Uncreated Conscience

Pardón, estaba incomunicada la última semana porque estaba muy ocupada por mi trabajo. He ayudado una otra redactora a St. Martin’s Press con sus autores y no tuve tiempo para escribir en mi…blog? (¿Cómo se dice “blog” en español?)

Sorry, I have the habit of reverting to high school Spanish when I get a wee bit stressed. (Of note, I love that “editor” in Spanish is redactor(a). Henceforth I wish to be known as a redactor.) I’m a little rusty.

So, JJ, you might ask, what have you been up to? Oh nothing much, I might say, just running around the Flatiron Building like a chicken with its head cut off. I have been assisting another editor here with her list while her assistant is on maternity leave. Said editor is a genius, with multiple bestsellers on her list who need a lot of maintenance. I’m still working primarily with Cap’n Sweet Valley, but now I’m on another floor (but in an office!). Now that SWEET VALLEY CONFIDENTIAL is about to go into production, I’m getting my exercise running up and down two flights of stairs at least 12 times a day.

Because I myself haven’t contributed much to the publishing blogosphere lately, might I direct you to this awesome series of posts on LGBTQ stereotypes in YA fiction by Malinda Lo? Today she blogs about gender perceptions, expression, and performance and how gender identity and sexuality do not have a 1:1 correlation.

Anyway, while I’ve been buried up to my eyeballs with work, I’ve also been reading my face off, so expect to be seeing reviews of the following soon:

1. TENDER MORSELS by Margo Lanagan
2. THE ART OF SEDUCTION by Robert Greene
3. A CONSPIRACY OF KINGS by Megan Whalen Turner
4. ILLYRIA by Elizabeth Hand
5. MATCHED by Ally Condie
6. DELIRIUM by Lauren Oliver
7. ASCENDANT by Diana Peterfreund
8. THE REPLACEMENT by Brenna Yovanoff

But I do intend to talk more about craft and writing, especially now that I’m learning from Redactor Genius. So here’s my question, oh blogosphere: What writing topics would you like me to cover? Publishing business you can read about elswhere; I’m mostly here to talk editorial (redactorial?) stuff. So shoot. Leave suggestions in the comments!

Ash by Malinda Lo

If any of you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been waiting (for what seems like forever) for Malinda Lo‘s ASH to be delivered to me from Amazon. ASH arrived at long last yesterday and I devoured the book in one sitting.

This review comes in two parts: a review of the book itself and a few thoughts on what this book meant to me emotionally: as a bisexual woman, as a person of biracial Asian descent, and my slight crush on the author whom I have been, um, online stalking ever since I heard about this book. (I’m not scary, I swear!)

ASH first came to my attention when buzz went about the YA blogosphere about the so-called “lesbian Cinderella”. It was garnering good critical reviews from book bloggers and I liked that a novel—a young adult novel—with queer themes was being so well-received. Not that young adult novels don’t deal with LGBT themes at all, but like other “minority” books, sometimes the story is all about the “issues” and not about, well, just the people. (Please see: my dislike of most Asian-American protagonists.)

ASH is a story about a girl recovering from grief and finding the will and desire to carry on.

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