A (somewhat dry) musical autobiography

🎵📽📚 I don’t know if it’s a problem or a good thing that when my mind can’t come up with a topic to blog about and I’ve committed myself to blogging (as I’m now trying to do first thing everyday when I sit down to work), I just jump in and treat my blog like morning pages. Which is fine unless I’m working on a blog post that I’m not ready to write yet and that is sort of occupying my stream-of-consciousness. Which is what’s happening right now: later, I’ll write a post about reclaiming my Spotify recommendations - Discover Weekly and Daily Mixes - from my kid’s music tastes, and the different tools and articles I’m using to do it. But I’m not there yet.

I can talk about music, though. That’s a thing. So, I don’t consider myself a person who has well-defined musical tastes. When I was growing up, my parents had a Columbia House membership, and I listened to their Gold & Platinum tapes a fair amount. I feel like I mined their tapes for other stuff, too: Styx’s Kilroy Was Here, Culture Club’s Colour by Numbers, a Peter and the Wolf that they transferred from vinyl to cassette (I don’t know which one, but my money’s on Cyril Richard), and The Irish Rover’s The Unicorn, which I guess was my grandfather’s album and not mine. I also had a Mousercise album that familiarized me with a bunch of Disney songs from movies I may or may not have seen, and the songs in the Totally Minnie TV special: “Don’t Go Breakin' My Heart,” “I Only Have Eyes for You,” “Let’s Hear It for the Boy,” “Nasty,” and “Eat It,” among others.

It was probably this early that I started getting into showtunes (my parents took me to see A Chorus Line when I was 3) and film scores, especially the John Williams oeuvre. These were always shared family experiences, and I loved them.

The first album that I remember as really being something I listened to because I chose it was Madonna’s Like a Virgin. I would put this on and dance, and of course had no idea what most of the songs were about. In fourth grade a friend introduced me to the movie Beaches, which brought me into the Bette Midler fold. I think it’s kind of hilarious that my mom was relieved when I traded Madonna for Bette Midler. I don’t think she’d done her research.

Also when I was in fourth grade, I first encountered The Phantom of the Opera and I fell in love right away. My parents had always enjoyed and shared Jesus Christ Superstar with me.

Around 1991, I started paying attention to pop hip-hop and R&B, and I think those are the genres that still speak to my heart in a very real way, especially R&B. In particular, I loved Kris Kross, En Vogue, Vanessa Williams’s “Save the Best for Last”, Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be,” and pretty much everything Boyz II Men. I briefly had a quick interest in Tim McGraw due to a friend liking him, but then returned to R&B. I also choreographed a secret dance to Paula Abdul’s “The Promise of a New Day” that no one ever saw.

Between Highlander and Wayne’s World, Queen got a lot of play. I think my mom liked them long before I knew I did.

In high school, I went back to Bette Midler and doubled down on the showtunes my parents had introduced to me in childhood, plus new shows. This is what I think of as my “musical taste” - a preference for showtunes to pretty much all genres, including R&B. My friends were into alternative from 1992 on, probably, and I can sing at least a few bars of every song on Spotify’s 90 Pop Rock Essentials playlist, less because I actually like them than because they were the big radio hits when I took Driver’s Ed.

My senior year of high school, I started dating W. and he loaned me CDs for many musicals, expanding/deepening my showtune horizons even further, and I really sort of locked in on showtunes until I was 20 or 21, when my participation in Domain Grrl culture led me to take an interest in more contemporary music as well as some older artists, and that’s when I got into artists like Michelle Branch, Lucy Woodward, Evanescence, and Jeff Buckley, with a little Dave Matthews Band thrown in because why not. I really loved Shakira’s “Underneath Your Clothes at this time, too.

Then I took a turn into punk/punk-influenced stuff, digging into The Sex Pistols, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Jimmy Eat World(not sure that counts as punk, but I listened to it around this time), Superchunk, and older Goo Goo Dolls stuff. Plus I picked up a little bit of hairband stuff, mostly Poison’s Greatest Hits. Opposites, right?

