Eilis O'Neal

Rosalinda Fitzroy has been asleep for sixty-two years when she is woken by a kiss.

Locked away in the chemically induced slumber of a stasis tube in a forgotten sub-basement, sixteen-year-old Rose slept straight through the Dark Times that killed millions and utterly changed the world she knew. Now her parents and her first love are long dead, and Rose -- hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire -- is thrust alone into a future in which she is viewed as either a freak or a threat.

Desperate to put the past behind her and adapt to her new world, Rose finds herself drawn to the boy who kissed her awake, hoping that he can help her to start fresh. But when a deadly danger jeopardizes her fragile new existence, Rose must face the ghosts of her past with open eyes -- or be left without any future at all.

I waited a long, long time to get my hands on a copy of Anna Sheehan's A Long, Long Sleep. Really, I put a hold on a copy through the library shortly after the book came out in August of last year and then waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, in April, I called the library to ask what was up and found out something had gone wrong in the ordering process, and no one there had noticed. Happily, once alerted, it only took a bit longer for them to actually get the book in stock. And I'm pleased to say that my long, long wait was worth it.

As you may know, I'm a sucker for retold fairy tales, or stories that draw heavily on fairy tales for their inspiration. A Long, Long Sleep isn't precisely a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, but a story that explores the question of what life might have been like for Sleeping Beauty after she was kissed and awoken by the prince. I love this, because so often fairy tales end on the kiss, and ignore the real life problems that would inevitably come after. (There's another fairy tale aspect that Sheehan doesn't shy away from: darkness. I can't get into the source of this darkness without giving too much away, but I was pleased that she didn't pull her punches with the true bad guy of the piece, and that that part also fits in with the fairy tale theme.)

And Sheehan's answer to what life is like after the traditional end of the story? Difficult and confusing. Rose is a girl out of time, one trying to come to grips with losing her parents, her world, and her best friend/boyfriend, Xavier. She flounders in the world she awakens to, though her problems with fitting in don't all come from the fact that she's out of time. That was one of the other things that I liked about the book: Rose's growth. She starts the book as a girl with some serious self-esteem problems. As in, really serious, though Sheehan eases the reader into the depths of Rose's self-worth problems well. She grows stronger as the book progresses--and in a believable way.

Finally, I was really pleased with the sci-fi setting. There's still not much science fiction in the YA market, though the field is growing. A Long, Long Sleep makes good use of the sf setting, without being overly technical (something I appreciate). And this is the first time I've seen fairy tales paired with sf in a YA book (though it there are others, let me know), and I loved how they complimented each other. My only gripe about the sf would be that I would have liked to have known the actual date of the book, and where exactly events were taking place. (The 2080s are mentioned, but it's not mentioned how long ago that was.)

So, if you're looking for something different in YA fairy tales or sci-fi (or feel cautious about dipping your toe into science fiction), take a look at this one. There's room left for a sequel, and though I can't find a mention of one yet, I certainly hope there will be.

Before my mom was a Pre-K teacher, she was a landscaper. Which meant that I spent a lot of my early childhood being carted around to businesses and private houses, finding ways to entertain myself while my mom worked. So there was a lot of reading, lots of pretend play, and even some practice for being a writer, which I talk about here. I don't ever recall being that interested in her actual gardening, but as I've become an adult I've realized that I seemed to have picked up a love of gardens anyway. (This is probably aided by the fact that my mom's personal garden has always been quite lovely and I spent massive amounts of time reading in it when I lived at home, and the fact that most castles and manor houses have wondrous gardens, and I wish, rather desperately, that I could live in one.)

In any case, though I'm not nearly so green-thumbed as my mom, I've kept my garden since I bought my own house about eight years ago. I've spent the last few weeks cleaning it up from the winter and getting all my new plants in, and I think it looks pretty good for early in the spring (though my garden doesn't reach its peak until summer, because many of my plants are of the native, drought-resistance variety, which in essence means that they want to be beaten with the blazing heat of an Oklahoma summer before they'll get going). So I thought I'd share some pics.



This is Clyde II. (Clyde, First of His Name, is smaller and lives in the house because he's a little more battered than Clyde II and too fragile to go outdoors.) Clyde II Is a llama, NOT, as some people claim, a goat. (And no, I don't care that he has horns and may have started life as a goat. He's a llama now.) Bonus points for anyone who knows why he's named Clyde II. (Hint: it's related to a short story that appeared in Realms of Fantasy.)



