BioBioI like to write fantasy books with girl heroes, partly because I couldn't
find many fantasy novels with female warrior heroes (we're not talking age, here, just
femaleness) when I fell in love with fantasy in middle school. As of May 2001 I have
published 17 fantasy novels with girl heroes (and some pretty cool guys, if I do say so
myself). All 17 are available in the US and Canada in hardcover and paperback; we're
catching up throughout the UK (including Australia) with 16 books out in the fall of 2001;
we're working on my third quartet in Denmark and Germany, and we've started with my first
quartet in Swedish and in audio book form in the US (Denmark is 'way ahead on audio
books). For titles, publication dates, selections from various books, details of my career
and plenty of tips for fellow writers, check out my homepage at
http://www.tamora-pierce.com/ .
I started Sheroes so I can share all I've learned
about female heroes in years of digging in history's odd nooks and crannies,
and because I
love Girls Who Kick Butt. I don't just mean physical
butt-kicking--it can be politically, like Elizabeth I, Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary
Clinton, musically, like Janis Joplin, Clara Schumann, and Courtney Love, movie-ly, like
Jodie Foster, Ida Lupino, and Angela Basset, TV-ly like Buffy, Willow, Major Kira Nerys,
and D.C.I. Jane Tennyson . . . I could just run on and on, and I will, on this page--I
hope you will, too.
This is going to be cool. Really.
As the whim strikes me, I'll be change things here for things like favorite places, pet peeves, and so on. This time it's...
New Orleans, particularly the swamps and the Garden District--but when it's cooler, thank you very much. Ma and I went at the beginning of April a year or two ago, and while I wish I'd worn lighter clothing, it was still wonderful. I love the swamp. It smells wonderful, like rich wet earth; the flowers are surprises in the shadows, and the creatures are amazing. (I got to hold a baby alligator the tour people were raising until it was big enough to defend itself once it was released into the swamp with the big 'gators. There is a majorly cool silver place on Chartres Street that sells enameled animal figures in silver, and things like palm branch candle sticks and lemonade pitchers with the silver shaped so it looks like condensation on the sides of the pitcher. I love visiting the Mississippi whenever I can (though I still prefer the Hudson) (I don't know what it is with me and rivers. I just like them). The houses of the Garden District are so beautiful, laden with gardens and gracefully built. San Francisco used to be my favorite city in the U.S., but it's now tied with New Orleans.
Edinburgh Castle: The Rock. I got to see it, standing proud atop its red stone cliff, only from the outside when I was there, but I want to go back for the whole tour. So much history took place there, and it really is a beautiful fortification, with the sheer drops on three sides.
Balanced Rock Canyon: It's in southwestern Idaho, near where Ma lives. When I lived with her and my dad, on my weeks off from the group home, I'd drive out there, down past the volcanic formations to the creek between the rock walls of the shallow end of the canyon. Sometimes I'd park there and climb out along the creek, at the base of the rock walls where birds nest. Sometimes I'd drive up the other side to Balanced Rock, which really does look like a two-ton question mark carved by the wind. (I set part of THE REALMS OF THE GODS in Balanced Rock Canyon.) I thought this was the most of it, until my dad took me around a couple of years ago, to an end of the canyon I didn't know even existed. We wound along dark rock rising steeply on one side of the road and the other side of the stream, which broadened at the bottom, climbing slowly down until the cliff walls towered over our heads. We stopped at a pull-out near the bottom of the road, where I saw a large heron fishing. It was beautiful and deserted, with the hard desert shrubs for greenery, and my dad's slow voice to describe the earthquake that had driven the walls at this end of the canyon so much higher than the part I knew so well. The shadows lengthened and the air cooled as we drove out, Pa's truck the only sound in the silence, the animals having all gone to bed. If we stopped the truck, the only sound was the wind and the odd peeper.
