distraction no.99

When an author says a book she’s written is the Book of Her Heart, what does that mean? In this ongoing blog series, I’ve invited guest authors to reveal what they consider the Book of Their Heart—and share why this book holds a distinct and special place apart from all others they’ve written.

Here, to help celebrate her book birthday this week for A Blind Spot for Boys, I have Justina Chen sharing with us the two books of her heart, and how they exposed different pieces of her heart in different ways…

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Guest post by Justina Chen

“Attitude!” the legendary editor overseeing our weekend writing retreat intoned.

The word sizzled in the conference room the way scandalous ideas do when they’re brought into the light. An intake of breath. A nervous smile or two as the twenty-five writers around me all tried to decipher where we were going with this.

We waited for more, but Patti Lee Gauch, former editorial director of Philomel, fell silent. She twiddled a ruler in her hands while we tasted that word in our heads: Attitude! Was this the cryptic method she used when working with the likes of Eric Carle and Brian Jacques? As if in answer, Patti kicked off her flat shoes, stood before us in her socks: four-foot-ten-inches of life-crackling wisdom. Four-foot-ten inches of conviction that can only come from a lifetime of wordcraft. Only then did she wield the ruler to punctuate her main point as if it was a sword in her personal battle against boring prose.

“We need characters”—point!—“who sass”—slash!—“the world.” The ruler fell to Patti’s side, but the command might as well have been written in white, hot electricity.

Attitude! Sass! They were twined strands of a story’s DNA. They obviously catalyzed the writers around me who were tapping away at their keyboards, word-inspired. Unlike me. I set my pen down, defeated. How do you write with attitude when the world itself has sassed the sass right out of you? A few years ago, I found myself the unwitting co-star in a midlife cliché. Eight weeks into what was supposed to be a two-year move to China, my then-husband admitted that he’d been having an affair with his secretary in Shanghai. Hence, our move. Hence, my return to a full-time job after finding that our finances had been ravaged. Hence, a writing pace that had dwindled to a few halfhearted sentences a day. And that right there was the crux of my writerly problem: my heart had been ripped in half.

But far, far worse, I watched helplessly as my kids fell into emotional catatonia, prone and unmoving on the rug for days after they learned that their father was leaving us…in a country where we barely spoke more than ten words of the language and hardly knew anyone. Weeks later, when my pre-teen son grunted at his dad on the phone, no longer even deigning to form words, I knew then that the most tragic legacy of the ensuing divorce wasn’t a broken family. It was my children’s broken hearts.

So I did what I think any writer-mom would do: I wrote my kids a love letter. A long love letter that became Return to Me, a novel that illuminated the pain and upheaval of betrayal. A novel that detailed the power of true, abiding love. A mother’s love. It spilled over with love. Sass, not so much.

But attitude—that exhortation traveled from Patti’s lips to my ears. A sweet nudge to laugh again—and to make my readers laugh. A wise hand beckoning to me: Come, create with joy—so my readers would be filled with joy. Still, like Prufrock, did I dare disturb the universe? Did I dare sass again as I had in my previous novels filled with girls who sassed the world’s definition of beauty and success and racial identity?

Before the cataclysm in my life, I had confessed in passing to my agent how I went to thirteen proms. Yes, thirteen proms. (Boys from other high schools; a headstart in freshman year. It’s possible. Do the math.) He started laughing. Guffawing, actually, if you want to be perfectly accurate. When he finally stopped gasping for air, he said, “There’s your next novel.” But then the dark period washed over me, and Thirteen Proms sounded like a horror story. And sorry, I was already living my own. So the idea shriveled and was shelved…until those beckoning words: sass and attitude.

So sass I did through a major rewrite about Shana Wilde, a girl deemed a Wilde child just because she hit the gene lottery with the trifecta of blonde hair, long legs, and willowy figure. Sass I did for a girl who’s catnip for boys, the Helen of high school. Sass I did for a girl nursing a secret that no one—not even her best friend—knows: she’s been dumped by her much older and very much clandestine boyfriend. As a result, she puts herself and her stomped upon heart on a Boy Moratorium. Well, life cannot take attitude away forever, not for Shana who is a sassy girl at heart. And not for me.