A bigger shot of Clyde II so that you can see the huge plant that's attacking him. I love this plant because it is so weird looking, though I'm having trouble remembering what it is (I planted it several years ago).



Close shot of the Plant Who Shall Not Be Named. Love the little fairy-cup leaves.



And one more just for fun.



The Yarrow That Will Take Over the World. This is only 1/3 to 1/2 of the whole plant. Also, this is Matt's favorite plant, because he says it reminds him of the platforms in a Mario game. Yes, I'm married to a geek.



Zinnias make me happy, even when they're still small. I also have yellow and orange flowers, and they're awesome in the heat of summer.



This strawflower is new this year. I can't get over how plasticy the leaves feel--it's like they're not even real.



I planted these Crazy Daises last year, but didn't get to enjoy them because I was in Ireland when they bloomed. Very glad to be here to see them this year, because they make me smile whenever I go past them.



If one daisy is crazy, what's a whole bush of them?



Matt might like the yellow yarrow best, but I really like my paprika yarrow. What's funny about this picture is that I didn't realize a ladybug had photobombed me until I was resizing this for the post. You can see it on the right edge of the plant.



These cosmos are new this year. I love their darker pink centers. I also have dark purple ones and you can see some of the white and purple ones in Clyde II.



These always look like they should start singing to me, like the flowers in Alice in Wonderland. Their mouths are already open, after all.


So, there's a peek at what I've been busy with for the last few weekends. I'll do another post later this summer when the coneflowers, Mexican hat plant, Mexican butterfly weed, and the butterfly bush get going.

I haven't been around on the blog as much over the last few months. In part, that's been because my husband spent the last 4 months in a land I like to call Dissertation Hell. It's a dismal land, one that prohibits most-to-all of your social contact, forces you to leave household chores undone, and leaves you with only enough energy to fall in front of the TV when you emerge from it at the end of the night. My husband was, obviously, living there much more than I was, but Dissertation Hell requires that your spouse get a visa and come with you for a lot of the journey. So, we've both been a little more tired than usual.

But it all paid off. Yesterday, he got his Ph.D. in chemistry. What do you do to celebrate such an event? Why, I'm so glad you asked . . .



You make the Periodic Table of Cupcakes! Different flavors for the different groupings of elements, along with a guide to help people choose which element is right for them. (Because a Metalloid tastes different than a Halogen, you know, and no one wants to be surprised when they bite into a Noble Gas.)

It was geeky and silly and fun. And, most of all, yummy.

I've talked elsewhere about the importance I place on character names. And, as I've been having some Naming Issues in the book that I'm working on right now, I've been thinking recently about my process of naming.

With major characters, I generally can't introduce them into the story until I have their name. And not a place holder name—their real, for all time name. I've tried to give major characters place-holder names, and it just doesn't work. They dig in their heels and refuse to come alive for me, or else every time I put down the name I start worrying about how it isn't right and why won't they tell me their real name by God?!? So as stories progress, I tend to have long stretches of sitting at the computer, starring off into space while I run names in my head and try to decide if they feel right. I usually know what kind of feeling I want to evoke with the name, the kind of sound quality or length that I'm looking for. This name should be hard and short, I think. Or, This person has a really posh sounding name. I'll know the neighborhood I need to be in, but sometimes getting to the right street can take lots of time and lots of wrong turns. So I make lists of possible names, even the ones I know aren't quite right, because sometimes a wrong name can still lead me to the right one. All this also goes for major place names as well.

With minor characters, generally people who appear only briefly or are mentioned by name but never make an actual appearance in the story, and with minor places, I'm less picky. I've been known to pop in a place holder name, knowing that I'll probably come back and change it later. Or, if I'm feeling really lazy, even to leave the name out entirely and put a dashed line where the name should go. Sadly, this usually leads to not-so-fun day after I'm done with the first draft, a day when I have to force myself to go back and make up names for people and places in need of authentic-sounding names but who aren't all that important.

Right now, in the book I'm currently working on, I've run into a niggling problem in that I don't like my main character's last name. Probably because it's not her original last name. Sadly, I realized that her original last name, which I really did love in combination with her first name and which sounded so cool, didn't work in the rest of the story. It really wants and needs to be in some other story. Sadly (again), I only realized this after writing about 120 pages of the book, which meant that I had to change her name in mid-stream. And I've realized as I've gone on with the book that I'm not all that happy with the second last name. I don't know what I want to change it to, and I've left it the way it is so far because it's just a last name, even though I frown a little every day I write it.