Waratah Park, near Sydney, Australia: David Harris, my Australian publisher, took me there my first day in Sydney. It's where I got to feed emus and kangaroos (well, actually, once they realized I had food, they helped themselves, and not all that gently!). I got lipped by a hairy-nosed wombat (he was livelier than usual, the day being gray and cool), and I was able to pet a koala. You're supposed to pet them only on the rump, since they get snappish if you try to go higher. David kept angling around for a photo. I thought he was just looking for good light, since it was so gray. Instead, when I visited Scholastic's offices the next day, David proudly showed me the shot on his computer: it looked like I had my hand up the koala's behind! (To add insult to injury, he'd added a cartoon balloon of the koala saying "OUCH!") Waratah was wonderful: it is a small park, with samples of Oz's native critters and birds. I saw pink galahs (parrots) in their enclosure at the park; later, when we drove down to the ocean, I saw a pair of them grazing on someone's lawn!
The Ohiopyle Waterfall, Fayette County, southwestern Pennsylvania: I grew up near here, and remember vividly the tumbling water, the smooth rocks, the coolness of the trees along the banks. My parents, back before their marriage went south, would drive us kids along the road that follows the river at the end of long summer days, singing old songs, or just letting the quiet forest and river sounds come through the windows. It's one of my most peaceful memories. Sometimes the clan would have picnics further up the river, and we would get to play in the river, feeling it tug us, tempting us to just give up and float down to the Ohio River, maybe all the way to the Mississippi. None of our parents would let us go with the river, though.
Central Park Zoo, New York, New York: It's a small, habitat zoo, no cages. I spent three hours one winter morning alone in the Rain Forest building, writing descriptions of the colored birds that went zipping around in the open, then finding out what they were for Ozorne's aviary (THE EMPEROR MAGE). I also spent half an hour learning how to communicate with marmosets (who ignore the visitors because they don't move like People, i.e., marmosets). I finally succeeded, only to discover that another visitor had been watching me move my head, scratch, and pretend to eat like a marmoset for some time. (This is why Raquel, my best friend, won't visit marmosets with me.) In the penguin house some of the chinstrap penguins have a game they like to play: they'll swim by you in the water (the water level's about even with your eyes, and the wall's glass so you can see under the water), and duck their heads to look at you underwater. If you duck your head, then try to raise it at the same time the penguin does, to look at you above the water, the penguins know you know the game, and they'll play, ducking and lifting their heads, trying to make you miss popping or ducking when they do. Once you lose a couple of times they'll swim away, but sooner or later another one will come to see if you'll play.
Yes, I am easily amused.
There's also a polar bear enclosure: if you're lucky, you'll see one of the polar bears swimming. One will come right at the glass, hit it (while the little kids scream), then push off like he's racing in a swim meet. These are three very mellow bears. Sometimes you'll also see the Arctic foxes in their part of the northern enclosure, next to the leopard and harbor seals. And if you're really into frustration, you can try to catch a glimpse of the red pandas, if they're visible in their trees. Forget trying to catch them on the move or with their faces visible. In all the years Raquel and I have visited the park, we've seen their faces maybe three times, and we've caught them moving four times.
And there's always the turtle pond. You can sit on the rail, look at the turtles sunning themselves, watch for butterflies, frogs (if it's the right season) and the rare glimpses of fish in the water as you listen to the Central Park birds. This interlude usually lasts until the most recent group of school trip or camp kids comes racing in screeching, looks around, sees nothoing that looks like it will eat other living creatures, and races away again. (Their handlers don't always have the longest attention span, either.)
Some of these will change with updates. Some will stay as valuable resources in general:
My own homepage: all kinds of stuff, including appearances, excerpts from books, other cool links, more biographical information, you name it.
Women in World History: A general view of who's where and when, and what's what.
Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali, boxergrrl, too cool! Actually, the Women Boxing site is generally of interest for anyone who's been told she hits like a girl!
The Kristy Yamaguchi Home Page: Remember her? The skater who actually won the gold medal at the Olympics as the media continued to feature Nancy Kerrigan?
