Today is the official publication date of The Unwritten Rule, my friend Elizabeth Scott’s newest YA novel. Like all of her books, this one is wonderful — realistic and touching, and very sweet in the way that real life can be sweet, imperfections and all. Here’s a representative bit of advance praise:

“Trust Elizabeth Scott to create an exquisite portrait of longing so palpable, I yearned for the Forbidden Boy, too. Trust her to look unflinchingly at the undercurrents beneath the ‘cracked gloss’ of friendship: loyalty and love, jealousy and hurt. The Unwritten Rule is, above all, a superb study of what it means to be authentic when what you want collides with what you cannot have.” –Justina Chen, author of North of Beautiful

Elizabeth also has incredibly dedicated fans who made countdown widgets for the book’s release, tweeted about the book, and even wrote songs about it. (I love the YA lit world. I don’t even know what I’d do if somebody ever wrote a song about Alcestis. Glow with joy for a week straight, obviously, but also be very surprised!) Anyway, if you’re interested in reading about friendships between girls, Elizabeth writes them beautifully, in all their complexity. Highly recommended.

I mentioned recently that the Chronicle had included the first line of Alcestis in their ongoing feature of “grabbers.” On Twitter a little while ago, someone (I forget who, argh) linked to this list at Flavorwire of their thirty favorite opening lines in literature. As usual, I liked some of them and boggled at others, and there are few lines I’d add to any list of that sort.

For example…

From Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle, which I taught for the first time in the fall:

I planned my death carefully; unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.

And, okay, from Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale:

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

(Totally beats The Road, I’m sorry.)

P&P always gets the most love among Austen’s openings, for good reason, but Emma’s is also brilliant:

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:

An Author ought to consider himself, not as a Gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary Treat, but rather as one who keeps a public Ordinary, at which all Persons are welcome for their Money.

A Sentimental Journey:

–They order, said I, this matter better in France–

And if we’re including plays, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, of course:

Heads.

Do you have favorite first lines you feel are always overlooked? I’m intrigued that the Flavorwire list is specifically about favorites, not just about lines that are particularly grabby. I think my own favorite first lines tend to be those that communicate a flavor of the book. I almost included the opening of The Portrait of a Lady here, but it’s an intentionally misleading first line, tonally; it’s breezy and somewhat superficial and it hides from you the depth of the drama within the book. That’s a respectable strategy, but it means that I don’t really think about the first line when I think about the book as a whole.

Speaking of great openings, here’s the beginning of Lydia Kiesling’s lovely post about Brideshead Revisited at the Millions:

Brideshead Revisited is one of my favorite novels.  I am prone to the use of superlatives, fits of florid enthusiasm, and weeping, so I have dozens of favorite novels, songs, and movies.  I also have a lot of mortal enemies (mostly from the parking lot) and several best friends.  Both my cats are my favorite.  There are so many things to love (and loathe).  Let’s say that I am catholic with my affections.

The people in Brideshead Revisited are also Catholic with their affections, but for them it means something different, namely that they are crazy.  Or not crazy, exactly, but capable of nuances of feeling, infinitely tied to a class and place and time, that seem no longer to be part of anyone’s emotional spectrum.  These feelings do not register on the brute psychic seismographs of today; they require some exquisite baroque device, ancient but extraordinarily sensitive, sitting under a drop cloth in a crumbling country estate.

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.

Yesterday’s launch party was just wonderful. My friend Kristin Ware kindly volunteered to photograph the event and did a marvelous job — I’ll have photos from her soon to share with you. T. also recorded a video of me reading. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to edit that and get it posted quickly as well.

In more Alcestis news of the visual sort, the lovely Realm Lovejoy interviewed me for her blog. Realm is a videogame artist, an author, and an illustrator, and she creates beautiful illustrations to accompany her author interviews. For my interview, she painted a gorgeous portrait of Alcestis. Please go check it out and leave her admiring comments!

And finally, one more photo of Alcestis in the wild, from, of course, my mother:

This is Alcestis at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, OR, where I will be reading on the evening of March 18.

The wonderful John Scalzi was kind enough to give Alcestis a place in his Big Idea series, a frequent feature on his blog in which other writers talk about, as he puts it, “what makes their books tick.” For my Big Idea piece, I wrote about why I chose the myth of Alcestis and why I think it’s important not to limit the seduction-by-deity plot to male/female romantic pairs. (I even got to use my favorite line from one of my favorite high school English teachers to explain this!) I’ve discovered many writers through the Big Idea series — most recently, I found Malinda Lo’s Ash through her post on Scalzi’s blog — and I’m delighted to have the chance to tell his readers about my book.

Other exciting Alcestis news:

• Soho Press is not only giving away five signed copies of the book via AuthorBuzz — if you RT their post about the giveaway on Twitter, you’ll be entered in a separate drawing for one signed copy. Yes, I do want to draw tiny sparkly hearts around my amazing publishers.

This has been an amazing week already, and the book launch party is still yet to come! (Sunday, BookPeople, 3 pm, see events page for links & details. Ahem.)

In non-Alcestis news, I wanted to pass along a few writing-related links, both on topics near and dear to me — the first is a piece by Rachel Cusk in the Guardian asking whether (and how) creative writing can be taught. (I’m still planning to write up my own post about this, whenever things quiet down slightly.) The second is an essay about Virginia Woolf, around whom I would also like to draw sparkly hearts — I have a feeling she’d be all for it, too.  Specifically, this article, written by a neurologist, focuses on connections between Woolf’s mental illness and her style of depicting consciousness. I haven’t had a chance to read it in as much detail as I’d like, but I feel strongly that anyone who begins an essay by stating “Recently I read Woolf’s entire oeuvre chronologically” deserves my support. (And my jealousy. I wish I had time to do the same! Except maybe Jacob’s Room; I’ve never quite been able to get into that one.)

My brief jaunt out of town turned into a slightly longer jaunt out of town, thanks to the snow and ice storm that hit the mid-south this week. But I’m back, just in time for the official launch of Alcestis! Expect a longer blog post tomorrow, but for now, check out this Washington Post article on the comparatively tiny sales of classical recordings required to break into the top ten. Interesting to compare with small press expectations for literary fiction, I think.

Today, a recommendation: the blog of my dear friend and mentor Elizabeth Scott, who writes wonderful YA novels of all sorts. Her next novel The Unwritten Rule will be out in April, and she’s published six other novels already. I recommend them all.

She is also the master of useful linkage. Seriously: whether you’re published or not-yet-published, make checking her blog a part of your writing-blogosphere routine and you’ll be rewarded with plenty of helpful tips, advice from agents and editors, commentary from writers about craft and about the writing life, and etc. Today’s post is an especially fine example of the kind of great material she often finds — my favorite posts from it are Justine Musk’s notes on “how to write a book that ‘hangs together’” (in other words, how to develop the themes in your work), Kristin Nelson’s post of an annotated query letter, and this post on the value of MFA programs (a subject I’m planning to write more about soon, thanks to a recent question from a blog reader). For the other links, see Elizabeth’s blog!

For today, a wonderful TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the danger of listening to a single story.