This kind of prompt entertains me immensely, and so, in the tradition of a similar prompt from 2017, please enjoy ...
Your Dystopian YA author name is your last initial + your first initial + the first kind of tree you can think of.
— tiny snek comics (@TinySnekComics) September 7, 2019
The title of your book series is The + the color of your shirt + the first object to your right.
Your Dystopian YA author name is your last initial + your first initial + the first kind of tree you can think of.
The title of your book series is The + the color of your shirt + the first object to your right.
#CB
BC Willow defines the generation with her opus The Grey Bed
Following the stories of multiple couples through their first and last sexual acts in their lovingly shared beds, it is a potent refutation of the 50 Shades generation.
#RM
M R Oak with their thrilling YA debut "Cream Windows"
Claire: the fans can be called Creamies!
Claire: oh hai. I am coming back up to the first comments because I am on a roll and I did not do these first books justice.
'Cream Windows' was probably the first YA novel to really address the world-wide experience of young people seeing their future change after 2020.
Oak's protagonist is a visual artist in one-room lockdown and resorts to painting half of their windows cream to use as a canvas each day for their work.
The novel allows us to follow the tentative connections of social media as the daily paintings are digitally preserved for the protagonist's audience, while the clear window shows a world unprepared for the new ways needed to resume life.
In a year of worldwide transition, the work of the protagonist, paintings momentarily more pliable than the real world, allowed readers to understand that negotiation is the only way forward.
RM: THIS SOUNDS REALLY GOOD
Claire: I'm not going to lie, I have been doom-scrolling TikTok compilations, so I have been enjoying too much electronic cream windows ...
#HP
PH Sequoya, Beehive shelf
Claire: I am not going to lie, would deffo read that ...
HP provided photo of the beehive shelf
Claire: that is THREE trilogies!!
HP: I am obsessed with hexagons. I have matching glasses in the kitchen LOL
Claire: I've been really getting some inspiration from the books, so I am back up here to see what I get from your book:
As the much-lauded biographer of Buckminster Fuller, Sequoya was a leading light in the biosphere wing of sustainable living policy wonks. During her long-service leave, she wrote a stream of consciousness diary of a settler on a terraformed planet in a speculative future.
The Beehive Shelf became the first in an extensive series of earnest science fiction that was often hailed as the only real successor to the Foundation series.
HP: OMG that's exactly what I would write LOL In fact I wrote the outline of a book in 2004 and it was something a little like that - speculative future, earnest science fiction, reformed planet, climate change.
#MS
SM Birch
Claire: 🔥well now🔥
Claire: Soooooooooo, hey there. I have been letting my imagination off the leash a bit with the other books, so I thought I'd ACTUALLY write what I so imperfectly implied in my deliberately obscured initial comment.
Let's see how much NSFW content I can imply in polite language:
Everyone knows SM Birch's iconic blog, even if no one discusses it with their parents. Comparable only to Belle du Jour or Savage Love, The Supple Birch was the place to find what Belle and Dan would not, or could not, discuss.
When Birch's announcement of a book went out in the vanishingly rare subscribers newsletter, hands flew to bedside table drawers around the world. Something new to rest in that drawer - we were ALL ready.
But you see, no one was actually ready for the next iteration of The Supple Birch. Every square inch of the graphic novels that became the blogs' final form were full of import.
Thirty years later, the generation who grew up on the blog and then graphic novels created university courses in its arcane, speculative and revolutionary discoveries.
And now, the live show is here.
MS: Oh wow. I had no idea such a person existed!
Claire: Right? That prurient secrecy around adult ideas damages us all ...
#BL
LB Hazel "The Hawaiian Bowling Ball"
Claire: I am trying to work out if it's a Big Lebowski Universe entry or about some Volcano-Surfing extreme-sport loving criminals headed up by Dwayne The Rock Johnson in the Fast and Furious Universe??
BL: Porque no los dos?
Claire: Look, you're not wrong, make it so ...
Claire: I got REALLY verbose on the topic of other books, so I'm back to realise the vision set out in our comments above:
LB Hazel is probably the most influential Film Agent of our times. Discreet to the point of secrecy, he was the steady hand at the helm of some of the best-loved careers of 21st Century Cinema.
