I love doing giveaways on Goodreads — there’s something delightful about watching the number tick up as more people enter. Right now the giveaway’s only actually been accessible for three days, I think, and more than 360 people have requested the book. (Last year’s ARC giveaway got up to over 1000, I think.) I’d rather like to hug them all.

This week has been full of dissertation, but I took a break on Thursday night to go see Robyn at ACL Live as part of her Body Talk tour. If you like electro-pop and have a chance to see her, I highly recommend it. Somebody’s uploaded a few short videos from the show to YouTube; this is the best one. If you think you hear an echo, that’s the entire venue singing along. (Also, see this interesting documentary clip about the “dynamic textile” liquid art used in Robyn’s “Indestructible” video.)

I’ll post again soon with more literary links. I’m working on my laptop right now, and, as always, half the things I’ve been meaning to mention here are open in tabs on my desktop. Someday I’ll develop the habit of tagging things on delicious right away rather than leaving them open for a few days first. For now, I’ll just point out that Paul Lisicky will be reading at the Joynes Reading Room on the UT campus on Wednesday, February 23, at 7:30, and that UT Theatre & Dance is currently staging The Threepenny Opera.

Today is the official release of Alcestis in paperback!

In the year since the hardback release, I’ve:

• had a book launch party (photos here)
• read at a college
• read in Ashland, Oregon, met with a book club there, and filmed an interview/reading with a local book TV program
• read at Wiscon
• read at ArmadilloCon in Austin
• met a huge number of amazing writers on Twitter
• taught an intensive summer fiction workshop at the University of Texas
• spoke to a UT honors class after they read the book
• learned that the book will be available in a Turkish edition and in audiobook form from Iambik
• led a discussion about the book in the Blanton Museum, for their book club
• written a bunch of blog posts for other sites, including the always fabulous Hipster Book Club and Small Beer’s Not a Journal (see the Alcestis page for more guest blog posts, interview, and reviews from sites like Open Letters Monthly and Lambda Literary)
• written more blog posts here than I ever expected to!

I continue to be amazed that people want to read my book. I mean, obviously that’s what I hoped for when I wrote it, though I also wrote it because I wanted to read it. But the fact of the book being in the world, of going into a room for a book club meeting and seeing fifteen people who have all spent at least a few hours of their lives reading something I wrote and are now eager to talk about it — there’s nothing quite like it. Thanks to my time as an English grad student, I’m well aware of just how far back the English-language literary tradition stretches, and how very many books have been produced since print became widespread. I like knowing that Alcestis is among them, and that it’s reached some readers who have really enjoyed it. I hope the paperback edition will allow it to reach even more.

The book is available in paperback via IndieBound, Amazon, B&N, Chapters/Indigo, Powell’s, Borders.com — and of course it’s still available in hardback and ebook form on those sites, too. If you buy and read the book, please do take the time to leave a review on the site where you bought it and/or at Goodreads, if you can. It means a lot to me and will especially mean a lot to other potential readers who want to know what you thought of the book.

A quick reminder that on this Thursday (the 20th), I’ll be leading a discussion of Alcestis at the Blanton Museum Book Club, at 7 pm. The book club will meet in the Susman Gallery on the second floor of the museum. Since it’s Third Thursday, the museum will be open till 9 pm. See the Blanton website for directions and more information on the current exhibitions.

I’m back from a conference and trying to get myself together. This takes more effort than you’d expect, when in the wake of cross-country trips and one of the Worst Migraines of All Time. Ugh. But I’m slowly making progress, and part of that progress involves posting some reminders here about recent and upcoming news.

Thing 1: I will be leading a discussion of Alcestis for the Blanton Museum of Art Book Club in Austin on January 20. (Tiny sidenote: I’m not actually a graduate of the Michener Program, as that link suggests — my creative writing master’s degree is from the UT English department. I am, however, replacing Ted Hughes as the subject of this book club meeting. No, I am not ever going to get tired of mentioning that.) This discussion is linked to the Robert Wilson Alceste print exhibition currently running at the Blanton. I believe we’ll start at 7 pm, but I’ll try to get confirmation of that this week and will update here. If you’re in the Austin area and want to talk about the book, about misbehaving gods, about historical fiction and adaptation — come by and chat!

