I very literally bought Pinelight by accident, while looking for free Kindle books on Amazon's website. For some reason, I had one-click ordering turned on and one wayward click purchased the book. It was only 99 cents, but I was a little bummed at first. Now I felt like I had to read it. So I poked around to find out about it.
The beginning takes place in Louisiana, and that caught my interest. Then I clicked through the first couple of pages, and there, before the opening chapter, was a Bible verse, Ephesians 6:12. A YA book with faith-based themes, a battle between good and evil, and, it seemed, adventure. For some reason, after realizing that, it didn't seem like a typical YA paranormal romance (and it's not.) I felt a little more enthusiastic about Pinelight, and finally read it a couple of weeks ago.
Yes. This is a good book.
It starts with the main character, Clara, riding in a truck with her now former friend Erik. Because it begins in the middle of a scene, the conflict between them is slowly revealed, and I liked that. Erik has betrayed Clara's trust by finding and reading her diary. Clara's life is already complicated, because of a missing chunk of memory and the absence of her parents (she lives with her aunt.) She has one friend at school, who I hope to see more of if there are more than three books, and a nemesis in a popular girl who is just plain mean.
When Clara comes home one day to find her aunt missing and Erik prowling the house with another woman, she flees to a family friend who is much more to her than she thought he would be. After their arrival across the pond, Clara stumbles into another world. There's a touch of romance, but with a darker undertone that leads up to the end conflict.
What this Christian-themed novel lacks is exactly what makes it refreshing. Clara has absent parents, but the author doesn't crutch on making the main character a tragic orphan. Also gone is the innocent lamb sacrifice that so frustrated me in several of Ted Dekker's books. There are no perfectly beautiful and always so nice and sweet characters, like Bryan Davis. Clara is gifted, but with a much heavier burden than being nice. She and her family are bound for battle, and that is kept important.
It's not without the romance aspect, but it appears that the series (as I'm gathering from the sequel, Tigerlily) while indulging in the romantic aspect, is more taking the "sacrificial love" path. I like that. Yes, the characters are young. Yes, they are probably in love. But that's not the only part of the book; it's a much more complex story.
Okay, I'll stop gushing now.
Pinelight, by Jillian Perey, was probably the best book I've ever accidentally bought. Okay, yes, it's the only book I've ever accidentally bought, but I really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Friday, January 18, 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
Book Review: The Secret of Spruce Knoll
I like trying new things, especially when it comes to books. Lately I've been delving more into YA indie fiction, and I feel like I've been rewarded for doing so. I read more now, because indie digital books are cheaper. I'm changing it up a little, and this week's book review is on a good old paperback.
The Secret of Spruce Knoll by Heather McCorkle was reviewed on IndieReader.com, and since the reviews on Amazon were pretty favorable, I decided to check it out for myself. I ordered both it and The Toadstone Trilogy Book One and got them right before Christmas.
The story follows newly orphaned Eren Donovan as she moves halfway across the country to live with her aunt in the tiny town of Spruce Knoll, Colorado. Her ancestry is half-Irish and half-Maya, something the townspeople seem to automatically hate her for. She makes a fast friend in Aiden, a fellow orphan who lives with his adopted parents and adopted siblings. The secret in question is that the entire town is made up of channelers, or people who manipulate energy from the earth to fight or heal. Almost from the very beginning, Eren gains her powers. What follows are mysteries, sinister townsfolk, a lot of commentary about racism, and an epic-ish battle as she discovers what really happened to her parents.
I finished this book with a meh feeling. It felt like a cross between Harry Potter and Twilight, only harder to get into. The structure of a good story was definitely there, and the characters were okay, but I felt like it could have used a little more work to open things up a little. Some characters changed very quickly, or were never surprising, and the book when on a lot about how much everyone hated mixed-blood kids, only to drop it later. I don't like the feeling of floating outside the story, and I truly wish it had been more captivating.
Overall, I thought The Secret of Spruce Knoll was okay, but not a series I could really get behind and become a huge fan of. I don't think I'll be getting the sequels.
The Secret of Spruce Knoll by Heather McCorkle was reviewed on IndieReader.com, and since the reviews on Amazon were pretty favorable, I decided to check it out for myself. I ordered both it and The Toadstone Trilogy Book One and got them right before Christmas.
The story follows newly orphaned Eren Donovan as she moves halfway across the country to live with her aunt in the tiny town of Spruce Knoll, Colorado. Her ancestry is half-Irish and half-Maya, something the townspeople seem to automatically hate her for. She makes a fast friend in Aiden, a fellow orphan who lives with his adopted parents and adopted siblings. The secret in question is that the entire town is made up of channelers, or people who manipulate energy from the earth to fight or heal. Almost from the very beginning, Eren gains her powers. What follows are mysteries, sinister townsfolk, a lot of commentary about racism, and an epic-ish battle as she discovers what really happened to her parents.
I finished this book with a meh feeling. It felt like a cross between Harry Potter and Twilight, only harder to get into. The structure of a good story was definitely there, and the characters were okay, but I felt like it could have used a little more work to open things up a little. Some characters changed very quickly, or were never surprising, and the book when on a lot about how much everyone hated mixed-blood kids, only to drop it later. I don't like the feeling of floating outside the story, and I truly wish it had been more captivating.
Overall, I thought The Secret of Spruce Knoll was okay, but not a series I could really get behind and become a huge fan of. I don't think I'll be getting the sequels.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Where Was Twilight When I Was a Kid?
A couple days ago, I read this article on io9.com. It's called 9 Reasons to be Grateful for Twilight, and it's a pretty good article. (The site's awesome, too. Seriously, check it out if you love sci-fi or anything geekish. It's great.) I'm gonna zero in on one point, though.
Twilight made young adult books cool.
Growing up in the early 2000s, you'd think that publishers just assumed that teenagers didn't read. It's not like the entire young adult genre was non-existant; it just didn't get a lot of attention. Back then I didn't read the Harry Potter books, and even if I had, that was only a few books, because not all of them had come out yet. My local library was pretty disappointing anyway, but even big chain bookstores like Books-a-Million and Barnes & Noble didn't have much to offer beyond those horrible coming of age novels about puberty and survival or some junk.
I did have the Lord of the Rings books, and I did read them five times. I have The Hobbit, which has been consumed three or four times. I also read a few of the Princess Diaries series. I actually have the first five of those. They're pretty beaten.
And folks, if you're counting, that's a grand total of nine books. Add the Christy Miller series, and that makes twelve, but they were extremely short novels, between 150 and 200 pages each.
So beyond an epic, much imitated fantasy and a blip of teen chick lit, I didn't read all that much of any variety. I was ecstatic when I discovered the first book in the Inheritance Cycle, Eragon, hiding at Books-A-Million one afternoon. But I needed more. I wanted adventure books, with swords and fighting and action and maybe a little romance and possibly some sarcasm. I couldn't find anything I liked at stores because there wasn't anything to find, or at least anything I liked. I mean, I'm picky, but come on. I wanted something more. When I started writing my book, I took it as my mission to provide some sort of epic fantasy to my overlooked generation.
I kept writing my book and looking for stuff to read and chatting on internet forums (though most of that had been LOTR, and didn't last to long after the last movie came out. I'd also probably be more excited about The Hobbit if this year was 2005.) I graduated from high school and headed off to college, met a lot of friends who loved to read as much as I did (and who also enjoyed LOTR) and my angsty, whiny self calmed down and took a backseat and went shopping a whole lot. At some point in 2005, Twilight made its PG-rated debut on bookshelves and became a bestseller. I guess that's when publishers and booksellers began to notice an entire demographic.
When I finished my junior year of college, I decided I needed a break from Bob Jones University. I wanted to take some time off, work, and finish up a correspondence course on the Protestant Reformation. I applied, and finally, late in the summer, got a job at Books-A-Million.
I've talked before about the business effects of the first Twilight film, which came out in 2008, at the same time I was working in the bookstore, and how it led to more people purchasing books (and us running out of New Moon right as Christmas shopping picked up.) By that time, the fourth book was out, and selling crazy. At some point that year, Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games came out. I remember seeing it at B&N in Greenville SC.
Suddenly, what I wished for in high school has come true. Yeah, it took a minute, but the YA section at B&N is much bigger than I ever remember it being when I was a teenager. I still browse every so often, checking out cover design (because I straight nerd over stuff like that.) I like to see where the trend is going. Looks like vampires and werewolves are still pretty solid, but the really cool kids are post-apocalypse survivors
I still read YA, and I'm not alone. No, I'm not trying to reclaim my youth. I'm 26 and I don't feel that age anyway. A lot of YA is just plain good, quick fiction, which is what I've looked for. Something I can curl up with at night, under a blanket. Something that will give my brain a break because I'm working on my own stuff.
I admit, I'm a little jealous. I wish there had been more books for teens when I was a teenager, more of the adventurous stuff that I craved. But I'm glad that demographic is no longer ignored. And hey, if I get some good entertainment out of the deal, all the better.
Because let's be honest. At the end of the day, there is nothing quite like a good book, a warm puppy, and a nice cup of coffee for curling up with on a lovely rainy day.
Twilight made young adult books cool.
Growing up in the early 2000s, you'd think that publishers just assumed that teenagers didn't read. It's not like the entire young adult genre was non-existant; it just didn't get a lot of attention. Back then I didn't read the Harry Potter books, and even if I had, that was only a few books, because not all of them had come out yet. My local library was pretty disappointing anyway, but even big chain bookstores like Books-a-Million and Barnes & Noble didn't have much to offer beyond those horrible coming of age novels about puberty and survival or some junk.
I did have the Lord of the Rings books, and I did read them five times. I have The Hobbit, which has been consumed three or four times. I also read a few of the Princess Diaries series. I actually have the first five of those. They're pretty beaten.
And folks, if you're counting, that's a grand total of nine books. Add the Christy Miller series, and that makes twelve, but they were extremely short novels, between 150 and 200 pages each.
So beyond an epic, much imitated fantasy and a blip of teen chick lit, I didn't read all that much of any variety. I was ecstatic when I discovered the first book in the Inheritance Cycle, Eragon, hiding at Books-A-Million one afternoon. But I needed more. I wanted adventure books, with swords and fighting and action and maybe a little romance and possibly some sarcasm. I couldn't find anything I liked at stores because there wasn't anything to find, or at least anything I liked. I mean, I'm picky, but come on. I wanted something more. When I started writing my book, I took it as my mission to provide some sort of epic fantasy to my overlooked generation.
I kept writing my book and looking for stuff to read and chatting on internet forums (though most of that had been LOTR, and didn't last to long after the last movie came out. I'd also probably be more excited about The Hobbit if this year was 2005.) I graduated from high school and headed off to college, met a lot of friends who loved to read as much as I did (and who also enjoyed LOTR) and my angsty, whiny self calmed down and took a backseat and went shopping a whole lot. At some point in 2005, Twilight made its PG-rated debut on bookshelves and became a bestseller. I guess that's when publishers and booksellers began to notice an entire demographic.
When I finished my junior year of college, I decided I needed a break from Bob Jones University. I wanted to take some time off, work, and finish up a correspondence course on the Protestant Reformation. I applied, and finally, late in the summer, got a job at Books-A-Million.
I've talked before about the business effects of the first Twilight film, which came out in 2008, at the same time I was working in the bookstore, and how it led to more people purchasing books (and us running out of New Moon right as Christmas shopping picked up.) By that time, the fourth book was out, and selling crazy. At some point that year, Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games came out. I remember seeing it at B&N in Greenville SC.
Suddenly, what I wished for in high school has come true. Yeah, it took a minute, but the YA section at B&N is much bigger than I ever remember it being when I was a teenager. I still browse every so often, checking out cover design (because I straight nerd over stuff like that.) I like to see where the trend is going. Looks like vampires and werewolves are still pretty solid, but the really cool kids are post-apocalypse survivors
I still read YA, and I'm not alone. No, I'm not trying to reclaim my youth. I'm 26 and I don't feel that age anyway. A lot of YA is just plain good, quick fiction, which is what I've looked for. Something I can curl up with at night, under a blanket. Something that will give my brain a break because I'm working on my own stuff.