Books, like life, have a reason and a season. So if Return to Me was the book of my broken heart written in a season of sorrow, then A BLIND SPOT FOR BOYS is the book of my joyous heart written in a glorious season of sassiness.

I dare you not to like the book.[1]

Sass, how nice to be reacquainted with you.

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[1] That said, it’s cool if you don’t so long as you aren’t mean about it. Woman to woman, let’s make a pact not to dehydrate anyone of a single ounce of sass. Life will take care of that all on its own if we allow it to. We women, instead, need to sister each other.

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Justina Chen is an award-winning novelist for young adults whose most recent book, A BLIND SPOT FOR BOYS, was called “an emotional and beautiful story” by Booklist. North of Beautiful was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus and Barnes & Noble. Her other novels include Girl Overboard (a Junior Library Guild premiere selection) and Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies), which won the Asian Pacific American Award for Literature. Additionally, she co-founded readergirlz, a cutting-edge literacy and social media project for teens, which won the National Book Foundation’s Prize for Innovations in Reading. When she isn’t writing for teens, Justina is a story strategist for executives and leads storytelling workshops at companies like Disney and AT&T. She loves kicking back with her coconut black tea and hanging out with her kids.

Visit her online at justinachen.com or follow her on Facebook or on Twitter at @JustinaYChen.

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 Thank you, Justina, for sharing the Book of Your Heart with my readers! Happy Book Birthday Week to A Blind Spot for Boys!

 If YOU are a traditionally published author and would like to write about the book of your heart, feel free to contact me.

The posts in the Book of Your Heart series:

• The Book of Your Heart Series: Camille DeAngelis
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Tessa Gratton
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Brandy Colbert
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Dahlia Adler
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Corey Ann Haydu
• And about my own Book of My Heart: Imaginary Girls

Three years ago as of this week, the novel I’d consider the “Book of My Heart” was published. Tomorrow, on Saturday, June 14, when Imaginary Girls is officially three years old, I will tell you all why it connects so deeply to me and why I’d consider it the book of my heart apart from all books I’ve written or will write. I’ll also hold a giveaway for some elusive hardcovers!

So what is a book of an author’s heart, you may ask—and why say such a thing about one book and not others, when we love all our books and put pieces of ourselves into every one? I’ve asked a few author friends to share the book that holds a distinct and special place in their heart and tell us why. 

Here is Corey Ann Haydu revealing how hard she tried not to write the book of her heart, but she did, and you’ll be able to read it in the fall of 2015. Here’s how it came to be…

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Guest post by Corey Ann Haydu

I tried not to write The Book of My Heart. I tried so hard not to write it, that I didn’t, in fact, write it. The first draft of RULES FOR STEALING STARS had most of the elements that are in the book today. Four sisters. A troubled family. A bit of magic. A girl named Silly.

But it didn’t have my heart.

The problem with writing RULES FOR STEALING STARS is that I wanted to write about a kind of grief that I understood, but without actually writing the hard parts. The parts where you watch your world crumble. The real panicked, hopeless moments that are sometimes part of families and childhood and life, in general.

So I wrote the After. I thought I was writing the hard part. I would have told anyone who would listen that I was writing the hard part. But I was writing the After. I was writing the moment after the hardest moment.

I was not asked to add the hard part. I don’t think anyone knew I had skipped the hard part except for me, and I only knew because of a note my editor gave me on my first draft. It was an open-ended, big picture sort of question which is the best kind of question to get asked by your editor. A question that makes you think but doesn’t give you the answer.

Something’s missing in the plot, she said. She didn’t say what. She mused about different characters and their journeys and how building up or tearing down bits and pieces of their journeys might solve the problem.

As soon as the question was asked, I knew the answer.

I had to write the thing I didn’t want to write. I had to write the messy parts of families. Not the after, but the before. The DURING. Not when something is already gone, but when you are in the process of losing it.

