Posts tagged RECAST

I am just now watching the third season of True Blood.  We do not have HBO (I simply refuse to pay more for cable than I already do!) and until recently we didn’t have a terribly reliable way to watch pirated episodes from online on our TV (and the hubby and I huddling around a computer screen just wasn’t going to happen.)  So, we’ve been slowly watching the seasons as they come out on DVD. 

Anyway, can I just say that I am so so SO glad I had NOT watched this season (that this season hadn’t even come out yet!) before I wrote RECAST?  When Russell Edgington made his proclamation on the national news at the end of the episode I watched last night, my jaw was on the floor! On the floor, I tell you!!

Now, that’s as far as I’ve gotten in the series, so no spoilers please!  :)  Gotta keep watching tonight to see what happens!

RECAST spoiler alert!!

I had to post this chunk of a longer message sent to me by a reader on Facebook.  Thank you Amy!  Your entry has been noted!  (And my day has been made!) 

As for your DRIFT hypothesis… we’ll just have to wait and see!  ;)  But I can safely say that if either Drake or Leah were taken, the other would be seriously distressed about it…

I want to enter the contest!

I can’t wait to see what happens in DRIFT and I was all over that vlog you posted reading the first chapter. I think my jaw dropped at the end of RECAST when he put her on the plane by herself. I know he had to, but my God, it was terrible. I hope nothing bad happens to Leah or Drake in DRIFT but I think there’s a halfway decent chance one of them is going to be picked up by the Mythological Affairs Department. Leah’s reaction to the name of that group made me laugh, like she was being compared to a unicorn or something.

—Amy

Don’t forget to enter the contest: here’s the rules!  Can’t wait to see what others come up with! 

I just got the first round of proofs for the RECAST paperback cover and they are awesome!  *Happy dance* I can’t wait until it’s finalized—then I can show everybody!!  Stay tuned! 

Kathryn: ok, two really quick things before I run out the door (busy day :)

Elle: shoot!

Kathryn: 1. Loved the Occupy Recast post. it was spot on, really really good

Elle: so glad you liked it!

Kathryn: I did. Well done :) 2.Is it tacky…to wear leggings and a long baggy sweater…if the sweater sometimes rides up a bit and a glimpse of backside occurs in said leggings. they are true leggings, not tights, and not at all see through

Elle: So long as the leggings are a dark color, and it’s a SWEATER (not a sweatshirt) it’s not tacky at all. wear boots or cute flats and throw on a necklace or something so it all looks purposeful(I love that you just IMed to ask me that btw!)

Kathryn: ok good. I was worried. And yes, actual sweater, black leggings, with boots

Elle: you’re golden. I bet it looks awesome. yay for fashion!

Kathryn: yay!

Kathryn is the Ferris to my Leah.  <3

Like most, I’ve been watching coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement with some interest. I won’t pretend that I’m as well informed as some, but I’ve tried to at least keep an eye on what’s happening with the local, Occupy Seattle demonstrations because, well, I admire people “flexing their collective political muscle,” to use Cecelia’s turn of phrase from SHIFT.  And, in fact, quoting Aunt Cecelia brings me to the crux of this post.

When I first saw coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, I was sitting in a breakfast pub in Vancouver, B.C., enjoying an order of eggs benedict and a glass of orange juice with my hubby.  What struck me, as I read the closed-captioning on the television, was how very similar the Occupy Wall Street movement was to the protests Leah learns about near the end of SHIFT. 

Well of course you’d think that, Elle, I thought to myself.  You’re just narcissistic enough to draw parallels between your imaginary worlds and this very real movement.  Sheesh. 

I dismissed the thought as silly.

