On not attending BEA

A short time ago, thousands of people in the publishing industry descended upon a single convention center in New York City for one mother of an expo. It's one of the largest "book" events of the year and it attracts authors, editors, agents, librarians, book sellers, bloggers, superheroes, villains, cab drivers...the list goes on.

I did not attend Book Expo America, but being attached to someone who was attending, I did travel to New York at the time of BEA and I did reap a few benefits.

It ended up being one of the most surreal five days of my life and not only because I encountered Spiderman on the street, and ate more cupcakes than in all the years of my life combined.

Possibly the surrealitude of the week could be contributed to the total lack of sleep one can achieve while renting an apartment with friends you only see a few times a year. Possibly it was due to the fact that in said apartment, two blocks from Central Park, the noise of the city barrels through the windows at all hours of the day and night to throw erratic parties on your eardrums. Possibly it was due to the lack of actual oxygen in the air…

 

Possibly it was the cupcakes.

Either way, three things happened in New York which have altered my life in slight, yet significant ways.

First – In a little coffee shop on Tenth Avenue, I met three incredible women and I'm still surprised the shop survived our impact. The first, my agent, who is as kind and dynamic in person as she is via email. The second, my editor, who impressed me all over again with her passion for the work and BEWARE THE WILD. The third, my editor's assistant, who was insightful and equally as excited about BTW. Sitting there, with a small group of people who had found a way to love this story as much as I do, who are every bit as committed to putting in the time and energy to making it better, I realized again just how incredibly lucky I am.

Second – This one requires a modicum of backstory. When I was fourteen years old, I left my childhood home in Virginia and moved to Yokosuka, Japan. I was only there for two years, but I never made it back to the east coast and eventually fell out of touch with all my childhood friends. Such is the life of a Navy child. But – prepare yourselves, I’m about to say something NICE about Facebook – Facebook (for all its faults) changed that.

I fell back into touch with M and after nearly two solid decades of estrangement we had a four-hour reunion in the middle of New York City. We spent much of the time staring at each other in amazement saying truly profound things to each other.

Me: I can’t believe you’re in front of me.
Him: I can’t believe I’m taller than you.
Me: ……*goofy grin*

We were so wrapped up in nostalgia that after 20 minutes of walking way too fast, I felt the axis of the world shift and suddenly ALL THE PEOPLE were around me.

Me: M! ARE WE IN TIMES SQUARE?
Him: *slow blink* Yes.
Me: HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Him: ….we…walked?

Which brings me to the third life-altering experience I had in NYC.

There’s really no way to be tactful about this, but I’m going to try because this is something that may save your life in the future.

If you take away nothing else from my non-BEA experience, take this one lesson: NYC DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOUR BLADDER.

No. It’s true. And it’s important you know this because discovering it when you’re twenty blocks away from your apartment, all the Starbucks are closing because it’s 10pm, and you’re too stubborn to hail a cab isn’t something I’d recommend.

I mean, it might change your life, but not in a Hunger Games sort of way. Rather, this will change your life in a Trainspotting sort ofway where the world is suddenly very loud and very strange (which is really saying something for NYC), and all the doors are locked and the shopkeepers all look like Delores Umbridge, and then you discover you don’t even have a key to your apartment and no one is answering your texts so WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET HOME? WHAT HAPPENS THEN???

It is FAR from pleasant.

So, there you have it, my recipe for how to have one singularly intense day in New York City. Passing ife-saving advice on to you is really just a bonus.

Spiders and Beds: things that should not mix

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that last week brought some uncomfortable surprises to my bed in the shape of demonic arachnids.

 

Arachnophobes, READ NO FURTHER.

If you live in Kansas or in any of the states south of the Mason-Dixon line, then you’re probably Very Aware of the terrors capable of being wrought by the brown recluse. If you're not from one of these states, then it's probably worth mentioning that the bite of a brown recluse carries a venom that causes your flesh to rot from your body. I don't recommend googling "brown recluse bite," but if you must, consider yourself WARNED.

Every region I’ve ever lived in has this sort of boogey beast. In Virginia it was snakes. In Japan, centipedes. In Mississippi, black widows. In Washington, rain. But none have ever pursued me so well as the brown recluse.

(I was about to say none of the others have followed me into my bed, but a very chilling memory of an encounter with a poisonous centipede in Japan just refreshed itself for me….I’m suddenly unsure that it’s wise to continue writing this post….*)

(*This blog is not about wisdom.)

So. Imagine this if you will: you’re waking up after a blissful night of rest. The sun is rising outside your window, the birds are singing sweetly, the aroma of coffee floats through your door on a curling wisp of cartoon steam.

But when your Darling roles out of bed, there’s a large dark spot on the sheets just at the point where her shoulder blades might have been, which leads to the following conversation:

Darling: What is that?
Me: Turn on the light.
Darling:…I do not want to.

But when the light goes on, there’s no doubting the fact that the dark spot pressed to the bed sheet is a brown recluse spider. Adult. Squished. Horrifying.

Naturally, this led to two solid days of denial. Which is why I can now say with absolute certainty that I do NOT recommend using denial to rid your home of spiders.

DOES. NOT. WORK.

How do I know this?

Picture this: two mornings after that horrible experience, you wake to another delightful birdsong of a morning and lazily climb out of bed. You think all is well in the world until you and your Darling return to make the bed a short time later to discover something small and stick-like laying on the sheet.

Me: What is that?
Darling: It is a part of a plant.
Me: *spots another* I think it’s a spider’s leg.
Darling: O_O It is a PART of a PLANT.

This led to a very careful and fruitless inspection of the sheets, which in turn led to lifting the pillows….

And WHADDYA know? Brown recluse. Sans three legs. Squished beneath my pillow.

I’ve never considered myself to be afraid of spiders (because really? between spiders and zombies, there's a clear winner where rational, reality-based fear is concerned), but finding two full grown brown recluse complete with fiddle-playing heads in my bed has definitely tipped me toward the more hysterical side of things.

Upon finding this, the second brown recluse, we leapt from denial to aggression and went berserk on the house. I have no idea if vacuuming the ceiling and walls, setting down traps, or playing my cello menacingly at the corners were effective, but it sure made me feel better.

So, this is the point at which I realize this story doesn’t really have a comforting ending. … Sorry?

Contest Winner!

I'm several days tardy posting this....but the winner of the Curiouser and Curiouser contest is Rachel Bellavia (from Blogger)! Rachel, please email me at nataliecparker AT gmail DOT com with your mailing address to claim your very own ARC of THE CURIOSITIES.

Her entry was both silly and delightful, so I'm posting it here for you all to see.

Thank you to everyone who entered! I enjoyed all of your entries and if I could give all of you an ARC, I would!

And then I was a debut novelist

I'm sure there will be a time for details later. Now, however, is the time for ex!cla!ma!tion points! Because I'm going to be published!

The official announcement:
 

Natalie Parker's BEWARE THE WILD, pitched as Twin Peaks meets The Village, in which a claustrophobic Louisiana town is dominated by its sinister, encroaching swamp, which swallows up a boy who is instantly forgotten by everyone except his sister, and replaced by a mysterious girl from the past who is intent on taking over his family and his life, to Phoebe Yeh at Harper Children's, in a good deal, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, for publication in Winter 2014, by Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency (NA).

Foreign: info@rightspeople.com 

That's right. HarperCollins Children's Books! I am so happy I could sprout flowers from the top of my head. And oh, holy crow, there's already a Goodreads page.  

To every one of you who has been reading this blog over the years, THANK YOU.

Curiouser and curiouser contest

I'm in an exceedingly good mood. My week was a pitch perfect mix of challenging, exciting, and engaging. It involved high stress day job meetings, celebrations, chalk drawings, and fire. Really, it was incredible. I suppose you could even call it a curious sort of week.

*and then it happened that Natalie failed to segue seamlessly*

So, I'm going to give away an ARC of a book I've had the privilege to watch evolve, THE CURIOSITIES by the Merry Sisters of Fate (do I really need a parenthetical here? don't you know them already? Brenna, Tessa, and Maggie).

What's it about? I'm glad you asked:
A vampire locked in a cage in the basement, for good luck. 


 Bad guys, clever girls, and the various reasons why the guys have to stop breathing. 


 A world where fires never go out (with references to vanilla ice cream). 


 These are but a few of the curiosities collected in this volume of short stories by three acclaimed practitioners of paranormal fiction. 


 But The Curiosities is more than the stories. Since 2008, Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff have posted more than 250 works of short fiction to their website merryfates.com. Their goal was simple: create a space for experimentation and improvisation in their writing—all in public and without a backspace key. In that spirit, The Curiosities includes the stories and each author’s comments, critiques, and kudos in the margins. Think of it as a guided tour of the creative processes of three acclaimed authors. 


 So, are you curious now?

I'm sure you ARE curious and you're dying to figure out how to win this beautiful ARC.

The rules are simple, really: I want you to show me how curious you are about THE CURIOSITIES.

This is a points for creativity sort of contest, but the kind of creativity is entirely up to you. The only requirement is that your blog entry/tweet/facebook update/vlog/tumblr post/whatever include the words "I'm curious as a ___ about THE CURIOSITIES."

