A final reminder about the giveaway contest being run by Wonders & Marvels — the deadline for entering to win a copy is today, Sunday, February 28.

Yesterday, my day was made by this stunning and thoughtful review of the book, which places Alcestis in the context of Mary Renault’s historical fiction.  I can’t claim that my writing has been very directly shaped by Renault’s work — I’ve only ever read The Persian Boy — but I’m honored by the notion that Alcestis offers a similar reading experience to her novels, but one “centered in women’s experiences.” This is also one of the most beautifully written reviews I’ve read. “Giddy” would not be too strong a word for my reaction.

The fabulous historical blog Wonders & Marvels is giving away four copies of Alcestis! The deadline for entering to win a copy is this Sunday, February 28. To enter, visit the blog post linked above and post an answer to the following question as a comment:

What little-known character in history deserves to be in the spotlight and have his or her story told?

There are some great responses in the comments already. I would love to read a novel about Alcibiades and Socrates. I think some of the women writers I’m analyzing in my dissertation would make excellent subjects for historical fiction. I can’t believe that nobody’s written a novel about Laetitia Pilkington yet, and Delarivier Manley would also be a fine candidate for fictionalization, as long as you didn’t let the most boring lawsuit ever dominate the story, the way she does in her own fictionalized autobiography. But the delightful Charlotte Charke would top them all — probably literally, if that were possible.

That’s Charlotte as Damon, one of her popular breeches roles. Her Narrative is way funnier than her father Colley Cibber’s Apology, should you ever have the desire to read a mid-c18 autobiography about the life of a player.

Anyway, many thanks to Wonders & Marvels for hosting this giveaway! I look forward to reading everyone’s suggestions.

I’m offering a signed copy of Alcestis in the Con or Bust auction being run by the Carl Brandon Society. The money raised in this auction is available to fans of color who request assistance in order to attend Wiscon, the feminist SF convention held annually in Madison, Wisconsin. (I’ll be going for the first time this year!)

And some links!

• A great essay on modulating your responses when writing critiques.
• Urban legends from Meiji-period Japan.
• And something very close to my heart: Austin’s No Kill Coalition, which will be presenting a No Kill Resolution to the City Council on March 1. Join the coalition, email the council — do what you can.

Mary Ann Gwinn of the Seattle Times asked historical fiction readers to name their favorites, and got so many replies that she’s been reporting their responses in installments:

• Part I deals with historical novels set in the US, and mentions Nancy Horan’s Loving Frank, which is about my distant relative, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. I’m definitely interested in Russell Banks’s Cloudsplitter, too, though I really didn’t like the film version of The Sweet Hereafter (I should try the book some time, I know).
• Part II includes historical fiction set outside the US and is notable for including novels by Ken Follett and Michael Crichton, only mentioning two Philippa Gregory books, and totally skipping Heyer, Jean Plaidy, etc. It’s like the exact inverse of most of the historical fiction blogosphere! So interesting! I do want to read Susan Sontag’s The Volcano Lover, because I did a seminar paper on Emma Hamilton — has anyone read it? Thoughts?

Lessons I have recently learned: when people say that you should only go running while sick if your illness is above the neck, they’re not kidding. I went for a short run on Friday and my lungs are still in revolt. (I apologize to everybody who had to listen to me cough my way through part of a panel at the Harrington symposium at UT yesterday!)

In nicer news, I recently received my first copy of the Historical Novels Review, the review publication of the Historical Novel Society. The February issue contains a review of Alcestis and a mention of me and the book in a short feature on debut historical novelists, as well as articles on magic in historical fiction and Jane Austen and the new gothic, interviews with writers, and more. It’s a great publication and I’m sad that I put off joining the HNS for as long as I did — my grad student poverty notwithstanding, it’s basically an organization devoted to everything I like. I’m delighted that Alcestis appears so prominently in the Review.

