First please note that the new issue of Bookslut is up with both a new adult nonfiction review from me, The Red Leather Diary by Lily Koppel, and a new YA column on what I considered "hidden worlds" but Jessa titled "things that bite". (Oddly, both descriptions apply.) I reviewed Martin Millar's Lonely Werewolf Girl (you all know how I loved it), Unleashed by Kris Reisz, Darkside by Tom Becker, Changeling by Delia Sherman and Amulet Bk 1 by Kazu Kibuishi. There are also three (THREE!) gorgeous new books on Greek mythology that should not be passed up - combined they form my "Cool Read" for July.

The issue also has a review of Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and really, I need to get this book. Here's what's weird - I don't like running. I've often wondered if maybe that's just because I wasn't much of a runner when I was young. I was always way more into the water and all things water-related than any kind of running. We did run in junior high (when I did my last three years of PE) and I did okay but only because I had to. I was not an organized sporty type girl and so I didn't run much. Years later when I got more into weight lifting I did bike a lot (and in college biked to class or work) but I never got into the running thing. Now I find myself not biking anymore (the amount of hills in this town is insane) and doing all sorts of exercises to address my legs....and yet I know that running would be good for legs and good for me overall (it's not like I'm going to push it or anything).

Yet in the end. I have never liked running. I have such little stamina it is amazing. Give me a weight bench and I do pretty good but stamina? I've got nothing. So maybe reading about running would help....yeah! That's the ticket!

I am pitiful.

As fans of her blog know, Jenny D. is all about the running/swimming/biking. She blogged the other day at Harper's My Space page for the release of her book The Explosionist (why aren't your reading that book right now??) and mentions how her love for triathlons is affecting the plot of the book's sequel:

he Explosionist is the first volume of what I originally planned as a trilogy, and this summer I'm writing the sequel, The Snow Queen. And I am finding myself now with a very funny problem! This book picks up right where the last one left off, but it's a good four years now since I wrote the first draft of volume one. Sophie hasn't had a huge amount of time to change, in other words, but I have! And the big thing that's different in my life now as opposed to four years ago is that I have fallen in love with the idea of triathlon!

I still haven't figured out exactly how to handle this in the new book, but I am very certain that Sophie will do quite a bit of bike-riding—and I am determined to have her go for a few swims!

For those of you who were wondering why Jenny checked out all those books on Laplanders - now you know! (I love the Snow Queen story - can't wait to see her spin on it.)

Now that Map of My Dead Pilots is gone to the agent (Gone! Banished from my thoughts for one solid month I swear!) I am catching up on book reviews and working on a short story. I am not a conventional story writer - I don't seem to plot that well. This could be something that changes with practice but I seem to be more attracted to stories that are written in an unconventional manner. I have been thinking about a short story idea for a little while (ironically it is about a pilot who crashed in Alaska) as it was something that just has not fit into either the NF or fictional accounts of my time at the Company in AK. When I first read Chris Barzak's "What We Know About the Lost Families of ___ House" in Interfictions it really hit me hard as a way to tell a story in a different way. And I was wondering if that format would work for the story I've been toying with (it is not a haunted story at all) when I came across Catherynne Valente's "A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica" in Clarkesworld (online - do read it!) and thought, "whoa - I can do this". (Keeping in mind of course that my story is not about maps or Antarctica.

Interestingly while it is Valente's willingness to take chances in her writing that appeals to me the most, it troubles her from time to time (especially when she thinks about sales). She just wrote about this today and I do hate that writers who are creative and thoughtful and work hard at their art must suffer from lesser sales. It so does not seem fair. And then I read about what Theodora Goss is willing to do in order to write a good story and it fairly blows my mind. Consider:

I deal with them the only way I know how, which is to work. So last night I was up until 3:30 a.m. researching the history of the Tasmanians. Today, I am writing this in my notebook, sitting on the T, on my way to the Boston Public Library to look at an 1890 edition of H. Ling Roth's The Aborigines of Tasmania. I have the 1899 edition, but if H.G. Wells had read Roth's book before he wrote The Island of Dr. Moreau, as I believe he did, he would have read the 1890 edition. So I'm going to see how the two editions differ.

In a journal entry, Tobias Buckell wrote that everyone can find the time to write. He told aspiring writers to turn off their televisions. I think he's right that everyone can find the time. My problem is the energy. It feels as though the stress of this continual ambiguity is sapping away my energy, my ability to concentrate. So it's easier to do writing that doesn't require deep focus – like this journal, and academic writing (which is intellectual rather than emotional, like putting together a puzzle). So many people seem to think that writing a story is easy. It's the hardest writing of all.

And so I see Jenny D. with her books on Lapland and Catherynne Valente and Chris Barzak pushing the boundaries of format and style and Theodora Goss going to extremes to get the perfect book on Tasmania and I think well, yes. I should write this story about a pilot who crashed in 1943 and the girl who died and how no one remembers. It is a story I know; I should take a chance like my literary heroes do and write it.

And I really ought to try that running thing as well.