For example, you might tweet: I'm curious as a cucumber about #THECURIOSITIES!

Or you might blog an original piece of artwork: (This was also the week I learned cucumbers are strangely difficult to draw and they look better without arms.)

Whatever you do, include the phrase "I'm curious as a _____ about THE CURIOSITIES." Add links to this post if it suits your fancy. Enter as many times as you like, just make sure you drop links to your entries in the comments below.

I'm afraid this is a US address only contest. I also need to be able to see your tweets/FB updates/etc - I can't count locked entries. Sorry!

I'll pick my favorite entry next Friday the 11th, so you've got time to be creative. Aaaaaaand go!

The Canyon via Junipers

The problem with the Grand Canyon is that it doesn't look real. And unless you have some wicked fancy macro lens, your camera isn't going to help with that. It didn't take very long for me to realize that all my photos of the canyon were going to look exactly the same. Same rocks. Different angle. Each looking like a romantic painting of a striking landscape.

So! I turned to the local abundance of juniper trees for assistance. They make marvelous models, it turns out. They're so emotive, so friendly, so shockingly versatile, which is how I ended up with a series I'm calling, Juniper in Repose at the Grand Canyon.

First up, the model I like to imagine crept upon the canyon in the dead of night, then awoke to discover how close it had come to falling in, Juniper Startled:

Second, Juniper in Awe:

Third, the Juniper who wished to be a Condor:

Fourth, the Giving Juniper + Tessa:

And finally, Yesterday's Juniper (taken 1,000 feet down in the canyon wall):

There you have it: the Grand Canyon via the life and times of a juniper tree.

The trip of trains and canyons

For years and years, we’ve been talking about making a trip to the Southwestern US to see the Grand Canyon. Partly because Tessa loves the region and partly because I’d never been. So, we decided it was high time we made good on this particular item on the Someday List. We bought train tickets (because what’s an adventure without trains?), booked a package via the Grand Canyon Railway, and took off.

Neither of us has traveled extensively by train in the US, so this was an incredible way to spend 4 and a half days. The trip ended up being as much about the train as it was about the canyon. Let me just break it down by hours because I suspect it will be impressive.

Hours spent on the Southwestern Chief (to/from Williams, AZ): 52
Hours spent on the Grand Canyon Railway (to/from the park): 5
Hours in the park, doing parkly things: 28
Hours in Williams (mostly sleeping and watching outlaw re-enactors): 21
Total trip hours: 106

My take-away? Train travel is beautiful and slow. Perfect for two writers searching for inspiration, but maybe not for obsessive clock-watchers.

We had perfect weather and even though I had my laptop handy, I had a very difficult time prying my eyes away from the changing landscape. We went from the plains, to mountains, to desert – gold to green to rust red.

As a bonus, my bed came with a handy harness that strapped into the ceiling to keep Natalie from falling to the ground in a graceless splat. I felt like an astronaut.

And then there was the canyon. Whoa, that canyon! It wasn’t what I was expecting. I think in my mind, the Grand Canyon was in a barren landscape like Tatooine, with a vicious, toothy maw in the bottom.

But, it is not.

In fact, there was an entire forest around the Southern Rim and shrubs grow all the way down to the bottom of the canyon. Pines that smell like vanilla, and shrubs that look like they’ll cut you if you stray too close.

In any case, the canyon brought out one of the key differences between Tessa and me, and it has something to do with self-preservation.

Bonus points if you can tell me which of the women in this picture is representative of me. HINT: I’m the Sagittarius.

I really wanted to hike down into the canyon and if I’d planned more time and packed better hiking clothes, I’d have hiked all the way to Phantom Ranch to stay the night all the way down at the bottom. As it was, though, we had time to hike down the 1.5 mile trail and back up again. 

This is the point at which the Grand Canyon pulls one over on those of us used to mountains and hills and other things that go up. The canyon trails suck you in. They look easy. They look fun. You’re cruising downhill and looking at the world rising up around you. You’re excited to see what’s ahead, what’s through that next nifty looking tunnel, what’s around that next switchback.

It’s all exciting and wonderful and EASY.

But then, it’s time to go back up. And that’s when things get painful. Not only is the uphill climb interminable and hard, but you’ve already seen the view from the top. THERE IS NOTHING NEW AHEAD OF YOU. It’s not like a mountain hike, where you’ve got the view AND the downhill trek to look forward to. No. It’s all pain and sweat just to get back to the vantage point you’ve already seen. It’s insult to injury, I tell ya, and it’s only by the sheer desire to survive that you reach the top again. 

The Grand Canyon has a dark sense of humor.

But I don’t regret making the hike. What’s a victory without a little pain?