So the memoir of the ultimate insider should have been more scandalous than philosophical, but this is where 'The Hawaiian Bowling Ball' will surprise and delight you.
Taking the careers of long-time clients John Turturro and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Hazel maps out the heartbreaking restrictions on-screen physicality places on the true inclinations of artists working in the film medium.
He takes us into the heart of Johnson's political and philosophical salons, held in libraries the world over, co-hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Notorious RGB, the policy outcomes of which were never credited with his facilitation or collaboration.
And, in stunning contrast, especially as the Turturro estate gave their full permission for publication of otherwise restricted papers, the tales of the extraordinary extraction team that Turturro trained and operated for three decades on behalf of the Hague to find mass murderers, and bring them to justice.
This book truly reminds us that the brain is a muscle best used for the next generation and that muscles are mighty when used on behalf of lady justice.
BL: Well then...I best get writing! I really want to read this!
Claire: I got the tea for you, I'll be ghost writer! ahahahahaha
#CR
RC Eucalyptus, Purple cat on a red blanket
Claire: clearly a children's adventure series. iconique.
Claire: I'm BAAAAACK!
Seeing as I have started creating more and more elaborate blurbs for books, I am coming back to this one for round two ...
'Purple Cat on a Red Blanket' is a book that takes Alan Coren's tongue-in-cheek joke about one of his books and turns it right on its head.
The late Alan Coren famously published a collection of humorous pieces in book form, called Golfing for Cats. And he put a swastika on the front cover. He had noticed the most popular titles in Britain in those days were about cats, golf and Nazis. That was in 1975, long before the internet.
So in 2020, while cats ruled the interwebs and the Golfing Nazi was in the White House, RC Eucalyptus released a book for children that apparently took place on a red tartan blanket spread out in a field of Patterson's Curse during wildflower season in Australia.
But anyone who has read this gentle story of a picnic in 1975 in the rolling hills surrounding York will tell you it's more Watership Down and Picnic at Hanging Rock than Possum Magic, although there are plenty of lamingtons.
It's hard to describe the book, so go read it, but don't tell me I didn't warn you about the cats ...
#PC
PC Oak. The Blue Pillow Trilogy
Claire: a cyberpunk love story, not to be confused with CP Oake's The Blue Pillow, which is about Gardening in Foreign Climes.
Claire: The Oakes of Insi Catt, or the Shetlands as we know them now, are a literary family of extraordinary longevity, producing a giant of literature every third generation. Although most of their work is now lost to history, 'The Blue Pillow' from CP Oake, published 1890, used to be the most modern Oake book on the bookshelf.
It is a warm retelling of a young Oake leaving the ancestral isle and forging a career as a gardener in some of the most celebrated gardens in warm climates around the world. His bittersweet discovery that he could not bear the cold, not even for his family or history, lingers long in the memory.
But it is now the third generation of Oakes around the world, and the great publishers were poised and ready for the inevitable flowering of the rare Oake genius.
The literary world was NOT disappointed. PC Oak, from a cadet branch of the great authorial tree flourishing in Australia, offers us a strong Oak/e story for the times.
Again on the eternal topic of pulling up and putting down roots, his 'The Blue Pillow' takes us into the cosmos, three sisters, the new science of space travel, and a ship full of specimens leaving a dying blue dot.
Resting the hope of the world on yet another set of protectors of seeds and shoots, the very meaning of life, Oak reminds us that humans have traveled, always.
#FM
MF Sheoak, Black Mouse
Claire: fans of the Trilogy regularly address each other as 'Mother F#*kers' and it's totally cool.
Claire: Well, this is the last of the books that I did not write an overly elaborate blurb for ... so now you are getting one!
'Black Mouse' is one of those literary events that you only get to witness once in a generation. MF Sheoak produced a manuscript at 22, was holding simultaneous negotiations with eight publishing houses, and sold the movie rights alongside her manuscript for a fortune no one can actually confirm.
But we know all this because we are in a post-'Black Mouse' world now. Sheoak's prescience was so overwhelming that we now live in a world described in minute detail only two years before in her book.
