So MERMAID doesn't come out till March 1 but it got its first two reviews in the past week. Plus I have my first reading scheduled: March 16 at the KGB Fantastic Fiction series (in NYC), curated by Ellen Datlow and Matt Kressel. !

Look!

From Publisher's Weekly:

Mermaid
Carolyn Turgeon, Three Rivers, $14 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-58997-2
In Turgeon's surprisingly dark retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, two women pine for the affections of a prince: mermaid Lenia, who pulls Prince Christopher from the sea, and Margrethe, the princess of the rival kingdom, who witnesses the rescue from the convent where she hides from the war raging between their two kingdoms. Lenia, who falls instantly in love with the prince, sacrifices the sea, her voice, and her health to be with him on dry land. Meanwhile, Margrethe believes that marrying the prince would unite their kingdoms, but when she arrives to arrange it, she finds him already enraptured with Lenia. While he remains unaware that the girl he loves is also the mermaid who saved him, Margrethe recognizes her rival immediately and puts into motion a plan to send the ailing mermaid back to the sea and save her own ravaged kingdom. Turgeon has done a superb job of creating compelling characters and conflict from a story already familiar to readers. (Mar.)

And from Kirkus:

MERMAID
A Twist on the Classic Tale
Author: Turgeon, Carolyn

Review Date: November 15, 2010
Publisher:Three Rivers/Crown
Pages: 288
Price ( Paperback ): $14.00
Price ( e-book ): $14.00
Publication Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN ( Paperback ): 978-0-307-58997-2
ISBN ( e-book ): 978-0-307-58998-9
Category: Fiction

Two princesses (one earthbound, one aquatic) vie for the heart of a prince in this new twist on the classic fairy tale.

For 18-year-old mermaid princess Lenia, the world of men could not be a more exotic or fascinating place. Although her experience with humans is limited to the shipwrecks and dead sailors she comes across in her ocean-floor kingdom, she yearns for more. She gets her wish when she is finally permitted to go up and explore the surface, and has to save a young man from drowning during a storm. She delivers him to the shores of a convent and into the arms of a young novice. That girl, Margrethe, is actually the daughter of the northern king, hiding at the convent for her own protection. And, as luck would have it, the rescued sailor, Christopher, is the son of her father’s arch nemesis, the southern king. The two royals share an attraction, without knowing each other’s identity, and Christopher leaves without knowing Margrethe’s secret. Back with her merpeople family, a smitten Lenia pines for the prince and strives to find a way to be with him. Her quest takes her to the sea witch, Sybil, who informs her that becoming human is indeed possible, but comes with a steep price. Lenia has to give up her beautiful voice, and her lovely new legs will cause her chronic pain, like walking on knives. Also, Christopher must marry her if she is to survive and acquire a human soul. No matter. Lenia takes Sybil’s potion and goes to her beloved, who is indeed charmed by the mute otherworldly creature Lenia has transformed into. They become lovers, but she has competition. In order to stave off an almost inevitable war, Margrethe hatches a plan to marry Christopher herself, and unite their kingdoms. But while that might be good politics, it does not bode well for Lenia, who is unable to explain her situation to anyone. Faithful for the most part to Andersen’s dark fable, Turgeon’s (Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story, 2009) version wisely gives voice to the mermaid’s rival, making the prince’s ultimate choice—and Lenia’s sacrifice—even more poignant.

A gothic love triangle with two equally matched heroines. This isn’t kid’s stuff.

So yesterday I met the fabulous Kitty Von Sometime, who does this amazing Weird Girls visual art series in Iceland. They've done 11 videos so far including this massive gorgeous Busby Berkeley style mermaid video you can watch below (along with an interview w Kitty). She is fundraising for episode 12 now. Go look!!! Give her some moolah!!

Kastljos Interview about The Weird Girls Project from kitty von-sometime on Vimeo.

Those Youtube videos really are very unwieldy and run right into my gorgeous right-hand column I see. They are so rood. Yet awesome so please forgive them and watch them immediately.

So I am in Iceland now, I got here Sunday and am on my way back to New York, after spending a couple more weeks in Berlin and a couple days around Heidelberg visiting my old friend Erika and her family and seeing some amazing creepy castles, including CASTLE FRANKENSTEIN which supposedly the Shelleys and Lord Byron visited and which inspired her to write Frankenstein (though we went on Saturday night and thus were chased around by vampires and werewolves and men with chainsaws), and MESPELBRUNN CASTLE, which is old and weird and full of deer heads and weapons and creepy portraits of everyone who lived there including a woman stylishly yet unoriginally named Marie Antoniette who hosted the Grimm Brothers regularly and helped them select which versions of various tales they were going to use. Oh, and not just deer heads but heads of every animal you can think of, stuck on the walls.

Anyway, in Iceland yesterday I took a trip out to see GEYSIR and GULLFOSS and THINGVILLIR national park and I think I might be in love with the weird weird alien landscape here, all volcanic rock covered in bright green moss and snow, big rifts where the earth is pulling apart, giant wounds and huge mirrory lakes and this weird pearly soft sky you could tip over and drink out of, and I feel like I'm in Alaska mixed with Mars. I was supposed to go out last night to see the Northern Lights but sadly it was too cloudy, so I shall have to let the sky dazzle me NEXT TIME around, and then slip me into some Blue Lagoon.

But those geysers blew my mind a bit. Look:








And here is Gullfoss and me almost blowing away:





I would write more but I have to go interview a fabulous artiste named Kitty Von Sometime for my new MERMAID BLOG which will probably change your life.