Tag! I'm It!

Oh dear. I would never normally do two blog posts in one day. But I seem to have been caught up in an internet game of tag! I've been tagged by Ya fiction author, Michelle Krys. Check out her website here: http://michelle-krys.blogspot.ca/

So now I have to answer eleven questions, and come up with eleven of my own and tag OTHER bloggers in this post. (It's supposed to be eleven, but really, I mean come on. I'm not that popular).

1) What are the top three books in your TBR pile?
See sidebar! Ooh! Cheating.

2) Who is your top book boyfriend (dare I say husband)?
Hm. I would have to say Eric Northmen, from the Sookie Stackhouse books. Meow.

3) If you could have written any YA book in history, what would you choose and why?
The Harry Potter series. Aside from money and fame...I really do think they're sheer creative genius. Then of course, there's the money and fame....

4) If you could live the life of any book heroine who would you choose and why?
Hermione or Ginny from Harry Potter, because I wish I could wave a wand and do magic.

5) Choose one: your book is a literary masterpiece with tons of critical acclaim but very, very lacklustre sales, or your book is a blockbuster of a novel with millions upon millions of copies sold but others question its quality and it is nearly universally bashed in the writing community, a la Twilight. There's no in between or neither choice either (Nice try!)
Aaaw, that's a crappy choice. Um, I'll be shallow and go for the sales. Hopefully my next book will be a literary masterpiece AND I'll be famous enough to sell it! Haha.

6) If you could have the super power of any literary hero or heroine, who would you choose and why?
Tessa, from Cassandra Clare's Infernal devices series. It would be so awesome to be able to morph into someone else and trick people!

7) You're stranded on a desert island for life, with one author. Who is it?
Young adult fiction author, Rebecca Lynn. Because we would just build our own starbucks out of bamboo and sip coconut milk and talk about books forever.

8)You are forced to live one day of your life over and over for eternity. What day is it and why?
Hm, I think it would be my last birthday. Chocolate cake for eternity wouldn't be so bad.

9)If you could be invisible for one day, what would you do with that time?
Um, honestly? I'm tempted to say I would go act heroic or something, but I would probably sneak around and play pranks on people.

10) If you had to be reincarnated into an animal what would it be and why?
A bird, because I've always wanted to fly.

11) If you had to rename yourself what would you choose?
Something fancy. Hm, like Rebecca Velvet. That sounds cool and mysterious. Or maybe the last name Warrior. That would be AWESOME on a book cover.

The Newly Tagged:
-Rebecca Lynn- http://www.authorrlynn.com/
-Melvyn Windham - http://meloramawrites.blogspot.ca/
-Janeen Ippolito - http://thequietpen.wordpress.com
-Cassie Mae - http://www.ninjaswrite.com



My Forwarding Questions:

1)If you got to meet a famous author who would it be?
2)If you got to say only ONE thing to them, what would it be?
3)Make up a fake (and short) book jacket with these words included: Dishwater, hedgehog, nylons,wobbly, sausages, dangerous, angry. Okay, GO...
4)Who is your book boyfriend/girlfriend?
5)Your publisher is paying for you to go anywhere in the world and write a book about it. Where?
6)What is the most HORRIBLE book character you can think of and why?
7) Who is your favorite villain?
8) What is your favorite book to movie?
9)  What was the most horrifyingly scary book you've ever read? Why?
10) What book series do you wish you had written?
11)When is the last time a book made you cry and what book was it?

The Cobra Event: A Book Review

Fun fact: This book alarmed Bill Clinton so much that he had his intelligence experts read it to see if it was actually possible.

                This post is partially because I should have starting doing book reviews a long time ago, and partly because this book makes me frustrated, and I want to rant.  I can’t complain, since I didn’t even spend ten dollars on the thing. I found the book at the “Free Store”, which is the pile of junk along the road that the local garbage man puts out (I find lots of books there, one man’s trash, right?).

The Cobra Event is a thriller about biological warfare.  The writing is overly descriptive, mechanical and dry, but for some reason…I can’t put it down. Maybe it’s the absolutely chilling concept, or the extreme detail that makes me wonder if the author knows a little too much about all this. The Cobra event has me frustrated, because in some parts I feel like Preston thinks the reader is a complete moron, such as when he describes a sample tube “about as big as your pinky” and has the character put a cottons swab tip in it, then goes on to describe the fluid inside and mention AGAIN…there’s a cotton swab tip in it. Uh…I know. I got that the first time, thanks bud.  In spite of my annoyance I find the book strangely fascinating.  It reminds me a little bit of the movie Contagion, except that in this book it’s deliberate and in the movie it was just a flue type thing that was killing everyone off.