But then other, local protests began cropping up—an odd coincidence. And, finally, someone asked me if I’d intended to draw comparisons to current events when I wrote RECAST.  That’s when I knew I wasn’t crazy. And that’s when I was reminded that my readers are brilliant—that of course they would see the parallels between the Occupy movement and the protests Leah observes in the Shift Series.  I realized, also, that if one person had that question, others most assuredly did, too, and that I should speak to it:  

I wrote SHIFT, and then RECAST (and the two upcoming books that follow them) during an 8-month bout of unemployment in 2009.  At that time, the economic slide was just beginning; everyone knew at least one person (probably more) who was jobless and the outlook was pretty grim.  (So, I guess things were pretty similar, then, to how they are currently…)  It was in this climate, sensing that the economy would not turn around in 3-5 years (as was initially expected) that I wrote SHIFT.  It was impossible for my story not to reflect some of that political-economic angst. As a result, unemployment and other signs of economic unrest are vaguely alluded to in SHIFT.  Leah is not even old enough to vote, however, so what would fiscal politics have meant to her, really? Not much, beyond the classroom. Which is why the allusions are vague, only becoming tangible when they pose a threat to her immediate situation.

In Leah’s world, as much as in our own, it was only a matter of time before a large-scale demonstration was organized.  So when I first wrote of economic unrest in SHIFT, it was with the intention of giving readers some context as to the larger world Leah was living in.  When I wrote about the nationally- televised protest in RECAST it was with the purpose of bringing that larger world home to Leah and her fantastic circumstances.  The protests in SHIFT and RECAST were not written with the intention of drawing parallels to any recent political/counter-political movements—it just so happens that they have.  In a way, the coincidence was unavoidable. 

To illustrate this point, I’ll let you in on a secret :  When I see people demonstrating in and around Seattle, a tiny sliver of me wants to go walk around in the crowd to indulge in the fantasy that preternatural groups—Mythologicals—exist and that a few of their kind might be walking through the same crowd… I know, I know, I’m an odd duck, but many of us writer-folk are.  Besides, you have to admit, what Leah witnesses in the first chapter of RECAST would definitely be news worth watching.  Don’t even try to pretend you wouldn’t be glued to the television.  I know I would be.  (And then I’d be glued to my laptop, madly drafting another blog post trying to explain how I’d predicted the future… which would be spooky.)

RECAST is now available on all Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com and the Apple ibookstore!  Distribution is complete!  In final celebration, here is one more, especially delicious excerpt:

The moment I saw him, the second I knew he was safe, a weight was lifted. A weight that had been since I’d left at the end of the summer, and that had only grown more heavy as each hour had passed after the protests. It was gone now.

The corner of his mouth, smooth and perfect, twitched pleasantly, the phantom suggestion of a smile, as if he too was acknowledging the weight’s lifting, even in sleep. His dark hair, even darker than the shadows in the room, made a short, black halo around his head on the white pillow.

The heat pulled at me. It tugged gently but insistently at my skin, at my hands. Before I knew fully what I was doing, I was brushing the hair from his forehead and laying my hand on his grey t-shirt, feeling the rise and fall of his breath.

“Leah,” Cecelia put her hand on my arm. “Let’s get you to bed.”

I looked up at her, reluctantly abandoning my attention on Drake. “No. Please, let me stay with him,” I begged. “I’ll sleep on the floor. Or curl up at the other end of the sofa,” I added when her expression turned to one of skeptical disbelief.

The look in her eyes changed with what I said, like she was seeing the seriousness of my request. Behind her, Ferris looked on with something like concern in her face.

“Please,” I said one last time. Truthfully, the thought of walking away from him now was tantamount to torture. He was here. I was here. And so the idea of sleeping with walls between us was…even that distance was too much when it was so unnecessary. Something in me needed him. Covetously. Badly enough that I was shamelessly begging my aunt not to make me walk away from him. Please don’t make me walk away from him again.

“Okay,” she nodded in reluctant agreement after eyeing me for a moment in a way I wasn’t sure I liked the looks of.

But I couldn‘t care to decipher her expression. She was going to let me stay near him, where I could keep some form of contact with him all night long. That’s all that mattered. Let her think I was crazy. Maybe I was.

***

RECAST on Barnes and Noble (Nook)

RECAST on  Amazon (Kindle)

RECAST on smashwords.com (Every conceivable format)

A friend in the UK sent me this screenshot.  Day = Made.