Sometimes a hard story is when something is taken from you. Lots of wonderful moments take place in the year after a death or a loss or a trauma. But the story of Silly and her sisters is one where they are watching things fall apart. I was scared to write those scenes. I know a little something about watching things fall apart.

RULES FOR STEALING STARS is the book of my heart not because I went through exactly what Silly goes through at the exact age she goes through it. It is the book of my heart because while I was writing it, I was also in the process of loss. The during. The watching and the waiting. Not the before and not the after. I wanted to write the after, I tried to write the after, because in some ways I wanted to be there. I maybe even thought I was there.

Sometimes when we’re writing we skip over the most important parts. The hardest parts. The emotional parts. We do that to protect ourselves. It takes some amount of hurt to write hurt, in my experience, and we skip those hard parts so that the characters don’t have to feel the full extent of the pain of life, and neither do we.

I skipped the hard parts, but it took a little while for me to see it. It was unpleasant to admit that I had written the wrong part of the book. That while I’d been congratulating myself for how brave I’d been, I’d actually shied away from the scary parts.

So I rewrote the book.

The revision process for RULES FOR STEALING STARS was the hardest I ever had. The emotional journey of the characters had to be reimagined, and the heart of the book had to grow and shift and find a new way to beat.

The book of my heart has to be the book that is about the hardest parts and the things that break us. And because I am a girl who believes in the After and the What’s Next and the Surviving, it also has to be a book about hope. So it is both a book about the things that break us and the things that put us together. About the things that seem hopeless and the places we find hope.

It is a book about a girl and her sisters and the During. And the hope, hope, hope for an After.

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Corey Ann Haydu is the author of OCD LOVE STORY (S&S 2013), LIFE BY COMMITTEE (HC, 2014), MAKING PRETTY (HC, 2015), and RULES FOR STEALING STARS (HC, 2015). Visit her at www.coreyannhaydu.com or follow her on Twitter @CoreyAnnHaydu.

The posts in the Book of Your Heart series:

• The Book of Your Heart Series: Camille DeAngelis
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Tessa Gratton
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Brandy Colbert
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Dahlia Adler

Come back tomorrow for my own post about my book of my heart, and for the giveaway of Imaginary Girls!

Three years ago as of this week, the novel I’d consider the “Book of My Heart” was published. On Saturday, June 14, when Imaginary Girls is officially three years old, I will tell you all why it connects so deeply to me and why I’d consider it the book of my heart apart from all books I’ve written or will write. I’ll also hold a giveaway for some elusive hardcovers!

So what is a book of an author’s heart, you may ask—and why say such a thing about one book and not others, when we love all our books and put pieces of ourselves into every one? I’ve asked a few author friends to share the book that holds a distinct and special place in their heart and tell us why. 

Here is Dahlia Adler revealing that her first book, Behind the Scenes, out this month, may not be the “book of her heart,” but we will soon get to read the one that is…

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Guest post by Dahlia Adler

This month, I release my very first book. It’s called Behind the Scenes, and it’s fun and sexy and I’m thrilled it’s going out into the world. I worked hard on it, and I love it, and I hope readers will too. But there’s a truth behind it that I don’t talk about very much, and that’s this:

I would never have written it if I hadn’t had to shelve the book of my heart.

For most of my adolescence, I’d worked on a series of books set in one particular world, but then, about five years ago, I got an idea for something completely new. It started with a character’s name and something that’d happened to me in college and swirled out from there until it took on a life of its own. Then I got an opportunity to take a class on writing YA, and I took it as the ultimate sign that this book was meant to be.

I’d been writing for years, but this time, I was falling in a deep and true love I’d never felt before. I loved and related to my main character, with all her quirks and flaws and sense of humor. I loved the secondary characters, who made me laugh and challenged my comfort zone. I loved the love interest, who was so much more than that, and the way it was sort of a slow, tentative burn into the brightest, steadiest of flames. And I loved that I continued thinking about the characters and what was happening in their stories long after the end.