I'm going to have to figure this out. And soon. But with her already having had two last names, I know finding a third one that really works will be hard, if only because she's been called too many things in my head already. Part of me wonders if I should stop and try to figure it out before going on, but then I worry about losing momentum on the actual story. I think I'm going to wait, hoping that that's the best thing to do. I think.

Ah well. This is what being a writer is, folks. Figuring it out as you go along.

One of the questions that I get asked a lot is “Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?” The short answer that I give is “yes.” By the age of eleven or twelve, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would, without hesitation, say “a writer.” Before that age, I might have answered “writer,” but I also might have answered any number of other things, include marine biologist (this was before I realized that you probably need to like biology to be a marine biologist, and not just want to swim with dolphins). The turning point for me was reading, in quick succession, a run of books that made me look at the world, and at myself, differently. These included Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness books, Monica Furlong’s Juniper and Wise Child, Diane Duane’s Young Wizards books, Alexander Lloyd’s Westmark and Prydain books, and Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series.  Aside from being just uber-awesome, these books helped me through a really rough patch of my childhood, and after reading them all within the space of a year or two, I knew that I wanted to write books like that. Soon after, I tried to write my first novel, and I’ve actually been in the process of writing some novel or other ever since (though several of them were never finished and many of them will never see the light of day).

But even before that, I was taking part in two activities that were, in essence, prepping me to make that turn at the age of twelve. The first is one that I’ve talked about elsewhere: from the age of about three I told my mother stories. I don’t actually have memories of doing this until somewhere around age five, but we have the stories, typed on our typewriter on brightly colored paper and then sometimes illustrated (badly) by me, to prove that I was doing this before then. Here’s the first story I ever wrote:

    Once there was a green frog that lived on a lily pad. She loved to swim. She was the queen. She had a friend called the king.

    One day she was very sad and cried big frozen tears. The king asked, “Why are you crying big frozen tears?” She said sadly, “Because the river is frozen. I can't swim.”

Kind of minimalist, but I was three. (Reading it now, I'm amused that the kind and queen are apparently “just friends.”) According to the family legend, my mom promptly called my father after she had finished writing the story down and told him that I was “going to be a writer.”

In any case, that story started a trend, so that I now have a large binder stuffed full of typed-out stories from my childhood. (They got a bit longer, and acquired titles like “A Black Cat Meets a Jack-o-lantern and They Both Meet a Witch and They All Meet  Ghost.”) It’s not child prodigy stuff, but it was fun—and a lot of kinds of fun thrown together. I got to tell a story, spend time with my mom, usually play around on the typewriter when she was finished typing the story up. (I liked to type before I could actually read or write, making pictures with things like the @ sign, which I decided was a snail. The @ sign was my favorite.)

The other thing that I feel had a real influence on me writer-wise before I officially decided that I wanted to become a writer came about mainly due to the fact that my mother was a landscaper for most of my young childhood. She worked for both private homes and larger companies, so I spent many, many spring, summer and fall days stuck in people’s yards or places like the gardens of Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Tulsa while my mom gardened. It wasn’t so bad, actually; I was pretty good at entertaining myself as a kid. When I wasn't entertaining myself, though, one of the things that we did to keep me busy was to “play Robin Hood.”

What this involved was me taking on the persona of a character, generally from an animated movie. My favorite one, the one that we spent the most time playing was Robin Hood, from the Disney version. So I would be Robin Hood, and my mom would be everyone else. Maid Marion, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Little John, King John, the various little kid rabbits and turtles. And then I would start some sort of story. We had to rob the king’s castle, escape from the castle, infiltrate the Sheriff’s guard, rescue Maid Marion—everything that a kid could think of Robin Hood doing. Basically, we were roleplaying, though I didn’t know the word at the time. I would dash around and act things out, while my mom would supply the dialogue for her characters. Or, generally, parrot back the lines that I told her. (It was only as an adult that my mom told me that it was annoying to only rarely get to make up her own lines. As a kid, I never realized that prefacing everything I told her with “say that,” might get old after a while.)

