ESC zine | SJ O'Hart

Image: spinoff.comicbookresources.com

Did you miss me?

Probably not, I’m wagering. I should think you’d probably have missed me a lot more if I’d done a better job of going away to begin with. I didn’t blog very much, true, but I wasn’t as absent from Twitter as I’d planned (darn you, smartphone!); and I did a lot of dropping in on Facebook, too. As well as all that, my brain was always ‘on’. It’s something which I’m really going to have to work on, you know, this tendency I have to never stop thinking. It’s almost like my mind goes even more doolally over writing-related stuff when I know I’m not supposed to be thinking about it.

So, long story short: I’m only back from two weeks ‘off’, and I feel as tired as ever. Wahey!

However, one of the reasons I’m tired is that, during the last couple of weeks, several cool things happened. I can’t go into detail about them all yet, but – all in good time, my dears. All in good time.

The first cool thing is: I read a whack-ton of books, some of which I’ve been asked to review for a brilliant kidlit-related publication which will be out later in the year. The books included Witch Light (originally published as Corrag, and read just for pleasure) by Susan Fletcher, which was a beautifully written story of one young woman’s struggle to escape her impending execution and her recounting of the massacre at Glencoe in 17th-century Scotland, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Shockingly, I’d never managed to get around to reading the latter until now, despite it languishing on my TBR-list for years. I also devoured The Wolf in Winter, the new John Connolly novel (again, this was just for me!) and it was as fascinating as any of his previous Charlie Parker books. I love and adore children’s and YA books, of course, but it is nice to step into the realm of adult literature every once in a while (if only to reaffirm your conviction that kidlit is way better).

Speaking of which, did you read this article by Ruth Graham, published in Slate on June 5th, about how adults who read YA literature should be ashamed of themselves? Yeah. Well, you can all probably guess how I feel about that particular viewpoint. Let’s just say it did my heart good to watch the backlash to this article’s publication on Twitter. Author after author after reader after reader took to the airwaves (do people still say ‘airwaves’? Anyway) to promote and share the love for the YA/kidlit books that they adore, and that was wonderful to witness. In the last week alone, I’ve read a YA book about a fourteen-year-old girl tormented with guilt and self-hatred after the death of her younger brother, for which she blames herself. The story takes us through her psychiatric treatment and the depth of anguish she must face in order to deal with her pain. I’ve read books aimed at young readers which deal with death, genocide, totalitarian regimes, slavery, abuse, imprisonment, injustice and every kind of loss imaginable – in other words, nothing less than what you’d find in a literary novel – and Ruth Graham appears to take issue with YA literature because of its tendency to offer ‘neat’ and satisfying endings. To that I say ‘tosh’. Most of the YA books I’ve read show the characters coming through a crucible of some sort, learning to live with it, and then moving on somehow changed, somehow unimaginably different. Not neat. Not trite. Real.

Also, if ‘growing up’ means putting aside the magic of beautiful literature and living on an unceasing diet of Pynchon and Updike and Franzen and Banville and Roth (even though I quite like Roth), then count me out. Give me fairy tale and dreamscape and adventure and the thrill of discovery any day.

‘I suspect that, for his escape, he took advantage of the migration of wild birds.’ (The Little Prince, Chapter Nine). Text and illustration: Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
Image sourced: mtlsd.org

The second cool thing to happen while I was away was this: I had a story published (it’s called ‘The Monument‘, and there’s a teeny sliver of ‘bad’ language used in it, so be aware of that if you’re planning to read it). I also had another story (‘Hollow’) accepted for publication by a very cool ‘zine called ESC, and a piece I wrote about the Date with an Agent event went live on http://www.writing.ie. So, all that was plenty awesome.

The third cool thing was this: a friend asked me to join him in helping out with editorial duties on a literary journal which investigates the interplay between literature and science. So far my role has included such duties as brainstorming themes, thinking up submission guidelines and trying to write a cool, snappy bio, which I’ve managed with varying degrees of success. I’m sure there’ll be more to say about this in the future, but for now here’s a link to the journal’s website where you can find out more about it.

In non-writing related news: I watched X-Men: Days of Future Past and loved it; my husband had a birthday, which was great; we got to spend some time with family, which was very great, and there was actually some sunshine to enjoy, which was fantastic.

How about all y’all? How have things been over the past couple of weeks? I can’t wait to hear all your news.