue of their monthly online 'zine, Pulse ! Hope you enjoy my answers - they're down the page under AUTHOR'S NOTES.

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I note that we could not find TPOTS (which I'm enthusiastic to read since my wife read me Swordspoint on our daily commutes a few weeks ago) in either Brookline Booksmith (which made me facepalm, and I didn't have time to ask if it was cunningly hidden somewhere) or Pandemonium (who said that their shipment had not yet arrived) this past Saturday.

I expect that one of these evenings, we'll stop in the Concord Bookstore or Willow Books to see if they've got it.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

GRRRRRRRRRR on Brookline Booksmith!!!!! They turned me down when I asked to do a reading/signing this fall there. Never heard the term "facepalm" before (and willing to learn!) - but suggest everyone in Boston start calling them to ask if they've got the book in.

Heh heh. As Pirate Jenny said, "That'll learn 'em."

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Brookline Booksmith is full of a bunch of morons, obviously. I bet Pandemonium would be glad to have you. :}

"Facepalm" is related to "headdesk", although the former is generally used as either a verb or a statement of action, as in "*facepalm*". The latter is more often used as a statement of action. I find both of these to be incredibly useful emotive shorthand online, though I've not seen adequate emoticons for them yet. :)

[nohwhere-man.livejournal.com]

Spotted two copies at Bookshop Santa Cruz, in Santa Cruz, CA (where else would it be?).

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Well, you never know - last night we were walking in Battery Park and I spied a ferryboat that said "Brooklyn" on it pulling for the opposite shore. "Oh!" I said brightly, pointing to the bright lights across the way; "is that Brooklyn over there?" My cousin's husband looked at me and said, "It must run in the family."

It was New Jersey.

Well, hell - the damned boat *said* "Brooklyn"!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Bought mine yesterday at B&N in Eagan, MN (someone gave me a gift card for my birthday). I also faced all the other copies out on the shelf.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Well done!

Does this mean I get to have Minions now?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sure! or possibly "Associates," or "my people." "I sent some of my people out to take care of that." "Oh, that's terrible! I'll get my people right on that." Etc.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Cool! But howbout we say my people *are* Minions? (Who says you can't have it both ways?)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh yah, and then you could say, "Oh, that's terrible! I'll get my people right on that." And then you could turn and snap your fingers and say, "Minion! I have a job for you!"

At my house, the boys and I took a vote about whether we're a matriarchy, and I lost, so we are. This has led to seven years of debate (off-and-on, not constantly) about what Igors call their Master if she is female. markgritter contends that, "Yes, Mistress," has other connotations than an Igor would use, and Lady or Milady is just not Igory. He leans towards "Boss" as the gender neutral term when he is hunching his shoulder and squinting his eye. Umm. In case this comes in handy in any way, I suppose? or in case you have alternate suggestions.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

My copy of TPOTS came via Amazon last Wednesday. I spotted 4 or 5 copies in the SF section of the Burlington (Mass.) Buns & Noodle on Friday. It's next in my queue as soon as I finish Petty Treason.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Nice!

[aurenfaie.livejournal.com]

I love the bit about "books you wish you'd written." I just started reading The Last Unicorn recently. (:

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I read it for the first time when I was 14, on a cold grey day in a lake house in MIchigan my parents had dragged me off to to visit some friends of theirs. I went upstairs and found it, and lay on the bed and didn't come down. It's just about the best book ever.

[sararyan.livejournal.com]

Blast from the past reporting here: Sara Ryan, one of your students from Clarion 1991. I bought my copy from Powell's, and stayed up way too late last night reading it. :)

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

That was a fun interview to read--and it makes me very happy that you like _The Children of Green Knowe_. I was so, so excited when those books were brought back in print, and even though I don't personally love the Brett Helquist illustrations, I hope that they'll get a new generation of kids to read them. Can you tell me more about _The World of Henry Orient_?

I quite like Marcus as well--it's interesting how his role starts small and then keeps growing and growing. I also _loved_ Flavia! The multiple-parallel structure of the book was also something I really liked--I kept waiting to see how the different strands were intertwined, and squeeing when they did. And within that, I really loved the parallels & contrasts set up between Alec and Ferris, and between Artemisia and Katherine. I won't say more for fear of spoiling people, but I wanted to babble a bit.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

They *made* me name Flavia. In the first draft, she was just The Ugly Girl all the way through. But I like her name. I do love her.

Gosh - do you suppose we could start a SPOILERS ONLY thread somewhere, to burble about hidden mysteries to our hearts' delight? (That is a real question. I still haven't quite got LJ down, yet.)

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

You could make a post and put SPOILERS ONLY DISCUSSION OF TPOTS in the header, and then LJ-cut it. Here's a link to the most useful guide to LJ-HTML that I've come across--well, someone forwarded it to me, so I can't really take credit for it. LJ and HTML Tags (http://www.journalfen.net/users/sagralisse/8886.html). I mostly just copy and paste from there--my LJ-skills are still pretty basic, even though technically I've been on here for a long time.

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

I just finished it yesterday, actually, and I really enjoyed it. I would have loved to read about a heroine like Katherine when I was fifteen/sixteen; I imagine what I had gotten out of the book would have been very different then from what I got now. Kudos!