Thing 2: Many thanks to the fabulous Karen Healey for including Alcestis in her list of favorite books of the year! (Karen’s novel Guardian of the Dead is awaiting me on my Kindle, to be read on my next trip — since I really can’t justify too much pleasure reading when I’m not traveling, this month.)

Thing 3: The delightful Hipster Book Club people asked me to contribute a top 5 list for their end-of-the-year collection. Go to page 2 of that index and you can enjoy my ramblings about my favorite works of the year featuring post-apocalyptic themes. (My original list was chock full of links, but apparently those got lost somewhere along the way. Ah well.)

Thing 4: I feel weird about doing this, but as I’ve seen a number of other writers mention their Hugo/Nebula eligibility lately — Alcestis is eligible for nomination in the fantasy novel category for both the Nebula Awards (for SFWA members) and the Hugos (if you’re a WSFS member).  I’m not sure if I’m Campbell-eligible this year, but I’ll let you know when I find out.

And a link to conclude: a short NPR piece on who really wrote the first detective novel. The tone of the piece is a little strange — oddly disparaging about mystery-novel clichés, considering that they weren’t clichés when the first one was written — but the information is interesting.

So! To make up for that brief absence, here’s a nice announcement: the Blanton Museum Book Club will be reading Alcestis and discussing it on January 20, 2011. I’ll be leading the discussion. This book club meeting is linked to the prints exhibition Robert Wilson in Four Acts, which just opened at the Blanton and runs through March 13, 2011. Here’s the Blanton’s description of the exhibition:

Artist Robert Wilson—a University of Texas at Austin alumnus, native Texan, and The Blanton’s 2011 Gala honoree—is best known for his video and theatre work. However, as part of UT’s 1986 Guest Artist in Printmaking Program, Wilson made two suites of prints. Alcestis is named for the wife of King Admetus from Euripides’ eponymous 438 BC Greek tragedy who offers herself as a sacrifice upon learning that her husband will die unless he can find another to take his place. Alceste illustrates Wilson’s stage design for Christoph Willibald Gluck’s 1767 opera of the same name, based on Euripides’ myth. Robert Wilson in Four Acts presents these suites alongside a study for Alceste and video documentation of Wilson’s production of Gluck’s opera.

And here’s the amusing part: if you click the Book Club link above, you’ll see that it still lists the January 20 book selection as Ted Hughes’s translation of Alcestis (the Euripides version). But no, my friends — I have replaced Ted Hughes! I feel as though I ought to notify my alma mater about this. </Sylvia Plath jokes>

Also, here are a few links I’ve collected during the week:

• Ellen Ripley Saved My Life: a post by Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown. This is the third of three related essays, and speaking as someone whose notion of a strong woman was also unduly affected, in my teenage years, by Joss Whedon’s psyche — it’s amazing.
• A charming slideshow of doodles left on the whiteboards in the main library (the PCL) at UT.
• And another charming interview with Justin Cronin about The Passage, this one at Goodreads.
• Foxes playing in the London snow.

In the Independent, Arifa Akbar asks if “fictive sex” can “ever have artistic merit.” The context here is the annual Bad Sex Awards, given out by the Literary Review. Since I think the answer to that question is indubitably “yes,” I was particularly intrigued by this piece of information:

Ironically, the bad sex awards were originally conceived, in 1993, to celebrate good sex, before the editor, Auberon Waugh, was advised by co-founder, Rhoda Koenig, that this might be “less interesting” than plucking out the clichéd and the corny.

