Showing posts with label valente. Show all posts
Showing posts with label valente. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Congrats Catherynne Valente - Hugo Awards 2014 Finalist for 'Six Gun Snow White'

It's official! Catherynne M. Valente is a finalist for a Nebula this year!

Congratulations Ms. Valente. We have our guns, er, fingers, crossed for you. :)

From Subterranean Press, where it was published:
From New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente comes a brilliant reinvention of one the best known fairy tales of all time. In the novella Six-Gun Snow White, Valente transports the title’s heroine to a masterfully evoked Old West where Coyote is just as likely to be found as the seven dwarves. 
A plain-spoken, appealing narrator relates the history of her parents—a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him. With her mother’s death in childbirth, so begins a heroine’s tale equal parts heartbreak and strength. This girl has been born into a world with no place for a half-native, half-white child. After being hidden for years, a very wicked stepmother finally gifts her with the name Snow White, referring to the pale skin she will never have. Filled with fascinating glimpses through the fabled looking glass and a close-up look at hard living in the gritty gun-slinging West, readers will be enchanted by this story at once familiar and entirely new. 

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):“Valente’s adaptation of the fairy tale to the Old West provides a witty read with complex reverberations from the real world… Any attempt to derive a simple message from this work would be an injustice to the originality of the atmosphere, the complexity of the interplay of its elements, and the simple pleasure of savoring Valente’s exuberant writing.”
From Library Journal: “Valente’s (PalimpsestIn the Night Garden) talent for telling stories that have the cadence and grace of poetry makes her a perfect interpreter of classic stories. Her fans will appreciate the humor and artistry in this imaginative retelling of one of the world’s most popular fairy tales.”
From Locus:“Catherynne M. Valente’s Six-Gun Snow White moves Snow into the wild, wild west and her take on this trope has all that you’d expect: prospectors, duels, horses, and dust. But Valente rips the beating heart out of the old versions of the story, dissects it to see how it works, jams it back into this new tale, and gives it a jolt of juice to bring it back to life. Six-Gun Snow White is a vital marvel.”
From SF Crowsnest:“…any reader who loves magical, poetic prose can dive into this sad and beautiful little story and take pleasure in the author’s elegantly rendered wordscapes.”

Note: The gorgeous cover is by the always-amazing Charles Vess.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

NYC ComicCon: Catherynne Valente On Fairy Tales

Just thought you might like to see this little quote from New York City's ComicCon last weekend (Oct 10-13), because it's awesome:
Valente's brand new release! (love this series)
"Here's the thing about fairy tales," Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two) said during one of the many panels devoted to science fiction and fantasy literature during this past weekend's New York Comic Con, held at Manhattan's Javits Convention Center. "They are the best-edited stories of all time... boiled down, espresso-like stories that go straight to the back of your reptile brain." 

Valente, coming at (the challenge for keeping things new) from the fairy tale side, made much the same point, challenging the notion that any mythological or folkloric creatures were overplayed in modern fantasy. Any creature, she suggested, could still be done in an interesting way. "Everything's already been told," she said--"but you haven't told everything."
Stories that directly coffee-jolt your lizard brain. Seriously. Awesome. I have to quote her sometime soon.

Reported from NYC ComicCon by Shelf Awareness. (Emphasis in bold is mine.)
As a bonus, here's the lovely trailer for Valente's (AWESOME) Fairyland Series:

Thursday, February 9, 2012

YASIV Visual Recommendation Search

Brother and Sister Visual Poem by Terri Windling
I couldn't think of a way to make the title of the post interesting but I think a lot of you may enjoy this great new, free service called YASIV. It's essentially a search engine connected to amazon.com which suggest books "like" a title you search for and books others bought after they purchased the book you're interested in. It also gives you a handy list on the left when it's done making it's connections (which you can watch it do) and, when it's settled you can move the page around as if it were a giant (clickable) piece of paper.

Galley Cat has mentioned the service more than once the past week and I have to admit it is a lot of fun to use.
Just one set of "branches" the YASIC engine found for Grimm's Household Tales. The actual "page" (clickable & movable) is MUCH larger.
 About Yasiv 
Yasiv is a visual recommendation service that helps people to choose the right product from Amazon's catalog. Being it a book, a perfume or a video game - Yasiv finds anything what is sold on Amazon.com. 
Let's face it: We often decide what to buy based on what others are buying. And it's not a bad thing after all. If something is bought by many of our friends there has to be a reason for that. Maybe it's good and worth its money? This is where Yasiv steps in: it shows what people are buying with other products. A link between two products means that they are often bought together. By simply observing the network of products one may guess what has more popularity and what has less. 
The site is really in it's early stages and there are many things that we want to fix. But to know what's important and what's not we need your help. Please tell us what do you like and what you don't? We would really love to hear from you. 
Yasiv is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com with no additional cost to customers. 
Andrei Kashcha 
I put in Grimm's Household Tales as an example for you but it works with any title available (or visible) through amazon.

When you click on any cover the information will come up summarized (and, again, clickable) at the right. You will also see the network connections to the book highlighted by the lines and arrows turning yellow.

It even has a product link paste function so you can literally search visually - and not just for books! Check the demo video below showing what happens:


Very fun and useful in quite a number of ways if you like to have your information presented visually! I only wish you could have the option of showing related items (eg gifts) as well as books altogether (like a product version of a visual collage on a topic or story, such as the lovely Brother and Sister visual poem of Terri Widling's at the head of the post, which shows text, images and found items) or choose to search books separately.

You can start your own searches HERE.

Speaking of interconnectedness, there's one more thing you may be interested in: I did a google image search for "connected fairy tales" and among a lot of random things there were a few that made sense: The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente, Into the Woods musical, Jim Henson's The Storyteller, Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue, ABC's Once Upon A Time, NBC's Grimm, A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz, Bill Willingham's Fables and the Brother and Sister visual poem by Terri Windling (though how it found the latter I have no idea). Various books by A.S. Byatt appeared as well.

Note: In case you're wondering: I have no affiliation with amazon. I'm just posting about the service because I think it's a great research/hunting tool for visual people, which many fairy tale lovers are. :)

Monday, June 15, 2009

Circumnavigating Fairyland - New Book & Podcast from CM Valente

Catherynne M. Valente, award winning author of "The Orphan's Tales", is writing - and podcasting - a new YA book with the lengthy and whimsical, wonderfully olde-worlde title of:


After many enquiries as to whether the fairy tale book mentioned in her (very) adult book, "Palimpsest" was real, Valente took it upon herself to bring it into existence. It turns out she really likes writing Young Adult fantasy!

(From CMV's blog:)
This is a book about a little girl named September who gets herself a ticket to Fairyland on the back of The Green Wind and a somewhat cranky Leopard. There she discovers the realm of the capricious Marquess and the dangers of the Perverse and Perilous Sea. It is going to be something else.
In her blog, she talks about her process and discoveries as she writes it. She's also recording herself reading it and posting both the text of the chapters and the audio, week by week, podcast-style as the book is completed. It's completely free though donations are welcome.

You can follow her progress through her blog, week by week through the podcast and also via Twitter. Here's her announcement:
#Fairyland is live! Read girl's adventures w/ leopards, fairies, & customs agents! Read for free, pay if you can! http://tinyurl.com/mbpvur


There are wonderful echoes of "The Orphans Tale" evident already, which should make for a rich, enjoyable experience for the reader/listener and one that stands the test of time.