I also listened to a lot of what might best be called “Buffy rock” at this time - bands featured on or somehow related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and/or Angel: Velvet Chain, Darling Violetta, Four Star Mary, Common Rotation, and Kane. (And I guess a little Ghost of the Robot, and actually a lot of Tony Head and George Sarah’s album Music for Elevators, especially the track “Last Time,” over and over on repeat one until it made my friends very tired of it.)

W. gave me Cake’s Fashion Nugget and They Might Be Giants’s Flood around this time, both of which I love. Also, my friend A. gave me a copy of Eisley’s Room Noises, which I still love and find magical.

I retreated back to showtunes until around 2012, when I made friends with author Nathan Kotecki, who gave me a giant mix of all the goth/darkwave music that inspired him as he wrote his first novel, The Suburban Strange. In a real sense, this felt like going home, and when I then followed that up by listening to all the music Jillian Venters (also a friend) recommends in her book Gothic Charm School, I decided that Switchblade Symphony was my new favorite band. Which makes sense, because it’s a team up of a film composer and a musical theater performer.

And that’s where we are today. Writing this has helped me realize that actually, I totally have defined musical tastes. Look for tips on teaching Spotify to follow.

📚 Read Ultimate Spider-Man #4.

📚 Read Ultimate Spider-Man #2, #3.

📚 Read:

📚 Want to read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield 📚

📚 Want to read Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch

Quick reading response - Why Johnny Doesn't Flap: NT is OK!

📚 Some quick notes on Why Johnny Doesn’t Flap: NT is OK!:

This is a kid’s picture book all about how sometimes neurotypical people are unfathomable, but that doesn’t mean neurotypical people and neurodivergent people can’t be friends. It was gifted to me by an autism mom, and as an autism sibling who exhibits many signs of neurodivergence, it delighted me.

When he talks to you, Johnny looks directly into your eyes, which can make you pretty uncomfortable. He doesn’t mean any harm, though. That’s just the way he is, and that’s OK.

I mean look how Johnny’s head takes up the whole page. I need some personal space, Johnny. To quote my second favorite new character in The Rise of Skywalker, D-O, “No thank you.” (First favorite is Babu Frik.)

The whole book is full of gems like this. Highly recommend.

📚 Finished reading: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle 📚

📚 Read Why Johnny Doesn’t Flap: NT is OK! by Clay Morton & Gail Morton

📚 Want to read One Person/Multiple Careers by Marci Alboher 📚

📚 Want to read Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher

📖 Currently reading How to Be Everything by Emilie Wapnick 📚

📖 Currently reading: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern 📚

📚 Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated Language and Learning : A Critique of Traditional Schooling. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.

Gee introduces the concept of affinity spaces in this book, pointing out that popular culture is ahead of schools in the construction of “specially designed spaces (physical and virtual) constructed to resource people tied together, not primarily via shared culture, gender, race, or class, but by a shared interest or endeavor” (2004, p. 4). He argues that “people learn best when their learning is part of a highly motivated engagement with social practices which they value” (Gee, 2004, p. 77) and offers affinity spaces as an example of a space that facilitates this kind of engagement.

Gee contrasts affinity spaces with communities of practice as proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991), arguing that defining a community implies labeling a group of people, including determining “which people are in and which are out of the group, how far they are in or out, and when they are in and out” (Gee, 2004, p. 78). Talking about spaces instead of communities removes this concern of membership; people who are present in a space may or may not be part of a community.