I admit, I'm a little jealous. I wish there had been more books for teens when I was a teenager, more of the adventurous stuff that I craved. But I'm glad that demographic is no longer ignored. And hey, if I get some good entertainment out of the deal, all the better.
Because let's be honest. At the end of the day, there is nothing quite like a good book, a warm puppy, and a nice cup of coffee for curling up with on a lovely rainy day.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Frustrations
I think it's the law of how things work.
Yes, I'm back. I really really hate the fact that I haven't been doing the warm-up writing I'm used to doing now that I don't feel like I have to, or now that I don't have a chart to fill out.
The book is finished in the most raw form it will ever be in, at least in regards to its current incarnation. (And yes, I think I will put some excerpts from the original creation up again. That was fun. Humiliating, but fun.)
I've taken the time to make some pre-named Notepad files to get what I have now in a typed form. Once I finish the last couple pages of the chapter I'm typing now (currently titled "Alien Planets"), I'll have six of those Notepad files left.
The fact that I'm so close is thrilling. It's yet another peak I've reached.
The higher peak is definitely going to be the editing, and formatting, and cover design, and all the other parts of a book that everyone takes for granted, but which are important and which give a book the real feel it needs.
The fact that I can do nothing but read business articles, completely uninterrupted, for something like two hours, while an attempt to type longer than a paragraph is met by constant interruptions, is immensely frustrating.
But there's only six pieces to go.
And since we're talking about things that make books into books, I will add that I agree very much with Stephanie Meyer on one thing regarding music that she put in her acknowledgments (and pay no attention to the nerd behind the green curtain that reads stuff like that)...
Muse is awesome.
Yes, I'm back. I really really hate the fact that I haven't been doing the warm-up writing I'm used to doing now that I don't feel like I have to, or now that I don't have a chart to fill out.
The book is finished in the most raw form it will ever be in, at least in regards to its current incarnation. (And yes, I think I will put some excerpts from the original creation up again. That was fun. Humiliating, but fun.)
I've taken the time to make some pre-named Notepad files to get what I have now in a typed form. Once I finish the last couple pages of the chapter I'm typing now (currently titled "Alien Planets"), I'll have six of those Notepad files left.
The fact that I'm so close is thrilling. It's yet another peak I've reached.
The higher peak is definitely going to be the editing, and formatting, and cover design, and all the other parts of a book that everyone takes for granted, but which are important and which give a book the real feel it needs.
The fact that I can do nothing but read business articles, completely uninterrupted, for something like two hours, while an attempt to type longer than a paragraph is met by constant interruptions, is immensely frustrating.
But there's only six pieces to go.
And since we're talking about things that make books into books, I will add that I agree very much with Stephanie Meyer on one thing regarding music that she put in her acknowledgments (and pay no attention to the nerd behind the green curtain that reads stuff like that)...
Muse is awesome.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Vampires Make Good Business Partners
And they won't bleed you dry, pun quite intended.
Knowing that this book, when it's done and ready, will be shoved out of the nest and into a crowd of other self-published books, is a scary thing. I mean, I like my ideas. I like that I have control over the project. I sort of relish the idea of producing this book by myself, because I promise I'm gonna make it sweet.
But it's scary and off-putting to most people because they're afraid they'll never experience what I call (and there are probably other names for it in this line of work) the Twilight effect.
It has very very little to do with vampires, and a heck of a lot to do with how the publishing business works at its best and most organic moments.
In the fall of 2008, I worked at our local Books-a-Million while taking a semester off of college. If you remember, that was the year that the first Twilight film was released, in November, just before Thanksgiving. I honestly didn't know much about that series except for that they had vampires and were really popular.
I was working the day after the movie came out, and I obviously hadn't seen it yet. A lot of customers who came in that day requested at least one of the Twilight books, often the first one. Why?
They liked the movie.
They liked it so well, they bought the first book, and maybe the second. Eventually, we actually ran out of copies of New Moon (which was frustrating, because Christmas.) We sold a lot of copies of Twilight that season. The best part was that people who enjoyed the first book would come back and buy all of them. This meant a larger audience for the next film. That meant more books sold.
It did help that the series was already a bestseller, of course. Money was spent to produce the book and film series.
I'd say they got a return on their investment. That's how business works.
One of the hesitations in the decision to self-publish is knowing that it's very, very likely that there won't be a film franchise to boost sales.
But seeing that demonstration of how the publishing business works is encouraging, because ultimately, during that Christmas season, that bookstore did really well because of word of mouth business.
It's exciting because communication is at the heart of society now. Of business. When given two differing reviews of a product, people are autonomous enough that they want to find out for themselves. And maybe they'll talk about it.
People talk.
And that's awesome.
Knowing that this book, when it's done and ready, will be shoved out of the nest and into a crowd of other self-published books, is a scary thing. I mean, I like my ideas. I like that I have control over the project. I sort of relish the idea of producing this book by myself, because I promise I'm gonna make it sweet.
But it's scary and off-putting to most people because they're afraid they'll never experience what I call (and there are probably other names for it in this line of work) the Twilight effect.
It has very very little to do with vampires, and a heck of a lot to do with how the publishing business works at its best and most organic moments.
In the fall of 2008, I worked at our local Books-a-Million while taking a semester off of college. If you remember, that was the year that the first Twilight film was released, in November, just before Thanksgiving. I honestly didn't know much about that series except for that they had vampires and were really popular.
I was working the day after the movie came out, and I obviously hadn't seen it yet. A lot of customers who came in that day requested at least one of the Twilight books, often the first one. Why?
They liked the movie.
They liked it so well, they bought the first book, and maybe the second. Eventually, we actually ran out of copies of New Moon (which was frustrating, because Christmas.) We sold a lot of copies of Twilight that season. The best part was that people who enjoyed the first book would come back and buy all of them. This meant a larger audience for the next film. That meant more books sold.
It did help that the series was already a bestseller, of course. Money was spent to produce the book and film series.
I'd say they got a return on their investment. That's how business works.
One of the hesitations in the decision to self-publish is knowing that it's very, very likely that there won't be a film franchise to boost sales.
But seeing that demonstration of how the publishing business works is encouraging, because ultimately, during that Christmas season, that bookstore did really well because of word of mouth business.
It's exciting because communication is at the heart of society now. Of business. When given two differing reviews of a product, people are autonomous enough that they want to find out for themselves. And maybe they'll talk about it.
People talk.
And that's awesome.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Slower Day
Today, I only wrote four pages in my book. I'll probably work on it a little more before I go to bed, but I'm starting to think that maybe the raw draft will be done sooner than even the time frame I set. That means I can finish typing it.
Which means I can edit it.
Which means formatting.
That means distribution.
So I might be able to give myself the birthday present of a finished book after all.
Hey, that frees NaNoWriMo up for the second book. Nice.
Which means I can edit it.
Which means formatting.
That means distribution.
So I might be able to give myself the birthday present of a finished book after all.
Hey, that frees NaNoWriMo up for the second book. Nice.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
I Swear I Saw It
I randomly got really excited about my book last night, because for the first time, I can really visualize it.
Okay, maybe not so random.
I also had a dream last night about spaceships crashing and genetic testing. Anyway, back to the random excitement of memory.
I may have told this story before, but here it goes again. Sometime this summer, I was reading Ragecomics when I came across one that had a girl with a Poker Face seeing a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey on her teacher's desk. When I saw that, I pictured in my mind a copy of my novel, finished. Printed. Bound, with a dust-jacket.
I think that little glimpse of finishing has really been a motivator. I thank God that He gave me that little gift.
I'm getting closer to the end, and I know where the story is going. I literally didn't two weeks ago. I'm so thankful for the idea to do this 30 day thing. I might keep it up even after the 30 days are up.
I'm now looking at the daunting challenge of self-publishing. I mean, not just uploading it to Kindle. That's not too hard, because Amazon isn't strict about how it looks. Smashwords is, but not even that's horrendous. Formatting and making a cover are about all you need to do for a digital book. It's not comparatively that much.
Not when you put it up against a print book.
I've been comparing different companies. CreateSpace versus Lulu versus Lightning Source, all of them with pros and cons. The biggest issue is cover design. I'm not a graphic designer, but I'm also not one to make something terrible and just throw it out there. I'm picky and meticulous and too broke to hire someone to design the cover, so I'm going to tackle it myself.
I'm not worrying anymore about it being all for nothing. It's all for something. Someone will read my book. I've sure as heck enjoyed writing it.
I'll be happy if I can just fill a gap for a reader somewhere.
Because before anything else happened, that was why I started writing.
I hope someone enjoys.
Okay, maybe not so random.
I also had a dream last night about spaceships crashing and genetic testing. Anyway, back to the random excitement of memory.
I may have told this story before, but here it goes again. Sometime this summer, I was reading Ragecomics when I came across one that had a girl with a Poker Face seeing a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey on her teacher's desk. When I saw that, I pictured in my mind a copy of my novel, finished. Printed. Bound, with a dust-jacket.
I think that little glimpse of finishing has really been a motivator. I thank God that He gave me that little gift.
I'm getting closer to the end, and I know where the story is going. I literally didn't two weeks ago. I'm so thankful for the idea to do this 30 day thing. I might keep it up even after the 30 days are up.
I'm now looking at the daunting challenge of self-publishing. I mean, not just uploading it to Kindle. That's not too hard, because Amazon isn't strict about how it looks. Smashwords is, but not even that's horrendous. Formatting and making a cover are about all you need to do for a digital book. It's not comparatively that much.
Not when you put it up against a print book.
I've been comparing different companies. CreateSpace versus Lulu versus Lightning Source, all of them with pros and cons. The biggest issue is cover design. I'm not a graphic designer, but I'm also not one to make something terrible and just throw it out there. I'm picky and meticulous and too broke to hire someone to design the cover, so I'm going to tackle it myself.
I'm not worrying anymore about it being all for nothing. It's all for something. Someone will read my book. I've sure as heck enjoyed writing it.
I'll be happy if I can just fill a gap for a reader somewhere.
Because before anything else happened, that was why I started writing.
I hope someone enjoys.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Music
When I'm at the gym on the elliptical, listening to Pandora on my phone, my thoughts turn to the story I'm writing.
Like a lot.
And I realized some time back that my favorite songs form a sort of soundtrack to my books. I imagine scenes in my head to correspond with the songs, and that really helps.
Now, I don't absolutely have to be plugged in to my music to write, especially where pen and ink are concerned. The other day I got a lot done just because of the peace and quiet at work. It was great. But today, in the car on the way back from a family day trip to my Gramma's house, I turned on my Pandora app, which is constantly set to an Angels and Airwaves station, and went at it.
I got a lot done and left somewhat of a cliffhanger for myself. There's some definite character stuff and I'm almost to the end of that chapter. It was a really great part I was happy to get finished, because I liked it so much. I accomplished something today.
I guess all this to say, when the book is nearer to being ready, I'm going to put up a list of the songs that have found their way into my story, and I'll link to any videos I can find. You've probably heard them before; even better. It's really just an insight thing.
Anyway. I'm just excited about the amount of work I got done today. Along with the stuff I've figured out lately, it seems like it's all coming together.
It's a great feeling.
Like a lot.
And I realized some time back that my favorite songs form a sort of soundtrack to my books. I imagine scenes in my head to correspond with the songs, and that really helps.
Now, I don't absolutely have to be plugged in to my music to write, especially where pen and ink are concerned. The other day I got a lot done just because of the peace and quiet at work. It was great. But today, in the car on the way back from a family day trip to my Gramma's house, I turned on my Pandora app, which is constantly set to an Angels and Airwaves station, and went at it.
I got a lot done and left somewhat of a cliffhanger for myself. There's some definite character stuff and I'm almost to the end of that chapter. It was a really great part I was happy to get finished, because I liked it so much. I accomplished something today.
I guess all this to say, when the book is nearer to being ready, I'm going to put up a list of the songs that have found their way into my story, and I'll link to any videos I can find. You've probably heard them before; even better. It's really just an insight thing.