Not even Nostradamus was this good, not even Agnes Nutter was this good.
And we cannot be sure the sequel will not be as farsighted and true as the first. We wait for her. And in the meantime, we mutter 'mother f#*ker' under our breath as each new revelation is proved to be in the book …
FM: this is the greatest!!
Claire: I love doing blurbs for friends, and your Agent was very flattering about my own work, so, y'know, it was an honour :)
#JM
MJ Fig is the author of The Black Bottle
Claire: The Black Bottle was a serious departure in style for Fig, whose extensive literary career covered both literature and biography. The Black Bottle, as a kind of mannerspunk/solarpunk hybrid, divided critics and united readers.
JM: I have to write this now.
#JW
WJ Bonsai, The Black Glass
Claire: This darkly funny coming-of-age story leaves readers with the memorable final image of the dark glass heart, traced over with kintsugi, shattering for an eternity 💔
#MD
DM Ash, The Black Door
Claire: Ash reimagines Ragnarok for the 21st Century, reminding us that in our greatest triumphs are the seeds of our utter destruction.
#WD
The world had grown cold since the "unforgivable years". Sure we can make heat, but can we find warmth? - DW Jarrah, The Black Hot Water Bottle
Claire: The book that inspired the Smash Hit West End Musical 🎶
Claire: I have been going overboard with the blurbs now ... so it's time for yyyooouuurrrsss!!!
Here's the thing about The Black Hot Water Bottle - both book and musical. It's complicated, yeah?
That DW Jarrah was able to write and release both simultaneously is still the stuff of legends in both ends of town, the great publishers of the Strand, and the bright theatres of Soho.
But he was the scion of families that literally own both powerhouse industries, so how could he not straddle both with his breakout debut?
It's when you realise he's a medical innovator, bringing cutting edge medical improvements to these shores that you begin to wonder if he sleeps at all, and how does he physically have time for everything he does?
It's a mystery to this correspondent, but maybe you can ask him yourself on Saturday, when he gives a reading at Waterstones Piccadilly and then attends the Opening Night of the restaging of the musical at Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
SOMEBODY ask him how he does it!!
WD: Your flattery is of a special brand x
Claire: It's not flattery if it is based on real events, it's just sparkling reportage!
#JJ
JJ Ginkgo Biloba. White Toothpick
Claire: a genre-defying retelling of Ginkgo Biloba's torrid three-year affair with David Bowie.
#CH
HC Oak The White Light
Claire: The White Light became a touchstone for a generation of writers, Oak's reimagining of the way literature communicated science created powerful images that influenced authors, playwrights and filmmakers for decades.
CH: truly fabulous. An inspiration! 😍I'd love to write something that influenced authors, playwrights and filmmakers for decades!!
Claire: I cannot wait for the book launch, and the dedication to me!
#MM
MM Yew, the striped malteasers
Claire: We all saw the public feud between MM Yew and their esteemed colleague Mal Teese, fought over many years through PhD students and across Conference Papers, but this behind-the-scenes look at MM Yews machinations to come out the victor will surely replace 'The Prince' on the bookshelves of hungry young power brokers the world over.
#GK
KG Pine. The Green Door. (I mean, that's a world of possibilities right there)
Claire: The Green Door was a pioneering policy, ensuring climate change science was the prime mover in Australian legislation for almost two decades. Pine's tell-all memoir of the dedicated campaign team that put her on the road to Canberra will leave the reader charmed by the people who won the war for Australia's sustainable future.
#AM
MA Huon. The Black (Speckled) Envelope
Claire: A collection of short stories reimagining Sherlock Holmes stories from the point of view of the perpetrators. Famous for the unforgettable revelation that while Holmes may find the miscreants, Watson is a vigilante who kills each perpetrator before they even go to trial ...
#JF
FJ Gum. The grey plate and empty mug
Claire: After humanity has spent seven generations in an off-planet settlement, a group of young humans return to earth for a school trip, and are required to create an artistic response to what they see.
One young human’s photo, entitled 'the grey plate and empty mug' reveals that something on earth is not quite what it seems.