Gee identifies some key components of any space, not just an affinity space: content, generators, content organization, interactional organization, and portals. Content is what the space is “about,” and is provided by content generators. Gee uses the example of a video game, which generates a variety of content (words, images, etc.). The space is then organized in two different ways: content is organized by the designers, whereas interaction is organized by the people interacting with the space, in how they “organize their thoughts, beliefs, values, actions, and social actions” (Gee, 2004, p. 81) in relationship to the content. This interaction creates a set of social practices and typical identities present in the space. The content necessarily influences the interaction, but interaction can also influence content. For example, with a video game, player reactions to the game may influence future updates to the game. Finally, Gee defines portals as “anything that gives access to the content and to ways of interacting with that content, by oneself or with other people” (Gee, 2004, p. 81). In Gee’s video game example, this could be the game itself, but it could also be fan websites related to the game. Portals can become generators, “if they allow people to add to content or change the content other generators have generated” (Gee, 2004, p. 82). A video game website might include additional maps that players can download and use to play the game or offer recordings of gameplay to serve as tutorials or entertainment. A generator can also be a portal; for the video game example, the game disc or files both offer the content and can be used to interact with the content.

Gee builds on this description of a space to describe “affinity spaces,” a particular type of space that young people today experience often. The “affinity” to which Gee refers is not primarily for the other people in the space, but for “the endeavor or interest around which the space is organized” (Gee, 2004, p. 84). He defines an affinity space as a space that has a number of features:

“Common endeavor, not race, class, gender, or disability, is primary” (Gee, 2004, p. 85). People in the affinity space relate to each other based on common interests, while attributes such as race, class, gender, and disability may be used strategically if people choose.
“Newbies and masters and everyone else share common space” (Gee, 2004, p. 85). People with varying skill levels and depth of interest share a single space, getting different things out of the space in accordance with their own purposes.
“Some portals are strong generators” (Gee, 2004, p. 85). People can create new content related to the original content and share it in the space.
“Content organization is transformed by interactional organization”(Gee, 2004, p. 85). Creators of the original content modify it based on the interactions of the people in the space.
“Both intensive and extensive knowledge are encouraged” (Gee, 2004, p. 85). Specialized knowledge in a particular area is encouraged (intensive knowledge), but the space also encourages people to develop a broad range of less specialized knowledge (extensive knowledge).
“Both individual and distributed knowledge are encouraged”  (Gee, 2004, p. 86). People are encouraged to store knowledge in their own heads, but also to use knowledge stored elsewhere, including in other people, materials, or devices, using a network of people and information to access knowledge.
“Dispersed knowledge is encouraged” (Gee, 2004, p. 86). One portal in the space encourages people to leverage knowledge gained from other portals or other spaces.
“Tacit knowledge is encouraged and honored” (Gee, 2004, p. 86). People can use knowledge that they have built up “but may not be able to explicate fully in words” (Gee, 2004, p. 86) in the space.
“There are many different forms and routes to participation” (Gee, 2004, p. 87). People can participate in different ways and at different levels.
“There are lots of different routes to status” (Gee, 2004, p. 87). People can gain status by being good at different things or participating in different activities.
“Leadership is porous and leaders are resources” (Gee, 2004, p. 87). No one is the boss of anyone else; people can lead by being designers, providing resources, or teaching others how to operate in the space. “They don’t and can’t order people around or create rigid, unchanging, and impregnable hierarchies” (Gee, 2004, p. 87).

Gee argues that as young people encounter more and more affinity spaces, they see a “vision of learning, affiliation, and identity” that is more powerful than what they see in school (Gee, 2004, p. 89).

Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated Language and Learning : A Critique of Traditional Schooling. London, UNITED KINGDOM: Routledge.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. ; New York: Cambridge University Press.

📚 Ito, M., Martin, C., Pfister, R. C., Rafalow, M. H., Salen, K., & Wortman, A. (2019). Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning. New York: NYU Press.

Ito et al describe the ways in which online affinity networks can be conducive to Connected Learning, explicating an updated model of Connected Learning in the process. This book is the output of the Leveling Up study; it is a collaboratively authored text identifying themes that were shared across multiple ethnographic studies in a variety of online affinity network contexts.

Connected learning “both describes a form of meaningful and opportunity-enhancing learning and guides design and policies that expand access to this form of learning” (p. 3).

It “is centered on young people’s interest-driven learning and is agnostic as to the types of relationships and institutions that can support this learning” (p. 3).