In nearly twenty years of writing, I’d always been reticent about sharing my work, but this time I happily threw it all over the place—to classmates, to friends…dear reader, I queried. Seriously. And I got a lot of requests, too! Such encouragement! Such love! People were going to adore my characters and story as much as I did!

Until they didn’t. Sure, they found things to love, but ultimately, it just wasn’t the right fit for any agents. And it took about fifty rejections until I got the one that made clear why:

The pacing was awful. The tone was completely uneven. The book was entertaining, sure, but it was like two different books crammed into one. It didn’t matter if people thought it was funny or romantic or thought-provoking—from a writing perspective, it was kind of a disaster.

So I shelved it. And I determined I would write a plot-driven, well-paced YA, one where I didn’t get so lost in my love for the characters that I was blinded to structure flaws.

That book goes on sale in two weeks.

Since then, I’ve written many more books, but the characters of that first book—the book of my heart—have never left me. And even the story—that flawed, oddly paced story—still pulls me back. So when my editor, who’s also a friend with whom I happen to share reading taste, asked me for something fun to read one day, I actually thought to say, “Well, I do have this one thing you can read for fun that I think you’ll like…”

And she did. She fell head over heels for the characters the same way I did, and thought about them long after the end. The difference was, she had magic words at the end of that process: “If you want this to be your Book 3 [of your 3-book deal], I am totally cool with that.”

Just like that, the book of my heart had a pulse again for the first time in three years. And it’ll take a lot of work to get it to where it needs to be, but I can’t imagine work more worth doing. It’s like I’m going to get to introduce the world to my first love. And though with a release date of November 17, 2015, it’ll be my third impression on the world rather than my first, I hope it’ll charm its way into the hearts of both people who’ve read Behind the Scenes and Under the Lights and people who haven’t.

But the beauty of having a book of your heart is this:

When it comes down to it, it doesn’t even really and truly matter how much other people love it. Because when you write that book that lives on inside you no matter its publication fate; the book whose characters are practically family and whose setting feels so real to you that you can close your eyes and transport there in an instant; that book you love so much, that years later you’re still throwing it at people to read, and unknowingly saving its life in the process—you remember exactly why you do this in the first place. And there’s just nothing better than that.

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Dahlia Adler is an Assistant Editor of Mathematics by day, a Copy Editor by night, and a YA author and blogger at every spare moment in between. You can find her on Twitter at @MissDahlELama, and blogging at The Daily Dahlia, YA Misfits, and Barnes & Noble. She lives in New York City with her husband and their overstuffed bookshelves. Behind the Scenes is her debut novel.

The posts in the Book of Your Heart series:

• The Book of Your Heart Series: Camille DeAngelis
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Tessa Gratton
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Brandy Colbert

Come back tomorrow for another Book of Your Heart guest blog! And look for the giveaway of Imaginary Girls on Saturday, June 14!

Three years ago as of this week, the novel I’d consider the “Book of My Heart” was published. On Saturday, June 14, when Imaginary Girls is officially three years old, I will tell you all why it connects so deeply to me and why I’d consider it the book of my heart apart from all books I’ve written or will write. I’ll also hold a giveaway for some elusive hardcovers!

So what is a book of an author’s heart, you may ask—and why say such a thing about one book and not others, when we love all our books and put pieces of ourselves into every one? I’ve asked a few author friends to share the book that holds a distinct and special place in their heart and tell us why. 

Here is Brandy Colbert telling us why her debut novel, Pointe, was, from the very beginning, the book of her heart…

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Guest post by Brandy Colbert

When I was ten years old, a TV movie aired called I Know My First Name Is Steven. If you’re of a certain generation, you’re probably nodding right now, remembering, at the very least, the title—but probably more so the horrifying true story it was based on.

In short, the movie tells the life of Steven Stayner, who was kidnapped at the age of seven and returned to his family when he was fourteen. The film was a two-parter and I remember dreading the sight of the television the second evening. I wanted to finish the movie but I was so terrified by Steven’s story that I’d barely slept the night before. And I knew it would take a long time for me to stop thinking about him and everything he’d endured . . . but I sat down and turned it on because I had to see it through to the end.

