Random Knightley Page Excerpt #1
In order to get your interest interested in Knightley, here is a page-long teaser from the novel. The page was chosen using a random number generator. I’ll do a few more of these before the book comes out.
Chapter 7: Servants and Scholars, Page 108
*a couple of notes before we begin.
1. This scene is from the first day of school, when everyone is assigned rooms.
2. It is infinitely more amusing if you imagine Alan Rickman’s voice whenever Lord Havelock speaks.
3. If you followed my Facebook updates last year, you’d understand about the Alan Rickman thing. Reader, I tried to keep him out of this. But he took up residence in my manuscript and could not be persuaded to leave. Alternately, if you would like to upset Alan Rickman, feel free to imagine Lord Havelock speaking with Sean Connery’s voice instead. *
“My, my, emergencies do happen quickly.” Lord Havelock glared. “
Who has died?”Rohan went pale, but swallowed and bravely said, “No one, sir. However, the three of us have not been assigned rooms. I trust there is a good reason.”
Henry and Adam exchanged a look of surprise. Rohan’s accent was unbelievably upper crust, but even more curious was how he faced Lord Havelock without fear.
Lord Havelock also seemed taken aback, but he reached into a fold of his master’s gown and produced a small, grubby plaque.
Lord Havelock stopped at a shabby wooden door across from the common room. It was not a grand door–the wood had gone warped in places, and the doorknob was made of unfinished wood, rather than shining brass. Henry would have thought it was a broom cupboard if he had noticed it, and it was not a very noticeable sort of door.
Lord Havelock tacked the plaque–rather crookedly, in fact–to the door and, with a cold smile, turned on his heel and returned to his chambers.
“Shall we?” Adam asked, hand on the doorknob.
Obligatory link: Pre-Order on Amazon here.
Supernatural Genital Stealing Vampires
I’m working on a paper that concerns genital theft and koro, which are mildly hilarious culture bound syndromes related to perceived loss of masculinity. The only problem? No matter how hard I tried, I could not come up with a thesis statement.
So I asked myself, “is it possible that this paper is actually about vampires?” The answer was very clearly yes.
Now I am working on a paper that concerns how vampire sexuality (cough, Edward Cullen, cough) is a Western metaphor for the same concerns that gave rise to culture bound syndromes such as genital theft and koro, and how, through understanding Edward Cullen’s sexual behavior, health care providers can better comprehend patients who believe themselves to be victims of genital theft.
Let me draw your attention to a screen shot of my research:
Does it surprise you that there are no articles in medical or scientific journals which deal with “genital theft” + “supernatural” + “vampires”? Don’t worry! My paper shall be the first!
In Which I Apologize for Things That I Imagine To Be Problematic
This morning, I visited my publisher. For some reason, I was under the mistaken impression that I was there to meet my publicist for Knightley Academy who would, if I completely charmed her, hopefully help me to set up a bookstore signing for the release.
Publicists, you see, are generally very busy people who have to set up book tours for important people like Scott Westerfeld and Holly Black (with whom I share a publisher).
So there I was, early morning, following my publicist through the halls of the Simon and Schuster Fortress, desperately clutching my cup of coffee and wondering why we were in such a hurry and where, exactly, we were headed.
The Simon & Schuster fortressWe went into the publicity director’s office, where he was waiting for me. There was nowhere to put my coffee cup. My chair was that awkward height where, unless I sat at the extreme edge like I desperately wanted to flee at any moment, my feet did not exactly touch the floor. Yes, I am mini, now hush.
My publicist and I sat across from the important man in the big, imposing desk. And then he said, “so you know Knightley is getting a new cover, right?” Actually, man in the big, imposing desk, I did not know this. It had been midterms, you see, so my editor was being very lovely by not interrupting my study panic.
I was all, “um, what cover?”
And then everyone scrambled to find the new cover. Luckily my editor came in and saved the day and gave me a glossy, fabulous mock up of my just-approved new cover with a fantastic blurb from Tamora Pierce (“steampunky, subversive and enthralling!”) on it. I can’t show you guys the cover yet, but it is very, very awesome, and green, and it involves a castle.
I was sort of thinking that maybe everyone had expected me to panic over the cover change, and that was why they had taken me to this important-looking office. I tried my best to look un-panic prone.
Then, the publicity director told me that my book was “flagged,” which was why he wanted to speak with me.
Not usually a good sign.I thought: Oh crap, they are not going to publish my book after all! They are canceling it right now. They made up this ruse about a new cover to judge how well I take shocking news. I bit my lip and waited for it.
“Your book has been flagged,” he continued, “because there’s been a fantastic response from buyers and we’ve been receiving a ton of enthusiastic emails about the series.”
Omg. Flagged was a good thing. Perhaps I wasn’t in trouble after all.
I ventured that I had brought a few copies of my marketing plans with me. I passed them out, and everyone flipped through these stapled minipackets I had prepared detailing my plans for how I was going to promote the series myself, since publicists are very busy with famous authors and, anyway, I didn’t mind setting up my own library visits.