Anyway. I'm just excited about the amount of work I got done today. Along with the stuff I've figured out lately, it seems like it's all coming together.
It's a great feeling.
Friday, September 21, 2012
I've Got That Friday Feeling...
I have always loved Fridays. I know I'm not alone in that. The reasons have changed over the years, of course.
When I was younger, it meant I could stay up late, since I didn't have school in the morning. It kept that meaning as I grew, but added on that autumn Fridays were best, and there was nothing quite like football and hot apple cider. When I got into college, it meant hanging out with new friends, and the potential of Saturdays, because Greenville South Carolina is pretty cool if you like to shop, which I do. Even now, despite the fact that I work every other Saturday, there's just something about Fridays.
The potential, I guess. The feeling that Saturday is coming, and that's one day with no rules or alarm clocks (though I set mine sometimes for fun, in order to defiantly turn it off, because I'm weird like that) and nowhere you really have to be, and plenty of time to do fun stuff, like working on a book. I remember doing that as a teenager, when the first draft of the second book (yes, I wrote two whole, terrible novels and started a third one that improved) was penned.
Tomorrow, I'll be doing the same at some point. Last night, I finished up a part I'd been working at for several days, in which the characters encounter a creature I wrote when I was in high school and honestly never thought I'd see again. While it's in the text for only a short time, it's nice to have it back. I look forward to using it in the future, because in the original short story (same universe as the two novels) these things were scary, the one break from utter unintentional goofiness.
And about that third book I never finished...
It was the turning point. The story became darker, the need more urgent, and the situation more intense. It differed so much from the original, in a good way, that it became the major catalyst for rewriting the entire story from the beginning.
I'm glad I didn't finish it, because you know that always means the story's not over yet.
When I was younger, it meant I could stay up late, since I didn't have school in the morning. It kept that meaning as I grew, but added on that autumn Fridays were best, and there was nothing quite like football and hot apple cider. When I got into college, it meant hanging out with new friends, and the potential of Saturdays, because Greenville South Carolina is pretty cool if you like to shop, which I do. Even now, despite the fact that I work every other Saturday, there's just something about Fridays.
The potential, I guess. The feeling that Saturday is coming, and that's one day with no rules or alarm clocks (though I set mine sometimes for fun, in order to defiantly turn it off, because I'm weird like that) and nowhere you really have to be, and plenty of time to do fun stuff, like working on a book. I remember doing that as a teenager, when the first draft of the second book (yes, I wrote two whole, terrible novels and started a third one that improved) was penned.
Tomorrow, I'll be doing the same at some point. Last night, I finished up a part I'd been working at for several days, in which the characters encounter a creature I wrote when I was in high school and honestly never thought I'd see again. While it's in the text for only a short time, it's nice to have it back. I look forward to using it in the future, because in the original short story (same universe as the two novels) these things were scary, the one break from utter unintentional goofiness.
And about that third book I never finished...
It was the turning point. The story became darker, the need more urgent, and the situation more intense. It differed so much from the original, in a good way, that it became the major catalyst for rewriting the entire story from the beginning.
I'm glad I didn't finish it, because you know that always means the story's not over yet.
Monday, September 3, 2012
30 Days, 30 Posts, 30 Chapters
So.
I've decided to make September (roughly) my own month for getting the book done. I am promising myself that the book will be done, finished, completely, by my birthday, as a present to myself. Yeah, I'm nicely busy. With my part-time job and the attempt to go into writing full-time, this should be interesting. Especially the next time my puppy climbs on my chest in an attempt to eat my chapstick while I'm wearing it.
For 30 days, I will post here about stuff, mostly my book or other fictional outlets. I'll also write a chapter of my novel, either on my computer or by hand, the latter of which I prefer.
So here y'all go. First post of this little thing. Chapter coming later today. :)
I'll be more interesting tomorrow. For example, this past weekend I uploaded Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, and one very tense 80s movie into my head.
My brain had a field day that night.
Enjoy!
I've decided to make September (roughly) my own month for getting the book done. I am promising myself that the book will be done, finished, completely, by my birthday, as a present to myself. Yeah, I'm nicely busy. With my part-time job and the attempt to go into writing full-time, this should be interesting. Especially the next time my puppy climbs on my chest in an attempt to eat my chapstick while I'm wearing it.
For 30 days, I will post here about stuff, mostly my book or other fictional outlets. I'll also write a chapter of my novel, either on my computer or by hand, the latter of which I prefer.
So here y'all go. First post of this little thing. Chapter coming later today. :)
I'll be more interesting tomorrow. For example, this past weekend I uploaded Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, and one very tense 80s movie into my head.
My brain had a field day that night.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Oh My Word, Here I Go...
*ahem*
When I was fifteen, I started writing a book.
It was bad.
Here is an excerpt, with commentary included. It serves as a warning to younger me, since twentysomething me is currently DeLorean-less.
-----
Years ago, on a farm just outside of a town called Coleville, in West Virginia [not a real place. I stole the name from combining a movie with the wrong way my last name is spelled all the time and I had not at the time ever been to WV.] there lived a girl named Susan Miltons [I'm really bad at surnames]. The Miltons family was a relatively small family, with one boy, Johnny, and two girls, Susan and Linda [I swear I stole the names from an American Girl book.]. their father was a very hardworking man who was absolutely delighted to provide well for his family. And the family surely was well provided for. [What is this crap, young me? Really?]
Susan was a young girl with an adventurous spirit. She felt that she must have one, because Linda and Johnny were more content to do homework and see their friends. [Susan was apparently a loser with no friends. Or a serial killer. Criminal Minds would probably be all over that.] Susan loved to explore the thick, beautiful woods on the Miltonses [???] property. The trip was sometimes [only sometimes?] inconvenient, because Susan had to go around the field [corn, if you were wondering], but once she was finished with that obstacle [apparently Susan was fat, too], Susan explored to her content. [I guess young me wasn't into pronouns.]
To Susan, there was always some new place to find. Sometimes it had been an unfamiliar clearing. [How exciting.] Other times i had been a new path that wound through the woods, leading to some mysterious end that Susan never quite found. [Maybe that's where the bodies were hidden?] One unfortunate time, Susan had found the trail to the railroad tracks, and the train was just speeding through. [Dag.] But there was one consistent thing about Susan's explorations. She always took her loyal dog, Teddy, with her. And one day, Susan found another new clearing. But this clearing was very extraordinary, and more astonishing than anything Susan had ever seen.
It was a beautiful day one October, when Susan was twelve. [I think I legitimately thought people would get confused if I used "she" once, instead of the name.] The air was cold, the sky was the deepest blue, and it was Saturday, which allowed the whole day for fun. [No duhrr.] So she [freaking finally] went exploring, and Teddy followed loyally, as he did every time, his tongue hanging out, his fur blowing in the breeze. The leaves were changing, and falling, and not a cloud was in the sky. So the young girl and her dog strolled to the woods.
This day, Susan chose a new, smaller path than the others she had seen before. [My grammar sucked too, if you haven't noticed.] The path was clear, nearly perfect, not covered by thorns like most of the trails in these woods. Up ahead was a bend in the path, and when Susan and Teddy went around it, they found, instead of another path, a clearing. But this clearing was different than others. [Those sentences are just gross.] Everything in it was a different shade of brilliant blue. The rocks were blue, as was the piney cover on the blue tinted soil. [Sorry, I forgot about the acid trip part of the story.]
"Oh," breathed Susan. "Teddy, it's so amazing." [Poor Teddy...I'm so sorry for what you had to put up with.] Teddy looked happy; no, ecstatic, as if he had found some hidden happiness in that clearing. [SUBTLE FORESHADOWING DUNDUNDUN.] A small fruit hung from one of the trees, and Susan looked at it, but decided against eating it. But she made a decision about the clearing itself. This was her special place. I'll come back every day, she thought. Or at least I'll try. So, after playing there for a long while with Teddy, Susan headed home.
****************
[It gets better.]
Susan did indeed try to go back every day. Even when she explored other places, she found time to go to her special clearing. [Was anyone concerned at all about this child spending hours in the woods unsupervised?] It was a place of peace, somewhere to play and to dream. No other place was like it. But even so, special as it was to her, there was something even better about it that Susan herself would never discover [SUBTLETY.] So these happy years crawled by lazily, and Susan and Teddy became closer in a strange way as they visited the clearing. [I'm sorry, but just no.]
The day came when Susan turned sixteen. [This is apparently known to happen occasionally.] As this birthday had approached, she had stopped going as often. Other things, like friends, [finally], school [also finally] and cinema [Cinema? Really?] replaced the clearing as important to her. And then, Susan stopped going at all, and forgot all about this beautiful clearing. [Morality tale: avoid puberty at all costs, because you may be in danger of getting a life.] Teddy never did, though, and he went back every day, because, not only was he used to the routine, the dog [because I know you totally just forgot what species Teddy was] knew that something was more special about this blue place. [did no one care that the dog wandered off too?] But the clearing, as Susan stopped going, turned from a bright blue to a dull, dead, faded gray. [Being a teenager will also kill the local flora. Apparently.]
Susan graduated from high school two years later, went to college, and got married to a man named Charlie McKail. They moved far away from Coleville, to a larger town named Wilson, hours away from Coleville. [In North Carolina.] Susan and Charlie had a daughter, whom they named Anya Leona McKail. The family lived a nice life in Wilson. [Good to know.] Anya went to a good school [also good to know, because schools in NC err on the side of suckage] and Susan and Charlie had very good jobs. And all this time, the clearing grew grayer still. [I imagine it eventually just turned clear.] And Teddy, the loyal dog, died, as no one in our world lives forever. [Crap, that's depressing.] The years passed, with the clearing lying, forgotten, in the thick woods around Coleville.
[Here's a tiny excerpt from a bit down the page. Anya's parents are discussing moving to Coleville because Susan's parents decide to give her a house or some junk like that.]
"Mama, we can't move," Anya objected. "I have friends here. Do you know how long it took me to make friends? [In Susan's footsteps, I suppose.] What in the world's wrong with Wilson?"
-----
A lot Anya. There's a lot wrong with Wilson.
When I was fifteen, I started writing a book.
It was bad.
Here is an excerpt, with commentary included. It serves as a warning to younger me, since twentysomething me is currently DeLorean-less.
-----
Years ago, on a farm just outside of a town called Coleville, in West Virginia [not a real place. I stole the name from combining a movie with the wrong way my last name is spelled all the time and I had not at the time ever been to WV.] there lived a girl named Susan Miltons [I'm really bad at surnames]. The Miltons family was a relatively small family, with one boy, Johnny, and two girls, Susan and Linda [I swear I stole the names from an American Girl book.]. their father was a very hardworking man who was absolutely delighted to provide well for his family. And the family surely was well provided for. [What is this crap, young me? Really?]
Susan was a young girl with an adventurous spirit. She felt that she must have one, because Linda and Johnny were more content to do homework and see their friends. [Susan was apparently a loser with no friends. Or a serial killer. Criminal Minds would probably be all over that.] Susan loved to explore the thick, beautiful woods on the Miltonses [???] property. The trip was sometimes [only sometimes?] inconvenient, because Susan had to go around the field [corn, if you were wondering], but once she was finished with that obstacle [apparently Susan was fat, too], Susan explored to her content. [I guess young me wasn't into pronouns.]
To Susan, there was always some new place to find. Sometimes it had been an unfamiliar clearing. [How exciting.] Other times i had been a new path that wound through the woods, leading to some mysterious end that Susan never quite found. [Maybe that's where the bodies were hidden?] One unfortunate time, Susan had found the trail to the railroad tracks, and the train was just speeding through. [Dag.] But there was one consistent thing about Susan's explorations. She always took her loyal dog, Teddy, with her. And one day, Susan found another new clearing. But this clearing was very extraordinary, and more astonishing than anything Susan had ever seen.