Speaking of fascinating historical information, check out Kathryn Hughes’s write-up in the Guardian of this book about arsenic in Victorian England (not yet released in the US, but coming in March). Hughes calls it “a lovely book, a near-perfect blend of rigorous scholarship and jaunty storytelling,” but even more remarkable than that praise is Hughes’s summary of the perniciousness and pervasiveness of arsenic in Victorian material culture:

Perhaps most sinister of all, though, was the way that arsenic insinuated itself into the very fabric of the Victorian home. The poison was used in the production of green dyes, which were incorporated into everything from ribbons to playing cards. The scene was set for a neo-Websterian tragedy in which beautiful maidens and society bucks crumpled to their deaths following a gift of haberdashery or quick game of whist. Even more fateful was the craze for deep green wallpaper, which led to thousands of families meeting their deaths as a result of their taste in home furnishings. Not that they actually licked their walls: the dye was very unstable, so the slightest breeze could dislodge a puff of toxic dust. Queen Victoria herself was so appalled by the homicidal tendencies of green wallpaper that she ordered every room in Buckingham Palace to be stripped of the stuff.

Makes you wonder which ubiquitous chemicals in our daily lives might be looked at this way in hundred years, no? Creepy.

I have a cold. It’s not the worst cold I’ve ever had — I think that honor goes to the one I got right before going to NYC with other Smith seniors during my last year of college, when I was dizzy for days and couldn’t hear correctly out of either ear for about a week. This one’s just your average bad cold. But it’s been about two years since I had a cold, and I forgot how dopey they make me. Wednesday I finally gave up on trying to work and read Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games on my Kindle.

Short version: postapocalyptic dystopian SF YA televised Battle Royale with a gloss of the Minotaur myth (kids given as sacrificial tribute to the powerful central city). Here’s what Collins says about her inspiration for the book, in this interview (PDF):

A significant influence would have to be the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The myth tells how in punishment for past deeds, Athens periodically had to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete, where they were thrown in the Labyrinth and devoured by the monstrous Minotaur.

Even as a kid, I could appreciate how ruthless this was. Crete was sending a very clear message: “Mess with us and we’ll do something worse than kill you. We’ll kill your children.” And the thing is, it was allowed; the parents sat by powerless to stop it. Theseus, who was the son of the king, volunteered to go. I guess in her own way, Katniss is a futuristic Theseus.

In keeping with the classical roots, I send my tributes into an updated version of the Roman gladiator games, which entails a ruthless government forcing people to fight to the death as popular entertainment. The world of Panem, particularly the Capitol, is loaded with Roman references. Panem itself comes from the expression “Panem et Circenses” which translates into “Bread and Circuses.”

The audiences for both the Roman games and reality TV are almost characters in themselves. They can respond with great enthusiasm or play a role in your elimination.

I was channel surfing between reality TV programming and actual war coverage when Katniss’s story came to me. One night I’m sitting there flipping around and on one channel there’s a group of young people competing for, I don’t know, money maybe? And on the next, there’s a group of young people fighting an actual war. And I was tired, and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way, and I thought of this story.

Unsurprisingly, I’m fascinated by the way Collins adapted the Labyrinth myth to suit a futuristic SF setting. But I also have to compliment this book for being possibly the best book ever to read while muzzy-headed. I don’t mean that as any kind of slam on the book at all — it’s marvelously cleanly written and the balance Collins achieves between suspense and necessary exposition is perfect. And then, of course, there’s the inescapable drama of the A-plot. I know I keep talking about readerly pleasure, but it’s kind of hard to underestimate the narrative drive inherent in a Battle Royale plot, particularly a Battle Royale plot with a romantic subplot. The romance is the only part of the book that seemed at all predictable to me — the plot machinery is less well camouflaged. (Still Team Peeta all the way, though.)

Speaking of readerly pleasure: The Hunger Games has three recalls on it in the UT library system. It came out nearly a year and a half ago.

… and speaking of readerly pleasure deferred, UPS just delivered Catching Fire (book two in the series, not on Kindle). But I really, really need to get back to work. Sigh.

I’ve just uploaded the video Travis recorded at my book launch party to Vimeo, so you can now watch and listen as I read the prologue to Alcestis and talk a bit about the content of the book. Feel free to share this video, too!

ALCESTIS reading — Katharine Beutner from Katharine Beutner on Vimeo.

