R. F. Long

It’s almost a real book! I now have 5 whole copies to play with. Most of them are spoken for, alas.

But they are sooooo pretty. I believe that copies may be available for review from the Penguin Young Readers group though, but I can’t swear to that.

This is the official bit:

If you would like to request a copy of THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS to review on your blog, email Penguin Young Readers Group at yrmarketing (at) us.penguingroup (dot) com. Be sure to include your name, the name and URL of your blog, an address to which a possible review copy can be sent, plus any statistics and/or sample reviews. Please understand that galley quantities are limited and that not all requests can be filled.

The May Tree, or Hawthorn, or the Fairy Tree features in my novel THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS. The tradition is to tie a rag or ribbon to the tree and make a wish. It’s a gnarled, thorny little tree, with the most beautiful white flowers in springtime and bright red berries in autumn. It is the Thorn in the saying Oak, Ash and Thorn, and grows in the most exposed areas, clinging to the sides of hills and the rocky earth.

We’ve been away for a couple of days, back to Ashford Castle in Mayo. I’ll have more photos and a post about it soon.

On the way back, we stopped off at Loughcrew, or Slieve na Cailleach (your spelling may vary). Slieve na Cailleach means Mountain of the Witch and is topped by a stone cairn called The Hag’s Cairn, which is about 6000 years old. It’s a fantastic place, really atmospheric and not a little creepy. I’ll have more on that too, including some compass related weirdness. But for this morning, here’s a photo I took on the way up there.

It’s a May Tree in November, with it’s rags and ribbons clearly displayed to the world as offerings to the fairies and the wishes of mankind. We added our own. I sort of felt I had to.

Just a quick but vital interruption in our scheduled blogging to reveal an almost exclusive thing of wonder.

*dances around, throws confetti, dances some more*

Why?

Because I can at last share the beautiful cover for The Treachery of Beautiful Things.* And it’s not just beautiful.

It’s SO EXCITING. *throws more confetti*

Isn't it AWESOME???

It’s so perfect I can’t believe it. It’s Jenny as the May Queen and I can’t stop adoring it.

To differentiate between my adult and YA writing, we decided to publish The Treachery of Beautiful Things under the name Ruth Frances Long. It’s available for Pre-order from Book Depository and Amazon.

Thanks to my wonderful editor and the fantabulous art department at Dial.

*squee*

*pets cover*

*hugs cover*

Normal service will be returned when I calm down a bit! (It might take a while)

ISN’T IT GORGEOUS?

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*Ok, so people on my mailing list saw it oooh five minutes ago.

So a few bits of exciting news in the last little while.

1) May Queen has a new title - The Treachery of Beautiful Things – which I absolutely love. So evocative.

2) It also has a release date (16th August 2012). Yes it’s 400 days away, but you know what? It’s a date. I’m going to have a -1 year birthday party for it while on holidays!

3) It has an ISBN 9780803735804 This means SO MUCH to a librarian.

4) It’s available for pre-order.

5) And it almost has a cover! It’s SO gorgeous. Beautiful! But I can’t share it just yet as it isn’t final. But as soon as I can, I will.

So news! At last!

It all started as a bit of a whim to be honest. But then these things often do.

It was admittedly a tight deadline, but the edits on May Queen (which may not be called May Queen anymore) went back on Sunday evening with Monday to spare. At the moment I’m mainly in recovery mode and looking forward to a bit of a break. And more edits, this time for Graffiti Angel (which may not be called Graffiti Angel anymore).

It’s funny how stories change, sometimes as you write them and sometimes during the course of the editing process. That’s the point of it, of course. To make it a stronger story, to make it better, shinier, to smooth out the rough bits or lop them off entirely if that’s what it takes.

I’ve mentioned before how much I love editing. I get completely absorbed by it. I was asked recently (while waffling away on Twitter as usual) about my editing process and maybe could I do a post on it. And I may–but not this post. I’m in the post-edit phase, where I’m physically and mentally exhausted. I have a massage booked for Thursday because the muscles in my neck and shoulders have tightened into something like wires and can’t seem to remember what relaxing is any more.

