>It's V Day! And a contest!

>Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Villains and Villainesses, I come not to praise Caesar, but...wait wrong speech!

It's V day! That's right Villainology: Fabulous Lives of the Big, the Bad, and the Wicked is now officially on store shelves or in little mail rooms of online booksellers waiting to be shipped in fancy little packages. Imagine, thousands and thousands of books crying out for a home. They make great door jambs!

Look, the powers that be, whoever they are, put together a Villainology trailer to celebrate:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp06JNe5GmU&rel=1]

Oh, and to further celebrate I'm going to give away one signed copy of Villainology to someone who reads this blog. The trick is, since this blog appears on LJ, Blogspot, Myspace and some rather disreputable places I have to find a fair way to do this...so, whoever goes to the Villainology section of my website, arthurslade.com, and tells me what the "word of the day" is, then e-mails me (click on the old telephone on the top right of my web page) will have a chance at winning. I’ll do the draw three days from now (Oct. 12th). Remember to include your e-mail address in the body of the e-mail. Five other entrants will receive a fabulous mystery prize.

Onward! Upward! Away!

Art

>Review/Whew/Thanksgiving

>Well, I just read one of the nicest reviews of my career. It's for Villainology and it's here in Canadian Materials magazine. It has the best "quotable" line ever! Here it is! "Villainology is the ultimate literary gateway drug." I soooo want to get a t-shirt with that on it.

Oh, and I have to say, whew! And woo hoo! I just finished ten days straight of working on Worse Than Starkers and sent the latest draft to my editors. I've rewritten this book countless times now and felt like I've been looking so close and carefully at it that I was getting to the point of actually unravelling the DNA of my characters (and the plotline). So, whew! I won't have to look at it for awhile. Of course, now is that odd time where I wonder: do they like it? Did it work?

To take my mind off of such questions I plan on eating as much turkey as possible on Thanksgiving Monday (Canadian Thanksgiving, that is). I find food takes my mind off most everything.

Cheers,

Art

>Lizzy Borden Gets the Ax

>Yep, in my list of villains for Villainology, Lizzy Borden was axed. She axed for it! Okay, enough Schwartzeneggerisms! Here's what I wrote about dear ol' Lizzy:

Lizzy Borden: Maybe you’ve heard the skipping rhyme that made her famous forever: Lizzie Borden took an ax/And gave her mother forty whacks/When she saw what she had done/She gave her father forty-one. It’s based on the story of Lizzie Borden, who lived in Fall River, Massachusetts. In 1892 Lizzie found her father and stepmother hacked to death with an ax. Lizzie was put on trial for the murders (the most dramatic part was when her parents’ skulls were unveiled for all the court to see, and Lizzie fainted). She was acquitted by the all male jury and she and her sister split the inheritance. No one ever proved that she had done it. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the rhyme is wrong, her stepmother got 19 whacks and her father 10. Silly Rhyme! Oddly enough an opera called Lizzie Borden was written about her. Funny how all this violence makes people want to sing.

The book has shorter sketches of villains and also "featured" villains (who get a few pages of text). Originally I thought Lizzy would be the perfect villain to be featured, but the more I read about her story the harder it was to make it funny. I mean did she really do it? And, if so, how do you make chopping your parents up into pieces funny? So she was relegated to a short sketch and later was axed altogether (there's that word again). That was one of the difficulties I encountered in the writing of this book--how do you make evil funny. It was suggested at one point that I could do a piece about Hitler. He's a villain (uh, I hope you agree). But he's not funny (okay maybe Charlie Chaplin could make him funny).[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4nV7qTJlOI]
Ah, I'm kidding about the villains bit, of course. I've been a fan since Ride the Lightning hit the record shelves back in 1984. Although, didn't like much after the "black" album (St. Anger is starting to grow on me). The documentary is painful to watch because of the massive clash of giant egos and the goal of getting an album done. And in the middle of it all is a performance coach/therapist (who only makes $40,000 a month) who is working them through their angst and anger. It's amazing that these guys have everything (moneywise) and yet still want to go through the pain of creating a recording together and making it as perfect as possible. I highly recommend the documentary, even if you don't like their music. It's a real testament to how the creative process can drive you (to drink, sometimes, according to the documentary).

Ride the lightning, everyone!

Art

>Bilbo's Birthday!

>Well its Bilbo's birthday, today! Or at least today was the day that The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien was released back in 1937. My Grade Four teacher, Mr. Fitzgerald read the book to us. That was the first I ever heard of it. And sadly, I had to miss a week of school and was incredibly disappointed that I wouldn't get to hear that part of the book. Where was I going? What could be more important than The Hobbit? Oh, we were going to Disneyland. I still remember being on the plane thinking, "I wonder what's happening in The Hobbit, right now." Of course that book led me to Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three and, well, to many more books. Thanks Tolkien!

Here are a few books I recently finished:
Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel. This was the second time I read it. Probably my favourite Oppel book. The perfect followup to Airborn.
The Great Stink by Clare Clark. A murder mystery novel for adults set (mostly) in the sewers of Victorian London. Very well done. You'll never, ever get the description of the sewers out of your head.
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I'd already read the books, but listened to the audiobooks. They're excellent. I'm still disappointed by the third book, but overall one of the strongest fantasy series I've read. I'm excited about the movies because I want to see what they do with the material.

Art

>Names, Names, Names

>Where do names come from? What do they mean? And more importantly how does a name affect your destiny? I was listening to CBC Radio on Saturday and they have a lovely show about the English Language called
And Sometimes Y. The topic this week was Name Games, and one of the specialist on the show spoke about how names affect who you become. For instance someone named Sasha might be more likely to go into the arts, or be a more gentle soul than say, someone named Viper. Or someone named Arthur may become an artist (or a writer). Obviously all sorts of factors contribute to the building of our characters, but your name is something that "points" to you. That's how they described what a name does.

Anyway it got me to thinking about how we authors name our characters. In Dust I called the evil rainmaker, Abram Harsich. I chose Abram because it's a biblical name, Harsich because it had a "Har(d)" sound and by adding "sich" it sounded kind of Eastern European. I wanted the name to "point" to the fact that Abram had been around for a long, long time. In my current project one of the evil characters is Miss Hakkadottir. Scary, eh? The good guy is Modo. I sometimes spend ages searching out names for my characters. Other times they appear out of the blue. Anyway, it's one of the (many) fun parts of this whole writing craft. Who else gets to name so many people?

Art

Oh, and on another note found another nice review of Megiddo's Shadow at Relish Now. "Edward Bathe’s journey from teen to young man is a three-tissue read." That's good, right? I hope I get some kind of royalty from the tissue company!