Babel Clash

Oh, ninjas!!

I was just having almost this same conversation with my husband (mystery writer extraordinaire Charles Ardai). There is little I adore more than a good cliche reinterpreted fresh — I love what Sharon Shinn has done with angels in the Samaria books, I was just re-reading those the other day — and my contender for the “next” one was unicorns. I feel they are ripe for re-imagining. It would be a challenge because of the potential for twee, but come on — unicorns!

– NO, WAIT.

I HAVE IT.

NINJAS ON UNICORNS.

It will be my next proposal.

Actually, I will totally take this opportunity to pimp a forthcoming anthology of great awesome, Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black, in which I decidedly come down on the side of unicorns. Here’s a quick taste!

Purity Test

“Oh, stop whining,” the unicorn said. “I didn’t poke you that hard.”

“Excuse me, I have a hangover, I think I’m bleeding, and I’m seeing unicorns,” Alison said, rubbing her shoulder. “I have grounds.”

She groggily swung her legs over the side and sat up the rest of the way on the park bench. It was still dark, except for the big old wrought-iron street lamp down the path that was stabbing at her eyes. Alison was really not ready to be awake again. Blowing the last of her money on a fake ID from Times Square and two six-packs of supermarket beer instead of a bus ticket back to the group home had seemed like a good idea at the time. She wasn’t even completely ready to give up on it yet, although the unicorn was making a pretty good case.

The unicorn was extremely pretty, all long flowy silver hair and shiny hooves, indescribable grace, and a massive and improbable spiraling horn about four feet long. Also, it looked kind of annoyed.

“Why a unicorn?” Alison wondered at her subconscious. “I mean, dragons are so much cooler.”

“Excuse me?” the unicorn said indignantly. “Unicorns kill dragons all the time.”

“Really?” she said skeptically.

The unicorn pawed the ground a little with a forehoof. “Okay, usually only when they’re still small. But Zanzibar the Magnificent did kill Galphagor the Black in 1014.”

Zombies vs. Unicorns will come out in September 2010.

And speaking of awesome cliches done fresh, tomorrow (or possibly the day after depending on technical issues), I will soon be joined on here by my good friend the fabulous Claudia Gray, author of the Evernight series — vampires and boarding school! It is heaps of fun! — to ramble back and forth with me for a bit.

This plan was hatched on her recently completed visit to NYC, as a result of which we spent last Saturday night in an S&M dungeon — okay, FINE, 675 Bar is actually a trendy NYC joint now, but I have it on excellent authority that it until recently was an S&M dungeon, and it looks the part, barring the incongruous new foosball table. (Unless the foosball table is actually standard issue for S&M dungeons? Actually, there’s that bit in the (strange and creepy and oddly brilliant) movie of The Revenger’s Tragedy where Eddie Izzard and Christopher Eccleston are randomly playing foosball in a sort of S&M-y post-apocalyptic universe, so maybe!)

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