Some of the questions they seek to answer:

“How do relationships and networks provide social support, information, and connections to opportunity?... What kinds of relationships and networks support connected learning? Can online affinity networks help develop social capital, learning, and opportunity?...what kinds of additional relationships and supports do young people need to connect their learning in affinity networks to academic, civic, and career opportunities?” (p. 4)

“Why do some young people go online primarily to hang out with existing peers and to browse entertaining YouTube videos, while others dive into online tutorials, courses, and communities of interest that drive more specialized forms of ‘geeking out’ and social organizing? What role can educators, parents, peers, and the developers of online resources play in shaping these dynamics? What kinds of institutional practices, policies, and infrastructures can build stronger connections between youth interests and sites of opportunity, particularly for less privileged groups? What kinds of cultural barriers and assumptions inhibit or facilitate the building of these connections?” (p. 7-8)

How do online affinity networks connect to educational, career, and civic opportunity?

While educational technology (“edtech”), and especially specific edtech tools, have both proponents and detractors, their approaches fail to consider that “Technologies and techniques…. Take on different characteristics depending on the cultural and social settings they are embedded in” (p. 6). Without attention to the cultural and social environment, new technologies “tend to amplify existing inequity” (p. 6).

“...access to social, cultural, and economic capital, not access to technology, is what broadens opportunity.” (p. 6) (emphasis original)

A history of this work: The Macarthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative funded research conducted by, among others, members of the Connected Learning Research Network.

One of these projects was the Digital Youth Project. Fieldwork for this project was undertaken in 2006 - 2007, when “teens were flocking to MySpace… YouTube was just taking off… before the mobile internet and texting had taken hold in the United States” (p. 8).

The output of that project was the book Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (Ito et al 2009). The model described in that book was designed to describe how children and teens interact with new media, but “was not designed to directly inform educational practice or design” (p. 9).

Affinity Online is an output of the Leveling Up project, another project of the CLRN. Contrasting with HOMAGO, Affinity Online is explicitly designed to inform “the design and deployment of learning technologies and related programs” (p. 10). The project came about because “…large-scale adoption of new media created an imperative to investigate the potential connections between young people’s online activities and meaningful opportunities in education, civic institutions, and careers” (p. 10).

“Critique of existing practices is necessary but not sufficient; we believe that those of us practicing ethnography and social science also have a role to play in presenting alternatives.” (p. 10)

METHODS

This text provides a “cross-case analysis of in-depth qualitative research in networked settings” (p. 12), specifically “a variety of affinity networks that make use of online spaces” (p. 13). Data collection methods include “questionnaires, surveys, semistructured interviews, observation, and content analysis of media, profiles, videos, and other online artifacts” (p. 13).

Networks were chosen by seeking out “examples of practices already existing in communities that can be spread and scaled to address systemic problems” (p. 14), an approach from the public health field called “positive deviance” (Pascale, Sternin, and Sternin 2010).

FINDINGS

Ito et al identify common characteristics of online affinity networks that support connected learning:

  • Strongly shared culture and practices
  • Varied ways of contributing
  • High standards
  • Effective ways of providing feedback and help (p. 17)

“…an interest cannot be separated from its culture, people, and places.” (p. 18)

“Connected learning is not limited… to a particular pedagogical approach… the focus is on building relational, practical, and conceptual connections across settings and experiences, centered on learning interests and affinities.” (p. 19)

“…connected learning is more appropriately conceived of as the growth of a network of connections than as a linear pathway or an internalization of skills and knowledge” (p. 21)

“Transformative and resilient forms of learning are embedded in a web of social relations, meaningful projects, and shared activities with which a learner feels a sense of affinity” (p. 166)

“We see connected learning not as a journey of individual development that is transferrable across different settings that a person moves through, but as building stronger, more resilient and diverse social, cultural, and institutional relationships through time” (p. 167)

This idea of network-building as opposed to pathway-traversing is similar to the contrast Martin (2012) draws between traditional, linear models of information literacy and her new, more networked model of information literacy. It also has implications for people who are trying to identify pathways to connected learning, such as Bender & Peppler (2019). Should people asking questions like Bender & Peppler’s be investigating networks rather than pathways?