It was a beautiful day one October, when Susan was twelve. [I think I legitimately thought people would get confused if I used "she" once, instead of the name.] The air was cold, the sky was the deepest blue, and it was Saturday, which allowed the whole day for fun. [No duhrr.] So she [freaking finally] went exploring, and Teddy followed loyally, as he did every time, his tongue hanging out, his fur blowing in the breeze. The leaves were changing, and falling, and not a cloud was in the sky. So the young girl and her dog strolled to the woods.
This day, Susan chose a new, smaller path than the others she had seen before. [My grammar sucked too, if you haven't noticed.] The path was clear, nearly perfect, not covered by thorns like most of the trails in these woods. Up ahead was a bend in the path, and when Susan and Teddy went around it, they found, instead of another path, a clearing. But this clearing was different than others. [Those sentences are just gross.] Everything in it was a different shade of brilliant blue. The rocks were blue, as was the piney cover on the blue tinted soil. [Sorry, I forgot about the acid trip part of the story.]
"Oh," breathed Susan. "Teddy, it's so amazing." [Poor Teddy...I'm so sorry for what you had to put up with.] Teddy looked happy; no, ecstatic, as if he had found some hidden happiness in that clearing. [SUBTLE FORESHADOWING DUNDUNDUN.] A small fruit hung from one of the trees, and Susan looked at it, but decided against eating it. But she made a decision about the clearing itself. This was her special place. I'll come back every day, she thought. Or at least I'll try. So, after playing there for a long while with Teddy, Susan headed home.
****************
[It gets better.]
Susan did indeed try to go back every day. Even when she explored other places, she found time to go to her special clearing. [Was anyone concerned at all about this child spending hours in the woods unsupervised?] It was a place of peace, somewhere to play and to dream. No other place was like it. But even so, special as it was to her, there was something even better about it that Susan herself would never discover [SUBTLETY.] So these happy years crawled by lazily, and Susan and Teddy became closer in a strange way as they visited the clearing. [I'm sorry, but just no.]
The day came when Susan turned sixteen. [This is apparently known to happen occasionally.] As this birthday had approached, she had stopped going as often. Other things, like friends, [finally], school [also finally] and cinema [Cinema? Really?] replaced the clearing as important to her. And then, Susan stopped going at all, and forgot all about this beautiful clearing. [Morality tale: avoid puberty at all costs, because you may be in danger of getting a life.] Teddy never did, though, and he went back every day, because, not only was he used to the routine, the dog [because I know you totally just forgot what species Teddy was] knew that something was more special about this blue place. [did no one care that the dog wandered off too?] But the clearing, as Susan stopped going, turned from a bright blue to a dull, dead, faded gray. [Being a teenager will also kill the local flora. Apparently.]
Susan graduated from high school two years later, went to college, and got married to a man named Charlie McKail. They moved far away from Coleville, to a larger town named Wilson, hours away from Coleville. [In North Carolina.] Susan and Charlie had a daughter, whom they named Anya Leona McKail. The family lived a nice life in Wilson. [Good to know.] Anya went to a good school [also good to know, because schools in NC err on the side of suckage] and Susan and Charlie had very good jobs. And all this time, the clearing grew grayer still. [I imagine it eventually just turned clear.] And Teddy, the loyal dog, died, as no one in our world lives forever. [Crap, that's depressing.] The years passed, with the clearing lying, forgotten, in the thick woods around Coleville.
[Here's a tiny excerpt from a bit down the page. Anya's parents are discussing moving to Coleville because Susan's parents decide to give her a house or some junk like that.]
"Mama, we can't move," Anya objected. "I have friends here. Do you know how long it took me to make friends? [In Susan's footsteps, I suppose.] What in the world's wrong with Wilson?"
-----
A lot Anya. There's a lot wrong with Wilson.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Panic!
I really really really really cannot stand the thought of not being able to move my elbows. The thought of being stuck in a pipe or something, or somehow having my arms pinned, makes me mentally panic.
Now do understand that this is more than just discomfort. The first two minutes on an elliptical are a little uncomfortable, at least until I'm good and warmed up. I can't sleep at night if I'm too hot. I probably will never again make the mistake of ordering a bubble tea with whole milk.
But if I were caught with my elbows pinned to my sides and unable to move, I'd probably just start screaming. Even when I don't feel like doing much at all, my body still craves the option of moving.
There's only one other feeling in the world like it.
That feeling is always when I'm trying to work on my book. Recently, I've spent more energy blogging than actually working on my novel, and it does frustrate me. Being a little unsure of where to go next always feels a little untidy, but that's okay. I usually whip out my teeny little notebook for those moments, or run ideas by my fiance. It's a method of talking things out, and it usually really helps a ton.
I'm talking about those moments when my job is a little quiet and I have a moment I could use to focus. I sit in front of my screen and re-read the scene I just wrote. Then I place the cursor where I want to begin...
And usually that's when something makes noise. For no reason. Or my favorite times, when little kids scream. In short bursts.
Over and over again.
That's when I panic, because the noises don't stop. Door alarms sound, or UPS delivers something, or the phone rings and rings and rings, sometimes three callers at once. And I can't figure out, in earnest, where to go after getting five seconds to my mental self, and I start to hate the scene and I remember it being so much better when I wrote it down in the notebook five days ago, because I was listening to music I like and was therefore able to provide myself with a mental sanctuary. Then I sort of start to hate this character that's just visually there but said a whole lot more and her brother's important, and I like him but without her, there's no connection. And then I think "Oh crap, this character might be ripped off of Simon Tam" even though he's really honestly not. And then I wonder if I should just get rid of this character because she's been around since literally 2002, only back then she was twelve inches tall and now she's all emo, but I really love the attitude there. Oh my word, I could transfer that to another character and make her awesome, but the brother thing is a problem but I really really love that character and oh hey, they could have muskets and tricorner hats or maybe I can just say True Grit plus Lord of the Rings plus Twilight plus The Hunger Games plus the 1980s and nukes! OMG GUYS GUNS ARE COOL.
Not that any of this discussion actually occurs in words.
My brain doesn't have the attention span for words.
Well, now I feel better.
Thanks!
Now do understand that this is more than just discomfort. The first two minutes on an elliptical are a little uncomfortable, at least until I'm good and warmed up. I can't sleep at night if I'm too hot. I probably will never again make the mistake of ordering a bubble tea with whole milk.
But if I were caught with my elbows pinned to my sides and unable to move, I'd probably just start screaming. Even when I don't feel like doing much at all, my body still craves the option of moving.
There's only one other feeling in the world like it.
That feeling is always when I'm trying to work on my book. Recently, I've spent more energy blogging than actually working on my novel, and it does frustrate me. Being a little unsure of where to go next always feels a little untidy, but that's okay. I usually whip out my teeny little notebook for those moments, or run ideas by my fiance. It's a method of talking things out, and it usually really helps a ton.
I'm talking about those moments when my job is a little quiet and I have a moment I could use to focus. I sit in front of my screen and re-read the scene I just wrote. Then I place the cursor where I want to begin...
And usually that's when something makes noise. For no reason. Or my favorite times, when little kids scream. In short bursts.
Over and over again.
That's when I panic, because the noises don't stop. Door alarms sound, or UPS delivers something, or the phone rings and rings and rings, sometimes three callers at once. And I can't figure out, in earnest, where to go after getting five seconds to my mental self, and I start to hate the scene and I remember it being so much better when I wrote it down in the notebook five days ago, because I was listening to music I like and was therefore able to provide myself with a mental sanctuary. Then I sort of start to hate this character that's just visually there but said a whole lot more and her brother's important, and I like him but without her, there's no connection. And then I think "Oh crap, this character might be ripped off of Simon Tam" even though he's really honestly not. And then I wonder if I should just get rid of this character because she's been around since literally 2002, only back then she was twelve inches tall and now she's all emo, but I really love the attitude there. Oh my word, I could transfer that to another character and make her awesome, but the brother thing is a problem but I really really love that character and oh hey, they could have muskets and tricorner hats or maybe I can just say True Grit plus Lord of the Rings plus Twilight plus The Hunger Games plus the 1980s and nukes! OMG GUYS GUNS ARE COOL.
Not that any of this discussion actually occurs in words.
My brain doesn't have the attention span for words.
Well, now I feel better.
Thanks!
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Silly Library, Books are for Kids
I've mentioned before how much I looked forward to the Bookmobile making its appearance on my street when I was a kid, and how much I loved reading.
We moved the summer after third grade, to a neighborhood sort of across town, where the Bookmobile didn't go. I started fourth grade, made new friends, and got both a computer and a puppy. The library sort of took a seat on the backburner, and I made use of the one at my Christian school, or just went to B. Dalton in the mall. When I was in seventh grade, Books-A-Million came to the Wal-mart shopping center, and suddenly, between it and B. Dalton, a wealth of books and magazines was suddenly available.
I literally did not visit the library again until I was in 10th grade.
Not joking. What books I wanted, I saved for and bought, or asked for them for my birthday or Christmas.
That year Clive Barker released his YA novel Abarat. I saw an ad for the book in a kids' magazine and thought "hey, that looks pretty cool." By this time, I'd of course devoured all of the Chronicles of Narnia, buffet style, and discovered The Lord of the Rings. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was a huge favorite of mine, as was A Wrinkle in Time, and I wanted more adventure. More worlds to step into. So Abarat looked pretty cool.
It was also pretty expensive at BAM. What money I had, I didn't want to spend. So I decided, after seven years, to get a library card for the Wilson County Public Library.
I felt rich there, standing in the YA section. I remember (because I'm a freak who remembers stuff like this, don't judge) borrowing Wolf Tower by Tanith Lee and Many Waters, by Madeleine L'Engle. They didn't even have a copy of Abarat, but I still couldn't wait to check out more.
Problem was, a lot of YA books back then weren't all that interesting, especially the ones they had at the Wilson County Library. Usually they were "poignant, coming of age stories" written circa 1982. If there was any fantasy at all, it was all mythological Wales type of stuff, and a lot of the time they'd have the second book in a series, without having the first. I eventually did buy Abarat. As I got older, books became less of a cool thing for me. I wasn't at all interested in things like Pride and Prejudice; I wanted something more along the lines of my favorites. The bookstore wasn't much help either, though I'd known that. B. Dalton had closed a few years before, and BAM either didn't stock things as much or just plain sold out. I was restless and not content with basically having very little to read that I liked. The library didn't have anything because they purchased from BAM, and the local store didn't have all that much either.
But my mind had entertainment. It craved a story so much that it wrote one.
See, we had to read some story in English class that was sort of like the poor man's version of the story of Icarus. Only this tale read like a bad driver's ed film, because the kid's dad was Apollo, and he totally borrowed and wrecked the car. Or something. At any rate, my teacher decided we needed to write our own myth, preferably with a happier ending and that didn't graphically detail what happens to a body in an auto collision. I wrote some dumb little page-long thing where this chick found a clearing in the woods that was magical and turned blue when she walked into it. There's more details, all of which I remember, but they're dumb. Sorry.
I turned it in and got it back, and promptly shoved it into my backpack, whereupon it was immediately stained with banana.*
I didn't forget about it, though. There was more to this story, so I wrote out another copy for myself to continue later. I went to my Gramma's that weekend and started working.
I confess, I have no idea what we did in my 6th period class for the rest of the freaking year, because I wrote the whole time. Like really. I think it was World Geography, but I know I didn't pay attention because I still suck at geography.**
I figured I was freaking brilliant by writing a novel at the age of 15. I finished it and began the process of rewriting, changing and taking out and putting in and having a ball. Then I got the idea for the sequel, then another idea for the third book. The second one was finished by the next winter, shortly after my library adventures began.
I never finished the third one, and here and there I'd work on it between high school and finishing college.
It's funny when you re-find things you hadn't touched in a while.
That book sucked.
Like, it was really bad. Childish and confusing and often times, downright dumb. I threw in plot devices like they were candy at a parade, and often characters existed just to remind the main character that she was special. Yeah, I was one of those writers. I wanted to make it as fantastical as possible, but keep it down to earth and for some reason, partially set in West Virginia (which at the time, I had never been to.)*** There was a gap somewhere in there, where I grew up and started writing a little better. Characters were more complex, there were more secrets, and the dog no longer talked. Dogs, by the way, were the only creatures that could talk in the story. I had two dogs at the time, so I blame that.
And yet, still, even after all my emo-ness and stuff, it still wasn't ready. Like at all.
Like it read like a horrible fan-fiction that wasn't even clear what exactly the author was a fan of.
Lo and behold, college! It was great, and it was awful and I had a lot of friends and did a lot shopping and hanging out and basically not ever working on my book.
But it simmered back there, on the back burner. All the bad stuff cooked off, and spices were added, and my story became mental comfort food. I like where it is now. Heck, I love where it is now. Granted, it is like a fickle lover, sometimes frustrating and many times amazing. Yes, the bare bones are there. Teenagers, quest, weapons. Like the human skeleton, this formula is literally everywhere in YA fiction, whether you know it or not. It's extremely basic. Now I have on my side a weird obesession with the Cold War, lots more attitude, many movies without hobbits, and a temper upon which I blame genetics.****
But that's all I'll say about that.
Because I think it's time to pretend I had a few too many and do the writer's version of dancing on a table at a wedding and launching my stilettos across the room.
I'm going to put some annotated excerpts from the previous work on this blog. Many of the notes may just contain exclamations of shame or LOLs because it's seriously bad, but funny bad. Seriously funny bad.
So prepare to enjoy.
Or just stare awkwardly. Your choice.
*I still have the sheet of notebook paper, and it still has banana on it. It's a beautiful sort of gross.
**Seriously, as far as I know, every state that isn't Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Missouri, or West Virginia floats around in this weird archipelago. Of freedom.
***I did go in 2005, on a senior ski trip with my class. And I have the shoulder pain and loss of motion to prove it!
****Yeah, if you think the Hatfields and McCoys were bad, you shoulda seen my family and the neighboring family where they lived, back before 1950. Apparently, an uncle of mine busted home one day and asked his mama (my great-grandmother) where the gun was, because he was gon' kill him somebody. She was all "heck to the naw" and I don't think anything came of that. Also, my Granny once frightened a school principal into actually punishing other students that jumped both my dad and my aunt. I am so proud of both of these events, you don't even know.
We moved the summer after third grade, to a neighborhood sort of across town, where the Bookmobile didn't go. I started fourth grade, made new friends, and got both a computer and a puppy. The library sort of took a seat on the backburner, and I made use of the one at my Christian school, or just went to B. Dalton in the mall. When I was in seventh grade, Books-A-Million came to the Wal-mart shopping center, and suddenly, between it and B. Dalton, a wealth of books and magazines was suddenly available.
I literally did not visit the library again until I was in 10th grade.
Not joking. What books I wanted, I saved for and bought, or asked for them for my birthday or Christmas.
That year Clive Barker released his YA novel Abarat. I saw an ad for the book in a kids' magazine and thought "hey, that looks pretty cool." By this time, I'd of course devoured all of the Chronicles of Narnia, buffet style, and discovered The Lord of the Rings. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was a huge favorite of mine, as was A Wrinkle in Time, and I wanted more adventure. More worlds to step into. So Abarat looked pretty cool.
It was also pretty expensive at BAM. What money I had, I didn't want to spend. So I decided, after seven years, to get a library card for the Wilson County Public Library.
I felt rich there, standing in the YA section. I remember (because I'm a freak who remembers stuff like this, don't judge) borrowing Wolf Tower by Tanith Lee and Many Waters, by Madeleine L'Engle. They didn't even have a copy of Abarat, but I still couldn't wait to check out more.
Problem was, a lot of YA books back then weren't all that interesting, especially the ones they had at the Wilson County Library. Usually they were "poignant, coming of age stories" written circa 1982. If there was any fantasy at all, it was all mythological Wales type of stuff, and a lot of the time they'd have the second book in a series, without having the first. I eventually did buy Abarat. As I got older, books became less of a cool thing for me. I wasn't at all interested in things like Pride and Prejudice; I wanted something more along the lines of my favorites. The bookstore wasn't much help either, though I'd known that. B. Dalton had closed a few years before, and BAM either didn't stock things as much or just plain sold out. I was restless and not content with basically having very little to read that I liked. The library didn't have anything because they purchased from BAM, and the local store didn't have all that much either.
But my mind had entertainment. It craved a story so much that it wrote one.
See, we had to read some story in English class that was sort of like the poor man's version of the story of Icarus. Only this tale read like a bad driver's ed film, because the kid's dad was Apollo, and he totally borrowed and wrecked the car. Or something. At any rate, my teacher decided we needed to write our own myth, preferably with a happier ending and that didn't graphically detail what happens to a body in an auto collision. I wrote some dumb little page-long thing where this chick found a clearing in the woods that was magical and turned blue when she walked into it. There's more details, all of which I remember, but they're dumb. Sorry.
I turned it in and got it back, and promptly shoved it into my backpack, whereupon it was immediately stained with banana.*
I didn't forget about it, though. There was more to this story, so I wrote out another copy for myself to continue later. I went to my Gramma's that weekend and started working.
I confess, I have no idea what we did in my 6th period class for the rest of the freaking year, because I wrote the whole time. Like really. I think it was World Geography, but I know I didn't pay attention because I still suck at geography.**
I figured I was freaking brilliant by writing a novel at the age of 15. I finished it and began the process of rewriting, changing and taking out and putting in and having a ball. Then I got the idea for the sequel, then another idea for the third book. The second one was finished by the next winter, shortly after my library adventures began.
I never finished the third one, and here and there I'd work on it between high school and finishing college.
It's funny when you re-find things you hadn't touched in a while.
That book sucked.
Like, it was really bad. Childish and confusing and often times, downright dumb. I threw in plot devices like they were candy at a parade, and often characters existed just to remind the main character that she was special. Yeah, I was one of those writers. I wanted to make it as fantastical as possible, but keep it down to earth and for some reason, partially set in West Virginia (which at the time, I had never been to.)*** There was a gap somewhere in there, where I grew up and started writing a little better. Characters were more complex, there were more secrets, and the dog no longer talked. Dogs, by the way, were the only creatures that could talk in the story. I had two dogs at the time, so I blame that.
And yet, still, even after all my emo-ness and stuff, it still wasn't ready. Like at all.
Like it read like a horrible fan-fiction that wasn't even clear what exactly the author was a fan of.
Lo and behold, college! It was great, and it was awful and I had a lot of friends and did a lot shopping and hanging out and basically not ever working on my book.
But it simmered back there, on the back burner. All the bad stuff cooked off, and spices were added, and my story became mental comfort food. I like where it is now. Heck, I love where it is now. Granted, it is like a fickle lover, sometimes frustrating and many times amazing. Yes, the bare bones are there. Teenagers, quest, weapons. Like the human skeleton, this formula is literally everywhere in YA fiction, whether you know it or not. It's extremely basic. Now I have on my side a weird obesession with the Cold War, lots more attitude, many movies without hobbits, and a temper upon which I blame genetics.****
But that's all I'll say about that.
Because I think it's time to pretend I had a few too many and do the writer's version of dancing on a table at a wedding and launching my stilettos across the room.
I'm going to put some annotated excerpts from the previous work on this blog. Many of the notes may just contain exclamations of shame or LOLs because it's seriously bad, but funny bad. Seriously funny bad.
So prepare to enjoy.
Or just stare awkwardly. Your choice.
*I still have the sheet of notebook paper, and it still has banana on it. It's a beautiful sort of gross.
**Seriously, as far as I know, every state that isn't Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Missouri, or West Virginia floats around in this weird archipelago. Of freedom.
***I did go in 2005, on a senior ski trip with my class. And I have the shoulder pain and loss of motion to prove it!
****Yeah, if you think the Hatfields and McCoys were bad, you shoulda seen my family and the neighboring family where they lived, back before 1950. Apparently, an uncle of mine busted home one day and asked his mama (my great-grandmother) where the gun was, because he was gon' kill him somebody. She was all "heck to the naw" and I don't think anything came of that. Also, my Granny once frightened a school principal into actually punishing other students that jumped both my dad and my aunt. I am so proud of both of these events, you don't even know.
Monday, June 25, 2012
1995 Was a Great Year to be Nine Years Old
Arguably one of my favorite blogs is Fourth Grade Nothing. The author grew up in the 70s and 80s, and most of the posts are spent reminiscing about her childhood. I love reading it. It's sort of like oral history. Actually, that's exactly what it's like. I wasn't around for much of the 80s, and none at all for the 70s, so it's really cool to read about another person's experiences.
I also love Children of the 90s, because I am one.
I don't remember much at all about the 80s, except for snatches here and there, memories of snow, my dad's Isuzu truck, and maybe a little Disney World. I was born in 1986, and spent a little over three years in the glorious 1980s (they really do look fabulous...) before the clock struck midnight and January 1, 1990 rolled in.
My most favorite memories are of the 90s, when I really grew up. Like so many other people who remember their childhood, I just feel like everything was so much better then. School supplies were definitely more awesome, and everything we take for granted now was a novelty.
I think that's why third grade was my favorite year of school. I mean, yeah, it had its times of suckage, but that was all elementary school drama. It was 1995 when the school year began, and I was almost nine years old. I freaking loved shopping for school supplies, and mine were epic. I had a suede backpack, all different earth-toned colors, and it closed with a drawstring and a flap. My chin-length hair (which was straight then) and my spaghetti strap dress over a white t-shirt made me feel so fashionable. Like really. I had style. I think.
My favorite school supply was my Trapper Keeper, which had some computer generated, abstract image on it. Man, that was so cool. Trapper Keepers are back, yeah, but it's not the same. They're boring. Vintage, supposedly. To a 90s kid? Bleh.
I'd taken a little creative license with the school supply list and convinced my mom that the sparkly glittery crayons would be fine. (They weren't. We did color mixing that year. Turns out peridot doesn't count as yellow.) I remember my teacher reading Ellen Tebbits that year. The world was our acid trip as we collectively obsessed over Lisa Frank. I think I had a pocketbook by that time, mostly because my cousin, the same age as me, had one and I desperately needed one too. I don't think I ever used it.
Please, all of yall tell me you remember plastic pacifier necklaces, yin-yangs everywhere, and Yikes! pencils and stuff. My fiance found some at his house, the green and purple particle wood sharpened down to just three inches long.
The Bookmobile, and extension of our local library, came every three weeks and parked right across the street from our little house, and I devoured The Babysitters Club and Goosebumps. I think I learned to love reading then. Not sure when the biting sarcasm developed.
That was the year we got cable, and it was absolutely amazing. I watched all of one channel, Nickelodeon. Back then, you had to order the Disney Channel extra, so I never watched that as a kid. Nickelodeon was enough. It had previously been a treat reserved only for weekend trips to my Gramma's house in Virginia, or for when we were at my Granny's house across town. Snick was the perk of a weekend at Gramma's, and Are You Afraid of the Dark rocked my world.
In 1995, I discovered Star Wars. My parents rented it, and it blew my mind. I'd never seen anything like it before. I mean yeah, I watched Star Trek The Next Generation on TV, but I have only a few memories of that and no emotional attachment. Star Wars made me love movies. Better than that, it made me love good storytelling. I had a homemade Star Wars cake that year, with Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, R2-D2, and Luke Skywalker on it. The writing was done in blue gel on white icing. Epic.
My goal was to eventually make a lightsaber with a white blade. I daydreamed of finding that special crystal in my schoolyard.
We didn't have Internet yet then. I mean, it existed, but for most of the public, it was a little bit of a novelty. We didn't even have a computer. Family friends did, and I remember playing with a program at my parents' friends' house where you would speak into the microphone, and the parrot on-screen would repeat what you said. It yelled at me when I used the word stupid once.
I thought the internet looked so cool, with all the AOL keywords and games and a whole world out there, right at our fingertips.
I begged my dad to get a computer with a "motive" so we could get on the internet.
He laughed at me. The computer with the "motive" didn't come until the next year, around the same time we got Minnie.