So, I may snort in annoyance every few pages, but I can only blame myself because I keep reading. It’s one of those things, like cheap candy. It doesn’t taste that good, but it’s there so you eat it. Okay, I guess that isn’t a good comparison. Cheap candy doesn’t make me paranoid. I swear, this book is bad for my nerves; every time somebody sneezes I jump out of my seat.

“Oh my gosh, you think you have the common cold but in a minute your brain is gonna turn to mush and leak out your ears, get away from me!”

Next up: I've been hearing a big internet buzz about The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. I hold in my greedy little hands a brand new hardcover copy! (I may or may not be stroking it and whispering my precious.)

Fantasy Novel Hook for your Book Contest

              It was either a bath, or books. Until I found a bath made of books. Huh?

            Oh dear, sometimes I get so excited. I was browsing novel contests online and stumbled across a particularly good one.  I became so engrossed that I forgot I was drawing a bath in the next room and only a loud rushing, dribbling noise pulled me away from the computer. My bathroom tiles are a smidge soggy now. Flooded, to be precise.  But no matter, this is the exiting contest that caused my bath to do the Niagara Falls impression:

Author Lisa Regan is hosting a “Hook for Your Book” contest, for fantasy novelists. It will be judged by a real live literary agent, Jeanie Pantelakis of the Sullivan Maxx Literary Agency!

The contest is open until October 17^th so hurry and enter on Lisa’s blog!  In order to enter you must be a follower of the blog, and provide a link to a tweet or blog post to spread the word about this contest. You must have a completed novel (It’s sad they have to say that, shouldn’t most people figure that one out? I guess not.) Write a 50 word paragraph that is the “hook” for your book in the comments section of Lisa Regan’s contest post. Don’t forget your name, book title and contact info! Here is an example that Lisa Regan has on her blog:

Finding Claire Fletcher

Detective Connor Parks, newly divorced, with his career in jeopardy, spends the night with a woman he meets at a bar. The next morning Claire Fletcher is gone; leaving behind a hint of a decade-old mystery. Abducted when she was 15 years old, no one has heard from her…until now. Will he find Claire Fletcher?

Lisa L. Regan
Email: duchessmalfi@hotmail.com

Ms. Pantelakis will choose three people as finalists. They get to send her a synopsis and the full manuscript, in the end, one will get a full read, hopefully resulting in a contract.  This is an amazing opportunity! If you have a manuscript completed and polished, then go for it! In fact, that’s where I’m headed right now.

The Lure of the Bookstore

            “Ooooh, shiny!”

            This is my usual reaction to book covers, much as a black bird is attracted to glistening shreds of tinfoil, so I am drawn to the fresh, creaseless covers of new books. It’s almost a shame to read them, to break their backs, sending cracks down their spines. But I do, of course. To leave words unread would be ludicrous.

            Equally attractive is the used bookstore, with its hidden, dusty volumes and yellow pages that crackle with age. The heavy tomes of forgotten wisdom are waiting in breathless silence for a new owner, for someone to gaze upon the pages and drink in the stories they tell. Waiting for someone to fall in love again. And the smell of old books! They smell like a gloomy night, the type of night you sit at your desk with the lamp light shining softly down, the only sound is the quiet rustling of the pages, the crack of the fire and the tapping of rain at the window. They smell like pirate ships and sorcerers, armored knights and vikings, fierce battles and tranquil forests.

And sometimes there are stories hidden within stories. A scribble here, a signature here,

“This book belongs to…”

“This book was given to….”

            There are emotions attached to books, tear splotched, torn pages. I once examined a pair of old autograph books. They were filled with memories, verses people had written, well wishes and handwritten poetry.  One book was filled all the way, the other only halfway. I pressed my hands to the glass eagerly, lost in the little story card beside the display. Twin girls had been given these autograph books, and one had died of scarlet fever very young. Her sister went on to fill her own book, but she kept her dead sister’s book with her, unsigned and empty. I had to turn away from the books, for fear I should fog up the glass a little. How silly, to stand there sniffling at the display case. 

            There is something about books, new or used. Something that makes me want to take them all home and learn their stories. Sometimes, on those cold, rainy nights when the fireplace casts shadows in the corners and the house is silent and sleeping, I retreat to my library, working my way around the room to run my fingertips over the spines of the books, listen to them whisper. Which one of us is next?  

                                                                     

Happily Ever After, or Not?

“This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly; it should be thrown with great force.” Dorothy Parker

            I was reading a book on the beach one morning. I had been deeply engrossed in this book for several days, and upon coming to the end of it, I stared at the last sentence in horror. It read thusly:

  “They may or may not have escaped. Dear reader, what do you think happened?”