KEY FINDING: Online affinity networks rarely overlap with school or local networks or career networks.

“Building these connections requires concrete forms of sponsorship, translation, and brokering in order t oconnect interests to opportunity.” (p. 167-168)

“When we consider the resources and supports that young people need to connect their interests to their opportunity, equity becomes of critical concern.” (p. 168) Youth need programs and mentors with social capital to broker connections; if brokering is treated as a market-driven process, this exacerbates inequity.

“The responsibility of providing mentorship, brokering, and connection bulilding to link youth interests to opportunity is a collective one and cannot be shouldered only by families, nor only by schools and other public educational insitiututions. It entails a broader cultural shift toward recognizing the new learning dynamics of a networked era, paying more attention to learning and equity in online communities and platforms, and providing more educational supports in both formal and informal learning environments.” (p. 169

Barriers to “having a shared understanding and public agenda for how the adult world can harness online affinity networks for educational opportunity and equity” (p. 171) include the Digital Culture Generation Gap and Compartmentalized Social Networks.

Re: the Digital Culture Generation gap - “lack of understanding and visibility around what digital youth culture is about” (p. 172) and “cultural values and negative stereotypes” - e.g. gaming and fandom in particular are stereotyped as addicitvie and frivolous, respectively.

Re: Compartmentalized Social Netowrks - “online affinity networks can support bonding social captiial, but they have few avenues for bridging social capital between onlien relationships and local ones, limiting connections to academic, career, and civic opportunity” (p. 173).

Design Principles for creating Connected Learning Environments/Experiences:

Shared culture and purpose

  • “Purpose-driven participation” (p. 174)
  • “Diverse forms of contribution and participation” (p. 175)
  • “Community-driven ways of recognizing status and quality of work” (p. 175)

“In learning environments that are less interest-driven [esp. Schools], it is more challenging to develop this sense of shared community values, culture, and purpose” (p. 176). Schools tend to foster this more in extracurriculars and electives. These activities offer a potential site of connection between online affinity networks and local networks.

Project-based and production-centered

  • “Competitions, creative production, and civic engagement” (p. 178)

Openly networked

Book Review: Pop Classics Buffy the Vampire Slayer 📚

Most people who know me know that the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of my favorite things. It has been the dominant pop culture text in my life for almost 20 years, so of course my husband bought our son the BtVS picture book for his second birthday.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer picture book cover

We read it for the first time a few nights ago, and, y’all, this is done so lovingly, I almost cried. If you love BtVS and you like picture books, pick this one up.

The plot is simple. This is, let’s say, an AU where Buffy lived in Sunnydale when she was in elementary school. Don’t think about canon too hard. The writers of the show didn’t, so we probably shouldn’t, either. Sixteen year old Buffy introduces herself at the beginning, then sends us in a flashback to when she was eight years old and afraid of the dark, because OF COURSE there is a monster in her closet.

And you know how BtVS is all about literalizing tropes, so… She’s not wrong. She recruits Willow, Xander, and Giles to help her with the problem, and of course through the power of friendship it all works out.

But where the whole thing shines is the little touches in the illustration. Each time I read it, I find a new BtVS easter egg. I don’t want to spoil too much, so here are just a couple examples.

Below, I’ve noted a few special  Sunnydale locations in the front endpapers in yellow.

Front endpapers

Next, a few things worth noticing in Buffy’s room, this time in blue:

Buffy's room

And this is just the beginning. Each page has tons of this stuff, and the book’s climax has the best references of all.

Right before the climax, though, we get this page:

Together we stepped into the darkness.

And really, isn’t stepping into the darkness together what BtVS is all about?

 

🔖📚 No Romance Required 30 Books About Girl – Boy Friendships

Me: “Okay but everyone wants to marry Dickon so they must mean the friendship between Mary and Colin right? I think even Colin wants to marry Dickon.” (Reader: I married Dickon.)