After 1995, it got crazy. Technology changed at a dazzling rate of speed. I didn't know what a cell phone was then, and I had no idea, in 1995, what a laptop was. (I would later discover this technical marvel while watching Independence Day, in which a Powerbook was used to kill aliens.) No year, for the rest of that decade, ever felt as aweome. Blips of cool popped up here and there, such as seeing Star Wars (Special Edition!) in the theater and getting a puppy (10th birthday...double-digits rock). Back before the new Star Wars trilogy came along and partly broke the hearts of fans everywhere (but we're loyal lovers.) Back before the Y2K scare, before 1999 got stale, and back when kids weren't lazy. Back when anything was possible, but what else could have been better? Forget tomorrow. Today, there are pools to cannonball into, Death Stars to blow up, just in front of the swingset, and Warball games to play, beat or be beaten.
Yes, 1995 was truly a great time to be nine years old. I don't think the world's any worse. We're certainly aware of more now. I think we might've appreciated childhood a little more if ourselves now could go back in time and show our younger selves that this Saturday at the pool is a blessed and rare day off. But why ruin the fun?
And by the way, I still want that white lightsaber.
I also love Children of the 90s, because I am one.
I don't remember much at all about the 80s, except for snatches here and there, memories of snow, my dad's Isuzu truck, and maybe a little Disney World. I was born in 1986, and spent a little over three years in the glorious 1980s (they really do look fabulous...) before the clock struck midnight and January 1, 1990 rolled in.
My most favorite memories are of the 90s, when I really grew up. Like so many other people who remember their childhood, I just feel like everything was so much better then. School supplies were definitely more awesome, and everything we take for granted now was a novelty.
I think that's why third grade was my favorite year of school. I mean, yeah, it had its times of suckage, but that was all elementary school drama. It was 1995 when the school year began, and I was almost nine years old. I freaking loved shopping for school supplies, and mine were epic. I had a suede backpack, all different earth-toned colors, and it closed with a drawstring and a flap. My chin-length hair (which was straight then) and my spaghetti strap dress over a white t-shirt made me feel so fashionable. Like really. I had style. I think.
My favorite school supply was my Trapper Keeper, which had some computer generated, abstract image on it. Man, that was so cool. Trapper Keepers are back, yeah, but it's not the same. They're boring. Vintage, supposedly. To a 90s kid? Bleh.
I'd taken a little creative license with the school supply list and convinced my mom that the sparkly glittery crayons would be fine. (They weren't. We did color mixing that year. Turns out peridot doesn't count as yellow.) I remember my teacher reading Ellen Tebbits that year. The world was our acid trip as we collectively obsessed over Lisa Frank. I think I had a pocketbook by that time, mostly because my cousin, the same age as me, had one and I desperately needed one too. I don't think I ever used it.
Please, all of yall tell me you remember plastic pacifier necklaces, yin-yangs everywhere, and Yikes! pencils and stuff. My fiance found some at his house, the green and purple particle wood sharpened down to just three inches long.
The Bookmobile, and extension of our local library, came every three weeks and parked right across the street from our little house, and I devoured The Babysitters Club and Goosebumps. I think I learned to love reading then. Not sure when the biting sarcasm developed.
That was the year we got cable, and it was absolutely amazing. I watched all of one channel, Nickelodeon. Back then, you had to order the Disney Channel extra, so I never watched that as a kid. Nickelodeon was enough. It had previously been a treat reserved only for weekend trips to my Gramma's house in Virginia, or for when we were at my Granny's house across town. Snick was the perk of a weekend at Gramma's, and Are You Afraid of the Dark rocked my world.
In 1995, I discovered Star Wars. My parents rented it, and it blew my mind. I'd never seen anything like it before. I mean yeah, I watched Star Trek The Next Generation on TV, but I have only a few memories of that and no emotional attachment. Star Wars made me love movies. Better than that, it made me love good storytelling. I had a homemade Star Wars cake that year, with Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, R2-D2, and Luke Skywalker on it. The writing was done in blue gel on white icing. Epic.
My goal was to eventually make a lightsaber with a white blade. I daydreamed of finding that special crystal in my schoolyard.
We didn't have Internet yet then. I mean, it existed, but for most of the public, it was a little bit of a novelty. We didn't even have a computer. Family friends did, and I remember playing with a program at my parents' friends' house where you would speak into the microphone, and the parrot on-screen would repeat what you said. It yelled at me when I used the word stupid once.
I thought the internet looked so cool, with all the AOL keywords and games and a whole world out there, right at our fingertips.
I begged my dad to get a computer with a "motive" so we could get on the internet.
He laughed at me. The computer with the "motive" didn't come until the next year, around the same time we got Minnie.
After 1995, it got crazy. Technology changed at a dazzling rate of speed. I didn't know what a cell phone was then, and I had no idea, in 1995, what a laptop was. (I would later discover this technical marvel while watching Independence Day, in which a Powerbook was used to kill aliens.) No year, for the rest of that decade, ever felt as aweome. Blips of cool popped up here and there, such as seeing Star Wars (Special Edition!) in the theater and getting a puppy (10th birthday...double-digits rock). Back before the new Star Wars trilogy came along and partly broke the hearts of fans everywhere (but we're loyal lovers.) Back before the Y2K scare, before 1999 got stale, and back when kids weren't lazy. Back when anything was possible, but what else could have been better? Forget tomorrow. Today, there are pools to cannonball into, Death Stars to blow up, just in front of the swingset, and Warball games to play, beat or be beaten.
Yes, 1995 was truly a great time to be nine years old. I don't think the world's any worse. We're certainly aware of more now. I think we might've appreciated childhood a little more if ourselves now could go back in time and show our younger selves that this Saturday at the pool is a blessed and rare day off. But why ruin the fun?
And by the way, I still want that white lightsaber.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Horror Vacui Is Now Free!
Okay, so, after some consideration, I've decided I'd really like to get some of my work out there as best as possible.
So my short story collection, Horror Vacui, is now free at Smashwords.com.
I also have it available at Amazon.com, but Amazon won't let me change the price to $0.00, so Smashwords.com is the place to get this collection free in a bunch of different formats.
So here's the book at Smashwords if you want it free.
If you really want to be nice to me, here's the book on Amazon for $0.99.
Also, I've decided to close my Etsy shop and reopen on Storenvy under the name 12:01. Here's the link to that shop. I'd love for you to stop by. Also, 12:01 has a blog, which will be updated weekly.
In other news, the book is coming along nicely, and I'm very happy with the direction it's taken. I can't wait until it's finished!
So my short story collection, Horror Vacui, is now free at Smashwords.com.
I also have it available at Amazon.com, but Amazon won't let me change the price to $0.00, so Smashwords.com is the place to get this collection free in a bunch of different formats.
So here's the book at Smashwords if you want it free.
If you really want to be nice to me, here's the book on Amazon for $0.99.
Also, I've decided to close my Etsy shop and reopen on Storenvy under the name 12:01. Here's the link to that shop. I'd love for you to stop by. Also, 12:01 has a blog, which will be updated weekly.
In other news, the book is coming along nicely, and I'm very happy with the direction it's taken. I can't wait until it's finished!
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Titles and Covers and Elves, Oh My...
I hate sci-fi and fantasy.
I'm a hypocrite. I know.
I didn't really realize this until sort of recently. Like last week*
Now let me back up a bit. I obviously don't actually hate the genres as a whole. They really are the most interesting to me. I love the Harry Potter books, liked Twilight, have published a small collection of short sci-fi stories, and am currently working on a novel with its roots in fantasy and its leaves in the stars. That's not hate, but I'm really good about making overstatements.
So last week. I was at the library, poking around and looking for something to read that would satisfy my very picky nature. (I ended up getting Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker, which I know I probably won't finish, and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which I really liked. When they do the movie, Alan Rickman needs to play Silas. So anyway.) I had read something on io9.com about a couple of books that looked to be hard sci-fi. The second one had lovely cover art, and it was newer, and the library had it. I figured I should start with the first, so I found it on the shelf and took a look at the inside of the cover.
It took me about two seconds to slide it back on.
Why?
The blurb was way too freaking long.
While that sentence makes me sound, well, lacking, I have a valid reason for thinking that. This book's description, coupled with cover art that reminded me of bad mass-market sci-fi coupled with Harlequin romance, only if the characters were electronics instead of people, were a major turnoff.
I didn't need to read the whole plot of the book on the cover. It didn't tease me or invite me in at all. The art was, eh, about as interesting as my microwave with its broken turntable (so not much.) The length of the blurb threatened to tell the entire story. Suddenly the novel became a hard sci-fi infobook.
I don't read textbooks anymore. I barely read them in college.
Worst part was, this was done by a publishing house. I'd react the same way with the fantasy books at the library. All of them will have an elf, or bow with arrows, or a leather bikini, or maybe a centaur. Possibly a blatant ripoff of hobbits. All that is pretty much why I avoid high fantasy like the plague. Yeah, this makes it really hard for me to describe with any helpful accuracy what sort of books I like to read.
Well first, it has to be attractive. There are a lot of movies that I haven't seen (and most likely won't) for the simple reason is that they just didn't look that interesting. I really could not care less how they "made you think about...life." Uhm, well, yeah. A lot of movies do. First time I saw The Matrix, I was a little freaked out for a couple days. Not from the movie. It's still one of my faves. But just because I sat in Geometry class wondering if my pencil was real, doesn't mean it's a cinematic masterpiece. It was just a fun movie, and it got my attention.
Second, it has to entertain. If a book goes on incessantly about the politics and religious practices of vampire elves living in a 23rd century version of New York on a distant planet, I don't care if the setting is really cool, I'm done if there's no plot. Even the most interesting characters are boring if nothing ever happens to them. Pride and Prejudice didn't get popular because Lizzy Bennett spent the book pondering life while working as a waitress. It has an actual plot.
So writers, if you've chosen the self-publishing route, as many including myself have, you're gonna be doing a lot on your own, unless you want to hire some talented friends. This means cover design, and blurbs, and all that.
Please make it interesting. Deign to use a one-word title if it keeps things mysterious. Get a friend to read your book and help you if you need to. Avoid long plot summaries. Good food isn't interesting because the person eating it is full from consuming the meal. It's interesting because it smells good and teases the eater.
Be a tease. Leave a lot to the imagination.
You may find you sell more books that way.
*This happened longer ago than a week. Several weeks. I just remembered I had this post.
I'm a hypocrite. I know.
I didn't really realize this until sort of recently. Like last week*
Now let me back up a bit. I obviously don't actually hate the genres as a whole. They really are the most interesting to me. I love the Harry Potter books, liked Twilight, have published a small collection of short sci-fi stories, and am currently working on a novel with its roots in fantasy and its leaves in the stars. That's not hate, but I'm really good about making overstatements.
So last week. I was at the library, poking around and looking for something to read that would satisfy my very picky nature. (I ended up getting Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker, which I know I probably won't finish, and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which I really liked. When they do the movie, Alan Rickman needs to play Silas. So anyway.) I had read something on io9.com about a couple of books that looked to be hard sci-fi. The second one had lovely cover art, and it was newer, and the library had it. I figured I should start with the first, so I found it on the shelf and took a look at the inside of the cover.
It took me about two seconds to slide it back on.
Why?
The blurb was way too freaking long.
While that sentence makes me sound, well, lacking, I have a valid reason for thinking that. This book's description, coupled with cover art that reminded me of bad mass-market sci-fi coupled with Harlequin romance, only if the characters were electronics instead of people, were a major turnoff.
I didn't need to read the whole plot of the book on the cover. It didn't tease me or invite me in at all. The art was, eh, about as interesting as my microwave with its broken turntable (so not much.) The length of the blurb threatened to tell the entire story. Suddenly the novel became a hard sci-fi infobook.
I don't read textbooks anymore. I barely read them in college.
Worst part was, this was done by a publishing house. I'd react the same way with the fantasy books at the library. All of them will have an elf, or bow with arrows, or a leather bikini, or maybe a centaur. Possibly a blatant ripoff of hobbits. All that is pretty much why I avoid high fantasy like the plague. Yeah, this makes it really hard for me to describe with any helpful accuracy what sort of books I like to read.