We played this a lot. I mean, a whole lot. Not always Robin Hood, although I’d say that was the game 85% of the time. We also played The Secret of Nimh (I was Jeremy the crow, for some reason, rather than Mrs. Frisby), 101 Dalmatians (Me: Rolly the puppy. My mom: the other 100 puppies plus humans), and others. I did this to a lesser extent with my dad, usually to the tune of Thundercats (though with my dad it involved more wrestling and mock-fighting).

And I loved it. Really and truly loved it. At the time, I didn’t think of it as prepping me to be able to tell stories. I just liked playing the game. But, looking back, it was teaching me, on a child’s scale, about writing action and suspense scenes, making up dialogue for numerous characters, and even a little about pacing.

So that's the long story to answer the question “Did you always want to be a writer?” Apparently, even before I really realized it, the answer was yes.

Two things have recently come to my attention.

1) I have too many books. As in, I really, really don't have space for them all in my house. Which leads me to the conclusion that I need a new, larger house, with its own built-in library with shelves up to the ceiling and a rolling ladder like Beauty and the Beast . . . but that's another story. In any case, I need to Make Room On My Shelves, even if it is a painful and terrible process.

2) I promised to host a contest for followers on my new Tumblr and then I let it slide.

Both of these realizations are great for you because they mean it's time for . . . .

A Giveaway!

It's easy. If you're already a follower on Tumblr, go to the contest post there that mimics this one and "like" it. If you're not a follower, become one and "like" the post. (If you don't have a Tumblr account, you can make one for free; having just started myself, I have to say it's fun and I'm kind of getting addicted to it.) And while you're there, feel free to ask a question about basically anything--I'd love to answer it.

The Prizes:

2 winners will be chosen at random and will be given their choice of three ARCs each from the following list of fabulous books:

Eve by Anna Carey
Variant by Robison Wells
Frost by Marianna Baer
Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver
Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan
The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
Dark Eden by Patrick Carman
Darker Still by Leanna Renee Hieber
Deadly Cool by Gemma Halliday
Wildwood by Colin Meloy

The giveaway will be open until noon CST on Saturday, April 7th, and then I pick the winners. Hope you'll enter

Now that spring--in the form of birds chirping at my windows, plants beginning to show their heads in my garden, and my allergies making themselves known in unpleasant ways--appears to be here, I thought I'd mention some of the things I'm looking forward to most this season.

Books:



Black Heart by Holly Black. The third book of the Curse Workers series is probably my most anticipated book of the spring. I'm absolutely dying (and I mean that in a fairly literal way, because I'm absolutely worried and freaked out) to find out what happens to Cassel and Lila. I'll be pulling a late-nighter with this one, I'm sure.


Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal. As I've mentioned several times, I loved the first novel in this series, Shades of Milk and Honey. It was the perfect blend of magic with Austen-like romance and manners. In fact, my husband, who is also an Austen lover (I'm still sort of psyched that I managed to convert him so early in our relationship, and how easy it was, and how permanent), is also eagerly awaiting the 2nd book.


The Master of Heathcrest Hall by Galen Beckett. And, speaking of Austen, I'm also really looking forward to Beckett's version of magic and manners. The first book in this trilogy, The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, leaned pretty heavily on Austen and Bronte, though not in a bad way. The second book, The House on Durrow Street, stepped farther away from them, and then took an almost science fictional turn I did not see coming.  I have no idea where the third one is going, but I can't wait to find out.


The Shape of Desire by Sharon Shinn. I have to admit that I know little about this book aside from the jacket copy. But Shinn is one of those authors that I don't really need to know that information to know that I'll buy the book. I buy all of her books and--with only one exception out of about 20 novels--they thrill me every time. So I'm always looking forward to her books.

On the Screen:


I'm not alone in this--in fact, this lake is so big I'm not even a drop in it--but I really, really am looking forward to The Hunger Games movie. I'm equally freaked out about it, because I have a history of feeling dissatisfied with movies based on books that I really love. I did the best with The Lord of the Rings movies (aside from the second one, which had me cursing as I left the theater because of the whole Faramir issue). I've been lukewarm on most of the Harry Potter movies (but that has more to do, I think, with the fact that so much as to be left out for time considerations). Hunger Games isn't long, so I'm hoping the Harry Potter issues won't crop up. I am hoping that they do a good job with the film, that it stays true to the books in the ways that matter and brings them to life in a way that's enjoyable. Fingers crossed.