I would love to see a Good Sex Awards shortlist. (It could be a cute stunt for the Review, if nothing else.) I’m sure Koenig was right that Bad Sex Awards get more attention — pointing and laughing usually does — but I’m not sure that mocking poorly-written scenes is automatically more interesting than celebrating good ones would be. Good sex in literary fiction is probably rarer than bad, and sex that many readers can agree is good might be even more uncommon. For example: I totally don’t agree that writing good sex is reducible to Geoff Dyer’s claim, quoted in Akbar’s essay, that descriptions of sex must “be absolutely explicit — no metaphors, no hyperbole.” (Then again, I do remember some of the horrifying metaphors cited in previous Bad Sex Award lists, so maybe that’s not a bad place to start.)

And I think Akbar’s onto something, here:

The most interesting writing about sex in the past two decades has arguably come from gay and lesbian novelists – Hollinghurst, Jeanette Winterson, Edmund White – who have touched ground where there has still been sensibilities to disturb and imaginative barriers to break down.

I’d also be interested in a broader conversation about sex in genre fiction, if we’re discussing the breaching of imaginative barriers.

Finally, Akbar covers the point that writers usually make when talking about sex in fiction: the “so what?” question.

Koenig casts doubt over this rationale: “I do think writers should ask themselves ‘is this sex scene necessary?’ In other words, what will we learn from following the people into the bedroom that we will not learn from simply being told that they have gone to bed together and liked it or disliked it or felt guilty about it or whatever?”

There are three sex scenes in Alcestis and one almost-sex-scene that dissolves into chaos thanks to some god-conjured reptiles. (Seriously. Drawn straight from the myth.) In my opinion, these scenes are all necessary for plot and character development, but their existence has made me squirm on occasion. I remember copy-editing one of the sex scenes while sitting at the laundromat — the scene with dubious consent, of course, because what else would you end up copy-editing at the laundromat? — and hoping that the bored middle-aged lady next to me wasn’t peering over my shoulder at the manuscript.

I don’t really feel that way about the published book; I think I’ve become comfortable with the idea that the book is, in large part, about desire. But giving public performances where I read about desire can still make me blush a bit. In a talk last spring, I read the almost-sex-scene along with a few other sections of the book. Even though I’d practiced the reading in advance, I hadn’t quite realized what it would be like to read in front of an audience a scene that sounds like it’s about to include sex. There was definitely an anticipatory and slightly uncomfortable feeling in the room, right up until the snakes appeared and the audience realized I wasn’t actually about to read a detailed account of the main character’s deflowering. I haven’t yet decided whether or not to include that scene in any future talks I give. Maybe I’d be able to enjoy the slightly uncomfortable vibe, now that I know to expect it. Or — maybe not.

Anyway, to sum up, here’s Seanan McGuire posting on Twitter, just a few hours ago:

… though I should add that the eighteenth century proved that even books full of nuns aren’t necessarily sex-free. (I’m looking right at you, Monk Lewis.)

ArmadilloCon was delightful, even though I was gimping around all weekend thanks to a twisted ankle during my Saturday-morning run. (Side note: why are ankles so weird? It felt fine for half a day after I twisted it and then just started throbbing in the middle of a panel. Thanks to everyone at the con for not laughing at me while I did things like hold cups of ice water against my foot during readings!) The con was really well-run and friendly — many thanks to Jonathan Miles, in particular, for inviting me to participate.

• I was on three panels: LGBT Issues in Spec Fic, Better Writing through Mythology, and Spec Fic in Academia (which I moderated). Spec Fic in Academia was a bit sparse, though we still had a good conversation, but the other two had lively audiences — especially the mythology panel, despite its being the first of the morning on Sunday. And it seems the LGBT panel was ArmadilloCon’s first on the topic, which makes me extra glad to have been a part of it. I also attended a panel on “crossed genres” (or interstitial fiction, or slipstream, or whatever you like), which, given the location of the con, had a distinctly Texan twist.
• I read the prologue to Alcestis at the Broad Universe reading, and read “The Former Hero,” a not-yet-published short story, at my own reading Saturday night.
• I met some very nice Austin writers for the first time — Lee Thomas, Stina Leicht, Matthew Bey, and others — and talked to a couple of writers who are working on mythologically-inspired first novels.
• I also sold and signed a few books! Always nice.

