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.”

Today I got a shiny CD from my friend Kristin, who took wonderful photos of the Alcestis book launch party last Sunday at BookPeople.

T. says that I should do a Wesley Willis-style description of the event: “I read at BookPeople. About thirty or forty people were at the show. It was a rocking good time.” Which is actually pretty accurate! Because I did my master’s degree in fiction writing at UT and am still in the same department for my Ph.D. work, I am lucky enough to have a group of amazing friends who have watched me write this novel, revise it, wait and wait to see if it would find a publisher, sell it (with much rejoicing) to Soho, revise it some more — you get the picture. So they were excited to see the final product in print, and I was tremendously excited to share it with them.

The one thing I forgot to get a picture of was my name on the marquee sign out front, which was pretty damn exciting all on its own. There was another sign inside the store with the event listed, and I couldn’t help it — I walked up and pointed and said, “Uh, that’s me.” And the kind staff member (Jen R., if I remember right) in charge of the event took excellent care of me (and T., who came early with me to help set things up).

The reading was held on the second floor, in the big open space between sections of the store. Below is a photo of me reading, with some of the audience visible:

I read the Prologue and the majority of Chapter 7.

And then I hung around and signed books for old friends and new friends, too.

If you want to see more photos from this reading, check out the Flickr set that Kristin created. I’m really looking forward to my next reading, now!

All photos are copyright Kristin Ware (thanks, Kristin!).

Today, found this lovely blog about period dramas (with which, as my Netflix queue would show you, I am totally obsessed). One of the entries on the front page at the moment is a review of Alejandro Aménabar’s Agora, a film about Hypatia, the Alexandrian scholar of mathematics, philosophy and astronomy murdered by a mob in 415 AD. (Click here for a great image of Aménabar directing Weisz. So cool to see Egyptian wall murals with the colors intact!)

Here’s the trailer, on YouTube:

I’m really looking forward to this film — and if you have other recommendations for good period dramas, do share?

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.

I’m getting ready to head over to BookPeople in an hour or so to set up for my launch party, but before I go, I wanted to share the guest post I wrote for Wonders & Marvels, a great blog about history. Wonders & Marvels will also be offering copies of Alcestis in a giveaway, about which I’ll post more details tomorrow. But for now, off to the party!

There is really nothing quite so cool as having friends email/post on your Facebook wall/message you on Twitter to tell you that they’ve just seen your book in their local bookstore.

For visual evidence, this photo arrived earlier in the week from the lovely and wonderful Elizabeth Scott, who wrote to show me that Alcestis had just been added to the display case at the front of her area Barnes & Noble.

My reaction: WHEEEEEEEEEEEE. And then I forwarded it to my mother.

Right now I’m dissertating, but later tonight I’ll be running out to buy wine for the book launch party which is, you recall, this weekend:  Sunday at BookPeople. Yes, the afternoon of the Super Bowl. I’ve already been teased about that, don’t worry. (My reaction: “The Super what?” –kidding, kidding. Mostly.) I am really looking forward to reading from the book again — I’ve only had a few chances to do so and I love to do it — and to celebrating with all my local friends. One of those dear friends is going to take pictures, so I’ll try to post some here early next week. I may even try to get some video of me reading.

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.)