A few links for today — I hope to be back later with video from the book launch party, too, assuming I’m capable of figuring out iMovie for the first time while suffering from cold-induced stupidity.

First, a story about ancient stone tools discovered on the coast of Crete — on a section of shore covered in soil deposited 100,000 to 190,000 years ago. The tools themselves may be as old as 700,000 years. Previously, the oldest stone tools on Crete were around 10-20,000 years old, so if the dating of these tools is accurate, humans (or pre-humans) were seafarers a lot earlier than previously thought.  CRAZY.

New studies of King Tut’s remains reveal that he died of malaria and a broken leg — the hole in his skull was not the cause of death. I could not stop imagining Temperance Brennan speaking the text of this article while I read it, except she’d probably be pricklier and use larger words.

An excellent post about what makes a good title for a story, and how helpful bad titles can be.

Things I am really tired of seeing knee-jerk GET OFF MY LAWN responses to from authors:

1. The Times article about the German novelist who “remixed” (her word) or “plagiarized” (lots and lots of outraged posts) a novel published by another German writer, in a novel about remix culture. Do I think she should have credited the first writer if she wanted to remix his material? Absolutely. Do I think she should have asked him first? Probably, but it depends on how much material she actually lifted — if it was fair use, maybe not. (The extent of her borrowing seems to be under debate at the moment.) This particular author may indeed have made some stupid decisions, and some of that bad decision-making may certainly be related to the fact that she’s seventeen and in the public eye. Do I think that many, many professional writers in the US should read Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture — available as a free PDF at that site — before they go off on rants about plagiarism and these kids today? Hell, yes. Spell-check helps, too.
2. The Google Books settlement. I didn’t have to choose whether or not to opt out, and based on the limited amount of reading I did before the deadline, it sounds like the Authors’ Guild’s response was almost as problematic as the settlement itself. I don’t currently have a strong opinion on this issue either way and would be willing to be swayed by persuasive arguments that honestly acknowledge what a horrible mess the current system of orphaned works really is. I haven’t seen many of those.
3. Piracy. I understand that it’s a major problem for some writers. I also think that responses to piracy — or to the “remixing” author, etc. — that demonize a whole generation of readers are just not useful, even if they’re accurate. If you, as an author, can avoid that kind of demonization and can explain to your readers why piracy hurts you, in particular, more power to you. (Elizabeth Scott wrote a post that accomplishes this well a few weeks ago.) I think it’s important for readers to understand that their choice to torrent an author’s work can hurt that author’s future career. Based on my experiences teaching undergraduates, many of them genuinely do not know that. But my experience with these kids, and my own membership in Gen Y, makes me pretty certain that emulating the RIAA is SO not the way to go.

And now I’m going to flounce off and write some more dissertation. Happy Valentine’s day, everybody.

It’s a bullet-point kind of day, I’m afraid. First up, Alcestis news!

• Earlier this week, I was interviewed by Kate Ergenbright of UT’s newspaper, the Daily Texan.
• Photos from the book launch party are here, in case you missed them.
• Don’t forget about the AuthorBuzz giveaway of five signed copies of the book: details here.
• I linked this guest post I wrote for Wonders & Marvels last weekend, but it may have gotten buried. If you’re curious about how I decided to afflict poor Hippothoe with asthma, that post is for you.
• This review, by Kelly Lasiter of Fantasy Literature, makes me VERY happy. (I found it on GoodReads. Did you know that it’s really hard to resist looking at your book’s page, even when you’ve logged on intending to add yet another book to your own TBR list? It’s an amazing feeling to see, for example, that people are reading the book at that very moment.)

And some Friday afternoon links:

• Some excellent advice about making writing a habit.
• A cat actually making the NOM NOM NOM noise while she eats.
• A video of San Francisco traffic in 1906, a few days before the earthquake. (I’m slowly reading Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell, which makes this film extra fascinating.)
• Really horrifying details about just how sketchy the casting process for the Avatar: the Last Airbender movie was.
• The Times article about the plantation diary that inspired Faulkner.
• An intriguing piece in Scientific American about the gut’s “second brain.”