What, you thought I was going to just post a giveaway and leave it at that? What fun is that!?
Nope, Kelly Link HERSELF is stopping by today to talk to us about one of her favorite authors ever. That's right. And all you have to do is click read more to, well, read more!
And because I feel this is necessary, here is her BIO.
Kelly Link is the author of three collections of short stories, Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question “Why do you want to go around the world?” (”Because you can’t go through it.”)
"Cat Chant admired his elder sister Gwendolyn. She was a witch. He admired her and he clung to her. Great changes came about in their lives and left him no one else to cling to." -- Charmed Life
Above is the opening of the novel Charmed Life. It comes from one of my favorite beginning paragraphs, and from one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite authors.I have a very vivid memory of standing in the aisle of the B. Dalton's bookstore in Miami, Florida. I am in the fantasy and science-fiction section, where I often pull down the current Daw's paperback Year's Best Fantasy Stories, edited by Arthur Saha. The cover is lurid, and I am too afraid to bring the book up to the counter, even though I have enough money to buy it. I have a real problem with covers -- the books that I want to buy have covers that I don't especially like, or am embarrassed by. The covers that I do like are often wrapped around books that prove to be tedious, and I can't afford, on my allowance, to buy bad books.
Up to this point, I have been terrible at remembering names of authors. I'm a fast reader, and by the time I returned a stack of books back to the library, I've already started to forget even the titles of the books that I liked, which makes it a problem when I want to reread them. Another memory: over the course of several years, earlier, while living in Glenside, Pennsylvania, I find, read, and return to my library the book Grimbold's Other World by Nicholas Stuart Grey. Then I forget the title of the book, and the name of the author, and spend many following visits to the library, trying to find it again. I think I found it and lost it again at least twice.
I'm eleven. I go to B. Dalton whenever my parents will drive me to the Dade County Mall. On this visit, I pull down a copy of a book called Charmed Life by a writer named Diana Wynne Jones. At this age, even though I can't quite keep the names of authors straight in my head, I am beginning to develop a theory that writers with three names (or at least two initials) are good bets when it comes to fantasy. (Probably why I will eventually pick up Joyce Ballou Gregorian's books, as well as P. C. Hodgell's, in a few years, and then Karen Joy Fowler's collection Artificial Things. Eventually I am also partial to interesting and distinctive names, like Piers Anthony, or Tanith Lee, maybe because they are easier to remember. By the time I'm fifteen or sixteen, I'm fully invested in the cult of the author: if a bio reveals that an author has a horse, or cats, or lives in a castle -- better yet, all three -- I'll give their book a try.)
I have a vague suspicion that I have already read either Charmed Life, or another book by this writer, and a murkier suspicion that it was a book I rated highly. Moreover, the cover is intriguing: it's a pearly greenish grey, and there are two attractive-looking but sinister children (in the style of Midwich Cuckoos, although I haven't read that yet), and a dragon. I buy it. Already, at this age, I want to own as many books as possible, but since my allowance is too small to do this, and my parents don't take us to the mall all that often, every aspect of buying a book has a ritualistic pleasure to it. Anticipation -- owning a book, but not being able to read it yet, not even on the car ride home, because I get carsick -- is one of the pleasures.
I've been in love with the work of Diana Wynne Jones ever since. Aside from J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis, she's the first writer whose name really stuck in my memory. Out of those three, she's the first writer who, when I first encounter her books, is still writing. This is both a terrific thing -- new books appear, unexpectedly -- and a terrible thing -- I have to wait for each book, and they aren't always available at the library or in B. Dalton. I'm too shy to ask a clerk to special order a book, and by checking the list of other titles in the front matter of the books that I do own, I can see I've already missed a couple. For the next twenty years, or so, until the internet makes it astonishingly, magically easy to find books -- even out-of-print books -- I will look for books by Diana Wynne Jones every time I go to a bookstore, or the library. The next one I find, I think, is at the library: The Power of Three. The ones after that, I think, are Dogsbody and Fire and Hemlock and Archer's Goon, or maybe Homeward Bounders. There are allusions to Greek and Norse mythology, Arthurian legends, fairy tales -- I'm flattered that the author thinks I will recognize them. It's as if parts of the books are in a special code for readers like me. Later on, I read E. Nesbit, and Edward Eager, and T. H. White, and recognize them as the same kind of writer as Diana Wynne Jones.
I still have that copy of Charmed Life. The spine is cracked, and comes away from the book, and the pages are yellowed and crumbly. I have a hardcover as well, and I buy paperback copies whenever I come across them so that I can give them to friends or students. The things that I still love in her work are her characters, who seem like people that I know. Some of them are like me. They are sometimes lazy, or vain, or sarcastic. They act impulsively, do stupid things. They let other people take advantage of them. Sometimes they are attractive, and sometimes they are plain, and sometimes the plain ones are romantic leads. They do brave things reluctantly. They discover hidden depths in themselves. I appreciate the way in which she explores the complexities of friendships, romantic feelings, parent-child and sibling relationships. Rather than her young adult protagonists feeling like miniature adults, often her adult characters behave like children -- in a way that feels extremely realistic, even more so now that I'm in my 40s. In these books, empathy and common sense are valuable character traits, more valuable, because often in short supply -- but valuable too are flamboyance, theatricality, inventiveness, imagination. Often her characters display all of the above.
I love how magic works in Diana Wynne Jones's fiction. There's always an underlying feeling of soundness to it. I always believe that, in her alternate worlds, this is exactly how it would work, whether it's a chemistry set bringing to life chocolate bars, which then drape themselves over heaters and melt, or a witch binding up extra lives in a matchbook. I like her wizards and witches better than anybody's -- better even than Gandalf who, in 1st grade, was one of my first crushes. Her nonfiction book, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, is essential reading for anyone who wants to try tackling traditional fantasy. Let me say that again. Want to write traditional fantasy? You must read The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.
I love her tough-mindedness, her inventiveness. Much like the fiction of Joan Aiken, another writer whose work I read again and again, Diana Wynne Jones's narratives overflow with the kinds of details, digressions, and secondary characters who, in a less generous writer's work, would be parceled out each to their own book.
Just as good as her fiction is her account of her childhood, and of becoming a writer, posted on her website at
http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/autobiog.htm. You really ought to go read that next. I wish that there was a book-length autobiography. Also up, on the front page of her website is this notice:
"I am sorry to have to report that Diana is not at all well at the moment. She has been suffering from cancer and is now undergoing treatment including chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Because of her illness, Diana is not able to read emails right now and she is not able to reply to letters and queries. If you would like to send a good wish, you can email via me (Meredith) and I will print out the messages (no questions, please) every week or so and post them to Diana - meredithxyz @ googlemail.com - Sorry you have to manually remove the spaces but this is the only way to cut down on spam."
I've never actually met Diana Wynne Jones, although I did once see her in passing. She was on the way out of a bathroom at a convention, and I was on my way in. It really didn't seem like a good place to stop someone to tell them how much you love their work. I need to go write a letter.
"Polly sighed and laid her book face down on the bed. She rather thought she had read it after all, some time ago." -- Fire and Hemlock
Here's a list of the Diana Wynne Jones books that I like best to recommend to new readers. Here in the States they go in and out of print, so do what I do and buy them whenever you can find them.
Archer's Goon
Charmed Life
The Homeward Bounders
Fire and Hemlock
Dogsbody
The Ogre Downstairs
The Time of the Ghost
Power of Three
The Dalemark Quartet
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland