Local Customs
Yesterday I celebrated the cute American holiday of Independence Day, which takes place every July 4th. Robyn and Jimmy don’t have an American flag at home, because they are unpatriotic! So I grew one in a jar. I realise that most of my readers will be entirely ignorant of this holiday, which receives little world-wide press compared to more dramatic July events like St Ulrich’s day or Umi no Hi, so I have done some research and will now present: The True Story of Independence Day A long time ago, the American demi-god George Washington saw that his people were oppressed...
read morePrivileged Person Problems
ROBYN: Please don’t bite me while I’m using tools. ME: I haven’t bitten you in AGES. It has recently been borne into me that maybe people don’t normally get hungry like I do? Like maybe for normal people it goes something like this: Stage 1: Not hungry. Stage 2: Little bit hungry. Stage 3: Starting to think about a sandwich. Stage 4: But I could probably hold out until dinner. Stage 5: Mmm, a satisfying meal for which I had a healthy appetite! For me, it goes like this: Stage 1: Not hungry. Stage 2: Would claw the face off a toddler for a hamburger. So when normal...
read moreDemons and Magicians and Dancers, Oh My
Internets, let’s talk about books, a subject dear to my heart. Specifically, let’s talk about a book dear to my heart, Sarah Rees Brennan’s The Demon’s Covenant. Sarah and I met over the internets via mutual friend and scary brilliant person, Justine Larbalestier. An admirer of Sarah’s work in fiction and non-fiction, especially The Demon’s Lexicon, I had sent her Guardian of the Dead. She liked it! (In fact, she blurbed it, which you can see on the US back cover) And she emailed me, in return, The Demon’s Covenant. I was in Oamaru at the time, and...
read moreActual Fan Email, Actual Response
Hi Karen, As a child (I am now an elderly 21) I loved geckos. At After School Care we would collect gecko eggs to take them home and put them in cotton wool lined egg cups, waiting for them to hatch. At home I kept my school bag outside, hanging from a rack on the wall beside the front door. One night I went out there to get something from it. The wall (as was usual) was covered in geckos, that was cool – geckos and I were tight, we had a mutual respect for each other…right? Well Karen, apparently NOT. Because these little $*%@# decided to drop their tails – leaving me faced...
read moreIn Which I Talk To Books
So last time on Karen’s exciting poll of what she should write about next, being paralysed by her choices, the winner was That Massive Pile Of Books She Has Consumed Recently. You bastards. These are the books sitting on the bottom shelf of my lovely new bookshelf, which means I have read them since arriving in the US. Minor spoilers. *knucklecrack* READY? LET’S GO! Norse Code, Greg van Eekhout. BOOK: Action-packed Ragnarok as conspiracy theory, with MBA-student-turned-Valkyrie Kathy Castillo and perenially dumped on minor god Hermod trying to avert doom as it thunders towards...
read moreQueen of the Kitchen Update
Internets, you may remember the story I wrote and sent out last year in lieu of Christmas cards, Queen of the Kitchen. I really like that story, but it was looking a little sad on the page. What it needed, I thought, was colour. Life. ARTWORK. So I commissioned an illustration from K. Smirnov, and it is fantastic; exactly as I had imagined Caroline to look: I particularly love the strength of her forearms and the quirk in her lips – this looks like a girl who cooks a LOT, and has developed muscle to do it, and is not particularly inclined to put up with interference in her life, which...
read moreAbout Karen
Karen Healey is a young adult novelist. She is the author of the urban fantasies GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD and THE SHATTERING, both set in New Zealand, and the forthcoming sci-fi adventure WHEN WE WAKE. GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD won the 2010 Aurealis Award for Best YA Novel and was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award. Karen can tell you a lot about baking, covers of "Hallelujah" and superhero comics.
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