Well first, it has to be attractive. There are a lot of movies that I haven't seen (and most likely won't) for the simple reason is that they just didn't look that interesting. I really could not care less how they "made you think about...life." Uhm, well, yeah. A lot of movies do. First time I saw The Matrix, I was a little freaked out for a couple days. Not from the movie. It's still one of my faves. But just because I sat in Geometry class wondering if my pencil was real, doesn't mean it's a cinematic masterpiece. It was just a fun movie, and it got my attention.
Second, it has to entertain. If a book goes on incessantly about the politics and religious practices of vampire elves living in a 23rd century version of New York on a distant planet, I don't care if the setting is really cool, I'm done if there's no plot. Even the most interesting characters are boring if nothing ever happens to them. Pride and Prejudice didn't get popular because Lizzy Bennett spent the book pondering life while working as a waitress. It has an actual plot.
So writers, if you've chosen the self-publishing route, as many including myself have, you're gonna be doing a lot on your own, unless you want to hire some talented friends. This means cover design, and blurbs, and all that.
Please make it interesting. Deign to use a one-word title if it keeps things mysterious. Get a friend to read your book and help you if you need to. Avoid long plot summaries. Good food isn't interesting because the person eating it is full from consuming the meal. It's interesting because it smells good and teases the eater.
Be a tease. Leave a lot to the imagination.
You may find you sell more books that way.
*This happened longer ago than a week. Several weeks. I just remembered I had this post.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Book Review: Trials of Fire (Divine Order Saga)
Back in November, I purchased Trials of Fire by Richard Hein for $.99 on Amazon. The author had put it on sale, and it looked pretty cool. I downloaded the book to my Kindle and began the long, ADD-laden journey of finishing it. I'm easily distracted.
Trials of Fire is the first in the Divine Order Saga. If I remember correctly, the book will soon be available in print as well. It's a fantasy novel with its roots in the steampunk genre.
The story begins with the graduation of a few twentysomethings from their training for the religious Order, after which they are able to basically act as the will of the gods that they worship, armed with swords. They're a little like the Jedi, only the swords are your basic magic weapons. The main characters set out on what seems to be a routine investigation into some local disturbance, and along the way pick up and shelter a girl who appears to be on the run from the law. There's magic, battles, and all that good stuff. I won't spoil it for you.
But this is a book review, so I must critique. While an interesting concept, the book probably could have used a second eye during the editing process. There were many places where easy-to-catch typos just ran rampant. It seems that find and replace was employed with one of the interesting wording choices, because it was consistent but didn't fit quite right, which leads me to believe that it was a mistake, rather than quirky in-story dialogue. There were often times in the end of the book where "there/their" mistakes, and similar, appeared. A few times, whole verbs were absent from the story. Instances where characters "seemed" to do this or "seemed" to feel that way just occurred too frequently. As a reader, I found these things pretty distracting, and that's never good.
As far as story, it was solidly plotted and does leave some questions open at the end, welcoming a next installment in the series. I did notice that the author took great care, several times and very conspicuously, to mention that there hadn't been a war in a long time. It was a little ham-fisted. I didn't find the descriptions of battle very interesting, but this probably rests with me. I'm not a fan of reading about sword-fights. It's too much like watching something in slow motion, and often I'm lost simply because I know almost nothing about swords or using them in combat. Admittedly, this is a bit of a nitpick.
If you want a nicely plotted steampunk homage to Star Wars, you'll probably like this book. It wasn't quite my cup of tea, but with some tidying up in the grammar department, it would be pretty decent.
Trials of Fire is the first in the Divine Order Saga. If I remember correctly, the book will soon be available in print as well. It's a fantasy novel with its roots in the steampunk genre.
The story begins with the graduation of a few twentysomethings from their training for the religious Order, after which they are able to basically act as the will of the gods that they worship, armed with swords. They're a little like the Jedi, only the swords are your basic magic weapons. The main characters set out on what seems to be a routine investigation into some local disturbance, and along the way pick up and shelter a girl who appears to be on the run from the law. There's magic, battles, and all that good stuff. I won't spoil it for you.
But this is a book review, so I must critique. While an interesting concept, the book probably could have used a second eye during the editing process. There were many places where easy-to-catch typos just ran rampant. It seems that find and replace was employed with one of the interesting wording choices, because it was consistent but didn't fit quite right, which leads me to believe that it was a mistake, rather than quirky in-story dialogue. There were often times in the end of the book where "there/their" mistakes, and similar, appeared. A few times, whole verbs were absent from the story. Instances where characters "seemed" to do this or "seemed" to feel that way just occurred too frequently. As a reader, I found these things pretty distracting, and that's never good.
As far as story, it was solidly plotted and does leave some questions open at the end, welcoming a next installment in the series. I did notice that the author took great care, several times and very conspicuously, to mention that there hadn't been a war in a long time. It was a little ham-fisted. I didn't find the descriptions of battle very interesting, but this probably rests with me. I'm not a fan of reading about sword-fights. It's too much like watching something in slow motion, and often I'm lost simply because I know almost nothing about swords or using them in combat. Admittedly, this is a bit of a nitpick.
If you want a nicely plotted steampunk homage to Star Wars, you'll probably like this book. It wasn't quite my cup of tea, but with some tidying up in the grammar department, it would be pretty decent.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Reflections of a Future Terrible Parent, Part 1
When I decided in the spring of 2005, on a whim, to apply to and attend Bob Jones University, I had no idea what I'd be getting myself into. I was a little familiar with the school, mostly through some of the textbooks my Christian school used (there were some historical inaccuracies and brushovers) and the students who visited from the school (way too smiley.) But, for some reason that wasn't at the time at all obvious to me, I knew that I needed to be at that college in the fall of 2005. When I decided that, I was at a senior retreat for my class. I didn't know then that the man I'll be marrying in a few months was sitting in the same room, with his senior class. Later that year, because of a conversation with a good friend who also went to BJU (the only other person in my class to do so,) I met my now-fiance. It was more than I ever could have thought I'd receive simply for following an impression upon my soul. I never expected to even have many friends, as I'm not outgoing. But I have those too, thank God.
Everyone knows Bob Jones University is not without its flaws. It's become quite infamous lately, for what I think are grand missteps in judgement. It's also a place with many rules. Those I don't care about. I'm not here to really talk about Bob Jones University. It's the attitudes within a few in my generation (and older) that I encountered both at the school and outside of it that really cemented in my mind certain things I will not do when I am a parent.
I grew up in the 90s, as a normal kid. We moved around town a few times, but because I went to a private Christian school, I never had to change where I went. It was always the same place. Other than having to wear dresses every day to school, my childhood was not at all different than most other kids that grew up then. I devoured the Goosebumps book series, as well as The Babysitters Club. I don't think I owned many of the latter, and only one of the former. I also read the American Girl books (the ones that went with the dolls), but I didn't own many of them. The Bookmobile coming every 3 weeks was my own private Christmas; we didn't even have to go to the library, because it came to us. I loved that. I got my fill of BSC and Goosebumps, as well as other scary books for kids. I liked the spooky stuff. Seriously, the 90s was a great time to be nine years old. Before we got cable, a weekend trip to my Gramma's house in Virginia was a treat, because she did have cable, and therefore, we could watch SNICK on Saturday night. My favorite was the still-scary Are You Afraid of the Dark. I loved that show.
Until I was about eleven years old, my mom stayed home to take care of my little brother. When he went to kindergarten, she went back to work (she's a nurse.) This left me with the responsibility of us kids staying home alone every day, which was fine. We watched Kids WB and Fox 50 Kids. Animaniacs was an extraordinary show. I watched three straight incarnations of Power Rangers, as well as this show with some knights in Ireland. I freaking loved Mystic Knights. That show rocked. And none of it was educational. Saturday mornings were much the same, because ABC had all the best shows by then. (CBS had my heart for a while, though, as did Fox, which played Peter Pan and the Pirates.) Disney's Doug wasn't as good as the original, which aired on Nickelodeon. Still watched it, though. My best friend (who also went to my school) lived up the street, around the corner, and up this insane hill that probably wouldn't be so bad if I gave it a whirl at th age of 25. I biked everywhere in my neighborhood, exploring every nook and cranny to my hearts content. I finished 6th grade, started shaving my legs, and started junior high. I remember being a Britney Spears fan, back before she sorta lost it. Seventh grade was marvelously awkward for me. After that year, my best friend moved away, and we moved out of our neighborhood and across town. Another friend transferred, and the only link was a phone number (we didn't get internet until later that year), and a dude whom I'd known since 5th grade and whom I had declared to be my mortal enemy. Sort of. (Same dude was the friend who went to BJU. Funny how things turn out, ain't it?) It was a lonely year.
High school was better. Actually, it was pretty great. I was still an introvert, so I was the quiet one, but who cared if I could get away with stuff in my school. 9/11/2001 was at the beginning of my freshman year, and it was pretty scary because North Carolina has its good share of military bases. At some point in that time frame, I transitioned from my rather conservative peach eyeshadow and pink lipstick to smudged eyeliner in blue, green, or purple, and dark lipstick in red, purple, and sometimes silver. Blush was not something I was a fan of. Pallor was my friend. I liked books and stuff with bows and arrows in them, but I was also a girly-girl. The US invaded Iraq in 2003. 2004 brought Green Day's American Idiot, so that was awesome, but we also worried about the draft starting up again, and whether women would be drafted as well, if it came to that. I graduated in 2005, at the age of eighteen, and started preparing to go away to college.
I was not prepared for what I'd face from other Christians, since my upbringing in a Christian home had been so so very regular.
Everyone knows Bob Jones University is not without its flaws. It's become quite infamous lately, for what I think are grand missteps in judgement. It's also a place with many rules. Those I don't care about. I'm not here to really talk about Bob Jones University. It's the attitudes within a few in my generation (and older) that I encountered both at the school and outside of it that really cemented in my mind certain things I will not do when I am a parent.
I grew up in the 90s, as a normal kid. We moved around town a few times, but because I went to a private Christian school, I never had to change where I went. It was always the same place. Other than having to wear dresses every day to school, my childhood was not at all different than most other kids that grew up then. I devoured the Goosebumps book series, as well as The Babysitters Club. I don't think I owned many of the latter, and only one of the former. I also read the American Girl books (the ones that went with the dolls), but I didn't own many of them. The Bookmobile coming every 3 weeks was my own private Christmas; we didn't even have to go to the library, because it came to us. I loved that. I got my fill of BSC and Goosebumps, as well as other scary books for kids. I liked the spooky stuff. Seriously, the 90s was a great time to be nine years old. Before we got cable, a weekend trip to my Gramma's house in Virginia was a treat, because she did have cable, and therefore, we could watch SNICK on Saturday night. My favorite was the still-scary Are You Afraid of the Dark. I loved that show.
Until I was about eleven years old, my mom stayed home to take care of my little brother. When he went to kindergarten, she went back to work (she's a nurse.) This left me with the responsibility of us kids staying home alone every day, which was fine. We watched Kids WB and Fox 50 Kids. Animaniacs was an extraordinary show. I watched three straight incarnations of Power Rangers, as well as this show with some knights in Ireland. I freaking loved Mystic Knights. That show rocked. And none of it was educational. Saturday mornings were much the same, because ABC had all the best shows by then. (CBS had my heart for a while, though, as did Fox, which played Peter Pan and the Pirates.) Disney's Doug wasn't as good as the original, which aired on Nickelodeon. Still watched it, though. My best friend (who also went to my school) lived up the street, around the corner, and up this insane hill that probably wouldn't be so bad if I gave it a whirl at th age of 25. I biked everywhere in my neighborhood, exploring every nook and cranny to my hearts content. I finished 6th grade, started shaving my legs, and started junior high. I remember being a Britney Spears fan, back before she sorta lost it. Seventh grade was marvelously awkward for me. After that year, my best friend moved away, and we moved out of our neighborhood and across town. Another friend transferred, and the only link was a phone number (we didn't get internet until later that year), and a dude whom I'd known since 5th grade and whom I had declared to be my mortal enemy. Sort of. (Same dude was the friend who went to BJU. Funny how things turn out, ain't it?) It was a lonely year.