#NM
MN Palm "The Black Bag"
Claire: When the first volume of 'The Black Bag' was released, fans of Palm and her multi-disciplinary work, who should have known better, really, were not prepared for the resulting decade long cultural wars.
She kept readers, forgive me, in the palm of her hand, as she released book after book that shifted public opinion and even national policy, and it became apparent that she had many cultural relics to assign to a 'black bag'.
#LP
PL Wattle "The White controller"
Claire: As a mostly academic writer, Wattle's book on animal husbandry and liberation was a cross-over hit for reasons still examined every year in book review circles.
In her excoriating dismissal of colonial attitudes to animals, especially wildlife, her examination of the absurd biblical weight on the narrow frame of the snakes of the world, far from the deserts of Palestine and its religions, became a celebrated part of popular culture.
#ZJ
JZ Bonsai ‘The No Lamp’
Claire: As far as counter-cultural touchstones go, young readers cannot go wrong with the radiantly revolutionary ideas of 'The No Lamp'
At its heart is the premise that the eternal 'NO' flickers and beckons us towards freedom and change, by examining every assumption we hold, whenever we can.
When in a political economy that posits 'YES' as the answer to all wants and desires, 'The No Lamp' reframes service and duty as a means of community change.
We are all called to pick up the lamp, and look for the 'NO' at the core of our mutual challenges ...
ZH: Dang it, your blurb makes me want that book to exist
Claire: I am really warming up this morning. I, too, wish I could work out the first principles of 'NO' ... I'd make a fortune.
ZJ: I’ll be getting back to this response soon 🤣
#AS
AA Maple. The taupe pillow
Claire: When 'The Taupe Pillow' first hit the shelves, it changed many of the usual misogynist strictures of literature. There were no overtly feminine features to the cover, there was almost no discussion of the author, nothing to go on but the buyer's interest until the word of mouth started.
But when the word of mouth started, there was no stopping the book sales. Almost everything about this book is about structures within structures hiding truths that destroy structures as soon as build them.
The intricate set pieces that make up the key plot points, the mannerly deceptions and misdirections of the characters, all conducted by leaders leaning over the elaborate plans for civilizations that were to hang from the stars.
It's a tour-de-force from Maple, who almost never tours or gives interviews but spends her time as an architect to the very worthy, and milliner to the wider world (if you can work out which Instagram milliner is she!)
#ZH
HZ Ash, The Pink Mouse
Claire: After two decades of being the most decorated short story writer in SciFi, Ash was sitting in the pantheons of the gods, on panels beside Le Guin, hoarding Hugos and not needing any more Nebulas, but winning them anyway.
Ash commanded the great halls at the Cons, the fans spun theories into the ether endlessly, the galaxies spun on.
On 29 February 2020 'The Pink Mouse' was released with no warning and no launch, just available in all the usual places as the world began to drown under COVID. As the whole machine of the globe faltered, 'The Pink Mouse' did not.
In the loose tradition of the 'Brown Book' in 'The Book of the New Sun', 'The Pink Mouse' is a collection of short stories that are either prequels or sequels to the prize-winning short stories on syllabus' across the world.
And the stories in the 'The Pink Mouse' destroy the premise of their celebrated precursors with a sentence or two that bring down decades of reviews and scholarships.
No short story writer has so comprehensively reframed their own legacy in their lifetime. With a rock-solid lack of ego, Ash burns her storied legacy to the ground and strides on, for there is no prize in literature for burning everything and building again, but maybe there should be.
#SJ
JS Pomegranate, The Brown Batik.
It held the memories and history of a world forgotten, and a mystery to be solved hidden in the vines and leaves of this simple heirloom
Claire: I can see the movie in my head 📽️
#EM
ME Oak. The nude chihuahua
Claire: We all remember the moment that we read page 420 in 'The Nude Chihuahua'.
Personally, I was lying in bed at about my fourth hour of reading, just biting into and chewing a granny smith, and I just froze when I read that notorious sentence.
The juice from the bite and the apple in my mouth pooled at the back of my throat, just under my tongue, then dripped into my lungs so I started coughing. I spat apple and juice out over the page from my mouth and, more painfully, out my nose, in a kind of unconscious homage to that moment in the book.