          What do I think? I think I just wasted three days on your useless book! So enraged was I, that I threw the offending volume across the sand and into the waves, where the book floated soggily for a second and then sank.  That did not quell my indignant feelings. I thought to myself, that it was as though the author had grown sick of it, and sought the easy way out, committing literary suicide.  

I’m not saying the end of a story has to be all unicorns and rainbows. It doesn’t even have to be happy. But readers, I think you will agree, that it needs to leave you satisfied. Loose ends need to be tied up. There needs to be a glowing note of satisfaction upon closing the book. The reader needs to believe it was time well spent. Perhaps some writers think they are daring and inventive, when their book has a dark and terrible ending, leaving the reader in despair. I myself have finished books and felt depressed afterwards. My heart heavy, as though I would never be happy again.  This is not how readers want to feel. There are enough sad endings to real life stories, I don’t want my fairy tales ending badly too.

If authors feel that “happily ever after” is overdone, they may revert to the “bitter-sweet” ending.  There are many books that pull this off beautifully, for example:

The Notebook-Nicholas Sparks (Yes! That was actually a book, my god!)

The Book of Lost Things- John Connolly (Fabulous book, highly recommended).

Bridge to Terabithia-Katherine Paterson ( I was very soggy after this.)

Some only have bittersweet endings because you don’t want the book to be over (or the series). The ending of the Harry Potter saga for instance, had many a fan in happy tears.

One of the greatest series of all time: Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, has a very bittersweet ending. Nearly every time I’m torn between being sad and happy. (Frodo is leaving his friends and it’s so sad, but then he’s going with Gandalf to frolic with the Elves for ever and ever….such confused emotions!) Bittersweet is good, it leaves the reader satisfied, and appeases the writer’s artistic temperament. I have to admit, sometimes I  want a plain old ride-off-into-the-sunset, “glass shoe fits and she goes to live in the palace”, type ending.

    

   “And she married the prince, and they had lovely babies that never cried, and she never got old or fat, and they lived a fabulously wealthy life with no taxes. All their subjects loved them, and the weather was always splendid and it never rained.”

THE END

The Trouble with Cats

Many of you have experienced the frustrations of being a writer. The constant distractions the outside world provides.  The lethargy we seem to experience at the thought of starting a new project, or editing an existing one.  Some of us have that wonderful little voice in our head, that driving thought or idea that will make us sit down and get to work. But once we have overcome the slothfulness and put aside the shiny distractions of TV and internet, there are more obstacles still. I do not speak of writer’s block. That can be taken down with the sturdy sledgehammer of careful thought. No, I speak of a far greater foe.

I experienced this yesterday. No sooner had I sat down at my computer, when along strolls Peaches, my feisty calico, who quite suddenly has a penchant for Earl Grey tea. Without so much as a by- your- leave, she sticks her furry face inside my tea cup and begins lapping up the contents within.  My outraged noises and shooing motions don’t bother her in the least, and she drinks her fill. Grumbling, I turn back to my work.

Soon she attempts to flop down on my keyboard, making appreciative purring noises that probably translate roughly into, “Aaah, lovely. I can warm my belly on the keyboard and piss her off in one go.”  I shove her off and she flops over onto my papers like a limp noodle, and then proceeds to roll around on her back, paws in the air, on top of all of my papers, purring and drooling. Thoroughly impatient by now, I hiss at her, much the same way a crazy person would, and she gives me a disapproving stare.

Briefly there is drama, when Addie, the Great Dane pokes his giant head and shoulders into the doorway and my cries of “No dogs in libraries!” mingle with Peaches outraged growls. She jumps from the desk and menaces him, until he backs himself out of the room, staring at us woefully as he retreats. I look blankly at the screen once all is silent again. Where was I?

Peaches is now off in the corner, playing the mighty hunter. She makes odd burbling noises as she stalks an intruding moth across the window sill.

I get one or two words written and then she’s back, like a recurring nightmare, head butting my arm, demanding I acknowledge how cute she is.        

Yes, damn it, you’re very cute.   

She drapes herself over my shoulder like a large, fuzzy parrot and purrs at top volume right in my ear, determined that if I’m going to do anything at all, it had better involve petting and adoring her.  I ignore her, and she returns to her rolling and drooling, scattering my papers across the desk. Alas, she rolls too enthusiastically and falls off the edge of the desk with a crash, scattering the papers and taking several books with her. Whoever said cats were graceful?  I laugh unkindly and she glares at me in embarrassment, stalking out of the room in a huff. 

                At last, the tyrant is gone and I am free to write! Now, I’ll just quickly check Facebook….