Game of Thrones Season Two. I thought HBO did a really good job with the adaptation of the first book. Nothing important left out, great production values, great actors. I'm hoping that they continue it in Season 2. Of course, doing as good a job will, in some ways, mean that Season 2 is even more torturous than Season 1. Partially because bad things continue to happen to good people, and most of the bad people who you want to see maimed don't start getting their just desserts nearly quickly enough, but also because the second book starts in with some of the things about the series that Irritate Me. Not talking about things on a story level here, but on an authorial level, because as much as I love the books there are also some particular things about them that really, really bug me. And I'll have to relive those during the show. But I'll be watching every week. Oh yeah.


What are you looking forward to most this spring?

I have a Tumblr!

It's new, so there's not much there yet, but there will be. (Insert evil laugh here.)

Seriously, though, join me there. I'll be posting pics of the dogs, my spring garden, knitting projects, books--all sorts of things, basically. And there's an "Ask Me" section, so if you have burning questions about what Kiernan would do in a particular situation, how I deal with writer's block, my favorite flavor of ice cream, or whatever, you can ask me there. I promise to give truthful, insightful, humorous answers, though not necessarily all at the same time. Seriously, though, ask me something--I like questions.

Also, I'm going to be having a contest soon for Tumblr followers, so check back here and there soon!

This week I'll be at the Association of Writers and Writing Program's annual conference (AWP) in Chicago. The conference is huge one--they actually had to cancel late registration this year because 10,000 people have already signed up. (Which is pretty amazing, given that the first AWP I went to in Kansas City in 2000 had only a few thousand people at it, as far as I know.)

I won't be on any programming at AWP, because it's mainly geared toward literary fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. But in case there are any YA or genre fans in the mix as well, I wanted to mention that I'll be running Nimrod Journal's book table at the bookfair each morning until about 11:30. The table is K20, and while I'll mostly be handing out information about the journal, I would love to chat with any YA fantasy and sf lovers who want to drop by. So if you'll be there, don't be shy--come see me! Here's the info:

AWP Conference 2012: Chicago
Thursday, March 1 - Saturday, March 3
Nimrod Journal's booktable, table K20
I may be around other times, but you can be sure to catch me between 8:30 and 11:30 a.m.

So for the last two years I've been learning to knit. And in the last two years, I've managed to complete . . . one and a half projects.

Seriously, I think I may be the slowest knitter in existence. Here's my first post about my knitting, where you can see the scarf I made as my first project and one half of the front of the ruana I was (and am still currently) making as my second project. Sadly, this post is dated March 11th, 2011, and as you can see from the pictures below, I've basically still got half the ruana to go.


The front and a little of the back of the ruana. I really do like it, especially the cable. Also, it's very soft.


Cable close up. I'm sort of dorkily proud of it.

So now I'm working on the back of the ruana. When I saw that the back has no pattern, that it's just knit-knit-knit, purl-purl-purl, I thought, Yes! This is going to go so much faster since I don't have to count stitches and keep track of the cable and all that finicky stuff! What I forgot to factor into that thought was that I've now joined the two sides of the front up, which means that the back is twice as long as anything I was working on before. As in, it feels like it goes on for twelve years. I'm averaging about 2 rows in fifteen minutes of knitting. And I have to make the back as long as the front. How much have I gotten done so far?


That much.


As in, my hand much. Which isn't very much at all.

So, things are moving slowly. But the real problem is that I have to have very particular circumstances to knit. I don't want to just knit. That's boring. I'd like to be able to watch TV and knit, and I sort of can. As long as it's a show I've seen multiple times that doesn't have that much visual interest. I knitted to Star Trek Next Gen, and that worked well, because I don't need to be able to actually watch the TV to know what's going on. But Buffy, which I also know pretty well, is out because, well, I don't want to miss even a second of Spike. (Among other reasons. Really, I promise.) But there just aren't a lot of shows that fall into that category that I'm interested in rewatching at the moment.

I can kind of hold conversations and knit, as long as the other person does 85% of the talking. So that's pretty much out.

Recently, I've decided to try listening to books on tape while I read (and wow, that's exactly how I typed that out, without thinking, and really that just dated me). But, again, it has to be a book that I've already read, so that if I miss a line or two, it doesn't matter. I think I'm going to try the Harry Potter books and see how that goes.

In short, I'm still debating with myself as to whether or not I can call knitting a hobby, since I'm not sure something you do this infrequently counts. But I'm having fun. Though I think I know now to pick a shorter project for my third, just so the sense of accomplishment comes a little quicker. . . .