To say that I could not easily eat a granny smith for months afterward is an understatement, and each time I see the book on my shelf I re-live the feeling of apple chunks in my sinuses and carried down the back of my throat while unable to breathe.
I hear that people have fainted during readings of that scene when Oak toured for the two years 'The Naked Chihuahua' was #1 on the Times Bestseller List. I am not surprised.
So recommend this book to your nearest Book Club ... it'll rattle everyone's cage.
EM: love it! Decided nude was more mysterious than naked though xx
Claire: Hahaha, I figured as much! ZJ further up has 'The No Lamp', which I suspect is his polite way of indicating nudity … Although, considering this story was inspired by a mixture of Lionel Shriver and Chuck Palahniuk, 'The Naked Chihuahua' is pretty on brand ...
#CS
S.C Fig. The Grey Notebook
Claire: A friend of mine admitted to me the other day that they have a very unique way of screening lovers: the bookshelf of the potential lover is checked minutely, and the number and configuration of books in the 'The Grey Notebook' series on the shelf will accurately predict the kindness and consideration of the lover in bed.
I present to you now their 'Notebook Sex Scale' for your edification:
Fifth Book only: came to the series at its peak of popularity and got to read the first four at their pace, not the pace of publication. It was found that these people will not spend enough time with foreplay, and will be too showy with their technique.
First to Third Books only: stuck with the short waits between book publication, but tapped out during the 15-year gap between the Third and Fourth book. It was found these people were too LONG with foreplay, and just rolled over after orgasm.
Just the Movies: do not sleep with these people, we all feel strongly about what happened to the book on the screen. We feel your pain, Fig, we stand in solidarity, and we do not sleep with those who love the Show.
All the Books, all the novellas, all the short stories, memorabilia: they will be the soul of patience and longevity, hold these treasures close.
CS: HAHAHA!
You, my friend, are fucking funny.
Claire: true.story!
#PG
GP Eucalyptus, The Maroon Pillows
Claire: When you really need to bury an otherwise untouchable cultural icon, especially an oppressive one, you call in The Doctor.
GP Eucalyptus earned her tongue-in-cheek moniker during the book tour for her debut volume of investigative journalism that comprehensively disembowelled the cult of the great white male in literature.
'The White Jacket' was a cultural watershed, but it was her sophomore publication 'The Maroon Pillows' that really cemented in our minds the surgical decimation of her commentary.
If you've ever used a line from Shakespeare in your everyday speech (and if you are an English speaker, you have!), this book will ensure you never do so again.
The Doctor stakes Shakespeare's oeuvre out on a rock and turns her hands to removing that liver over and over again, pointing out to the English-speaking theatre world that our blind obedience to programming a Shakespeare every year, in every repertoire, does irreparable damage to equality and justice in roles and casting across the acting world.
Shakespeare may have given us fire, but his male character-heavy plays are holding us back. Call The Doctor, we need a cure ...
#ET
Ok I need to see your reaction to this one: T.E Gum's "The Blue Breast Pump"
Claire: There is a particular thrill to finding out that two of your favorite authors are friends. It's especially nice when that friendship turns out to be mostly secret, but very dynamic over multiple decades.
TE Gum and BC Willow have enjoyed a long-documented but seldom discussed artistic collaboration for almost four decades, and 'The Blue Breast Pump' is a surprisingly moving account of two women finding their voice.
Written as a celebration of two different paths in the literary woods, at the start of each decade we join the budding writers to enjoy their work.
Their youthful debut is 'NP: A Tale', and a decade later, Gum and Willow work together for a year maintaining an Installation that was 152 years old, the latest in a line of young guardians of an ancient Institution.
A decade later the two women are working on extensive political treatises over a three year period, and then it is back to that year-long Installation for an examination of their legacy with new parameters.
When Gum and Willow return, two decades later, to the Installation, the two authors critically examine their work until it collapses under the wisdom of their intervening life experience.
This book is a deeply feminist experience, showing that as artists grow, there is a need to reflect on the work of the past, and if it doesn't stand up, it must go. I look forward to reading the next installment, in forty years' time!
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