He and I didn’t have anything in common, really. Along with our racial and gender differences, he was living in California and I was being raised in southwest Missouri. He was also fourteen years older than me, but seeing what had happened to him as a child made me realize just how vulnerable I was because of my age. It was the first time I understood that truly unspeakable things happen to kids—and that even though I came from a stable household with two loving parents, they might not always be around to protect me.

His story faded over time, but I never stopped thinking about Steven, and I couldn’t stop grieving for all the children who were in his situation and never made it out.

From the very beginning, I knew Pointe was the book of my heart. The story revolves around Theo, a seventeen-year-old ballet dancer whose best friend, Donovan, disappeared four years earlier. When he’s returned from captivity at the top of the book, the reader soon learns Theo was connected to the abduction. To anyone who knows me well, the book’s premise wasn’t a surprise: I’d danced for a long time growing up, and I’d been interested in long-term kidnapping cases since I first heard about Steven Stayner. I’d even periodically look for news on anyone involved in his story years and years after he’d been found.

But I only recently understood that Pointe is so special to me because the story that inspired it taught me the meaning of empathy.

I’ve always felt things deeply. Growing up, I was often called sensitive, and it’s taken a while to accept that yes, I am—but that being sensitive isn’t a character flaw, nor does it mean I am weak. Of course I sometimes wish I could be the person who doesn’t sob over stories about people and animals in faraway cities and countries, obsessing over lives and situations that have nothing to do with mine. Because there’s always that feeling of What can I do?, and that question can eat away at us sensitive types. Luckily, writing—and writing fiction, in particular—has always been the best way for me to deal with these big, insistent emotions that seem to take over with no warning.

Pointe isn’t about the abducted friend; in fact, Donovan hardly shows up on the page. Pointe is about what would happen if that abducted kid was your friend. And it’s about what would happen if you found out your biggest secret had contributed to the years of sexual abuse and violence forced upon your friend.

I’m thrilled anytime someone connects with the book, but I think one of the biggest compliments has been hearing that for some, the novel is not only realistic but also empathetic. Theo has to make some tough decisions over the course of the narrative, and I think, ultimately, she must choose to give in to her empathy or ignore it completely to move on with her life.

A couple of weekends ago, I took a road trip up to Northern California for a book event. On the way, I saw a sign announcing we’d entered the city of Merced. I immediately sat up straight in the passenger seat and stared down the sign until we’d passed: “Steven Stayner is from here.” Then I proceeded to tell my friend everything I knew about him, including that Steven had died in a motorcycle accident four months after the movie about him premiered, and that in 2010, Merced had built a bronze statue of him to honor the courage he’d shown in rescuing himself and another kidnapped boy when he was only fourteen.

As a lifelong writer, I’m so grateful to have published a novel, particularly one focused on topics I’ve felt so strongly about for decades. And heartbreaking as it is, I’m especially grateful that Steven Stayner chose to share his own story with the world. He risked his life to save the child his captor had recently abducted because he didn’t want that little boy to go through the manipulation and abuse he’d survived all those years. Heroic? Absolutely.

But that bravery was most certainly spurred by a deep sense of empathy.

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Brandy Colbert grew up in Springfield, Missouri, and has worked as an editor for several national magazines. She lives and writes in Los Angeles. Pointe is her first novel. Visit her at brandycolbert.tumblr.com and on Twitter @brandycolbert.

The posts in the Book of Your Heart series:

• The Book of Your Heart Series: Camille DeAngelis
• The Book of Your Heart Series: Tessa Gratton

Come back tomorrow for another Book of Your Heart guest blog! And look for the giveaway of Imaginary Girls on Saturday, June 14!

Three years ago as of this week, the novel I’d consider the “Book of My Heart” was published. On Saturday, June 14, when Imaginary Girls is officially three years old, I will tell you all why it connects so deeply to me and why I’d consider it the book of my heart apart from all books I’ve written or will write. I’ll also hold a giveaway for some elusive hardcovers!

