The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Valentines Day and A Conspicuous Absence of Vampires

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Valentines Day and A Conspicuous Absence of Vampires

The kids are finally back in school for more than one day consecutively, the power is back on, and I just finished reading the first batch of email from readers of Light Beneath Ferns.

Valentines Day here was like something I would edit out of a YA I was writing. Since we were still snowed in pretty much (we could go on the roads, but it was scary cold and really icy), I made cupcakes and got a bunch of decorating stuff for Emma. Or so I thought.

Somehow we ended up on Valentines night with teenagers and a very, very impromptu Valentines Day party. I never thought teens would want to stay in the kitchen with me and Emma, but they proved me wrong. Not only did they make more cupcakes, they mixed icing and used all the sprinkles and hearts. They actually stayed in there and talked to me. I love what they did with the icing:

Of course, Philip had on his hat (you know how little kids like certain things, like belts or bracelets? Philip has always loved hats) Here he is with Emma and friend:

And yesterday I found out I was a paranormal romance writer. I didn't know that. But that's ok, paranormal romance is a perfectly acceptable sub genre. The only thing is, I don't write about vampires. And that seems to be a problem.

It's not that I have anything against vampires, and I'm sure there are good stories out there involving vampires, but I don't write them. In fact, I don't even read them. And if you like them, that's what you like and you should read all kinds of vampire books. Vampires just seem silly to me for the most part.

But somehow, somewhere, LBF got tagged "vampire" and a couple of people bought it and wrote to me complaining that they read the whole novel and there was no vampire. Not one.

They're right; there isn't a vampire in LBF. I'm not sure how books get tagged or who does the tagging, but just in case you are planning on reading it, be prepared for a very pronounced absence of vampires. The kids did talk me into walking in a Halloween parade in a vampire (vampress?) costume, but other than that, I live and write a completely vampire free life.

Maybe it's because I live in the New Jersey Pinelands which happens to be the tic capital of the world. According to the produce clerk at the local Acme, there are more tics here per square mile than any other place in the world. So maybe the whole idea of bloodsucking hits just a little too close to home.

10 comments:

Bish Denham said...: LOL Anne! I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks vampires are silly. Andit's just wonderful how teens gravitate to your house, play in the kitchen, and even talk to you. You must be a pretty cool mom.; Wednesday, 17 February, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: I think I'm a cool mom of a friend. When other kids tell me, "So I failed math..." I remain normal. My kids say they forgot a hw assignment and I morph into psycho mom. "WHAT??? AND YOU WERE WATCHING TV LAST NIGHT INSTEAD OF PLOTTING ANGLES???" - well, that's how it starts.

But really, all kids want is for someone to listen to them. And food. Lots of food.; Wednesday, 17 February, 2010
Jemi Fraser said...: It's bizarre people would think you've written about vampires! That's so odd.

Love the cupcakes and the party :); Wednesday, 17 February, 2010
storyqueen said...: Well, a tick is a mini-bloodsucker, a vampire of the near microscopic variety, if you will....I'm surprised the reader did not get the connection....

Shelley; Wednesday, 17 February, 2010
Unknown said...: LOL! We both spent Valentine's day in the kitchen with teenagers.

Now how anyone could mix you up with a writer of vampire paranormal is beyond me. Too bad. No vampires. Instead they got great writing.; Wednesday, 17 February, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: I think the book was tagged somewhere and I think it was with "vampire romance" - I guess they were expecting Twilight. Oh well.; Thursday, 18 February, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; Thursday, 18 February, 2010
Anonymous said...: Hey Professor Spollen!!! Happy
Birthday!!!!!!!!

Your Jerzee Geniuses; Thursday, 18 February, 2010
Mary Witzl said...: Boy, I couldn't agree more about vampires! Bram Stoker and Anne Fine did them well, but after them I felt I'd had enough. Twilight schmilight.

It's a huge compliment that the kids want to be with you in the kitchen! It's irritating as all get out, but inside you just feel so flattered. Not every adult gets such honors, you know.; Friday, 19 February, 2010
Liz @ Cleverly Inked said...: Cute cupcakes; Tuesday, 23 February, 2010

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

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