DEFY THE DARK
Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.
Two blog posts in one day, Sarah?
(Well, I like to keep you guys guessing.)
This is a cool thing that you will ENJOY, I think. There are prizes.
So, this week the anthology DEFY THE DARK was released. It is all darkly haunting tales by Rachel Hawkins, Carrie Ryan, Aprilynne Pike, Malinda Lo, Courtney Summers, Beth Revis, Sarah Ockler, and many more: I am not sure WHY I was asked, given the super cool lineup, but hey, I’ll take it. I love writing short stories! I love the screaming from my editors about the exact definition of ‘short.’
The editor was the amazing Saundra Mitchell, who is both a good friend and the author of many brilliant novels, including the just-released The Elementals, which she explains all the awesome things about better than I ever could here: http://diversityinya.tumblr.com/post/52870290826/when-there-are-no-words
It also has a story from a brand new author in it, which I think is pretty cool, as we all know there are a thousand new authors with amazing stories to tell, waiting for us to discover them.
Not only did we have a contest and chose a fabulous new author, Saundra (she can do magic, I’m telling you!) read every one of the thousands of entries and chose other authors to highlight as well. They will be at http://defythedark.com/emily-skrutskie/ and http://defythedark.com/taure-shimp/. Emily’s story is AFTER ILLUME, a ship-bound SF tale, and BOGWATER by Taure Shimp, a wonderful southern gothic.
Everyone else’s stories are super cool, guys. There’s baby spider people and creepy Southern towns. And there is my story, I Gave You My Love By the Light of the Moon, and I HOPE it’s cool.
The theme was what happens in the dark, and I love the Vampire Diaries, and a particular couple I love on that show are Tyler the angry jock werewolf and Caroline the cheerleader vampire, blonde and bubbly and bright-shining-heart-of-gold Caroline who teaches him to be a better man by being amazing and tenderly shepherding him through his supernatural chaaaanges because she knows better. I also love Vivian the lady werewolf from Annette Curtis Klause’s Blood & Chocolate, and I feel she could have lit up the life of many a gloomy fictional vampire of my acquaintance. Basically, I like vampires and I like werewolves. They’re extremely different creatures of the night, often painted as in opposition (and what’s not to love about Furry Romeo and Fangy Juliet? Maybe Edward and Jacob could have made it work together, is what I’m saying, I don’t judge…) and they both say a lot about what it means to be human.
So I wrote my story about Berthe, who loves lacrosse and camping and was just bitten by a werewolf, and the weirdo hipster she meets in a cafe.
You defy the dark by living in the dark with love. Or that’s what I was going for, anyway.
How’s about you tell me about fictional couples you enjoy-either ones that actually happened, or characters you’d like to see get together? I will enter you for a draw, and the winner will get a copy of Defy the Dark, a copy of Unspoken, wristlets and bookmarks, and my super secret extra addition… my very last ARC of Untold. (The others are earmarked for the CONTEST WINNERS, about which more soon…)
But first, let’s defy the dark, and dish on fictional couples.