And now it’s back to job-market preparation and dissertation revision for a little while. But I happen to know that there’s a very in-depth interview about Alcestis in production at the moment — I’ll post the link as soon as it’s live.

I just got my preliminary ArmadilloCon 32 schedule, so if you’re able to make it to Austin at the end of the month and want to see me read, sign, or talk on a panel, you’re in luck! My events are all on Saturday, August 28, and Sunday, August 29. The con is at the Renaissance Hotel in the Arboretum, and there are one-day passes available at the con if you’re only interested in attending a few events (though of course I encourage you to attend the whole thing!).

Sa1700SB Broad Universe Reading

Sat 5:00 PM-6:00 PM Sabine

P. Kitanidis, K. Beutner, P. Jones, A. Latner, J. Cheney, J. Reisman, C. Berg, S. Leicht, G. Oliver, N. Moore

Sa1900SB LGBT Issues in Spec Fic

Sat 7:00 PM-8:00 PM Sabine

M. Dimond, N. Moore*, R. Bennett, K. Beutner, L. Thomas

Sa2030P Reading

Sat 8:30 PM-9:00 PM Pecos

Katharine Beutner

Su1000T Better writing through Mythology

Sun 10:00 AM-11:00 AM Trinity

S. Leicht, K. Beutner, M. Bey, R. Caine, N. Holzner*, S. Swendson

Su1200DR Signing

Sun Noon-1:00 PM Dealers’ Room

N. Holzner, R. Eudaly, K. Beutner, S. Swendson

Su1400SB Spec. Fic. in Academia

Sun 2:00 PM-3:00 PM Sabine

K. Beutner*, J. Reisman, K. Kofmel, S. Wedel, G. Wilhite

In March, I filmed an interview with “Open Books, Open Minds,” a local TV book program based in Ashland, Oregon, and sponsored by the Jackson County library system. Clips from that interview are now up on Youtube — the first features a bit of the interview and me reading the prologue; the second shows me reading a selection from chapter 1 that I haven’t read publicly before. (The bit about the seawater ritual, for those of you who’ve read the book.)

Many thanks to Maureen Battistella of the Ashland Mystery group, who organized and filmed the interview, and Ashland Public Library manager Amy Blossom, who interviewed me!

Wiscon! I went, I met a bunch of wonderful people, I had a seven-day-long migraine. Thank god for marathons of Law & Order on hotel cable when one isn’t up to anything more strenuous than lying down with an ice pack. (Ice machines: also a thing to be thankful for.) When there are gaps of time in the con report below, just picture me listening to the familiar tones of Sam Waterston in a darkened room.

I got to Madison later on Thursday than expected thanks to some goofiness on the part of Delta, who had decided, for kicks, to swap our full plane for a smaller plane and boot 20 people off. This did not go over well, as you might expect, and the process of finding a larger plane meant that we arrived about 2 hours late.

Wiscon itself is fascinating. This was my first con-attending experience of any length; I stopped in at World Fantasy in 2006, when it was held in Austin, but only to meet the two people I already knew who were attending. At Wiscon I was lucky enough to be guided around by Jen Volant, who knows everyone and happily introduced me to them all. When I say “everyone,” though, I mean “writers” — it seemed to me that there are at least two Wiscons happening simultaneously, a writer-centric one and a fandom-centric one. There’s certainly crossover between these groups, but on the whole, they seem to run in parallel.

And then there was the little pride of feral fourteen-year-old girls, daughters of older con attendees, all long-legged and bare-footed, who were clearly having their own shadow convention. We were particularly taken by their habit of occupying the elevators and demanding that visitors to their domain answer personal questions. When I got on, two of them were lying on the floor and punching the elevator buttons with their toes.

Friday I went out to breakfast with Jen and her friend Jessie, dropped off some copies of Alcestis at the Broad Universe table, later worked the Broad Universe table for a little while, went out to dinner with Jen and a huge group of people who I won’t try to name here because I probably would feel like a weird name-dropper, and finally ended up back at the hotel in the evening, observing karaoke shenanigans in which I did not participate.