And yet, knowing that there are another batch of edits sitting there, waiting to be done, another book world to jump into and play with, it’s sooooooo tempting right now. Looking at them, just lurking in my inbox. They don’t have a deadline so I can take as long as I like to do them, and wait as long as I want until I start them. Before my agent freaks, that’s not going to happen, because that story is calling away to me and I know for a fact I won’t resist very long. (In fact I did the line edits last night… er… yeah, so much for taking a break…)

But this is part of why I love writing. Stories are magic. They pull you in, they absorb you in another world, and they can be really hard to shake off. As my mind is in an editing zone right now, it wants to edit. Simple as that. But right now I need a bit of a recharge and a chance to think about what needs to be done.

Yes, definitely need to do that post on editing process. Although I’m a little concerned about exposing to the world just how crazy I can be.

~~~oOo~~~

And the newsletter: the problem with newsletters right at the mo is there’s not much news – just me being editing-crazy. But I’ll have it out later today. Just be forewarned about the crazy, right?

Claire Hennesy has a thought provoking post up today about Retellings, where writers take well known and established stories like fairytales and folklore and use them as a base for their own stories, building on them, changing their slant or reworking them into something new. I started to reply there, but given the fact that I LOVE this subject, my reply started to get long, which is a little unfair on someone else’s blog. So I thought I’d put it here instead. You should of course read Claire’s post first! (but be warned, I now have MORE books to add to my neverending TBR pile).

For me, it seems to work the other way. Quite often I start out telling my own story and find that the fairy tale or mythic elements bleed through as the characters take on those ghostly archetypes that linger in the background of our cultural life. They are still my stories, my characters, still in their own stories but rather than deliberately drawing on archetypes I find they filter into the story in a subtle way (a hopefully subtle way). Because those fairytales are powerful things. They’re beguiling and whimsical. On the surface. But then you go deeper. And deeper. They tell raw and compelling stories when you whittle them down to their purest form. They have darker versions of themselves hidden away in the shadows behind our polished up 21st century versions.

So if I show you an image of a single glass slipper on a staircase, your mind fills in the rest and you go Ah-HA! If there’s blood on the slipper, or if the slipper shatters into a million pieces, your mind is both startled and intrigued. How has the story been changed? Or has it? Is there some older, darker version you haven’t heard before.

I think it’s part of the way writers often feel that stories tell themselves. That they run away with us clinging on for dear life via the pen.

So in my case a fantasy quest novel takes on elements of folklore and fairytales harking back to those older legends and the place of blood and sacrifice they came from. Or an urban fantasy set in modern day Dublin becomes a reimagining of the Percival legend with Celtic overtones and a heroine skirting to the wrong side of divine law.

Myths and folktales lend resonance to our stories and give a sense of a far deeper pool of storytelling behind them. It’s an exciting and abundant area in which to play.

It’s spring. Really really spring. Because the hawthorn in the field at home is in full bloom.

And it’s magic.

Well, of course it’s magic – it’s a hawthorn in bloom. It’s a May Tree (yes, in April), also called a faerie tree and it has many names – it’s the Thorn in “Oak, Ash and Thorn”, the buds in “the darling buds of May” and the May Queen’s tree. It features in my forthcoming YA fantasy May Queen (2012, Dial Books for Young Readers).

And because it was my birthday the other day, I got a new camera, and so there are pictures. (Many many pictures in fact, but here are a few).

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As I’m currently in the throes of editing, and I was making some how to edit suggestions on twitter recently, I thought a brief post on some of my methods might be of use.

Plus its a neat way of procrastinating. Read more…

Almost time for rewrites again and I’m getting myself back into the mindset for May Queen, my YA fantasy coming out next year from Dial Books for Young Readers.

As I’ve said before , music is really import to me. A song can encapsulate a feeling, a moment, and distill it so that even a few bars can bring memories and emotions flooding back. A song helps me key myself back into characters, their flaws and their dreams. Read more…