If You Loved...

Hey, guys!



Just letting you know that my lil' weekly feature, If You Loved, just went live on BUST Magazine's website-read it here! You, my lucky readers, will get a hint at what title will be featured on Mondays before the piece goes live on Tuesdays--this week, it passes on The Orpheus Obsession by Dakota Lane to lovers of Weetzie Bat, a natural progression. I've got about a month's worth already lined up, and matching them is very exciting--but I'd love your help, too. If you have any old literary loves that you'd like to see paired with a fresh new title, drop me a line in the comments and I'll keep it in mind when writing the next few pieces. Happy Reading!

P.S. I've reviewed The Orpheus Obsession in the past; have a peek at it.

How to Make a 3D Collage

Art by Peregrine Blue

Wait until it rains and turn off your computer. (Unless you want to make a cyber collage, but that's another story.) Get all the cool stuff you've been saving, that poster you peeled off the wall in the city, scraps from magazines, the picture of Moon's place with the sun mysteriously casting stars on the side of the building, that Japanese candy wrapper you found on the ground, and of course the five hundred pics of your pals and enemies and the strangers whose images you like to steal so you can turn them into members of a fictional tribe. Make sure you've got lotsa ordinary stuff, like buildings and trees, and then you start gluing the stuff all together on stuff cardboard and bend it this and that so it stands up and pretty soon you have this whole surrealistic village that you've been doing since you were eight, and Zack picks through it, making the tiny, thin cutouts fly up buy you don't get mad. In fact, you don't even finish cutting out that pic of Orpheus from his CD cover because you'd rather go back online than glue his head onto that fish riding the bicycle through the ill-conceived, half-finished, psychedelic suburban neighborhood.

~The Orpheus Obsession, by Dakota Lane

In which the poppets come to life

In mindollie's world, the girls have hair like cotton candy where birds come to roost, tiny French babies sit in the pastry, and forlorn robots wait for the rain to come.


She has the sweetest little doll room, too--look at all that detail!

Nibbles! I love Nibbles!

Tiny things are my weakness: tiny animals, tiny books, and especially teeny tiny food. Miniature worlds always fascinated me as a little girl--I had multiple shoebox houses for my collection of plastic kitties and family of poison dart frogs and I still haven't quite given up on the idea of building my Pullip doll, Amandine (aka Nomy), the artsy loft of her dreams, with wall-to-wall toile scrapbooking paper and the twee-est little pastry stocked kitchen, ever.

One of my tiny loves? Re-Ment, teeny toy food sets from Japan. Popular with Pullip and Blythe collectors (they're scaled to Barbie doll size), each set is deliciously, impossibly detailed. Here are a few of my favorites:


From the Fairytale Sweets collection (Go look, they're all adorable.)

Amandine never suspected that the chessman chocolate molds had been enchanted, but wised up as soon as the rabbit pawns hopped off the cake to declare a truce.

This one would make a nice top for a trinket box, pieces either fixed in place or left loose for an impromptu game of chess.


From the Fairytale Tableware collection

The first teacup she found nestled in the rosebush, the second on her garden path when she walked outside to water. The others clattered their way to her on the bookshelves, in her jewelry box, and on top of her library books.

Could you see them as a wee little charms for a bracelet, maybe spaced with some French pastries?


From the Elegant Sweets collection

"Well now," thought Amandine to herself, "Am I supposed to eat them, wear them, or frame them and admire them longingly from a distance?"

Wouldn't they make a sweet set of delicate rings, two or three to a finger with a frothy white top, jeans, and matching flats?

I found my sets at the Toy Tokyo booth at NYC ComicCon, but you can check the Re-Ment International website for the store nearest you. Till you can track down your own, the Re-Ment Addicts Flickr group is full of photos of every set you can imagine in some pretty creative vignettes. Happy hunting!

What a Wonderful World: Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

Trust me, I hate overuse of the word "quirky" as much as you do.

But if any book is, it's Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. Quirky and whimsical and refreshing normal yes distinctly odd in the best way. Paul lives in Gaytopia, New Jersey, and he's your typical teenager. He's architecting the Dowager Dance on a teeny budget and lack of volunteers to dance with the Dowager's portrait, his big brother gives him grief, and he's stuck in a love triangle with the boy he loved and lost and the gentle, artsy new kid in town. Unlike your typical queer love story, the rest of the town doesn't care much--in their society, being gay is okay and everything's skewed a little bit beautifully eccentric:

Zeke's already jamming by the time we get to the highway bookstore. He's put his stage in the European History section, and every now and then he'll throw names like Hadrian and Copernicus into his mojo rap. The place is crowded. A little girl in the children's section puts the Velveteen Rabbit on her shoulders for a better view. Her moms are standing behind her, holding hands and nodding to Zeke's tune. The Gaystafarian crowd has planted itself in the gardening section, while the three straight members of the guys' lacrosse team are ogling a bookstore clerk from Literature. She doesn't seem to mind. Her glasses are the colour of licorice.