Saturday I went for a short run (down fraternity row, by accident) and hit the farmer’s market briefly, though I’ve been spoiled by the Texas growing season and forgot that it would be all green onions and garlic. I love green onions and garlic, but it might be unwise to eat them raw in your hotel room, especially if you’re meeting a bunch of people for the first time. Madison is charming, but the layout of the downtown, the narrowness of the bit of land between the lakes, is the most fun part. There’s something really odd but pleasant about running down a normal block in a small city and then glimpsing the lake through the buildings ahead of you. (UW, any chance you want to hire a fiction writer soon?)

I got back to the hotel in time for the 10 am “Craft of Writing YA” panel, which I enjoyed but wasn’t blown away by. Maybe this is because I do tend to read YA writers’ blogs where many of the same issues are discussed. The panelists were all interesting and articulate, but I’d been hoping for something different, I guess — not that I have any idea what. Here’s a transcript of the panel, which is worth a look.

That afternoon I moderated a panel called “What’s the Future of the Past?” I haven’t found any transcripts of it yet, though somebody was live-tweeting it. Now that I’ve moderated one panel on this topic, I feel like I’d actually be prepared to moderate a panel on this topic well — I don’t think I did a great job this time, though I appreciate the great participation of the panelists, who muddled through quite well despite my cluelessness. As on the YA panel, the panelists were conversational and interesting and had clearly thought a lot about the topic, but it seemed to me that the conversation still sometimes felt like we were summarizing notions about historical fiction that have already been expressed rather than reaching for anything new. I think panels of this sort — the “gather a group of people to talk about a certain generic form” panel — may need a firmer moderating hand, and I wasn’t sure how to employ one, given my lack of experience with con panels versus academic panels at which everybody shows up with a prepared talk. This is something I want to think about for next time so that I can facilitate a discussion that moves into more complex territory. Also, note to self: next time, don’t have a migraine.

Saturday I also attended a fabulous reading by Jen, Meghan McCarron, Alice Sola Kim, and Anthony Ha — definitely a highlight, and I hope to be able to read what I heard in print soon.

Sunday morning, bright and early and migraine-y, I was a panelist on the “What is Feminist Romance?” panel, which was packed despite the 8:30 hour and was very ably moderated by Robyn Fleming. We talked about romance novels and about romantic storylines in other genres, and Robyn did a great job of distinguishing between those generic conventions. The same kind transcriber also recorded this panel, which I’m glad to see, because I think we ended up having an excellent and varied conversation (even if we did tend to get sidetracked listing features of romance novels/romantic storylines that are not feminist).

Sunday afternoon I participated in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. It was scheduled against a reading by Karen Joy Fowler and Carol Emshwiller and others, sadly — I’d have loved to go to their reading! But we had a great audience and I enjoyed hearing snippets of work by other Broad Universe members, including Gwynne Garfinkle, another Team Diana Fox author.

And Monday I made it back to Austin without any complications, unlike just about everyone else traveling home from Wiscon, apparently. I had a great time and I am really hoping to be able to go again next year.

Books I bought or am planning to buy soon:

• Christopher Barzak‘s One for Sorrow (bought on my Kindle, so I could read it before the con)
• Greer Gilman‘s Cloud and Ashes (same, though I haven’t read it yet; I had a friend’s ms to read instead on the trip up to Madison)
• Neesha Meminger‘s Shine, Coconut Moon (Neesha was also on the Feminist Romance panel)
• Emily Horner‘s A Love Story, Starring My Dead Best Friend (Emily, too, was on the Feminist Romance panel!)
• Karen Healey‘s Guardian of the Dead, which falls into the ever-growing category of “books I’ve heard about and keep meaning to buy but haven’t yet.”

And there are so many people I met who are currently looking for agents or publishers for books — I want to read all of those, too! And short fiction. Argh. So much wonderful stuff to read, so little time.