High school was better. Actually, it was pretty great. I was still an introvert, so I was the quiet one, but who cared if I could get away with stuff in my school. 9/11/2001 was at the beginning of my freshman year, and it was pretty scary because North Carolina has its good share of military bases. At some point in that time frame, I transitioned from my rather conservative peach eyeshadow and pink lipstick to smudged eyeliner in blue, green, or purple, and dark lipstick in red, purple, and sometimes silver. Blush was not something I was a fan of. Pallor was my friend. I liked books and stuff with bows and arrows in them, but I was also a girly-girl. The US invaded Iraq in 2003. 2004 brought Green Day's American Idiot, so that was awesome, but we also worried about the draft starting up again, and whether women would be drafted as well, if it came to that. I graduated in 2005, at the age of eighteen, and started preparing to go away to college.
I was not prepared for what I'd face from other Christians, since my upbringing in a Christian home had been so so very regular.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Book Review: Shattered, by Sophia Sharp
Say what you will about the Twilight series, but it must always be conceded that the books have been successful in the six years that they've been out. With the rising popularity of self-publishing and the ready availability of resources for such, lots of sad, sad clones of Twilight have appeared on the digital bookshelves of the Kindle store.
Shattered, by Sophia Sharp, popped up as a "YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS" sort of thing in my Amazon account, while I was poking through author pages. It was 99 cents, so I thought "heck, why not" and downloaded it to my Kindle app. (The app was free. Awesome.*)
The book started out okay, but it felt a little first draftish, and the wording tended to be a little juvenile. The male lead (Logan) brooded and mystified the girl (Laura) in an all too familiar way.
And then people begin to disappear.
No, really. Entire sets of characters disappear, including all of Laura's friends. Though the dialogue among them could be stiff and unconvincing most of the time, the characters didn't deserve the horrific fate of being erased from reality altogether. As far as her family, though they are mentioned, you never meet them. Even the dog is a faceless entity that exists, apparently, to underscore the All-American main character.
An unlikely situation involving Laura's soon to be former crush which could totally get the jerk arrested is lifted straight off the pages of Twilight and solved by Logan and mixed martial arts. Very little is described in the book, except for a detailed view of a river-powered mill somewhere in the boonies and Logan's distinctive pale and emo look. The conversations between Laura and Logan aren't badly done, but like the rest of the book, they do need some work.
It's a clone of Twilight, so the SUPRISE I'MA VAMPIRE moment is pretty obvious before it comes, though the "visit the dream world" concept that Sharp includes is interesting and not something I was expecting, though it does make the vampire element seem a little more intrusive and contrived. Logan goes to high school, and Laura first meets him when he transfers to hers. However, he is a 400 year old vampire and travels alone, and there's never given any reason for him to keep up appearances as a high school student. Maybe he fears arrest by a truant officer even though he's totally old enough to drop out and get his GED.
On the bright side, Shattered only cost 99 cents, and the grammar and spelling were clean, something not seen much in a self published novel. It's also refreshingly free of that dreaded pair, Mary Sue and Gary Stu. Sophia Sharp is a 19 year old college student, so writing this novel, however flawed it is, is a commendable effort. I won't be reading the rest of the series, but feel free to check them out yourself in the Amazon Kindle Store.
*Seriously, get it. The app is free for all devices that it's available on. Your iPad could be that much more awesome, my friend.
Shattered, by Sophia Sharp, popped up as a "YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS" sort of thing in my Amazon account, while I was poking through author pages. It was 99 cents, so I thought "heck, why not" and downloaded it to my Kindle app. (The app was free. Awesome.*)
The book started out okay, but it felt a little first draftish, and the wording tended to be a little juvenile. The male lead (Logan) brooded and mystified the girl (Laura) in an all too familiar way.
And then people begin to disappear.
No, really. Entire sets of characters disappear, including all of Laura's friends. Though the dialogue among them could be stiff and unconvincing most of the time, the characters didn't deserve the horrific fate of being erased from reality altogether. As far as her family, though they are mentioned, you never meet them. Even the dog is a faceless entity that exists, apparently, to underscore the All-American main character.
An unlikely situation involving Laura's soon to be former crush which could totally get the jerk arrested is lifted straight off the pages of Twilight and solved by Logan and mixed martial arts. Very little is described in the book, except for a detailed view of a river-powered mill somewhere in the boonies and Logan's distinctive pale and emo look. The conversations between Laura and Logan aren't badly done, but like the rest of the book, they do need some work.
It's a clone of Twilight, so the SUPRISE I'MA VAMPIRE moment is pretty obvious before it comes, though the "visit the dream world" concept that Sharp includes is interesting and not something I was expecting, though it does make the vampire element seem a little more intrusive and contrived. Logan goes to high school, and Laura first meets him when he transfers to hers. However, he is a 400 year old vampire and travels alone, and there's never given any reason for him to keep up appearances as a high school student. Maybe he fears arrest by a truant officer even though he's totally old enough to drop out and get his GED.
On the bright side, Shattered only cost 99 cents, and the grammar and spelling were clean, something not seen much in a self published novel. It's also refreshingly free of that dreaded pair, Mary Sue and Gary Stu. Sophia Sharp is a 19 year old college student, so writing this novel, however flawed it is, is a commendable effort. I won't be reading the rest of the series, but feel free to check them out yourself in the Amazon Kindle Store.
*Seriously, get it. The app is free for all devices that it's available on. Your iPad could be that much more awesome, my friend.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Ah, Self-Righteousness, the Spice of Life
This blog's mostly about fiction and various forms of it, such as writing. Y'all knew that already, so I'll move on.
Writers always get stuck with a version of typecasting. We're always the quiet ones who don't want others to read our stuff and fiercely guard it with our lives and hide journals under stuff. Sometimes, we're also in pain and we write to make life better or something, usually with the use of beautiful and tortured (i.e. horrible) poetry. And ultimately, we write for the sake of writing. It is an art form, and to make our art into anything but would be selling out.
Right.
Maybe I'm especially unique, but I'd personally like to write a bestseller and make money from either book sales or subsidiary stuff, such as books and related merchandising. Does this make me a sellout? Not really. As a skill, writing is very marketable. Your options range from writing website copy to penning the next Harry Potter, and it is hard work. As a writer, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that your unedited work is just gold in ink form, but that's the farthest thing from being true.
My degree comes from a very conservative university. I minored in creative writing, and I took some great classes that didn't only focus on the skill of writing, but also on the marketability of a finished product. In fact, not one but two professors pushed a focus on making your work publishable. If you want to use your gifts, you shouldn't limit yourself to writing stories and poems for friends or your own personal pleasure, and you really shouldn't scoff at those who are published, because they've been willing to do the work that you will need to do to get published.
I think one of my favorite reactions is the "I've seen and write better than that" that tends to come up. A good example that I once read on the internet was the laughable statement that Twilight is unoriginal because...wait for it...Buffy did it better the first time. Reasons being? Buffy had a vamp boyfriend too. This is true, but that doesn't grant Joss Whedon's hit series any more originality than Twilight. In all honesty, Buffy kinda sucked. (Whedon hit the mark better with Firefly, a great show that regretfully lasted only one season.) The title character's ability to sort of use something that resembled a sappy stage version of fake martial arts was, I think, the reason so many were fans of the show, or something like that. (Granted, this was the 90s, the era of empowered women in leather bikinis, and fanboys went nuts for stuff like that. Throw in the romance with a tortured vamp-guy, and you have a hit series.)
All this to say, don't get too much on your high horse. Take criticism. I once knew someone who had a near breakdown at her on-campus job because some guys in her creative writing class had given an honest critique on her story's characters. It deeply bothered this person that someone had noticed that her characters went through very unsubtle, sudden changes. Look at examples around you, and please stop comparing apples to oranges. For example, comparing the Chronicles of Narnia to the Harry Potter series is probably something you should avoid, just because the styles are very different. True, they're both fantasy, and neither are allegorical. They do have a couple of things in common. For example, England. And words.
One more thing: give yourself credit. You may be a fan of Harry Potter, a loyal Narnian, a Twi-hard, or a respectable citizen of Hobbiton, but you are not any of those authors. You don't have to be them in order to write good books of your own. I'm reading through the Harry Potter series right now and it was tempting for a bit to knock a few years of the ages of my main characters and give them adventures at the age of 13 or 15. I admire Rowling's work and I think she's a good writer. She's certainly a strong writer, and that could easily become a problem for myself if I let her series overcome my work. I can't let that happen. All I can do is work out discrepancies and issues in my book and let it be what it already is. What sets me apart from the writers of any books I own? They're already published. Instead of concentrating on my intellect, I'm going to sit down, shut up, and work, because they're all way ahead of me already.
Writers always get stuck with a version of typecasting. We're always the quiet ones who don't want others to read our stuff and fiercely guard it with our lives and hide journals under stuff. Sometimes, we're also in pain and we write to make life better or something, usually with the use of beautiful and tortured (i.e. horrible) poetry. And ultimately, we write for the sake of writing. It is an art form, and to make our art into anything but would be selling out.
Right.
Maybe I'm especially unique, but I'd personally like to write a bestseller and make money from either book sales or subsidiary stuff, such as books and related merchandising. Does this make me a sellout? Not really. As a skill, writing is very marketable. Your options range from writing website copy to penning the next Harry Potter, and it is hard work. As a writer, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that your unedited work is just gold in ink form, but that's the farthest thing from being true.
My degree comes from a very conservative university. I minored in creative writing, and I took some great classes that didn't only focus on the skill of writing, but also on the marketability of a finished product. In fact, not one but two professors pushed a focus on making your work publishable. If you want to use your gifts, you shouldn't limit yourself to writing stories and poems for friends or your own personal pleasure, and you really shouldn't scoff at those who are published, because they've been willing to do the work that you will need to do to get published.
I think one of my favorite reactions is the "I've seen and write better than that" that tends to come up. A good example that I once read on the internet was the laughable statement that Twilight is unoriginal because...wait for it...Buffy did it better the first time. Reasons being? Buffy had a vamp boyfriend too. This is true, but that doesn't grant Joss Whedon's hit series any more originality than Twilight. In all honesty, Buffy kinda sucked. (Whedon hit the mark better with Firefly, a great show that regretfully lasted only one season.) The title character's ability to sort of use something that resembled a sappy stage version of fake martial arts was, I think, the reason so many were fans of the show, or something like that. (Granted, this was the 90s, the era of empowered women in leather bikinis, and fanboys went nuts for stuff like that. Throw in the romance with a tortured vamp-guy, and you have a hit series.)
All this to say, don't get too much on your high horse. Take criticism. I once knew someone who had a near breakdown at her on-campus job because some guys in her creative writing class had given an honest critique on her story's characters. It deeply bothered this person that someone had noticed that her characters went through very unsubtle, sudden changes. Look at examples around you, and please stop comparing apples to oranges. For example, comparing the Chronicles of Narnia to the Harry Potter series is probably something you should avoid, just because the styles are very different. True, they're both fantasy, and neither are allegorical. They do have a couple of things in common. For example, England. And words.
One more thing: give yourself credit. You may be a fan of Harry Potter, a loyal Narnian, a Twi-hard, or a respectable citizen of Hobbiton, but you are not any of those authors. You don't have to be them in order to write good books of your own. I'm reading through the Harry Potter series right now and it was tempting for a bit to knock a few years of the ages of my main characters and give them adventures at the age of 13 or 15. I admire Rowling's work and I think she's a good writer. She's certainly a strong writer, and that could easily become a problem for myself if I let her series overcome my work. I can't let that happen. All I can do is work out discrepancies and issues in my book and let it be what it already is. What sets me apart from the writers of any books I own? They're already published. Instead of concentrating on my intellect, I'm going to sit down, shut up, and work, because they're all way ahead of me already.
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