Susan Ee

Dixit

For those of you who are writers, Dixit is a great game.

Each player has a random hand of oversized cards with whimsical pictures. During a player's turn, she picks a card and says a word, phrase or sentence that is a hint of what the card's image might be, then puts the card face-down on the table. Every other player picks a card from her hand that she thinks might be mistaken for the current player's card and puts in face-down on the table.

The pile of cards from everyone gets shuffled so no one knows whose card is whose and is placed face-up. Then, everyone guesses which is the current player's card.

So why am I telling writers about this game? Well, if you're just starting to write, you'll probably be more interested in spending your writing time practicing and learning the basic tools of narrative. But if you've got the basics down and are thinking about esoteric things like resonance and evocation of an image/ emotion/ experience within the reader, then this is a great "writing exercise" with the added bonus of it being a fun game.

Everyone comes to the table with their own world of experiences and associations and it's a writer's job to say just enough so that they can participate in your story. It can't be so little that they get confused and wander off in random directions and it can't be so much that they get bored.

I played this game this weekend and one of the players said "Boris." It was great fun seeing what associations people made with that name. It's just as telling to see which pictures people pick as it is to see whether the players get the hint.

Don't think of this game as a "lesson," because the usefulness falls apart if you think too hard on it. It's just a fun game to exercise your creative muscles of communication.

It's best played with 5 or more people. Enjoy!

SOPA Protest

I am a content creator and a copyright holder. I support free speech, free Internet, and the tech companies who stand against the Internet bills, "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) and "Protect IP Act," which are so broadly written that even copyright holders like me are convinced it will be a disaster for the Internet.

I support the web-wide protest on Wednesday, Jan. 18th, by Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, Boing Boing and other web companies. I will have my own personal version of a blackout by being offline tomorrow. No comments or replies will be posted by me on Wed.

Here is a sample of the list by TechCrunch of companies against SOPA:

AOL, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, Google, Boing Boing, Kickstarter, Linkedin, Mozilla, PayPal, Twitter, TechCrunch, Yahoo, Zynga, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Flickr, YouTube…

Old school legislatures—keep your clumsy, fat-cat fingers off our Internet. You don't come close to understanding it enough to properly legislate it.

1,000 Ratings for Angelfall

Today, Angelfall reached 1,000 ratings on Goodreads.

A few months ago, when it got 10 ratings, I was so excited! Ten people had read and rated it. Ten! And I didn't even know these people. Well, okay, I knew one, but still. Nine of them were complete strangers.

When it got 100 ratings, I was flabbergasted. 100? Could that be right? I mean, I had fantasized about a hundred people reading my little book with maybe DOZENS rating it. But 100 ratings meant this was beyond friends of friends. How were they even finding it? I walked around in a happy daze, thinking, I am a novelist! That's right. Total strangers read my book. They voluntarily spent hours of their lives sharing my dream of Penryn & Raffe. And they enjoyed it! How amazing is that?

Well…you can imagine how I feel today.

1,000 ratings, with 400 of them being full reviews, complete with moving GIFs and photos to describe how they felt about Angelfall.

1,000 ratings, averaging 4.5 stars.

Words like "stunned", "honored", "grateful" and "moved" come to mind. But really, there are no words to describe how I feel right now. The readers have given me the gift of a lifetime.

Thank you.

FBI and Zombie Bullets

Me at a party:

Friend: So this is M. He's an FBI agent in the anti-terrorist division.
Me: Really?
Friend: Yeah, he went to West Point, served in Iraq, now he's an FBI agent. He's The Man.
Me: That's fascinating. Can I ask you a question?
Special Agent M: Sure.
Me: If angels came and destroyed the world...?

I am such a dork.

Thanks to Special Agent M for letting me corner him and hound him with questions about what would happen in case of an angel apocalypse. It's a good thing he likes fantasy! He was generous enough to give me his card and offered to answer questions for Book 2.

Plus, he told me about special zombie bullets! These are real bullets specially designed for a zombie attack. Gotta love that.


(No, Angelfall is not a zombie book…although now that I think of it, zombie angels might be kind of original, yeah? Just kidding!)

Angelfall - Finalist for the Year's Best Fantasy & Sci-Fi Cybils Award!

Wow, talk about starting the year off right. I just found out that Angelfall is one of seven finalists for the 2011 Cybils Award for the Year's Best Fantasy & Science Fiction for young adults. There were 1,289 nominated books for the Cybils Awards this year.

Cybils is a major bloggers' literary award that has been running since 2006.

Angelfall is the only one of the finalists not backed by a corporate marketing machine. You, the awesome readers, are exerting your Reader Power by your fabulous blog posts, forum chats, gushing reviews and recommendations to friends. THANK YOU!

There's something about this whole thing that makes me feel rather giddy and punky—like I'm getting away with something I'm not supposed to. :) No matter what happens, I feel like Angelfall has already won just by making it to the finalist list against all odds.

Special thanks goes out to readers Lydia Dawson, who nominated Angelfall, and to Sommer Leigh, who wrote up a beautifully compelling description of the book on the Cybils site.

The finalists are:

Angelfall (YAY!!!!! :) by Susan Ee
Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
Blood Red Road by Moira Young
Misfit by Jon Skovron
Red Glove (Curse Workers, Book 2) by Holly Black
The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
The Shattering by Karen Healey

Winners will be announced on Valentines Day.