Nellie Bly was the first crusading woman reporter, who went around the world in 72 days, in addition to other brave acts like checking herself into a mental hospital. So much for those delicate Victorian flower-females, eh?
Sforzas, females and males: This was one tough family of mercenaries who plied their trade in the Renaissance in Italy (the name means "forcer"). Check out Caterina and some of the other wives if you think all they did was knit lace!
Upcoming appearances--for more details/links/current information, go to my homepage.
GODDESS OF YESTERDAY by Caroline Cooney. This book is not what you expect from Cooney, who's best known for timeslip romances and modern thrillers (THE FACE ON THE MILK CARTON, etc.). Anaxandra is the hostage of a lesser Mycenean (Bronze Age Greece) king. When pirates attack her hosts, leaving her the only survivor, Anaxandra takes on the identity of princess Callisto for her rescuer, King Menelaus of Sparta. He takes her home to his court, ruled over by the godborn Helen, and is present for the events that set the Trojan War in motion. This is a truly unique, creepy view of Helen, as well as a vital telling of one of the most powerful of the Greek legends.
BLOODY JACK by L.A. Meyer. It will probably come as no surprise to anyone that historical novels in which girls disguise themselves as boys to make their way in the world float my boat. This one is about a girl from 1600s London, orphaned when her family dies of plague, who becomes part of a street gang. She and her friends find ways to survive, but when they lose their leader to a nasty adult, Mary takes the leader's clothes for warmth. Thinking she is a boy, men from the Royal Navy press her (many commoners were "impressed" into the navy in Britain) into service as a ship's boy. Here are her adventures, her struggle to keep her sex hidden, to find a place among the ship's company, to be brave in a fight against pirates, and to live a good, old-fashioned sea adventure with some sexual issues thrown in. I'd class this one as my favorite sort of adventure tale, a "ripping yarn" of the TREASURE ISLAND and ROBINSON CRUSOE sort.
ASHES OF ROSES by Mary Jane Auch and THE TRIANGLE FIRE by Leon Stein. ASHES is the story of a girl named Rose who comes to New York in the early 1900s, looking for a way to support herself and her sister until their parents come over while avoiding the many traps of life in New York for new immigrants. She finally obtains a job in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, site of one of the worst disasters in the history of the American labor movement. Stein's book is nonfiction, uses a lot of material taken from witness accounts (including some who were still living when he wrote it), and describes the fire, the conditions which led to it, and the things that resulted from it: Auch used it as research for her book. The Auch book is a good way to get into the subject. If you want the whole story about the event, not just how it would have been seen by one person, read the Stein book, but I'll warn you: it's not for the faint of heart. The Stein book begins with a description of the fire as it unfolds. It's easy to see how it has a grip on writers (Jack Finney, in his amazing book TIME AND AGAIN, also shows the fire), but I really shouldn't have been reading it around the anniversary of 9/11.
THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL by Philippa Gregory. Here's the story of Anne Boleyn's older, married sister Mary, who was Henry VIII's mistress before he fell in love with Anne. The book shows not only Mary's life as a royal mistress, but the power families had over their children, directing their behavior just as big companies tell their employees what to do and when. Mary has an insider's view of her sister Anne, one that's not very flattering to Anne or to Henry, for that matter. It's a gripping book about one woman who just wants to live her own life and isn't quite sure how to go about it, during a time when one self-involved king and one ambitious woman remade England and the English church.
It's funny--I seldom read books written in the first person, but except for the Leon Stein Triangle book, all of these stories are told in the first person. I guess even I'm not too old to change yet!
The Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture: "Afro-American Blues and Game Songs" and "Negro Work Songs and Calls." Archivist Alan Lomax went out in the 1930s and 1940s and collected music that might otherwise have been lost, visiting Delta shacks and mountain "hollers" (hollows) to record America's oldest folk music--I only recently found out he did this in the Caribbean and in France and other European countries as well. The two I mention above are the ones I like best so far, including the game song "Sea Lion Woman," with its creepy chorus, the dread saga of the boll weevil and the havoc it wreaked on southern cotton, and work songs sung by men working on railroads and steam boats as they used songs to mark the beat of the hammers and to count the depth of the water. Give 'em a try--just search your favorite music folks for "Alan Lomax," and you'll find a wealth of music you might otherwise never hear.
"Fool Me Good," artist Precious Bryant. I was turned onto Ms. Bryant by my friend Christina, the Goddess of All Hard-to-Find Culture for Femmes and Nile Delta Queen of Kidlit (all the good stuff flows through her and makes a contribution to her banks of knowledge). (Okay, so I've been away from home for a while. Christina still always turns me on to cool stuff.) Precious Bryant sings blues with a snappier approach, a kind of don't-mess-with-me blues that says men will mess with you, but what the heck.
"The Fire and the Rose", Aquitanian Chant by a group called Heliotrope. These are even cooler than Gregorian chants, because they let girls sing, too. Soothing music that gives you a taste of the reverence people once had for a church they truly loved.
"The Orphan's Lament" by Huun-Huur-Tu. It's called "Tuvan throat singing" by people educated in such things, music produced by sounding two separate chords in the throat. To me it's Mongol music, and if you can listen to this stuff and not imagine yourself out on flat grasslands, seated around a campfire, listening to the movements of your horses, watching the stars overhead, and imagining world conquest, then you have no imagination, and I pity you. I call it "Mongol music," and I love it. The sound just can't be described.
No rock 'n' roll to mention this time: I guess I've been going through all the comfort listening I can find. Why songs by oppressed peoples and disillusioned women should comfort me I don't know, but there it is.
I still won't come up with stuff on PBS and the Learning Channel, though if you haven't caught some of the Ken Burns programming on PBS, you're missing history that feels like it's really happening right now to people you could know and understand. Ken Burns and his brother may get a little too serious for me sometimes, and I'll never forgive them for leaving Cab Calloway out of "Jazz", but they know the American mind and what shapes it like few others.
My favorite shows continue to be large-cast dramas with interesting people and some humor.
I still watch (faithfully) "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel." And I have something new and different from their creator, Joss Whedon: "Firefly," on Fox on Friday nights. It's a whack cross of westerns and science fiction, with a wonderful cast--Mal, the captain, and his female second-in-command, Zoe, are former rebels against the Alliance, the government that wants to unite the settled planets whether they want to be united or not. The pilot is a funny, sweet guy who's married to Zoe (he reminds me a bit of Tim, actually--I just wish I were as tough and beautiful as Zoe). Then there's a Companion, a woman like the courtesans of the classic world and the Japanese geisha; Shepherd, a preacher who may or may not have been an Alliance muckymuck; Jayne, a thug who went over to Mal's side when offered a bigger cut of the proceeds than his old gang was giving him (he's the ship Serenity's muscle); Simon, an upperclass doctor on the run from the Alliance because he kidnaped his psychic/psychotic sister River from them (she's a genius they were experimenting on for a couple of years and Simon is trying to nurse her back to her old, cheerful self), and Kayley (I probably misspelled it), the ship's lower-class, cute, perky engineer. Yep. Engineer. She was a local girl the former engineer was fooling around with when Mal discovered she knew more about the engines than the former engineer. Give this one a try. There are no aliens; the Companion is gorgeous and intelligent; everyone has secrets, and each job the ship takes on creates problems. Hurry up, though--it's not doing so well, and Fox may cancel it.
"NYPD Blue", "ER", "Third Watch," "Law and Order" and related shows, plus new additions "CSI" and "CSI Miami," "Missing Persons," "Robbery Homicide": cops and doctors, how can you go wrong? Women on these shows are smart and capable. There's something for everyone, and I loot these shows freely for characters when I'm stuck.