Want to read: The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids by Alexandra Lange 📚

Book Review: Stan Lee

This review was written for my children's literature class, so it addresses some concerns from a more professional perspective than many of my earlier reviews have.

Miller, R. H. (2006). Stan Lee: Creator of Spider-Man. Farmington Hills, MI: KidHaven Press.

Stan Lee: Creator of Spider-Man is part of the KidHaven Press Inventors and Creators series, a series which introduces the lives of famous people to middle grade readers (Grades 4 - 8). The author, Raymond H. Miller, has written over 50 children’s nonfiction titles on various topics. While he is not an accredited Stan Lee expert, his experience in writing this type of book lends him some authority. The text, published in 2006, covers Stan Lee’s life from his birth until the 2000s, with up-to-date information about his current work. It focuses primarily on his career; sections about his childhood slant heavily towards how his childhood experiences influenced that career.

The book is clearly designed to provide an introduction to the life of one of the most famous writers in the history of comic books. The text is not overly complex, but it is not so simplistic as to bore or insult the intelligence of its intended audience. It does not present differing perspectives on Stan Lee’s life; it does, however, report conflicts objectively, simply stating the facts of situations like Lee’s lawsuit against Marvel rather than taking one side or the other in these matters.

The structure of the book is chronological; chapter titles and subtitles break up the text but do not reveal a great deal about the content that follows them. The book includes extensive reference aids, including a table of contents, a glossary, an index, endnotes which provide citations for quotes used in the text, a page of “For Further Exploration” recommendations, and photo credits. These serve as excellent examples for readers if they need to write biographical texts themselves.

Illustrations include photographs of Stan Lee in various situations, images of his influences (such as William Shakespeare) and experiences (such as chess, ping pong, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor), and scenes from movies based on his films. These are colorful with clear captions which add to the text’s meaning. There is one confusing illustration, a combined map of Manhattan Island and timeline which features characters from Stan Lee’s comic books. The text on this image, in comic-style bursts, is arranged in no discernible order.

Overall, this book is well-suited to its audience and purpose. The text is clear, the presentation is attractive, and it is a fine example of well-researched non-fiction.

📚 Summer Blog Blast Tour, Day 3

Summer Blog Blast Tour, Day 1

The Summer Blog Blast Tour is back and it kicks off today! Browse around for interviews with the following authors:

📚 A Shakespearean Summer

Author Lisa Mantchev is sponsoring a Shakespeare challenge, which is Liv of Liv’s Book Reviews is hosting. Read three Shakespeare plays between June 1st and August 31st, post about them in your blog, and you’ll be entered to win a few prizes.

One of them is the book Eyes Like Stars, the first in Lisa’s The ThÊâtre Illuminata trilogy. Here’s a description:

Welcome to the ThÊâtre Illuminata, where the characters of every play ever written can be found behind the curtain. They were born to play their parts, and are bound to the ThÊâtre by The Book–an ancient and magical tome of scripts. Bertie is not one of them, but they are her family–and she is about to lose them all and the only home she has ever known.

I cannot tell you how much this sounds like the perfect book to me, the book that will top the list of “Books I Wish I’d Written."

So, join me in the challenge, won’t you?
[via Becky’s Book Reviews]

📚 SBBT: Amber Benson

I met Amber Benson once.  It was in February 2001, at a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Posting Board Party.  She was talking to a friend of mine, and thinking she must have been one of the regular posters whom I knew and seeing her in profile, I walked right up to her and put my arm around her shoulders as though we’d known each other since the dawn of time.

Then I realized who she was, and was pretty much in awe that she hadn’t thrown my arm off her shoulder and been all, “We’ve never met.  Please don’t touch me.”  Because that’s probably what I would have done, had I been in her situation.  Instead, she engaged me in a very pleasant conversation.

Amber Benson is both lovely and multi-talented, and thanks to Little Willow of Bildungsroman, she agreed to be one of my interviewees for the Summer Blog Blast Tour this year.  While Amber is best-known (among my friends, anyway) for playing Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she has many other credits to her name, including authoring two novels with Christopher Golden (Ghosts of Albion: Accursed and Ghosts of Albion: Astray) and her first solo novel, Death’s Daughter, published this year.