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. And Borders and Barnes & Noble both had it here in Reno.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

It's funny - I didn't write it for teens, really - but I realized when it was done that it was, in fact, the YA of my dreams. This is probably too long a question for LJ, but I am curious to know the difference between what you think you got out of it now versus what you might have then. . . .

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

1) I'm glad you got your arm twisted into writing the confrontation scene. It was grueling to read and I loved it.

2) Shoot Out The Lights for Alec -- oh how perfect! One thing I've always wondered -- do you hear the auditory quote from "Kashmir" on that album, or am I imagining it?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

1) Well, you're practically a friend of the family - of course you'd want to know!

2) "Kashmir" -- ?

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

"Kashmir" = Led Zeppelin song, off "Physical Graffitti" IIRC. Very, very distinctive guitar riff. I am pretty sure I hear it quoted in "Backstreet Slide."

Of course if you don't know the Led Zeppelin song, it won't make sense.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Might could be. But, yes, I'm too nerdy even for Led Zeppelin. My producer had to explain it to me when we put them in our Sound & Spirit LOTR show.

[lutin.livejournal.com]

& I wouldn't know of them at all, except for some kids
in middle school who suggested it as the likeliest source
for my first name, Kashmiri.

Regarding spoiler threads & LJ: the most you can do is
give a warning (eg, **~*~*~OMGZ SPOILERZ!*~*~** /something
equally silly) and then enough space so that people who
don't want to read them can scroll past them easily enough.
You could also LJ-cut (http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=75) a post, or create a new post &
encourage people to talk about spoilers there.

..Do your Minions get a theme song?

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for my copy to arrive. I thought it might come on Saturday. But no. And, again: no. *taps foot*

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

May it be yours by the coming week-end.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

My copy has finally arrived, and I'm enjoying it very much. But I have a question: Do you ever have chocolate first thing in the morning? I notice this seems to be a persistent practice among the Swordspoint world's characters, or at least the upper class.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

When I was 6, my dad got a job in France and, until our house was ready, we fetched up in a scruffy hotel in Paris where we were all on separate floors, the bathroom was down the hall, but (since there was no breakfast room) a maid brought up a tray of breakfast each morning. It had croissants, butter, bread, jam, and your choice of coffee, tea or hot chocolate.

Which would you choose?

This is, btw, still what a French hotel or cafe breakfast consists of. If you beg for orange juice, you usually get something that looks & tastes suspiciously like Tang. And serves you right. Now sit up straight and drink your chocolate.

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

It's also what people - posh people, anyway - used to drink before coffee came into fashion. (I think.)

[lutin.livejournal.com]

In Poland, you get a funny substitute for coffee
if you can't manage to stop the hostess and get
a proper tea. Or, you used to.

Their orange juice basically tang, but their juice
market more than makes up for it with Hortex's
black current and wild cherry juices (that's two
juices, which taste just as good separately as they
do mixed together).

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I love blackcurrant! I wish it were easier to get here.

[lutin.livejournal.com]

I know! -- I wish Hortex would let you buy crates of the juice from their website, but they don't (probably because any Pole can walk to their tiny corner market and buy litres of the stuff). Somebody should talk to them about importing juice here.

[alethea-eastrid.livejournal.com]

ahh, fond memories of Morocco, where we became regulars, for the ten days that we were there, at the place that would give you a baguette, jam, orange juice that had been an orange when you walked into the room...and really, really, really good hot chocolate...for a dollar. We had to get there early, or it was too hot to even think about the chocolate, but...yumm.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Yumm! Of course, there are mornings when the sight of even the best chocolate is Just Too Much - for those, we have barley water (as seen in THE FALL OF THE KINGS, when a very hungover student visits an aspiring spymaster).

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Now that I've finished the book I was already reading when I got my copy (I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak, who makes me want to crawl into his brain and steal his neurons and graft them into my head for my own diabolical literary purposes), I am now allowed to move along to TPOTS. Hurrah! I am sure it, too, will make me want to harvest authorial neurons. Which I promise not to do. Really. I've entirely stopped stealing brains.

Very much looking forward to it.

harvesting neurons

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Eeooooooo!!!! And I know *exactly* what you mean - it's pretty much what I said in that Spectra interview about Elizabeth Knox et al.

You can't have my neurons. I need them all - rather badly. (Besides, they appear to be shrinking - must be all the cardboard boxes. Those things are toxic.)

thank you

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

I haven't read other reviews or comments or interviews yet - but I was finally able to get to the bookstore where I'd reserved my copy, and I got home about six hours ago, and just finished reading. I spent much of the first parts of the book giggling and chortling and kicking my heels against the mattress, and much of the latter parts of the book with my hand over my mouth and an ache in my chest, and a good bit of time throughout being absolutely delighted at meeting up again with old friends and seeing how they'd turned out, and how everything fit together. There will definitely be some additional readings - I know there are things I didn't pick up on, or fully appreciate, the first time around. But right now I feel like there are things I didn't even know I was missing in my other fantasy reading, and they're all in this book.