"The West Wing." The only problem with this show is that it makes me even more miserable with the government I have.
Things we know are bad or incorrect or not contributing to our emotional/spiritual/career growth, but we indulge anyway.
Don't look for me to include chocolate or coffee here. I am surrounded by choca- and coffee-holics, but I am neither. I am told by my choca/coffee-holic friends that this is a flaw in an otherwise sterling person.
Screaming testosterone fest movies. Guy movies laden with so much
testosterone that I can feel hair grow on my chest as I watch. This includes both
"Seven Samurai," the Japanese samurai flick by Akira Kurosawa, starring Takashi
Shimura and Toshiro Mifune, two of the finest actors in that country from the 40s through
the 80s, and its American counterpart, "The Magnificent Seven," directed by John
Sturges, starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, and a major cast of guy stars. Both movies
are about starving villages who expect bandits to return to clean them out, so they hire
some down-and-out warriors to fight for them.
Then there's just about anything John Milius has put his hands on as a writer or director,
including "Flight of the Intruder," "Conan the Barbarian," and (my
fave) "Red Dawn." "Red Dawn" stars Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen,
Jennifer Grey and Leah Thompson before any of them were old enough to shave anything, not
to mention one of my favorite blaxploitation (70s movies made with black men and women
triumphant over corrupt white people and drug dealers) actors, Ron O'Neal, and Powers
Boothe. The Soviets (back when there was still a Soviet Evil Empire) attack America,
capturing parts of it. Our heroes are high school kids who become resistance fighters.
What's not to like?
And last but not at all least, "Tombstone." All the really good eggs in one
beautiful basket: Kurt Russell, Sam Elliot, and Bill Paxton as the three Earp brothers
newly come to Tombstone; Val Kilmer in what I thinks is his finest performance as
Doc Holliday, dying of tuberculosis and totally cool; Powers Boothe as the evil,
opium-smoking head of the gang which opposes them; Michael Biehn as Johnny Ringo, a very,
very fast shot and total psychopuppy--I could go on, but I won't. I love this
movie. Love, love, love it.
Obviously I don't watch these things for their value to feminism. And I should mention
they're most of them a bit on the violent side of the Force. But I was raised on men's
adventure novels and TV, and screaming testosterone fest movies feed the old need. It's
also because I was raised on stuff like this that I got the idea that this is something
women ought to be able to do, so I began to write it.
One of the movies I name, "Red Dawn," does have two girl warriors in Jennifer
Grey and Leah Thompson, who realize they're just as good as the guys and stop washing
their dishes. Whee!
Aerosmith. Yes, I know these guys are sexist. "Dream On" is still one of my favorite rock 'n' roll songs of all time. So's "Hangman Jury" and their cover of "Come Together."
Ice cream, creme brulee, pecan pie, ginger cake. At my weight I
shouldn't indulge in these things. I do anyway. Favorites: Haagen Daas pineapple/coconut,
strawberry, or dulce con leche; Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia;
any fruit ice cream from Bassett's in Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. Hey, I'm
gonna be within walking distance of it for a long Labor Day weekend. Bassett's for
breakfast, Bassett's for lunch--maybe not Bassett's for dinner. I have
to draw the line somewhere.
People who use "anyways" or who use "impact" as a verb. It's "anyway," and no amount of using impact incorrectly is going to make it a verb. When you're a writer, you become obsessed with stuff like this: be warned.
People who live with their cel phones (mobiles for the overseas crowd) stuck in their ear, particularly drivers. How many of those conversations are really necessary? Why do people take their kids to the park and spend the whole time on the phone--aren't they there for quality time for their kids?
People who think they know all about kids' books even though they
haven't read one since they were kids. People who ask kids' writers when are they going to
write a real book (that is, for adults) and kids' editors when they're going to edit
real books. I would suggest something rude to deal with these people, but I'm trying to be
a role model, here.
People who ask questions when they aren't particularly interested in the answer.