Teenagerdom's not easy, even in a gaytopia where the Joy Scouts practice guitar in the park, the cemetary markers have memory books and trinket boxes to celebrate the lives of the deceased, and painting abstract masterpieces to a jazz soundtrack is an acceptable first date. Paul kisses the wrong boy, gets a friend in serious trouble with his less-than-tolerant parents, and almost loses his best friend over her poor taste in men. Unlike a lot of YA, the book never becomes mired in its own drama; Paul and his friends--gasp!--actually communicate, and come up with some pretty ingenious solutions to their assorted woes. I would like my future lovers to take notes from this title on the proper way to beg forgiveness:

On the first day, I give him flowers and time.
The night before, I unlock my closet of origami paper--over a thousand sheets of bright square color. I turn them all into flowers. Every single one...

On the second day, I give him words and definitions...I decide to look randomly through the dictionary to find other unique words...After I jot down the words--a hundred in all--I rewrite them nicely on a long scroll, under the heading

Words to Find and Know in this World

Levithan has an incredible way with words--every word, every sentence has meaning. If it sometimes feels if the message is overpowering the story, I can forgive it for being such an inspirational one:

I have seen men holding hands walking down the street in a big city and I have read about women being married in a state that's not so far away. I have found a boy I just might love, and I have not run away. I believe that I can be anyone I might want to be.

It is, as I said, a victory. It might not last, but right now it means everything to me.

*David Levithan's website
*Interviews: Teen Book Review, Achuka (especially good!), Nerve.com (rest of the site is variably NSFW, browse at your own risk)
*Want more? Worth the Trip is my favorite blog for GLBTQ-and-then-some lit.
*Speaking of painting the music...
*How-to's for origami paper flowers, in case you need to do a little groveling
*The International House of Logerrhea can help you make your own list of words to find and know

Today's my birthday!

Photo by Alice's Tea Cup

I arrived on this planet 23 years ago today, and I'm celebrating with lunch at Alice's Tea Cup with two good friends, and then a bit of adventuring around Union Square with a visit to my old Place of Internship. Some of my amazing friends have gifted me already, and I'd like to share their art with you.


Callan is the secret love child of Hillary Knight and Mary Blair, but you didn't hear it from me. If you care about me, you'll just have to care about her too, because she's the other half of my brain and our wands have the same core. We enjoy the bon mots of Oscar Wilde, giggling at ridiculous hats, and plotting world domination by cute things. This is her portrait of me; the spiked wheel is for St. Catherine of Alexandria, patron saint of librarians, and the unicorn...well...why not a unicorn?


Krista will be the next John Lasseter some day, just you wait and see. She can leap tall storyboards in a single bound and sketch faster than a Pratt freshman on a quad mocha and a thesis due the next day. Recently, she spent a week here, where we left secret messages for visitors to Governor's Island, painted the roses (and my hair) red, and stood in defiance of the rain on my parade. She's drawn an illustration for the picture book I've written, Dear Mrs. Winterbloom.

Call it Cabinet of Curiosities Couture

Art by Vera Bee, who draws cute kisses and fantastic hats

Oh, that's a wonderful question. I'd definitely want plenty of 18th century polonaise dresses, and I have long greatly coveted the Princesse de Machin's headress: a bird cage filled with live butterflies! I'd want plenty of elaborately draped dresses from the 1870's, both bustle and natural form, two eighteenth century men's coats, one plain and one all embroidered. As well as that lots of wonderful wire-and-padding undergarments! An 1860's croquet skirt would be nice as well. I would also adore a Poiret lampshade skirt (could I try and make one out of a real lampshade?) I'd love a stylized version of 1700's skirt supports, made to look like an pyramid of suspended gargantuan picture frames, graduating in size from the waist to the floor. I'd love to have one of those umbrellas with antique dolls on them, and a few of Mme. Tilman's taxidermy hats, though perhaps not, because I'd feel terribly guilty wearing them, knowing that the animals were killed for it. Since it is my dream wardrobe, I will have lots of automaton jewelry that in real life, like these other things, I could never afford. Oh, and I'd love some of the costumes from the Ballet Russes, and Loie Fuller's dancing dress, and 1940's doll hats, and posy holders, and a hat with a Venus flytrap on it, for insect control! Also wearable terrariums, and a land going octopus familiar that would sit happily on my head and act as a wig during bad hair days. ~mudpie_duchess, in response to "What hangs in your fantasy closet?"