For more information about Amber, visit The Essence of Amber.  For more information about Death’s Daughter, visit the book’s website.

My interviews almost always run exactly seven questions, so here are the seven Amber was kind enough to answer for me:

You have written for several media: film, comic books, theatre, online animation, and novels.  What is your favorite thing about each medium?

I love writing plays because they are all about dialogue (one of my fav things ever) and imagination.  If you have talented actors, they can take you anywhere without ever leaving the confines of a plain, black stage.   Comic books and animated/live action film have a similar draw for me.  You work heavily with dialogue, but then you also get to describe all the great action/set pieces that your characters get to play around in/with.  Prose is the most challenging thing for me.  It incorporates all of the stuff in the other mediums, but then it also adds the element of getting inside the inner monologue of your character/s.  For me, writing novels is a real balancing act, but a very rewarding one, too!

How does your experience as an actress inform your writing process?

I think being an actor makes me more aware of character and dialogue.  That’s the stuff I’m drawn to as an actor and I think it only informs my writing and makes it better.

Much of your writing has been in genres related to the supernatural.  What about that type of story appeals to you?

A good story is a good story, whether you’re reading Dostoevsky or Heinlein.  Still, the thing I have always liked about fantasy/scifi is that you can tell a story without preaching or getting up on a soapbox.  You can deal with very topical subject matter, but throw it into an alternate world and no one gets offended.  It’s really freeing.  [For more on this subject, see my interview with Sonja Foust; she feels the same way Amber does.]

Your first solo novel, Death’s Daughter, was released recently.  How did writing this alone differ from working with Christopher Golden on the Ghosts of Albion novels?

Writing by myself was really scary at first because I didn’t have anyone to fall back on if I got stuck with a scene or a charcter’s motivation, but as I got further into the writing process, it got much less daunting.  Writing with Chris is awesome - and a lot of fun.  He really taught me all I know about writing prose.  Actually, I feel like I went to Chris Golden’s: Writing 101.  He enjoyes the written word and imparted that joy to me!

The Ghosts of Albion novels are Victorian horror, with a sort of Gothic feel to the prose and a distinct voice that fits in with that time period.  Death’s Daughter is a very modern novel with a more chick-lit feel.  What was it like to make that change?

I love writing in different voices.  If I was writing in the same world/voice for more than a few books without any relief, I would get horribly bored.  Mixing things up genre and voice/world wise keeps things fresh and interesting for me.

What are your favorite books, comic books, or graphic novels?

Graphic novel: Blankets by Craig Thompson Comic book: Sock Monkey by Tony Millionaire Novel: The Idiot by Dostoevsky

So, you’re an actress, singer, director, producer, and writer.  What do you think you’ll do next?

I am working on a middle grade book book called “The New Newbridge Academy” and I just co-directed a film with Adam Busch called “Drones”.  I am trying to stay as busy as possible and never have vacation! J/K!  :)

Thank you Amber so much for this interview!

Stay tuned here at lectitans, as I’ll be reviewing all three of Amber’s novels over the next few weeks.

Today’s SBBT Schedule: Maya Ganesan at Miss Erin Amber Benson at lectitans Carolyn Hennesy at Bildungsroman Jo Knowles at Hip Writer Mama Sherri Winston at Finding Wonderland

Don’t forget the Guys Lit Wire Book Fair for Boys!

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my feed so you will get my other interview posts.

Non-Fiction Monday: How to Be a Budget Fashionista by Kathryn Finney 📚

 I know that Non-Fiction Monday is supposed to focus on non-fiction for kids, but I don’t read much of that and I still wanted to get in on the party.  So here we are.

How to Be a Budget Fashionista is a guide by Kathryn Finney, founder of thebudgetfashionista.com.  The book is divided into three sections, labeled as “Steps."

