Looking Ahead to 2007

Dragging my thoughts away, for a few moments, from my ongoing and seemingly endless reading for the Cybils, I'd like to give you an idea of what I've got planned for 2007. Once the Cybil SF&F shortlist has been handed over to the judging committee, I shall be turning my attention back to my paper on wizards in the "Tales of Einarinn" and the "Aldabreshin Compass" series by Juliet E McKenna. This paper is for the Masters of Magic: Wizards in Western Literature essay collection (feel free to ignore the dates on this webpage !), which should hopefully see the light of day late next year or in 2008. The last I heard, the deadline for papers is Spring 2007, and after that, I plan to get back to my projected book (with the projected title: From Heroine to Lady Hero) on heroines in YA fantasy and how they've developed from Damsel-in-Distress to independent women heroes. This project has been on the back burner since 2003 (in large part due to a certain lady author not finishing her 7 book series about a certain young wizard yet !) I'm currently planning to write chapters on the following authors/series: Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series, Robin McKinley's Damar series, Garth Nix's The Old Kingdom series, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series and J K Rowling's Harry Potter series.

All of which means I will be doing lots and lots of re-reading next year and probably a bit less reading of new-to-me books. I will, of course, still be reviewing for Orbit/Atom and for Write Away, and writing for The Edge of the Forest - so there will be new books from them that I will read and review, and many of the books I'll be re-reading for the book will be reviewed here, because I've mostly not re-read them since starting my Blog.

On the topic of female fantasy heroines, if any of my readers have suggestions of books to read (for comparative purposes), please do let me know. I've got a handful of titles/series/authors that I've either read or plan to read (including Tanith Lee's Unicorn series and Andre Norton), but I'm open to new suggestions, although I may not read all of them (depending on availability).