So what is a book of an author’s heart, you may ask—and why say such a thing about one book and not others, when we love all our books and put pieces of ourselves into every one? I’ve asked a few author friends to share the book that holds a distinct and special place in their heart and tell us why. 

Today I have Tessa Gratton here to celebrate the book birthday of her new novel The Strange Maid, the second United States of Asgard book, and to tell us why she considers it a book of her heart…

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Guest post by Tessa Gratton

When I think of “the book of my heart” I think of dragons. The monstrous sort who remove their hearts from their chests and hide them inside heavily guarded boxes. I imagine a book holding my heart hostage, or secretly delivering my heart to others.

I haven’t ever been sure what “a book of my heart” means, and there seems to be no strict definition. It’s “the book that means the most to me” or “the book about themes or issues that mean the most to me” or “the book I love the most.” I could answer every one of those questions with a different book. But only after the fact, once the book is published and I regain some perspective.

When I’m actually writing a book, my heart has to be fully committed, or I’d never make it through. In that sense, every book I write is a book of my heart. Though I feel differently about different books, and I love them differently, I love different things about them.

My heart is the house of my passion and the home of my courage. My heart is the part of me that empathizes with fictional characters, and struggles to connect with real people. It is the piece of me that longs for communion.

My heart is the reason writing is so hard. While my mind plays with structure and learns how to efficiently break rules of grammar, how to communicate and outline and plot and connect ideas with ideas with ideas into complicated patterns of story, my heart is the voice that constantly asks why.

Why am I doing this to myself? Why struggle to tell this particular story? Why make myself be brave? Why go to the hard places when an easier one might do just as nicely for the plot? Why try and try and try again, through rejection and hundreds of thousands of deleted words? Every single book has to answer those questions.

For me, it’s just not worth it if I’m not emotionally invested.

That isn’t to say I can’t write for fun: I desperately want to have fun as much as possible when writing. It’s just that I also need that one thing connecting myself—my heart—to the story.

But now THE STRANGE MAID is coming out, and I am really upset. I feel like anybody who reads it will have the terrible, terrifying chance to see my most intimate flaws. Not only my characters’ strengths and flaws, desires and mistakes, but all of mine whether they have anything to do with the book itself or not. This book suddenly has made me feel vulnerable in a way no other book has. Does that make it a real “book of my heart”?

I’ve been trying to write it since 2008. It’s been through a dozen iterations. I’ve come back to it again and again in some form between my previous novels and projects. I rejected entire concepts and directions and drafts. But I kept coming back to it. It’s been a historical novel, it’s been high fantasy, it’s been a road trip adventure. Signy has been an orphan, a priestess, a debutante, and a daughter of a Valkyrie.

While I struggled, I wrote four other novels, three of them published by now. I wrote them for plenty of reasons, and pieces of my heart are imbedded inside them. But with THE STRANGE MAID, I kept returning to the same core: a strange little girl who gives herself to terrible darkness because of how passionate she is for everything. And that passion is her strength. She doesn’t understand why, but she embraces her own dark, strange, mad heart. And people are afraid of her for it.

I realized (finally) that this book I kept pushing at, kept returning to and struggling with (kept being terrified of) is about our fear (and hope) that what girls desire could turn them into monsters.

Which is something that I’m always arguing against: this societal fear of teenaged girls being powerful in and of themselves, and loving things for no other reason than they love them. It’s something I felt when I was a teenager. I was afraid of myself, because I loved things I was not supposed to love. I was terrified of being a bad person because of what I wanted—sometimes just because I wanted anything at all. Don’t be too ambitious, we say. That thing you scream over is stupid, we say. You’re too emotional. You aren’t allowed to feel desire of any kind.

No wonder it was hard. I was writing a book about trolls and Valkyrie and riddles and gods of poetry and love and betrayal, and oh yes: a whole lot of my own personal baggage.

And now other people are going to read it.