“Multi-city book tour,” the publicity director read aloud, flipping through a packet.
I turned bright red.
“About that,” I quickly amended. “I was just going to stay with some of my old friends from college over Spring Break and thought that I could maybe visit a library or a bookstore while I’m in Boston and NYC. I was going to set it up myself and–”
“–What a fantastic idea.”
“Um, sorry? What?” I asked.
And then I was informed that they would be happy to set up visits to libraries, schools and bookstores in like a million cities, and they started talking about what was an appropriate speaker’s fee (I have only ever charged zero dollars and zero cents, but I didn’t say that), and which were the best independent bookstores for me to visit, and how it was such a good idea for me to do a book tour, and a zillion other incredible things that do not happen to mildly geeky graduate students who harbor an unhealthy Harry Potter obsession and sometimes write Twilight fan fiction.
I just sat there and listened to it all and waited to wake up to the sound of my alarm and head over to meet my publicist for real, because there was no way that this was really happening.
I shook everyone’s hands and said goodbye and followed my editor out to the elevators in a daze. And then she was like, “what are you doing right now?”
I didn’t think that “mentally pinching myself and wondering why this dream is incredibly realistic because I sort of have to pee” was the best answer, so I said “Oh, um, nothing, why?”
And that is how I wound up spending my afternoon drinking Diet Coke with my editor and going over the synopsis for Knightley 2, which is TOTALLY SERIOUSLY I AM NOT KIDDING called The Secret Battle Society (this is obviously subject to change, but come on, is that title not made of pure, ridiculous win?). We talked about the overall arc of the series, and polished up everything that was sort of vague and/or WTF-y in the synopsis and generally fixed all of the plot holes.
If you drink enough of this stuff, it makes plot holes disappear.Since I worked on Knightley 1 while I was living in London (back when I was still cool, sigh) I had never had the opportunity to do this before in person, and it was amazing. I’d heard my editor was good (I’d worked with a different editor on Book 1) but wow, good does not begin to describe it.
Anyway, it is actually 6AM now, and no I didn’t just wake up. I, um, never went to sleep. I actually have to be at the NCTE conference in a couple hours (eep), and I probably shouldn’t show up as a sleepless zombie. But, seriously, this has been the most incredible day and I haven’t gone to sleep because I’ve wanted to draw it out as long as possible. Okay, I’m going. Goodnight.
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Studying
A group of my classmates and I are working on a project that involves popular culture and medical anthropology. Tonight, I was studying with a friend. Her pop culture topic is Twilight. Mine is Harry Potter. The resulting conversation ensued around 11PM, laptops out, whilst sitting at her kitchen table.
Friend: Let’s play a game.
Me: Is the game called ‘study quietly for 2 hours?’
Friend: No. Truth or Dare.
Me: Like, ‘I dare you to study quietly for 2 hours?’
Friend: No. We can ask each other a question every 30 minutes.
Me: Like, ‘Do you like Lacan?’ ‘No.’ ‘Okay, time to study for 30 more minutes?’
Friend: No. Interesting questions.
Me: Like, ‘Would you sleep with Lacan?’
Friend: What does Lacan actually look like?
We Google Lacan.
Friend: Ugh, no, I would not sleep with Lacan. Okay, time to study for 30 more minutes.
Me: Somehow, I knew I wouldn’t like this game.
Toast
Penn Homecoming game against Princeton.
All of that debris on the track is toast.
We threw toast.
Yes.
There is a tradition of toast-throwing.
Octopi
This is a t-shirt design! Omg: http://karmasoup.org/shop.htmlMe: So you know how the plural of octopus is octopi?
Classmate: Er, yes?
Me: Okay, so what if there was a pie that had only one octopus in it…would it be an OCTOPIE?
Classmate: It is imperative that we ascertain the answer to this question forthwith! Come, we shall enlist the help of a dozen supercomputers, which are conveniently located in the basement of the science center.
Um, it didn’t really happen like that. My classmate did not, in fact, reveal a secret underground lair of supercomputers which possess an uncanny ability to take awful puns seriously. She sort of looked around desperately, made some excuse about needing to sharpen her Sharpie, and ran out of the room.
Whatever, classmate. I have another joke that I am SAVING FOR YOU. It goes like this:
Q. How many octopi?
A. 3.14
I think she will enjoy that one infinitely more. Yes.
Day of the Dead
Since I didn’t get to dress up for Halloween (yeah, remember the Max from Where The Wild Things are costume idea? Didn’t happen. Apparently long underwear has a butt flap. And an, um, front flap. They do *not* advertise those facts on the long underwear websites. You would have wussed out on having nether-region flaps as well. Admit it), I dressed up for Day of the Dead instead.
Basically, I wore this to lecture. Including the awesometastic flip up glasses (only $10 from 80s Purple).