Step 1: Know Your Budget.  In this section, Kathryn provides advice for fashionistas who maybe have been letting their money get away from them.  This section is essentially a mini-lesson in personal finance, and could benefit even those who do not want to become fashionistas.

Step 2: Know Your Style.  Every fashionista has a distinctive style, but these can be grouped into certain types.  Most people have more than one style.  In this step, you take a quiz and create a look book to determine what your style is.  Then, Kathryn supplies a list of designers and stores that fit your style.  PLEASE NOTE: Designers are not budget-friendly most of the time, so it might be best to look at these designers and use their work for inspiration, rather than plan to actually buy their designs.  (My style is mostly Romantic, with secondary styles of Conservative and Urban Trekker.)

Step 3: Know Your Bargains.  In the third part of the book, Kathryn discusses how to find bargains in department stores, online, from designer outlets, and more.  One review on Amazon pointed out that Kathryn’s idea of a bargain sometimes does not seem like a bargain at all: $50 for a blouse, $90 for a skirt.  While these aren’t bargains I can afford, if you look at the percent markdown from their original prices, the items she cites are true bargains.  Worrying about the specifics, however, isn’t what the book is about anyway.  Even if your clothing budget is such that you have no choice but to buy all of your clothing in thrift stores, there is advice here for you.

In addition to fashion and shopping advice, How to Be a Budget Fashionista includes ideas on how to supplement your income, how to arrange a clothing swap with friends, and how to make several beauty products from things you have lying around the house.

If you are looking to learn how to put an outfit together, this is not the book for you.  (That would be The Lucky Shopping Manual.)  But if you already know how to do that and just need some help doing it cheaper, you should check this book out.

Book: How to Be A Budget Fashionista [affiliate link]
Author: Kathryn Finney
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Original Publication Date: May 30, 2006
Pages: 240
Source of Book: Purchased from Amazon

Out of the Madhouse

…yesterday my life’s like, “Uh oh, pop quiz.” Today it’s “rain of toads.”

Thus spoke Xander Harris in part two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s pilot episode, “The Harvest.”  Even in its later seasons, Buffy didn’t have the special effects budget to create an on-screen rain of toads.  The advantage to books is you aren’t limited by those sorts of budget constraints.  In Out of the Madhouse, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder bring the rain of toads, along with all the trolls, sea monsters, skyquakes, and nasty Cordelia-chasing demons you could ever hope for.  What’s that, you say?  Trouble in Sunnydale?  Must be Tuesday.  The difference is, this time, it’s all happening at once.  Also?  Giles is out of town.  It turns out there’s an interdimensional mansion in Boston that’s been keeping these monsters at bay, but now its caretaker, the “Gatekeeper,” is ailing and his magic is weakening.  Buffy, Xander, Cordelia and Giles head to Boston to put a stop to the monster leak, while Willow, Oz, and Angel hold down the fort against an invasion of evil monks who are out to get Buffy.  (Note: I said evil monks not evil monkeys.)

Like any tie-in, Out of the Madhouse suffers from the fact that you can’t kill off major characters.  What you can do, however, is injure them severely, and in every fight scene in Out of the Madhouse I expected someone - usually Cordelia - to end up in the hospital.  Out of the Madhouse has a structure somewhat like a multi-episode arc; you’ve got the main problem of new scary monsters, plus signs that the Watcher’s Council might be sketchy, subplots involving outside forces looking to hurt Buffy, and some new recurring characters who are quite likeable.  The dialogue is strong, though not Whedon-quality, and except for the wild special effects that would be necessary to pull it off and the unlikely requirement of on location filming in Boston, I completely believed that this was a story I might see on the show itself.  Add in a surprise ending and you’ve got a recipe for fun and nostalgia.  (Plus, Golden and Holder manage to avoid the Ethan Rayne trap!)

I’d recommend Out of the Madhouse to any Buffy fan looking for stories to tide them over between issues of the comic book or to take them back to the good old days.

Book: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book One: Out of the Madhouse
Author: Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Original Publication Date: 1999
Pages: 384
Age Range: Young Adult
Source of Book: Library