Launch is always exciting and/or panic-inducing. You know your methods are imperfect, you know that there will be failure involved. You might not succeed in communicating anything to readers—the entire point of writing. You’re putting this thing you created from nothing into the world for strangers, to try and communicate something to them, whether it’s entertainment or issues or themes or to scare them or make them cry.

So when your heart is in a book, part of that thing you’re communicating is yourself.

For better or worse, THE STRANGE MAID is definitely a book of my heart.

I fight to create every book into a book with my heart embedded inside. I think a book of my heart is one that begins there.

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An excerpt from The Strange Maid by Tessa Gratton:

We make camp in the shell of a farmhouse, surrounded by mostly intact troll walls. There’s no fire, but we have a small battery-powered lamp. Its even light is more eerie than flickering flames might have been, illuminating rotting old chairs and a table still set with a runner and vase. I sink onto the worn rug while Unferth settles with a groan on a short old sofa printed with dull cabbage roses. He sips his screech and says, “Tell me, Signy, why you love Valtheow the Dark most of all.”

         I reach for the flask. The blistering trail it leaves down my tongue gives fire to my words. “Nothing about her was half-done. She did not symbolically bleed, she poured her own blood out for sacrifice. She tied a rope around her neck. She… embraced passion and war like they were poetry, not only things to be described by it.” I gather my knees to my chest. “Since Odin first told me her name I knew she never hesitated to embody death, the way it feeds life.”

         “Why do you want to be like her?”

         “It’s exciting! It – it thrills me. It’s this…” I close my eyes and recall my Alfather again, arm around me so my ear presses to his thrumming heart. “An itch like madness, that I was born with. That drives me forward.”

         “It’s dangerous.”

         “Everything worth doing is dangerous, Unferth.”

         He contemplates me as he drinks, one hand loose on the arm of the couch, his injured right leg stretched out so his pose is languid. The more I talk about this the more I want to make him understand, to press it into him if I have to. Instead I grab the flask from his hand and plop down beside him on the couch. My legs hook over his outstretched thigh and our shoulders touch as I drink. He sets his head against the wall. I let the vertigo of liquor sway me against him until I’m leaning. The upstairs floor groans gently. The electric lamp buzzes. I can hear the rush of my own blood in my ears.

         “What would you do with that power if you had it?” he asks.

         “Change the world,” I murmur contentedly.

         “Don’t you mean destroy your enemies and paint your face with their blood?”

         “Isn’t that the definition of change?”

         “Ambitious.”

         “No good reason to aim low.”

         His shoulder trembles and I realize he’s laughing. I poke his ribs and he catches my hand. He turns it over and smooths out my fingers until he can see the binding rune. As he taps my scar with his thumb, a hot line sears from my palm to my belly. “Death chooser,” he says, “Strange maid.”

         “What?” I whisper. The runes bound together into my palm are an odd variation of death and choice and servant. After parsing them out years ago, I had assumed they only meant to mark me as a Valkyrie. A death chooser.

         “This binding rune is from a very old thread of language…” his breath touches my temple, curling down my cheek until I turn into it. There are his rain-colored eyes. He says, “Death is linguistically connected to otherness, to foreigners and… strangeness. Death and stranger, like different fruit on the same linguistic branch. You can trace all kind of names through the binding rune. Like… Alfather – Valfather. Valborn, Valkyrie, Valtheow, death born, death chooser, servant of death, death maid… strange maid.”

         My breath catches in my throat.

 

The Strange Maid is on sale today!

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Tessa Gratton  has wanted to be a paleontologist or a wizard since she was seven. She was too impatient to hunt dinosaurs, but is still searching for someone to teach her magic. After traveling the world with her military family, she acquired a BA (and the important parts of an MA) in gender studies, and then settled down in Kansas with her partner, her cats, and her mutant dog. You can visit her at TessaGratton.com.    

The posts in the Book of Your Heart series:

• The Book of Your Heart Series: Camille DeAngelis

Come back tomorrow for another Book of Your Heart guest blog! And look for the giveaway of Imaginary Girls on Saturday, June 14!